Jung Journal

Culture & Psyche

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Decoding Toni’s Stone

C. G. Jung’s Memorial for Toni Wolff

Kevin B. Turner & Chia-Wei Yang

To cite this article: Kevin B. Turner & Chia-Wei Yang (2021) Decoding Toni’s Stone, Jung Journal,
15:3, 90-102, DOI: 10.1080/19342039.2021.1942758

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19342039.2021.1942758

Published online: 16 Sep 2021.

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Decoding Toni’s Stone
C. G. Jung’s Memorial for Toni Wolff
KEVIN B. TURNER AND CHIA-WEI YANG

Oil Painting of Toni Wolff, 1927, by Paul Basilius Barth (1881–1955)

(Courtesy of Psychologischer Club Zürich)

Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Volume 15, Number 3, pp. 90–102, Print ISSN 1934-2039, Online ISSN 1934-2047.
© 2021 C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. DOI: 10.1080/19342039.2021.1942758.
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 91

The Self is a paradoxical symbol, as all real symbols are. It is totality and oneness, yet man can only
perceive it as duality. Somewhat like the Chinese Taoistic symbol of the Taigitu [which] represents
unmanifest wholeness, but in actuality there is always either Yang or Yin actually manifested.

Toni Wolff, in a letter months before her death

(Champernowne 1980, 46)

After the death of Toni Wolff in 1953, C. G. Jung carved a memorial stone in Chinese for her
and placed it under the Chinese gingko tree near the sunken garden on the southeast side of his
home in Küsnacht on Lake Zürich. On the stone he portrayed an older man sadly leaning on
a cane, a branch of gingko leaves, and five large Chinese characters carved vertically. A photo of
the stone was recently published for the first time in The Art of C. G. Jung (Jung 2018).

Meeting Toni’s Stone

We are students of both Chinese language and Jungian thought. When the Jung Family Archive
kindly showed us the original Toni Stone in Küsnacht in the summer of 2018, we were as puzzled as
other readers of Chinese by the second of five Chinese characters. We returned to Asia, and a few
months later, we received the newly published book The Art of C. G. Jung (November 2018). We again
pondered the five characters carved vertically in Chinese on Toni’s Stone, described as “to-ni, wolf,
nun, mysterious.” The first character 朵 (duǒ) is clearly a grammatical counter for flowers that sounds
phonetically like toh in Toni, and the third character is clearly wolf, 犲 (chái). However, we puzzled
over the second character 臼千尼 (similar to ní), which appears to be a novel composite character
(consisting of two Chinese radicals and one character) created by Jung, as it does not exist in any
standard dictionaries. Several have surmised that Jung intended it to be a phonetic character for ni as in
To-ni, as it has a vague similarity to the character for fragrance (香), thus hinting at fragrant nun (香
尼). We learned that four other Chinese professors had also assumed a similar meaning or intention.
Jung himself had previously described Emma as the foundation of his house and Toni as “the
fragrance,” so the assumption seemed reasonable. However, Jung’s novel combination of radicals, 臼
千, within the second character is definitely not 香 (fragrance).
Joseph Henderson in his foreword to Memoirs of Toni Wolff wrote that Jung had once shown him
the stone and told him that it meant “Lotus, Nun, Mysterious” (Champernowne 1980), with no
mention of the word fragrant in honor of Toni. Yet there is no Chinese character for lotus present in the
actual stone carving. Laurens van der Post, a long-time friend of Jung’s, reports, “On the stone intended
for Toni Wolff, who had died first, he wanted to inscribe another Chinese character to the effect that she
was the fragrance of the house” (1975, 177). Neither the characters for lotus nor fragrance are in the final
product. Why would Jung tell others that fragrance and lotus are part of the Chinese inscriptions on the
stone when they are not? Was he simply mistaken, or is there something more?
Another oddity became apparent to us when we saw Emma’s memorial stone at Bollingen,
where Jung’s carving in Latin clearly speaks of Emma’s death: “She completed her life and after her
death she was lamented. She went over to the secret of eternity in the year 1955” (Cooper-White
2013). Yet Toni’s memorial stone makes no clear mention of death, departure, transition, or
anything of the sort; in fact, even if an observer is able to read Chinese it is not clear that the
stone is even a memorial. Why? Something was amiss, incomplete; it seemed to us that, like the
alchemists of old, Jung had left a hidden message, a riddle.
92 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

Toni’s Stone, a photograph (1956) from The Art of C. G. Jung (Jung 2018, 172)
(© 2007 Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung, Zürich)
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 93

The Influence of Chinese Thought on Jung

Before we delve further into Jung’s cryptic message in Chinese, we feel it important for the
reader to grasp how and why Chinese language and thought was so important to Jung. In
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung writes of a letter he received:

I received a letter from Richard Wilhelm enclosing the manuscript of a Taoist alchemical treatise
entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower, with a request that I write a commentary on it. I devoured
the text at once, for the text gave me undreamed of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala
and the circumambulation of the centre. That was the first event which broke through my
isolation . . . remembrance of this coincidence, this “synchronicity,” I wrote underneath the picture
which had made so Chinese an impression upon me: “In 1928, when I was painting this picture,
showing the golden, well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in Frankfort sent me the thousand-year-
old Chinese text on the yellow castle, the germ of the immortal body.” (Jung 1962, 197)

A key here is the word immortal, as it pertains to Toni’s Stone. In Murray Stein’s insightful
article reflecting on the influence of Chinese on Jung and his psychological theories, he points out
that Thomas Kirsch, while visiting China in 1994, gave a talk entitled “Jung and Tao,” and there
reminded the surprised audience that Jung “claimed that Wilhelm had influenced him more than
any other individual in his life” (Stein 2005, 193). Jung felt Wilhelm’s influence was so needed in
the world that he urgently implored, rather prophetically, to Wilhelm, “You are too important to
our Western world. I must keep telling you this. You mustn’t melt away or otherwise disappear,
or get ill” (Jung 1973, 63). Wilhelm died shortly thereafter. Stein concludes:

The treasures that Jung found in Chinese thought, thanks to the work of Richard Wilhelm,
continued to influence his thinking for the rest of his life. . . . This notion of individuation as
circular rather than linear, basically a Chinese one, would become a central feature of Jung’s theory of
individuation. Chinese thought, therefore, played a key role in coming to this understanding and
formulation of a process that is perhaps the centerpiece of Jung’s psychological theory. . . . In his life,
too, Jung made himself an experiment in the uniting of these “opposites,” East and West [Yin and
Yang]. He did attempt to live the Tao and not only to think and write about it. The influence of
China entered into his everyday life as well as into his psychological theorizing. (Stein 2005, 220)

Jung has defined Chinese characters (images) as “readable archetypes” (Shen 2009, 10). Jung
himself suggests, “Every psychic process is an image and an ‘imagining,’ otherwise no consciousness
could exist and the occurrence would lack phenomenality” (1939/1958, CW 11, ¶889). In her
article “Ancient Chinese Hieroglyphs: Archetypes of Transformation,” Adelina Wei-Kwan Wong
continues this line of thought: “From this Jungian perspective, the [Chinese] hieroglyph, as an
image associated with specific meaning, reflects the psychic process of those who use it” (2018, 55).

Dream Incubation: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Alchemy seeks the Philosophers’ Stone, the key to immortality, which involves meditation
upon and incubation of images. To say that the incubation of dream images played a part in
Jung’s life and work would be an understatement. Jung advised in Archetypes and the Collective
94 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

Unconscious, “The tendency of the old man to set one thinking also takes the form of urging
people to ‘sleep on it’” (Jung 1968/1980, CW 9i, ¶405).
Following Jung’s advice, I went to sleep meditating on the image of the mysterious second
character (臼千尼). In the wee hours of the morning I awoke with a start, and searched through
my Chinese radical dictionaries and soon discovered the character 臿 (chā), meaning mortar (and
pestle), which also means “separating the grain from the husk.” I immediately noticed that
regarding this character, if we lift the radical for thousand 千 up (and out of its husk 臼), we have
臿 > 臼千. This is precisely what Jung carved in the first two portions of the second character!
Initiated into Kundalini and Tibetan Buddhist practices myself, I immediately recognized the
千 (thousand) being lifted from the husk (臼), as the goal of Kundalini yoga and Tibetan phowa—
that is, at the time of death, one departs from the top of the head, exiting from the thousand-petaled
lotus, the sahasrāra, the seventh chakra, to achieve spiritual liberation or spiritual immortality. The
grain/soul is then literally separated from the husk/body and freed. Jung even closed the middle bar,
suggesting death, or “no return to the husk (body).” Jung was clearly privy to this kind of knowledge
after his many years of studying and writing commentaries on the Tibetan Bardo Thodol (The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, or guide to afterlife navigation) and Kundalini yogas.
The second character could then be read as “the nun whose soul departed from the husk of the body,
via the top or peak one-thousand-petaled (lotus) chakra, thus successfully reaching liberation (immor­
tality, or perhaps the Philosophers’ Stone) at the time of death.” This is known as mahasamadhi in
Sanskrit and phowa in Tibetan. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, for whom Jung wrote several book commentaries,
wrote extensively about Tibetan phowa in his 1935 book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (Evans-
Wentz 1935), a copy of which rests in Jung’s personal library in Küsnacht. Twenty years before Toni’s
departure, Jung wrote: “To speak about the lotus of the thousand petals above, the sahasrāra center, is
quite superfluous because that is merely a philosophical concept with no substance to us whatever; it is
beyond any possible experience” (Jung 1996, 113). Thus, Jung and Wolff, with whom he shared his most
intimate soul explorations, were both likely well aware of this practice. For those adept at phowa, it can
even be done for another person at the time of their death, leading them out of the top of the head for
liberation or at least a most successful rebirth. As intention is the key to all spiritual practice, Jung’s
intention may be clear here, and this may be why he doesn’t mention the word death in her memorial.
Chia-Wei then discovered a possible confirmation in this quote from a text I had sent to
her months earlier. Jung wrote in the preface to Wolff’s collected works (1981/2003), “Thanks
to [Toni’s] high natural intelligence and quite exceptional psychological insight, the author
[Toni] was one . . . to separate the wheat from the chaff.” Here we find the very essence of the
hidden character 臿 (separating the wheat from the chaff ) in Jung’s preface of the German
edition of Wolff’s collected works.

Hidden Lotus, Open Trap

Chia-Wei went on to unearth a next step in the mystery—an archaic Chinese character combination
for “unopen lotus bud,” 菡萏 (hàndàn). The bottom portion (radical) of the second character for
(closed) lotus 萏 (dàn) is 臼, the very same as that of 臿 (chā), separating the grain from the husk. The
lotus is considered not only the symbol of the chakras but also a symbol of purity and transcendence.
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 95

Chia-Wei points out that the lotus grows underwater in mud and rises from the mud to blossom in the
sunshine above water, implying transcendence. Also, the Gnostics, about whom Jung often wrote,
considered the body to be a trap, that is, to be in physical form is a pitfall 臽 (xiàn), a covered husk or
trap. This is what is implied by the Chinese radical for husk 臼 at bottom of pitfall or trap, thus we have
“held in the husk.” Jung was steeped in Gnostic thought and knowledgeable about Buddhist Tantrism
as well. In Tantrism, the soul is considered woven into the body via the chakras (lotuses). Closed (or
sleeping) chakras, like unopened lotus buds, hold the soul in the body (husk). In both Gnosticism and
Buddhism, the material body is a trap to escape, to transcend. If we add only 艹 (cǎo) on top (signifying
“plant”) of trap, the character becomes lotus bud 萏.

Soror Mystica
For further clues into the mystery of Toni’s Stone, let us explore alchemy, tantrism, dreams, and
lesser known aspects of Toni Wolff and C. G. Jung’s hidden life. Wolff was twenty-two and Jung
thirty-five years old when they met in 1910. Jung “related to Jaffé that at the beginning of analysis
Toni had an eruption of the wildest fantasies, some of an incredibly cosmic nature. Her fantasies
paralleled Jung’s line of thought, but—he said—he was so preoccupied with his own material that
he could then scarcely take on hers as well” (Owens 2001, 39). In Black Book 2, Jung notes that it
was a dream three years after he met Toni that led him to start a relationship with her. In 1925, he
remarked that this dream “was the beginning of a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of
inert material only, but that there was something living down there” (Jung 2009, 198, fn. 37). Not
long after, Jung had a frightening physical experience:
He swam out into Lake Zürich and then got a severe cramp. Thinking he might drown, at that
moment he made a vow: if he were able to survive and make it back to shore, he would “give in”
and contact Toni. Jung interpreted this event as indicating his own life was in danger if he did not
act to re-establish the relationship. (Owens 2001, 40)
Jung and Wolff were more than lovers. On a number of occasions Jung himself referred to
Toni as his spiritual wife, his soror mystica (sister in the mysteries). Toni Wolff told Marie-Louise
von Franz that the enduring strength of her relationship with Jung came not only through sex but
primarily through “the likeness of our minds” (Bair 2003, 321). Wolff and Jung embarked on
a forty-year exploration of the psyche together. Their heroic efforts changed Western thought as
we know it, and their influence appears to be increasing with time. Jung and Wolff rediscovered, at
least for the West, the principle of the union of the opposites, a primary facet of Jung’s new
psychology. As Toni’s father had lived in Japan for over twenty years, it is assumed that it was she,
along with Wilhelm, who introduced Eastern concepts to Jung.
The Eastern mind is far ahead of us in the knowledge of the basic psychological facts. I will only
remind you of the fundamental law of the opposites, which ancient Chinese philosophy has
formulated under the symbols of the Yang and the Yin. Yang and Yin are cosmic principles as well
as psychical ones. (Wolff 1934, 5)
In 1932, Toni Wolff gave a lengthy talk at the Psychology Club in Zürich entitled
Tantrische Symbolik bei Goethe (Tantric Symbolism in Goethe) (Wolff 1981/2003, 285–
96 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

318). Wolff’s talk demonstrated an intimate knowledge of not only the tantras and their
relationship to alchemy (and therefore to analytical psychology) but also Goethe and the role of
the alchemical Philosophers’ Stone in his work. First, however, let us define Tantra, as there are
significant misunderstandings regarding this term. Giuseppe Tucci describes, “The aim of all
the Tantras is to teach the ways whereby we may set free the divine light which is mysteriously
present and shining in each one of us, although it is enveloped in an insidious web of the
psyche’s weaving” (1970, 78). In other words, the purpose of Tantra is to free the light from
the husk, the trap, the woven web, as in Tibetan phowa, the final conscious exit of the soul
from the top of the head at the time of death. Radmila Moacanin further elaborates:

Diagram from Michael Maier’s book Atalanta Fugiens, first published in 1617. Here a man is using a compass to draw a circle
around a circle within a square within a triangle. Within the smaller circle are a man and a woman, the two halves of our nature
that are brought together through alchemy. (Courtesy of Science History Institute)
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 97

The transmutation of energy is the central concept in all Tantras.1 Absolute reality contains all
dualities and polarities. . . . Within their own bodies Tantric disciples achieve the reunion of the
two polar principles, that is the primordial unity . . . the Great Bliss. All Tantric practices, rituals
and meditations—the so-called sadhanas—have as their aim this realization. (Moacanin 1986, 32)

Making the Philosophers’ Stone

What then is the relationship between Tantra and the Philosophers’ Stone, so much discussed in
alchemy and by Jung himself? Simply put, the goal is one and the same—the transmutation of the
prima materia into spiritual gold, to spiritualize matter, and then to finally free the light from the
husk, as in Tantra, transcendence. Regarding the “union of the opposites” stages of both tantra and
alchemy, Jung quotes from the Rosarium Philosophorum: “Make a round circle of man and woman,
extract therefrom a quadrangle and from it a triangle. Make the circle round, and you will have the
Philosophers’ Stone” (Jung 1940/1958, CW 11, ¶92). Therefore we could here insert Jung and
Toni inside the circle (round Tower at Bollingen) under sacred processes, and we have the Stone
(see diagram in the image on the previous page). “Our stone is not the ordinary stone,” intone the
alchemists across the ages. Jung often quoted the alchemist Dorn: “Transmutemini in vivos lapides
philosophicos!” (Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!) (Jung 1980, CW 12, ¶187).

Jung’s Notebook
Before Jung carved Toni’s Stone he designed it in pencil in one of his personal notebooks,
kindly made available for our viewing by the Jung Family Archives in Küsnacht. Examining
the second character in pencil, we can see that Jung had erased an earlier character (eraser
smudges are clearly evident in the following image)
under which was written “very fragrant” in pencil in
English. He had intentionally replaced whatever was
erased (香 or 臿) with his newly created character 臼
千尼 and then moved it from the fourth position
into the second position on the stone itself (both
could be pronounced ni), the place of Toni’s name.
One can observe that portions of the hidden char­
acter 臿 (separating wheat from chaff) can separate
into 臼千, and, importantly, he closed the middle
bar of 臼, perhaps implying “no return to the husk”
or death, as shown in the image.
A lingering clue from Toni’s Stone remains to be
examined—the word fragrance. Jung had purportedly
Jung’s handwritten second character from told Laurens van der Post that he wanted to inscribe
The Art of C. G. Jung (2018, 172) (© 2007 a character to mean fragrance on the stone (Post
Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung,
1975, 177). Jung himself wrote “very fragrant” in
Zürich)
English below the mysterious second character; he
98 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

then erased the Chinese and replaced it with another that, although similar, is not the Chinese
character for fragrance. Why would fragrance be only implied or even occulted (hidden)? Let us
turn to Goethe’s Faust where twice he mentioned that fragrance portends the final creation of
the Philosophers’ Stone.2 Toni’s Stone, itself a stone, may be a hidden tip of the hat to that for
which the couple had strived—the Philosophers’ Stone.
Returning to the five Chinese characters, we decipher Toni’s Stone as follows:

(1) 朵 (duǒ), a counter for flowers, similar in sound to To as in Toni’s name.

(2) (臿) 尼 > 臼千尼 (ní), a novel character created by Jung (does not exist in Chinese),
the second syllable of Toni’s name, fragrant (香) portent to the creation of the
Philosophers’ Stone, tantric/alchemical marriage, culmination of the union of oppo­
sites, and final departure of the soul from the (臼) husk/trap (臽) of the body, via the
(千) thousand-petaled lotus (萏) bud at the top of the head, as in Tibetan phowa,
thus a most successful transcendence (transition) into unity consciousness.
(3) 犲 (chái) “wolf,” as in Toni’s family name Wolff.
(4) 尼 (ní), nun, soror mystica, alchemical wife/tantric partner in the Mysteries (to make the
Philosophers’ Stone). In Latin, nonna refers to a pagan priestess (Raphael 1965, 242).
(5) 赜 (zé), mystery, mysterious, or perhaps “of the hidden way.”

We can scarcely imagine a more beautiful memorial, held secretly in Toni’s Stone and
Jung’s heart:
To-ni, fragrant portent to the creation of the Philosophers’ Stone, whose soul has exited from the husk-
trap of the body, up through the thousand-petaled lotus chakra, reaching transcendence, liberation,
immortality, wolf (Wolff), soror mystica, (unmarried) nun/alchemical marriage (spiritual wife) in the
Mysteries.

Ancestral Spirits
As we close our investigation, let us now turn to the reverse side of Toni’s Stone and another
possible reference to the Philosophers’ Stone. In their 1659 classic alchemical treatise, A True
and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits,
John Dee and Edward Kelly insist in no less than a dozen places that the Philosophers’ Stone
could only be made “with the help of the Spirits” (Dee, Kelly, and Casaubon 1659). While in
Zürich, Erlo van Waveren was privy to personal knowledge Jung kept highly confidential:
“Whenever [Jung] spoke to me about an incarnation, it was referred to as an ancestor;
‘ancestral components,’ ‘psychic ancestors,’ ‘ancestral souls’” (Waveren 1998, 2012, 29).3
Jung carved in the Latin on the reverse side of Toni’s memorial stone:
DIIS MANIBUS
SACRO ARBORIS
HUIUS NUMINI
FECIT ET POSUIT C.G. JUNG
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 99

ANNO MCMLVI
which translates as follows into German4:
DEN AHNENGEISTERN (UND)
DEM HEILIGEN GÖTTLICHEN WESEN
DIESES BAUMES [gingko]
MACHTE UND SETZTE C.G. JUNG
(DIESEN STEIN) IM JAHR 1956
And into English:
THE ANCIENT SPIRITS (AND)
THE HOLY DIVINE BEING
THIS TREE (Gingko)
MADE AND SET by C.G. JUNG
(THIS STONE) IN 1956

And as translated in Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung: A Collaboration (Healy 2017, 241): “Sacred
divine beings, along with ancestral spirits, helped to create this stone.” Healy adds that Jung
“told Mary Elliott that he periodically leaves bowls of rice as offerings to Toni at the base of the
memorial” (2017, 242). This is a profoundly Chinese gesture.

Conclusion
The synchronicity principle [is] . . . where an inner event occurs simultaneously with an outside one.
C. G. Jung (1952, CW 12, ¶938)

Jung coined the term synchronicity as a way to describe a meaningful, though acausal connec­
tion between inner and outer events. Intention powerfully draws meaningful coincidences—
synchronicities. Something larger than what was consciously intended occurs—a blending of
personal consciousness and the collective unconscious. When asked about synchronicity and
psychical research Jung said in a filmed interview directed by Suzanne Wagner (World Within
1990), “There are cases of parallel events [in which] I have a certain thought . . . a certain
definite subject is occupying my interest, my attention. At the same time, something else
portrays that thought, quite independently.” Synchronicities involve intentionality, unpredict­
ability, creativity, perhaps even a state of grace. When one is synchronized or resonating with
intention, coincidences increase; life responds. If we consider the mysterious second character
with this in mind a hidden gold may be unearthed.
We cannot be sure that Jung consciously intended the multilevel meanings that cascade from
his creative sequence of Chinese character radicals on Toni’s Stone, but to repeat Wong’s assertion:
“the [Chinese] hieroglyph, as an image associated with specific meaning, reflects the psychic process
of those who use it” (2018, 55). As an aficionado of anagramma, alchemy, and hidden meanings, it
is not surprising that Jung left a personal cryptic message for posterity. Barbara Hannah writes, “He
[Jung] gave up a burning wish to learn Chinese only when his studies in alchemy convinced him
100 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

that he could never find the time to learn that most difficult of all languages” (1976, 173). Perhaps
Jung learned more than Hannah had assumed and had not given up so easily.
The riddle left behind in Chinese on Toni’s Stone by Jung could be an elaborate,
sophisticated Chinese anagramma holding a multitude of hidden meanings and intentions.
“Typical of my grandfather—he was like that,” says grandson Andreas Jung.5 Perhaps more
importantly and more remarkably, it is an exquisite manifestation of that most central concept
in Chinese thought—synchronicity.

[The] unlimited knowledge present in nature . . . can be comprehended by consciousness only when the
time is ripe for it.
C. G. Jung (1963, 307)

ENDNOTES
1. Moacanin continues: “‘Tantra,’ a Sanskrit word, relates to the concept of weaving, suggesting activity,
continuity, and also interdependence and interrelatedness [1986, 15] . . . . Tantra implies continuity
—the continuity of the movement of one’s life and inner growth, when spiritual practice is
consciously pursued. And practice leads to an understanding of the interwovenness of all phenom­
ena, the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm, mind and universe, matter and spirit
[16] . . . . To [Jung] psychotherapy is ultimately an approach to the numinous. It is on this ground
that Jung and Tantra meet; they penetrate and transform the same psychic realities [65] . . . . But
the work of redemption, whether in alchemy, in Tantra or Jung, cannot be left to nature; it requires
conscious effort. Above all it must be a living experience, it must take place in the midst of life
[66] . . . . The fundamental concept in Tantra is recognition of polarity, and its integration is the
core of Tantric practice: the union of male and female energies, matter and spirit, active and passive
principles [80] . . . . And in Tantra especially, all the hidden tendencies, projections, must be known
and experienced before they can be transmuted into wisdom [87] . . . . Tantra’s chief concern is
spiritual growth, and the remarkable Tantric way is one not of asceticism but of fully experiencing
life in all its joy, spontaneity and creativity. An essential part of it, however, is the mental attitude,
that is, the selfless motivation that underscores every form of Buddhist practice. In Tantra and in
Jung’s model the mundane and spiritual dimensions of life are closely connected; in fact, they are
two sides of the same reality that need to be reconciled” (104).
2. John Read recognized the part played by fragrance in connection with the production of the
Philosophers’ Stone: “Fragrance is a portent of the philosopher’s stone” (quoted in Raphael
1965, 67).
3. In the biographical note at the head of van Waveren’s book, Pilgrimage to the Rebirth (1998), Olivier
Bernier writes, “Even more important than the assurance Jung had given, that these figures were indeed
to be considered as incarnations, was the certainty Jung expressed to Erlo about reincarnation, and
about having himself been through a number of lives.” Furthermore, in her journals Katherine Rush
Cabot reports Jung telling her that he had seen “Toni [Wolff] in an old-fashioned gown, in the 13th
century, and he had a three-cornered hat and was bowing low in front of her” (Reid 2001, 237).
4. Translation by Dr. Thomas Fischer, personal email communication.
5. Andreas Jung, personal conversation with the authors at 228 Seestrasse, August 2019.

NOTE
References to The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are cited in the text as CW, volume number, and
paragraph number. The Collected Works are published in English by Routledge (UK) and Princeton
University Press (USA).
Kevin B. Turner with Chia-Wei Yang, Decoding Toni’s Stone 101

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bair, Deidre. 2003. Jung: A Biography. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.
Champernowne, Irene. 1980. A Memoir of Toni Wolff. San Francisco: C. G. Jung Institute of San
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102 J U N G J O U R N A L : C U L T U R E & P S Y C H E 1 5 : 3 / S U M M E R 2 0 2 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the Jung Family Archive in Küsnacht for showing us the original memorial
stone for Toni Wolff as well as sharing archival information with us. We also wish to thank
Dr. Thomas Fischer and Dr. C. C. Jung, current director of the Foundation of the Works of
C. G. Jung (Stiftung der Werke von C. G. Jung), for translations and permissions to reprint the
photographs herein.

KEVIN B. TURNER, currently the Foundation for Shamanic Studies director for Asia, has lived in Asia for more
than thirty-five years. He holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics, has lectured at universities in Taiwan,
Korea, and Indonesia, and held tenure at Sakushin Gakuin University in Tochigi, Japan. He is the author of
the award-winning 2016 book Sky Shamans of Mongolia: Meetings with Remarkable Healers and a number of
academic publications in anthropology and psycholinguistics. Correspondence: [email protected].

CHIA-WEI YANG is a lawyer, qualified both in the UK as a barrister-at-law and in Singapore as an advocate and
solicitor. She holds a law degree (LLB, Hons) from the University of London, a master’s (MSc) in environment
management from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and is an appointed member of the IUCN
World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL).

ABSTRACT

C. G. Jung carved a memorial stone in Chinese for Toni Wolff after her death in 1953. Why he carved
a memorial stone in Chinese for his “spiritual wife” is unknown. Efforts at deciphering Jung’s intentions
in the Chinese characters he chose, in particular, one that is a novel character of Jung’s own creation,
have been inconclusive. This study offers a new interpretation of Toni’s Stone in the light of Chinese
linguistics as well as Wolff and Jung’s knowledge of Kundalini yoga, Tibetan mysticism, synchronicity,
Goethe, alchemy, and the Philosophers’ Stone.

KEY WORDS
alchemy, anagramma, Bollingen, Bardo Thodol, Chinese linguistics, Goethe, incarnation, Jung, Kundalini,
Küsnacht, Philosophers’ Stone, phowa, Secret of the Golden Flower, synchronicity, tantra, Tibetan Book of
the Dead, Toni Wolff, Zürich