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This is an outstanding book from two analysts, members of the Association of Jungian Analysts, but of very different backgrounds that conspire to make a rich foundation. Anne Baring read history and has been an art historian, while Jules Cashford read philosophy and literature, and has translated the Homeric myths from the Greek. The book was first conceived as a chronological account of images of a feminine god. It soon became apparent to the authors that this objective had become overtaken by a wider, more ambitious idea: an investigation into why such images have become lost and where such images have gone. By then the book had become a history of western religions and of the development of consciousness.
One is made to sit up from the first paragraph of the preface. Two ideas are proposed. First, images of a goddess are so widespread that it seems there must be continuous propagation and evolution of them through history, from the evidence of archaeology, literature, and art. Second, these images have been created out of the human unconscious. A key idea is an eruption of an idea of opposites during the movement away from goddess images in the bronze age, with concurrent splitting and projection into male and female, spirit and body, with maleness and spirit as higher, femaleness and nature as lower.
The reader at once becomes entranced by what turns out to be an account of the development of images of numen. Numen, say the authors, means a nod - a nod from the gods. Numen is characteristic of archetypes, but some have lost their deity although retaining numinosity. In Christian and Jewish religion only the archetypal image of male god has retained godhead. According to Jung the god-image is not invented, it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously. The unconscious god-image alters the state of consciousness, just as the latter can modify the god-image once it has become conscious. God-image can be feminine, masculine or both together, according to the p