We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide. If we cannot deny the archetypes or otherwise neutralize them, we are confronted, at every new stage…
Archetypes, Emotions, and Primordial Images Archetypes are systems of readiness for action, and at the same time images and emotions. They are inherited with the brain structure-indeed they are its psychic aspect. They represent, on the one hand, a very strong instinctive conservatism, while on the other hand they are the most…
Archetype, Complexes and Fate Archetypes are complexes of experience that come upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. The anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be, as an intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When, for instance,…
The Metaphor of Archetypes and Rivers “Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any time. An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has…
“Archetypal images, as universal patterns or motifs…” Archetypal images, as universal patterns or motifs which come from the collective unconscious, are the basic content of religions, mythologies, legends and fairy tales. An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with it…
— “The prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.”– “Absorption into the instinctual sphere, therefore, does not and cannot lead to conscious realization and assimilation of instinct, because consciousness struggles in a regular panic against being swallowed up in the primitivity and unconsciousness of sheer instinctuality. This fear is…
Jung: On Water Symbolism… When one has awoken from Muladhara, one goes into the water, which represents the unconscious where one faces the Leviathan/Crocodile from the depths which are ones own demons. The Leviathan is the biggest and most fearsome creature of the watery depths. (but it represents the same animal as the…
Michelle Franton — an artist from Australia — and I started corresponding after she came across an image I had drawn of Kayaking the Unconscious She talked about how her paintings are “irrational”. I asked Michelle to comment on this fish painting of hers: The fish appeared during the painting of one of…
If you contemplate your lack of fantasy, of inspiration and inner aliveness which you feel as sheer stagnation and a barren wilderness, and impregnate with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just a great a fullness if only you…