Imagination, image, and mythopoiesis: 'The Annunciation of Sophia'

This dissertation explores creation as mythopoiesis both theoretically and artistically through its origins in imagination, image, and the imaginal. Human creativity is best understood through metaphor and myth, finding its closest analog in creation myths. The creation myth of Sophia, or Divine Wisdom, provides the primary content mythology grounding this study, supplemented by the process mythology of alchemy, closely associated with Sophia. The novel, The Annunciation of Sophia, is presented as an imaginal encounter with Sophia, as a contemporary re-imagining of her myth and as an act of redemptive healing.;Image is the irreducible jewel of Western esotericism, and Jungian and archetypal psychology are esotericism's contemporary blossoms. According to Jung, consciousness can only arise within psyche as image. We know first through imagining images. Imagination is not a thing or an organ of mind, but rather is a process that happens between the individual psyche and the larger cosmos, an erotic encounter simultaneously birthing gnosis, or logos. The process of imagination is both a receiving and an acting, an opening to and a creating with, originating in the primary and continuous generativity of psyche. Mythopoiesis, a richly evocative term connoting both the imagination's poetic nature and its elaboration of image in myth, is the fragrance and sap of imagination.;Image stands as the way in, as the phenomenal threshold between worlds, those both seen and unseen, immanent and transcendent. The image habits an intermediary realm described by Henri Corbin as the mundus imaginalis and by archetypal psychologists as the imaginal, both territory and way of being. Images only reveal their dimensionality when approached imaginally; they must be wooed, loved into being, if they will show their depths and individuality. Cultivating an imaginal consciousness requires the whole person: one must marry heart with mind and senses with intuition. Beyond a style of consciousness, living imaginally represents an ethical stance towards the cosmos. Opening to the fullness of the image requires an embrace of all the worlds, and the knowledge that, as Jung says, psyche and world are, at base, one. Realization of this oneness is the alchemical unus mundus.