Archetypes represent a deep mystery. They are powerful primordial forms and forces that have been experienced and understood in a great diversity of ways, depending on the culture and epoch in question. Within the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition, a great cosmological transformation took place during the two-and-a-half millennia that unfolded between the classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and the modern depth psychology of Jung, von Franz, Hillman, and Grof. Yet the idea of archetypal principles or essences that structure our world is common to both.
For Jung, the archetypes represented the fundamental psychological principles and powers informing and impelling human consciousness, rooted in the depths of the unconscious and of nature, whereas for Plato they represented the fundamental transcendent principles ordering cosmic reality itself, as apprehended by the enlightened philosopher. Therein lies a tale with enormous implications for our understanding of ourselves as well as of the universe.
Join me this evening for a survey of our evolving understanding of the archetypal mysterium and the overarching evolution of our world view in which that understanding has been transformed, right up to the present.
See the corresponding workshop here.