Although from antiquity right down to recent times we see a new and differently patterned canon of culture continually superseding the previous one, the West has nevertheless succeeded in achieving an historical and cultural continuity in which each canon gradually came to be integrated. The structure of modern consciousness rests on this integrati

The uroboros, traceable in all epochs and cultures, then appears as the latest symbol of individual psychic development, signifying the roundedness of the psyche, life’s wholeness, and perfection regained. It is the place of transfiguration and illumination (illus. 11 ),of finality, as well as the place of mythological origination. Thus the Great R

Detachment from the uroboros, entry into the world, and the encounter with the universal principle of opposites are the essential tasks of human and individual development. The process of coming to terms with the objects of the outer and inner worlds, of adapting to the collective life of mankind both within and without, governs with varying degree

Images and symbols have this advantage over the paradoxical philosophical formulations of infinite unity and unimaged wholeness, that their unity can be seen and grasped as a unity at one glance.

Everything is supplied of its own accord; there is no need of the slightest exertion, not even an instinctive reaction, let alone a regulating ego consciousness. One’s own being and the surrounding world—in this case, the mother’s body—exist in a participation mystique, never more to be attained in any environmental relationship. This state of egol

The structural elements of the collective unconscious are named by Jung “archetypes” or “primordial images.” They are the pictorial forms of the instincts, for the unconscious reveals itself to the conscious mind in images which, as in dreams and fantasies, initiate the process of conscious reaction and assimilation.

The uroboros appears as the round “container,” i.e., the maternal womb, but also as the union of masculine and feminine opposites, the World Parents joined in perpetual cohabitation. Although it seems quite natural that the original question should be connected with the problem of the World Parents, we must realize at once that we are dealing with

Ernst Cassirer 1 has shown how, in all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus the coming of consciousness, manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious, is the real “object” of creation mythology. Cassirer has likewise shown that in the different stages of mythological consciousne

Naturally to me, as a psychologist, the most valuable aspect of the work is the fundamental contribution it makes to a psychology of the unconscious. The author has placed the concepts of analytical psychology—which for many people are so bewildering—on a firm evolutionary basis, and erected upon this a comprehensive structure in which the empirica