Soul Loss, JHN Perkins' story of Undine

Eminent Jungian JHN Perkins has turned to a profound but neglected legend for a new understanding of the soul.

"I would like to call attention to a new book by John Perkins and say briefly why it is ,I think , worth the attention of many, including many here, who might pass it by. It is titled "Soul Loss" and it is a meditation both psychological -- the author is an analytic psychologist -- and spiritual on the legend of Undine, an ancient and tragic story of the love of a knight and a maiden from the sea.

"At present folklore is not in vogue with publishers or readers in the way it was 30 years ago when Joseph Cambell and Bill Moyers discussed the power of myth on public television. However, this brief book, 112 pages, is much more than a telling of an old story, or even an analytic psychological opening out of the way the story illuminates our inner world, it is also a powerful gathering up of the thought of an author who is himself a spiritual explorer and not simply an academic. Drawing on sources from his own memories, dreams and reflections ,as it were, from James Joyce as well as from Carl Jung, he pulls it all together in a unique work, powerful and visionary.

"The word 'mystical' has I think a certain attractiveness though it is used for the most wildly diverse things. I will use it here and say that this book is a mystical journey, a mystagogy or path of initiation into what it is to be human in all its height and depth , light and dark, and rapture grounded in the eternal."

-- Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, author of The Theology of Wonder and other spiritual classics.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Loss-Lessons-Tragic-Undine/dp/1539438597