The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris

C.G. Jung held an ‘extemporaneous’ seminar on “The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris” at the 1943 Eranos Conference. In a complete version for the first time, this book presents all of the known material relating to the seminar, including notes taken by two of his students, Alwine von Keller and Rivkah Schärf Kluger, and the outline that Jung himself prepared. Opicinus de Canistris (1296–c. 1352) was a priest and cartographer from near Pavia, Italy. His typically medieval cartography is characterized by historical, theological, symbolic and astrological references along with a curious anthropomorphism, which depicted continents and oceans with human features. Jung recognized this as a projection of Opicinus’ inner world and interpreted the maps of the world as mandalas, where the integration of the shadow, the dark principle, was missing.