“Yet, active imagination is not a psychological activity in the transpersonal sense of >theurgy (ritual magic), the attempt to work with images by and for the human will. From both sides of archetypal psychology’s tradition—Plotinus and Freud—we have been wared against opening floodgates to the “balk tide of mud of occultism.” Active imagination becomes popularist superstitious theurgy when we active the images artificially (drugs), perform it routinely as a ritualism, foster special effects (synchronicities)m further divinatory abilities (turning to inner voices to interpret dreams), use it to augment self-confidence in decisions (power). Each and all of these uses are no longer modes of self-knowledge but of self-aggrandizement, now covered by the innocent label >psychic growth. Faust still pervades, perverts, our Know Thyself, turning it into a drive beyond the limits which that maxim originally implied: “Know that you are but human, not divine.” Active imagination as theurgic divination would work on the gods rather than recognizing their workings in us. We reach too farm missing the daimones that are present every day, and each night too. As Plotinus said: “It is for them to come to me, not for me to go to them.”

— James Hillman