The Archetypal Mother Bear

This blog post excerpt from Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero (2017) explores the archetypal mother bear in myth, depth psychology, astronomy and our family lives.

By Bernie Taylor | Bernie’s Blog

Social: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Academia

Published May 19, 2020

Archetypes (from Chapter 6 – The Cosmic Hunt)

We may find that deeper connection with animal beings through our psychic and, less often, physical experiences with the bear. The Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung found that the bear is one of the common archetypes (Greek arche, original or beginning + type, for or pattern) (Jung, C. G. 1959). Archetypes are recurrent symbol or motif in dreams, literature, art and mythology. Dream images of animal beings may seek to warn us or expose parts of ourselves that we may not otherwise recognize. This can be seen in the mother bear archetype which represents our need to transfer within and project the defensive nature of a wild animal being to the mother human so as to give physical and emotional strength in protecting her children. This archetypal protective mother bear motif is papered across kitchen walls and carved into figurines that stand defensively on shelves in the once traditional den of motherhood.

The projection of this mother bear can be found in the homeschool mother who internally feels the need to shelter her kids at the kitchen table, the overbearing soccer mom who growls at referee decisions from the sidelines of a youth playing field, or a Cub Scout Den Mother who is unable to let her boys face life’s challenges on their own and emotionally begin their growth into men. She is the same protective mother bear that we found guiding her cubs through the seasons of the year in both the terrestrial and skyworlds on the Gorham Etching and who must ultimately let go as she watches her juveniles climb up a tree as depicted on the Gallery of Discs. That is same protective mother bear motif we find in dreams, literature, art, mythology, as well as encounter in our everyday lives. This is a physic and physical integration where the mind, earth and sky become one.

The constellation Ursa Major – the Great Bear – is shared in myths on many continents with a mother bear as the central character. This myth is storied in Gorham’s Cave at Gibraltar from 36,000 years ago and may be the origin of an intercontinental astronomical myth. Rediscover astronomy and myth.

Archetypes are not only internalized from animal beings and then projected to human beings. There are human archetypes as well, such as the elder/sage, caregiver, warrior, trickster, damsel in distress, and eternal child (i.e. Peter Pan), among others, that we identify among ourselves and project onto animal beings. They may also be places such as a sacred/cosmic mountain, the water of transformation, the cosmic egg from which everything in the universe was hatched, a world tree that connects the realms of the underworld, terrestrial plane and the skyworld, a paradise from which humanity sprang, or a cave/underworld, which is a metaphor for the unconscious, where the hero faces the self. We find common archetypes across cultures and easily recognize where the story is going once they are introduced. When the archetype is encountered the story is evoked.

These archetypes are held somewhere deep in the well of our collective memories where they structure patterns of thought through recurrent symbol or motif. They may perhaps be in a psychic storeroom that reaches back to our beginnings.  Jung recognized these global archetypes and postulated a “collective unconscious” — the universal repository of all human beliefs, knowledge, patterns, and experience that has not come to conscious awareness. These memories somehow pass to us from one mystery to another and are the foundation for the human experience. At the most basic level, in animal beings, we call them “instinct” and among human beings we frame this as “human behavior” or the “human condition.”  Some of these archetypes are descriptive of animals, such as the bull which may appear as powerful and threatening, the lead mare who manages the herd, or the protective mother bear. These archetypes are recognized by human and animal beings alike. We recognize archetypes in stories and our personal relationships without having them being taught or explained. They are not social constructs. Rather, many of these archetypes are animist in nature, possibly retained in our collective unconscious from before any categorization would have been made of us as human beings.

Bernie Taylor is the author of Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero (2017).

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