In this way was the Universe created. From this comes many wondrous Applications, because this is the Pattern.
—The Emerald Tablet (Precept Six)
I am outside a building on a terrace. It is night. I turn to the right and see a large brown owl sitting at the edge of the terrace looking directly at me. The bird is powerful, mysterious, sitting calmly on its perch on the wall. I think, “I know this owl. I have seen it before, and I have always longed to see it again. Now it is with me.”
The owl spreads its wings and flies off into the forest.
Turning slightly to my left, I see on a barren patch of open ground an old beggar woman, a crone, swathed in skirts and veils. The woman is spinning around and around. As she spins, her clothes spread out like black wings. I am afraid of her. I don't want to give her money or interact with her in any way. But then I realize she is in her own world, doing what she needs to do. She does not need my money. She only needs me to know that she is there, spinning in the night. She only needs me to recognize her.
I feel as if something is now accomplished and complete. I watch the woman for a while, then turn and walk home. I hear the whispers of her skirts and veils as the beggar woman spins in the distance and then, above me, the hooting of an owl.
This is a fragment of a dream that I had the year I turned fifty. It marked a significant shift in life focus, a new commitment to my ideas about the soul, and an inner imperative to honor my “night vision”—my ability to see into the mysterious darkness of the body soul, the inner world, and the unconscious, as well as the outer daylight world of the conscious mind. Soon after the dream, I decided to begin teaching and pursue publishing my first book. I also painted the owl. To this day, the wide-eyed night bird sits above my desk and guides me back and forth between the domains of daytime and darkness. This dream preceded a knowing that became conscious gradually, as the years passed, as people I cared for died, as my own physicality, interests, and energies shifted. The owl came to forewarn me of something on the way—the wild weird beauty, the relentlessness, the potential artistry and liberation of aging; something to be accomplished; and an acceptance of a task: to remember, to witness, to surrender.
The owl dream is just one of hundreds of dreams that I have recorded in my journals plus the hundreds more that patients have shared with me. Dreams of tour buses barreling across the Sinai desert, boats floating through Amazonian rivers, teeth peeling layers of shining metallic colors, stolen blue bicycles, church bathrooms, lost car keys, Kansas cyclones, fierce tigers, broken telephones, and an infinite array of houses, trees, dogs and cats, doctors, sandwiches, tsunamis, and cafeterias.
Then there are the images that come from even deeper places, the images that are not personal but universal: concentric circles in the sand, bleached white bones, stone bathtubs, triangular doorways leading into dark caves, babies covered in wet clay, feathered serpents, storm clouds, towering trees, springs, crystals, huts, many-storied houses, hallways, mountains, and long roads. Although these images come from the contemporary dreams of my patients and students, we discover them again in fairy tales and myths as well as the art and poetry of cultures throughout time and space, from Siberia to Mexico, from Tibet to Egypt, from Celtic Ireland to sub-Saharan Africa. These perennial symbols arise from the deepest layers of our awareness. Like the instincts, they are not taught but are innate and inborn, regenerative and persistent. Like the owl in my dream, we know them from “before.” And we know them “after.”
Traditional Chinese medicine is filled with these enduring images, as are classical Chinese medical texts, writings of the great Taoist poets, and ancient Chinese myths. Names of acupuncture points like Great Abyss, Spirit Burial Ground, Insect Ditch, Gate of Origin, Celestial Pivot, and hundreds of others call us back to this other world, as do the great Taoist poet Chuang Tzu's stories of belching trees, river lords, sacred turtles, hunchbacks, mudfish, and the eternal phoenix who eats nothing but the rarest fruit and drinks water only from the clearest springs. Master physicians gave illnesses evocative names such as Wind Invasion, Spirit Disturbance, Rising Fire, Possession by Demons, Damp Heat, Running Piglet, and the dreaded and deadly Separation of Yin and Yang. They spoke of symptoms like plum pits stuck in the throat or the desire to climb tall towers and tear off one's clothes while singing. Pulses feel like tight wires, soggy threads, or pearls rolling in a bowl of water.
When I first began talking to my patients in the language of the ancient Chinese, I expected that there would be a lot of explaining to do. Instead, I was amazed at how readily people accepted and responded to the poetry of a world they had never experienced, had not studied, and could not consciously understand. Almost without exception, patients made significant connections between the poetic images and their issues, symptoms, and healing processes. It was as if they were being offered something precious that they had been waiting for, a way to talk about their physical and emotional symptoms that elevated them from annoying inconveniences, medical expenses, or frightening disabilities to experiences with their own unique story, meaning, and possibly even purpose.
Without any previous training in Chinese medicine, my patients responded to the point names, resonated with the myths, and related in direct, embodied ways to yin and yang in their own lives. I found that using language and the imagination to bring these ideas and images into a treatment had an effect on physiology. Similarly, introducing myths and mythical beings enlivened the treatment and helped my patients reconnect to forgotten parts of their own being. I saw that the Red Bird of the Heart, the White Tiger of the Lungs, the Dark Goddess Xi Wang Mu, or the Blue-Black Tortoise who guards the Gate of Life at the base of the spine lived not only in ancient China but also in our modern Western souls.
I noticed the same sense of recognition, visceral response, and acceptance when I brought in images drawn from astrology, yoga, shamanism, flower essence therapy, dream work, and many other ancient healing traditions. I asked myself how these images, symbols, and myths from completely different times and cultures could inspire such curiosity, appreciation, and easy receptivity in modern Western patients. Why did it feel so important to bring these images into the treatment room? What was unique about the healing that happened in this atmosphere?
Pieces fell into place for me when I read about C. G. Jung's early twentieth century investigations into a related phenomenon in his clinical practice in Switzerland. Jung repeatedly found correlations between images in his patients' dreams and visions—snakes biting their own tails, squares within circles, or upside-down trees—and images he discovered in ancient alchemical drawings, myths, and aboriginal art. In almost all cases, there was no way that the patients could have known that their dream images were mirrored in an ancient Egyptian alchemical scroll, a Taoist text, or an African shaman's prayer shawl. Yet the parallels were unmistakable. Jung was fascinated and intrigued by the “[a]nalogy, sometimes even identity, between the various myth motifs and symbols” and his patients' fantasies and visions.
One of Jung's crucial breakthroughs in understanding came through a schizophrenic patient's hallucinatory image of a long phallic-shaped tube that extended down from the sun. The patient claimed that the tube's motion caused the winds to blow on Earth and “[w]hen he moved his head from side to side, the sun's phallus moved with it, and that was where the wind came from.” Soon after working with this patient, Jung came across almost exactly the same image in a second-century Egyptian papyrus, the Mithras Liturgy, which had been translated into German. The Liturgy described a tube that hangs down from the sun and is the origin of the wind. This tube veers from East to West and generates wind corresponding to its movements.
The “coincidental” parallel of his patient's vision with the description in the ancient papyrus led Jung to a startling conclusion: his patient's hallucinations, rather than being singular random outpourings of a deranged mind, were the result of a breaking down of individual ego identity that catapulted him into a deep and primal level of awareness not ordinarily available to modern waking consciousness. Jung came to understand that this deeper sector of the psyche is a vast reservoir of universal, primordial images that exert a powerful influence on all human beings throughout space and time. These images well up through the layers of the psyche to appear in art, dreams, religious rituals, drug-induced hallucinations, myths, and fairy tales as well as in the psychotic visions of schizophrenics. Like the instincts, the images are innate, an intrinsic part of the human psyche and nervous system dating back to our earliest beginnings. And like the instincts, they have a powerful capacity to protect us, move us, propel us forward into life, possess us, and also help us heal and grow.
Through his encounter with this psychotic patient as well as his ongoing study of the dreams and visions of other patients, Jung recognized the importance of this deep reservoir of ancestral images to understand the human psyche both in its pathology and its health. He came to view it as a primal psychic system of a universal and impersonal nature that does not develop through our historical encounters with family, culture, or education, but is inborn, inherited from our earliest ancestors. Due to its commonality among all human beings, Jung called this domain of the psyche the “collective unconscious” to distinguish it from the personal unconscious. He viewed it as the link between individual awareness, instinctual life, and the vast bewilderment of the cosmos. He called the primordial images that arise from these psychic depths “archetypes” and felt that they connected us not only to the roots of our being but also to the divine creative energy of the universe.
Archetypes are hints to riddles the conscious mind alone could never answer. They are less “things” than living tendencies, open channels where psychic energy flows. They point us in a direction. C. G. Jung borrowed the word archetype from the Greek to refer to the significant symbols and patterns he came across repeatedly in the dreams of his patients and the art, myths, and religious texts of the ancient civilizations he was exploring. Arche means “first” or “origin” and typos means “mark, blow, or impression.” For the Greeks, the word had to do with how being came from nonbeing, how the forms of the world emerged from the formless void, how the unity of ideal perfection is reflected in the infinite, imperfect multiplicity of the world.
The archetypes are the contents of the collective unconscious. They are embedded in the threads of our DNA, impressed into the subtle body like a blow, an indelible mark, a block of type pressed down onto the pages of the soul. These images are as much a part of our makeup as our arms and legs, as the capacity of our lungs to breathe, and our hearts to beat. Just as the physical structures of our bodies begin to organize from the moment of conception, these images also begin to impress themselves on our psyches a priori—before we even come to be. They organize our way of entering into our life and our way of leaving it. They are an intrinsic part of our nature as humans, just as fundamental, irrepressible, and necessary to our survival as our inborn animal instincts.
The outer expression of an archetype changes according to time, culture, and individual experience, but its fundamental structure does not. Just as a robin's nest will have the same form and function whether it is woven in an elm tree in Kensington Garden or a spruce tree in the woods of Maine, an archetype will retain its essential nature, function, and drive wherever it appears. For example, the Goddess of Love may show herself as Aphrodite in Greece, Venus in Rome, Isis in Egypt, Oshun in Africa, a woman emerging from a fluted sea shell in an Italian Renaissance painting, or Marilyn Monroe in the modern cinema, but in all her infinite guises she retains her fertile sensuality, potent sexual desire, and feminine allure. She seduces us into the madness of love, the complexity of relationship, the joys and burdens of procreation, and the risky uncertain business of life itself.
Archetypes are channels or conduits into which our psychic energy, emotions, and behavioral responses naturally flow. A healthy human infant, for example, comes into life with the outline or space for “mother”—the mother archetype—already in it. It is ready to be held, nurtured, and nursed before it ever meets its human caregiver. It is born with a knowing of mother in its bones, blood, fingertips, and taste buds. This Body Felt Sense knowing of mother exists deep in its being and allows it to spontaneously recognize, trust, and respond to its care-giving parent as long as the real and the archetypal are sufficiently close in quality and behavior. Throughout our lives, long after our biological mother has passed away, this innate a priori mother continues to live in us, directing and supporting us, arising at times as a longing, a comfort, a loss, as the warm furry body of a dog in a dream, a green mountain or a warm pond, a table filled with food and flowers, a good sleep after a long journey, or a lover's nurturing embrace.
The concept of the archetypes opened a doorway for me and my practice. It allowed me to make sense of the immediacy of my patients' responses to the images and poetry of traditional Chinese medicine. It helped me understand the healing potency of these images and how they influence the healing process simply by bringing them into the treatment room. It helped me understand why images, myths, and poetry transcend time and culture as well as how they could shift an experience from the everyday world of mental consciousness to another domain where body and soul, physical and psychological, seamlessly intertwine. Through this shift, something happened in the room that was unexpected and powerful, that took the treatment beyond stress reduction, energy balancing, health maintenance, or symptomatic fix to an experience of personal renewal.
Conscious use of the archetypes allowed me to bridge the gap between the world of ancient China and the modern Western consciousness of the patients I work with. Over time, I came to recognize archetypes as powerful tools, another kind of needle, that I could intentionally use to move qi, open channels, and support a patient's journey toward their own healing and wholeness, toward their Tao. Eventually, I came to see work with archetypes as an intrinsic part of Alchemical Healing.
You come into the world with archetypes already embedded in your nervous system. You are born with a space in your soul for Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. Friend. Healer. Hero. Mentor. And you are born ready to meet the people who will reflect these universal qualities back to you as personal, limited, embodied expressions of something divine. If the outer people and conditions you encounter through the various stages of life are adequately close in kind and quality to the archetypes already waiting within, you meet them, integrate them, and these qualities gradually become a part of your creative and functional self. Archetype becomes identity.
Child psychologist D. W. Winnicott devoted his life to the painstaking observation of infant development. He was particularly struck by the child's critical need for what he came to call the “good enough mother.” He discovered that what human beings most need in order to grow into self-confident, generous, functional adults is not a perfect mother. In fact, because it is impossible for a human being to exactly replicate an archetype, striving for that kind of perfection gets in the way. Winnicott found that the most basic human need is for a caregiver who brings just enough of the archetypal maternal qualities of warmth, nurturance, and reliable presence to “stand in” for the archetype until those qualities come to life as a part of a child's developing self.
But what happens when the outer person isn't “good enough”? What if the mother is suffering from depression after the death of a previous child and cannot express warmth? What if the older sibling has a severe illness and cannot be relied on as a companion? What if the mentor betrays the sacred bonds of trust through boundary violations or envy?
When the “real person” does not resonate adequately with the archetype, the process of healthy development breaks down. In my practice, I see it as a hole in a patient's soul that is as painful and debilitating on a psychic level as a festering wound on the body. I have seen this psychic wounding manifest as a terrible gnawing hunger, an insatiable longing, a hopelessness, or a nameless rage. Until the wound heals, it usually requires constant self-medicating and numbing in the form of dissociation and various forms of addictive behavior. And yet in this lead there lies the gold. The place of wounding is also the place where the healing begins. In the realm of archetypes, the hole contains the wholeness.
As a result of our work together, James gradually became aware of a feeling that no one had his back when he needed to speak in public or act as an authority. The feeling of “backlessness” left him anxious, shaky, doubting his self-worth, and hesitant to take on personal or professional risks. The situation led to his sense of being stuck in a job he disliked, with few friends and no close intimacy.
Over several months, we worked with acupuncture to move qi through a meridian in James's back called the Governing Vessel that enlivens yang qi and strengthens the backbone. He took Larch flower essence, which restores self-confidence and supports a feeling of powerful verticality that mirrors the upright shape of the larch tree. But it was during a process of Inner Sensing when he recognized that the empty feeling at his back was the hole where his father should have been.
James's parents divorced when he was ten years old. After the divorce, he lived with his mother and rarely saw his father, who had always been distant but after the divorce disappeared almost completely. Of his mother, James said, “I knew she would always be there. I knew she loved me. And that's great. That's beautiful. But still, I always felt there was something important missing.”
He realized that not having a father around, especially as he was entering puberty and trying to figure out how to be a man in the world, left him with a big emptiness, a hole that he was always afraid of falling into. And yet, when he turned his gaze to that hole in our session, there was something there, something that made him smile.
I asked if he could imagine this father who would be the right match, the right guy, the right chemistry. He paused and then he nodded his head, emphatically, yes. I asked James to describe what this person would be like.
A good father is someone you grow up with, someone you know over time. You get to watch him handle adversity, challenges that come up and you see that, no matter what, he stays the same person. He doesn't get all turned around when things get tough. He hangs in. He stays. Not like my actual father. I mean, when I think about people I know, I can't really think of anyone. I guess I'm going to have to create him inside of me. That's the father I want to become. That's the father I am going to be.
In Alchemical Healing, archetypes are used in much the same way that an acupuncturist uses needles, as tools to move qi, access the life force, and support the opening of stuck places in transformational processes. They can also be used as filters or nets through which you access and gather potent transpersonal cosmic energies and step them down sufficiently to be safely worked with in your life. In addition, archetypes form the basis of the imaginal practices and meditations of alchemy. They are key components in astrology, dream work, and the Inner Sensing practice introduced in the last chapter. Psychologically, archetypes can be understood as self-generated energies that propel you toward your own survival, growth, and development.
From the perspective of alchemists and magicians of earlier eras, archetypes are spirits, autonomously functioning divine soul beings with their own perceptions, drives, insights, and desires. They are messengers who link humans to the divine. They come in an infinite array of costumes and disguises, as wily tricksters, wise teachers, fierce opponents, long-lost lovers. They live in the betwixt and between of the psyche, “part of us” yet also separate.
Whether you view them as images, principles, or living spirits, it is unwise to underestimate the power and purpose of the archetypes. Just as the instincts irresistibly compel us toward biological preservation and growth, the archetypes propel us forcibly toward our psychospiritual development and personal evolution. They come in service to your entelechy, your innate drive to become the fullest possible expression of your innate nature.
Even when you are not aware of them, archetypes move you. They grab you in the gut, inspire you, heal you, and call you back to yourself in new ways. Even when you do not know they are there, you are affected and touched by their presence. Whether or not you relate consciously to the power of the King archetype, for example, you are affected when the president is knowingly deceitful or a beloved world leader dies. You respond with relief and joy when Simba wins the battle over his manipulative, death-mongering uncle Scar and restores fertility, peace, and hope to the Pride Lands in Disney's Lion King.
Archetypes inform the shape of our myths, our creative impulses, and our relationships. They beckon to us from movie screens. They appear as faces peering out at us from the bark of trees, babies smiling at us from grocery carts, handsome strangers, and round gleaming stones picked from tide pools. Whenever you are dazzled, grabbed, arrested, compelled, wandering, lost, late, or blind to your own reason, you can suspect that an archetype is present and has something important to tell you. It is imperative that you slow down, breathe, recognize its presence, and listen carefully.
You know an archetype is present not through your mind but through your body and your emotions. You feel a primal, instinctual energy come into your life, something entrances, seduces, attracts, repels, confuses. You fall in love with the fireman who rescued your cat from the roof of the house. You can't stop watching the royal wedding on television. You blow up at your mother-in-law every time she calls. Your jaw clenches when you hear the word priest, or you feel anxiety creeping up your spine at the sight of a cemetery. Notice how the energy shifts when you read the words Republican, liberal, immigrant, homeland, black, and white.
Mother, father, lover, child—you feel these experiences as a tug of emotion, a rush of anger, a driving desire, an inexplicable fear, disorientation, or longing. The response surprises you. You feel it in your throat, your chest, your churning stomach, the heady rush of excitement throughout your entire body, the compelling need to say something you already know you will regret or an unexpected loss of words.
When you are in the presence of archetypal energy, it is as if a powerful tide is pulling you away from your individual identity into the vast depths of the collective unconscious. You are drawn into fits of melodrama, pits of depression, flights of grandiosity. You make impetuous purchases, run stop signs, and enter into ridiculous love affairs. Jungian analyst Harry Wilmer describes these experiences of insanity in ordinarily sane people as “[b]eing in the clutches of an archetype.” We are in their grip and they hold us captive with a power that we often cannot control.
As an acupuncturist I think of “being in the clutches of an archetype” as an energy block. Like a block, it is a place where qi or life force gets arrested, bottled up, and out of reach of conscious awareness, but it is also a place of potential vitality, an entryway to a new possibility. Seeing and acknowledging an archetype block is like needling the right point at the right time so that your life force can begin to flow again.
Archetypes are paradoxical, and similar to the medicine that cures in small doses and kills in large doses, they need to be approached with caution, respect, and gratitude. Most of all, they need to be recognized and related to so that their potentially destructive “larger than life” energies can be titrated through the filter of consciousness. Welcome and sit next to the archetypes that arrive on your doorstep but resist the impulse to become identified with them. This prevents you from becoming an unconscious conduit of their energies, but instead allows you to get closer to their wisdom and tap into their renewing reservoir of life-giving transpersonal energy.
Begin by paying attention to how your Body Felt Sense changes in response to certain words, people, and situations.
When you notice an unusual bodily shift, an impulse to react with an outburst of emotion or hurtful words, an overwhelming attraction, take a breath and pause! Pause . . . breathe . . . remember . . . ask yourself when you have felt this feeling before. What does it remind you of?
Use Inner Sensing to feel into the nature of your body response. What is its color, its texture, its emotion? Why is it coming? What does it need? What qualities are present?
Is there a public figure, movie star, television personality, book character, or someone you know that reminds you of how you feel in this reactive state? Give the Body Felt Sense a name and get ready to relate to it!
Benjamin and I got a powerful lesson in the importance of listening carefully to archetypes that show up in relationship when, after sixteen years of knowing each other, we finally made the decision to legally marry. We had carefully weighed the outer social, political, and economic ramifications of our decision. We waited until it looked likely that gay marriage would be legalized in Maine (the people of Maine voted in the bill two months after our ceremony) so that the LGBTQ+ members of our community shared the same rights to legalize and publicly celebrate the commitment. We spoke to our lawyer and sorted out the complexities of shared resources and inheritance in our blended family. We had a budget and a date. We were ready to go.
But we hadn't reckoned with the inner situation and the power of the coniunctio—the archetype of the divine marriage. Weddings have a potent force field, and soon all our friends had something to say about it. Some expressed shock and dismay that after so many years of standing for some alternative expression of relationship, we'd made what they viewed as a conventional decision. Others were excited and wanted to help. Our friends were more than generous with everything from their time to their organizational skills to the tablecloths, napkins, and china we'd use for the reception. A farmer friend offered a lamb and two others said they'd take care of the outdoor grill. Soon, everyone had gotten involved.
Rings. Clothes. The DJ, the cake, chairs, and tables. Everything was falling into place. It was all going so well except that every time Benjamin and I sat down to do some planning, we started fighting. It was as if a nasty grumpy ghoul was doing everything in its power to ruin the party. It got so bad and we were hating each other so much at one point that we came close to calling the whole thing off. But then we remembered, took a pause, and turned our attention inward.
When we tuned in to the field between us—the feelings and atmosphere that constellated when we actually sat down together—we felt a sadness, a resentment, and a loneliness. The space was heavy and musty like a house that had been closed up for a very long time. Opening to my imaginal sight, I saw a child in tattered clothes sitting alone in an empty room while everyone was happily busy elsewhere. When we asked the child why it had shown up right when we were getting married, it didn't have a lot to say. But when we stayed with it, we recognized that the archetype of the abandoned child that was present in both our personal life stories had taken over our relationship. It became clear to us that in the midst of all the extroverted excitement and planning, we had abandoned our own relational connection.
After that, we started to carve out time for the inner aspects as well as the outer logistics of our wedding. We took the writing of our vows seriously. We checked in with each other's feelings and made space for our fears of intimacy and commitment as well as our hopes for deepening connection. I grappled with the feelings of grief in knowing that my mother and brother, who had both recently died, would not be present to celebrate with us. Benjamin struggled to make peace with the complex feelings he had regarding his decision to exclude most members of his family at the event. We tried to remember that every aspect of the ceremony had an inner symbolic resonance that needed to be respected. We kept coming back to our commitment to each other's healing and spiritual development as well as our shared commitment to our friends, our community, and the world. Gradually, the archetype of the abandoned child transformed into the divine child who is the carrier of new life and new possibilities.
The wedding took place in the field by our home and the reception in a rickety nearby barn. It was a wild conglomeration of family and friends old and new. The early Autumn rays of sun broke through the silver clouds just as we took our vows. The ceremony went beautifully. The food was great, and everyone danced all night. But I have absolutely no doubt that none of that would have mattered if we hadn't taken the time to listen in to the ragged angel, the abandoned child who had come to call us back to ourselves and to one another.
In order to bring the spiritual potency of an archetype into your life, you have to find a way to bring it down to Earth. Grounding your work through ritual is one of the best ways to make the archetype a part of your world, to make it conscious and real, and at the same time, honor its unknowable divinity. It is also a way to actualize the changes that the archetype is urging you toward.
A ritual is a physical act that grounds a psychological insight or spiritual revelation in form, word, and action. It is one of the most efficient expressions of magical consciousness. When Benjamin and I turned our attention to writing our wedding vows, we engaged in a ritual that honored the divinity of the child who had come to us. Touching an acupuncture spirit point, applying an essential oil, placing a flower in a glass vase with intention, and hanging a prism in a sunny window are other relatively simple ways to honor the archetypes on a daily basis.
Archetypes need your attention. They need your devotion, interest, and care in order to manifest their potent healing and life-giving effects in the world. When you neglect their hunger, wisdom, desires, and needs, they keep coming at you from the outside in perplexing and annoying ways that stall the forward movement of your life. But when you attend to them, honor them, and make space for them, they become healing allies and trusted guides to the sacred country of the soul.