Sunday, November 14, 2021

Hatching of Self


"As an object prone to fertilization, the egg is an appropriate symbol and metaphor for the idea of potentiality. It is pre-creation chaos waiting to become cosmos. In psychological terms, it is the preconsciousness of the given culture – the collective being waiting to be made conscious of itself. To quote psychologist Marie Louise von Franz, 'we can easily recognize in it the motif of preconscious totality. It is psychic wholeness conceived as the thing which came before the rise of ego consciousness, or any kind of dividing consciousness'. In short, the egg is a symbol of pre-differentiation, differentiation being the essence of the creation of anything. The egg contains within itself male and female, light and dark, all opposites in a state of union. It is perfect entropy and signals the existence of creative power from the very beginning. By extension, the cosmic egg is a symbol of the individual’s preconscious state before the process of individuation allows for the hatching of Self."

2 comments:

Mike Nelson Pedde said...

Andy: If you're not familiar with this site, I thought you might be interested. Some of your images would fit well here.

https://minimalistphotographyawards.com/minimalist-photography-awards-winners-2021/

Mike.

Andy Ilachinski said...

Hi Mike, thanks for the tip. Since I try to keep my blog focused on just the images (well, with a few quotes and comments sprinkled in of course), there are relatively few (self congratulatory) "announcements" of magazine publications and competitions. Having said that, with regard to the minimalist photography awards, I'll reveal that I received an honorable mention for 2021 (https://minimalistphotographyawards.com/2021/07/17/quiet/), and another in 2019 for a portfolio of my synesthetic landscapes (https://minimalistphotographyawards.com/2019/07/01/synesthetic-landscapes/). My eye/I resonates deeply with minimalist photography in general, and I am humbled to have a few of my works sit beside the many extraordinary photographs this yearly competition brings out!