Similarly, the character named Virgil is a composite figure based in part on the historical Roman poet named Virgil. Just as the composite character named Beatrice symbolically represent the anima archetype in the human psyche, so too the composite figure named Virgil symbolically represents the Wise Old Man archetype in the human psyche. All men and all women have both the anima archetype and the Wise Old Man archetype in their psyches.
In the Roman Catholic tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary is an anima figure, albeit one based on the historical mother of the historical Jesus. Of course the veneration of Mary in the Roman Catholic tradition includes not only men but also women. Nevertheless, the figure of Mary that is venerated is best understood as an anima figure -- that is, as a figure based on projections of the anima archetype in men's and women's psyches.
For Christians, the mythic figure known as the Christ symbolically represents the Wise Old Man archetype in the human psyche.
As these three divergent examples of anima figures show, there is great variety in portraying anima figures -- including of course a wide range of pagan goddesses. However, in the present essay it is not my purpose to discuss anima figures in greater detail.
Concerning the anima archetype in the human psyche, see Erich Neumann's books THE ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, 1954; orig. German ed., 1949) and THE GREAT MOTHER: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHETYPE, 2nd ed., translated by Ralph Manheim (Princeton University Press, 1963; orig. German ed., 1954).
What Neumann refers to as the Great Mother archetype is what I refer to as the anima archetype in the human psyche.
JUNG AND THE ANIMA ARCHETYPE
Jung went through the proverbial mid-life crisis, just as Dante and Nietzsche did. During Jung's experience of the mid-life crisis, he engaged in self-experimentation using a technique of imagistic meditation that he came to refer to as active imagination. He found his active imagination exercises so helpful that he subsequently encouraged other people to use this form of meditation. His various statements about this technique of imagistic meditation have been collected together in the book JUNG ON ACTIVE IMAGINATION, edited and introduced by Joan Chodorow (Princeton University Press, 1997).
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