Our 2024 fall harvest in this issue of ARAS Connections is rich and varied. It is exciting for us at ARAS to see how an ARAS approach to symbolic imagery is taking root in creative projects in so many different forms that are deeply connected to our lives today.

The first offering came in response to the current United States Presidential elections. JD Vance, the Republican nominee to be vice-President, opened up a “can of wild cats” that was precipitated by his resurfaced 2021 interview with Fox News Host Tucker Carlson. In the interview, Vance complained that the U.S. was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too….It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children…. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"

In response to Vance’s statement, ARAS received an inquiry “out of the blue” from an Italian Jungian analyst, Alessandra di Montezemolo, who had heard of Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comments. Some years ago, as part of her training to be a Jungian analyst she had written a paper: “The Cat and its Relationship with the Feminine: From the Sacred Creature in Egypt to the embodiment of the Devil in the Middle Ages for the Catholic Church”.

Alessandra wondered if her paper might be relevant to what was going on in the United States following the resurfacing of Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies”.

Our response was immediate and positive. ARAS is all about connecting evolving symbolic imagery from different historical eras and regions of the world to our current experience in the world. Vance’s comments put us in direct communication with one of the more important shifting narratives in the human psyche over the past 5,000 years, although that may not have been what J.D. Vance was thinking about when his “childless cat ladies” notion was thrown into the cauldron of our contemporary psycho-political-cultural conflicts. But the origins of his misogyny have deep roots in the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal societies and from paganism and polytheism to monotheism. Freeing women and men from the shackles of misogyny and restoring the empowerment of women and the embrace of the feminine are among the great challenges and potential accomplishments of our era.

If the “childless cat ladies” conversation links the present to the past, Jo Fairfax’s contribution of “12 Sculptures inspired by Jungian Archetypes: History, Ideas, Process” links the timeless to the future in his exploration of primal psychological structures with the futuristic technology of 3D printing. Fairfax writes:

“The challenge for me was to keep all that I loved about nature and our primal psychological structures while using technology….My work was increasingly veering towards my fascination about how the brain works and Jung’s archetypes seemed like a perfect way to further explore the brain,… trying to dovetail the magic of technology with the human spirit.”

Each of us will have our own reaction to Fairfax’s creations. I find them whimsical and humorous while at the same time evoking something quite serious, sacred and ritualistic about the archetypal patterns that express themselves in human form and behavior.

Finally, nothing is more gratifying to us at ARAS than witnessing how young people take so naturally to exploring the world of symbolic reality in our Pioneer Teen Program. We have been running this program for a decade and seeing the spirit of ARAS come alive in young people inspires our hope and firm belief that future generations will be nourished and enriched through their exploration of ARAS. The ARAS Pioneer Teen Program is our bridge between past, present and future in linking the Spirit of the Depths with the Spirit of the Times. We hope you enjoy this harvest of ARAS Connections as much as we enjoy bringing it to you.