MARIA TAVERAS, LCSW
“The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all,” Jung says, “consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and shaping that image into the finished work.” What Jung means by the creative process is the same as the technique of active imagination, which is a dialogue between the ego and the unconscious – or, more specifically, between the ego and the images that emerge from the unconscious. In active imagination, an image is unconsciously activated, that image is actively engaged by the ego, and the image is elaborated and shaped.
Emergence of the Winged-Serpent
(Bonded Bronze, 24” x 8” x 8”, 2006)
Cast by SCULPTURE HOUSE CASTING LIC, NEW YORK
In an alchemical engraving there appears a tree in the form of a woman. Jung calls this tree "Mercury as virgin." Under this form, it is said, the tree implies the union of opposites. The tree, it is suggested, can serve as a representation of the Virgin Mary. The goddesses of Egyptian mythology: Isis, Nut and Hathor were always considered tree goddesses. It was common to project the individuation process in the image of the tree. The theophany of a goddess, according to Mircea Eliade, in the center of a sacred tree, expresses a religious intuition upon reuniting the nutritive element of the goddess with the power of the orientation of the tree: They mean that here is a "Center of the world", that here is the source of life, youth and immortality. The trees signify the universe in endless regeneration....at the heart of the universe there is always a tree. . . . The Great Goddess personifies the inexhaustible source of creation, the ultimate basis of all reality. She is simply the expression, in myth, of this primeval intuition that sacredness, life and immortality that are situate in a "center". The lower part of the tree has been valued as a portal of divine revelation. By virtue of this, it is the place beloved for theophanies. Paracelsus conceived the tree as a woman: she is the tree which grows from the earth, and the child is like the fruit that is born of the tree. . .