(ii) I f soul as consciousness needs place in which to be aware, then all
manifestations of place are to some greater or lesser degree conscious or ensouled;
a notion that Bentov suggested thirty years ago (Bentov, 1988:78).
(iii) That the ensoulment of place, rather than being seen as a form of animism,
may be more positively observed as underpinning constructs such as Jung’s
collective unconscious, de Chardin’s noosphere, and the Web of Wyrd.
(iv) That the locus of place is shifted between subject and object as if, lying now
more with us, now more with the world, it finally lies somewhere in between.
(v) That place is potentially a fundamental structuring element of consciousness,
yet soul permeates place in all of its manifestations. As Harpur so succinctly put it:
According to the Neoplatonic tradition, psyche or soul is the
underlying principle – the very stuff of reality. I t is imagined both
as macrocosm, ‘great world’, and as microcosm, ‘little world’. I t is
both a collective world soul, containing all daimons, images and
souls; and an individual soul containing a profound collective level,
in which we are connected to each other and indeed, to all living
things. Depending on our perspective we can see ourselves as
either embracing the Soul of the World or as being embraced by it,
although both are the case (Harpur, 2002:37).
Such a construct also elucidates Jung’s concept of the psychoid system, a
third part of the psychic realm, where the psychic element appears to mix [ to some
greater or lesser degree] with inorganic matter (in von Franz, 1988:4). That
construct also supports my thesis that the fundamental nature of place is
archetypal, not in metaphysical immobility and remoteness, but in a constantly
changing form or gestalt. The essence of place manifests in different forms along a
continuum, albeit that essence and form cannot be neatly separated. Let us now
investigate that continuum.
10.2 Place as a Mobius Strip-like Continuum
This place-elsewhere-place continuum must not be conceived of as
possessing either a literal or consecutive structure, although it is real, structured
and vital. I ndeed, I tremble when I contemplate the extremely potent and complex
nature of the continuum, especially in its mythopoeic manifestations. I t is then like
a palimpsest, revealing layers and reflecting the influences of many times, cultures
and the constituents and influences of individual and collective psyches. Then it is
that I begin to understand place not through the traditional privileging of conscious