ARAS - Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism

It's Archetypal Friday and our symbol for this week is ziggurat.

The ziggurat forms a stairway between heaven and earth. Unlike an Egyptian pyramid, the Mesopotamian ziggurat was a temple rather than a tomb. This form was in use by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Elamites, and Babylonians over thousands of years. The top of the ziggurat was a place of ritual, being believed to be the residence of a city's patron god and were only accessible to the priests who attended to the god, with their proximity to this great power being the source of the priest class's earthly power. It is theorized that ziggurats were the inspiration for the biblical Tower of Babel, an enormous architectural work reaching into the heavens that was the product of a unified human race; this project leads to ruin as God thwarts the project for its by making human beings language unintelligible to one another, scattering them across the world speaking in different tongues. The Sumerian myth Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta contains within its wider story some remarkable similarities and differences with the biblical tale, with Enmerkar building a giant ziggurat and demanding tribute from the Lord of Aratta, as Enmerkar is in need of resources that are not present in his own country. Enmerkar also uses an incantation to Enki that will make it so all nations will speak in the same tongue for the purpose of communicating with neighbor. Both of these tales speak to the awareness of how these great projects were only possible through collaboration and communication, even if the consequences of these ambitious projects could be disastrous.

Image: "THE ZIGGURAT OF AQAR QUF: Very steep slope, ca. 1 in 10; H. ca. 57 meters.
The only great monument remaining from about four centuries of Kassite rule; ca.
1400 в.с."

Coming up this month, we are very happy to announce the ARAS Patreon Meetup for June with longtime friend of ARAS, Chantal Lee. Chantal Lee is a librarian in the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs at The New York Public Library, serving out of the Art & Architecture Collection and the Picture Collection. She formerly co-directed Olympia, an art gallery in the Lower East Side. Chantal curated our Ekphrazein series, which featured poetry readings, music, and dance in relation to symbolic prompts. She continues to be a cherished part of the ARAS community. Chantal will speak about her history and enthusiasm for ARAS, her own research interests, and more. Come join us at 7PM on Thursday, June 19th for this short talk, an unveiling of the newest ARAS quarterly mailer, and more!

To join us for Chantal's discussion of her work and research interests, sign up for the ARAS Patreon in the link below and mark you calendar for 7PM EST on Thursday, June 19th. https://www.patreon.com/cw/ARASArchive

We hope to see you there!

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Robert Frost

Crossroads, the intersection where disparate paths converge, has been viewed as a locus of extreme potency able to contain and synthesize opposites flowing into one another. At the crossroads one confronts the necessity of choice and the immensity of fate. Crossroads is a matrix of union, and also of separating, parting, splitting, of meeting and farewell (CW 5:477). Ancient travelers offered sacrifices at a crossroads in recognition of the invisible agencies that affect life’s transitions. Oedipus laments, Oh three roads, dark ravine, woodland and way/where three roads met: you, drinking my father’s blood,/my own blood, spilled by my own hand: can you remember the unspeakable things I did there, and the things I went on from there to do? (Sophocles, 72).

In ancient Greece, a junction of three ways was dedicated to Hecate. The marker of three faces looking in three directions signified her dominion of the three realms of the physical world—sea, sky and earth. Here, on the branching roads, the bodies of executed criminals where thrown (CW 5:477), for the crossroads was an opening to the underworld, of which Hecate was mistress. Hermes, too, was honored, especially at quadratic crossroads. Like Hecate, he is psychopomp, guiding the spirits of the dead to the underworld. Both are emblematic travelers of the highways. Hecate arrives at the doorways of those laboring toward birth, a midwife mediating that crossroads of becoming or obstruction. Hermes, with his winged feet, his mantle and staff, is a “skilled highwayman, deceiver and bandit,” the spirit of the unconscious, as of the night, “which can terrify the solitary man and lead him astray, can also be his friend, his helper, his counselor” (Kerenyi, 56,95).

A crossroads represents the possibility of many ways and also commitment to the individual path. Legendarily, the crossroads is where a pact with the devil is made, suggesting a juncture where consciousness must regard the unconscious, and be accountable to the whole self in all its Luciferian multiplicity and ambivalence. At the Vodou altar, Legba must be invoked first as he is lord of the gate between the material and spirit worlds, where “mortals may contact les invisibles…” (Galembo, 4).

Galembo, Phyllis. Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti. Berkeley, 1998.
Kerenyi, Karl, Hermes: Guide of Souls. Putnam, CN, 1995.
Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle. Tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. NY, 1949.
Stevens, Anthony. Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind. Princeton, 1998.

Images from the ARAS Archive:
TOP - A Crossing Place by Richard Long (1983). This floor sculpture made of stones evokes the mystery of the crossroads where we both meet and part ways.
BOTTOM LEFT - Robert Johnson: Devil at the Crossroads
BOTTOM RIGHT - Kalfou, the Vodou Spirit of the Crossroads. Ounfo (Vodou temple) of Oungan (Vodou priest) Guy Bata in Leogane, Haiti.

We are in the final week of our ARAS Education Kickstarter, ensuring that our summer arts program is free and accessible to all NYC teens! We are almost to our deadline and every dollar counts! If we do not meet our $6,000 goal by Monday, May 25th, all donations will be refunded!!

In addition to the great rewards that we are offering donors which you can see on our kickstarter page, we have a special announcement: Anyone who donates over $20 between now and 3:30pm EST on May 21st will be entered to win A LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP TO ARAS ONLINE! Memberships to our online archive are $100/year (or $25/year for students)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aras/aras-teens-summer-art-program

Our kickstarter campaign has only eleven more days left and we still have a ways to go before we reach our goal of $6,000. If you are looking for a pitch for why this program is so important and why it must be offered free of charge for the teens of New York City, consider these reasons to support. This program has mean so much to the teens who have participated over the past twelve years of its existence. It in fact has had such a profound effect on the teens who participate that the person writing this post and sharing all of ARAS's images with you all is himself a former participant from its first iteration back in 2014! Any amount you donate will be going directly into making sure this magical program will always be free for any teen who wants to participate. However much you are able to give will be making a huge difference in the lives of young people!

Here is a link to the kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aras/aras-teens-summer-art-program

Thank you!!

We only have 2 more weeks to make the ARAS Teens summer program a reality. Thank you so much for supporting our Kickstarter fundraising campaign! It is greatly appreciated by all of us here at ARAS!

Raffle Alert!! For the next 24 hours, anyone who donates over $20 will be entered to win a 60-minute Tarot Reading with Middle Sister Tarot! We are so excited to be able to offer this reward. Donate before Tuesday, May 12th at 3pm EST to enter.

Thank you!
ARAS

Welcome to ARAS | ARAS Welcome to ARAS The Archive for Research in Archetypal SymbolismA pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history. Archive Search Available to our members, The ARAS Archive contains about 18,000 photographic...

Archetype in Focus: A Monthly ARAS Feature
Fairy

Evanescent creatures with butterfly wings; miniature figures gaudily dresses or garbed in simple homespun garments. Benevolent and miscreant, perverse and playful, fairies like Queen Mab, Titania, Oberon, Puck and Tinkerbell materialize out of psyche as some of our most whimsical imaginings.

The word ‘fairy’ is linked to fayre, meaning an illusion, reflecting not only the fairy’s effect on consciousness, but also one of the fairy’s primary powers—to fascinate, spellbind, or charm. ‘Fairy’ is actually derived from the Latin fata, or fate, alluding to the association of the fairy with good or ill, and the curses and blessings that hover about the newborn, as in the fairytale of the Sleeping Beauty.

Fairies are often portrayed as mediators to order and industry. A fairy might hide one’s keys or gloves if the house is messy, as if to remind one to tidy things up. In countless stories, fairies are serendipitous helpers to impoverished or overburdened humans or those faced with seemingly impossible tasks. Fairies are masters at tailoring, spinning, washing, sweeping, planting and mining. If treated well, they repay their human friends with magical gifts or powers. Nevertheless, as shapeshifters and tricksters, fairies are as capable of havoc as of help, administering love potions that foster unlikely matches, or souring milk or causing accidents.

Elves, brownies, pixies, fays, leprechauns, nymphs and sprites, fairies range in size (so it is said) from a thumbling to the height of a three-year old child. These tiny supernatural beings, a projection of those often amoral, luminous and highly generative impulses that are agents of the psyche’s non-rational energies and synchronistic happenstance. Associated especially with the uncanny transformations of twilight and night, fairies inhabit Fairyland, Dreamland, Never-Never Land and Middle Earth, evoking the unconscious dimension and psyche’s secret workings.

Images from the ARAS Archive:
1) William Blake, Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, ca. 1786
2) 5Gb.147 - Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (detail), ca. 1855-64. - Fairy woodman (Fairy Feller), wearing cap, brown leather coat and breeches, raising ax held in both hands to strike hazel nut.
3) Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, the fairies from Disney’s 1959 animated classic, Sleeping Beauty, descend on the castle.

Invest in Imagination!

The ARAS Teens Summer Art program is a FREE two-week summer intensive for teens that fosters innovation, collaboration and creativity through the study of art, myths and symbols, as well as art making. The participants create original art work in response to the rich history of a specific symbol of their choice. They deepen their understanding of their symbol by looking at it through the lenses of art, culture, mythology, history and their own personal experiences. The teens attend daily field trips to museums and galleries, go into working artists' studios, and conduct research in our vast archive. At the end of the program, the students are given the opportunity to present their work and the research behind it at a celebratory show and reception.

We started this program in 2014 and have seen the immense impact that it has on teens. They begin to see the world in a different way. In uncertain times, it is more important than ever to offer teens a safe place for them to express themselves and experience this kind of depth. With your help we can continue to offer this amazing program for free in 2026.

It is ARAS' mission is to bring the power of symbols to a younger audience! So, it is important to us to keep this program going! ARAS Teens is designed to attract a diverse group of participants from all different kinds of backgrounds. At ARAS, teens have the opportunity to explore and learn about their own heritage, as well as others', through research, collaboration and presentations. Learning about the rich history of creative human expression also inspires the teens to explore personal interpretations of universal symbols and how they may differ in various cultures. All of this has a profound and lasting effect on teens. We have seen these connections develop again and again and it is very moving. We hope you will join us in making this happen!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Your tax-deductible contributions will make a lasting impact on our teens and the ARAS Archive!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aras/aras-teens-summer-art-program

Over on the ARAS Patreon you can read our newest Reading Room piece taken from the extensive ARAS Library. In this month's piece, Niki de Saint Phalle: a Psychological Approach to Her Artwork and the Symbolic Significance of the Tarot Garden, Paul Brutsche examines the work of Niki de Saint Phalle along Jungian lines.

Check out the ARAS Patreon through the link in our bio!