Many / One

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Archetypes
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1 "Symbols, images, and archetypes…are the key regulators and main 'switches' of human consciousness and of one's inner life. It is through them that all alterations, focusing, and expansion of human consciousness take place, for they are the regulators, accumulators, and transformers of human consciousness. They enable a person to connect himself (and his field of consciousness) temporarily and to identify with something greater and larger than he is and, thus, slowly to transcend himself and actualize his latent energies, faculties, and potentialitites." Divine Light and Fire, Experiencing Esoteric Christianity (Peter Roche deCoppens)

2 "Ideas are exemplars existing in the divine mind." Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Anton C. Pegis, editor)

3 "Psychologically, the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

4 “Archetypes represent the precipitate of psychic functioning of the whole ancestral line, i.e., the heaped-up, or pooled, experiences of organic existence in general, a million times repeated, and condensed into types. Hence, in these archetypes all experiences are represented which since primeval time have happened on this planet.” Basic Writings of C G Jung (V S DeLasslo, editor)

5 "The materialization of a form originates upon the archetypal planes, through the agency of divine thought, and from thence (through directed streams of intelligent energy) acquires substance as it is reproduced upon each plane, until eventually, upon the physical plane, the form stands revealed at its densest point of manifestation." A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (Alice A. Bailey)

6 "Dr. Jung points out that he has borrowed his term 'archetype' from classic sources: Cicero, Pliny, the Corpus Hermeticum, Augustine, etc. ('Psychology and Religion', par. 89). Bastian notes the correspondence of his own theory of 'Elementary Ideas' with the Stoic concept of the 'Logoi spermatikoi'. The tradition of the 'subjectively known forms' (Sanskrit: antarjneyarupa) is, in fact, coextensive with the tradition of myth, and is the key to the understanding and use of mythological images." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

7 "Growth at all levels must include spiritual development as its most subtle and valuable aspect. The life of the spirit, manifest in the psyche, must evolve in accordance with certain principles and forms, which, in turn, must be related to all the other levels of human existence...to designate these principles and forms Jung has adopted the term 'archetypes.' Violet Staub deLaszlo, introduction Basic Writings of C G Jung (V S DeLasslo, editor)

8 "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)

9 "Ideas are certain original forms or permanent and immutable models of things which are contained by the divine intelligence. They are immutable because they themselves have not been formed; and that is why they are eternal and always the same. But though they themselves neither come to be nor perish, yet it is accordfing to them that everything, which can come to be or pass away or which actually comes to be and passes away, is said to be formed." St. Augustine, Lib. 83 Quaest., q. 46 Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Anton C. Pegis, editor)

10 "Mandalas are also formed with the hands, danced, and represented in music (for instance Bach's 'Art of Fugue')….When a mandala is being formed, everything round and square known to man works on it too. But the impetus for its formation comes from the unconscious archetype." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

11 "The archetype of the human being is God…'God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him' (Genesis 1:27)." Covenant of the Heart, Meditations of a Christian Hermeticist on the Mysteries of Tradition (Valentin Tomberg)

12 "We are all made in the image of God. That is the ultimate archetype of man." The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell)

13 "The fact is that with the knowledge and actual experience of these inner images [archetypes] a way is opened for reason and feeling to gain access to those other images which the teachings of religion offer to mankind." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

14 "As animals of the same kind show the same instinctual phenomena all over the world, man also shows the same archetypal forms no matter where he lives. As animals have no need to be taught their instinctive activities, so man also possesses his primordial psychic patterns and repeats them spontaneously, independently of any kind of teaching." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

15 "The archetypal world is 'eternal', i.e., outside time, and it is everywhere." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

16 "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)

17 "The ancient magical and mythological levels of our being, although 'unconscious' to our current modus operandi, need to be recognised as vital capacities of ours. If we fail to integrate them with our rational world view, we are likely to regress into a new barbarism rather than take the next step of conscious evolution." Return of the Goddess (Edward C. Whitmont, MD)

18 "Everything which will later become this or that particular thing is contained invisibly in the seminal reasons implanted at creation; the world blooms out of its primitive elements as a tree develops from its seed." Richard McKeon, introduction to St. Augustine Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator)

19 "Symbols are among the most profound expressions of human nature…certain images are universal and timeless, occurring n the East and West, in the ancient past and in our hurly-burly present….such universal images, or archetypes, carry dynamic, creative forces that move us deeply." Sacred Origins of Profound Things (Charles Panati)

20 “The forms which experience takes in each individual may be infinite in their variations, but they are all variants of certain central types, and these occur universally. They are the primordial images, from which the religions each draw their absolute truth.” Collected Works (Carl Jung)

21 "Nature itself rests on an internal foundation of archetypal principles symbolized by numbers, shapes, and their arithmetic and geometric relationships." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

22 "When we speak of archetypal images we are not referring simply to dream images or to mythological or literary images. We are, instead, speaking of a way to respond to our ordinary lives with our imaginations, rather than only pragmatically or logically. We are speaking of a way of being in the world that is open to many dimensions of meaning, open to resonances, echoes, to associative and synchronous connections, not only causal ones. We are speaking of a world discovered to be full of sign-ificance – of signs, symbols, metaphors, images." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

23 "All my life, as a student of mythologies, I have been working with these archetypes, and I can tell you, they DO exist and are the same all over the world." Myths To Live By (Joseph Campbell)

24 "Archetypal images are found in virtually all cultures and during all ages, thus representing a kind of universal language." The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience (Ralph Metzner)

25 "The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light." A Greater Psychology, An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought (Sri Aurobindo, edited by A. S. Dalal)

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite