Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"The archetypes, as organs of the psyche, are dynamic, instinctual complexes which determine psychic life to an extraordinary degree." Carl Jung, 'Psychological Commentary' Tibetan Book of the Dead (W Y Evans-Wentz, translator)

2		"To the opened eye of the seer all nature is but a symbol, a partial and dim expression of the radiant beauty of the archetypes in the Divine Mind." Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight (Shirley Nicholson)

3		“The forms which experience takes in each individual may be infinite in their variations, but they are all variants of certain central types, and these occur universally. They are the primordial images, from which the religions each draw their absolute truth.” Collected Works (Carl Jung)

4		"Archetypes, that is, universal and inherited patterns, taken together, constitute the structure of the unconscious….archetypes are the forms or river-beds along which the current of psychic life has always flowed." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

5		"As the intellectual historian Richard Tarnas points out,'Platonic Forms are not conceptual abstractions that the human mind creates by generalizing from a class of particulars. Rather, they possess a quality of being, a degree of reality that is superior to that of the concrete world. Platonic archetypes form the world and also stand beyond it. They manifest themselves within time and yet are timeless. They constitute the veiled essence of things.'" Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

6		"In the psyche, at a depth which cannot be called 'personal', there exist the great archetypal images. These images are demonstrably related to the true Archetypes; and although, in dreams for instance, they may sometimes move in the personal levels of the psyche and participate in actions which reflect personal conditions, still their more profound character is manifest." The Sword and The Serpent (Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips)

7		"Culture and psyche are not opposed entities but two aspects of the same psychobiological process – the actualization of innate archetypal propensities." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

8		"The archetype is that which is believed always, everywhere, and by everybody." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

9		"Plato arrived at the conclusion that there exists in a supra-sensible world a host of models or archetypes, immaterial, immutable, eternal, man in general or man in himself, triangle in itself, virtue in itself, etc. These he termed ideas, which are the object apprehended by the intellect, the faculty which attains truth – that is to say, they are Reality." An Introduction to Philosophy (Jacques Maritain)

10		"The purpose of human learning and philosophy is to reawaken in the soul remembrance of the eternal, spiritual realm of pure forms and ideas." The Roots of Consciousness (Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D.)

11		"Philosophically, in the reality structure of the feminine archetype, Great Nature is just as important within as it is without. The principle of the 'unus mundus', the unified reality stream, is operative here; the realm of inwardness has as much ontological status as the external world has. The feminine principle expresses itself as an unfolding of levels of existence, not as the conquest of facts." The Search for the Beloved (Jean Houston)

12		"The archetypes serve as blueprints to guide the growing forms. They are like the perfect song on a conceptual level which individual singers bring into being in their unique way." Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight (Shirley Nicholson)

13		"The Absolute or Supreme God is the basic, or final Archetype in which all lesser archetypes originate and are resolved." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)

14		"Quintessentially, archetypes are about relationship….As inhabitants of the We Are realm, archetypes bridge spirit with nature, mind with body, and self with universe. They are always within us, essential elements within the structure of our psyches." A Mythic Life, Learning to Live our Greater Story (Jean Houston)

15		"Ultimately every archetype is merely an individual expression of one Universal energy pattern, which is our connection to the Divine." C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., Foreword Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential (Caroline Myss)

16		"By using archetypal symbols that resonate on a universal level, art can evoke the complete range of possible life experiences, including the boundless nature of our souls." Alex Grey Experiencing the Soul (Eliot Jay Rosen, editor)

17		"Carl Jung spoke of a God-archetype within the psyche. The psyche has an affinity for God, a faculty for relationship with God." Spiritual Pilgrims, Carl Jung & Teresa of Avila (John Welch, O. Carm.)

18		"The 'Ideal Forms' are the archetypal or formative ideas…the eternal and subjective concepts of things subsisting in the divine mind prior to becoming." The Secret Doctrine (Helena P. Blavatsky)

19		"In its created being (the soul) incessantly receives the impress of its Eternal Archetype, like a flawless mirror, in which the image remains steadfast and in which the reflection is renewed without interruption by its ever-new reception in new light." John of Ruysbroeck, 'Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage' Behold the Spirit, A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion (Alan Watts)

20		"Dr. Jung points out that he has borrowed his term 'archetype' from classic sources: Cicero, Pliny, the Corpus Hermeticum, Augustine, etc. ('Psychology and Religion', par. 89). Bastian notes the correspondence of his own theory of 'Elementary Ideas' with the Stoic concept of the 'Logoi spermatikoi'. The tradition of the 'subjectively known forms' (Sanskrit: antarjneyarupa) is, in fact, coextensive with the tradition of myth, and is the key to the understanding and use of mythological images." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

21		"The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which [we] can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciusness that is all at sea." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

22		"The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light." A Greater Psychology, An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought (Sri Aurobindo, edited by A. S. Dalal)

23		"Archetypes are vital to understanding and defining who we are, individual expressions of a collective consciousness." Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire (Deepak Chopra)

24		"Culture is not an arbitrary invention but a precipitate of archetypal dynamics." Return of the Goddess (Edward C. Whitmont, MD)

25		"Archetypal images have something in common throughout mankind." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)