Eternalised

The fool is one of the most relatable, intriguing and recurring figures in the world. There have been fools who have caused surprise and laughter since time immemorial. We worship folly by seeing it in people and in the world and by willingly displaying it in ourselves. It is one of the timeless archetypes, which we all inherit at birth. Many of us suffer from the absence of the fool in our lives....

Nightmares. We all have them. But what exactly do they mean? Why do we have bad dreams? Is there any psychological meaning behind them? Nightmares are the source of much of the horror we see in stories, myths, movies and games. They are an encounter with the dark side of the unconscious, which often includes facing some of the most painful aspects of who we are. And one does not know what that par...

Shamanism is one of the oldest, if not the oldest system of healing known in the world. It forms the prototype from which many other forms of healing are derived, such as modern psychotherapy. The shamanic journey is an expression of the human condition, and despite the cultural differences around the world, the deeper structure appears to remain constant. A common thread seems to connect all sham...

We all have a particular personality type, and at the same time, we are all unique. To partake in the journey of discovering who we truly are, it is necessary for us to know our true and authentic personality. The quest to know ourselves allows us to better understand the complexity and intricacies of the human condition, improve our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world.   ...

The legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes Thrice Great) is the inspiration for the spiritual teachings known as Hermeticism. He is a syncretism (joining) of the Greek deity Hermes, the winged messenger of the Gods, and his Egyptian counterpart, the Ibis-headed moon god Thoth.   The Way of Hermes involved altered states of consciousness in which practitioners went through a training regim...

Philosophy is a mode of life, an act of living, and a way of being. Modern philosophy has forgotten this tradition, and philosophical discourse has all but overtaken philosophy as a way of life. Philosophy is not just an intellectual discipline, which can get abstract and divorced from the real world, but is most importantly a way of life that teaches us how to best live our lives.    Philosophy i...

The wounded healer refers to the capacity to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery. It is the archetype at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures. As long as we feel victimised, bitter and resentful towards our wound, and seek to escape from suffering it, we remain inescapably bound to it. This is neurotic suffering, as opposed to the authentic...

Hell is understood as the archetype of ultimate suffering. It is no imaginary place, but rather a state of consciousness that we all experience at some point in our lives. Hell is an unavoidable journey in life. In ancient mysteries or rituals of passages, the hero must descend into a dark place in order to give birth to a new consciousness and gain access to a new stage of life. It is the most pr...

Loneliness, emptiness, and anxiety – these are the main complaints American existential psychologist Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In 1953, May published Man’s Search for Himself, in which he explores these problems – that are perhaps more relevant than ever in our modern age.   When society can no longer give us a clear picture of our values and standards, of what we are...

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. Carl Jung used the term  in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative  child within every person. It is an archetype, and like all archetypes, has both a positive and a  negative side. It can bring the energy, beauty and creativity of  childhood into adult life, or thwart self-realisation and doom us to both unrealistic adolesc...

There is perhaps no figure in literature more fascinating than the trickster, appearing in various forms in the folklore of many cultures. Trickster is witty and deceitful. He is the timeless root of all the picaresque creations of world literature, and is not reducible to one single literary entity. Trickster tales have existed since ancient times, and has been said to be at the very foundation o...

Franz Kafka's dark world deals with existentialist themes such as alienation, anxiety, disorientation and the absurd. His work is so original that the term Kafkaesque was coined to describe the nightmarish and bizarre atmosphere of his work. Throughout his works we see the strange dream-like mixture of perplexity and embarrassment play out, and the notion of a grand organisation with its incompreh...

Alchemy occupies a unique place in the collective psyche of humankind. Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Jung discovered alchemy and devoted the remaining 30 years of his life to studying it, which he practically dug up from the dunghill of the past, for it was considered pseudoscience, a forgotten relic of history and despised field of investigation which he had suddenly revived.    Alchemy all...

Projection is a psychological fact that can be observed everywhere in  the everyday life of human beings. It is an unconscious mechanism where  one ascribes one’s own motivations, thoughts, feelings, and desires that  are unacceptable to oneself, while attributing them to others. It is a  misalignment of the inner and outer world, because what one is inwardly,  one will see outwardly.   To really...

Synchronicity is a term coined by Carl Jung which describes a meaningful patterns or meaningful coincidences of outer and inner events that cannot be causally linked. It occurs with an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, premonition, thought or mood) is seen to have a correspondence in external reality: the inner image has "come true", bringing meaning to your life. When Jung was in...

Active imagination is a technique developed by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality.     Jung discovered this method between the years of 1913 and 1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious. He searched for...

In his book Owning Your Own Shadow: The Dark Side of the Psyche, American author and Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson states that to honour and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.   In this episode, we briefly clear up some misconceptions regarding the concept of shadow. It is not our enemy,...

William Blake was an English poet and visionary artist whose unique work gives us a glimpse into an entirely different world. His art was ignored and neglected, and few people took his work seriously. He was generally seen as a madman.   His vivid imagination, visions and mystical experiences lead him to a spiritual task that was the exploration of his inner self. For Blake, the essence of human e...

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German Philosopher born in 1788 known for his dark pessimistic philosophical reflections. For Schopenhauer, the underlying force of reality is the Will (also called will to live or will to life), which is the essence of existence. It is an unconscious and blind desire that restlessly strives for more activity. The will is the tornado that swirls inside of us and throws us...

Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.    Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.    Nishitani unders...

While lecturing on anxiety, Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich noticed that there was an enormous response in the post-war era, especially in the younger people, and he sought to give an answer to the growing anxiety which had developed. The aftereffects of the two World Wars had left the world in a state of disorientation, estrangement, anxiety and meaninglessness. Tillich tells us...

Lovecraft's dark philosophy is known as Cosmicism, which focuses on the insignificance of humanity and its doings at the cosmos-at-large, in contrast to the anthropocentric philosophies in which many find intellectual reassurance.  This form of non-anthropocentrism is crucial to the philosophy of Cosmicism.   The question of the meaning of life was better left unanswered. Cosmicism is a type o...

Few artists have so powerfully evoked the uncanny otherness of the unconscious like Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser. His unknown dream paintings were met with blank incomprehension, and were not well-received by the art community of the time, but, viewed today, his vivid paintings bear striking testament to the disruptive and transformative reality of individuation, the purpose of Jungian psychology...

The anima and animus are two contrasexual archetypes crucial for individuation and to progress towards the Self in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, they are the archetype of life and archetype of meaning, respectively.   The anima is the personification of all female psychological tendencies in man, while the animus is the personification of all male psychological tendencies in woman.    They fo...

In Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the nightmare of total equality, a society in which equality is finally achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individuality. One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.   We’ll be exploring the increasing promotion of equality to the point of it being absurd as a consequence of the “unheard cry for meaning” that plagues modern society.    The modern age...