Copyright 2002
Wilderness Drum, Inc.
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The Imaginal World
Steve Beyer

Introduction The nature of active imagination The technique of active imagination The imaginal world The ontology of imagination The role of the ego Mechanisms of active imagination Cognate experiences Conclusion

The imaginal world

The active imagination enters its own landscape, the imaginal world, peopled with guides and spirits, demons and tigers. "It is crucial to understand that the imaginal world has a reality of its own, within the four walls of its own realm" (Rowan, 1993, p. 63). In this imaginal world, Hillman says, "[w]e have to engage with persons whose autonomy may radically alter, even dominate our thoughts and feelings, neither ordering these persons about nor yielding to them full sway" (Hillman, 1983b, p. 55). Mary Watkins says that one creates for oneself a home in the imaginal. "This home, the various imaginal egos, is created from the very material of the imaginal – images. With its creation the nonmaterial side of metaphor becomes more apparent, more inhabited, more clearly a part of our wanderings" (Watkins, 1976, p. 124).

This world has, too, its own language. "The imaginal resists being known except in its own terms. Image requires image. Image evokes image. Systems of understanding arise, themselves symbolic. It is as if one can say what the imaginal is like, but cannot utter what it is" (Watkins, 1976, p. 99; emphasis in original). This world is what Corbin calls the mundus imaginalis, "a very precise order of reality, which corresponds to a precise mode of perception" (Corbin, 1972/2000, 71). As Rowan puts it, the difference between the imaginary and the imaginal world is that "the imaginal world is a world where real things happen, and one of the things which happens is 'the self open to others'" (Rowan, 1993, p. 54). In the imaginal world there is a space in one's life where the great archetypal themes can live themselves out (Johnson, 1986, p. 157).

References

Corbin, H. (1969). Creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi (Mannheim, R., Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hillman, J. (1983b). Healing fiction. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications.

Johnson, R. (1986). Inner work: Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Rowan, J. (1993). The transpersonal: Psychotherapy and counseling London, UK: Routledge.

Watkins, M. (1976). Waking dreams. New York, NY: Harper Colophon.

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