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Making of a Temenos

Making Room for Magical Conversation

I'm working on my "sanctuary" room. Yesterday, I installed battery-operated fairy lights and brought down the LED candles. The room contains Buddhist art, African ritual objects, my grandmother's furniture, Central Asian rugs... "Claude" AI recommended I call it my Temenos (Greek, TEM-en-os, stress on the first syllable; the final "os" rhymes with "boss"). According to Claude:

Psychologist Carl Jung borrowed the term to refer to a protected inner space — a mental and sometimes physical container in which transformation could safely occur. He used it (1) to describe a bounded space where the psyche could open and (2) to refer to sacred circles in dreams and mandalas.

Jung built his own physical temenos — the Tower at Bollingen on Lake Zurich — a stone structure he constructed with his own hands over decades as a place outside ordinary time, for solitude, inner work, and what he called "being in the self."

12 Mar 2026

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