Review by Veronica Goodchild, February 6, 2013
Sandra Dennis, Embrace of the Daimon: Healing Through the Subtle Energy Body in Jungian Psychology .
We speak more urgently today of a mind-body connection as psyche truly seeks to incarnate in and through us beyond anything we might say or interpret about her. In this unique, engaging work, Sandra Dennis goes beyond the split that continues to underlie the phrase ‘mind-body’. Building on the alchemical notion that she calls the unio corporealis (‘union with the body’), first identified by Jung, she takes us on a journey to the profound levels of subtle body reality in that landscape of the psychoid that Corbin calls the imaginal world.
Pressing up from a realm that is neither spirit nor matter, yet paradoxically psychophysical in nature, the daimons and guides from this realm are seeking connection and transformation with our co-participation, in order to enable both consciousness and matter to evolve to a higher level. Increasingly we hear about what I call signatures of this new emerging subtle realm coming back into prominence in our time – from synchronicities, kundalini openings, shamanic and near-death experiences, to UFO encounters and the mysteries of crop circle manifestations – as spirit and matter reach toward each other for a new Sacred Marriage in the realm of psyche.
This book helps us learn to recognize and navigate this subtle, imaginal realm and its denizens, and to heal through its often taboo energies, associated with the presence of feminine wisdom as Sophia, and engages us at the leading radical edge of Jungian psychology today.
Veronica Goodchild, PhD, Core Faculty, Jungian and Imaginal Psychology, Pacifica Graduate Institute, author of Eros and Chaos: The Sacred Mysteries and Dark Shadows of Love (2001, 2008), and Songlines of the Soul: Pathways to a New Vision for a New Century (2012).