Classic literature addresses archetypes through human history. Primary archetypes continue to pervade every aspect of culture or history, at least to the extent that we can access it. Most repetitive among those primary archetypes are:
• The good/evil axis
• The male/female axis
• The physical/spiritual axis
To some extent, there are other archetypes, but in most cases, they can somehow be subsumed under one of the larger ones. For example, duality associated with “the one and the many”—a recognition that while there are sensory perceptions of separate objects, there is a corresponding conscious perception of a single underlying reality—that perception is really simply a subset of the physical/spiritual axis.
What is interesting in the conversation is those three primal archetypes do not depend upon doctrine, culture, belief system, religion, or whatever. They all emanate from consciousness, an attribute most fully developed in homosapians. However, the archetypes are differentiated in countless forms through countless cultures and civilizations throughout history.
Original writing date: June 23, 2008