C.G. Jung: “‘Fishes and snakes are favourite symbols for describing psychic happenings or experiences that suddenly dart out of the unconscious.” Paul Klee The Golden Fish C.G. Jung on Fish Symbolism The serpent is an equivalent of the fish. The consensus of opinion interpreted the Redeemer equally as a fish and a serpent; he is…
Jung and Hercules When a Jungian hears about tasks that some mythical or fairy-book character has to do, they get pretty excited. There must be some good psychological reasons for these tasks– some analogies, metaphors, similes and parallels to examine. Amplification is the name of the game. So what is the deal with…
The Tao begets One One begets Two Two begets Three Three begets the myriad things Tao-te-Ching, Chapter 42 Yesterday’s post was about the three roots of Yggdrasil (to Asgard, Jotunheim, Nifhelm) and the three norns (Urd, Verdani, Skuld), and a quotation by Jung about the number three : One is the first from which all…
You gotta hand it to the Norse myth-makers — a huge serpent eating corpses and gnawing at the root of the World Tree is a bit of a nightmare image. According to Jung, the beginning of psychological work starts with the alchemical stage of the nigredo, the “point of maximum despair.” In images, it is…
Of course, if there is a world tree, there has to be a world serpent… What’s a tree without a snake?…. In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr is the Midgard Serpent that surrounds the world: when he lets go of his tail, the world will end. . Previous posts have talked about Snake symbolism and the Uroboros:…
From the website of Maria Taveras, a Jungian analyst and artist Jung also discusses a case in which a snake emerged from the mouth of a woman. After World War I, a 28-year-old woman consulted Jung. She wanted “to be cured within ten hours” – that is, within only ten analytic sessions. The woman told…
Continuing in the amplification of the healing snake in Amy Hardie’s The Edge of Dreaming… (… Snakes on a plane, snakes on a woman, snakes on a stick — snakes everywhere….) The woman with the snake coiled around her looks particularly unhappy; I suspect this picture was not her idea…. More on men’s projection about…
Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it. The Integration of the Personality. (1939)