Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend. The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the supraordinate personality, such as a king, hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross, etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary (arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.[Definitions, CW 6, par. 790.] The primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal thought-forms of humanity. They are as much feelings as thoughts; indeed, they lead their own independent life rather in the manner of part-souls, as can easily be seen in those philosophical or Gnostic systems which rely on perception of the unconscious as the source of knowledge. The idea of angels, archangels, principalities and powers in St. Paul, the archons of the Gnostics, the heavenly hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, all come from the perception of the relative autonomy of the archetypes. ~Carl Jung; Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 66; Paragraph 104.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 14:07:52 +0000
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