C G Jung, Dreams, reflections, Shadow work, therapy, Uncategorized

When Archetypes Become Accessories: or why your crystals won’t heal you

aleksandrastaneva

Crystals, mantras, tarot cards, objects.
Signs but nothing more? Hate to break it to you, but unfortunately yes.

True symbols aren’t sold on Amazon. True symbols are alive. They are doorways, not possessions. But when a stone is sold to you as power itself, when a mantra is packaged as a cure, when a card is treated as fate written in ink, the symbol has been emptied of its soul. This is the concretistic fallacy or mistaking the husk for the fruit.

The concretistic fallacy, that Edward Edinger elaborates on in “Ego and Archetype” (1992) is when archetypal or symbolic realities are mistaken for literal, concrete ones.

This collapse of the symbolic into the literal leads to distortion, rigidity, and even pathology. For example: Religious symbols are taken literally, for example God as an external old man in the sky. Psychic events are reduced to biology or external events, for example It’s just brain chemistry or This dream means my boss is evil.

Concretism denies the psyche its symbolic dimension and blocks individuation.

In therapy, concretistic thinking often appears as magical solutions, dogmatic beliefs, or pseudo-healing practices.

The antidote is to hold the tension of the symbolic, recognising that images and archetypes point to realities within the psyche, not outside of it.

So yes, there is an opportunity to take a shortcut and substitute the object for its true soulful meaning.

Modern gurus and Instagram healers thrive on this. And I felt called in to call this out.

They sell you glittering shortcuts, trinkets that bypass the slow and dedicated work of true transformation. They promise you magic without descent, healing without struggle. But soul is not for sale. It’s not concrete. It’s not an object you can’t look at it on Instagram, purchase, consume or wear it.

The work of the soul is in the turning toward yourself, in listening, in carrying the symbol deep into your life until it burns and blesses you from the inside out.

True healing does not come from buying the right crystal or chanting the right phrase. It comes from entering the underworld of your own psyche, wrestling with shadow, and listening for the voice of soul.

Symbols guide us but only when we dare to live them, not display them.

Authentic growth is created, lived, experienced and not performed.

Yours in love and rant,
Aleksandra 💜

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Published by aleksandrastaneva

Aleksandra She, who remembers. I work at the threshold, where psyche speaks in symbols, and the soul remembers. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology and Internal Family Systems, my work invites women and seekers into the quiet, often forgotten places within: the underworlds of grief, the wild terrain of desire, the sacred chambers of the inner child, inner mother, the Shadowlands, and Self. With a background in women’s heath research, in ritual, and in lived experience spaces, I do not offer diagnosis or treatment, I offer devotion to the unfolding Self. On the threshold of becoming- where we always are. Through dreams, parts work, myth, and the body, I walk beside those ready to meet themselves fully, fiercely, and tenderly. This is not fast work. It is sacred work. It is not about fixing, it is about remembering. I do not promise certainty. I promise presence, and a deep trust in the wisdom already within you. My work is rooted in the wild: in the seasons and the body, in the wisdom of the land, and in the deep ecology of the soul. I honour the personal as political, and the psychological as inseparable from the cultural. Feminism, ecopsychology, and embodied awareness are not add-ons here, they are the soil this work grows from. I offer one-on-one soulwork sessions, women’s circles, and immersive psychoeducational experiences that weave together depth psychology, parts work, and embodiment. Some of this work unfolds indoors, some in wild places—always with reverence for the wisdom of nature, the nervous system, and the feminine psyche. Welcome to the HORÓ nest. I think you might just be ready to re-member your Self.

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