Jung and the Alchemical Imagination (Jung on the Hudson Book Series)

From this point of view, disease was a spiritual entity, that is, it was imaginal, and in its manifestation in the imagination it corrupted and distorted the imagination of the archeus. It was as if there were an unconscious active imagination going on between the image of the disease and the archeus, and through this dialogue the former overcame t

There is another power of the imagination to which Paracelsus referred. He wrote that the imagination had the power to penetrate the heavens, passing from star to star, overcoming and moderating heaven. On the one hand, this description refers to the process I have just discussed, because the power to moderate the heavens by moving from star to sta

The transcendent function is not only a change in consciousness, but an energetic change as well. When the transcendent function unites two previously separated opposites, the psychic energy that belongs to each is transformed, and part of it becomes available to the self. The self thereby gains psychic energy, which allows it to express itself mor

There are only a few rules that apply to this stage of the work. Inner figures should, whenever possible, not be real people, living or dead. The personified form should emerge from the unconscious, and should be unique to the person doing the active imagination. Doing actives with the images of real people is unfair to those individuals, for they

However, every so often, one may experience a figure that feels completely different. This figure feels as if it were coming from outside oneself, as if it existed in the external world, in the room in which one finds oneself, for example. One's eyes are open, and the felt sense is that one perceives a figure that does not come from within. The att

One can experience inner figures in many ways. Active imagination connects individuals with inner figures which, while very powerful, are clearly imaginal and derived from the psyche. These figures feel as if they were coming from within oneself. Typically one experiences them with eyes closed, and attention directed inward. These are the psychic f

To use a simple example, let us suppose an individual is in a father complex. He experiences fear and anxiety in dealing with authority figures in the world. If he is able to do active imagination, he may summon an inner figure who has helped him in the past.

As mentioned, an inner figure is a personification of a particular content of the unconscious, so that dealing with that figure is also dealing with the content in question. Just as, for example, one does not dream of a father complex per se but of a man in a three-piece suit who looks like one's boss, so in active imagination the inner content is

the ideal form of active imagination is a dialogue or interchange between an inner figure and the ego. The inner figure actually personifies the content of the unconscious we are attempting to engage, and it does so in a form that can speak and actively exchange information with the ego.