I have made special use of ethnological and alchemical material for the amplification of these structures and in order to consider the dreams within more general context. Moreover, the alchemical tradition contains much more material on the problem of death than we find, for instance, in official religious traditions. – Marie-Louis von Franz(On Dreams and Death)
Amplifying an image lets you take an archetypal dream image and use a variety of sources (from different religions, cultures, myths, etc) and notice a conceptual trend, or interconnected ideas.
For instance, the “old man/wise woman” image corresponds, ultimately, to the “Self”. The guiding moral authority for the ego. Examples include Moses, Elijah, Asclepius, Merlin, Gandalf and Dumbledore. (Female versions would be Athena, Joan of Arc and Galadriel) They all guide, protect, heal the “hero”(or people, or civilization), but always stay in the background, directing the hero’s fate, more or less from the shadows.
In the transfiguration of Christ, he sees Moses and Elijah, noting that the archetypal image (or the Heavenly Witness) has “resurrected” (been integrated into) the psyche of that person. Making out of him a Mystic, or Iatromantis (healer–prophet)
Image in Article header: Asclepius
or Protogonus was the mystic primeval deity of procreation and the generation of new life, who was introduced into Greek mythology by the Orphic tradition; other names for this Classical Greek Orphic concept included Ericapaeus /ˌɛrɪkəˈpiːəs/ (Ἠρικαπαῖος or Ἠρικεπαῖος “power”) and Metis (“thought”). Orphic tradition was the forefather to the Gnostics, and alchemists.
In the Orphic tradition, Dionysus-Protogonos-Phanes is a dying and rising god. (Hermaphroditic/Androgynous)
Philemon, Jung’s “Number 2 personality”, or what would be called the “Heavenly Witness” (his old man Archetype “resurrected” (uncovered, dug out, etc)) in him, speaking of Phanes :
Phanes is the god who rises agleam from the waters.
Phanes is the smile of dawn.
Phanes is the resplendent day
He is the immortal present.
He is the gushing streams.
He is the soughing wind.
He is hunger and satiation.
He is love and lust.
He is mourning and consolation.
He is promise and fulfillment,
He is the light that illuminates every darkness.
He is the eternal day.
He is the silver light of the moon.
He is the flickering stars.
He is the shooting star that flashes and falls and lapses.
He is the stream of shooting stars that returns every year.
He is the returning sun and moon.
He is the trailing star that brings wars and noble wine.
He is the good and fullness of the year,
He fulfills the hours with life-filled enchantment.
He is love’s embrace and whisper,
He is the warmth of friendship,
He is the hope that enlivens the void.
He is the magnificence of all renewed suns.
He is the joy at every birth.
He is the blooming flowers.
He is the velvety butterfly’s wing,
He is the scent of blooming gardens that fills the nights.
He is the song of joy.
He is the tree of light.
He is perfection, every-thing done better.
He is everything euphonious.
He is the well-measured.
He is the sacred number.
He is the promise of life.
He is the contract and the sacred pledge,
He is the diversity of sounds and colors,
He is the sanctification of morning, noon, and evening.
He is the benevolent and the gentle….
In truth, Phanes is work and its accomplishment and its remuneration.
He is the troublesome task and the evening calm.
He is the step on the middle way, its beginning, its middle, and its end.
He is foresight.
He is the end of fear.
He is the sprouting seed, the opening bud.
He is the gate of reception, of acceptance and deposition.
He is the spring and the desert.
He is the safe haven and the stormy night.
He is the certainty in desperation.
He is the solid in dissolution,
He is the liberation from imprisonment,
He is counsel and strength in advancement.
He is the friend of man, the light emanating from man, the bright glow that man beholds on his path.
He is the greatness of man, his worth, and his force.
from Jung’s Black book 7, pp. 16-9 And Red book, footnote 211, page 301.
Tangential thought… The Feminine is being, the Creation(being) and Destruction(no being) of the universe so in the pictures she is the very being of the scene itself, it is at a lower level than the archetypal images. The Masculin is the Action of the scene/universe, the actor and follower of the script… the protagonist. The Goddess Gives Birth to the God; the pleroma to both.
Kundalini yoga is the expression of the coiled up snake that travels the spinal column to the top of the skull (Sahasrara or crown chakra, where communion with the universe/God takes place)