The painting above by artist Tammo de Jongh (1967) depicts 12 of the most familiar archetypes of human consciousness. In this first blog of a series on archetypes, we’ll concentrate on the Child archetype shown in the upper left hand corner of the right side panel. The child has two butterfly bows in her hair and wears a key hanging from a chain around her neck. There are 6 archetypes on each panel. We’ll read more about the other 11 later in the series.  The Child archetype indeed represents the primary key to unlock personal spiritual transformation.

In Chrysalis, the Child  archetype was named the Divine Child. I did this for several reasons. First, Chrysalis does not believe the key to understanding the Great Mysteries of creation and life requires an authority figure such as a priest who purports to be in possession of all the answers. Religious ideology (even tarot ideology) and dogmatic “correct beliefs” are anathema to Chrysalis for the simple reason that human consciousness is eternally evolving; truth must always be reinterpreted in light of present day scientific and social progress.

Secondly, we were all taught, for example, that divinity – God – is wholly other. This disabling belief is symbolized in Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel fresco showing man’s finger (Adam’s) and God’s finger almost, yet never, touching. (This separation only ends in death and only then if you’ve been good, or so the story goes.)

But we no longer live in the 16th century. Chrysalis’ Divine Child is an archetype for today who encourages you to embrace your own divinity and co-creative responsibility. There is no grand puppet master in the sky pulling the strings of 7-billion hapless Earthlings. That is a falsehood.

In Chrysalis, divinity is defined as the singularity that connects everything, including each one of us, to a fundamental field of information that exists throughout the universe. This singularity, that nexus, is not beyond our reach. In fact, it lies at the center of Self, which is the human heart. The center of the universe – divinity – exists within everyone! Your unique singularity is the center of the universe.

This does not imply we live alone without assistance – quite the contrary. The fundamental field of information (Φ) includes archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, gods, goddesses, mythical creatures, angels, faeries, ancestors, and you name it. It is an energetic, complex matrix of self-organizing information systems that’s accessible to us via our intellect and intuition. We constantly exchange information with this omnipresent field whether we’re aware of it or not. To be aware of it is to be enlightened.

Since the foundational principle of Chrysalis Tarot is, “We are all One, interconnected and interdependent,” Chrysalis avoids God-talk assiduously. Chrysalis can be either polytheistic or anti-theistic, depending upon your definition of those words. Frankly, we regard personal gods as a man-made divisive lot, a self-evident fact in today’s world. We tend to take our myths and metaphors far too seriously.

When these mythological gods are monotheistic male deities, the inevitable result is exile of divine feminine truth, oppression of women, conquest of nature, inequality, and numerous other metaphysical imbalances that bear dire physical consequences for humankind. Only personal transformation accompanied by a global paradigm shift can mollify this monotheistic malignancy of separatism.

Above is the key to the image at the top of this blog. It begins with the Child archetype shown here in the upper left hand corner. Please note the Chrysalis archetypes referenced below are approximate syncretisms, i.e. the same frequency but slightly different resonance. All Collective Unconscious archetypes, and there are thousands of them, are malleable, dynamic entities.

1.   Child (Divine Child)
2.   Enchantress (Sorceress Morgan Le Fay)
3.   Fool (Merlin, the archetype of Self)
4.   Actress (Bella Rosa)
5.   Logician (Celtic Owl)
6.   Mother Nature (Gaia)
7.   Observer (Celtic Owl)
8.    Joker (Ravens, trickster archetype)
9.   Warrior (Herne)
10.  Slave (Papa Legba, gatekeeper and servant archetype)
11.   Patriarch (Green Man)
12.   Old Woman (Storyteller)

© Toney Brooks