The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire

as Plato said, soul and idea refer to each other, in that an idea is the “eye of the soul,” opening us through its insight and vision. Therefore

“Stick to the image” has become a rule of thumb. This means not translating images into meanings, as though images were allegories or symbols. As he says, if there is a latent dimension to an image, it is its inexhaustibility, its bottomlessness.

The soul seems to suffer when its inward eye is occluded, a victim of overwhelming events.

The soul, he says, turns events into experience. But it is image that is experienced, not literalism.

the psyche is the subject of our perceptions, the perceiver through fantasy, rather than the object of our perceptions.

We need to recall the angel aspect of the word, recognizing words as independent carriers of soul between people.

Man is half-angel because he can speak.

A particular image, Hillman notes, is a necessary angel waiting for a response. How we greet this angel will depend on our sensitivity to its reality and presence

we might regard ego from soul's perspective where ego becomes an instrument for day-to-day coping, nothing more grandiose than a trusty janitor of the planetary houses, a servant of soul-making.