In the 30+ years since she began popularizing the dream theories of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, Marion Woodman is a sage in our understanding of the soul. With more than a half million books in print, including one co-authored by Robert (Iron John) Bly, she is the authority for understanding the concept of the true soul and her books have been sighted in the private library of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Along with Joseph Campbell, her ability to articulate Jungian psyche has been instrumental in my 'understanding'. In Woodman's words,

"Psychological work is soul work.... By soul, I mean the eternal part of us that lives in this body for a few years, the timeless part of ourselves that wants to create timeless objects like art, painting and architecture. Whenever the ego surrenders to the archetypal images of the unconscious, time meets the timeless. Insofar as those moments are conscious, they are psychological — they belong to the soul.... For me, soul-making is allowing the eternal essence to enter and experience the outer world through all the orifices of the body ... so that the soul grows during its time on Earth. It grows like an embryo in the womb. Soul-making is constantly confronting the paradox that an eternal being is dwelling in a temporal body. That’s why it suffers, and learns by heart."

I just recently purchased her latest work {2005}, a CD audio book titled 'The Crown of Age'. Once again she important provides insights and guidance to aging, what she called a time for 'the culmination of our inner and outer development as human beings'. As we age she affirms a paradox of growing old,

while our physical strength wanes, our spiritual strength "blossoms, petal by petal." I highly recommend this CD for anyone at that 'wisdom' stage in life.

Description We are each "crowned" twice in this lifetime, teaches the legendary Jungian analyst Marion Woodman. Much is written about the promise of the first crowning, at birth. But what of the second, which comes only after a lifetime of experience? This is the “crown of age,” she says, a symbol for the culmination of our inner and outer development as human beings. On The Crown of Age, Woodman examines what it means to pass through life’s many "crossroads and thresholds," emerging as an elder, the embodiment of wisdom, wholeness, and truth. Mining the riches of her own life, including a

battle with cancer that nearly ended it, Woodman illustrates the paradox of growing old: that while our physical strength wanes, our spiritual strength "blossoms, petal by petal." With poetic insight she describes the archetypal passage in a woman's life from mother to virgin to crone, and the preparation of our souls for the great crown we receive only when life ends.

The Crown of Age is a crowning achievement in Marion Woodman’s long and celebrated career as a writer, teacher, analyst, and now, trusted elder.

Jerry