Worship literally means “worth-ship” – it is to give something its worth. Worship is a way of engaging with an archtype and occurs on two levels, we can find ourselves spontaneously worshiping through an archetype or we can consciously put ourselves on a spiritual path into an archetypal aspect of God. In the case of the former we may fall in love with the idea of the loving father, the Spirit or the detachment monk. We draw those archetypal experiences to ourselves through worship. An attraction to the father God then is our soul calling out for a deeper experience of fathering. That may be because of a lack in our own fathering or it may simply be a need to further intensify. What may begin as something happening to us can continue as a conscious act. Typically a Christian may have a numinous encounter with Christ but continue to attend church even after that initial energy deflates. This is a two edged sword, on one hand there is hope that the archetypal energy may come again through regular disciplined attention but there is also the danger that person’s spirituality will dry up because they are going through the motions of worship without the accompanying energetic engagement. This is a huge problem in traditional church life.

The devotional aspect of spiritulaity is often archetypal. While we may enjoy theologising about the nature of God it is more often that the experience of God as Father or a sacrificial son that will activate a sense of the numinous and of devotion.