An Introduction to ARAS
The
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) is dedicated to the
collection, description, and dissemination of archetypal images. Photographs of
works of art, ritual images, and artifacts drawn from sacred traditions all over
the world and contemporary art are presented as individual records, which
include written accounts of the context and meaning of each image.
Each record not only provides the identity and location of the image but also
describes the myths and rituals of the tradition from which it derives. In
addition, a discussion of the symbolic patterns, or archetypes, found in the
image and known from other cultures is included in a section entitled
"Archetypal Commentary." Here also are found interpretive statements
by analytical psychologists that connect the archetypal symbolism to the inner
experience of contemporary men and women.
ARAS has an interesting history, which I should like to
summarize briefly before describing its specific content and function in more
detail. A number of original illustrations of ancient symbolic artifacts were
collected by Olga Froebe-Kapteyn at her estate on Lake Maggiore in southern
Switzerland, where each year in late August, beginning in 1933, she conducted
meetings of the Eranos Society. In his foreword to Spirit and Nature, volume 1
(1954) of the series Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Joseph Campbell notes
that each meeting was assigned a theme, which served as the topic for papers
presented by scientists, theologians, philosophers, psychologists, and religious
historians. "Continuity was due, on the one hand, to the guidance of Frau
Froebe, whose sense of the meaning and object of Eranos never wavered [even
during the years of World War II when the operation was greatly curtailed—JLH],
and on the other, to the continuous presence and genial spirit of Dr. C.G. Jung,
whose concept of the fundamental psychological laws of human life and thought
supplied a criterion for both the recognition and the fostering of the perennial
in a period of transition" (p.xii).
Among the scholars who participated in the Eranos
conferences were Heinrich Zimmer (Indian religious art), Károly Kerényi
(Greek mythology), Mircea Eliade (history of religions), C.G. Jung and Erich
Neumann (analytical psychology), Gilles Quispel (gnostic studies), Gershom
Scholem (Jewish mysticism), Henry Corbin (Islamic religion), Adolf Portmann
(biology), Herbert Read (art history), Max Knoll (physics), and Joseph Campbell
(comparative mythology).
Olga Froebe-Kapteyn had a lively interest in finding and collecting images to
illustrate the topic of each year's meeting, which included such titles as
"Yoga and Meditation East and West," "The Gestalt and Cult of the
Great Mother," "The Hermetic Principle in Mythology, Gnosis, and
Alchemy," "The Mysteries," "Spirit and Nature,"
"Man and Time," and many others. She explained this interest in images
in her preface to the volume Spirit and Nature (1954): "Those who feel the
truth of the old Chinese conception that all that happens in the visible world
is the expression of ideas or images in the invisible might do well to consider
Eranos from that point of view" (p.xv). She might have said of the
collection of pictorial artifacts what she says of the lectures themselves:
"Their value is evocative. In many cases, they carry us to the bounds of
scholarly investigation and discovery, and point beyond. They touch upon unusual
themes, facts, and analogies and in so doing evoke the great archetypal
images" (p.xvi).
One of the creative uses to which Froebe-Kapteyn's collection was put is Erich
Neumann's book The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (Princeton, 1955),
where pictures of ancient goddesses provide the material for Neumann's
psychological interpretation of the archetype of the feminine as it evolved from
the time of ancient Sumeria and Egypt on through the religions of Greece and
Rome and into the Christian era. In addition, Neumann presents archetypal images
drawn from tribal societies that lack any historical connection to the vast
civilizations of East and West. In this way, he demonstrates the universal
influence of the archetype, which expresses itself in countless spontaneously
generated forms. These eternal images are analogous to the dream images of
people all over the world. Hence the term archetype, which denotes an inborn
psychic disposition to repeat old patterns of image or behavior in new ways.
(Archetype derives from a Greek compound: the word archē ("first
principle") refers to the underlying pattern of a symbol, whereas tupos
("impression") denotes a specific concrete form, or configuration,
through which the archē is rendered tangible. In other words, the archē
points to the creative source, which cannot be represented, while tupos refers
to any one of its many cultural manifestations.)
In 1946 Olga Froebe-Kapteyn gave her collection of pictorial artifacts to the
Warburg Institute in London. Photographic duplicates of the archive were given
to the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and to the Bollingen Foundation in New
York, which was, at that time, supporting numerous scholars in quest of the
meaning of symbolism and publishing the works of Jung. Jessie E. Fraser, the
librarian of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York (with financial
assistance from Jane Abbot Pratt, a member of this early Jungian group), began
to edit and develop the archive, extending the range of its subject matter far
beyond its original limits. The pictures and their accompanying study sheets
that are presented in this volume reflect many years of dedication and patient
work on Fraser's part in collecting, sorting, and classifying this material.
Eventually the collection in New York, now called the Archive for Research in Archetypal
Symbolism, was acquired by the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York. Copies of the
collection were housed also at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco and at
the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. These three Jungian institutions
continue to be the founding members of National ARAS, not because a symbolic
point of view is limited to Jungians, but because Jung was the particular
proponent of a broadly archetypal point of view that insists upon transpersonal
and symbolic connections transcending cultural and theological boundaries. This
perspective lies at the heart of the archive.
The archive includes images drawn from the entire range of historical artifacts
pertaining to the religious elements basic to each cultural period. Of these,
the earliest period is the Paleolithic, with its images of animals, human
figures, and abstract designs, which played a magico-religious role in the
relationship between the hunter and the hunted. The next period is the
Neolithic, with its wide expansion of vegetation symbolism. Here we discover
gods and goddesses associated with the agricultural cycle and its seasonal
progressions, manifesting the eternal archetype of death and rebirth. The
religious art of ancient India, Asia Minor, and Egypt together with Mycenaean
art constitute a large section of the archive. The motifs expressed in the art
of these early civilizations are found reemerging in modified form in the world
religions for which they have provided the foundations: Hinduism, Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.
In contrast to those images that suggest a historical process according to which
symbols constantly die and are reborn in a new form, the archive also includes
images drawn from small tribal societies, which provide a horizontal dimension
made up of many archaic traditions that are still vital today. One of these is
the Paleolithic culture of the Malekula Islands in Melanesia, which has been
fully described by John Layard, an anthropologist who later—as a Jungian
analyst—put his findings into an archetypal frame of reference.
The study sheets that accompany each image present a detailed description of the
image together with a cultural history that serves to clarify the meaning of the
symbolism at a time when it was collectively valued. These sections are followed
by an archetypal commentary, which brings the image into focus for its modern
psychological meaning. Although the psychological interpretation relies heavily
on Jung's theory of archetypes, the universal nature of the symbolism on a
cultural and religious level is fully honored in this section. The study sheets
end with a bibliography for related reading and a glossary of technical terms,
making it a useful tool for the researcher as well as for anyone who wishes to
enlarge his or her understanding of the image and its historical origins.
As indicated already, the main function of the archive is to enable people of all
kinds, and not solely specialists, to discover the living quality of ancient
myths, rituals, and symbolic artifacts, and in so doing to deepen their
awareness of the archetypes of the collective unconscious that underlie all
cultural forms. The viewer may follow numerous paths of inquiry and indeed is
encouraged to enter this activity spontaneously rather than from any prescribed
direction of study.
When one consults ARAS to find a particular image, one is
rewarded not only by the information provided in the study sheets but also—and
perhaps far more—by the interest they may arouse in looking up related symbols
that one might not have thought relevant. Thus, one may end up with a group of
records (images together with their study sheets) that amplify significantly the
original image. In this way, a single image may lead far beyond its original
focus of interest. This is made possible by the archetypal commentary, which
focuses on the universal patterns to which the specific image belongs, in
respect to both cross-cultural and psychological contexts. In some cases, this
may lead to syncretistic developments of a far-reaching character.
An example of this may be shown in the selection, let us say, of the labyrinth as
an image to explore in the ARAS collection. One early form of the labyrinth is a
spiral; or it may appear as a double spiral to suggest both the way in and the
way out of an enclosed area. It is a simple design found at entrances and exits
to caves, graves, temples, and other sacred enclosures. An abstract design, it
reminds us that an initiatory experience of an inward nature must also find its
way outward again, with all the confusion, anxiety, and peril to conscious
orientation that this involves.
The early labyrinths of Paleolithic cultures often express an ambivalent attitude in
respect to a great-mother figure. The initiate on Malekula, an island in the New
Hebrides Archipelago, must know how to draw one half of a labyrinth design in
such a way that it corresponds to a second half that is drawn by Le-hev-hev, a
female ghost. If he fails in this, she will devour him. Similarly, the Cretan
labyrinth was inhabited by the Minotaur, a monster that was half man and half
bull, the offspring of the Minoan mother goddess Pasiphaë and a sacred bull.
Nevertheless, there is always a sense that the positive creative aspect of the
maternal principle lies inherent in the central symbol, as a circle of
containment to which the initiate must submit as if losing himself and then
transcend by reemerging renewed.
Later in history, we find this symbol set in stone on the floor near the west portal
of Chartres Cathedral in France and in other cathedrals, such as Ely Cathedral
in England. The symbolism of meaningful initiatory entrances and exits exist
here also, but in medieval Christianity the emphasis is on the wholly benevolent
and loving quality of the Virgin Mary. The design at Chartres embodies also a
cross, and at the center of the labyrinth is a design suggesting the mystic
rose, so that the sacred space embodies the way of Christ (the cross) and the
compassion of Mary (the rose). At the same time, the labyrinth suggests that the
inward path to the center exists as a parallel to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
the spiritual center of this and other biblical traditions.
Chartres was, above all, sacred to the Virgin Mary. In exploring this image, the viewer
finds in the record bibliographical references to numerous works to be read for
further amplification of the symbolism. Other references lead the viewer back to
the earlier forms of the symbol. In this way, it becomes clear that the
labyrinth expresses a fundamental experience of death and renewal through the
healing power of the archetypal feminine.
Clearly, one of the major functions of ARAS is to provide an encyclopedic collection of
symbolism that honors both the universal pattern and the specific meaning
associated with a given image, something seldom found in other collections.
There is, however, no supposition among those working in this field that they
have found the one and only way of interpreting archetypal symbolism. The symbol
is forever recreating itself anew in the imaginations of those who experience
it.
Psychotherapists and dream interpreters may find relevant symbolism here to further their
understanding of the fantasies and the dreams of their patients. These
spontaneous expressions of the individual combine personal and archetypal
elements, which the records in the archive may help to disentangle and clarify.
This method may provide amplification for many psychological problems
confronting both therapist and patient at nodal points in the analytical process
of self-discovery.
Images that may prove especially apt for this use of ARAS are those of animals or
plants with archetypal significance. The animal and plant symbols that appear in
tribal cultures are often reflected in the dreams of modern people. The bear,
the serpent, the lion, the bull, the dog, the horse, the boar, the tortoise, and
many other animals are given their place of study and interpretation here as
prime symbols. Plant symbolism also abounds in modern dreams and reflects the
trees, flowers, vines, and grasses of mythological patterns. The world tree, the
lotus, the rose, and the vast archetypal expanses of nature in art and religious
iconography take on new significance through the perspective provided by the
ARAS collection.
Joseph L. Henderson, M.D.
Co-author with Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, et. al. of Man and His Symbols Consulting Analyst to ARAS
|