The Anima Mundi Project

09/16/2025

It's Archetypal Friday and our symbol for this week is Horn.

An ancient instrument that has gone through a great many variations and reworkings up to the present day, the horn was initially useful because it is loud. In battle, the ability of horns to announce, command, and direct allowed direct communication in a time before radios and other electronic communications. The horn is also a heraldic instrument, signalling the importance of Kings and foreign dignitaries as, is often seen in period dramas. In our contemporary mind, we associate horns like trumpets with jazz, especially in ensembles in the 50s and 60s. In many situations these instruments have jettisoned their more imperious connotations and instead has become tied to the connotations of sophistication, 'cool,' and authenticity that can be associated with the idea of jazz. The horn also has religious connotations, such as the Shofar made from a ram's horn played on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; other religious horns include the Gjallarhorn associated with Heimdallr, the son of Odin, and Mimir, a figure known for his wisdom in Norse mythology.

Image: "Designs for speaking-trumpets, of varying practicality. Kircher was convinced that the helical shape was most effec-tive, perhaps affected by a long-standing association of sound-propagation with spiral motion. There are symbolic, if not scientific, grounds for this in the shape of both the outer and the inner ear. (Phonurgia Nova, p. 136)"

From: Athanasius Kircher by Joscelyn Godwin, Thames and Hudson.

08/11/2025

At the heart of things is a secret law of balance and when our approach is respectful, sensitive and worthy, gifts of healing, challenge and creativity open to us. A gracious approach is the key that unlocks the treasure of encounter. The way we are present to each other is frequently superficial. In many areas of our lives the rich potential of friendship and love remains out of our reach because we push towards 'connection.' When we deaden our own depths, we cannot strike a resonance in those we meet or in the work we do.

A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us to be truly present where we are. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty of things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace. Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

07/29/2025

Speaking on political attitudes, Timothy Snyder (2017) wrote:

"The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction."

This applies to our personal development, as well.

07/03/2025

05/17/2025

It's Archetypal Friday and our symbol for this week is Infidel.

The infidel or non-believer is an exile of a religious community. Subject at the very least to exclusion and at worst to violence, the non-believer is often perceived as a threat to a faith-based community, where the all-encompassing reality that is constructed by their faith can be rendered fragile by doubt and skepticism. The infidel can also be a member of a rival religious group, a group that threatens the hegemony or even existence of another religion. This term is especially prevalent in the language of the crusades and in the conflicts between Christianity and Islam in the Medieval and early Modern period. In its original context in Europe, the term infidel came to refer to people actively opposed to Christianity, which in the European mind meant Jews and Muslims, those who practiced religions that actively rejected the Christian interpretation of a shared Abrahamic heritage. This term has fallen from use as more communities become amenable to a polyphony of religious voices, though the conflicts implied in the term still rage violently throughout our world. When we think about the term infidel we consider to what extent our differences in worldview and belief define our relationships to others and whether our own most deeply held feelings are so fragile that disagreement could destroy them.

Image: An infidel, a representative of chaos, is put into the service of cosmic order, the body of the cathedral. Order is reflected internally by the spiralling of the subtle energies within the body, here seen at the navel. (Pillar support, Ferrara Cathedral, Italy, c. 1140.)

10/12/2022

https://pacifica.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c9650e3ab25b2b1666d6a24eb&id=d25caf2124&e=b6d59e8efe

0 This year we look forward to celebrating more books by Pacifica alumni making their way out into the world as “published!” Emerging from more than two years of pandemic isolation, PGIAA is extremely happy to honor our alumni authors who published their works during that trying period. We are r...

10/05/2022

Archetype in Focus: Beard
Since hair grows on the face of a young man at puberty just as he becomes capable biologically of siring a family and capable psychologically of taking social responsibility, the beard is a mark of masculine adulthood. Hence the male heads of pantheons are usually bearded. Indra, a thundering sky god like Thor and leader of the Vedic deities, had a beard. Zeus does not explicitly sport a beard in Homer but does have an important chin: Thetis 'sat beside him with her left hand embracing his knees, but took him underneath the chin with her right hand and spoke in supplication' (Iliad 1.500); Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted this scene and gave Father Zeus a big curly beard. And while the ancient Egyptians preferred to be clean-shaven, their male gods wore beards, as did their incarnate divine Pharaoh (who had to strap on a false beard for ceremonies). Thus, we observe a pattern of meaning: the hair on the lower part of a man's face symbolizes the coming of age as well as the wisdom and authority that come with experience. There is something sacred about one's beard, and one can swear by it. The Little Pig vows to the Wolf, 'Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.'
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09/24/2022

The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality. Its surface texture of grass and stone is blessed by rain, wind, and light... The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth's joy and despair. The earth is full of soul.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

08/04/2022

Archetype in Focus: Seed

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with w**d,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
Robert Frost, “Putting in the Seed”

Of nature’s manifold works, none is more mysterious in form and function than the seed. Seed as symbol touches upon the most primeval meaning of life itself – undeveloped possibilities and new beginnings, growth, birth, death and renewal. Like egg, the seed is a resurrection and fertility symbol crucial to basic life rhythms such as seasons and the transformation from one phase to another.

The sowing of seeds evokes every form of procreation. Primitive fertility rituals in which couples copulated in the fields on their wedding night or at the time of sowing were sympathetic magic to assist germination in good soil, or, in other versions of such rites, abstinence was thought to concentrate potency in the sown ground.

In Egyptian mythology, the dismembered but restored god Osiris impregnates the earth which then bears its crops. Seed thus carries also the symbolism of sacrifice with spiritual renewal as a possibility. In this aspect seed symbolizes consciousness as the highest potentiality of matter. The union of opposites: sperm/egg, seed/earth, occurs only after the seed has passed through the underworld, dies to itself, is nourished and reborn in new combination.

Images from the ARAS Archive:
TOP - 5La.001 - Pomegranate Seed, by Elizabeth J. Milleker, gouache and sumi-ink painting, 2003, United States.
BOTTOM LEFT - Painting by Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka, a member of the Pintupi tribe of Western Australia, celebrates the growth and collection of “Mungilpa” which is seed-bearing grass. The prominent black dots are the accumulations of seeds. Ca. 1980.
BOTTOM RIGHT - Vessel with seed motif. Ceramic. Peru, ca. 900-200 BCE

07/26/2022

Psychosocial Wednesdays with Hallie Beth Durchslag13 July 2022OPPORTUNITIES AT THE CROSSROADS: WHAT MY PSYCHOSIS TAUGHT ME ABOUT POST-JUNGIAN THEORY The pres...