"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell
"...we are moderns in search of a soul, as Jung once put it. We are still in search of reconstituting that third place, that intermediate realm of psyche – which is also the realm of images and the power of imagination – from which we were exiled by theological, spiritual men more than a thousand years ago: long before Descartes and the dichotomies attributed to him, long before the Enlightenment and modern positivism and scientism. These ancient historical events are responsible for the malnourished root of our Western psychological culture and of the culture of each of our souls." --Hillman, Puer Papers, "Peaks & Vales"
"...we are moderns in search of a soul, as Jung once put it. We are still in search of reconstituting that third place, that intermediate realm of psyche – which is also the realm of images and the power of imagination – from which we were exiled by theological, spiritual men more than a thousand years ago: long before Descartes and the dichotomies attributed to him, long before the Enlightenment and modern positivism and scientism. These ancient historical events are responsible for the malnourished root of our Western psychological culture and of the culture of each of our souls." --Hillman, Puer Papers, "Peaks & Vales"
interiorized vision
Indwelling Vision
A Soulful Journey Into Deeper Interiority & Indwelling
By Iona Miller (c)2018
"It is a general truth that one can only understand anything
in as much as one understands oneself."
- Carl Gustav Jung, Zarathustra Seminar p.742
A Soulful Journey Into Deeper Interiority & Indwelling
By Iona Miller (c)2018
"It is a general truth that one can only understand anything
in as much as one understands oneself."
- Carl Gustav Jung, Zarathustra Seminar p.742
Global crisis cries out to us to re-examine our self understanding, relationships, and the world process that shapes us. This article engages our participation in a dynamic relationship with the unconscious image-making capacity of psyche. Soul serves as an autonomous guide for reflection, indwelling, contemplation, and self-exploration of soulful and spiritual vision. We discover the Beauty of Truth in the Presence of each moment of fullness, metamorphosis, and mutual understanding.
Petrarch realizes his calling in life is to look inward to “know thyself,” as Thales put it many centuries before Augustine. Most historians refer to the decisive shift in the study of “Mankind” to the beginning of the humanities as a distinct discipline separate from theology or natural philosophy.
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/03/03/more-reflections-on-james-hillmans-archetypal-psychology/
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/02/25/james-hillman-on-metaphysics-and-cosmology/
"In psychotherapy, we basically retrieve traumatic memories, bring unconscious material into consciousness, express the attached emotions, and release the trauma. In the process, traumas are resolved, we overcome debilitations and return to normality, free of symptoms. In healing, we expand the goal of our intervention from symptom relief to system optimization. The process of transformation, or transpersonal development, consists of becoming aware of the limitations of normality and recognizing the possibilities of further growth; preparing for and realizing these potentials through effective practices/techniques; and making these growth changes permanent in ourselves. In transformation, we begin with a remedial, regressive phase of emotional healing and continue into the progressive psychospiritual realm, overcoming normality and returning to wholeness. Achieving wholeness means incorporating the shadow and the luminous into a new, spontaneous, multi-faceted whole self. As transformational healers, we must orchestrate the development of the ego so that it becomes so strong and healthy that it is willing to surrender itself to a higher purpose than its own self-promotion. Personal transformation is analogous to the shamanic journey." --Zimberoff, Hartman, http://031ee85.netsolhost.com/images/Journal_2-1_Personal_Transformation.pdf031ee85.netsolhost.com/images/Journal_2-1_Personal_Transformation.pdf
"Occult science desires to free the natural-scientific method and its principle of research from their special application that limits them, in their own sphere, to the relationship and process of sensory facts, but, at the same time, it wants to retain their way of thinking and other characteristics. It desires to speak about the non-sensory in the same way natural science speaks about the sensory. While natural science remains within the sense world with this method of research and way of thinking, occult science wishes to consider the employment of mental activity upon nature as a kind of self-education of the soul and to apply what it has thus acquired to the realms of the non-sensory. Its method does not speak about the sense phenomena as such, but speaks about the non-sensory world-content in the way the scientist talks about the content of the sensory world. It retains the mental attitude of the natural-scientific method; that is to say, it holds fast to just the thing that makes natural research a science. For that reason it may call itself a science."
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 13 – An Outline of Occult Science: I: The character of occult science
Translated by Maud and Henry B. Monges and revised by Lisa D. Monges
"If the soul rises up to the gods, she becomes god-like and able to know the above and the below; she then obtains the power to heal diseases, to make useful inventions, to institute wise laws. Man has no intuitive power of his own; his intuition is the result of the connection existing between his soul and the Divine Spirit; the stronger this union grows, the greater will be his intuition, spiritual knowledge. Not all the perceptions of the soul are of a divine character; there are also many images which are the products of the lower activity of the soul in her mixture with material elements. Divine Nature, being the eternal fountain of Life, produces no deceptive images; but if her activity is perverted, such deceptive images may appear. If the mind of man is illumined by the Divine Light, the ethereal vehicle of his soul becomes filled with light and shining." -IAMBLICHUS, 333 AD
To live a fully human life, to become téleos (complete), we need to unify, integrate, and harmonize the conscious and unconscious halves of our souls. This individuation strives to make contact with the archetypes and their unified root.
The unified root of all the archetypes has been called the Highest Self, the Highest Soul, the God-image in the individual soul, and the Inmost Flower of the Soul. Jung stressed that it is mysterious and paradoxical, because it unifies all the opposites, transcending being and not-being. It is beyond discursive reason and can be approached and grasped only by means of metaphors and symbols.
Hermeticism was not embodied in a single religious group, but instead was a philosophical system that is at the root of many traditions, some of which remain robust. Hermeticism is a blend of ancient Egyptian religion, philosophy, science and natural magic, with elements of Greek Paganism, Alexandrian Judaism, ancient Sumerian religion and Chaldaean astrology/astronomy, and Zoroastrianism. It is associated with the philosophical schools of Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism and Pythagorianism.
Unlike Plotinus who broke from Platonic tradition and asserted an undescended soul, Iamblichus re-affirmed the soul's embodiment in matter believing matter to be as divine as the rest of the cosmos. He contended that that "the entire body of the cosmos is ruled by the World Soul..." and that macro/micro dynamics [as above; so below], requires that our vehicles both reveal and veil our essences. Marie-Louise von Franz (1974, 7) says, “The
lowest collective level of our psyche is simply pure nature.”
Iamblichus insisted on a special position for the human soul. It is separate from nous and the other higher souls, and holds an intermediate position between them and nature below. Hermetic rebirth and immortalization of the soul is realized as giving birth, not escaping from the world but creating it. Without the physical body it would not be rebirth.
To read hermetic rebirth as an escape from the material world is to miss the demiurgic dimension of the soul’s immortalization; this is certainly important for theurgists and Hermetists as well. He thought the goal of theurgy is insight and to “establish the universal soul in the demiurgic god in his entirety, distinguishing the universal soul from the particular soul.
One’s physical body is no longer a prison but becomes the nexus through which divinity is hermetically revealed and concealed. The initiate then exists in a particular mortal body but at the same time, as Hermes reports, “I went out of myself into an immortal body ...that is co-extensive with the cosmos." Hermetic rebirth means the initiate is reborn by giving birth to the world from the mystery of original silence. The way of Hermes is the way of immortality concealed and revealed in our mortal existence.
For the later Platonists, divinity is not a state; it is as an activity, an energy. Theurgy is demiurgy, world-generation via the ordering of pre-existent matter. Theurgy is "god work" that enables the embodied person to participate and communicate with divine energies. Archetypes are empirical, stable, and public sources of transcendent meaning, giving rise to archetypally meaningful situations or relationships that are numinous (hallowed, miraculous, uncanny, supernatural).
For example, in ancient Egyptian ritual, speech makes the archetypal realm of noetic realities manifest in the liturgical realm of visible symbolic tokens and actions. It also performatively accomplishes theurgical transition and transposition of the cultic events into the divine realm, thereby establishing relationship.
Theurgy is an archetypal process of mythic renewal. Theurgy is concerned with the work of spiritual regeneration, an ancient discipline, revered and nurtured throughout history by those few who know it, yet, barely acknowledged or understood by most.
The theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, with the image as a medium for interaction. A convergence of related symbols activates an archetype or complex and invites projection of the corresponding god or daimon onto the image. The symbols tune the image animating it to become a vehicle to facilitate communication.
Exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious, the
theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious. initiates participate in this and actualizes it in themselves -- the archetype manifests in them.
Theurgical practices facilitate individuation by enabling an accommodation and assimilation between our conscious minds and the personal and collective unconscious. This process advances from the daimons of the personal unconscious, to the archetypal gods of the collective unconscious, toward their root and source, the archetypal Self, the God-image, The Unspeakable One.
This contact is accomplished by means of symbolism, the discursively inexpressible and logically unconnected. Jung calls the symbol-making faculty of the mind the
transcendent function . In theurgy a symbol is something in the seira (the lineage) of a god,
whether it is an animal, plant, or stone, a mineral or a myth, a hymn or poem, a
drawn character or even a number.
A symbol is an inherent component of an archetype or complex, which can activate the archetype or complex, or by which the archetype or complex manifests in consciousness. A symbol serves both to invoke a god or daimon and to signal the arrival of a paleo-god or daimon.
Some symbols are inherent in the phylogenetic structure of an archetype and
are therefore universal, common to all humankind. Other symbols are in the
personal associative network that constitutes a complex or sub-personality arising
from the archetype. These symbols may be personal, cultural, or common to some
other group. In effect they invoke or signify a specific daimon (complex) that is engendered by a generic god, but associated with the individual or group.
Iamblichus understood the soul’s divinization as non-dual: "The benevolent and gracious gods shine their light generously on theurgists, calling their souls up to themselves, giving them unification, and accustoming them, while they are still in their bodies, to be detached from their bodies and turned to their eternal and noetic principle."
http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/iambl_th.htm
https://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/Hermeneutica/ShawPaper.pdf
https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/EvolutionJungTheurgyUPS.pdf
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/MacLennan-ISNS-2012.pdf
Petrarch realizes his calling in life is to look inward to “know thyself,” as Thales put it many centuries before Augustine. Most historians refer to the decisive shift in the study of “Mankind” to the beginning of the humanities as a distinct discipline separate from theology or natural philosophy.
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/03/03/more-reflections-on-james-hillmans-archetypal-psychology/
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/02/25/james-hillman-on-metaphysics-and-cosmology/
"In psychotherapy, we basically retrieve traumatic memories, bring unconscious material into consciousness, express the attached emotions, and release the trauma. In the process, traumas are resolved, we overcome debilitations and return to normality, free of symptoms. In healing, we expand the goal of our intervention from symptom relief to system optimization. The process of transformation, or transpersonal development, consists of becoming aware of the limitations of normality and recognizing the possibilities of further growth; preparing for and realizing these potentials through effective practices/techniques; and making these growth changes permanent in ourselves. In transformation, we begin with a remedial, regressive phase of emotional healing and continue into the progressive psychospiritual realm, overcoming normality and returning to wholeness. Achieving wholeness means incorporating the shadow and the luminous into a new, spontaneous, multi-faceted whole self. As transformational healers, we must orchestrate the development of the ego so that it becomes so strong and healthy that it is willing to surrender itself to a higher purpose than its own self-promotion. Personal transformation is analogous to the shamanic journey." --Zimberoff, Hartman, http://031ee85.netsolhost.com/images/Journal_2-1_Personal_Transformation.pdf031ee85.netsolhost.com/images/Journal_2-1_Personal_Transformation.pdf
"Occult science desires to free the natural-scientific method and its principle of research from their special application that limits them, in their own sphere, to the relationship and process of sensory facts, but, at the same time, it wants to retain their way of thinking and other characteristics. It desires to speak about the non-sensory in the same way natural science speaks about the sensory. While natural science remains within the sense world with this method of research and way of thinking, occult science wishes to consider the employment of mental activity upon nature as a kind of self-education of the soul and to apply what it has thus acquired to the realms of the non-sensory. Its method does not speak about the sense phenomena as such, but speaks about the non-sensory world-content in the way the scientist talks about the content of the sensory world. It retains the mental attitude of the natural-scientific method; that is to say, it holds fast to just the thing that makes natural research a science. For that reason it may call itself a science."
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 13 – An Outline of Occult Science: I: The character of occult science
Translated by Maud and Henry B. Monges and revised by Lisa D. Monges
"If the soul rises up to the gods, she becomes god-like and able to know the above and the below; she then obtains the power to heal diseases, to make useful inventions, to institute wise laws. Man has no intuitive power of his own; his intuition is the result of the connection existing between his soul and the Divine Spirit; the stronger this union grows, the greater will be his intuition, spiritual knowledge. Not all the perceptions of the soul are of a divine character; there are also many images which are the products of the lower activity of the soul in her mixture with material elements. Divine Nature, being the eternal fountain of Life, produces no deceptive images; but if her activity is perverted, such deceptive images may appear. If the mind of man is illumined by the Divine Light, the ethereal vehicle of his soul becomes filled with light and shining." -IAMBLICHUS, 333 AD
To live a fully human life, to become téleos (complete), we need to unify, integrate, and harmonize the conscious and unconscious halves of our souls. This individuation strives to make contact with the archetypes and their unified root.
The unified root of all the archetypes has been called the Highest Self, the Highest Soul, the God-image in the individual soul, and the Inmost Flower of the Soul. Jung stressed that it is mysterious and paradoxical, because it unifies all the opposites, transcending being and not-being. It is beyond discursive reason and can be approached and grasped only by means of metaphors and symbols.
Hermeticism was not embodied in a single religious group, but instead was a philosophical system that is at the root of many traditions, some of which remain robust. Hermeticism is a blend of ancient Egyptian religion, philosophy, science and natural magic, with elements of Greek Paganism, Alexandrian Judaism, ancient Sumerian religion and Chaldaean astrology/astronomy, and Zoroastrianism. It is associated with the philosophical schools of Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism and Pythagorianism.
Unlike Plotinus who broke from Platonic tradition and asserted an undescended soul, Iamblichus re-affirmed the soul's embodiment in matter believing matter to be as divine as the rest of the cosmos. He contended that that "the entire body of the cosmos is ruled by the World Soul..." and that macro/micro dynamics [as above; so below], requires that our vehicles both reveal and veil our essences. Marie-Louise von Franz (1974, 7) says, “The
lowest collective level of our psyche is simply pure nature.”
Iamblichus insisted on a special position for the human soul. It is separate from nous and the other higher souls, and holds an intermediate position between them and nature below. Hermetic rebirth and immortalization of the soul is realized as giving birth, not escaping from the world but creating it. Without the physical body it would not be rebirth.
To read hermetic rebirth as an escape from the material world is to miss the demiurgic dimension of the soul’s immortalization; this is certainly important for theurgists and Hermetists as well. He thought the goal of theurgy is insight and to “establish the universal soul in the demiurgic god in his entirety, distinguishing the universal soul from the particular soul.
One’s physical body is no longer a prison but becomes the nexus through which divinity is hermetically revealed and concealed. The initiate then exists in a particular mortal body but at the same time, as Hermes reports, “I went out of myself into an immortal body ...that is co-extensive with the cosmos." Hermetic rebirth means the initiate is reborn by giving birth to the world from the mystery of original silence. The way of Hermes is the way of immortality concealed and revealed in our mortal existence.
For the later Platonists, divinity is not a state; it is as an activity, an energy. Theurgy is demiurgy, world-generation via the ordering of pre-existent matter. Theurgy is "god work" that enables the embodied person to participate and communicate with divine energies. Archetypes are empirical, stable, and public sources of transcendent meaning, giving rise to archetypally meaningful situations or relationships that are numinous (hallowed, miraculous, uncanny, supernatural).
For example, in ancient Egyptian ritual, speech makes the archetypal realm of noetic realities manifest in the liturgical realm of visible symbolic tokens and actions. It also performatively accomplishes theurgical transition and transposition of the cultic events into the divine realm, thereby establishing relationship.
Theurgy is an archetypal process of mythic renewal. Theurgy is concerned with the work of spiritual regeneration, an ancient discipline, revered and nurtured throughout history by those few who know it, yet, barely acknowledged or understood by most.
The theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, with the image as a medium for interaction. A convergence of related symbols activates an archetype or complex and invites projection of the corresponding god or daimon onto the image. The symbols tune the image animating it to become a vehicle to facilitate communication.
Exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious, the
theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious. initiates participate in this and actualizes it in themselves -- the archetype manifests in them.
Theurgical practices facilitate individuation by enabling an accommodation and assimilation between our conscious minds and the personal and collective unconscious. This process advances from the daimons of the personal unconscious, to the archetypal gods of the collective unconscious, toward their root and source, the archetypal Self, the God-image, The Unspeakable One.
This contact is accomplished by means of symbolism, the discursively inexpressible and logically unconnected. Jung calls the symbol-making faculty of the mind the
transcendent function . In theurgy a symbol is something in the seira (the lineage) of a god,
whether it is an animal, plant, or stone, a mineral or a myth, a hymn or poem, a
drawn character or even a number.
A symbol is an inherent component of an archetype or complex, which can activate the archetype or complex, or by which the archetype or complex manifests in consciousness. A symbol serves both to invoke a god or daimon and to signal the arrival of a paleo-god or daimon.
Some symbols are inherent in the phylogenetic structure of an archetype and
are therefore universal, common to all humankind. Other symbols are in the
personal associative network that constitutes a complex or sub-personality arising
from the archetype. These symbols may be personal, cultural, or common to some
other group. In effect they invoke or signify a specific daimon (complex) that is engendered by a generic god, but associated with the individual or group.
Iamblichus understood the soul’s divinization as non-dual: "The benevolent and gracious gods shine their light generously on theurgists, calling their souls up to themselves, giving them unification, and accustoming them, while they are still in their bodies, to be detached from their bodies and turned to their eternal and noetic principle."
http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/iambl_th.htm
https://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/Hermeneutica/ShawPaper.pdf
https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/EvolutionJungTheurgyUPS.pdf
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/MacLennan-ISNS-2012.pdf
"To concern ourselves with dreams is a way of reflecting on ourselves-a way of self-reflection. It is not our ego-
consciousness reflecting on itself; rather, it turns its attention to the objective actuality of the dream as a
communication or message from the unconscious, unitary soul of humanity. It reflects not on the ego but on
the self; it recollects that strange self, alien to the ego, which was ours from the beginning, the trunk from
which the ego grew. It is alien to us because we have estranged ourselves from it through the aberrations of
the conscious mind." ~"The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man" (1933). -Jung, CW 10: Civilization in Transition, 318