Introduction / Using ARAS: The Symbolism of the Cross

[aras-image:5Ek.082,,9,,,Anthropos, the primordial man.]
  I want to return to where I started. The medieval and Renaissance drawings and diagrams of the Anthropos, the primordial man, present the human body itself as the point of intersection of the axes of the cross contained within and limited by an enclosing square or circle. The solar plexus, the innerwoven arrangement of nerves at the centre, is the point of meeting of the axes
(5Ek.082,) (see Fig. 2). This takes us back to the Catalan crucifix we mentioned in the beginning where the body of Christ is the cross. Man himself lives on the cross, is the cross, at any time, in any place; the experience may be degradation and torture, or transformation. 'There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the "homo totus" of Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God. ... The "light" that shines at the end is the lux moderna of the alchemists, the new widening of consciousness, a further step in the realization of the Anthropos, and every one of these steps signifies a rebirth of the deity' (JUNG 6, pars 152, 211).

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