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Ancient Stories Of A Jungian Mythology

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A myth is an ancient story that contains ancient forces. Such stories and the powers behind them, which are given voice through their enormous characters, once animated and motivated whole peoples and civilizations. They are anything but quaint.
From a Jungian perspective, the gods are great archetypes, dynamic energies of the human psyche. This hardly minimizes these forces, for the power of the psyche is immense, capable of waging war and wreaking vast destruction, turning humans into voracious monsters -- or conversely, of inspiring immense nobility, creating new worlds, vision, healing, and transformation. Between these poles, the gods dance outrageously all the trickery, manipulation, and self-absorption also at work in the human experience. …show more content…

What a wondrous thought that Zeus, Apollo, and Artemis were once fully at work and play in the world! In India, Krishna, Rama, and Kali are to this day alive and vital, as countless anecdotes of their devotees will attest. Now in winter, an enchantment of wonder, generosity, and brotherhood comes over many of us, welling up from the root springs of Christian cosmology, and its old tale of enormous sacrifice and transcendence.
Telling a myth from any culture is a remarkable and humbling opportunity to not just tell, but to in some way embody the powerful forces and energies it holds. There is a grandness in the stories, a time-transcendence, an essentiality. It’s appropriate to become enchanted in our own telling, and perhaps transported or transformed. Who is to say the gods are not still alive to those who believe them

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