This blog holds more information about the archetypes we are exploring for the Tending the Wild & Sacred Circle starting 23rd September 2024 (invite here) – hope it sparks your curiousity! And creativity! What does your heart and soul say?
Peoples separated by time, place and custom have used circles to designate sacred space, to regulate sacred energies and to mark repeating cycles of nature, … the circle has universal appeal.” Susanne F Fincher: The Mandala Workbook
The 12 Archetypal Stages of the Great Round
Each archetypal stage is connected with the seasons in the Southern hemisphere so we will begin with:
- September: Labyrinth
- October: New Beginnings
- November: Target
- December: Dragon fight
- January: Squaring the Circle
- February: Functioning in the World
- March: Crystallisation
- April: Letting Go
- May: Falling Apart
- June: Surrender
- July: Void
- August: Bliss
As Susanne F. Fincher explains, these 12 spiraling archetypal stages describe a continuous cyclical pattern of personal growth and each stage is experienced again and again throughout your life, so that you can better integrate awareness of Self/Soul and fulfil your potential for wholeness. These stages can be useful to archetypally explain the different stages you might move through in a transformational life transition, or they can also be used to explain a stage that one of your parts or part of your external life might go through…
Jung pointed out that circular designs are significant in the process of becoming an authentic individual…his experience led him to believe that mandalas were associated with an inborn urge to grow toward wholeness, defined as the full expression of one’s potential. Jung referred to the Self, as the psychic centre in each of us, the Self holds the pattern for our wholeness and generates the urge for individuation.” the Susanne F Fincher The Mandala Workbook
Jung drew 1000’s of mandalas on his own personal transformational journey and gathered many mandalas drawn by clients (discussed in Bill Plotkin’s Journey of Soul Initiation) and Joan Kellogg then later analysed Jung’s work on Mandalas and identified 12 archetypal stages of human development that link together in a repeating cycle of growth. Her research was called the Archetypal Stages of the Great Round of Mandala and was based on the work of Jung to explore the spiralling path of psychological development. Susanne F Fincher explores these 12 archetypal stages in her book ‘ The Mandala Workbook’ which I highly recommend reading. You can read my blogs mmarising each of the 12 stages of the Great Round starting here. There is more information about Creating Mandalas here also a nice summary here.
Kellogg’s Great Round reflects the dynamic relationship between the ego, the centre of consciousness, and Self, the centre of the whole psyche residing in the unconscious.
The twelve stages of the Great Round are a schema for describing a continuous, cyclical pattern of personal growth…as the spiraling stages are experienced again and again you can better integrate an awareness of the Self, the centre point guiding your process.”
Susanne F Fincher: The Mandala Workbook
Art therapist Joan Kellogg spent much of her life developing a system of understanding the wisdom of the mandala, which she called the “Great Round.” In her theory about patterns, forms, and colors in mandalas, Kellogg integrates parts of Jung’s discoveries and her own research that spanned several decades. In particular, she posited that our attraction to certain shapes and configurations found in mandalas conveys our current physical, emotional, and spiritual condition in the moment. Cathy Malchiodi.
It is really the creative process of making mandalas that helps us revisit the universal experience of the circle and, as Jung found, helps us to experience and reflect on the essence of who we are in the here and now. Cathy Malchiodi.
The Journey of Soul Initiation
Every heroine must endure a period of their own exile if they are to be intitiated into the true medicine of their calling.”
“Undergo symbolic death of the old life in order to be reborn.”
Toko-Pa-Turner Belonging
As we open ourselves to that element of wildness, we discover a quality of our own soul that longs to be embodied in the world, sung to the world, danced, cried and celebrated.
SOULCRAFT: CROSSING INTO THE MYSTERIES OF NATURE AND PSYCHE BY BILL PLOTKIN
The 12 Archetypal stages outlined by Joan Kellogg match up beautifully with the 5 stages outlined in Bill Plotkin’s book Journey of Soul Initiation:
- Preparation is stage 9 Crystallisation,
- Dissolution / Descent is stages: 10. Letting Go, 11. Falling Apart, 12. Surrender
- Soul Encounter is stages: 1. Void, 2. Bliss and 3. Labyrinth
- Metamorphosis is stages: 4. New Beginning, 5. Target, 6. Dragonfight, 7. Squaring the circle
- Enactment is stage 8. Functioning in the World.
This may sound a little complicated, and I’m keen to reassure you that there will be information on each stage throughout the journey and it is really only by diving into and embodying each stage that they begin to make intuitive sense. I have done the Great Round of Mandala at least 6 times and each time I spiral through the stages I learn more…
I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.”
Sue Monk Kidd, Travelling with Pomegranates; A Mother-Daughter Story
We are exploring these archetypes in the Tending the Wild & Sacred Online Circle starting 23rd September 2024 (invite here) – hope it sparks your curiousity! And creativity! What does your heart and soul say?
The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands-all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.”
“When we work the soul, she, the Wild Woman, creates more of herself.”
“to know her is an ongoing process, a lifelong process, and that is why this work is ongoing work, a lifelong work.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes from Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman
February 2022
Fairy tales, myths and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that we can pick out and pick up the path left by the wildish nature. The instruction in story reassures us…leads women deeper, and more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are those of the wild and innate instinctual Self.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes from Women Who Run With Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman
