C.G. Jung held an 'extemporaneous' seminar on "The Solar Myths and
Opicinus de Canistris" at the 1943 Eranos Conference. In a complete
version for the first time, this book presents all of the known material
relating to the seminar, including notes taken by two of his students,
Alwine von Keller and Rivkah Schärf Kluger, and the outline that Jung
himself prepared. Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c. 1352) was a priest and
cartographer from near Pavia, Italy. His typically medieval cartography
is characterized by historical, theological, symbolic and astrological
references along with a curious anthropomorphism, which depicted
continents and oceans with human features. Jung recognized this as a
projection of Opicinus' inner world and interpreted the maps of the
world as mandalas, where the integration of the shadow, the dark
principle, was missing.