Cross Directions:

Pursuing Imagination Toward Symbol Formation, Individuation, and Art

Mitchell T. Foy, LPC

The following documents the spoken portion of a presentation given at Art & Psyche:
The Illuminated Imagination conference, April 6, 2019, Santa Barbara, California. The
full presentation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ2YLP1BMXY

It started with this image, which appeared in dream two years ago. In the dream I have
an identical twin, and we both have this identical tattoo on our left shoulders. At the time
the image strikes me as completely mysterious, with few amplifications with which to
open it up. Nevertheless I do notice that the line down the center, while part of the
illustration, is actually, in dream, not seen but felt as a downward motion – hence the
arrow at the bottom.

“Faithful attention to the imaginal world,” says James Hillman, “is nothing more than
remythologizing.”

Myths illustrate intra-psychic processes at work now, in the moment. These processes
are often more complex than we are accustomed to holding, and out of conscious reach,
which is where the symbolic bridge is helpful. Here it is, from my sketch book, bridging
the gap between the shores of consciousness and the great unconscious.

This presentation – entitled Cross Directions: Pursuing Imagination Toward Symbol

Formation, Individuation, and Art - documents a remythologizing-in-progress, one
discovered through my own faithful attention to imagination and trust in the creative
urge. I am in the midst of a mythos-in-bloom, one that feels both personal and part of the
collective process Carl Jung refers to when he says “whoever knows God has an effect
on him [or Her, or It].”

Greek philosopher Hericlitus said that “nature likes to hide.” Fortunately, it also likes to
play. The artistic process is one way of playing with nature, dancing with God, and
swimming in the deep waters of the unconscious. Help along the way is provided by
attention and respect for synchronicity, curiosity, and courage.

I thank you for joining me.

Some background about myself: I was born in Washington DC but came of age in the
suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. My family was fairly passive toward religion, and I am
fortunate not to have much baggage around it either way. As a teenager, my interest in
religious symbolism was informed more by mythical-spiritual curiosity than by religious
experience or education. It was cultural curiosity that eventually led me, as a young
adult, to collect religious records like this, mostly for the rich cover imagery. Each one is
almost a mini-remythologizing itself. Some of the imagery, bears resemblance to the
mythical imagery of the heavy metal records my high school years. There's mystery, and
an often rudimentary aesthetic that continues to inspire me.

I grabbed some of that inspiration last summer in order to satisfy a creative yearning,
embarking on a quest to design my own album cover. As you can see in these prototypes
a theme quickly emerges. I'll come back to these shortly.

Concurrently, the next stage of symbol-formation appears in the form of a curious image
found on the door of an abandoned manufacturing building, south of Atlanta. This is
when the remythologizing process really begins to take off.

My attention focuses on the central figure - a sole practitioner busy at his craft –
looking like a musician, or even an alchemist. My gaze lands fatefully on what strikes
me as an upside-down Latin Cross. My intellect tells me it is merely coincidental, and
yet my imagination persists. Where is this leading me, I wonder? “Stick with the
image,” says James Hillman, imploring me to trust the process.

My attention returns to my dream Tattoo image and the directional line in the center. I
imagine this as instructional, like directions on a map, and apply it to my curiosity about
the Decal. Here my gaze is coaxed further down the central axis, past the horizontal
barrier of the printer's desk. Followed all the way down, there comes an unexpected
shift: the Inverted Cross, pursued below the horizon, transforms into its Upturned twin.

Jung speaks to the symbolism of the upturned, Latin-style Cross, specifically to the long
central axis, which he describes as an “elongation of the center of gravity.” “The divine
center of the spiritual man,” he says, “is removed from the earth - it is somewhere up in
the sky...One could say that the divine symbol descends to the point where it meets
man,” he says, “and then pulls him up in a sort of inflation.” Notice that Jung refers here
to a descent that reaches only to surface of the earth, where humans dwell. The
remythologizing process at hand, however, takes us below the surface, toward the
ground of being.

I'm struck by the poetic symbolism of pursuing an Inverted Cross only to discover its
mirror opposite, as if one Cross' direction must be explored in order for the gifts of its
opposite to be genuinely and substantially received. A mysterious tension is stirring, and
from this place I envision a simple picture of these opposites conjoined one cross
reaching for the sky, the other plunging into the earth. Caught in this tension, between
Heaven and Hell is the Earth surface.
I elect to represent the Earth surface with its own horizontal beam at which moment the
two-dimensional representation of my symbol-in-progress is born. I notice that this
Triple Cross contains not just three horizontal bars crossing a central vertical axis, but
also three basic four-armed crosses – two smaller and one larger.

One of my guiding principles for this imaginal process is the application of axioms. First
up is the axiom “As Above, So Below.” Applied to this Triple Cross it serves to
accentuate the tension in the center, the tension of existing simultaneously Above and
Below, of being neither fully of the Earth or the Sky - caught in the middle. The central
horizontal axis, I imagine, is this place. Perhaps a reworking of the axiom is in order,
accounting for the underworld:
“As Above, So Below, So Beneath”. Notice how the two crosses have produced a third,
and the two points of the original axiom – above and below – now also have a third.

The process continues as I envision full representation of the four directions of the
earth's surface, turning a two-dimensional picture into a three-dimensional object – here
constructed from wood. What contained three crosses now includes a fourth, and the
next axiom comes into play. It's called the Axiom of Maria, named for the second-
century alchemist who invented it.

The axiom states “From the one comes the second, from the second comes the third, and
from the third is the fourth that is the one.” It wonderfully maps the symbol formation
process so far, which starts with the one inverted cross, giving way to its opposite twin,
the third emerges from between them, and here the third expands into a fourth. For this
reason I have called this particular cross the Maria Cross, after the axiom it mirrors. The
Axiom of Maria speaks to the circular nature of intra-psychic processes, wherein a
conclusion will often bring one back around to reveal a new beginning. The last part of
the axiom that leads us back to the one, foreshadows the final stage of this symbolic
process.

First, I'd like to pursue support for the Maria Cross through amplification, here found
within the illustrations of an ancient alchemical text called the Rosarium. “The
alchemists,” says Jungian scholar Edward Edinger, “were rooted in the Western psyche
which we've inherited, so their imagery, their fantasy, their dream, is our fantasy and our
dream.” The pictures within the Rosarium reflect intra-psychic transformations taking
place on the alchemical journey toward wholeness.

The first one depicts a Vessel surrounded by smoke. Cosmic opposites are represented
by the Sun and Moon, and in between them is a six-pointed star. The Maria Cross itself,
with six primary points, resembles this star.

In the second picture, a dove is coming down from the star carrying a flower, inserting it
between two human figures holding their own flowers. The dove is facilitating a
unification between the opposites, and look at the symbol being created by this unity:
two horizontal stems with a vertical stem, much like the Maria Cross.

In the next picture the likeness of the central Object to the Maria Cross becomes even
stronge. In my fantasy the dove is an emissary, bridging the unconscious with conscious
reality in a very profound way. Three sets of opposites – Sun and Moon, Man and
Woman, Above and Below - are unified by this six-pronged Object, suggesting
something important within the collective psyche of that time - and perhaps this time -
seeking awareness.

The connecting principle, I believe, between the process of the alchemist who created
the Rosarium and my present-day remythologizing, is the dedication of Imagination to
what James Hillman calls Faith in Images. “Psychological faith,” he says, “is reflected
in an ego that gives credit to images. Its trust is in the imagination as the only
incontrovertible reality, directly presented, immediately felt.”

But we have even further to go, the Image is still unfolding.

While beholding the Maria Cross I find myself wondering what could be hidden in the
very center. I return to the Axiom of Maria for guidance, wondering what has not yet
been revealed. “From the third comes the fourth which is also the One,” it says. I'm
looking at the center, which is concealed by merging horizontal arms, and notice what
looks like the outline of a cube. To get to it we though have to reverse the process,
deconstructing the cross to reveal the center again.

Pursuing further the spirit of the Axiom of Maria, and Hericlitus' idea of hidden nature, I
wonder what might be inside of the cube? My concurrent album-art project draws my
attention. In my fantasy it depicts a mysterious Orb emerging from deep within the
womb of the Cross, which is itself falling away, its purpose fulfilled, and at this moment
I decide that hidden in the center of the Maria Cross – the alchemical Unifying Object -
is an Orb surrounded by a Cube.

Inquiry into what this Cubed Orb could symbolize is aided by amplification of a vital
alchemical symbol - the Squared Circle, about which Jung says: “Squaring the
circle...breaks down the original chaotic unity into the four elements and then combines
them again in a higher unity. The product is generally called the 'quintessence,' though
this is by no means the only name for the ever-hoped-for and never-to-be-discovered
'One.' It has, as the alchemists say, a thousand names.”

One of those names, I believe, is the Pleroma, and this is its fundamental representation.
This is where my symbolic journey has been leading. It is nothing less than tension point
between all irreconcilable opposites. It is the Final Paradox. There is a point in the center
of it all that cannot be reached, because one its qualities is non-existence. Its appearance,
here and now, hints of the terrible, wonderful path of collective Individuation. It hides
within, is of, and transcends the Cross. It has been there all along. Here it is, seen in a
cross from the 10th century.

In the Pleroma, says Jung, “Time is a relative concept and needs to be complemented by
that of the simultaneous existence of all historical processes.” Mythic themes repeated
throughout space and time, he says, “exist in the pleroma as an eternal process.”

Ultimately, Jung says in Seven Sermons to the Dead, the Pleroma is “nothing and
everything,” wherein, “both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite
possess no qualities.”

For the final stage, the remythologizing process comes back down to Earth as I
encounter the Shadow. What story would be complete without it? I bump into the
Shadow while in full research mode, proudly hunting for amplifications of the Maria
Cross. There are several, historic and modern, which approximate but do not match the
Maria. The closest visual match, as fate would have it, comes from the journal of a 17
year old young man. The artist is Dylan Klebold, who on April 20th, 1999, co-partnered a
killing spree at his high school in Columbine, Colorado.

The shadow arrives, and I am forced to begrudgingly accept that this infamous young
man has tapped synchronistically into something very similar to my own mythos. He too
grappled with the opposites, but with tragically different results. Why have I been led
here, I wonder? My resistance to aligning with this infamous figure is palpable, but lets
look at more of Dylan's journal drawings – a journal that he titled “Existences”, on the
very first page. Like the early stirrings of my symbol formation process, the second page
of his journal shows two opposing crosses as one, mirroring each other, about which he
writes: “the battle between good and bad never ends.”

Focus is drawn curiously to the center - where he places himself with instruction to “cut
here”. Note the synchronicity: the center is indicated with a square. Above and to the
right, the square expands three-dimensionally into a cube. Eerily, I cannot avoid the
implication: this troubled young man imagined the very cube, concealed in the center of
the cross, that I would envision decades later.

A few pages further and his own Triple Cross appears, which he names the Everlasting
Contrast – a surprisingly sophisticated moniker which sounds descriptive of the
Pleroma. This plainly shows a young man trying to navigate depression, alienation, and
a churning libido via creative examination of his own psyche. He was, however, ill
equipped for the deep work, writing “the ups & downs of fate are forever, good & bad,
equal. me...existence is like infinity times itself...the zombies have set their place in my
mind.” He prematurely reaches the paradoxical Pleroma – “infinity times itself” - with
dire consequences.

Reflecting on who I was at Dylan's tender age, it strikes me how similar we may have
been. This is something I drew when I was in high school, at just about the same age.
Black Sabbath was a musical group dramatically embodying the opposites – playing
songs of darkness yet adorned with Latin Crosses around their necks. To my teenage self
they were the brave explorers of the underworld. This image I created reflects a young
mind fascinated with myth, symbolism, and the opposites of darkness & light. Note the
angle of the cross in this drawing, and how it reappears over three decades later, as part
of a clue leading me toward awareness of the orb gestating in the cross' center.

This mythos that I share with you today marks the completion of a cycle, of a process
which apparently began in high school over thirty years ago. “From the One comes the
Second, from the Second comes the Third, and from the Third comes the Fourth which
is the One.” That is the Axiom of Maria – as vital today as it was centuries ago. With the
completion of one cycle we arrive at a new beginning.

Of Jung's Aion, Edward Edinger states: “The numinous secret is communicable only to
someone who is already having the experience of it...the whole of Aion is a kind of
circumambulation of “the secret”.”

Thank you for circling around this secret with me.