The Great Mother : An Analysis Of The Archetype

The difficulty of describing the structure of an individual archetype arises in part from the fact that the archetype and the symbol erupt on a number of planes, often at the same time. The phenomenology of the workings of the archetype extends from the unconscious instinctive drive of the primitive individual, contained in the group, to the formulation of concepts and beliefs in the philosophical systems of the modern individual. In other words, a vast number of forms, symbols, and images, of views, aspects, and concepts, which exclude one another and overlap, which complement one another and apparently emerge independently of one another, but all of which are connected with one archetype, e.g., that of the Great Mother, pour in on the observer who takes it on himself to describe, or even to understand, what an archetype, or what this archetype, is. Although all these many forms are ultimately "variations on a ground theme," their diversity is so great, the contradictory elements united in them so multifarious, that in addition to speaking of the "eternal presence" of the archetype, we must also speak of its symbolic polyvalence.

The Great Mother : an analysis of the archetype

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