Iconography of the soul

Collective unconscious of mankind made manifest.

The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

There is a library of archetypal images—commonalities in the ways human beings across the world have thought about and represented different phenomena through time. The library is called The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS).¹ It is a synthesis of Jungian psychology and symbolic expression for those drawn by imagery to engage the deeper dimensions of the psyche. ARAS was conceived with the grand idea of making the collective unconscious of mankind manifest.

The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism is a pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history. The collection probes the universality of archetypal themes and provides a testament to the deep and abiding connections that unite the disparate factions of the human family.²

The ARAS website has a library of books³ and articles on symbols.⁴ There is a free online newsletter, ARAS Connections.

ARAS Connections

The image collection is searchable (but membership required).

The collection of images in the ARAS library was begun at Eranos.⁵

Eranos

Eranos⁶ is an intellectual discussion group dedicated to humanistic and religious studies, which has met annually in Moscia (Lago Maggiore), the Collegio Papio and on the Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland since 1933. ⁷

It was founded by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn.⁸ Its goals were to create a “place of encounter and experience” and a “free space for the spirit”, where Eastern and Western thought could meet. Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. was an annual participant.⁹

There is an Eranos Lecture series¹⁰

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn

In 1935, inspired by ancient alchemical images in a lecture by Jung, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, founder of Eranos, crafted a plan to travel to the great libraries of Europe and collect photographs of archetypal images. Her pre-Internet “picture-hunting” provided research and visual material to support Jung’s writing and explorations—making him the first person to search the archive. From these images, Olga also chose themes for each Eranos Lecture series she hosted.

Over the next several years, she gathered and organized, by archetypal content, nearly 6,000 images.In the 1930s and 1940s, Olga's ongoing research in archetypes took her to major libraries in Europe and America, including the Vatican Library, the British Museum, the Morgan Library in New York City, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Her diverse and intensive studies provided her with material for her Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism.

1. The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. In 1956, the collection was gifted to the Warburg Institute of London. Copies were then sent to the Jung Institute in Zürich and the Foundation in New York where the archive was renamed ARAS. Today, ARAS contains more than 18,000 curated, symbolic images and accompanying commentary exploring the universality of archetypal contents. Accessible as a physical and an online resource, the archive bridges the everyday and inner worlds.

2. The Eranos Archive served as an indispensable iconographic base for important studies, such as C. G. Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy (1944), Mircea Eliade’s The Forge and the Crucible—The Origins and Structure of Alchemy (1956), and Erich Neumann’s The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954) and The Great Mother—An Analysis of the Archetype (1955).

3. “Bridging Cultures through Symbols: Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche Joins ARAS (Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism) in “Imagining the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco’s Journey into a New Home and New Neighborhood.” Jung Journal 15, no. 2 (2021): 103–6. See also: Ronnberg, Ami, and Kathleen Martin. The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images. Köln ; London : Taschen. 2010.

4. ARAS Library.

5. Gronning, Torben, Patricia Sohl, and Thomas Singer. “ARAS: Archetypal Symbolism and Images.” Visual Resources 23, no. 3 (2007): 245–67.

6. Eranos Foundation. Website.

7. The name, Eranos, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ἔρανος meaning "a banquet to which the guests bring contributions of food, a no-host dinner."

8. Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos. An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal & Kingston 2013.

9. Wehr, Gerhard., and David M. Weeks. Jung, a Biography. Translated by David M. Weeks. 1st ed. Boston: Shambhala, 1987.

10. Eranos Lectures. Website.