A woman dreamt she and her daughter were at a Cosplay convention. Cosplay involves dressing up as characters from films, series, or video games (especially Japanese Anime). As they walked from room to room, the mother served as a boundary between her daughter and other people since her daughter ‘is vulnerable in her woundedness’.  A famous Cosplay figure with a lame foot approached her, handing her his card to give to her daughter, saying it was an invite to apprentice with him. He then gave the mother his card too, saying this is for you too. They were both somewhat frightened by this figure.
 
The woman woke in terror, uncertain whether the dream referred to herself (symbolized by her daughter) or her real daughter with the interest in Cosplay.  This dream may be seen as the call of the wounded healer archetype as represented by the famous figure’s lame foot as well as a direct reference to the wounded child.
 
Kalsched (2013) wrote that the inner image of the “‘child’ often stands symbolically for an affective inner core of the self that is experienced as both innocent and sacred… an image of the human soul” (p. 54).  He further states that “the early story of the trauma survivor is a mythological story before it is a personal one” (p. 5). The Wounded Child archetype holds the painful experiences of your childhood (parental failures, mistreatment, abuse, neglect, and other traumas). These early experiences influence your life in terms of how you respond to your inner world and the world around you, whether with an openness or a defensive closeness.  When trauma occurs in a child’s life the ‘transitional space’, where play and imagination take place, shuts down. The Cosplay convention could be seen as representing the ‘imaginal’ world where we play with the archetypes, trying on their “outfits”.
 
The ‘Wounded Child’ embodies the image of Leonard Cohen’s line “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. Our woundedness becomes the opening for deep learning to take place - compassion, forgiveness and love for ourselves and others. The shadow aspect may manifest as self-pity and a tendency to blame others. 

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A social media post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica
 

Known as “the remover of obstacles” the Hindu god Ganesha is highly recognizable with his elephant head and human body.  As an image of the divine child, Ganesha embodies the promise for enlightenment, self-realization and spiritual wholeness through the integration of opposites. Ganesha represents the unification of cosmic forces: god and goddess, eternal and temporal, infinite and finite, spirit and body, conscious and unconscious.

Ganesha is the child of the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati (a manifestation of Shakti, the eternal partner of Shiva). In some myths Ganesha was born with an elephant head. In others his mother created him from clay (representing earth and the physical plane) to protect her while Shiva was off on his many wanderings. Others have it that Ganesha was created from the dirt from Parvati’s body. Upon Shiva’s return, not knowing each other, Ganesha barred his way and his father beheaded him. After Parvati was heart-broken and enraged, Shiva restored Ganesha’s head using the first thing he could find - an elephant!
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Ganesha is associated with intelligence and wisdom and, especially, his ability to overcome all obstacles. As “remover of obstacles” on our life path, he is revered as the god of beginnings, new projects and learning. He is also the patron of students, writers, travelers, commerce, arts and science. On his shadow side, he is known for his greediness in devouring more than he can digest as manifested by his fondness for sweet foods and his large belly.
 
Ganesha’s elephant head symbolizes wholeness as represented by the Atman (the True Self or immortal soul) or Jung’s archetype of the Self, which is the source of wisdom. This state of wholeness is beyond the grasp of our limited consciousness and we can only aspire to an approximate state of wholeness in our journey of individuation. “Wholeness is never comprised within the compass of the conscious mind-it includes the indefinite and indefinable extent of the unconscious as well. Wholeness, empirically speaking, is therefore of immeasurable extent, older and younger than consciousness and enfolding it in time and space.” (Jung, CW 9i)

Image source: http://www.clearandconnect.com

A post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica 

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The Divine Child is a manifestation of the archetype of the Self. Jung called the child image “a symbol which unites the opposites… capable of the numerous transformations… it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere, or else by the quaternary as another form of wholeness. I have called this wholeness that transcends consciousness the ‘self’” (CW 9i, Para 278).  

The Divine Child represents the emergence of a new, enlivening idea or energy, a renewal and expansion in consciousness. According to Jung “As bringers of light, that is, enlargers of consciousness, they overcome darkness, which is to say that they overcome the earlier unconscious state” (CW 9i, Para 288). The Divine child as a manifestation of the Self calls for an evaluation and restructuring of our current psychic structures, whether internally within an individual or collectively in a culture or humanity as a whole. 

The Divine Child has a special relationship with the Creator.  They have special powers which they bring as gifts to the world. The various stories of the Divine Children often involved miraculous births in unexpected places following prophesies of their anticipated arrival. The Divine Child is frequently birthed into an unwelcoming, hostile and dangerous world – their births evoking resistances from those in power and their lives threatened by the existing rulers. This is reminiscent of the old kings in fairytales who refuse to die and make way for the new. This is symbolic of the old order (old ways of governance and societal structure) resisting necessary change and renewal. 

Jesus Christ and Sri Krishna are some examples of the Divine Child, both having reshaped the spiritual destiny of humanity, symbolizing divine love. Jesus was born in a stable from a virgin mother, while King Herod tried to murder him leading the massacre of the innocents.  Sri Krishna’ uncle also plotted to kill him when it was prophesied the child would be responsible for his death.  

What needs to be birthed in ourselves and what parts of ourselves have to ‘die’ for the new to emerge to enable us to become more conscious? 

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A social media post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica

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The archetype of the child represented in the various aspects of the “child’ is an inner image, symbolic of the possibilities of life. Jung says that the image of the child “represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself.” (CW 9i, Para 289). The archetypal image of the child is a symbol of Soul residing in each of us and which has the capacity to lead us to wholeness.
 
Similar to the Hermaphrodite, the child image represent a ‘third thing’. According to Jung “the solution of the conflict through the union of opposites… From this comes the numinous character of the ‘child’” (CW9i, Para 285). The archetype of the Child is related to future development, potential and the emergence of new ideas within psychic life. Jung says that the Child expresses ‘futurity’ and “The child is potential future” (CW9i, Para 278). The child image is associated with innocence, purity, naivety, curiosity, playfulness, creativity, wonder for and delight in life and the Universe.
 
The child archetype sets up our earliest perceptions of life, safety, security, trust, loyalty, connectedness and family which are embedded in the brain structure.  The core issue of the child archetype is around dependency versus taking responsibility. The child archetype manifests in different ways which we will discuss over the course of the next month. These variants include the divine child, the wounded child, the abandoned or orphaned child, the high-chair tyrant and Puer or Puerella archetypes.
 
The child image does not refer to any specific human child, but encompass the various experiences of all children from different times and places as portrayed in different guises in mythology and fairytales. Jung believed that children are born with a ‘vast inherited memory’. He wrote “parents must realize that they are trees from which the fruit falls in the autumn. Children don’t belong to their parents… In reality they come from a thousand-year-old stem, or rather from many stems, and often they are about as characteristic of their parents as an apple on a fir-tree” (Jung, Letters Vol 1, pages 217-218).
 
Image credit: Frida Kahlo

A social media post I wrote for @jungsouthernafrica 
 
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