“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As I mentioned earlier, each person lives both male and female lives. As a rule, conscious memory of these is not retained. To prevent an overidentification of the individual with his present sex, within the male there resides an inner personification of femaleness. This personification of femaleness in the male is the true meaning of what Jung called the “anima.”

The male will often dream of himself, therefore, as a female. The particular way in which he does so, can tell him much about his own reincarnational background in which he operated as a female. Maleness and femaleness are obviously not opposites, but merging tendencies. The priestess, the mother, the young witch, the wife, and the old wise woman — these general types are archetypes, simply because they are “root elements” representing, symbolically, the various kinds of so-called female qualities and the various kinds of female lives that have been lived by males.

They have also been lived by females, of course. However, the women do not need to be reminded of their femaleness, but again, so that they do not overidentify with their present sex, there is what Jung called the “animus,” or the hidden male within the woman.

Again, however, this represents the male lives with which the self has been involved — the young boy, the priest, the aggressive “jungle man,” and the wise old man. These are types, representing generally and symbolically past male lives lived by present women. Women, therefore, can learn much about their reincarnational past as men, through studying those dreams in which these types appear, or in which they themselves appear as men.