Faces of the Goddess Magazine SGC 21

But archetypes themselves are not just
personification. The wheel of the year, the
cycle of life, these are based on occurrences
recognised and marked throughout the worldsuch
annual events as solstice, equinox, and
the waxing and waning of the moon. These
not only mark the progress of the year but in
reflection the progress of the heavenly bodies,
clearly displaying for us the layers of meaning
and the hint of the other world. These
occurrences are often marked with stories and
myths hinting at their universal power. It was
to this world of story telling and myth that
Jung looked to explain his theory. All around
the world we find recognisable stories to
account for these phenomena.
In the same way our lives are marked at
different stages which are shared over the
world—birth, onset pf puberty, mating,
initiation, death. These stages are shared
over and above culture and seem to hold an
underlying archetypal template reflecting the
mythological narrative underlying life as we
know it.
Jung’s original theory of archetypes begins
with a concept of the self, which is the
expression of the whole range of potential in
the personality. From there he chose to signify
“the Shadow, the Wise Old Man, the Child,
the Mother and her counterpoint, the Maiden,
and lastly the Anima in men and the Animus
in women. Of these the most abstract and
all encompassing would be the Shadow that
represents those aspects of oneself that exist,
but which one does not acknowledge or with
which one does not identify” (Jung 1985)
Jung referred to this abstract realm as the
cosmic consciousness from which all thoughts
emerge. In magical terms this is the world
of myth. It is what is inferred in Australian
indigenous Dreamtime—the reality of
creation, life, destruction and integration
that is behind our manifest world. Freud also
recognised these abstractions as prehistoric
instinctive fantasies. As with all our myths
and narratives they are helpful in explaining
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to ourselves how the world works and what
part in it we may play. Modern Psychoanalysts
such as R.D.Laing recognise these archetypes
as deep within the unconscious, rarely
brought to light. Another Jungian, James
Hillman, applied this to the myths, pantheons
and symbolic attributions of animals that
go beyond our recognition of the ego as
something coherent to something made of
fragments of personas, wishes, desires and
actions.
This concept of the archetype is now used
throughout the psychotherapeutic world.
There are many examples in self-development
or self-analysis books such as Caroline Myss.
She delineated an extensive list of archetypes
drawn from films, books and other examples
in current culture. These are also used to
define and delineate our values and patterns
in the world of work such as the Briggs-Myers
personality test which seeks the indications
prevailing and applies this to team building
or the work environment, using the suggested
patterns of each individual to best place them
in their employment.
These myths permeate our lives, our cultural
output—books, films, fairy stories and
folk rituals. One could say that this is tyhe
interface between what we call the mundane
world and the world of magic. Our religions
and concepts of Spirituality are also found
here at this crossroads. The gods/goddesses
we chose to honour, the attributes we give to
the spiritual aspects of our lives, the priest/
priestess, the guru, the enlightened ones,
the saints, the anchorites, the shaman and
the martyr, all these live in the liminal space
where the two worlds meet.
There are areas of psychotherapy that work
on this crossroads, employing archetypes and
myths to address psychological problems.
Transactional analysis for example helps to
look at communication difficulties using the
Parent/ Adult/Child dynamic, not as reality
but a model of how the archetypes determine
the flow and direction of the communication.