ART
The Art of Crossing Over
The Art of Crossing Over
All art intuitively apprehends coming changes in
the collective unconsciousness.
The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle.
--Jung, CW15, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1930)
For it is in their works of art that the nations have imprinted their favorite thoughts and their richest intuitions, and not infrequently the fine arts are the only means by which we can penetrate into the secrets of their wisdom and the mysteries of their religion. --Frederick Schiller
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6798/6798-h/6798-h.htm
Aesthetic education of man - art, including music used to enlighten society. Improving moral character, artwork embodies a power to inspire present and future generations even thru repressive periods -- as an alternative to dark forces.
Given its intimate connection with the formation of our emotional identities, it is no wonder that nature plays such a grand role in human culture. Culture throughout the ages has in many respects been an elaboration of the deep organic connections we share with all other beings—an armamentarium of existential symbolics. One could even put it, as Henry Miller once did, as follows: “Art teaches nothing except the significance of life.”
the collective unconsciousness.
The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle.
--Jung, CW15, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1930)
For it is in their works of art that the nations have imprinted their favorite thoughts and their richest intuitions, and not infrequently the fine arts are the only means by which we can penetrate into the secrets of their wisdom and the mysteries of their religion. --Frederick Schiller
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6798/6798-h/6798-h.htm
Aesthetic education of man - art, including music used to enlighten society. Improving moral character, artwork embodies a power to inspire present and future generations even thru repressive periods -- as an alternative to dark forces.
Given its intimate connection with the formation of our emotional identities, it is no wonder that nature plays such a grand role in human culture. Culture throughout the ages has in many respects been an elaboration of the deep organic connections we share with all other beings—an armamentarium of existential symbolics. One could even put it, as Henry Miller once did, as follows: “Art teaches nothing except the significance of life.”
"Strange as it may seem today to say, the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving. Like the enigmatic Chinaman one is rapt by the everchanging spectacle of passing phenomena. This is the sublime, the a-moral state of the artist, he who lives only in the moment, the visionary moment of utter, far-seeing lucidity. Such clear icy sanity that it seems like madness. By the force and power of the artist’s vision the static, synthetic whole which is called the world is destroyed. The artist gives back to us a vital, singing universe, alive in all is parts.
In a way the artist is always acting against the time-destiny movement. He is always a-historical. He accepts Time absolutely, as Whitman says, in the sense that any way he rolls (with tail in mouth) is direction; in the sense that any moment, every moment, may be the all; for the artist there is nothing but the present, the eternal here and now, the expanding infinite moment which is flame and song. And when he succeeds in establishing this criterion of passionate experience (which is what Lawrence meant by ‘obeying the Holy Ghost’) then, and only then, is he asserting his humanness. Then only does he live out his pattern as Man. Obedient to every urge — without distinction of morality, ethics, law, custom, etc.
[The artist] opens himself to all influences — everything nourishes him. Everything is gravy to him, including what he does not understand — particularly what he does not understand.
To be is to have mortal shape, mortal conditions, to struggle, to evolve. Paradise is, like the dream of the Buddhists, a Nirvana where the is no more personality and hence no conflict. It is the expression of a man’s wish to triumph over reality, over becoming. The artist’s dream of the impossible, the miraculous, is simply the resultant of his inability to adapt himself to reality. He creates, therefore, a reality of his own…
[…]
It is not that he is incapable of living. On the contrary, his zest for life is so powerful, so voracious that it forces him to kill himself over and over. He dies many times in order to live innumerable lives."
And therein lies the crux of “creative death”:
[T]he artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death, because the conclusion that life points to is death and to that conclusive fact man instinctively and persistently shuts his eyes. The sense of mystery, which is at the bottom of all art, is the amalgam of all the nameless terrors which the cruel reality of death inspires. Death then has to be defeated — or disguised, or transmogrified. But in the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other. The stern sense of destiny which eery creative individual reveals lies in this awareness of the goal, this acceptance of the goal, this moving on towards a fatality, one with inscrutable forces that animate him and drive him on.
Miller offers a poetic definition of history:
All history is the record of man’s signal failure to thwart his destiny — the record, in other words, of the few men of destiny who, through the recognition of their symbolic role, made history. All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself — civilization, in a word — are the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape. As man traces the stags of his physical evolution in his embryonic life, so, when ejected from the womb, he repeats, in the course of his development from childhood to old age, the spiritual evolution of man. In the person of the artist the whole historical evolution of man is recapitulated. His work is one grand metaphor, revealing through image and symbol the whole cycle of cultural development through which man has passed from primitive to effete civilized being.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Miller uses the rainbow — a metaphor for consciousness — to return to the osmosis of life and death:
[T]he way to escape death is to escape life. … This, then, is the Rainbow — the bridge which the artist throws over the yawning of reality. … He works out, in his art, the unreal triumph — since it is neither a triumph over life nor over death. it is a triumph over an imaginary world which he himself has created. The drama lies entirely in the realm of the idea. His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself.
[…]
In order to accomplish his purpose, however, the artist is obliged to retire, to withdraw from life, utilizing just enough of experience to present the flavor of the real struggle. If he chooses to live he defeats his own nature. He must live vicariously. Thus he is enabled to play the monstrous role of living and dying innumerable times, according to the measure of his capacity for life.
Ultimately, it comes down to completeness and cohesion in one’s self — that notion that, as David Foster Wallace put it half a century later, “what goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected” — which becomes a foundation for our mutuality and intertwinging, an idea Miller’s longtime lover Anaïs Nin once poignantly phrased as “A man who lives unrelated to other human beings dies.” Miller writes:
The trinal division of the body, mind and soul becomes a unity, a holy trinity. And with it the realization that one aspect of our nature cannot be exalted above another, except and the expense of one or the other.
[…]
In the rush upward the ‘individual’ aspect of one’s being was the imperative, the only obsession. But at the summit, when the limits have been felt and perceived, there unfolds the grand perspective and one recognizes the similitude of surrounding beings, the inter-relationship of all forms and laws of being — the organic relatedness, the wholeness, the oneness of life.
And so the most creative type — the individual artist type — which had shot up highest and with the greatest variety of expression, so mush so as to seem ‘divine,’ this creative type of man must now, in order to preserve the very elements of creation in him, convert the doctrine, or the obsession of individuality, into a common collective ideology. This is the real meaning to the Master-Exemplar, of the great religious figures who have dominated human life from the beginning. At their further peak of blossoming they have but emphasized their common humanity, their innate, rooted, inescapable humanness. Their isolation, in the heavens of thought, is what brings about their death.
--Henry Miller
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/07/henry-miller-on-creative-death/
"In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses."(Joseph Campbell, "Creativity," The Mythic Dimension, p. 154)
In a way the artist is always acting against the time-destiny movement. He is always a-historical. He accepts Time absolutely, as Whitman says, in the sense that any way he rolls (with tail in mouth) is direction; in the sense that any moment, every moment, may be the all; for the artist there is nothing but the present, the eternal here and now, the expanding infinite moment which is flame and song. And when he succeeds in establishing this criterion of passionate experience (which is what Lawrence meant by ‘obeying the Holy Ghost’) then, and only then, is he asserting his humanness. Then only does he live out his pattern as Man. Obedient to every urge — without distinction of morality, ethics, law, custom, etc.
[The artist] opens himself to all influences — everything nourishes him. Everything is gravy to him, including what he does not understand — particularly what he does not understand.
To be is to have mortal shape, mortal conditions, to struggle, to evolve. Paradise is, like the dream of the Buddhists, a Nirvana where the is no more personality and hence no conflict. It is the expression of a man’s wish to triumph over reality, over becoming. The artist’s dream of the impossible, the miraculous, is simply the resultant of his inability to adapt himself to reality. He creates, therefore, a reality of his own…
[…]
It is not that he is incapable of living. On the contrary, his zest for life is so powerful, so voracious that it forces him to kill himself over and over. He dies many times in order to live innumerable lives."
And therein lies the crux of “creative death”:
[T]he artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death, because the conclusion that life points to is death and to that conclusive fact man instinctively and persistently shuts his eyes. The sense of mystery, which is at the bottom of all art, is the amalgam of all the nameless terrors which the cruel reality of death inspires. Death then has to be defeated — or disguised, or transmogrified. But in the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other. The stern sense of destiny which eery creative individual reveals lies in this awareness of the goal, this acceptance of the goal, this moving on towards a fatality, one with inscrutable forces that animate him and drive him on.
Miller offers a poetic definition of history:
All history is the record of man’s signal failure to thwart his destiny — the record, in other words, of the few men of destiny who, through the recognition of their symbolic role, made history. All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself — civilization, in a word — are the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape. As man traces the stags of his physical evolution in his embryonic life, so, when ejected from the womb, he repeats, in the course of his development from childhood to old age, the spiritual evolution of man. In the person of the artist the whole historical evolution of man is recapitulated. His work is one grand metaphor, revealing through image and symbol the whole cycle of cultural development through which man has passed from primitive to effete civilized being.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Miller uses the rainbow — a metaphor for consciousness — to return to the osmosis of life and death:
[T]he way to escape death is to escape life. … This, then, is the Rainbow — the bridge which the artist throws over the yawning of reality. … He works out, in his art, the unreal triumph — since it is neither a triumph over life nor over death. it is a triumph over an imaginary world which he himself has created. The drama lies entirely in the realm of the idea. His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself.
[…]
In order to accomplish his purpose, however, the artist is obliged to retire, to withdraw from life, utilizing just enough of experience to present the flavor of the real struggle. If he chooses to live he defeats his own nature. He must live vicariously. Thus he is enabled to play the monstrous role of living and dying innumerable times, according to the measure of his capacity for life.
Ultimately, it comes down to completeness and cohesion in one’s self — that notion that, as David Foster Wallace put it half a century later, “what goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected” — which becomes a foundation for our mutuality and intertwinging, an idea Miller’s longtime lover Anaïs Nin once poignantly phrased as “A man who lives unrelated to other human beings dies.” Miller writes:
The trinal division of the body, mind and soul becomes a unity, a holy trinity. And with it the realization that one aspect of our nature cannot be exalted above another, except and the expense of one or the other.
[…]
In the rush upward the ‘individual’ aspect of one’s being was the imperative, the only obsession. But at the summit, when the limits have been felt and perceived, there unfolds the grand perspective and one recognizes the similitude of surrounding beings, the inter-relationship of all forms and laws of being — the organic relatedness, the wholeness, the oneness of life.
And so the most creative type — the individual artist type — which had shot up highest and with the greatest variety of expression, so mush so as to seem ‘divine,’ this creative type of man must now, in order to preserve the very elements of creation in him, convert the doctrine, or the obsession of individuality, into a common collective ideology. This is the real meaning to the Master-Exemplar, of the great religious figures who have dominated human life from the beginning. At their further peak of blossoming they have but emphasized their common humanity, their innate, rooted, inescapable humanness. Their isolation, in the heavens of thought, is what brings about their death.
--Henry Miller
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/12/07/henry-miller-on-creative-death/
"In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses."(Joseph Campbell, "Creativity," The Mythic Dimension, p. 154)
The Parataxic Mode is the designation given to this form of expression by psychologists. It denotes using symbols and images in a unique context. This is precisely what occurs in "Art." However, in art the symbols and images are no longer exclusively private, but may be shared with others.
Art expresses feelings and understanding. It is the fulfillment of sensation in an audible or visual form. It is an expression of an archetypal process in relationship with life. Art is philosophy expressed in symbols and imagery. or the sensation function, art serves the same purpose that science does for thinking. Other analogies for art include philosophy and psychology for the intuitive function, and the emotions of human society for feelings.
The characteristic procedures of the Parataxic Mode include archetype, dreams, myth, ritual, and art. Art forms include dance, ddrama, music, painting, cereminial magick, alchemy, perfumery, sculpture, poetics, etc.
As "Art," Path 25 presents us with a new quality in our vision of reality. This is the realm of metaphorms, where our brain images reality and the universe in its own structural terms. This surreal vision attempts to portray the working of the subconscious mind. In QBL, it is considered the narrow way between Death and The Devil, trial and temptation. The artiste attempts to balance his inner turmoil through a transforming "Work" or "Opus." History is replete with examples of this often painful process. But it can be joyful also.
1. Physical Plane: Path 25 represents both a physical and psychological harmonizing or equilibrating process, in which instability is balanced through disciplined work. It is a blending of opposites, culminating in unification and transformation through will. It indicates the reversability or sublimation of instinctual energies. Included are the performing arts, especially ceremonial or High Magick, with its blending of the energies of Sun and Moon. This process is designed to establish contact with the Self.
2. Astral Plane: The image for this card represents the exchange of male and female energies between husband and wife. Sublime, regenerate love creates the "magical childe" which comes into it's own in Tiphareth. It also expresses love for one's Angel or spiritual guide, without which no progress is possible. There must be a surrender to the direction of the inner Master, in order to establish a connection with the Light. Therefore, visualization practice is critical.
3. Causal Plane: The formula of this path is V.I.T.R.I.O.L., Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem ("Visit the interior parts of the earth; by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone"). This has nothing to do with the "hollow earth" theory, but means to plumb the depths of the subconscious by urning inward. This represents the opening of the ego-Self Axis, as termed by psychologists. It is living the high ethical standard required by the Self as preparation for receiving the Light of Tiphareth. Increase in Self-knowledge.
4. Archetypal Plane: Consecration of the personality to the Great Work or Self. A visionary mode is a grace conferred on the gifted artist. The roots of poetry and painting lie in prophecy and chanting and sympathetic magic. The Self imposes trials and tests to transform the consciousness of the aspirant. This is True Will. The transformations appear in the form of the I-it relationship, rather than the I-Thou of Syntaxic Mode (Tipareth).
Art expresses feelings and understanding. It is the fulfillment of sensation in an audible or visual form. It is an expression of an archetypal process in relationship with life. Art is philosophy expressed in symbols and imagery. or the sensation function, art serves the same purpose that science does for thinking. Other analogies for art include philosophy and psychology for the intuitive function, and the emotions of human society for feelings.
The characteristic procedures of the Parataxic Mode include archetype, dreams, myth, ritual, and art. Art forms include dance, ddrama, music, painting, cereminial magick, alchemy, perfumery, sculpture, poetics, etc.
As "Art," Path 25 presents us with a new quality in our vision of reality. This is the realm of metaphorms, where our brain images reality and the universe in its own structural terms. This surreal vision attempts to portray the working of the subconscious mind. In QBL, it is considered the narrow way between Death and The Devil, trial and temptation. The artiste attempts to balance his inner turmoil through a transforming "Work" or "Opus." History is replete with examples of this often painful process. But it can be joyful also.
1. Physical Plane: Path 25 represents both a physical and psychological harmonizing or equilibrating process, in which instability is balanced through disciplined work. It is a blending of opposites, culminating in unification and transformation through will. It indicates the reversability or sublimation of instinctual energies. Included are the performing arts, especially ceremonial or High Magick, with its blending of the energies of Sun and Moon. This process is designed to establish contact with the Self.
2. Astral Plane: The image for this card represents the exchange of male and female energies between husband and wife. Sublime, regenerate love creates the "magical childe" which comes into it's own in Tiphareth. It also expresses love for one's Angel or spiritual guide, without which no progress is possible. There must be a surrender to the direction of the inner Master, in order to establish a connection with the Light. Therefore, visualization practice is critical.
3. Causal Plane: The formula of this path is V.I.T.R.I.O.L., Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem ("Visit the interior parts of the earth; by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone"). This has nothing to do with the "hollow earth" theory, but means to plumb the depths of the subconscious by urning inward. This represents the opening of the ego-Self Axis, as termed by psychologists. It is living the high ethical standard required by the Self as preparation for receiving the Light of Tiphareth. Increase in Self-knowledge.
4. Archetypal Plane: Consecration of the personality to the Great Work or Self. A visionary mode is a grace conferred on the gifted artist. The roots of poetry and painting lie in prophecy and chanting and sympathetic magic. The Self imposes trials and tests to transform the consciousness of the aspirant. This is True Will. The transformations appear in the form of the I-it relationship, rather than the I-Thou of Syntaxic Mode (Tipareth).
Parataxic Mode
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will an personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense -- he is 'collective man' -- one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind.
--C. G. Jung
Art embodies a rhythmic flux of the psyche through a process, performance or a "product." The artist combines his technical skill or craftsmanship with the constraints of his artform. Thus, the creation is not merely the production of his free will, but also reflects the discipline imposed by training and materials. As such, art is the result of a unique combination of consciousness, or cognitive abilities (Hod), and subconscious drives or inspiration (Netzach). The motivating force or drive behind the process of art is the unconscious animation of an archetype, seeking expression. The archetype seeks manifestation in some 'form,' and seemingly manipulates the artist into producing this form. How often are artists surprised by their own creations, considering them a gift of God, their muse or perhaps even an angel?
Aleister Crowley made a very appropriate choice in changing the name of Tarot Trump XIV from "Temperance" to "Art." While both titles may be considered "accurate," Temperance indicates a condition of moderation, or blending of opposites; this is one aspect of Art. The artistic process combine sinner and outer life. It is a reconciliation of opposites in a transcendental, paradoxical symbols whose purpose is unification. The content expressed by the symbol is as-yet-unknown, or pre-cognitive. The artist receives the inspiration through intuition and feeling, is motivated by the drive of the archetype and the will to create, and executes the process through sensory and motor functions.
As the contents of the unconscious become more clearly defined, there is a transitional phase from the awe and dread of the Prototaxic Mode (see Yesod) to the relatively benign nature of Syntaxic Experience (see Tiphareth). Art is an expression of the PARATAXIC MODE, which mediates between these extremes through archetypes, dreams, mythopoesis, ritual, teaching tales and all forms of artistic expression.
In a cursory examination of the history of art (from a metaphysical viewpoint), we might associate primitive art with the Prototaxic Mode; Impressionism (from Chagall onwards) with the Parataxic Mode; and abstract or geometrical art with the Syntaxic Mode. These classifications are not absolute, obviously, but offer some guidelines for your own attributions.
In the Parataxic Mode, there is progressive replacement of dread with creativity in the service of archetypal patterns. If the artist has talent, his works also take on collective, as well as personal value, and reflect the transformative process in society. It frequently happens that artists are "ahead of their time", in that their work receives no wide recognition in their own lifetimes. Yet, great art has an ageless quality.
Images, symbols, and ritual enactment provide a means of crystallizing ideas which still remain below the threshold of conscious awareness. Ideally, they fulfill their function when either the artist or observer is later able to consciously integrate the "meaning" which they embody, at least to some extent. This is precisely the function of the pictorial Tarot Keys: one gains a greater cognitive awareness of the archetypal processes they encode, as time goes on.
The distinction between decorative and symbolic art lies in the fact that symbols portray a higher level of abstraction, whereas decorative art is a "just-so" story. It has no inherent meaning, and is merely ornamental. Visionary art gives us the ability to create our own reality, even if it is only in images, and this has a great transforming power on the psyche.
Jung distinguished between two types of artistic creation. He termed one of these psychological and the other visionary. The psychological mode draws its inspiration from the phenomena and lessons of life, or human experience (such as life drawing). The visionary mode, on the other hand, contains something of the Divine, and its subject matter is definitely out-of-the-ordinary. Terrific modern examples include the work of Mati Klarwein, H. R. Giger, Alex Grey, Gilbert Williams, and Robert Venosa.
One distinction between the two lies in the degree of psychological activity or passivity of the participant. In the first mode, the artist "thinks up" and develops the forms pretty much on his own, even it is emergent. But in the visionary mode his own will seems to defer to an apparently foreign inspiration, and it can feel like it simply comes through of its own will. There may be an element of passivity in both modes, but in a visionary experience it is more pronounced. Visionary art is also generally considered more profound.
Great art is perceived by what the visionary artist Michaelangelo termed "the eye of the soul." It may be considered the Parataxic counterpart of the primitive's trance, or the mystic's ecstasy. It is the pure joy of the creative flow state. The evocative power of art or music is embodied in the rhythm which is the underlying matrix of an art piece. The power of art is intimately connected with perception. Some would argue that consciousness itself is simply pure perception -- certainly there is no consciousness without it.
The symbolic value attributed to any given work, and how it moves us, depends on how we look at it. Thus, the art critic has developed tastes different from the "common man." Nevertheless, the greatest art stands the test of time, and has great appeal for the masses and connoisseur, alike.
The pleasure of a psychological work is largely aesthetic in nature, whereas the symbolic work strikes a deeper chord. Visionary experience carries even more impact than human passion. Its psychic reality may include or unite physical and metaphysical qualities. It is more effective when it conveys a transparent variation on an archetypal theme. For example, note the persistence of revivals of classical style and mythological themes among the 'great masters" in painting and sculpture. Art serves a therapeutic function for society. It may even predict the future, as when the Cubist movement and later abstract art preceded a cultural fragmentation of unprecedented magnitude.
"Art" is most properly considered as a process, not a product, though it results in artifacts often valued by society. The transformative process can be as strong during the creation of an unskilled or underappreciated piece as for a master-work. It is all relative. Even the performing arts, which were previously exempt, may now be preserved through recordings and film. John Gowan has classified the arts in a scale of increasing order from performing arts, to visual arts, to compositions in mathematics and music (which are Syntaxic in nature), and finally verbal creativity.
This does not imply that one form is better or "more advanced" than another. But it is an aid in determining nuances of the creative process, which we deal with more fully under Tiphareth. It is difficult to maintain much objectivity about one's creative effort when the physical body is intimately involved, as in dance. Dance, for instance, is closer to the automatism of the trance state, where the body is responding to training automatically, but there is still a large component of concentration. In the visionary mode, on the other hand, there is a temporary withdrawl from the sense organs and the constraints of the physical world. Beethoven said, "music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life."
"Art" is the culmination of five procedures of the parataxic Mode which includes archetype, dreams, myth, ritual, and finally art. The Parataxic Mode exemplifies non-verbal creativity. It represents the development of an enhanced relationship with the subconscious. It is a transcendence over man's minimalistic, instinctual nature to a flowering humanity with individual, unique qualities.
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will an personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense -- he is 'collective man' -- one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind.
--C. G. Jung
Art embodies a rhythmic flux of the psyche through a process, performance or a "product." The artist combines his technical skill or craftsmanship with the constraints of his artform. Thus, the creation is not merely the production of his free will, but also reflects the discipline imposed by training and materials. As such, art is the result of a unique combination of consciousness, or cognitive abilities (Hod), and subconscious drives or inspiration (Netzach). The motivating force or drive behind the process of art is the unconscious animation of an archetype, seeking expression. The archetype seeks manifestation in some 'form,' and seemingly manipulates the artist into producing this form. How often are artists surprised by their own creations, considering them a gift of God, their muse or perhaps even an angel?
Aleister Crowley made a very appropriate choice in changing the name of Tarot Trump XIV from "Temperance" to "Art." While both titles may be considered "accurate," Temperance indicates a condition of moderation, or blending of opposites; this is one aspect of Art. The artistic process combine sinner and outer life. It is a reconciliation of opposites in a transcendental, paradoxical symbols whose purpose is unification. The content expressed by the symbol is as-yet-unknown, or pre-cognitive. The artist receives the inspiration through intuition and feeling, is motivated by the drive of the archetype and the will to create, and executes the process through sensory and motor functions.
As the contents of the unconscious become more clearly defined, there is a transitional phase from the awe and dread of the Prototaxic Mode (see Yesod) to the relatively benign nature of Syntaxic Experience (see Tiphareth). Art is an expression of the PARATAXIC MODE, which mediates between these extremes through archetypes, dreams, mythopoesis, ritual, teaching tales and all forms of artistic expression.
In a cursory examination of the history of art (from a metaphysical viewpoint), we might associate primitive art with the Prototaxic Mode; Impressionism (from Chagall onwards) with the Parataxic Mode; and abstract or geometrical art with the Syntaxic Mode. These classifications are not absolute, obviously, but offer some guidelines for your own attributions.
In the Parataxic Mode, there is progressive replacement of dread with creativity in the service of archetypal patterns. If the artist has talent, his works also take on collective, as well as personal value, and reflect the transformative process in society. It frequently happens that artists are "ahead of their time", in that their work receives no wide recognition in their own lifetimes. Yet, great art has an ageless quality.
Images, symbols, and ritual enactment provide a means of crystallizing ideas which still remain below the threshold of conscious awareness. Ideally, they fulfill their function when either the artist or observer is later able to consciously integrate the "meaning" which they embody, at least to some extent. This is precisely the function of the pictorial Tarot Keys: one gains a greater cognitive awareness of the archetypal processes they encode, as time goes on.
The distinction between decorative and symbolic art lies in the fact that symbols portray a higher level of abstraction, whereas decorative art is a "just-so" story. It has no inherent meaning, and is merely ornamental. Visionary art gives us the ability to create our own reality, even if it is only in images, and this has a great transforming power on the psyche.
Jung distinguished between two types of artistic creation. He termed one of these psychological and the other visionary. The psychological mode draws its inspiration from the phenomena and lessons of life, or human experience (such as life drawing). The visionary mode, on the other hand, contains something of the Divine, and its subject matter is definitely out-of-the-ordinary. Terrific modern examples include the work of Mati Klarwein, H. R. Giger, Alex Grey, Gilbert Williams, and Robert Venosa.
One distinction between the two lies in the degree of psychological activity or passivity of the participant. In the first mode, the artist "thinks up" and develops the forms pretty much on his own, even it is emergent. But in the visionary mode his own will seems to defer to an apparently foreign inspiration, and it can feel like it simply comes through of its own will. There may be an element of passivity in both modes, but in a visionary experience it is more pronounced. Visionary art is also generally considered more profound.
Great art is perceived by what the visionary artist Michaelangelo termed "the eye of the soul." It may be considered the Parataxic counterpart of the primitive's trance, or the mystic's ecstasy. It is the pure joy of the creative flow state. The evocative power of art or music is embodied in the rhythm which is the underlying matrix of an art piece. The power of art is intimately connected with perception. Some would argue that consciousness itself is simply pure perception -- certainly there is no consciousness without it.
The symbolic value attributed to any given work, and how it moves us, depends on how we look at it. Thus, the art critic has developed tastes different from the "common man." Nevertheless, the greatest art stands the test of time, and has great appeal for the masses and connoisseur, alike.
The pleasure of a psychological work is largely aesthetic in nature, whereas the symbolic work strikes a deeper chord. Visionary experience carries even more impact than human passion. Its psychic reality may include or unite physical and metaphysical qualities. It is more effective when it conveys a transparent variation on an archetypal theme. For example, note the persistence of revivals of classical style and mythological themes among the 'great masters" in painting and sculpture. Art serves a therapeutic function for society. It may even predict the future, as when the Cubist movement and later abstract art preceded a cultural fragmentation of unprecedented magnitude.
"Art" is most properly considered as a process, not a product, though it results in artifacts often valued by society. The transformative process can be as strong during the creation of an unskilled or underappreciated piece as for a master-work. It is all relative. Even the performing arts, which were previously exempt, may now be preserved through recordings and film. John Gowan has classified the arts in a scale of increasing order from performing arts, to visual arts, to compositions in mathematics and music (which are Syntaxic in nature), and finally verbal creativity.
This does not imply that one form is better or "more advanced" than another. But it is an aid in determining nuances of the creative process, which we deal with more fully under Tiphareth. It is difficult to maintain much objectivity about one's creative effort when the physical body is intimately involved, as in dance. Dance, for instance, is closer to the automatism of the trance state, where the body is responding to training automatically, but there is still a large component of concentration. In the visionary mode, on the other hand, there is a temporary withdrawl from the sense organs and the constraints of the physical world. Beethoven said, "music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life."
"Art" is the culmination of five procedures of the parataxic Mode which includes archetype, dreams, myth, ritual, and finally art. The Parataxic Mode exemplifies non-verbal creativity. It represents the development of an enhanced relationship with the subconscious. It is a transcendence over man's minimalistic, instinctual nature to a flowering humanity with individual, unique qualities.
The Many Expressions of Art...
Art has two aspects, one for the artist and the other for the beholder...For the artist, the meaning of art lies in the apprehension of a perceptive context that is clarified and fulfilled in the work, and at the base of the whole process lies the biological purpose of attaining a higher level of consciousness, thus annulling a participation mystique...the new discovery comes to the beholder by wa of the unconscious; he takes it in like the air he breathes.
--M.C. Cammerloher/"Art in the Psychology of Our Time"
According to Jung's theory of psychological types (see Book 4, Hod), man possesses four different possibilities of reacting to his environment. These are represented as the functions sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling.
The realm of Art consists of a). the representative or imitative arts (such as dance, drama, and ceremonial magick), which portray or reproduce a psycho-physical relationship and convey "meaning"; and b). plastic arts where visual perception is the central experience.
In the Greek language, the conjunction of concrete sensation, psychic image, and spiritual meaning is termed aisthesis. It conveys both the notion of breathing in (or smelling) and perceiving. The imitative arts, and ceremonial magick, in particular, create an atmosphere which is breathed in by the participant or observer alike. The meaning is inherent in the engagement with psychic reality.
Cammerloher attributes representative arts to the function intuition; plastic arts are the product of sensation. In the past, mystical man, guided by his favorite function, intuition, could attain redemption or illumination. Application of the mysteries has broadened, and mankind has reached the stage where all the functions may be developed and serve as a key to the mysteries. In a holistic viewpoint, the total person possesses balanced activation and can use a function at will. The great artist Eugene Delacroix expressed his opinion in his journal:
When I have painted a fine picture, I haven't expressed a thought. Or so they say. What fools they are! They deprive painting of all its advantages. The writer says nearly everything to be understood. In painting a mysterious bond is established between the souls of the sitters and those of the spectator. He sees the faces, external nature; but he thinks inwardly the thought that is common to all people, in which some give body in writing, yet altering its fragile essence.
Art embodies or lends a visible and demonstrable form to perception and image. As the image becomes "fleshed out," there is an experience of fulfillment for artist or beholder alike which transcends the merely aesthetic. The art-experience enables man to consciously experience his particular perceptions and images by formative effort. Thus nature becomes both subject and object.
Man as nature, becomes reflective, self-aware and perceptive. The dichotomy of the subject-object, or I-It relationship is harmonized. This enables the artist to annul his unconscious identification with the environment, which is known in psychology as participation mystique.
The Art of Painting:
Everyone possesses the ability to produce some visual representation of his perceptions, with or without formal training. Cammerloher states: "The varying simplicity or development of the form then provides an absolutely unmistakable picture of the level his perceptions have attained."
The three basic stages of artistic knowledge of the world are categorized as delimitation, direction and variability of boundaries and direction. Art is the language for the communication of perceptions. Therefore, artistic statements are relative to the degree of knowledge attained. One who knows the language of art transmits more information.
This does not refer to technical training, but to the ability to state perceptions clearly and consciously, on a precise level. In this manner, the artist produces "the only possible demonstration of the stage of development attained by his images." In other words, he has an ability to reproduce that which he sees with his inner eye.
As a means of removing the artist from participation mystique, the artistic act is a way of illumination. Anyone is capable of this experience at any level of technical ability. Technical art may be corresponded to the left lobe of the brain and is the product of logic (or thinking). An objective experience is reproduced, for example a photographic-type portrait or external landscape.
Imaginal art, however, seems to emerge from the right brain, and is a grace or gift from the soul. We could hardly expect the artist to work without a model, and in this instance the model is internal reality. he still paints that which is "seen." But, the subjective experience is concretized in a communicative form, and he is able to share the quality of his vision with others.
Delimitation implies a sharp boundary; there is now an inside and outside (the magic circle is formed). With the drawing of the boundary, the force of creative action is acquired. The artist uses the canvas to focus his vision, which is executed using the magic wand of the brush (or knife).
When one becomes able to differentiate detail within the boundary, dimensionality is established. Complex contours and their mutual relationships are established with precision. The variable boundary stage may be characterized by the three-quarter profile, and utilizes the principle known as fore-shortening. Foreshortening gives the illusion of proper relative size. At this stage of perception-knowledge, space acquires a meaning of its own; static vision becomes dynamic; relativity becomes the prevailing view.
Foreshortening, or perspective drawing, combined with the technique of mixing paints known as chiaroscuro, creates the illusion of depth in a painting. The great masters of the Italian Renaissance developed this treatment of light and shade in painting, and this advance in technique made their work remarkably life-like.
For the painter, the world is revealed by illumination. Any painting (other than simple graphic arts) either contains a light source within itself, or one is depicted as illuminating the scene from an assumed point outside the picture. It is the painter's aim to capture as accurately as possible the effects of light on visual perception.
Light and color are intimately related. Most people realize that color variation is the result of absorption patterns when an object is hit by white light. The variations of the spectrum which aren't absorbed are reflected back to the eye.
Color is not only important in paining, but in psychology. Much ado has been made in recent years of various color therapies. However, these techniques ar inconsistent in their attributions of the various properties of color in respect to emotional response. On this point the Qabalah furnishes an extensive, cohesive theory worthy of individual testing.
Colors are defined in terms of hue, value and chroma. Hue distinguishes one color from another, such as red from green. Value indicates lightness or brightness, and is represented by ten shades of gray ranging from black to white. Chroma means intensity or saturation of color; is it relatively pure or grayish?
Colors are combined in painting according to the elements of harmony. Colors emerge from a spectrum, and so they group in sequences. These sequences may be used as a tool for determining what is attractive to the eye, to convey just the right signals to produce the desired effect. Contrary signals to the eye disturb the effect, whether they are noticed consciously, or not.
There are different types of harmonies. Analogous harmony comes from adjacent hues which lie next to each other in the spectrum, such as blue with its adjacents turquoise and violet. Complementary harmonies mix colors which are inherently opposites, like yellow and violet, or orange and turquoise, and red and green. In a balanced harmony the entire color spectrum is exploited. A primary triad includes magenta, yellow and turquoise. A four color harmony, or tetrad, could include red, yellow, blue-green and violet, for example. In a dominant harmony one color is glorified and its influence extends over the entire design. Harmony is assured by bringing all colors into a consistent relationship.
Another important aspect of painting is the law of field size, or control of the field. An expert in this is able to create unique and startling color illusions. Control of the field is achieved through producing a quality which pervades the entire canvas. It is an illumination quality -- bright, dark, grayish. The artist then adds touches of hue to make the canvas come alive, create a world of its own. Details in the canvas may appear lustrous, iridescent, luminous. Other qualities are transparency, texture, and solidity. To make a lustrous effect, requires mixing the background in shades by adding black. Then, pure intense color in small amounts appears lustrous. Luster depends upon black contrast.
The iridescent effect, like opal or mother-of-pearl, requires a background of a gray field. The predominance of soft gray creates an illusion of mistiness. The luminous effect is complex and subtle. Purity contrast, not value or hue, yields the desired effect. The luminous effect was brought to perfection by Rembrandt. The effect is seen in paintings where the light source is internal, such as a candle or fire-glow. Also, light shining into the eyes blurs vision, so this diffuseness must be accounted for in the painting. Highlights and shadows add the finishing touches. A delicate transition from normal color into shadow, with a diffuse edge simulates "reality."
The Art of Magic
There is magic in art, and art in Magick. The magic of art is its expression of symbol or prototype. Art is the symbolic forming of archetypes working in time. In the creative process, the artist becomes seized or fascinated; the archetype rises up in him and he creates the images in his personal form. He shapes them into a "work" because he has been sufficiently aroused to call forth his creative powers.
This process is analogous to that produced through ceremonial magick. At the culmination of the rite comes the assumption of the godform, where the aspirant is seized by the archetypal power he has called up. The creative power of this form subsumes him. His "work" is in fact the Opus of the Great Work, the process of Self-transformation.
Drama and dance are closely related in origin to ceremonial magic. So is the art of perfumery, through the development of incenses and fumigations. These scents were designed as psycho-sensory evocations. They call forth certain psychological states.
Rhythmic swaying and dancing, and circumambulations are fundamental in ritual. Modern forms of dance have their origins in rites of the past. According to Julian Jaynes, in The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, ballet is intimately linked with the goddess Artemis, which corresponds with path 25, ART.
The golden oracle at Ephesus, famous for its enormous wealth, had trained eunuchs as mouthpieces for the goddess Artemis...and the abnormal dancing on the tips of the toes of modern ballerinas is though to derive from the dances before the altar of the goddess.
In Magick, the will and the senses conspire to stir the emotions. Through consecrations, oaths, invocations, the aspirant changes his experience of reality. He is transported to another world in a quantum leap of consciousness. A modern, example, which is not magick, per se, is the ability of movie makers to create a simulated 'astral journey." Caught up in identification with the movie, we are led along through another time, another place, another life, another world. Magick seeks to tap mystical experiences of this type which are internal, and spiritually meaningful.
In Magickal ceremony, the aspirant knows whether the work appeals to him; he may consciously understand, or wish to understand the latent meaning of the rite. In either event he intuitively perceives and apprehends the archetypes and their meaning. They enter into him unconsciously.
In a discussion of Art, it is pertinent to recall that Crowley re-named Path 25, changing its name from Temperance to Art. We may infer from the position of this path on the Tree of Life (between Yesod and Tiphareth), that it concerns harmonization of the archetypal dynamics of "spirit" (Hod/Mercury) and "nature" (Netzach/Venus). Art, then, forms the magickal link between the archetypal and instinctual realms. We may also refer to creative aspects of psychology, technology, alchemy, and magick as artistic expressions. There are also correspondences with Tantra, sex magick, and enflamment.
Entrance to the solar sphere Tiphareth via the 25th Path, Trump XIV, in Magick implies Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. In psychology, this process is termed Individuation or coming into consciousness of the Self.
This implies a breaking up of one's involvement in the collective psyche, or participation mystique, and a transformation of personality. To enter this state "balance is required--the ability to let the ego move downstream, to lose its centrality and control, to give in, submit, enjoy and pleasure itself in the floodtide of becoming and then return to its central point, enriched by the experience; strengthened by its weakness, in its recognition of the limitations imposed by living entirely within the world of the natural standpoint."
In his work Ego at the Threshold, Edward Sampson substitutes the word 'transcendent' for the power of archetypal spirit, and states that "Balance is achieved when the natural standpoint and the transcendent meet in an atmosphere that permits the transcendent more than lip-service guidance in our everyday lives; with such balance we can extend ourselves beyond the everyday and experience a world always available; balance is achieved when the ego moves off to the side, enjoying living life, not merely thinking about it."
Magick, as art, carries us into the sacred realm outside of time and space, and may even predict the future. Art may be defined as recognition, selection and projection. Craft, on the other hand, (including Wicca, often termed 'the Craft") connotes the manual dexterity, charm or ability to create what you want. Art is a process, not a product, not the selection of a product.
Art and magick build pathways in the mind for energy to flow; it develops a characteristic archetypal pattern. In the "arte de magick," man gives form to his own vision of Reality. The psychological effect of ceremony is profound and transformative; nature looses her omnipotence, and the aspirant gains independence, a sense of purpose. Magick mediates between the bizarre inner world and ego-consciousness.
The Art of Alchemy
Another variation on the theme of magic is the alchemical Opus. It also involves an aspirant practicing the process of self-transformation. Carl Jung and his followers have detailed the correspondences between the alchemical work and modern psychotherapy. It seems, in fact, that alchemy is an antique form of psychotherapy, or service to the psyche, (or the gods).
In projecting the contents of his unconscious onto the elements of the work (sun = gold, moon = silver, mercury = quicksilver, etc.) the alchemist is able to unite the opposites within himself and effect the transformation into the Philosopher's Stone. This stone, in fact, represents the point of maximum equilibration. Alchemy is a sacred work, requiring the aspirant to be Self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented.
The individual is considered a microcosm of the whole of existence:
The individual psyche is and must be a whole world within itself in order to stand over and against the outer world and fulfill its task to be a carrier of consciousness. For the scales to be balanced, the individual must be of equal weight to the whole world.
In Psychotherapy and Alchemy, Edward Edinger lists the following among the alchemical operations: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, seperatio, and the final coniunctio which results in the birth of the homunculus or Philosopher's Stone.
Poetic Metaphor:
For the poet is a light and winged and holy Thing and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses. And the mind is no longer in him. When he has not attained this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. --Plato/Ion
There is an ecstatic inspiration common to vision and word, song and prophecy. The origins of poetry lie deep in the history of mankind. In the remote past the subconscious spontaneously produced magical incantations and songs. This transpersonal expression was fundamental in the creation of society or culture. The rhythmic sensuous images of prophecy and poetry enriched the consciousness of the individual and group, alike.
In Plato's viewpoint the poet does not awaken the images; rather, the images awaken him. The gift of the poet is to capture and record the interrelationship of an archetype with his intellectual and emotional complexes, in an instant of time. Assuming that his technique is proficient, his task is to prevent the ego from tampering with the poem, refining or tempering the contents of the psyche, convinced of personally writing (rather than receiving) the poem.
Among the metaphors of poetic speech are perceptions made through paranormal experiences of the senses. An example is "seeing music", "hearing the stars sing" or experiencing "bitter cold." In each descriptive phrase a quality or experience of one sense is combined with an object not ordinarily associated with it. Nevertheless, an understandable meaning is conveyed intuitively. We all sense the inherent meaning of "warm or cool colors" or "bright sounds". This perceptual phenomenon is known as synesthesia, or sensory blending.
This sensory blending is common in mystical experiences of an "extrasensory" nature. Actually they never are perceived through an extra sense, at all. But through a re-visioned experience of the normal five senses. Poets are able to 'touch the stars", or see "dawn smile", or be "lulled by glowing light as if it were music". Pervading a high degree of poetic metaphors are images of light and sound, in which brightness equates with loudness and brightness and pitch have an affinity. However, this doesn't mean loudness and brightness are perceptually or metaphorically equivalent in all cases.
There are many examples of poets who were involved in a spiritual quest. William Blake, of course, combined both his talents in poetry and illustration. The 19th century revival of the Western occult tradition influenced the works of W. B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley. In America, the New England contingent of Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickenson and others who sought reality through spiritual intuition.
Some of the most soul-moving poetry comes from the writings of the Saints or Masters of the East, the mystic poets. There is a great deal of beautiful Sufi poetry. Sikh scripture is also replete with references to the Light and the Sound of divinity. Kabir and Guru Nanak were saints who expressed their love for the Lord din poetry. Other oriental poetic forms include the Zen Koan, and Haiku. Both convey a profound spiritual message in a minimal number of words.
Modern examples of the psychological quest are poetess Anne Sexton, Rainier Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman and Robert Bly.
The "Artistic Temperament"
The public has a way of creative mythologizing which makes the artist more than an ordinary person. The phenomena which creates movie stars and superstars occurs in other fields and projects the "mad scientist", or "eccentric artist."
Part of the artist's gift is his relative lack of adaptation to the values of "average" society. The artist is aloof from daily life, in a world of his or her own. Or, if they are close to the streets, they have a radically different perspective on things which produces his unique vision. Rodin, Picasso, and Dali are all examples of psychological "rugged individualism." An artisan has a trade; an artist lives an alternative lifestyle. It is impossible to analyze why this impulse occurs to one individual and not another.
According to Jung, an artist leads a dual existence; he mediates between world like a shaman:
In his capacity of artist (the person)....is objective and impersonal -- even inhuman -- for as an artist he is his work, and not a human being.
Jung observed that every creative person could be considered a "duality or a synthesis of contradictory attitudes," a unique human with a personal life, but also the carrier of an impersonal creative process. The artist's creative achievement cannot be accounted for by an examination of his personal psychology. A Masterwork stands on its own. Jung even went further by stating that:
The personal life of the poet cannot be hold essential to his art -- but at most a help or a hindrance to his creative task. He may go the way of a Philistine, a good citizen, a neurotic, a fool, or a criminal. His personal career may be inevitable and interesting, but it does not explain the poet.
Society frequently projects artists are folk heroes or antiheroes. In Sam Keen's Voices and Visions, Joseph Campbell states:
The creative mythology of the modern artists arises when the individual has an experience of his own -- of order, or horror, or beauty -- that he tries to communicate by creating a private mythology. So it is the creative individual who must give us a totally new type of nontheological revelation, who must be the new spiritual guide.
Campbell sees creative artistic work as a "response to the need to escape from danger and chaos and find some new security." This inner quiet repeats the main theme of the hero monomyth (see Book VII, Tiphareth for Hero archetype).
Further development of consciousness leads the artist to acute perception. He no longer simply reflects the collective values, he is now free to criticize them. Campbell states, "...the world of the artist or the intellectual must be fierce, accurate in its judgment of the fault in a person or society. But along side this judgment there must be affirmation and compassion. What is important is to keep the dissonance between judgment and compassion."
It is curious that Campbell should employ precisely these words. This judgment and compassion refer explicitly to the qualities know respectively (in qabalistic terms), as Geburah/Mars and Chesed/Jupiter. They are the sphere which are encountered immediately after Tiphareth-consciousness is achieved. They represent aspects of the Individuality, just as the lower spheres denoted aspects of the personality.
Specifically, Geburah represents the force aspect of individuality. Chesed represents and transmits the ideal form of the individuality from the Supernal Triad to consciousness. The Supernal Triad (or top three spheres) represents existence so ideal the mind cannot conceptualize it. It is the true home of the soul.
For consciousness to enter this level of mystical attainment means balancing the forces of Geburah and Chesed on the Middle Pillar. This harmonization corresponds with path 13, Trump II, The High Priestess. We may consider The High Priestess a higher octave of "Art," since both a lunar in nature. The Priestess knows the art of piercing the veil, or soul-making.
Not all would-be artists, however, attain this integrated ideal. Like shamans, some artists have inherently imbalanced personalities. Many experience a gut-wrenching pathos, a sad yearning which may be encoded in their work. Susanne Langer describes her reaction to such art in Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.
The fact that I know as much as I do of the essence of pothos comes from meeting with great music (and art). If those passages make me sad is an extraneous and irrelevant detail. My grasp of the essence of sadness...comes not from moments when I have seen sadness, but from moments when I have seen sadness before me released from entanglements with contingency. We have seen this in great beauty, in the works of our greatest artists.
In therapy, unexpressed pathos (which is an indicator of the Puer archetype; see Chapter 7, Tiphareth), is sometimes given vent through creative activity. The therapeutic value of art has long been recognized. Jung encouraged his patients to give free reign to their preconscious contents by painting in a spontaneous manner. However, Langer points out that,
It may well be that an artist never creates a work of art unless he is emotionally stirred; if so, it does not follow that this, his own emotional excitement is what he portrays. ...may portray something quite independent of his own psychic processes. He may go beyond the thing felt.
In art therapy, the resulting paintings often lack technical precision, but show striking examples of the symbols and imagery of the individuation process. The most prominent motif in these artistic expressions is the mandala. It is a variation on the magical circle, a symbol of the unfolding Self.
A modern cultural example of unfolding variations on the mandala comes from a branch of technological art which corresponds with Path 25: Aerospace. The quest is sublimated now into the creation and indwelling of a new extension of mankind's world -- the space station. The majority of these are wheel-shaped for efficiencies sake. Here the puer tendency to verticality and ascensionism is disciplined to very pragmatic ends.
There is always the puer complex at work motivating the artist, as well as an element of Narcissism. The artist has a love relationship with the image of himself which is projected onto the canvas. Both imaginal art and archetypal thought enliven the world of fantasy and imagination, by turning vision inward. They are a release from the literalization of object-orientation. They take the psychic energy which normally flows outward, and turn it in.
Art therapy is a way of integrating the values of archetypes. But in order for the values of, let's say the anima or animus, to be incorporated into the personality of the artist, he or she must assimilate the psychological significance of their own work. Otherwise, the creative urge may be just another way of projecting one's inner reality into the outer world. This integration does not always happen spontaneously to the artist. If this were so, every great artist or poet would be a Self-Realized or God-Realized individual. History has shown different.
Discipline is not the only distinction between the true artist and the dabbler or dilettante. To subject oneself to hard work and the evaluation of one's fellow man is no small accomplishment. The development of artistic insight rather than an externalization of one's specific neurosis is another. One must combine the innate curiosity and vitality of youth with the maturity and dedication of experience. In her classic on the archetype of Eternal Youth, Puer Aeternus, Marie Louise vonFranz discusses the artist and puer complex.
In the really great artist there is always a puer at first, but it can go further. It is a question of feeling-judgment. If one ceases to be an artist when ceasing to be puer, then one was never really an artist. Objectifying the puer, is only the first step. Puer has to learn to carry on with the work he does not like, not only with work where he is carried away by great enthusiasm, which is something everybody can do...being carried away by a festival of work. Puer has to kick himself again and again to take up the boring job through sheer will power.
Puer is also the impulse to feel special, precocious, or gifted. The complex is a desire. What, then, are the psychological criteria for an "artist"? VonFranz lists some in her work, Creation Myths.
...these four factors -- originality, consistency, intensity, and subtlety -- (show) the differences between someone who has creative fantasies and someone who is only spinning neurotic nonesense...the continuity of devotion an individual is capable of giving his fantasy is very important and shows the difference between someone who is gifted with creative fantasy and somebody sucked into sterile unconscious material.
There are also certain psychological types more adapted or inclined toward artistic expression. Different types -- both introverts and extroverts -- pursue different areas of art, such as fine art or performance art. Many artists are Dionysian temperaments strong on Sensation-Perceiving (SP).
This penchant for acting on impulse contains a seeming paradox, for SPs, living only for immediate action, become the world's great performing artists: the virtuosos of art, entertainment, and adventure. The great painters, instrumentalists, vocalists, dancers, sculptors, photographers, athletes, hunters, racers, gamblers -- all need the skills which come only from excited concentration on an activity for long periods. No other type can mobilize what virtuosity takes: untold hours of continuous action. ...In a sense the SP does not work, for work implies production, completion, and accomplishment. The SP has no such desire for closure, completion, finishing. He is process-oriented. What ensues from his action is mere product, mere outcome, mere result, and is incidental. Thus, the SP's "work" is essentially play.(Kiersey, Bates, 1978)
In Myers-Briggs terms, ISFP is known as "the Artist"; ESFP as "Entertainer"; INFJ as "Author"; INTO as "Architect"; ENTP as "Inventor"; ISTP as "Artisan"; while ESTP is a born "Promoter".
*
Art has two aspects, one for the artist and the other for the beholder...For the artist, the meaning of art lies in the apprehension of a perceptive context that is clarified and fulfilled in the work, and at the base of the whole process lies the biological purpose of attaining a higher level of consciousness, thus annulling a participation mystique...the new discovery comes to the beholder by wa of the unconscious; he takes it in like the air he breathes.
--M.C. Cammerloher/"Art in the Psychology of Our Time"
According to Jung's theory of psychological types (see Book 4, Hod), man possesses four different possibilities of reacting to his environment. These are represented as the functions sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling.
The realm of Art consists of a). the representative or imitative arts (such as dance, drama, and ceremonial magick), which portray or reproduce a psycho-physical relationship and convey "meaning"; and b). plastic arts where visual perception is the central experience.
In the Greek language, the conjunction of concrete sensation, psychic image, and spiritual meaning is termed aisthesis. It conveys both the notion of breathing in (or smelling) and perceiving. The imitative arts, and ceremonial magick, in particular, create an atmosphere which is breathed in by the participant or observer alike. The meaning is inherent in the engagement with psychic reality.
Cammerloher attributes representative arts to the function intuition; plastic arts are the product of sensation. In the past, mystical man, guided by his favorite function, intuition, could attain redemption or illumination. Application of the mysteries has broadened, and mankind has reached the stage where all the functions may be developed and serve as a key to the mysteries. In a holistic viewpoint, the total person possesses balanced activation and can use a function at will. The great artist Eugene Delacroix expressed his opinion in his journal:
When I have painted a fine picture, I haven't expressed a thought. Or so they say. What fools they are! They deprive painting of all its advantages. The writer says nearly everything to be understood. In painting a mysterious bond is established between the souls of the sitters and those of the spectator. He sees the faces, external nature; but he thinks inwardly the thought that is common to all people, in which some give body in writing, yet altering its fragile essence.
Art embodies or lends a visible and demonstrable form to perception and image. As the image becomes "fleshed out," there is an experience of fulfillment for artist or beholder alike which transcends the merely aesthetic. The art-experience enables man to consciously experience his particular perceptions and images by formative effort. Thus nature becomes both subject and object.
Man as nature, becomes reflective, self-aware and perceptive. The dichotomy of the subject-object, or I-It relationship is harmonized. This enables the artist to annul his unconscious identification with the environment, which is known in psychology as participation mystique.
The Art of Painting:
Everyone possesses the ability to produce some visual representation of his perceptions, with or without formal training. Cammerloher states: "The varying simplicity or development of the form then provides an absolutely unmistakable picture of the level his perceptions have attained."
The three basic stages of artistic knowledge of the world are categorized as delimitation, direction and variability of boundaries and direction. Art is the language for the communication of perceptions. Therefore, artistic statements are relative to the degree of knowledge attained. One who knows the language of art transmits more information.
This does not refer to technical training, but to the ability to state perceptions clearly and consciously, on a precise level. In this manner, the artist produces "the only possible demonstration of the stage of development attained by his images." In other words, he has an ability to reproduce that which he sees with his inner eye.
As a means of removing the artist from participation mystique, the artistic act is a way of illumination. Anyone is capable of this experience at any level of technical ability. Technical art may be corresponded to the left lobe of the brain and is the product of logic (or thinking). An objective experience is reproduced, for example a photographic-type portrait or external landscape.
Imaginal art, however, seems to emerge from the right brain, and is a grace or gift from the soul. We could hardly expect the artist to work without a model, and in this instance the model is internal reality. he still paints that which is "seen." But, the subjective experience is concretized in a communicative form, and he is able to share the quality of his vision with others.
Delimitation implies a sharp boundary; there is now an inside and outside (the magic circle is formed). With the drawing of the boundary, the force of creative action is acquired. The artist uses the canvas to focus his vision, which is executed using the magic wand of the brush (or knife).
When one becomes able to differentiate detail within the boundary, dimensionality is established. Complex contours and their mutual relationships are established with precision. The variable boundary stage may be characterized by the three-quarter profile, and utilizes the principle known as fore-shortening. Foreshortening gives the illusion of proper relative size. At this stage of perception-knowledge, space acquires a meaning of its own; static vision becomes dynamic; relativity becomes the prevailing view.
Foreshortening, or perspective drawing, combined with the technique of mixing paints known as chiaroscuro, creates the illusion of depth in a painting. The great masters of the Italian Renaissance developed this treatment of light and shade in painting, and this advance in technique made their work remarkably life-like.
For the painter, the world is revealed by illumination. Any painting (other than simple graphic arts) either contains a light source within itself, or one is depicted as illuminating the scene from an assumed point outside the picture. It is the painter's aim to capture as accurately as possible the effects of light on visual perception.
Light and color are intimately related. Most people realize that color variation is the result of absorption patterns when an object is hit by white light. The variations of the spectrum which aren't absorbed are reflected back to the eye.
Color is not only important in paining, but in psychology. Much ado has been made in recent years of various color therapies. However, these techniques ar inconsistent in their attributions of the various properties of color in respect to emotional response. On this point the Qabalah furnishes an extensive, cohesive theory worthy of individual testing.
Colors are defined in terms of hue, value and chroma. Hue distinguishes one color from another, such as red from green. Value indicates lightness or brightness, and is represented by ten shades of gray ranging from black to white. Chroma means intensity or saturation of color; is it relatively pure or grayish?
Colors are combined in painting according to the elements of harmony. Colors emerge from a spectrum, and so they group in sequences. These sequences may be used as a tool for determining what is attractive to the eye, to convey just the right signals to produce the desired effect. Contrary signals to the eye disturb the effect, whether they are noticed consciously, or not.
There are different types of harmonies. Analogous harmony comes from adjacent hues which lie next to each other in the spectrum, such as blue with its adjacents turquoise and violet. Complementary harmonies mix colors which are inherently opposites, like yellow and violet, or orange and turquoise, and red and green. In a balanced harmony the entire color spectrum is exploited. A primary triad includes magenta, yellow and turquoise. A four color harmony, or tetrad, could include red, yellow, blue-green and violet, for example. In a dominant harmony one color is glorified and its influence extends over the entire design. Harmony is assured by bringing all colors into a consistent relationship.
Another important aspect of painting is the law of field size, or control of the field. An expert in this is able to create unique and startling color illusions. Control of the field is achieved through producing a quality which pervades the entire canvas. It is an illumination quality -- bright, dark, grayish. The artist then adds touches of hue to make the canvas come alive, create a world of its own. Details in the canvas may appear lustrous, iridescent, luminous. Other qualities are transparency, texture, and solidity. To make a lustrous effect, requires mixing the background in shades by adding black. Then, pure intense color in small amounts appears lustrous. Luster depends upon black contrast.
The iridescent effect, like opal or mother-of-pearl, requires a background of a gray field. The predominance of soft gray creates an illusion of mistiness. The luminous effect is complex and subtle. Purity contrast, not value or hue, yields the desired effect. The luminous effect was brought to perfection by Rembrandt. The effect is seen in paintings where the light source is internal, such as a candle or fire-glow. Also, light shining into the eyes blurs vision, so this diffuseness must be accounted for in the painting. Highlights and shadows add the finishing touches. A delicate transition from normal color into shadow, with a diffuse edge simulates "reality."
The Art of Magic
There is magic in art, and art in Magick. The magic of art is its expression of symbol or prototype. Art is the symbolic forming of archetypes working in time. In the creative process, the artist becomes seized or fascinated; the archetype rises up in him and he creates the images in his personal form. He shapes them into a "work" because he has been sufficiently aroused to call forth his creative powers.
This process is analogous to that produced through ceremonial magick. At the culmination of the rite comes the assumption of the godform, where the aspirant is seized by the archetypal power he has called up. The creative power of this form subsumes him. His "work" is in fact the Opus of the Great Work, the process of Self-transformation.
Drama and dance are closely related in origin to ceremonial magic. So is the art of perfumery, through the development of incenses and fumigations. These scents were designed as psycho-sensory evocations. They call forth certain psychological states.
Rhythmic swaying and dancing, and circumambulations are fundamental in ritual. Modern forms of dance have their origins in rites of the past. According to Julian Jaynes, in The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, ballet is intimately linked with the goddess Artemis, which corresponds with path 25, ART.
The golden oracle at Ephesus, famous for its enormous wealth, had trained eunuchs as mouthpieces for the goddess Artemis...and the abnormal dancing on the tips of the toes of modern ballerinas is though to derive from the dances before the altar of the goddess.
In Magick, the will and the senses conspire to stir the emotions. Through consecrations, oaths, invocations, the aspirant changes his experience of reality. He is transported to another world in a quantum leap of consciousness. A modern, example, which is not magick, per se, is the ability of movie makers to create a simulated 'astral journey." Caught up in identification with the movie, we are led along through another time, another place, another life, another world. Magick seeks to tap mystical experiences of this type which are internal, and spiritually meaningful.
In Magickal ceremony, the aspirant knows whether the work appeals to him; he may consciously understand, or wish to understand the latent meaning of the rite. In either event he intuitively perceives and apprehends the archetypes and their meaning. They enter into him unconsciously.
In a discussion of Art, it is pertinent to recall that Crowley re-named Path 25, changing its name from Temperance to Art. We may infer from the position of this path on the Tree of Life (between Yesod and Tiphareth), that it concerns harmonization of the archetypal dynamics of "spirit" (Hod/Mercury) and "nature" (Netzach/Venus). Art, then, forms the magickal link between the archetypal and instinctual realms. We may also refer to creative aspects of psychology, technology, alchemy, and magick as artistic expressions. There are also correspondences with Tantra, sex magick, and enflamment.
Entrance to the solar sphere Tiphareth via the 25th Path, Trump XIV, in Magick implies Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. In psychology, this process is termed Individuation or coming into consciousness of the Self.
This implies a breaking up of one's involvement in the collective psyche, or participation mystique, and a transformation of personality. To enter this state "balance is required--the ability to let the ego move downstream, to lose its centrality and control, to give in, submit, enjoy and pleasure itself in the floodtide of becoming and then return to its central point, enriched by the experience; strengthened by its weakness, in its recognition of the limitations imposed by living entirely within the world of the natural standpoint."
In his work Ego at the Threshold, Edward Sampson substitutes the word 'transcendent' for the power of archetypal spirit, and states that "Balance is achieved when the natural standpoint and the transcendent meet in an atmosphere that permits the transcendent more than lip-service guidance in our everyday lives; with such balance we can extend ourselves beyond the everyday and experience a world always available; balance is achieved when the ego moves off to the side, enjoying living life, not merely thinking about it."
Magick, as art, carries us into the sacred realm outside of time and space, and may even predict the future. Art may be defined as recognition, selection and projection. Craft, on the other hand, (including Wicca, often termed 'the Craft") connotes the manual dexterity, charm or ability to create what you want. Art is a process, not a product, not the selection of a product.
Art and magick build pathways in the mind for energy to flow; it develops a characteristic archetypal pattern. In the "arte de magick," man gives form to his own vision of Reality. The psychological effect of ceremony is profound and transformative; nature looses her omnipotence, and the aspirant gains independence, a sense of purpose. Magick mediates between the bizarre inner world and ego-consciousness.
The Art of Alchemy
Another variation on the theme of magic is the alchemical Opus. It also involves an aspirant practicing the process of self-transformation. Carl Jung and his followers have detailed the correspondences between the alchemical work and modern psychotherapy. It seems, in fact, that alchemy is an antique form of psychotherapy, or service to the psyche, (or the gods).
In projecting the contents of his unconscious onto the elements of the work (sun = gold, moon = silver, mercury = quicksilver, etc.) the alchemist is able to unite the opposites within himself and effect the transformation into the Philosopher's Stone. This stone, in fact, represents the point of maximum equilibration. Alchemy is a sacred work, requiring the aspirant to be Self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented.
The individual is considered a microcosm of the whole of existence:
The individual psyche is and must be a whole world within itself in order to stand over and against the outer world and fulfill its task to be a carrier of consciousness. For the scales to be balanced, the individual must be of equal weight to the whole world.
In Psychotherapy and Alchemy, Edward Edinger lists the following among the alchemical operations: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, seperatio, and the final coniunctio which results in the birth of the homunculus or Philosopher's Stone.
Poetic Metaphor:
For the poet is a light and winged and holy Thing and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses. And the mind is no longer in him. When he has not attained this state, he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles. --Plato/Ion
There is an ecstatic inspiration common to vision and word, song and prophecy. The origins of poetry lie deep in the history of mankind. In the remote past the subconscious spontaneously produced magical incantations and songs. This transpersonal expression was fundamental in the creation of society or culture. The rhythmic sensuous images of prophecy and poetry enriched the consciousness of the individual and group, alike.
In Plato's viewpoint the poet does not awaken the images; rather, the images awaken him. The gift of the poet is to capture and record the interrelationship of an archetype with his intellectual and emotional complexes, in an instant of time. Assuming that his technique is proficient, his task is to prevent the ego from tampering with the poem, refining or tempering the contents of the psyche, convinced of personally writing (rather than receiving) the poem.
Among the metaphors of poetic speech are perceptions made through paranormal experiences of the senses. An example is "seeing music", "hearing the stars sing" or experiencing "bitter cold." In each descriptive phrase a quality or experience of one sense is combined with an object not ordinarily associated with it. Nevertheless, an understandable meaning is conveyed intuitively. We all sense the inherent meaning of "warm or cool colors" or "bright sounds". This perceptual phenomenon is known as synesthesia, or sensory blending.
This sensory blending is common in mystical experiences of an "extrasensory" nature. Actually they never are perceived through an extra sense, at all. But through a re-visioned experience of the normal five senses. Poets are able to 'touch the stars", or see "dawn smile", or be "lulled by glowing light as if it were music". Pervading a high degree of poetic metaphors are images of light and sound, in which brightness equates with loudness and brightness and pitch have an affinity. However, this doesn't mean loudness and brightness are perceptually or metaphorically equivalent in all cases.
There are many examples of poets who were involved in a spiritual quest. William Blake, of course, combined both his talents in poetry and illustration. The 19th century revival of the Western occult tradition influenced the works of W. B. Yeats and Aleister Crowley. In America, the New England contingent of Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickenson and others who sought reality through spiritual intuition.
Some of the most soul-moving poetry comes from the writings of the Saints or Masters of the East, the mystic poets. There is a great deal of beautiful Sufi poetry. Sikh scripture is also replete with references to the Light and the Sound of divinity. Kabir and Guru Nanak were saints who expressed their love for the Lord din poetry. Other oriental poetic forms include the Zen Koan, and Haiku. Both convey a profound spiritual message in a minimal number of words.
Modern examples of the psychological quest are poetess Anne Sexton, Rainier Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman and Robert Bly.
The "Artistic Temperament"
The public has a way of creative mythologizing which makes the artist more than an ordinary person. The phenomena which creates movie stars and superstars occurs in other fields and projects the "mad scientist", or "eccentric artist."
Part of the artist's gift is his relative lack of adaptation to the values of "average" society. The artist is aloof from daily life, in a world of his or her own. Or, if they are close to the streets, they have a radically different perspective on things which produces his unique vision. Rodin, Picasso, and Dali are all examples of psychological "rugged individualism." An artisan has a trade; an artist lives an alternative lifestyle. It is impossible to analyze why this impulse occurs to one individual and not another.
According to Jung, an artist leads a dual existence; he mediates between world like a shaman:
In his capacity of artist (the person)....is objective and impersonal -- even inhuman -- for as an artist he is his work, and not a human being.
Jung observed that every creative person could be considered a "duality or a synthesis of contradictory attitudes," a unique human with a personal life, but also the carrier of an impersonal creative process. The artist's creative achievement cannot be accounted for by an examination of his personal psychology. A Masterwork stands on its own. Jung even went further by stating that:
The personal life of the poet cannot be hold essential to his art -- but at most a help or a hindrance to his creative task. He may go the way of a Philistine, a good citizen, a neurotic, a fool, or a criminal. His personal career may be inevitable and interesting, but it does not explain the poet.
Society frequently projects artists are folk heroes or antiheroes. In Sam Keen's Voices and Visions, Joseph Campbell states:
The creative mythology of the modern artists arises when the individual has an experience of his own -- of order, or horror, or beauty -- that he tries to communicate by creating a private mythology. So it is the creative individual who must give us a totally new type of nontheological revelation, who must be the new spiritual guide.
Campbell sees creative artistic work as a "response to the need to escape from danger and chaos and find some new security." This inner quiet repeats the main theme of the hero monomyth (see Book VII, Tiphareth for Hero archetype).
Further development of consciousness leads the artist to acute perception. He no longer simply reflects the collective values, he is now free to criticize them. Campbell states, "...the world of the artist or the intellectual must be fierce, accurate in its judgment of the fault in a person or society. But along side this judgment there must be affirmation and compassion. What is important is to keep the dissonance between judgment and compassion."
It is curious that Campbell should employ precisely these words. This judgment and compassion refer explicitly to the qualities know respectively (in qabalistic terms), as Geburah/Mars and Chesed/Jupiter. They are the sphere which are encountered immediately after Tiphareth-consciousness is achieved. They represent aspects of the Individuality, just as the lower spheres denoted aspects of the personality.
Specifically, Geburah represents the force aspect of individuality. Chesed represents and transmits the ideal form of the individuality from the Supernal Triad to consciousness. The Supernal Triad (or top three spheres) represents existence so ideal the mind cannot conceptualize it. It is the true home of the soul.
For consciousness to enter this level of mystical attainment means balancing the forces of Geburah and Chesed on the Middle Pillar. This harmonization corresponds with path 13, Trump II, The High Priestess. We may consider The High Priestess a higher octave of "Art," since both a lunar in nature. The Priestess knows the art of piercing the veil, or soul-making.
Not all would-be artists, however, attain this integrated ideal. Like shamans, some artists have inherently imbalanced personalities. Many experience a gut-wrenching pathos, a sad yearning which may be encoded in their work. Susanne Langer describes her reaction to such art in Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling.
The fact that I know as much as I do of the essence of pothos comes from meeting with great music (and art). If those passages make me sad is an extraneous and irrelevant detail. My grasp of the essence of sadness...comes not from moments when I have seen sadness, but from moments when I have seen sadness before me released from entanglements with contingency. We have seen this in great beauty, in the works of our greatest artists.
In therapy, unexpressed pathos (which is an indicator of the Puer archetype; see Chapter 7, Tiphareth), is sometimes given vent through creative activity. The therapeutic value of art has long been recognized. Jung encouraged his patients to give free reign to their preconscious contents by painting in a spontaneous manner. However, Langer points out that,
It may well be that an artist never creates a work of art unless he is emotionally stirred; if so, it does not follow that this, his own emotional excitement is what he portrays. ...may portray something quite independent of his own psychic processes. He may go beyond the thing felt.
In art therapy, the resulting paintings often lack technical precision, but show striking examples of the symbols and imagery of the individuation process. The most prominent motif in these artistic expressions is the mandala. It is a variation on the magical circle, a symbol of the unfolding Self.
A modern cultural example of unfolding variations on the mandala comes from a branch of technological art which corresponds with Path 25: Aerospace. The quest is sublimated now into the creation and indwelling of a new extension of mankind's world -- the space station. The majority of these are wheel-shaped for efficiencies sake. Here the puer tendency to verticality and ascensionism is disciplined to very pragmatic ends.
There is always the puer complex at work motivating the artist, as well as an element of Narcissism. The artist has a love relationship with the image of himself which is projected onto the canvas. Both imaginal art and archetypal thought enliven the world of fantasy and imagination, by turning vision inward. They are a release from the literalization of object-orientation. They take the psychic energy which normally flows outward, and turn it in.
Art therapy is a way of integrating the values of archetypes. But in order for the values of, let's say the anima or animus, to be incorporated into the personality of the artist, he or she must assimilate the psychological significance of their own work. Otherwise, the creative urge may be just another way of projecting one's inner reality into the outer world. This integration does not always happen spontaneously to the artist. If this were so, every great artist or poet would be a Self-Realized or God-Realized individual. History has shown different.
Discipline is not the only distinction between the true artist and the dabbler or dilettante. To subject oneself to hard work and the evaluation of one's fellow man is no small accomplishment. The development of artistic insight rather than an externalization of one's specific neurosis is another. One must combine the innate curiosity and vitality of youth with the maturity and dedication of experience. In her classic on the archetype of Eternal Youth, Puer Aeternus, Marie Louise vonFranz discusses the artist and puer complex.
In the really great artist there is always a puer at first, but it can go further. It is a question of feeling-judgment. If one ceases to be an artist when ceasing to be puer, then one was never really an artist. Objectifying the puer, is only the first step. Puer has to learn to carry on with the work he does not like, not only with work where he is carried away by great enthusiasm, which is something everybody can do...being carried away by a festival of work. Puer has to kick himself again and again to take up the boring job through sheer will power.
Puer is also the impulse to feel special, precocious, or gifted. The complex is a desire. What, then, are the psychological criteria for an "artist"? VonFranz lists some in her work, Creation Myths.
...these four factors -- originality, consistency, intensity, and subtlety -- (show) the differences between someone who has creative fantasies and someone who is only spinning neurotic nonesense...the continuity of devotion an individual is capable of giving his fantasy is very important and shows the difference between someone who is gifted with creative fantasy and somebody sucked into sterile unconscious material.
There are also certain psychological types more adapted or inclined toward artistic expression. Different types -- both introverts and extroverts -- pursue different areas of art, such as fine art or performance art. Many artists are Dionysian temperaments strong on Sensation-Perceiving (SP).
This penchant for acting on impulse contains a seeming paradox, for SPs, living only for immediate action, become the world's great performing artists: the virtuosos of art, entertainment, and adventure. The great painters, instrumentalists, vocalists, dancers, sculptors, photographers, athletes, hunters, racers, gamblers -- all need the skills which come only from excited concentration on an activity for long periods. No other type can mobilize what virtuosity takes: untold hours of continuous action. ...In a sense the SP does not work, for work implies production, completion, and accomplishment. The SP has no such desire for closure, completion, finishing. He is process-oriented. What ensues from his action is mere product, mere outcome, mere result, and is incidental. Thus, the SP's "work" is essentially play.(Kiersey, Bates, 1978)
In Myers-Briggs terms, ISFP is known as "the Artist"; ESFP as "Entertainer"; INFJ as "Author"; INTO as "Architect"; ENTP as "Inventor"; ISTP as "Artisan"; while ESTP is a born "Promoter".
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