The purpose of marriage is a journey of individuation, a chance for each partner to grow and flourish within the embrace of a supportive union – it is a crucible of transformation. Tempered by our shadow, it can forge us into our best selves.
Archetypal
BIPOLAR DISORDER: A Jungian Perspective
Imprisoned by the sea with his son Icarus, mythological craftsman Daedalus constructed wings to escape. Beeswax held feathers in place, so Daedalus told Icarus not to fly too high or too low: the sun’s heat would melt the wax and sea spray would weigh the wings down. Elated, Icarus flew too high–and fell. Like Icarus, the moods of people with bipolar disorder swing from soaring into mania to sinking into depression.
Inside the Mind of the Scam Artist: The Trickster Archetype
Conned, swindled, or bilked, about 50 million Americans were ripped off by scammers in 2020. What deadens a person to preying on another? Tricksters commit crudely constructed fraud. Jung said they are “not really evil [but do] the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness.”
SEX and its undeniable power to fascinate.
Sex fascinates us. Whether we turn toward it, flushed and excited or away from it, tense and disquieted. Archetypal images of sex adorn the thresholds of ancient temples and inform most mythological systems. Shiva and Shakti, in their union, create the universe – she providing all forms for his undifferentiated light. The gods beget gods as they mate, giving rise to infinite imagistic permutations of cosmic and personal qualities. These religious images of creation and pleasure inform our individual psyche granting sexuality a numinous intensity.
REVOLUTION: the way of radical renewal
We tend to think of revolution as a people’s push-back against perceived oppression—a reaction to rulership that has rejected fairness, change, and accessibility. When a rigid power structure reigns supreme—often presenting as idealism, spirituality, or cultural integrity—it can generate opposing force as an effort to restore rightness and realize renewal.
GAMES: metaphor for life
Games introduce us to conditions of life, for we must play the hand we’ve been dealt. Confronted with the limitations of ego and understanding, we may discover that games are metaphors for the movement of a mysterious cosmos.
STAY AT HOME DADS: emerging potentials in the father archetype
As our bonds to historic roles loosen, fathers are finding new ways to express themselves within the family dynamic. Being caregiver and homecreator does not diminish their experience of masculinity but rallies inner resources that had been set aside.
SEWING: Stitching a Life Together
What we sew has a limited lifespan, as do we. Stitching our inner and outer lives together day by day, we can create raiment for the soul.
Zombies: a call to consciousness
Zombies have recently risen from mythological depths to menace modern-day culture. Zombies image the horror of vulnerability to dehumanized existence. They exist in a meaningless void marked only by insatiable appetite; they are our collective’s pathological shadow. The undead alarm us–and can also awaken us. We are summoned to contend with dark and deadening powers through vigilance, consciousness, and action. Jung says, “If you will contemplate your lack of…inspiration and inner aliveness, which you feel as sheer stagnation and a barren wilderness, and impregnate it with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if only you will allow it to penetrate into you. If you prove receptive to this ‘call of the wild,’ the longing for fulfillment will quicken the sterile wilderness of your soul as rain quickens the dry earth.”
VOLCANO: archetype of creation and destruction
Volcanoes appear in our myths, movies, and dreams. Their awesome destructive power fascinates us and serves as a reminder that we are not in control of nature’s primordial forces. Offering access to the earth’s molten core, volcanoes have been believed to be the entryway to the underworld or Hell. The Greeks believed that the fiery bursts from volcanoes were the sparks flying from Hephaestus’ forge, thus underscoring the creative aspect of volcanoes – Hephaestus created items of incredible beauty and power in his underground workshop. Volcanoes create new rocks and new land mass. Their mineral-rich output fertilizes the surrounding soil, producing abundant and delicious crops. The volcano serves as a potent image of the unconscious – unpredictable, sometimes explosive, powered from the depths – but also capable of bestowing its fructifying blessing upon us.
Archetype of the Good King
The king is figured prominently in myth, religion, and fairy tale. This compelling archetypal image has roots in our earliest human beginnings, when the king embodied his tribe’s earthly vitality and supra-human connection to spirit. Today, the king symbolizes universal psychic functions; each of us has an internal ruler. Like Solomon, the king presides over standards of ordering and lawgiving that undergird processes of discernment and decision.
SYNCHRONICITY & CARL JUNG: The Mysterious Web of Numinous Coincidences
Synchronicity is a concept that has fascinated thinkers across disciplines for decades, and few have delved as deeply into its nature and implications as the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, synchronicity refers to meaningful coincidences that defy rational explanation, but that feel infused with a sense of significance or destiny. But how do we recognize such coincidences, and what role do they play in our lives and psyches?