If you look closely at the icon associated with the Depth Psych Alliance header, you’ll see it’s actually a beehive viewed in a series of layers (representing the psyche) or lenses (referring to Depth Psychology methods of inquiry), and the subject itself is blurred--symbolic of the unconscious, the mystery, or what's beneath or behind.
This particular image was chosen to represent the community because it is the most powerful depth psychological symbol I can imagine. A beehive is a superorganism, meaning it has life and intelligence as an entity in and of itself. It is greater than the sum of its parts. It is sacred space, the place in which tens of thousands of bees gather within the interior to do their designated work. Within the darkness, each bee has her own role and the hive would not function the same way without her. The hive is inhabited by the ultimate sacred feminine, the queen, which creates life by laying up to 2000 fertile eggs each day.
The space pulses with life, work, community, and is a magical laboratory for alchemy as sweet nectar is brought in and painstakingly turned into liquid gold through remarkable processes. Each of the worker bees leaves the hive to go out and forage, giving the gift of pollination to the places she visits on the outside, then returns again to sacred space before the sun goes down, navigating by an innate instinct to the place that is "home".
In addition to the darkness and depth, there is shadow (as represented on the left side of the icon)—and particularly now as bees are vanishing by the billions under the darkness of Colony Collapse Disorder that, while still mysterious, is likely in good part a result of how we humans have abused the earth with pesticides, pollution, destruction of the natural habitat required by bees, genetically modified plants, and commercial practices that are harmful and often fatal to bees.
Meanwhile, it is my deep hope that this community here at Depth Psychology Alliance will function as a healthy hive, a busy, thriving meeting place which we may all inhabit and do some of our work in the world, supporting each other, entering into discussion and reflection, and alchemically transforming our presence and efforts into soul that can go out into the world, gather sweet nectar and pollen and deliver it back “home” again on an ongoing basis.
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