Fantasi är något som spinner igång, en "spinning veil".
The poet.. gains consciousness only that he may better obey the movements of the unknown waves which cradle him, and that he may widen, through consciousness itself, the limits of the unconscious.
–Elie Faure, History of Art: Modern Art.
While the Soul depletes the ego of its strength through a "shattering" manifestation of the Divine Will or through the revelation of a difficult-to-digest truth, in its negative form, the Spirit, the god of the sea, submerges the ego: dissolving its foundation; blurring its perceptions; inhibiting its ability to discern and discriminate; and leaving it prey to the "denizens of the deep": the destructive forces of the archetypal unconscious. In its positive expression, the spiritual "dissolving and diffusing" process results in extending the perimeters of soul. One of the ego’s functions is to limit the range of sense perception by narrowing the focal point of consciousness. This prevents us from being overwhelmed by what surrounds us; it allows us to focus upon one thing at a time. Through the medium of imagination, the Spirit relaxes this pinpoint concentration and helps us to interact with broader aspects of the supramaterial realm.
While the Soul transforms and regenerates the ego, the Spirit relieves us of ego constraints in direct proportion to our capacity to grow more yielding, receptive, and open to things that take us "beyond ourselves" (and to miraculously return from such nonego states with our ego intact, healthy, and rebounding). Through the Spirit, we realize the potential elasticity of consciousness: its ability to stretch beyond ordinary boundaries and to seemingly transcend itself. Therefore, it increases the permeability of the ego-complex. If we can overcome a fear of "dissolving", the ego is expanded beyond its everyday limits.
Traditionally it's associated with the image-generating aspect of the psyche. It also rules the constantly evolving imagery found within the universe itself (and the image-less phenomena of gravity and of interstellar space). In the phenomenal world, every object we perceive–rock, bird, plant, sky–is also an "image": an "imagined" means of perception. Though we cannot perceive the subatomic world, we "imagine" we perceive matter in its objectively real state. Yet, such images communicate a metaphoric essence: they "imaginatively" describe the nature of the object we perceive. As the ruler of imagination, the Spirit describes how we perceive and, therefore, conceive of the immaterial world, i.e., what we imagine reality to be. (The Latin root of the word perceive means "to grasp thoroughly.")
