The New Year is traditionally a time of renewal.  Perhaps New Year’s 2021 is a particularly poignant and ripe time for renewal.  It is our hope that Democracy itself will rediscover its foundations and that our nation’s and the world’s health will also begin to recover from the pandemic.  We wish for all people—especially those who have been traditionally marginalized and discounted—that this is a time of profound renewal.  Speaking of renewal:  this is our 60th edition of ARAS Connections.  I don’t think we imagined getting to 60 when we started 15 years ago, any more than most of us imagine getting older when we are young.       

Synchronistically, this edition of ARAS Connections is also focused on renewal in the form of a return to our origins. In remembering our beginnings, we find focus on the three remarkable, pioneering women who gave birth to Eranos, the Bollingen Foundation, and ARAS:  Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Mary Conover Mellon, and Jessie Fraser.  The articles by Ami Ronnberg, Riccardo Bernardini, and Fabio Merlini take us on an amazing journey that spans much of the 20th century.  Their papers in this edition of ARAS Connections are among the many fine contributions from Art and Psyche over the years.  Ami has served on the steering group of Art and Psyche since its beginning in 2008 and has had a long and distinguished career as the Curator of ARAS, overseeing the publication of several books including The Book of Symbols. 

We are especially pleased to welcome the contributions of Riccardo Bernardini, Scientific Secretary of the Eranos Foundation, and Fabio Merlini, President of the Eranos Foundation to ARAS Connections.  Eranos is at the headwaters of ARAS and in that sense is the older sibling of ARAS.  Bernardini and Merlini bring further focus to the extraordinary life trajectory of one of the three founding women, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn who single-handedly created Eranos. Her relationship to the psyche and to C.G. Jung are at the very source of ARAS.  ARAS Connections exists because of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Mary Conover Mellon, and Jessie Fraser.