Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

priori”, Jung argues; “The representations themselves
are not inherited, only the forms, and in that respect they
correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also
determined in form only (Jung 1968c:79, pars 155).
Jung’s archetypes are characterised at first by no specific
contents, enabling the “content” to be inherited (Jacobi
1959:53-54). What the archetypes are “filled with”
depends upon the inherited traditions – habitus – and
general social and cultural structures, but this content is
not the archetypes per se. “Archetypes are, by definition,
factors and motifs that arrange the psychic elements into
certain images, characterized as archetypal, but in such a
way that they can be recognized only from the effects
they produce…Empirically considered, however, the
archetype did not ever come into existence as a
phenomenon of organic life, but entered into the picture
with life itself” (Jung 1958:149, par 222, my emphasis).
This move is important and has often been missing in
analyses and uses of Jung’s archetypes in practical
studies. Regarding the mode of apprehension which Jung
calls the archetype or primordial image, the
“…archetypes are not disseminated only by tradition,
language, and migration, but that they can re-arise
spontaneously, at any time, at any place, and without any
outside influence…[This] means that they are present in
every psyche forms which are unconscious but
nonetheless active – living dispositions, ideas in the
Platonic sense, that perform and continually influence
our thoughts and feelings and actions” (Jung 1968c:79,
pars 153-154, my emphasis).
The content may be as different and manifold as the
number of humans, but when the archetypes manifest
themselves in time and space they are perceived by the
conscious mind as symbols. This implies that every
symbol is at the same time an archetype, and as such
determined by a nonperceptible “archetype per se”;
every symbol has “an archetypal ground plan” or point
of departure from which it arises. The archetype is
“ready to actualise itself and manifest itself as a
symbol”, and the symbol is always grounded in the
unconscious archetype (Jacobi 1959:74). Therefore, a
symbol is never entirely abstract, but is most often in
some way or another “incarnated” (ibid:76). Whether a
thing is a symbol or not depends upon the consciousness
of the one who considers it; whether it is perceived as
merely a fact or an expression of the yet unknown (Jung
1923:602).
Symbols without spontaneous effects are dead. An
important premise in Jung’s use of archetypes is that
symbols are neither allegories nor signs: Symbols are
images of contents that most often transcend
consciousness; the content is beyond comprehension and
explications in words, but nevertheless real (Jung
1923:601). Cassirer argued “a signal is a part of the
physical world of being; a symbol is a part of the human
world of meaning” (Cassirer 1945:32). This ontological
dimension is important because “animals have signals
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and signs but no symbols” (Jacobi 1959:94). Erich
Fromm (1952) distinguishes between tree types of
symbols; 1) the conventional, 2) the accidental, and 3)
the universal, and it is only the latter that can be
regarded as a symbol in the Jungian sense.
“In so far as a symbol is a living thing, it is the
expression of a thing not to be characterised in any
other or better way. The symbol is alive only in so far
it is pregnant with meaning. But, if its meaning is born
out of it, i.e. if that expression should be found which
formulates the sought, expected, or divined things still
better than the hitherto accepted symbol, then the
symbol is dead…it merely serves as a conventional
sign for associations which are more completely and
better known elsewhere. Only for the exoteric
standpoint is the symbol always alive. An expression
that stands for a known thing always remains merely a
sign and never a symbol. It is, therefore, quite
impossible to make a living symbol, i.e. one that is
pregnant with meaning, from known associations. For
what is thus manufactured never contains more than
was put into it” (Jung 1923:602).
As I understand it, a symbol is in a religious sense a
divine and living actor. It has powers and capacities,
which live their own lives, and as a living being the
symbol has a life-giving potential. Thus, life-giving
symbols cannot be constructed in a post-modern sense:
they exist. Living symbols therefore have a deep
ontological meaning and foundation. When humans face
problems, they ask the gods for help, but this request is
impossible without employing symbols with immanent
powers. Therefore, seen from the devotee’s perspective a
symbol works in mysterious ways both unknown and
unconscious to humans; what they know is that the
symbol and rite work. In a ritualised context the symbols
become living and life-giving because they are not
conventional signs; they appear as if they have an origin
outside themselves which is interpreted as a divine lifegiver.
Life-giving water seems to be the ultimate
archetypal representation, not as an archetype of form or
as sterile water, but as the pro-creative power in its
numerous spheres. The belief in life-giving water as the
ultimate divine solution to any kind of problem seems to
be not only a living symbol but a life-giving process.
Thus, it is not the archetypal form that matters, but the
archetypal process and the outcome that give the lifegiving
symbols their authentic and ontological
legitimacy.
There is a hierarchy of archetypes, and each type may
have an infinite development and differentiation, like a
robust tree can put forth branches and thousands of
blossoms (Jacobi 1959:55), and “the deeper the
unconscious stratum from which the archetypes stems,
the scantier will be its basic design, but the more
possibilities of development will be contained within it,
and the richer it will be in meanings” (ibid:56). I will
argue that the deepest unconscious stratum is
ontologically life and death in its widest sense, and the
procreation of new life by use of ritualised water. “The