Archetypal Inner Work

Meeting the unconscious through image, symbol, and archetypal experience

A Priestess of Bacchus by John William Godward

Many of the powerful, transformative, and healing moments of my life have come from meeting the unconscious and the great archetypal energies that animate the psyche.

Perhaps the earliest example of it was when I was a small child, under 5 years old. I was plagued with night terrors, dreams of being stalked by a vampiric figure as I raced through the backyard of my home. Then I would awake, dazed and emotionally charged, to a scene of horror…spiders crawling all over my bed. Was it a hallucination? A continuation of the dream itself? It was viscerally real, overwhelming, stretching for what felt like hours in a timeless state. Eventually, they’d disappear, no trace of them left except for the imprint of fear I felt deep in my bones.

One day I went to my grandmother, a Sicilian immigrant whose old-world ways always shimmered with a kind of magic and awe. She was a devout Catholic who practiced ancestral folk healing, an intuitive with the kind of clairvoyant sight that shocked any who witnessed it; a liminal, reality-shifting individual in herself. She listened intently and instructed me to say the Lord’s Prayer when I awoke, to seek a higher power when I felt I had nowhere to turn.

And so I did, signing the cross, whispering the words, even as the spiders raced around me. In that contemplative space, I felt that I entered a different reality. Prayer was the vehicle but I was the conduit, an act that allowed me to touch into the otherworldly realm of the beyond. The night terrors and visions faded but my curiosity grew deeper. From that moment on, I’ve strived to maintain that connection. Not to a God I read about in religious texts, but to the numinous energy found within, the mystery of the inner landscape.

I continued to find it in all sorts of surprising ways. Deep in meditation, I was visited by mythic figures — howling wolves and mystical sorceresses — who gave me advice and helped ground me in times of overwhelm. A series of dreams kept urging me to leave behind my Jungian analysis and begin therapeutic somatic work, a decision I never anticipated that brought profound healing. Striking synchronicities and intuitive realizations appeared at the most sudden of moments, telling me to leave a job, move away, look where I didn’t think to look, and there I found a part of myself that was in need.

Each time the underworld of psyche opened up, through its images, symbols, and liminal states, I felt that same sort of awe. A presence that is always there, just below the surface; awesome in its ability to move, inspire, frighten and cure. It has been the baptismal waters, drawing me in to tend to my wounds and initiate me to a new way of being. It has been the cave of shadows I fear to enter, the haunting voices calling out, and though I resist, I know I must go forward. It has been my greatest teacher, instructing me on how to be more present, giving me new eyes to see.

“…as Jung pointed out, an archetypal experience is the only healing factor in therapy. All the techniques we use help people to open up to the archetypal experience. But only the unconscious sends an archetypal experience and that is an act of grace which we cannot force; we can only wait and prepare for it and hope it will happen.”

—Marie-Louise von Franz, The Cat

In this quote, von Franz says, echoing Jung, that all their efforts in therapy are to help clients open to an archetypal experience, the only true healing factor, which cannot be forced. I agree to an extent, that by the grace of the Fates we may receive such an experience when we are most in need.

But what I have learned throughout my life is that the veil between psychic realities can always be engaged.

All my earliest and formative meetings with the unconscious happened naturally, spontaneously. But as I grew older, I began to experiment with reaching out, with cultivating a receptive inner state. Different practices and modalities proved to be fruitful; a bridge could be built to the depths if I did so with intention, if I sharpened my ability to read its messages and notice its influences.

This aligns me with the traditions of the ancient diviners, oracles, mystics and seers, those who traversed the borderlands of psyche, meeting godly presences and bringing their words of mystery, command and wisdom forth. Although we cannot will the gods, just as we cannot will the unconscious, we can appeal to it.

It begins with tending the link to the deep psyche and touching into the archetypal realm.

What do we mean when we say archetypal?

The word archetype brings to mind common motifs and characters found in myth and fiction, gods of the pantheon, tricksters, heroines, cycles of death and birth. But these are not archetypes, they are the products, cultural artifacts that point back to the psychic forms which they rest upon.

Archetypes are the dynamic forces of the psyche, foundational structures that reveal themselves through image, symbol, and patterns of experience. They are the vessels of creation that energize life, timeless and eternal. To be in relationship with them is to meet the generative field of the soul.

“Archetypes are forms of different aspects expressing the creative psychic background. They are and always have been numinous and therefore “divine.” In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them as attributes of the creator.”

— C.G. Jung, Letters Vol. II

Archetypal perspectives give us a way to see into the fabric of experience, where symbolic threads weave through seemingly disparate moments, coalescing into a world rich with depth, meaning, and insight. In this stratum of the psyche, we encounter metaphors and images that awaken the imagination, that expand our sense of being.

This builds the vital link between conscious and unconscious, making us a being of the liminal worlds — the seen and unseen, the literal and the symbolic, within and without. No longer do we feel alone, rather, we are held in an archetypal constellation. It is here that integration becomes possible, where individuation unfolds and a steady center of the personality is formed.

For example, what at first appears as sudden depression, listlessness, and emotional overwhelm might, through an archetypal lens, be understood as a descent to the underworld (aka, the unconscious). The individual is at first gripped by the experience — clouded by its intensity, unable to find direction or meaning. So they turn toward the tarot and draw The High Priestess. Sitting at the veil between worlds, she counsels us to venture into the mystery, that a threshold is present. They notice pomegranates upon the veil, a symbol that recalls Persephone’s underworld journey into shadow and sovereignty.

The High Priestess from the Rider Waite Smith tarot and Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The experience begins to take new shape. With the High Priestess as guide and Persephone as the mirror, the individual starts to understand that the descent (and its accompanying symptoms) are essential. If met consciously, the seeds of transformation could take root as they interact with the unconscious in its many forms. The experience becomes imbued with mythic meaning, the archetypal patterns help them feel supported while offering keys for action and deeper seeing. What was once unbearable is now recognized as purposeful, an important step in the growth and development of self.

How will you reach out?

Following the path of the diviners, I have found two necessary requisites for this work.

1. Lowering the field of conscious awareness: Reflective, meditative, and liminal states that relax the grip of the ego create the proper conditions to access unconscious material. This includes deep meditation or engaging in active imagination, drifting between sleep and waking (or being fully asleep), trance or flow states, noticing intuitive insights and sitting with the information/symbols that arise, etc.

2. Utilizing symbolic or archetypal tools/systems: The psyche naturally “speaks” in a symbolic language. Anywhere we find concentrations of symbol and image, a portal to the unconscious opens. Divinatory systems such as tarot, runes, and the I Ching, along with archetypal frameworks like astrology and myth, help us enter into meaningful dialogue with the deeper layers of psyche.

There are countless combinations and ways to do this work. After all, the art of divination can be practiced with just about anything. This is exciting because it means you can shape the path as best fits your psychic landscape. Methods you feel drawn to (or maybe even resistant to) are great places to start.

Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia by Eugène Delacroix

Here at The Artemisian, you see a weaving of my cherished archetypal systems, those with the strongest voice that have called me to their altar. They include:

• Mythology and Fairytales: Stories arising from the collective unconscious, where archetypes are expressed in symbolic and narrative form. Fairytales often remain closer to the raw expressions of the unconscious, while myths, having been elevated to cultural or national status, can lose some of their original psychic purity (and strangeness).

• Tarot: A symbolic set of 78 cards, where each one reflects universal patterns of experience, from the deeply concentrated archetypal energies of the Major Arcana to the more personal and situational themes of the Minor Arcana.

• Alchemy: A tradition that sought to explore the mysteries and transmutations of nature. The alchemist’s efforts (which were both concrete and psychological) activated the collective unconscious, giving alchemy a double face: its materials, procedures, and images express both the transformations of matter and the archetypal dynamics of the psyche.

• Dreams: Direct expressions of the unconscious that arise when the ego is dimmed in sleep. Dreams reveal the unique images, symbols and patterns of our inner world, while also tapping into deeper archetypal frameworks.

You can also try out practices that lean more into lowering the conscious field and less so on working with image and symbol. Reading palms, utilizing a pendulum, scrying, ecstatic dance or free writing/drawing can move one into a liminal state. This opens the same divinatory portals, where unconscious material flows higher towards the ego.

The Artemisian is a home for archetypal inner work

In my writings and teachings, I strive to make the path of archetypal inner work accessible, showing that the potential to see archetypally and meet the unconscious is latent within each of us. We do not need to outsource this work to another; we are the living channel through which psyche’s images and expressions move.

Finding that path alone, however, can be disorienting. Where do we begin? What resources should we turn to? How do we make sense of the flood of images, symbols and experiences that flow from the unconscious?

The Artemisian stands at the threshold of the psyche and these mysteries. My hope is that the offerings here will help you to explore the influences shaping your inner and outer life, learn the symbolic language of the unconscious, and deepen your journey of growth and becoming.

The membership is where we do the most powerful form of this work — monthly classes, a wealth of educational resources, and a community of thoughtful fellow seekers walking the path of individuation together.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections on these ideas…

Do you practice any forms of divination or related modalities? Are you interested in building a relationship to the unconscious? Have you had similar experiences to the ones mentioned here? Join me in the comments to discuss!