Madman or Mystic? Re-imagining Relationship to the Sacred

Abstract

Modern men and women have experienced a seemingly unsolvable rift with the sacred, foregoing ancient ways of knowing for rational thought. The collective unconscious, once the domain of our ancestors, has reemerged in a radical return of the repressed, manifesting in disturbing pathologies. But the same traits that make for madness also show up in mystics, and those prophets and heroes who employ creative imagination to re-invoke relationship with the unconscious can avoid being inundated by the influx of unknown primordial forces. As the engaging essays in Diego Pignatelli’s, Primordial Psyche: A Reliving of the Soul of Ancestors, A Jungian and Transpersonal View provide insights into theology, mythology, mysticism, shamanism, and Jungian and transpersonal theory, we are invited to engage with the sacred again.

Key Words:

• archetypal hero
• creativity
• madness
• mystic
• primordial
• psychosis
• schizophrenia