Hillman is doing something precise here that looks like modesty but is actually a provocation. By placing "God" alongside "matter" and "energy" in the same row — as fundamental metaphors that hold whole worlds together yet cannot be pointed to — he collapses the hierarchy that Western thought has staked its authority on. God does not anchor the list; God is on the list. The sacred and the scientific are equally archetypal, equally unable to step outside themselves to verify their own foundations.

This is what makes archetypes genuinely axiomatic in Hillman's sense rather than foundational in the usual sense. A foundation can in principle be excavated and inspected; an axiom cannot be gotten behind. You do not perceive an archetype the way you perceive an object — you perceive through it, which is also why you cannot see it directly. The perspective is the pattern; the governing image is the lens itself. And because every theory returns to its axiomatic images — including theories about the unconscious, including Jung's — no discipline gets to stand outside this. Depth psychology is no less metaphorical than physics or theology. What changes is only whether you know that, and what you do with the knowing.