The term 'origin' occupies a peculiarly contested position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as epistemological criterion, ontological ground, and mythic category. William James exposes the logical circularity of invoking origin as a test for truth, cataloguing the diverse warrants — intuition, apostolic succession, supernatural revelation — by which competing traditions claim priority. Mircea Eliade reframes origin cosmologically: the time of origins is paradigmatic time, with the cosmogony serving as the model for every act of creation and renewal; to return to origin is to restore potency. Derrida, engaging Valéry, radicalises the instability of the concept itself: the source or origin cannot be reassembled into any originary unity and perpetually defers itself in time. Karen King, analysing Gnostic scholarship, demonstrates how genealogical arguments about origin — Jewish versus Christian — function rhetorically to privilege certain materials and subordinate others, revealing origin-claims as instruments of polemic rather than neutral historiography. The I Ching lexicon grounds origin (Tzu) as intrinsic selfhood and causative source, linking cosmological beginning to personal ground. Von Franz, working within Jungian mythological analysis, situates questions of origin at the boundary of conscious knowledge, the threshold where archetypal images such as the uroboros emerge. Taken together, these positions reveal origin as an axis on which cosmological, psychological, theological, and deconstructive concerns converge — never simply a beginning, always a site of power.
In the library
10 passages
origin has always been a favorite test. Origin in immediate intuition; origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation... these origins have been stock warrants for the truth of one opinion after another
James argues that invoking origin as a criterion of truth is a pervasive but philosophically circular strategy across religious history, cataloguing the multiple and incompatible origin-warrants employed to legitimate competing claims.
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902thesis
The paramount time of origins is the time of the cosmogony, the instant that saw the appearance of the most immense of realities, the world... cosmogonic time serves as the model for all sacred times
Eliade establishes the cosmogonic moment as the paradigmatic origin, arguing that all sacred time and creative action derives its authority from ritual reactualisation of this primordial beginning.
Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
the source cannot be reassembled into its originary unity. Because— first of all—it has no proper, literal meaning... Is not the source the origin, the point of formation, or rather emerg
Derrida, reading Valéry, deconstructs the concept of origin by showing that the source refuses to cohere into an originary unity and possesses no stable literal meaning prior to its metaphorical elaboration.
Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
what you have just emitted, emits toward you, and what you have produced fecundates you... you were delayed in relation to yourself... time opens itself as the delay of the origin in relation to itself
Derrida, via Valéry's notebooks, articulates origin as constitutively self-deferred: the act of expression retroactively becomes an origin only insofar as it is already delayed relative to itself, dissolving any simple temporal priority.
Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
Origin, TZU: source, beginning, ground; cause, reason, motive; line of descent; path to the origin; yourself, intrinsic.
The I Ching lexicon defines origin (Tzu) as simultaneously cosmological source, causal ground, genealogical line, and intrinsic selfhood, collapsing the distinction between external beginning and internal essence.
Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis
Whether one argues for a Jewish or a Christian origin of Gnosticism, the method is the same: genealogy privileges one set of materials as the original locus of Gnosticism and derives all other forms from it.
King demonstrates that debates over the origin of Gnosticism are methodologically identical regardless of conclusion, exposing genealogical origin-arguments as rhetorical strategies that impose linear derivation upon complex historical phenomena.
Things of every kind must be classed according to their origin... truth comes first and falsification afterward... Our teaching is not later; it is earlier than them all. In this lies the evidence of its truth
Tertullian's argument, analysed by King, treats chronological priority as self-evident proof of doctrinal truth, exemplifying the rhetorical logic by which origin is conscripted as an apologetic weapon.
Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism?, 2003supporting
Most of the questions as to the origin and substance of ou... the symbol of the prima materia, of the original matter of the world
Von Franz situates questions of cosmological origin at the boundary of conscious knowledge, where the uroboros and prima materia emerge as archetypal images projected onto the unknown ground of existence.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995supporting
The evolutionary origin of interoceptive and exteroceptive neurons... molecular biologists interested in the evolutionary origin of the nervous system have been avidly using the very latest tools
Craig situates the origin of interoceptive and exteroceptive neural systems in evolutionary genetic history, framing origin as a biological and phylogenetic question with implications for the neuroscience of self-awareness.
Craig, A.D. Bud, How Do You Feel? An Interoceptive Moment with Your Neurobiological Self, 2014supporting
Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development
Schore's title positions the origin of the self as a neurobiological problem, linking the emergence of selfhood to the developmental regulation of affect — a framing that grounds psychological origin in somatic and relational processes.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994aside