The study of archetype teaches us that the gods are beings beyond form brought into form to make themselves known to us, bound by form — they are signposts, gateways, a pointed finger towards the greater reality that those vessels — the forms — contain, which is the spiritual reality they hail from. The spirit is the water, the form is the pitcher. It’s easier for us to drink the spirit if it is placed in a vessel for us to sip from; however, that water can be placed in any number of pitchers or vessels of any number of potential shapes, sizes, and decorations. This is the study of universal archetype as I’ve come to understand it.

There is a reason why art is so commonly indistinguishable from the mystical. It is the imagination that dances the line between these two realms — the crude and the subtle, form and spirit, lower and higher. It is the imagination that is the birthplace of that child born from the union of those aforementioned polarities. That child’s name is archetype. However, we often place too distinct a barrier between our religious mysteries and our more… “secular” forms of art. Both source from the same well, from the same imaginal founts. They are the same beings dressed in different robes. The sacred contained within the secular is like Christ born in a manger — the holiest of holies is often found in the plainest of places (though our arts are anything but — I am merely commenting that there is divinity contained within that which we wouldn’t otherwise consider to contain it).

Though this will become tangential, this is the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone — some believe that the Philosopher’s Stone is the recognition of the essence of the sacred within all things. It is the priceless contained in the freely available, infinite treasure that is omnipresent, right under our noses, right before our eyes, in this very moment now.

(I clarify that it is in this moment now because, so often, when we are speaking of the sacred, the divine, and the generally inspiring, we place it so far away. It is purely hypothetical, it is elsewhere, it is a mere idea to be entertained, to find brief enjoyment and appreciation for, but rarely do we snap out of our stupor and look right before us to see that it is literally here, in the now. Yes, this very moment is sacred; this very moment has the potential for bliss; every moment you have ever lived or will ever live has the potential for enlightenment, has the potential to be the very best moment of your life, every moment is full of the most sublime and sacred beauty of the universe. We must not place it elsewhere — the time is now and has always been now.)

So, then, the reason why I even began writing this piece, to go back to its original purpose, the idea that made me bolt up and run to my computer, is that when we discuss archetype as being forms that contain the sacred, we often point only to art. We often point only to mythology, to our stories, to print, to paint, to paper. How often, though, do we see the manifest universe as containing divinity? How often do we see ourselves as being able to put ourselves aside — kenosis, self-emptying, to become a receptacle for something higher — to give ourselves up to be overcome by something greater than us? Is this not the nature of inspiration? I am commenting on our ability as humans to, through great work, surrender, and the purifying of the soul, heart, and mind, resemble something similar to archetype. Be mindful that if you believe there is anything to astrology, you do already believe that this is happening — astrology as the basis of character, and astrology as holding the keys for the formation of the personality, necessarily implies that we, too, are living art forms, living receptacles and forms for Spirit to play itself through. We are a pawn for a Divine Idea or higher Hand to express itself through us. 

However, I do believe that we can gradually, through what can be considered the alchemical process, grow to express, and become a living vessel for, ever-higher spiritual potencies. I do believe this has similarities with Jung’s process of individuation, the discovery of the Self, your truest and innermost spiritual signature. Isn’t it fascinating that the goal of some spiritual traditions is in the loss of self, to surrender the I, the ego, and to realize the common unity/community of the Cosmos? Isn’t it fascinating that Jung’s process is seemingly dissimilar, in that instead of losing ourselves, we find ourselves — our truest selves?

Are these different, however? Do we truly know that they are different? Is it possible that we surrender one self to graduate into another self? It reminds me of this mantra I’ve heard in yoga practice: “Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the Self.” It is as if there are many selves to us — some “lower,” some “higher” — and we can lose, and die unto, the lower, to give birth to the higher. I am reminded of motherhood. The creation of life, and birth itself, can be both pleasure and pain — though the process of natural birth is necessarily excruciating. Life cannot be given without pain, without sacrifice. I believe the process of actual, physical birth itself is reminiscent of spiritual rebirth — it is often so extraordinarily hard and painful to die unto our lower self that contains our fears, our pains, our miseries, our sorrows, our ego, our avarice, our limiting beliefs — all that is antithetical to the virtues of that higher and greater Self contained within that sacred vessel of our hearts. However, the love, the joy, the ecstasy found after that painful death that is a birth and birth that is a death! As the Mother falls in love with her child, wiping away the agonies of her labors, so too will we fall in love with the Self that is given birth to after our personal agonies, after the great struggle of our personal Magnum Opus, our Great Work, and tears of pain within the blink of an eye become tears of joy. 

The Ouroboros, what a beautiful symbol, teaching us that the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. Birth is death and death is birth.