Archive for the ‘stained-glass window’ tag
Psyche and Image
This is a detail from the Christian Church found in the downtown area of Changzhou. I was drawn by the image in the stained-glass window which was framed within a diamond. Ideas of quaternity, of new life, of mandala came to mind thanks to many years of ruminating over the works of Carl Jung and post-Jungian authors and writers such as Daryl Sharp, James Hollis, James Hall and John Dourley to name but just a few. In the end, it isn’t about what I have read, but what has resonated within me.
For example, this image with the dove at the centre. I think of the dove as heralding new life, such as the dove in the story of Noah and his ark. The dove lets one know that one can return to consciousness, to a new lease on life as much as a child tells us as a collective that our human race can begin again, with hope.
Images evoke response in all humans that can see images. What is seen isn’t necessarily what was drawn or created by the person or persons behind the image. Rather, what is seen is a reflection or a projection of the contents within the viewer. The individual psyche containing both conscious and unconscious contents, acts as a lens when viewing images. This is a natural phenomenon, not some contrived psycho-babble induced phenomenon.
“The psyche is manifold, synonymous with nature, and contains all possibilities. In me is the saint and the murderer, the ascetic and the lecher, the monastic and the bestial. When a figure shows up in the popular culture, it is but the personification and dramatization of the energies of the psyche. As we recall, the energy of the psyche is invisible; so it is only rendered available to consciousness when it is made manifest in image.” (Hollis, Mythologems, p. 36)
How do these images manifest themselves? Through our creations of image. They appear in dreams, in art, in words, in music. And these images show us “self” in various guises such as this dove, a guise of hope and promise, the guise of a child, the guise of an archetype within the psyche made visible.
