“Primordial image” is a term borrowed by Jung from Jacob Burckhardt which gave way to the term `archetype' in Jung's later writings:
The image is called primordial when it possesses an archaic character. I [Jung] speak of its archaic character when the image is in striking accord with familiar mythological motifs. It then expresses material primarily derived from the collective unconscious, and indicates at the same time that the factors influencing the conscious situation of the moment are collective rather than personal
CW6 ¶ 746The primordial image, elsewhere also termed archetype, is always collective, i.e., it is at least common to entire peoples or epochs. In all probability the most important mythological motifs are common to all times and races. I [Jung] have, in fact, been able to demonstrate a whole series of motifs from Greek mythology in the dreams and fantasies of pure-bred Negroes suffering from mental disorders
CW6 ¶ 747The primordial image is related just as much to certain palpable, self-perpetuating, and continually operative natural processes as it is to certain inner determinants of psychic life and of life in general.the primordial image expresses the unique and unconditioned creative power of the psyche
CW6 ¶ 748The primordial image is thus a condensation of the living process. It gives a co-ordinating and coherent meaning both to sensuous and to inner perceptions, which at first appear without order or connection
CW6 ¶ 749The primordial image frees psychic energy from its bondage to sheer uncomprehended perception. At the same time, it links the energies released by the perception of stimuli to a definite meaning, which then guides action along paths corresponding to this meaning
CW6 ¶ 749It releases unavailable, dammed-up energy by leading the mind back to nature and canalizing sheer instinct into mental forms
CW6 ¶ 749The primordial image has one great advantage over the clarity of the idea, and that is its vitality. It is a self-activating organism, “endowed with generative power”
CW6 ¶ 754The primordial image is an inherited organization of psychic energy, an ingrained system, which not only gives expression to the energic process but facilitates its operation. It shows how the energic process has run its unvarying course from time immemorial, while simultaneously allowing a perpetual repetition of it by means of an apprehension or psychic grasp of situations so that life can continue into the future
CW6 ¶ 754The primordial images, in their totality, constitute a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror with the peculiar faculty of reflecting the existing contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but, as it were, sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year-old consciousness might see them. Such a consciousness would see the becoming and passing away of things simultaneously with their momentary existence in the present, and not only that, it would also see what was before their becoming and will be after their passing hence
CW6 ¶ 649