An Evening With Monika Wikman: Honoring Tom Elsner's Work

Jungian analyst Tom Elsner died before he could celebrate his book, A Flash of Golden Fire: The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of the Modern Soul in Coleridge's ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', which was chosen for the Fay Lecture Series and then published by Texas A&M University Press in 2025.

Tonight, we will honor Tom’s brilliant work, paying specific attention to the deep-feeling sense of the roots of depth psychology emerging 100 years before Jung in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other Romantic poets. Tom’s work inspires us to pay closer attention to our own “lenses of perception” while, in connection with the transcendent function, helps us usher in the evolution of co-creative consciousness in our times.

In the early 20th century, C.G. Jung survived an intense encounter with the unconscious. He did this by giving expression to his inner world in the paintings and dialogues found in The Red Book. Yet Jung felt alone in this work, unable to find a precedent or cultural parallel, until he discovered alchemy. This ancient “protoscience” became the bridge Jung had been seeking between the past and the present. But a gap developed between the downfall of alchemy in the 18th century and The Red Book in the 20th.

According to Tom, Coleridge’s great visionary poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” is a link in that golden chain. In his analysis, Coleridge’s 19th century night-sea journey can be understood as a symbolic self-portrait of the collective unconscious, a self-portrait that, like The Red Book, finds its historical context and continuity in the alchemical tradition.

Following in the footsteps of the highly esteemed works in the Fay Lecture Series, Tom’s book promises to further extend understanding and appreciation of Jungian principles for practitioners, analysts, and others interested in Jungian theory and practice, the psychological dimensions of Romantic poetry, and the evolution of Western consciousness.

Monika Wikman, Ph.D, is a Jungian analyst and astrologer. Author of Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, she has also contributed chapters, articles and poems to numerous publications including a chapter in The Dream and Its Amplification, edited by Erel Shalit and Nancy Furlotti. A graduate of the Jung–Von Franz Center for Depth Psychology in Zürich, she taught for many years in the graduate department at California State University, Los Angeles, and was a dream researcher at UCSD Medical Center on "Dreams of the Dying."   She hosts a non-profit project under Earthways.com, The Center for Alchemical Studies.  Podcasts with Monika on various topics can be found at Shrinkrapradio.com and SpeakingofJung.com