VALLEY OF DIAMONDS: Adventures in Number and Time with Marie-Louise von Franz by J. Gary Sparks- Title 127

During a serious illness in his sixties, C. G. Jung dreamed that he was in a valley of diamonds and could fill his pockets with them. He understood the diamonds to refer to all he had yet to say about the human psyche. But he realized that he could only show a fraction of what he had in his pockets. He lived on to write his major works, but one “diamond” left virtually untouched was the relationship between inner and outer, the mysterious interface between mind and matter. He believed the key to this conundrum lay in investigating the concept of numbers as archetypes of the unconscious, but he lacked the energy for it.

This was the great task Jung bequeathed to his long-standing colleague, Marie-Louise von Franz, who heartily took it on in her prodigious tome, Number and Time (1974), which thoughtfully explores the space-time continuum, the psychological significance of the first four integers, 1-4, and parallel developments in the world of physics. Her enquiry is a difficult book, but seminal in laying the groundwork for a new worldview based on numbers as they manifest in dreams, everyday life, science and synchronistic events.

J. Gary Sparks’ masterful explication of Number and Time clarifies von Franz’s work and makes more accessible to all readers one of the proudly-faceted jewels Jung left as his legacy to genuine healing.

Valley of Diamonds is a fitting sequel to this author’s previous book, At the Heart of Matter: Synchronicity and Jung’s Spiritual Testament (Inner City Books, 2007).

J. Gary Sparks, B.Sc., M.Div., M.A., is a graduate of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA; the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA; and the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He is co-editor of Edward F. Edinger’s Science of the Soul (Inner City Books, 2002) and Ego and Self: The Old Testament Prophets (Inner City Books, 2000).