[-empyre-] on James Hillman

[Sondra Fraleigh]

James Hillman has just died at age 85. His "Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World" represented a turning point in depth psychology. We have touched upon some of his concerns, see his words below:

"Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi." 

I am reminded that anima is female in Jung's psychology. It doesn't exist, however, without animus. His was a Chinese yin/yang very interesting way of overcoming dualisms through the interpenetrating yin/yang teardrop symbol. I also remember that Jung wrote the forward to the English translation of the Chinese Book of Changes - the I Ching. Something of an Eastern ethos  entered into our world view through Jung and his followers. I feel I have learned so much from them.

Best, Sondra