Friday, April 11, 2008

The Organ of Soulful Perception

I have been reading a book by Henri Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, the guy who was so influential in Hillman's Archetypal psychology, besides Jung. It has been difficult-treading, but there are nuggets that have given me a much deeper understanding of what Hillman means by Psyche. This sentence in particular was very helpful,

"Such perception through the Imagination is therefore equivalent to a "dematerialization"; it changes the physical datum impressed upon the senses in a pure mirror, a spiritual transparency; thus it is that the Earth, and the things and beings of the Earth, raised to incandescence, allow the apparition of their Angels (Messengers) to penetrate to the visionary intuition."

I translate that to mean that every material incarnation is clothing worn by Psyche, adorning the Archetypes - and there is an Organ in us, perhaps the Heart, which can dematerialize and see through the clothing into Soul, or the Anima beneath all that is.

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