Teachings

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Teaching · 8th century

The Chakra System

Six Wheels, Seven Colours

A meditation map, not anatomy; the rainbow colours are a twentieth-century addition, not ancient India.

What it isA map for meditation, not a description of the body: each lotus carries a number of petals, a seed syllable, an element and a deity, and the practice is to move attention upward through them. It is an instrument for directing awareness, and it works whether or not anything is there.

The FindingThe rainbow seven is a Western assembly completed in 1977; the six-plus-crown scheme beneath it is one tantric lineage among others that counted five, nine or twelve — and older than the 1577 Bengali text through which the West received it.

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Teaching · 1946

The Archetype and the Archetypal Image

The Lattice, Not the Crystal

The pattern itself is never seen — only its images, which is why no one can honestly count them.

What it isJung's own analogy is a crystal: the axial system determines the form the crystal will take while having no material existence as the crystal. The archetype is the lattice, never observed; only images are. Which is why any numbered list of them is counting the wrong thing.

The FindingJung's own position from 1946 is that the archetype itself is never observed and cannot be made conscious, only its images can — so the numbered Jungian sets on sale, Mark and Pearson's twelve brand archetypes of 2001 included, are counting images of something he had said in 1936 was as numerous as life's typical situations.

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Teaching · 1919

The Word Archetype

Borrowed Word, Later Pedigree

An ancient theological word, borrowed in 1919 for a use no ancient author intended.

What it isArchetypos means first-moulded — the original from which impressions are struck. The word carries the whole doctrine inside it: what is stamped can be seen everywhere, and the die itself never appears in the record it leaves.

The FindingJung's "archetype" first appeared in 1919, in an English translation read in London — and the ancient pedigree now printed beneath it, Philo through Dionysius, was assembled thirty-five years later, in the 1954 revision of a 1934 lecture.

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