"The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness.

The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima . . . The deeper ‘layers’ of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat further and further into darkness."

continue ⤵️

Jung, 1940 essay on the Child archetype

Lower down’, that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalised and extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e. in chemical substances.

The body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence ‘at bottom’ the psyche is simply ‘world’.

In this sense I hold Kerényi to be absolutely right when he says that in the symbol the world itself is speaking."