Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"Quintessentially, archetypes are about relationship….As inhabitants of the We Are realm, archetypes bridge spirit with nature, mind with body, and self with universe. They are always within us, essential elements within the structure of our psyches." A Mythic Life, Learning to Live our Greater Story (Jean Houston)

2		"The first task of any systematic comparison of the myths and religions of mankind should be to identify these universals (or, as C. G. Jung termed them, archetypes of the unconscious) and as far as possible to interpret them." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

3		"Archetypes are life models, images and ideas that guide the direction of your life toward your soul's ultimate destiny." Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire (Deepak Chopra)

4		"The physicist's models ultimately rest on the same archetypal foundations that also underlie the speculations of the theologian." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

5		"The Absolute or Supreme God is the basic, or final Archetype in which all lesser archetypes originate and are resolved." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)

6		"The great mystics such as Shankara, Plato and Augustine used the term 'archetype' to designate the first subtle forms that appear as the world manifests out of unmanifest Spirit. They are the fundamental patterns upon which all patterns of manifestation are based. The Greek term, 'arche typon', meant original pattern. These subtle, transcendental forms, then, are the first forms of manifestation." Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions (Frances Vaughan, Ph.D.)

7		"Archetypes are the architects of our lives. They are the energy companions through whom we can learn to understand ourselves." Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

8		"Appearing in dreams, fantasy, art, myth, and religion, and even in scientific thought, the archetypes design the entire field of human experience." Journey Into Consciousness: The Chakras, Tantra and Jungian Psychology (Charles Breaux)

9		"The archetypes serve as blueprints to guide the growing forms. They are like the perfect song on a conceptual level which individual singers bring into being in their unique way." Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight (Shirley Nicholson)

10		"The soul, which is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal Archaeus, is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm." Isis Unveiled (Helena P. Blavatsky)

11		"The archetypes of the collective unconscious are psychic components undergoing transformation in the direction of consciousness." Richard Roberts Tarot Revelations (Joseph Campbell & Richard Roberts)

12		"I understand that there arise and are made in me, when I seek them out earnestly, certain ideas like intelligible species, of the intelligibles within, which I contemplate with the mind alone." John Scotus Eriugena (800?-877?), 'On The Division of Nature', Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator)

13		"I believe that on a higher level, everyone embodies the archetypal aspects of Jesus, Krishna, Mohammed, et cetera. These archetypes of our ideals serve to heal our sense of soul-loss. They help us remember a part of us that we often forget about in everyday life." Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., 'The Soul and Quantum Physics' Experiencing the Soul (Eliot Jay Rosen, editor)

14		"The archetypes represent the uniquely human means whereby instinctual, biological energy is transformed into the meaningful symbolic life of the human psyche." J. J. Clarke The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

15		"Through the genome of our species we inherit the archetypal predispositions of our ancestors, and it is on these basic, universal, and persistently active themes that individual cultures work out their sets of variations and transmit them from generation to generation." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

16		"The archetypal level contains the great symbolic and mythic patterns that charge the human spirit with meaning and direction." The Search for the Beloved (Jean Houston)

17		"The universality of an archetype affirms the reality of the principle in question." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

18		"In volume 18 of his Collected Works, Jung explained: 'The archetype is an inherited tendency of the human mind to form representations of mythological motifs – representations that vary a great deal without losing their basic pattern.'" Our Dreaming Mind (Robert L. Van deCastle, Ph.D.)

19		"Ideas, by the analysis St. Anselm makes of them, are thenselves things; and for them to be is indication of something concerning the nature of things." Richard McKeon, introduction to St. Anselm Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator)

20		"As the intellectual historian Richard Tarnas points out,'Platonic Forms are not conceptual abstractions that the human mind creates by generalizing from a class of particulars. Rather, they possess a quality of being, a degree of reality that is superior to that of the concrete world. Platonic archetypes form the world and also stand beyond it. They manifest themselves within time and yet are timeless. They constitute the veiled essence of things.'" Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

21		"The sky is moist and dry, cold and hot, bright and obscured by turns; these are the rapidly alternating forms included under the one ideal or universal form of the sky. The earth is ever passing through many changes of form; it generates produce, it nourishes the produce it has generated, it yields all manner of crops, with manifold differences of quality and quantity; and above all, it puts forth many sorts of trees, differing in the scent of their flowers and the taste of their fruits. Water takes different forms, now standing, and now running. Fire undergoes many changes, and assumes godlike forms;…they are like our mirrors, and reproduce the ideal or universal form in visible copies with rival brilliance." Hermetica (Walter Scott, translator)

22		"Culture is not an arbitrary invention but a precipitate of archetypal dynamics." Return of the Goddess (Edward C. Whitmont, MD)

23		"Joy is the quality which grows out of self-realisation….We are told that there is an archetype, a pattern, a way, a goal, and a light which shines upon the Path. But, realising this, do I know anything of the joy which should irradiate my way?" Discipleship in the New Age (Alice A. Bailey)

24		"The archetypal realm is not a figment of human fantasy and imagination; it has an independent existence of its own and a high degree of autonomy. At the same time, its dynamics seem to be intimately connected with material reality and with human life." The Cosmic Game, Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (Stanislav Grof)

25		"Just as nature, body, and instinct express themselves in universal patterns, so does the human psyche. The archetypes of the preconscious are a priori form-generating propensities in the human mind, causing it to organize experience into certain patterns that may vary without losing their essential configuration and underlying identity." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)