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		"The greatest and best thoughts of man shape themselves upon these primoridial images (the archetypes) as upon a blueprint." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

2		"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)

3		"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)

4		"Archetypal images feel basic, necessary, and generative. They are connected to something original….They seem to give energy and direction. Archetypal images give rise to associations and lead us to other images; and we therefore experience them as having resonance, complexity, and depth. They feel universal." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

5		"If these primal spiritual forces – these archetypal powers – can work through the collective unconscious to touch and influence [us] through our myth and ritual and imagination, including imaginative prayer, then we can in actual fact alter the course of history." Myth, History & Faith (Morton Kelsey)

6		"Ultimately every archetype is merely an individual expression of one Universal energy pattern, which is our connection to the Divine." C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., Foreword Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

7		"The 'imago Dei' [God-image], is the archetype of the self in us." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

8		"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.)

9		"The significant point: every physicist in this volume was profoundly struck by the fact that the natural realm obeys in some sense the laws or forms of mathematics, or, in general, obeys some sort of archetypal mental-forms." Quantum Questions, Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (Ken Wilber, editor)

10		"The earth is identical with the sublime figure of Wisdom….On closer examination this is really a tremendous thought. The 'Wisdom of God' in the Bible was the playmate of Yahweh, who was with him before the beginning of the world. In patristic literature she was defined as the 'archetypal world' or as the sum of eternal ideas in the mind of God, the prototypes from which he created all things." Aurora Consurgens (Marie Louise vonFranz)

11		"Carl Jung spoke of a God-archetype within the psyche. The psyche has an affinity for God, a faculty for relationship with God." Spiritual Pilgrims, Carl Jung & Teresa of Avila (John Welch, O. Carm.)

12		"Archetypal images are not remnants of archaic thought, not a dead deposit, but part of a living system of interactions between the human psyche and the outer world." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

13		"We can relate to almost every archetype because our psyches and spirits are connected to the great collective of all the archetypal patterns." Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

14		"Culture and psyche are not opposed entities but two aspects of the same psychobiological process – the actualization of innate archetypal propensities." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

15		"Since the archetypes, or elementary ideas, are not limited in their distributions by cultural or even linguistic boundaries, they cannot be defined as culturally determined." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

16		"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)

17		"In its created being (the soul) incessantly receives the impress of its Eternal Archetype, like a flawless mirror, in which the image remains steadfast and in which the reflection is renewed without interruption by its ever-new reception in new light." John of Ruysbroeck, 'Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage' Behold the Spirit, A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion (Alan Watts)

18		"Because these (archetypal) symbols are collective or transpersonal, to touch the archetype is actually to begin to transcend oneself, to find deeply within an intimation and pointer to the deeply beyond." Spectrum of Consciousness (Ken Wilber)

19		"Plato argues for a hierarchy of Forms or Ideas, in which sensible images 'participate'. In the 'Timaeus', he makes them exemplary causes, models for the Divine Artificer or demiurge, in fashioning things from eternally existing matter." Introductory Metaphysics (Avery R. Dulles, James M. Demske, Robert J. O'Connell)

20		"The purpose of human learning and philosophy is to reawaken in the soul remembrance of the eternal, spiritual realm of pure forms and ideas." The Roots of Consciousness (Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D.)

21		"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)

22		"The archetype is that which is believed always, everywhere, and by everybody." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

23		"As our soul contemplates its Archetype, so that Archetype in turn contemplates the One, which is its Source." Plotinus Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions (Frances Vaughan, Ph.D.)

24		"The essential reality of Beauty exists as an Archetypal Power in the Divine Mind, and the existence of this Power is the true reason why our minds are able to perceive beauty where they might otherwise have discerned only mathematical balance, for example, or biological aptness, or a certain refraction of light." The Sword and The Serpent (Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips)

25		"Without these Ideas – these generalizations, regularities and ideals – the world would be to us as it must seem to the first-opened eyes of the child, a mass of unclassified and unmeaning particulars of sensation; for meaning can be given to things only by classifying and generalizing them, by finding the laws of their beings, and the purposes and goals of their activity." The Story of Philosophy (Will Durant)