STAUDENMAIER, Ludwig.

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Die Magie als experimentelle Naturwissenschaft. First edition, first impression, of the German chemist's attempt to formalise the scientific study of magic. Staudenmaier's experimentation with automatic writing and auditory and visual hallucinations intersected with the burgeoning psychoanalytic movement; Jung owned a copy of this work, and the hallucinations detailed within likely influenced his own visions as recorded in the "Black Books" and the "Red Book" between 1913 and 1930.Die Magie als experimentelle Naturwissenschaft is Staudenmaier's first and only full exposition of his theories. He first published an account of his experiments with the science of magic in 1910 in Annalen de Naturphilosophie, a journal produced by the Nobel-prize winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) who personally endorsed Staudenmaier's paper. This work, which expands on that preliminary article, sold well, and was reprinted in 1918 and 1920, before a second, revised edition appeared in 1922. Jung annotated his copy of Staudenmaier's work, which contains several similarities with Jung's own experiments of "deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama... his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness" (Shamdasani, p. 200).Staudenmaier's interest in the duality of the spiritual and scientific dated back to his early life; he undertook ecclesiastical training before switching directions and enrolling at the

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