30 Jungian Memes for Magicians Preparing for their Hero's Journey into the Psyche

Ely Bulnes • Writer and Editor

Jun 26, 2024 1:00 PM EDT

Greetings, archetypes. For those of you that have stumbled upon these niche memes by accident, consider this a meaningful coincidence, or as Carl Jung put it, a synchronicity. Carl Jung was an extremely influential psychologist and psychotherapist who founded the school of analytical psychology, which is still very much a thing to this day. According to Jung, our minds are made up of the ego, the persona, and the shadow. In really simple terms, the ego is like your Instagram profile. You've been posting on it for years, curating a specific and consistent identity. When people land on your Instagram profile, you can say, 'Yep, that's pretty much me!' The persona is like your Instagram posts and stories. It's what you want people to think that you're like. Your posts highlight what you supposedly care about, the captions project the type of humor you're into, and when you post, you are keenly aware that you are doing it for an audience-- even if it's just your close friends and relatives. The persona is a bit of a mask that you put on for a performance. Finally, the shadow is like the posts you make on Reddit with a throwaway account. It's all the things you're ashamed of admitting but still drive you on a day-to-day basis.

During his brief time studying anthropology, Jung noticed that myths, legends, and art across cultures and the world tend to have similar themes and motifs that have extremely similar, if not universal, meanings. Thus he developed the idea of the collective unconscious, and in this realm, live the archetypes. Those are innate figures and symbols that guide and influence us as we navigate life. Some examples of archetypes are the mother, the trickster, the wise old man, and the hero. So, if you're ready to engage with the jester archetype, scroll through these humorous and poignant memes with a Jungian theme.