The Great Mother is uroboric: terrible and devouring, beneficent and creative Let us take as an example the archetype of the Great Mother. It combines a bewildering variety of contradictory aspects. If we regard these aspects as qualities of the Great Mother and list them as qualities of the archetype, that is itself the result…
The role played by the collective in the human culture is decisive. The individual fate of the hero-and the creative Great Individual is indeed a hero-may be the exception, but he is also the exemplar of a process which subsequently affects all individuals in varying degree. The average ego, the average individual, remains fixed in…
Thus uroboric incest is pleasurable only for the feeble ego The fact that fear is a symptom of centroversion, an alarm signal sent out to warn the ego, can be seen most clearly from the fear of regressing to an older ego form which would destroy the new, and with it the new system of…
The fertility goddess is both mother and virgin The Great Mother is a virgin, too, in a sense other than that intended by the patriarchate, which later misunderstood her as the symbol of chastity. Precisely in virtue of her fruitfulness, she is a virgin, that is, unrelated and not dependent upon any man. In Sanskrit,…
The problem of the First Parents isresolved in the dragon fight The tests of masculinity and the proofs of ego stability, will power, bravery, knowledge of “heaven,” and so forth, which are demanded of the hero, have their historical equivalent in the rites of puberty. Just as the problem of the First Parents isresolved in the…