Archetypes Quotes

“The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die.”

“The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die.”

“Archetypes are the mirror images of our never to be seen self”

“...Understanding as had the ancients that angels and demons were identical- interchangeable archetypes- all a matter of polarity: the guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer...”

“When we place our immediate conflicts in the territory of an archetypal story we can better see the nature of our problems and find solutions that bring creative imagination to bear in the realm of hard facts and hardening dilemmas.”

“These superhero and mythical stories have, in many cases, replaced Biblical stories as vehicles for communal myths, but they are hardly any better than ancient magical adventures tinged with mythical archetypes and the decidedly unnuanced black-and-white struggle between good and evil.”

“Numbers, furthermore as archetypal structural constants of the collective unconscious, possess a dynamic, active aspect which is especially important to keep in mind. It is not what we can do with numbers but what they do to our consciousness that is essential.”

“I drove all night, northeast, and once again I felt it was literature I had been confronting these past days, the archetypes of the dismal mystery, sons and daughters of the archetypes, images that could not be certain which of two confusions held less terror, their own or what their own might become if it ever faced the truth. I drove at insane speeds.”

“The Alchemical world view, in stark contrast to the scientific world view, where rational deterministic man is completely separated from both Nature and the Self, in fact the Self does not even exist. In the alchemical world view, all three are inextricably woven together and in "synchronistic" or "archetypal" events & occurrences in one's life, all distinctions between them blur and almost disappear.”

“it strikes me that the writers most deeply concerned with the state of literary fiction and its biases against women could do a lot worse than trying to coin some terms of their own: to name the archetypes they wish to invert or criticise and thereby open up the discussion. If authors can be thought of as magicians in any sense, then the root of our power has always rested with words: choosing them, arranging them and – most powerfully – inventing them. Sexism won’t go away overnight, and nor will literary bias. But until then, if we’re determined to invest ourselves in bringing about those changes, it only makes sense to arm ourselves with a language that we, and not our enemies, have chosen.May 14, 2011 Blog post”

“If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition.”