Art Therapy
Roadmaps for the Soul
Art Therapy / A Visual Magic Cosmology.
Like Surrealism, Art that seeks to mine and record images from the depths of the deep mind has been employed by Art Therapists and psychic explorers to understand their own psycho-physical makeup and make it intelligible to others in many ways throughout history. Some have used such art as teaching aids to others wishing to follow similar paths of exploration. This can take the form of pre-determined iconography of a tradition which allows little scope for variation, such as Russian Orthodox religious icons or even Tibetan thankas, or more creative expressions of personal growth of psychic unfoldment as is found in Art Therapy or individual fetishes. I have seem the Art therapist referred to as being a modern Shaman, [Shaun McNiff 'Art as Medicine'], with a mode of operation that goes on, or takes another participant on, an inward journey of soul recovery, then using Art, either visual, written or encapsulated into music,dance and drama, to record the discoveries of that journey. That comparison seems to fit well. But you don't have to be a medicine man to be a psychic explorer. Such Art is for the individual for self discovery as well as recovery.
Crucial to all forms of art which has its origins in psychic exploration is the diary, sketchbook, or notebook to record the discoveries from the inner world. The best place to keep this document is beside your bed to write down dreams and ground them before the memories fly away. The analysis of their content can wait for daytime and the conscious mind. Its also useful to carry a notebook on your daytime travels too, to record daydreams, meditations, and reflections on the dreamtime symbolism. From this raw psychic energy you can then work up images to be employed in finished art forms.
In the 21st century we are fortunate to be liberated, if we wish to be, from the confines of religous dogma, and able to partake in creative paths of self enquiry, but we will still need some form of cosmology in which to frame our discoveries, and for me this came in the broadest and non-sectarian framework for interpretation that is to be found in the psychological analyses of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung [1875-1961] who sought to get behind the cultural veneers that overlay the common symbols of psychic unfoldment that lay behind them . These he called archetypes. His sources for research include the writing and diagrams of Alchemists from Egypt [the science of Khem, an old name for Egypt] like Zozimos, to Paracelsus; Quabalists and Hermetic Philosophers like Agrippa; Chinese Taoism, and the I Ching; Oriental and 'primitive' religious manifestations generally; and Western religious imagery, in a non-sectarian way, as a complete cultural overview of religious and philosophical thinking and its associated artistic manifestations.
Archetype is only one word that has passed into common usage thanks to Jung, who actually coined several terms now used in psychological jargon: another example being 'persona', which means the external image of ourselves that we present to the world, or others see us as. Jung extended Freud's idea of the unconscious to include not only the personal pool of remnants of personal experience that make up dreams in encoded forms, but placed that pool on the edge of the oceanic Collective Unconscious, where the archetypes exist, and have an ordering function around which personal psychic material gathers to create personalised symbolism. These, he concluded, could be recovered from the unconscious by intiatory rites of passage or analytic psychology leading to Individuation as he named it, establishing growth towards self discovery and Enlightenment. The archetypes, he decided, were formed through evolution by the persistent effects of primitive experience. Genetics and Austen Spare's Atavistic Resurgence seem to confirm this assertion.
The main archetypes Jung identified were:
the Earth Mother;
Divine Child [Krishna, Horus, Jesus etc.];
the Sun; Moon; Sky;
Anima [man's idea of woman] and Animus [woman's idea of man], giving rise to Gods and Goddesses;
the Shadow [all that we don't like about ourselves driven into the unconscious, from where it must be recovered in order to regain psychic wholeness;
the Daemon, or higher self, that guides the individual through initiation, or individuation in Jungian terminology; and
the Wise Old Man or Magna Mater [ the life guide or Guru who teaches from practical experience.]
All of these can be identified as stages of psychic unfoldment once cultural veneers have been peeled away. For instance the Wise Old Man might appear as a ship's captain as a symbol of a guide for a journey, [that is life.] The word archetype has at times been given broader meaning to include terms like 'hero archetype', and so it is possible to regard all of the Tarot trumps as archetypes. Indeed there is a Jungian tarot set designed by Robert Wang, although I don't agree with all his attributions. The very multiplicity of tarot decks displays how archetypal patterns can appear in a variety of individual dialects.
Thanks to Sting and Police [the Rock group] the word synchronicity has passed in to more common usage. Jung coined it to mean a meaningful coincidence with no obvious causal connecting principle, suggestive of forces not explainable by, and therefore appealing to known science. Oracles like the Taoist I Ching, or tarot cards seem to be operated by such forces and pre-suppose spiritual rather than just materialistic dimensions to the multiverse. Salvador Dali's Paranoic Critical Activity, where multiple layers of imagery overlay each other, mimic such a universe. Herman Rorscach's ink blot test, where psychiatric patients are asked what images they see in random shapes, and thus reveal their own inner mental workings in a similar way. These projected internal images can be worked up into art which is unique to each person's perceptions, although related to the same stimulus if more than one person uses it as a starting point. Recourse to other source material of the material world may be needed to transform the psychic material into recognisable art, rather than using only imagination to create objet d art. Automatic drawing and writing like that of Austin Spare or other Surrealists, or the cut up poetry that William Burroughs and others employed also works in this way, once meaning is attached to it.
After the stage of initiation or individuation reintegrating the disliked personal personality traits that have built the shadow archetype Jung identified the mandala archetype, which can appear in Art, or even in dreams as symbols like the crossroads. He found examples of this not only in the oriental meditation icons which he took the name from, but in such culturally divers places as circular stained glass windows and the magician's working space of the magic circle. The archetype is that of balance and is typically built around the equal armed cross of the four elements balanced at the centre as the quintessence, and is often sub-divided into eight sectors on which figurative or abstract patterning is repeated. Jung also associated the four main psychic activities with these elements:
intuition
thinking feeling
sensation
which are also brought back into balance, where previously people tend to function in dominant and less in subordinate areas. This state of restored psychic balance Jung experienced himself after the turmoil that accompanied his break with Freud and his limited observations that had taken on the form of a patriarchal dogma. Not only did he find himself building mandala shape constructions in his garden, but like many in the same state of recovery, experienced visions and dreams of wholeness as life's initiation process became complete.
Mystics have a variety of models of the universe, such as the quabalistic tree, and a relation to them by which to judge progress, but to me Jung's model seems to have been gleaned from the most far reaching and cross cultural sources. So if you are a psychonaut or are encouraging others in self discovery, keep a lookout for the archetypes we have mentioned, in yours and others art, drama, music or dreams, and if you see through the camouflaged symbolism through which they are appearing they can prove useful signposts on your inner journey. Spontaneous creations are always the most fruitful ones, rather than those created by being led, but if the signs appear be ready to read to read them.