Barbara Hannah: The cat’s archetypal image is present in us all.
“The cat’s archetypal image is present in us all.
It is clearer to women, for the cat – even the tomcat – is much more feminine in behavior than, for instance, the dog. Men have the cat also, but here it is more connected with the anima.
Thus they do not escape the disastrous tendency of their anima cat to spin plots.
She usually hooks on to ambition, power and money where temptations are great and men are not so terribly conscious.
And then, of course, Tefnut entangles them in sexual affairs of all kinds and is delighted when they turn out disastrously.
The anima is much farther away for men and therefore more difficult to make conscious.
In fact, catching plots is the conditio sine qua non of men becoming conscious of their animas.
This is the most difficult task of all for men, far more difficult than it is for woman to become conscious of her animus.
”
But perhaps the cat is especially important on account of her tendency to go off with Tefnut into the depths of the unconscious and to degenerate into all kinds of injurious or even fatal behavior.
This degeneration is certainly very reminiscent of the days we live in, where plots are so readily spun in the unconscious and
subconscious lives of women and men alike, not only in ourselves but even on a worldwide scale.
All that each one of us can do is to work honestly on the archetypal image of the cat in our own souls.
Perhaps we may each then add “an infinitesimal grain [on] the scales of humanity’s soul” ~Barbara Hannah.The Archetypal Symbolism of Animals, Page 51.
Archetypal image:
The form or representation of an archetype in consciousness.
[The archetype is] a dynamism which makes itself felt in the numinosity and fascinating power of the archetypal image.[“On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8, par. 414.]
Archetypal images, as universal patterns or motifs which come from the collective unconscious, are the basic content of religions, mythologies, legends and fairy tales.
An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors.
If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the power that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less adequate expression in all these similes, yet-to the perpetual vexation of the intellect-remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula.[“The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” CW 9i, par. 267]
On a personal level, archetypal motifs are patterns of thought or behavior that are common to humanity at all times and in all places. For years I have been observing and investigating the products of the unconscious in the widest sense of the word, namely dreams, fantasies, visions, and delusions of the insane.
I have not been able to avoid recognizing certain regularities, that is, types. There are types of situations and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have a corresponding meaning. I therefore employ the term “motif” to designate these repetitions.
Thus there are not only typical dreams but typical motifs in dreams. . . . [These] can be arranged under a series of archetypes, the chief of them being . . . the shadow, the wise old man, the child (including the child hero), the mother (“Primordial Mother”and “Earth Mother”) as a supraordinate personality (“daemonic”because supraordinate), and her counterpart the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman.[“The Psychological Aspects of the Kore,”ibid., par. 309.]
#AnalyticalPsychology #DepthPsychology #CarlJung #TheUnconscious #JungianPsychology #Psyche #JungianConcepts #PsychologicalType #Archetypes #Individuation
