An Astrological Look at Anima and Animus

[kokopelle]

My research into the foundation of shamanic magic has revealed the importance of the anima and animus. I remembered that I had written about these in connection to astrology. A portion of those notes are reposted below.

There are three character symbols put forward by Jung. They are: the Shadow, the Anima or Animus, and the Self. These are intertwined into the way a person both sees themselves and interacts with those around them. An explanation of each is below.

The Realization of Shadow:

The Shadow is a portion of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of ego. The ego are aspects that mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could be just as well conscious. When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses that he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people – things such as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardliness; inordinate love of money and possessions – in short, all of the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: "That doesn’t matter; nobody will notice it, and in any case other people do it too".

Shadows are seen through projection in waking life, and are personified in dreams. The rude man in the café may be your own Shadow.

It can be said that the Shadow self is more prevalent when Mars and Venus are not balanced. Too much sensuality or aggression can lead to a Shadow that is projected onto others – lovers or enemies.

The Anima: the Women Within:

The anima is the female personification of the unconscious in a male. It is the personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man’s psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and relation to unconscious. This may be good or bad. The Venus in a man’s chart gives a clue to how the anima is played out.

Classical Animas

Type	Bright Face	Dark Face	Zodiac Archetype
Mother	Home and security, comfort and forgiveness	Possessor, devourer, and destroyer	Cancer
Amazon	Capacity to cope with reality, to deal with the material world	Domineering, managing, self-assertive, imprisoning, structure, dogmatic, bound by tradition and law	Virgo
Medium	Intuitive, the inspiratrice, vessel of creative spirit	Hysteria, madness, chaos, frenzied surrender to the forces of the collective and the daemonic powers of vision and delirium	Scorpio

The Animus: the Man Within:

The animus is the male personification of the unconscious in a female. The animus does not so often appear in the form of an erotic fantasy or mood; it is more apt to take the form of a hidden "sacred" conviction. When such a conviction is preached with a loud, insistent masculine voice or imposed on others by means of brutal emotional scenes, the underlying masculinity in a women is easily recognized. However, even in a women who is outwardly very feminine the animus can be equally hard, inexorable power. One may suddenly find oneself up against something in women that is obstinate, cold, and completely inaccessible. The Mars in a woman’s chart gives a clue to how the animus is played out.

Classical Animus

Type	Bright Face	Dark Face	Zodiac Archetype
Father	Protective, strengthening and reassuring, offers security	Stifling to growth, keeps her a perpetual little girl by denying rights to discover her own values	Leo
Hero	Drive, assertiveness, courage, common sense, tenacity, endurance, and a powerful will	Sensuous, materialistic, insensitive, brutal, domineering, possessive, and destructive to all creative gifts and things of the spirit	Aries
Wise Man	Magician, the prophet that unfolds the mysteries of larger meaning of life	The abyss, the searing, fanatical, and totally impersonal power of chaos.	Sagittarius

Book Resources

The material in this document can be found in the following, highly recommended, books:

The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need by Joanne Martine Woolfolk

Alan Oken's Complete Astrology by Alan Oken

Comments

[chimerae.livejournal.com]

Hey! Great stuff! Thanks for posting it.

You know, when I had my recent Shamanic Astrology reading, you were one of the three people who came to mind that I thought might benefit. There's something about they way they focus on Tribes -- the tribe and job you came in with and the tribe and job that's your assignment -- that just seems like it would be breakthough for you.

With all your knowledge, you already have that info from another source.

If you have any interest, you would be great at teaching in their system.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

How can I learn more about the system?

[chimerae.livejournal.com]

http://www.celestialtimings.com/articles/readinginfo.html

There's a subtle aspect of this that I can't document but feel that it's important to describe to you. Part of the prep for my reading was writing an autobiography -- something I have tried to do for 20 years. Once "in the zone" and scheduled for the reading, it's was fairly easy to do the writing that's been impossible before.

I work with lots of respected and gifted people, and I have rarely had that kind of subtle benefit. I'm hard for most gifted types to work with because they lack the depth and capacity to meet me where I live. I think some of your challenges come from the same sourcing.

[chimerae.livejournal.com]

http://shamanicastrology.com/shamanic_astrology_handbook.htm

[greensh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'll check out the material.

Your comment about groups prompted me to write another article on the topic. There are a lot of nails to be put in that coffin (smile). This time I wrote it from a shamanist perspective. I'll probably be writing mostly from this place for a time as I want to return to my "roots".

The REALLY big article that I need to write is about who serves ME. Your feedback and others has provided a healing balm to the wounds of belief regarding "serving" faceless people and groups that neither know me nor care about me. Ah... fodder for another day.

[chimerae.livejournal.com]

I deeply believe that we all have membership in radically different kinds of groups.

For some people the "herd" behavior of belonging works out really well.

While our world is changing so radically, I believe that it's important to gain skill and recognition of less obvious but (to me) more powerful kith and kinship.

For most people who have a need for that, the first step is the nearly heretical social awareness that many of our best allies are unfamilar to all of us, because we bring from our history a prejudice about what "kind" and "like" means -- and it's an incorrect presumption often based in wounding rather than in growth.