The Impact of the Archetype
The impact of the archetype, whether it takes the form of immediate experience or is expressed through the spoken word, stirs us because it summons up a voice that is stronger than our own. Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers, while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm of the ever-enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficient forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.
~ C.G. Jung. “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,” in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature