archetype

Pattern or model. Two important 20th-century thinkers about religions developed the term archetype in very infl uential ways: Carl Gustav JUNG and Mircea ELIADE. Jung was a psychologist. He believed that all human beings shared a certain kind of unconscious, the "collective unconscious." In his eyes, the collective unconscious contained fundamental symbols or archetypes necessary to personal wellbeing. One example is the MANDALA, a geometric diagram of squares, circles, and other designs around a center point. One of his followers, Erich Neumann, developed an archetype that he called the "Great Mother" (see GODDESSES). Among other places, Jung thought archetypes could be seen especially in dreams and myths. Mircea Eliade was a historian of religions. He divided human beings into two general classes: "archaic man" and "modern man." Eliade considered archaic man to be homo religiosus. That is, religion defi ned the way archaic people looked at and lived in the world. In particular, archaic people lived their lives according to archetypes. These archetypes were revealed at the beginning of time and recorded in myth (see MYTH AND MYTHOLOGY). By contrast, Eliade considered modern people to be secular. But they have not lost the archetypes completely. They have simply become unaware of them. As a result, Eliade said, religious archetypes recur in cultural forms such as art, literature, music, and fi lm.