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SEEING THRU ART
RECLAIM YOUR ANIMALITY AND SOUL
JUNG'S METHODOLOGY TO ENTER EDEN
AN ART-BASED RETURN TO EDEN
HEATHER TAYLOR-ZIMMERMAN
HARMONY
A Return to Eden
Expelled from the harmonious nature of Eden and the re-entry of the soul.
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SYMBOLIC
Iconic Symbolism
“imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art”
GNOSIS
“Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself, or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself” (p. 377)
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~ C Jung
EXPELLED FROM EDEN — Reclaim Your Soul
Living your animal by embodying your soul in your body and a body of art answers the lament of the dead, daemons, and Christ. It also returns the iconic time in the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived in harmony with nature within and without surrounded by what Jung called their brother animals.
In The Red Book Jung (2009) said: “The story of paradise repeats itself, and hence the serpent winds its way up the tree because Adam should be led into temptation” (p. 567). Having had their eyes opened upon eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve knew the difference between good and evil, becoming as the gods—and they were expelled from the harmonious nature of Eden. They were also expelled from aspects of their own animal nature. This section explores the myth behind the archetypal fall and Jung’s art-based methodology to learn to reclaim our animality and soul.
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LIVING YOUR ANIMAL — Brother Animal
The lament of the dead and daemons and the sin of Christ was “they forgot only one thing: they did not live their animal” (Jung, 2009, p. 341). Living your animal is at the heart of Jung’s Red Book and it is critical to his art-based process which he described as a teaching of the heart. In this section we explore what it means to live our animal and how we can do this through art, since “animals were really excluded” in the bible where there was “no artistic appreciation of the animal till the ox and the ass came in” (Jung, 1923, p.21).
Here, we will reimagine what Jung referred to as the exclusion of animals and nature as “living being” and remember that “as a brother of man the animal is a function of man” and the “getting away from the respect for brother animal begets in us that animal,” since “a man is only human when he is accompanied by brother animal” (p. 27).
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BE AWARE — Greek Gnosis is Knowledge
Jung’s soul told him, “Your body remains with you, my beloved, your living body. The enlightened thought comes from the body” and the “way that leads to this knowledge is Hell” (Jung, 2009, p. 485). Deep dive into the embodiment of active imagination that is the way of the embodied heart and the teaching of the soul in The Red Book. Greek gnosis is knowledge, but it is a knowledge that is based on direct knowing.
The visions were “set in a dark earthly depth, evidently an allegorical representation of the inner depths beneath the extension of the bright space of consciousness or the psychic field of vision” and “called for more reflection and interpretation than the other experiences, to which I could not do justice with cogitation” (p. 562).
THE RED BOOK— Iconography of the Soul
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of anything] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is]in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting iniquity” Exodus 20:4
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Jung (1923) believed that images of animals, nature, creative fantasy, and “primitive” or primordial humanity were edited out of the bible and these are themes that run throughout The Red Book’s pages—a book which Jung’s soul described as “the new religion and its proclamation” (Shamdasani, 2009, p. 61). Shamdasani (2013) described the images of the The Red Book as Jung’s iconography and in creating your own book of the soul’s images you will likewise give birth to a new and evolving (living) iconography of the soul.
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"It is not to be thought; it is to be viewed. It is a painting." Jung of his soul
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