Eternalised

From the beginning, spiritual reality was as certain to Rudolf Steiner as physical reality. He lived in both the invisible and visible worlds. He saw his task as connecting them. For a long time, however, the invisible world seemed more real. Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher who founded Anthroposophy, a term derived from the Greek anthropos (human being) and sophia (wisdom), meaning “wis...

Many of us go about our daily lives unaware that from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, we are engaged in spiritual warfare. There is a battle being fought for our very souls. This may sound extreme, but if we examine our thoughts, words, and actions, we can see how our values are constantly being undermined. Throughout our day, we gather all sorts of useless and harmful thoughts which w...

Creativity involves bringing one’s inner nature into being, a task unique for each individual. It must arise from your innermost self, not from fulfilling the expectations of others. One of the most destructive things, psychologically, is unused creative power. If someone has a creative gift and, for some reason (fear, laziness, or conformity), does not use it, the psychic energy turns inwards and...

The archetype of the Wanderer appears as a figure of profound loneliness, who drifts through life without a fixed home or direction, restless in the search for purpose and belonging. He has far-sickness, a deep longing for distant places and the hope of eventually finding a place on earth where he truly feels at home. The Wanderer longs for home, yet feels at home nowhere, dwelling in a liminal sp...

While Death may appear at times terrifying and at other times playful, those he summons almost always tremble with fear. All except one: the Fool. He joins the dance with a smile, laughing at the absurdity of it all. To him, the world is a theatre, and all men and women merely actors, each wearing different social masks to play their roles in society. There is something in the fool that Death appe...

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” These profound words by St. Paul express the struggle between the desire to do good and the inability to carry it out, due to the power of sin within human nature. The misalignment between our intentions and our actions is part of our daily life. For example, we may know that we love someone deeply, yet find...

In 1952, at the age of seventy-six, Carl Jung wrote Answer to Job in a single burst of energy and with strong emotion. He completed it while ill, following a high fever, and upon finishing, he felt well again. The book explores the nature of God, particularly what Jung perceived as God’s dark side, a theme that preoccupied him throughout his life. In it, the theology first explored in the Red Book...

Carl Jung published his book Psychological Types in 1921, introducing four functions of consciousness: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition, and the two attitudes through which these four functions are deployed: introversion and extraversion. Jung’s functions follow a fourfold structure, which is typical of the archetype of the Self. We are dealing with the archetype of the differentiation o...

“My life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life.” - Carl Jung 👑 Become a Patron ⁠⁠Access exclusive material and deeper studies⁠⁠ — Support the work ☕ ⁠⁠ Buy a coffee⁠⁠ 💸 ⁠⁠PayPal⁠⁠ 👕 ⁠⁠Offi...

In her 1984 book, Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes in Women’s Lives, psychiatrist and Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen delves into seven feminine archetypes within woman’s psyche, based on the goddesses of ancient Greece, whose names and mythologies have endured for more than three thousand years. Myths are not mere fictitious stories or fantasies of the human mind, but perennially r...

The crisis in mature masculinity is very much upon us. Men feel anxious, on the verge of feeling impotent, helpless, frustrated, unloved, unappreciated, and often ashamed of being masculine. Something vital is missing in the many lives of men. For students of mythology and Jungian psychology, there is hope. The external deficiencies we face—absent fathers, immature role models, a lack of meaningfu...

Confusion, wandering, isolation, darkness, disorientation—all evoke the labyrinth, a complex network of paths in which it is difficult to find one’s way out. Or do they? The labyrinth’s original meaning has been entirely distorted, which is only to be expected from such a perplexing symbol. Today, the labyrinth is found everywhere: in architecture, art, books, movies, and games. The labyrinth is a...

Animals have been an integral part of human existence since our earliest origins. They are deeply ingrained within us and play a crucial role in the unconscious. In various religions, animals are revered as gods. Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung frequently remarked that animals embodied the divine aspect of the human psyche. He wrote a bold statement for a thinker of his era, "Ev...

Strange sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history. After the Second World War, however, the appearance of UFOs became prominent in culture. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung studied the UFO phenomenon for more than a decade until his death in 1961. He wrote a book entitled Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, where he saw UFOs as a living myth fo...

Since early childhood, Carl Jung experienced paranormal phenomena, that is, phenomena that are beyond the scope of scientific understanding. They were virtually commonplace in Jung’s family. Jung’s personal experiences with the paranormal would set him on a quest to find an explanation of these events with his theory of analytical psychology, as well as sparking his interest in parapsychology, the...

Death is one of the greatest mysteries of human existence, the inevitable fate that unites us all. Whenever man is confronted with something mysterious and unknown such as the origin of the world, death, the afterlife, etc., the unconscious produces symbolic representations. In her groundbreaking book, On Dreams and Death, Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz writes about death dreams, that is,...

The villain is the most captivating and intriguing of all archetypes. The hero would not exist without his darker counterpart, which reflects aspects of ourselves that we do not dare to acknowledge or confront, but which are present within all of us. The villain is often a mirror of the dark aspects of humanity, embodying qualities that are evil, harmful, greedy, selfish, and destructive. In recen...

The Magician is the most mysterious and fascinating of all archetypes. He is a person who has gained access to esoteric or occult (hidden) knowledge, bringing the spiritual to the material. Thus, he is an initiate of secret and hidden knowledge of all kinds. As the Emerald Tablet teaches us, “As above, so below, and as below, so above, to accomplish the marvels of the One work.” The Magician is of...

Numbers do not merely have a quantitative nature, but also a qualitative one (for Pythagoras they were divine). Numbers have life, they are not just symbols on paper. Several philosophers, alchemists and mystics throughout history have associated religious or mystical ideas to numbers. In ancient times, people associated mystical meaning to words and names based on their numerical value, which bec...

The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung studied astrology for over 40 years, and was primarily interested in the way astrology could help to explore the psyche. For Jung, astrology represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity. The notion of seeing mythic narratives through patterns in the heavens is one of the earliest attempts to link the outer world with the inne...

Angels have fascinated human consciousness since the beginning of time. The word angel derives from the Greek angelos, which is the default translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mal’ākh (literally “messenger”). The angel is a messenger between God and mankind. Whether we talk about angels, daimons, djinns, fairies, or any other of such beings, they all hold something in common, despite their dif...

The Wise Old Man or Sage is an archetype that is recognised by almost everyone, be it in stories, games, movies, or everyday life. In myth he is often shown as one living in isolation, meditating and living a simple life deep in a forest, in the mountains, or in other uninhabited places. The Wise Old Man is a lover of wisdom, and uses his experience to guide others. He is portrayed as a mysterious...

The Quest for the Holy Grail has fascinated the Western consciousness for a long time. It epitomises the true spirit of Western man and is, in many ways, the myth of Western civilisation. It is a perennial and timeless pattern that expresses fundamental concerns of the human condition. The Holy Grail is a mysterious object guarded by a king in a hidden castle. It has been described as a cup, dish,...

Fairy tales fascinate us and give us a sense of warmth and home-coming that comes from the mythical realm of the imagination, a necessary complement to our everyday life. We are fundamentally story-telling creatures, and there is much we can learn by reflecting on the fairy tales heard in childhood. They seem almost magical because they connect us with emotions deeply buried within that cannot fin...

The Devil goes by many names: Satan, Lucifer, The Great Beast, Beelzebub, The Prince of Darkness. He is the adversary, the accuser, the tempter, the deceiver, and the one who divides from God. The Devil is incredibly wicked and evil, but also intelligent and witty – he is the father of all tricksters – that is what makes him so dangerous. The English word “devil” derives from the Greek diábolos (“...