For a long time, the word soul didn’t mean much to me. The usage in the generic context (e.g. “this movie warms the soul”) was too watered down and unclear, too new-agey. When used in the context of describing our “true self” housed within the body didn’t work for me either, particularly after beginning to study and practice Buddhism, which does not use the term or the concept. Even in the context of reincarnation, the Buddhist perspective is more that consciousness continues in some form, but it is not a “soul” that travels from body to body.
For the past few years, my life has been dedicated to exploring the realm of soul. At first I didn’t identify my process as such; then after beginning to enrich my personal experience with study of the works of other soul explorers, I was able to put a name to it.
As I began to read the work of archetypal psychologist James Hillman, whose work draws 
from Jungian psychology and Neoplatonism, a new understanding of soul began to reveal itself. In fact, I became aware of an entire Secret Tradition of the Soul—the title of Patrick Harpur’s book on the subject.[1] This tradition, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, offers a very clear distinction between soul and spirit—two different, complimentary aspects of our experience and life’s journey.
Spirit has to do with ascent, purity, and light; soul is connected with depth, imagination, and darkness. Exploring the realm of the soul has a quality of descent. There is a grittiness within the soul—a salt-like nature, as James Hillman describes. According to Hillman, the soul is
…a world of imagination, passion, fantasy, reflection, that is neither physical and material on the one hand, nor spiritual and abstract on the other, yet bound to them both….[the soul has] a connection with the night world, the realm of the dead, and the moon. We still catch our soul’s most essential nature in death experiences, in dreams of the night, and in the images of lunacy.[2]
I began to recognize that most of my personal path thus far had been devoted to cultivating spirit, which Hillman describes as “fast” with “its images blazing with light…fire, wind….It is masculine, the active principle, making forms, order, and clear distinctions.”[3] This soul-oriented period of my journey seemed to emerge, independent of any conscious effort on my part, as a balancing process.
This blog section of my new website will be a space where I continue to reflect on aspects of soul and the personal journey we all make to integrate the various aspects of ourselves. Our culture is not particularly supportive of soul—so for me, the people I have encountered who encourage soul work as an essential aspect of becoming wholeheartedly who we are, have been tremendously helpful. In the same way, I hope that my studies and personal experience can be of benefit to others.
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[1] Harpur, Patrick (2011). The Secret Tradition of the Soul. Berkeley, CA: Evolver Editions.
[2] Hillman, James (1989). A Blue Fire. New York: HarperPerennial. p. 122
[3] Ibid, p. 121
Dan Glenn 