Archetypes
Finally
we come to the ultimate kernel which cannot be made
conscious at all – the
sphere of the archetypal mind. Its presumable contents appear in the form of
images which can be understood only by comparing them with historical parallels.
If you do not recognize certain material as historical and if you do not possess
the parallels, you cannot integrate these contents into
consciousness and they
remain projected. The contents of the
collective unconscious are not
controllable by the will. They actually behave as if they did not exist in
yourself – you see them in your neighbours but not in yourself.
“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 effective means conceivable of
instinctive adaptation.”[3]
[Contemporary man] is blind to the fact that; with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by "powers" that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names.
Archetypes are gods of the Romans, Greeks, and Hindus, etc., (the Self would be synonomous with Christ), came up with their systems of ‘the gods’[2]. Archetypes are inherently active in the psyches of all people in all places and in all times and are akin to black holes in space, in that you only know they’re there by how they draw light and matter to themselves.
The
Romans had a clever way of assimilating people into their empire – by
translating the archetypes. If, for instance, they conquered
an Etruscan tribe, or when they later conquered the Celtic tribes, they would
find out who the main native gods were and assimilated them to their own gods.
As they were all Indo-Germanic, they all had the same pattern.
The main male god became
Jupiter So-and-So and the great goddess
Juno or
Hera So-and-So, and if the god of commerce was called Kerunnus, he became
Mercurius-Kerrunus. Thus we find temples everywhere in
Why go to the Brahmans? You’ve got it in yourself.
Turn in. All those gods that you are invited to
worship through the public sacrifice are projections of the fire of your own
energy. There’s that wonderful passage in the Chandogya,
“Worship this god, worship that god, one god after another; those who follow
this law do not know. The source of the gods is in your own
heart. Follow the footsteps to that center and know that you
are that of which the gods are born.” TMTT 106
And so, to grasp the full value of the
mythological figures that have come down to us, we must understand that they are
not only symptoms of
the unconscious but also controlled and intended statements
of certain spiritual principles, which have remained as constant throughout the
course of human history as the form and nervous structure of the human physique
itself.
There are three main archetypes: The Self, the Shadow, the Anima/Animus.
The
shadow, the
syzygy, and
the self are psychic factors of which an adequate picture can be formed only on
the basis of a fairly thorough experience of them.
Just as these concepts arose out of an
experience of reality, so they can be elucidated only by further experience.
Philosophical criticism will
find everything to object to in them unless it begins by recognizing that they
are concerned with facts, and that the “concept” is simply an abbreviated
description or definition of these facts.
Outside
the narrower field of professional psychology these figures meet with
understanding from all who have any knowledge of
comparative mythology. They
have no difficulty in recognizing the
shadow as the adverse representative of
the dark chthonic world, a figure whose characteristics are universal. The
syzygy is immediately comprehensible as the psychic prototype of all divine
couples. Finally the self, on account of its empirical peculiarities, proves to
the eidos behind the supreme ideas of
unity and
totality that are inherent in all monotheistic and monistic systems.
(For
Jung)
The Self is the master archetype which involves all lesser archetypes.
There are infinite numbers of Archetypes, but the more common ones one
comes across are
‘The unconscious
sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the
mind – whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom,
beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our
consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves. … There not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide: the inconvenient or
resisted psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate
into our lives.’
“I
would never even have had this thought unless so-and-so had happened; and
besides, I never think things like that”
Remarks like this are quite usual, and show how nebulous psychic facts
are, or rather how vague they are on the subjective side – in reality they are
just as objective as historical events.
The thing is that I did think this thus, regardless of the conditions and
stipulations I may attach to this fact”[5]
“It would be
an unpardonable sin of omission were one to overlook the
feeling-value of
the archetype. This is extremely
important both theoretically and therapeutically.
As a numinous factor, the archetype determines the nature of the
configurational process and the course it will follow, with seeming
fore-knowledge, or as though it were already in possession of the goal to be
circumscribed by the
centring process.
“The
archetype is pure,
unvitiated nature[6],
and it is nature that causes man to utter words and perform actions whose
meaning is unconscious to him, so
unconscious that he no longer gives it a
thought.”
When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies
abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that
the gods have claimed another victim. This is how daemonic power reveals
itself to us.
In our
dreams they
speak to us in
elaborate productions of heroes, villains, storms, and story lines,
which can reveal much of our
unconscious mind to us.
These messages are communications from the
unconscious that “knows and
does not
perceive”[7].
Archetypes exist in all cultures and in all times basically unchanged.
“I must stress
one aspect of the archetypes which will be obvious to anybody who has practical
experience of these matters. That
is, the archetypes have, when they appear, a distinctly
numinous character which
can only be describes as ‘spiritual’, if ‘magical’ is too strong a word.”
“We must,
however, constantly bear in mind that what we mean by “archetype” is in itself
irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible,
namely, the archetypal images and ideas.”
By far the greatest number of
~ C. G. Jung, Synchronicity, An Acausal Principle
Great
forces are directing you to conform to the patterns of your society.
You have DNA that has been handed down from generation to generation,
coding repeated behaviour patterns into your being.
You have
archetypal energies setting the standards for how you behave as a man or
a woman, as husband or wife, as father or mother.
You are immersed in consensual reality, whereby the world around you
reflects societal understanding of how life has been and is to be.
At the same time, you have an even greater force within you inspiring you
to wake up and recognize the reality of who you are.
This force, the creative power underlying the entire
universe, is urging
you to create brand new standards of reality.
The status quo is blind to our creative power.
Create a brand new world for yourself, one that meets your deepest needs,
and you will help
raise the quality of consciousness of the entire world.
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Philemon
and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me
the crucial insight that there are things in the
psyche which I do not produce,
but which produce themselves and have their own life.
The chief danger is that of succumbing to the fascinating influence of the archetypes, and this is most likely to happen when the archetypal images are not made conscious. If there is already a predisposition to psychosis, it may even happen that the archetypal figures, which are endowed with a certain autonomy anyway on account of their natural numinosity, will escape from conscious control altogether and become completely independent, thus producing the phenomena of possessions. ... In the case of an anima-possession, for instance, the patient will want to change himself into a woman through self-castration, or he is afraid that something of the sort will be done to him by force.
(In
the Roman Empire) there were all those little nations with their local creeds
and folklore and religious teaching – the Celts and the Syrians and the
Israelites, and so on – and then, when all this was put together in the
[2]
Small g gods
J
[3]
Jung Lexicon – Archetype – page
27
[4]
“The unconscious … is the source
of the instinctual forces of the psyche and of the forms of categories
that regulate them, namely the archetypes.”
The Structure of the Psyche, “ CW 8, par. 342 (Jung Lexicon page
145)
[5] Page
77-78 (what book I don’t know?)
[6]
“Nature” here mans simply that
which is, and always was,
given.
[7] Page 42