The Oracular Psyche: Divining Individuation

Abstract

Inspired by the Delphic maxim “know thyself,” this hermeneutic study expands upon Jung’s research on oracular collaboration with the unconscious. Depth, transpersonal, eco-spiritual, and relational psychologies are compared with modern and ancient oracular tools, texts, and methods to describe how oracular inquiry serves the individuation process. Four themes emerged in the analysis. First, oracular inquiry tools, texts, and images describe, organize, and symbolically embody models of psyche that include ecological, archetypal, and prospective processes that Jung associated with individuation. Second, prospective processes of psyche, when examined altogether, demonstrate an oracular function within the psyche in service to the entelechy of individuation. Third, oracular inquiry is shown to be an archetypal, eco-resonant, intersubjective, and embodied collaboration with the mystery (i.e., unconscious, Self, nature, divine, etc.). Fourth, multiple prospective processes of psyche co-emerge in clusters within oracular models of psyche as well as during phenomenologically reciprocal, relational, and embodied collaboration with the mystery. The term temenosity is recommended for this clustering phenomenon in honor of Jung’s understanding that autonomous, participatory, prospective processes of psyche usher us into the temenos of individuation, the sacred place where we come to know thyself. The implications of this interpretative study challenge modern perceptions of the applications of oracular inquiry and may benefit oracular-oriented depth practitioners interested in oracular models of psyche, as well as therapists and spiritual counselors interested in coming to know thyself through oracular collaboration with the mystery.