Corpus Anima is a collection of previously published essays written for professional
Jungian journals about the unity of psyche and soma, spirit and matter, body and soul. There
are also two chapters of more personal reflections, previously unpublished, including a series of
articles on the mid-Atlantic Azorean Archipelago. The essays on psyche and soma come from
the direct experience of their unity. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of
spirit and matter, body and soul, where through the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox
we can become whole.
Included in this collection is a published essay (Routledge) on the Portuguese poet and writer,
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). His particular paradoxical expression of the soul and its life in
the world is radically inspiring. The lines below are written on his tomb in Lisbon, resting in the
same national monument with Vasco de Gama (c. 1460s-1524), world oceanic explorer. Pessoa
was an explorer of inner worlds. He is, posthumously, a national treasure.
I am nothing.
I shall always be nothing.
I cannot want to be anything.
But I have in me all the dreams of the world.
Cedrus Monte, PhD, is a Jungian Analyst, graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland
(1995) where she now resides. She is originally from Northern California. Her roots lie there,
even her heart; but even deeper roots, soul roots, lie in the Azores and Madeira, both
autonomous island regions of Portugal. An uprooted wanderer of many lands, she has
grounded herself as much as possible in the one constant earth, the body.
