The psychology of the anima & animus

In our modern times, the average person lives the life of a sleepwalker. Half awake yet half asleep. Lifelessly drifting through the motions of mundane existence, feeling as if this isn’t really it, and that something deeper, more profound must be around the corner.

Perhaps you know this feeling all too well.

Absorbing the latest content craze or productivity hack, you may convince yourself the key to escaping your mundane existence is through leaving your job, moving country or reorganising your to-do list. Maybe you try these things with great enthusiasm until you realise it’s still not it. Something is missing.

But, you continue in your feeling of haziness until you fall in love. And suddenly all your senses return, heightened, vibrant and full of energy. Perhaps you feel the love of close connection which blossoms into a relationship or a deep infatuation with a passerby on the street. Whatever the case, you lose yourself in the whirlwind of another world, that of another person, and suddenly you ascend to a higher reality you didn’t think was possible. Now your plans to escape your country are met with the gratifying conclusion that your reality exists here, with this other person.

In the grips of this experience, we haven’t lost ourselves as some might say. In fact, we’ve become more alive.

But you needn’t wait to fall in love in order to feel this jolt of vibrant life force. In fact, there exist blueprints within you, archetypes of your unconscious, that when unlocked, will bring you wholeness, security and exhilaration like you’ve never felt before. If you can unlock the key to these blueprints, there are no limits as to the wholeness you will achieve. You can become a more integrated human being, which is so rare nowadays it almost appears god-like.

The unifying experience with another through the bonds of love awakens us to the reality of “the inner other”. The inner counterpart to ourselves which, up until the experience, we’ve done well to ignore. In Jungian psychology, this inner other for a man is the anima (soul/divine feminine) and for a woman it is the animus (logos/divine masculine).

The anima and animus are Jungian archetypes. Archetypes are primordial psychic energies which exist in the collective unconscious we all share as humans and they have existed since the beginning of mankind. Archetypes work upon us like a magnet below a sheet of paper. When pieces of metal are placed upon the paper, the magnet guides them to the direction of its choosing. We could refer to these realities as God’s acting upon our consciousness without our awareness.

To refer to these realities as Gods, as the ancient world rightly did, places them in a central position in the psyche, which they take up regardless of whether we consciously realise it or not.

In our modern times, metaphysical ideas and images, such as archetypes of the divine masculine and feminine, seem to have been forgotten, cast aside and denied in question of their utility. What benefit is it for man to busy himself with the metaphysical when there is true work to be done in the real world?

“The world - so far as it has not completely turned its back on tradition - has long ago stopped wanting to hear a “message”, it would rather be told what the message means.” Carl Jung

Our modern metaphysical symbols, devoid of their divine element and mythological content, evoke no meaning. And we don’t have to look far to see the widespread effect this is having on modern society; with boy and girl psychology rampant among the masses and the wounded masculine and feminine in full show.

The wounded masculine of today appears as the hyper-masculine male obsessed with cars, the resentful man fuelled with rage towards women because of their apparent ‘shallowness’ and the soft mummy’s boy, too cowardly to expose himself to the world.

Modern man has rejected the divine feminine, and is suffering the consequences.

“It is as if their internal world is sterile and barren, and they become desperate for an external compensation to defend against being aware of this state of mature alienation.”  Robert Tyminski

The wounded feminine is in no short supply either with the militant feminists animating their masculine, promiscuous teens having loveless one night stands, guarding the unleashing of their love because they’ve been hurt before and the woman stood perplexed after a date wondering why most men have the leadership skills of a 3 year old.

Modern man hears the call to be hyper masculine, yet feels a deep yearning for inner connection and stillness. The modern woman feels a pressure to animate her rationality but feels an inner desire for love and surrender. Masculine and feminine compensate for the other and it is a futile task to believe you can channel one energy for too long. Hence an animated masculinity on the side of the man is sure to promote just as deep a feminine side, and vice versa, because:

“Their power {anima/animus} grows in proportion to the degree that they remain unconscious.” - Carl Jung

And

“Those who do not see them are in their hands, just as a typhus epidemic flourishes best when its source is undiscovered.” - Carl Jung

Jung said if a man looked into his inner house long enough, what he would find might surprise him. He would find a woman. In ancient cultures, each community would have a male or female shaman. The role of the shaman was to communicate with the spirit world. Male shamans would have an inner wife who they would talk to and female shamans would have an inner husband they would consult with. Both experienced as a real person within.

In other ancient cultures - Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Egyptian - original humans were believed to be male and female. But this made them so powerful even the gods feared them and split them in half.

Mythological stories capture the divine pairing of such archetypes in the figures of Zeus and Hera, Shiva and Shakti. The divine combination of masculine and feminine.

In Christianity the divine syzygy (a pair of connected or corresponding things) is Christ and his bride the church. For the scripture says, “God made man male and female; the male is Christ, the female is the church.” - Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians xiv, 2 Trans. By Lake, 1 p.151

So it’s this reality of the inner other, our counter side, be it masculine or feminine, that this video is going to explore so that we can achieve wholeness within the psyche, instead of unstable shifts from each polar opposite. It is my hope that this video will unlock the hidden blueprints within you.

However, be warned. Awakening to such inner realities is not easy. In fact, Carl Jung said it is much easier to recognise and integrate our shadow, all the negative qualities about ourselves that we repress, than the anima or animus. After all, one needs only a Sunday sermon, to read a history book or visit the tax collector to realise we aren’t made of pure gold. But the anima and animus however, are tricky to awaken to because of the intellectual and cultural difficulties which get in the way, not to mention our inability to deal with the energy such archetypes evoke when we invite them to consciousness.

“And on top of all this there arises a profound doubt as to whether one is not meddling too much with nature’s business by prodding into consciousness things which it would have been better to leave asleep.” Carl Jung

The images of the divine masculine and feminine in their wholeness also fall out of the realm of usual experience and are thus perceived as unpopular merely because they are unfamiliar.

“The consequence is that they mobilise prejudice and become taboo like everything else that is unexpected.” Carl Jung

However, looking at the representation of the divine masculine and divine feminine in their wholeness, we are going to unlock these energies in the unconscious of the psyche so that their power can be felt, in unity, wholeness and strength. And we are going to further learn how to handle such energies as they arise.

Because, as Jung says:

“It is, in fact, one of the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths and getting stuck in blind alleys.”

The Divine feminine:

The divine feminine exists in the psyche as the anima which is characterised by the connective and loving quality of eros (which comes from Eros the Greek god of love). In contrast to the masculine characteristic of logos, through eros, the anima is the governing spirit of connectedness, love and rejuvenation.

These qualities are a reflection of the feminine’s true nature “while their logos is often only a regrettable accident.”

The word anima comes from the Latin word which means “soul”, also “breath” “life” “air”. Jung explained that anima is somewhat like a butterfly, “which reels drunkenly from flower to flower and lives on honey and love.” The woman feeling the wonder of love's bliss, the mother soothing her anxious child, the lady dancing as she walks with her husband through the forest and the compassionate nurse attending to each patient empathically are all women channelling their divine femininity.

Whenever the image of the divine feminine appears in dreams she takes on personified form - possessing all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. And the divine feminine embodies the feminine in its wholeness. Complete, shadow and all.  

In the East, anima is referred to as ‘the spinning woman’ who creates Maya (illusion) through her dancing.

Through the energy of the feminine we feel an enticing pull to embrace the present moment, which envelops us in warmth and seems to force happiness on us. It is the force of life, and for someone who feels out of luck or that life isn’t giving him what he wants is merely neglecting his relationship to the feminine.

“{for a man} to feel stranded on {his} own masculine island and weariness and hunger, it is because {he} is {refusing} to embrace the energy and women around him.” David Deida

The divine feminine, in her wholeness, is a true embodiment of love, passion, feeling, nature, destruction and rejuvenation.

One can best see the effect a woman channelling the loving element of the divine feminine can have on a man in Holderin’s “hymn to liberty”:

Since her arm out of the dust has raised me,

Beats my heart so boldly and serene;

And my cheek still tingles with her kisses,

Flushed and glowing where her lips have been.

Every word she utters, but her magic

Rises new-created, without flaw;

Hearken to the tidings of my goddess,

Hearken to the Sovereign, and adore!

The feminine is at its best when it awakens one to their intuition instead of mere intellect.

“Because one too occupied with their intellectual value will find his feeling confronting him like an enemy in the guise of the anima.” - Carl Jung

In a mediaeval sense, the King, believed to be a mortal embodiment of the divine, would promise union of the land and fertility. But this wouldn’t be possible without his union with the divine queen. Brought together in their mature masculinity and femininity, they bring prosperity, fertility, growth and order.

The divine feminine is the unconscious in a man. To explain this further, it’s necessary we look at Jung’s interpretation of the holy trinity in Christianity and the symbolic representation of colours.

In the holy trinity there exist three colours of red, green and golden. Golden for the father, red for the son as he shed his blood and green for the Holy Spirit. But, as Jung highlighted, why couldn’t there be a fourth colour? Why was blue left out? For blue, being the colour of the virgin's celestial cloak, represents height and depth and could represent the sky above and the sea below (both symbols of the unconscious and feminine element), in keeping with the idea that the woman (anima) is the height and depth of a man.

In ancient alchemical motifs, the king in heaven sits on a golden throne surrounded by an even brighter golden light; shining forth order, prosperity and logos. But what is heaven without Mother Earth? And how can a man reach fulfilment if the queen does not intercede for his black soul? (To intercede meaning = to act between parties to reconcile differences) hence the queen sits next to him on a circular throne made of earth-brown crystal, to balance the masculine.

It’s considered that in this heavenly image of pure gold, the queen sits beside the king to intercede for the sinners; embodying the compassionate, caring, forgiving aspect of the feminine.

The woman understands the darkness as she has taken her throne which is the earth itself. And she sits on this throne in heaven - again a reconciling of opposites; that of the chaotic earthly word and the harmonious order of heaven. So the woman adds the missing blue to the gold, red and green and thus completes a harmonious whole. And in doing so, she brings the earth with her.

All one has to do is watch a modern remake of an old mythological story such as King Arthur, lord of the rings or clash of the titans to see that the masculine hero (sometimes demi-god) first denies his god given strength and destiny. He continues to reject it and asks: how am I destined for greatness? I’m just a poor country boy? Born into a brothel.

It isn’t until the divine feminine (the mage for King Arthur, Arwen for Aragorn, lady Galadriel for Frodo or Aphrodite for Persius) intercedes the hero’s journey and awakens him to his power. Forcing it upon him even. Sometimes with a mere look of anger as if to say: “you’re good. But you’re not everything you could be, do better.” With the utmost love in her heart for she can see his god given nature.

In the presence of the divine feminine the divine masculine is called upon, initiated out of the man to bring order to the feminine chaos and to rise to the challenge of his destiny which could kill him. But it’s better to follow your destiny than to rot in comfort.

“Because she is his greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he has it in him she will receive it.” - Carl Jung

But, this isn’t always the case, because sometimes without her realising it, the shadow side of the feminine can wield her Maya to stagnate the hero, enveloping him into a world of comfort and false promise. And if he heeds the call to return to the love of the mother, she can work her poison.

In the psyche of the feminine there exist numerous shadow archetypes such as the witch, dark maiden, crone and the mad woman.

But 3 in particular reign most common:

The wrathful goddess, the seductress and the dark mother.

The wrathful goddess embodies the critical, vengeful and destructive element of the feminine. This is best depicted through the Hindu goddess Kali who is shown to be dancing upon her husband Shiva, with her long devilish tongue sticking out whilst holding a scythe and a severed man’s head in her hand.

Kali represents darkness, destruction and death. Embodying the destructive element of Mother Nature itself as well as the preservation of it.

Possessed by the wrathful goddess archetype, a woman cares not for the platitudes and niceties of a man. She seeks to destroy all foundations in which things stand upon. In her presence, her temperature boils into volatility and indifference. Sever his head, she demands, he deserves it.

We can see the depiction of the wrathful goddess in modern society in the woman who sees men as nothing but dirt on the bottom of her shoe. Who needs men? She reasons. Possessed by her animus.

The second archetype, the seductress, is manipulative by way of her appearance. Overtly sexual or misleading, she dances around a man, drawing him closer, wanting desperately to distract him from his mission or just for her own amusement.

This archetype is best captured by the sirens in Greek mythology. Sirens were believed to be mermaids who would distract sailors with their beauty and soothing voices through songs. They would lead sailors to the depths of the oceans in the promise of love but instead drown them.

We can see the seductress at play in modern times with the rise of sex work among young women, devoid of love, feeling and connection, only in pursuit of money, status and power.

The seductress can become animated if a woman begins to drift from wholeness and instead becomes hyper-feminine. As Robert Greene explains:

“The hyper feminine woman will often be concealing a great deal of repressed anger and resentment at the role she has been forced to play. Her seductive, girlish behaviour with men is actually a ploy for power, to tease, entrap, and hurt the target. Her masculine side will leak out in passive-aggressive behaviour, attempts to dominate people in relationships in underhanded ways. Underneath the sweet, deferential facade, she can be quite wilful and highly judgemental of others. Her wilfulness, always under the surface, will come out in rather irrational stubbornness in petty matters.”

The final archetype, the dark mother, has two aspects; the withdrawn mother and the devouring mother.

The withdrawn mother is cold, bitter, distant and sees love as an unnecessary burden. Cut off from the loving feminine energy of eros, she is best represented as the evil step-mother in the fairytale Hansel and Gretel.

Because they are a poor family, the evil step-mother convinces the father they must lead the children into the woods and abandon them in order to save money. Hansel overhears this conversation and decides to prepare by dropping stones along the path so he and his sister can find their way back. But the step mother locks Hansel in his room the night before they leave so he is unable to collect his stones.

A woman possessed by the withdrawn mother archetype must realise that where there is death there is also the opportunity for life. And where there is suffering there is kindness.

The devouring mother, on the other hand, is driven to create a constant society of others from fear of being alone. She seeks to serve others, providing for their every need so that they will remain forever loyal and never leave her side.

In the same fairy tale, the witch who lives in a house of gingerbread is a perfect representation of this. Hansel and Gretel, attempting to find their way home, unexpectedly find a gingerbread house. Fascinated, they begin eating parts of the house until the door opens. It's a haggard, sweet looking old woman with a cat. She deceitfully lures them into her home and sneakily leads Hansel into a cage and locks him in it.

Gretel is then ordered to clean the house whilst the witch feeds Hansel to fatten him up and then eat him. The devouring mother may have good intentions but through her constant care of others becomes obsessive, controlling and extreme. The loyalty she instils in her son, for example, stands to be a direct impediment to the son’s progression, the necessary adventure he needs to embark on in order to initiate his divine masculine, and she knows this. So she blinds him further and thus the mythological motif of oedipus is born

Cut off from the life-giving fluency of eros, a woman must animate her divine femininity by way of reconnecting to the images she has lost; that of the goddess. Activities such as walking in nature, art, laughter, social presence with others, freedom, surrender, dancing, trusting, listening and bodily touch are all ways to awaken the feminine. And one would do well to remember that the divine feminine is within each woman, one need only look:

“Feel them not merely as friends, coworkers, or sisters, but as walking blessings of energy. Receive their anger as a jolt of awakening energy. Receive their sexiness as a blessing of enlivenment. Receive their happiness, even when you are depressed, as a light shower of refreshment. Open your breath and body and fully receive each woman’s unique flavour of feminine energy, so your day becomes a feast of plenty. You need not show the women you meet throughout the day that you are doing anything special at all. Continue to receive them in whatever way is appropriate for the situation. But through it all, relax and enjoy the bountifulness of feminine energy that surrounds you, both in the form of human women and in the form of the moment together.” David Deida

Feminine ways of thinking involve seeing the relation of the parts to the whole. And feminine ways of action involve first withdrawing from the situation to then ponder deeply. Almost letting the enemy tire themselves out, avoiding the costs of war. This form of action is best captured in the Taoist idea of wu wei; effortless action.

A woman embodying her divine feminine would think best about how her colleagues work together, and how greater harmony can be achieved within the group. She is moved by chaos and embodies resonance.

But the divine feminine alone cannot integrate into fullness. For that, the anima needs its counterpart, the animus. The divine masculine.

Divine masculine:

Attuned to his highest spirit, the divine masculine is a provider, protector, blesser and problem solver who minimises pain and maximises praise and security.

In Jung’s words:

“When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction.”

But...

“The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love.” Carl Jung

In full light of his mature King energy, the mortal king, acting as a vessel for the divine king's energy, codifies laws and passes them onto his nation. The king is the most important of all masculine archetypes, and what lies outside his vision is dark, dangerous and chaotic. He brings reasoning, calm, life force, joy, the calming of chaotic and out of control emotion, maintenance and balance. The dad who spends time with his children, the boyfriend who supports his girlfriend’s decision to change her career, the ceo who blesses the junior executive’s talent with a promotion, and the man who is the calmest person in the room while all others lose their heads are all men channelling their divine king energy.

“It looks upon the world with a firm but kindly eye. It sees others in all their weakness and in all their talent and worth. It honors them and promotes them. It guides them and nurtures them toward their own fullness of being. It is not envious, because it is secure, as the King, in its own worth. It rewards and encourages creativity in us and in others.” Robert Moore

The story of Canaanite Baal depicts the restorative aspect of the divine masculine, as after slaying the twin monsters of chaos and death, Yamm and Mot, and because he loved the earth, he ordered the chaotic waters into rainfall and streams.  

Governed by his core navigating spirit, logos, which reflects his principle of reason and instilling order, the divine masculine’s consciousness is characterised through his power of cognition and discrimination.

The early masculine spirit on the path of development from boyhood to manhood embodies the hero, perhaps half man half god as in the case of the Greek hero Perseus. Early in his development, a man is often awakened to the cold torments of the earthly world with all its challenges, trials and dull meaninglessness.

In light of this a man can languidly regress into the remembrance of warmth his mother offers him as a gift without having to heed the necessary call to transition from boyhood to manhood.

“What, after all, has commonplace reality to offer, with its registry offices, pay envelopes, and monthly rent, that could outweigh the mystic awe of the hieros gamos?” Carl Jung

Or, awakening to the inner call to embody his divine masculine spirit, the man can embrace the cruel cold nature of the world as but a challenge to his masculinity. Such a response would call upon his courage and resolution to embrace the world with every part of himself exposed. Such begins his embodiment of his true masculine essence. Through trial, tribulation, initiation and descent into darkness, usually with the guidance of the wise old man, the boy becomes the blacksmith of his destiny and himself as the material.

But, since the beginning, and already knowing the reality of this danger, the man’s mother (embodiment of the divine feminine) has instilled in him the virtues of loyalty, devotion and faithfulness to protect him from the perils of moral despair and degradation which awaits him as he embarks on the hero’s journey.

Hence, in order to ascend closer to the image of divine masculinity, a man, through his power of logos, must develop the capacity to have a faithless eros (love) towards his mother and the all encompassing, soothing nature of the divine feminine. He must be able to leave the mother through his own choosing.

One can see this motif of the appealing lure into the feminine and the desire to forgo mission in the image of the land of the fairies in Celtic mythology. There exists in Celtic mythology a land of great promise, blossoming with nature, light and solace. Fairies grace this other world that men of the earthly world sometimes stumble across through a portal in the woods. However, although the fairies are well intentioned, the hero discovers there is another side to it. Each day spent in this other world corresponds to one year of time passing in the real world. If one goes so far as to spend 3 years in this other world, away with the fairies, it results in 300 years of time passing in the real world. And one would return to find their family dead and the world in a much different state than how they left it.

So why heed the call into darkness when one can stay in paradise in the protection of the feminine?

Because, the masculine knows, the call to excellence is too strong. He can feel it through his eros developed through his connection to his mother. Yet, perhaps through the guidance of the shaman, he severs the ties of comfort so his boy ego can die. And the divine feminine understands the necessity of such a mission because she understands the divine masculine must give nothing less than his best to her and the universe. For anything less than his best is disservice.

In modern times, the masculinity message resounds with a coherent theme; man is alone in this cold world and must create his own value. No one is coming to do it for him.

However, modern man is likely to be found wanting in his search for such a ritualistic initiation into manhood. For modern society has severed the tie to ritual completely. Young men are desperately wanting to be blessed and seen by the king. But where are the modern kings to be found?

So for a man to truly ascend to greatness he mustn’t lament this reality but instead let it mould him. If he is to embody his divine masculinity then he must understand; his vocation will come but he might need to labour in the stone quarry alone to carve the bedrock of foundation for his vocation to be based upon. And perhaps this carving must occur with his own hands.

Forgoing innocence, the man learns his mystery by pushing against his infantile tendencies and timidity and instead engages in an audacious act of self development. A man’s treasure can often manifest itself through a vision or a dream, often brought about by intense solitude, but this dream keeps one thing certain; the promise of excellence and his inner gold, but with seven headed demons which need to be sleighed along the way. Guided by the divine masculine, man doesn’t turn away from the necessary tasks of life which are unthankful. He embraces them, sword in hand. Ready to travel North and face all.

Embodying the mature divine masculine, a man is a defender of his intuition and an unflinching lover. The divine masculine doesn’t need money, work, love, cars, status, achievement, because he is already full. But he can, if he chooses, engage in these things anyway in order to give his divine gifts to the world through service.

The mature masculine psyche consists of a balance between all four archetypes and their shadow poles: the king, warrior, magician and lover.

The shadow masculine:

Drifting from balance, however, the hyper-masculine man’s qualities leak out in caricatured form.

Possessed with masculinity at the expense of his anima, a man will be secretly obsessed with clothes and his looks. He will take an unusual interest in people’s appearances, even other men, and make snippy judgements about them.

For example, the American president Richard Nixon often portrayed a macho front whilst constantly critiquing his colleagues in the White House and the colour of suits they wore.

“The hyper masculine man will express strong opinions about cars, technology, or politics that are not based on real knowledge, and when called on this, he will become rather hysterical in his defence, throw a tantrum, or pout. He is always trying to contain his emotions, but they can often have a life of their own. For instance, without wanting to, he will suddenly become quite sentimental.” - Robert Greene

The archetypal shadows of the masculine psyche include; the know it all trickster, the coward, the detached manipulator, the sadist, masochist, the addicted lover, the dreamer, the mama's boy and the tyrant.

With the modern masculinity message initiating men into extreme masculinity it appears the two most rampant shadow archetypes today are the detached manipulator and the coward.

Operating in full flow of his logos, savagely cutoff from his eros, the detached manipulator sees the world as a play-thing, a poor victim he can bend to his will. Women are nothing but stepping stones to status, work is nothing more than a means for money and his mind is nothing further than a tool to use to get what he wants. Such a man convinces himself he has no time for emotions, until one day the anima, unbeknownst to him, ejects her poison of love until he breaks down in the embrace of the feminine. For better or for worse.

“The more civilised, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensations can be set to work.” - Carl Jung

The coward, the negative pole of the hero archetype, exudes no effort to heed the call to heroism for he would rather stay drugged, hazy and docile in the feminine grip of comfort.

The average man is fat, poor and unambitious. The average man is a coward, denying his divine masculinity and potential until one day, to his shock, life comes knocking. Or he musters the courage to craft the door himself, from his sheer hands.

The divine masculine is mature, generative, restorative and nurturing. One could imagine the image of the Hindu God Shiva in a state of meditation, calm, serene, still. But when called upon to act, he can wreak havoc in an instant.

Masculine styles of thinking involve taking the whole apart and dissecting how each part works. Masculine styles of action involve identifying a clear goal, entering action with boldness and remaining headstrong in pursuit of that goal, always on the offensive and as a defender of his own intuition.

Conclusion:

To conclude, no man or woman can exist without the complimentary opposites of anima and animus. It is also perilous of modern society to promote animation of one of them at the complete expense of the other.

No man can fully shun his feminine side, nor can any woman fully rid herself of her masculine side. Doing so will only cause a man’s anima and a woman’s animus to stir inside with a brewing resentment until it forces itself against the person’s will into the light of consciousness.

The word ‘complimentary’ is best used when describing anima and animus because as we have seen, it is the role of the divine masculine to reawaken the feminine to eros when she is ridden by the animus, stubborn and not willing to bend. And it is the role of the divine feminine to awaken the masculine to his logos if he is not restoring order to the kingdom.

Channelling her masculine side a woman can self-reflect and use that instruction to advance forward. Channelling his feminine side a man awakens to the present moment and dances freely in his celebration.

Wholeness begins when one recognises the reality of the divine masculine and feminine are not outside of the individual, but inside.

“Just as the anima becomes, through integration, the eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a logos; and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness, the animus gives to woman’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation and self-knowledge.” - Carl Jung

Finally, awakening to these ideas, one may begin projecting their unconscious images of the divine feminine or the divine masculine onto earthly people. Until they are met with betrayal, indifference and annoyance at the reality that the earthly person will miss the mark to live up to a godly image.

So you could understand how desirable it is to dissolve these projections. But because of the sheer intellectual and moral effort required to do so, it’s almost like expecting the average respectable citizen to recognise himself as a criminal.

Therefore, to actualise this knowledge, your task is threefold:

1.) Recognise the anima / animus in others

2.) Recognise your projections and withdraw them after you’ve connected with someone

- Perhaps then you realise you’re not compatible or the opposite

- Find their faults charming

3,) Identify and develop your underdeveloped parts

“As long as the inner feminine or masculine is denied, the outer distance will only grow. When we bridge this distance from within, our attitude toward the opposite sex changes as well. We feel a deeper connection. We can talk and relate to them as if relating to parts of ourselves.” - Robert Greene

For further research, I would recommend these books:

Divine feminine:

Blue truth (David Deida)

Who fears death? (Nnedi Okorafor)

Divine masculine:

The way of the superior man

Both:

Aion (Carl Jung)

Thank you for reading.