The Bee
The ordered community, and souls on the wing.
The Bee: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The bee makes honey and wax, and lives in an ordered community around a queen. The ancients took bees for souls, as the philosopher Porphyry did, and believed they could be born from the carcass of an ox; Jungian writers read them as order and sweetness drawn from the chaos of nature.
The Bee: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Virgil’s Aristaeus and the bees born from the ox, the bees in Samson’s lion, the Melissae, priestesses of Demeter, and honey in the old pharmacies.
From the Sources
Virgil says that bees alone hold their offspring in common, live together in one city under the shelter of majestic laws, and alone know a fixed home and country.
“Alone of all things they receive and hold Community of offspring, and they house Together in one city, and beneath The shelter of majestic laws they live; And they alone fixed home and country know,”
Virgil, The Georgics, Georgic IV. Translated by James Rhoades (Project Gutenberg eBook #232). The text, read in part
He reports that some say bees have a share of the Divine Intelligence, since God permeates all things, from whom every creature draws its life at birth.
“Some say that unto bees a share is given Of the Divine Intelligence, and to drink Pure draughts of ether; for God permeates all- Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault of heaven- From whom flocks, herds, men, beasts of every kind, Draw each at birth the fine essential flame;”
Virgil, The Georgics, Georgic IV. Translated by James Rhoades (Project Gutenberg eBook #232). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
In the Materia Medica
Honey: the substance itself, as the old medicine used it and as it is known today.
Where to Read
- The Book of Symbols, Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (2010)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Small Creatures
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Bee.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/bee.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Bath: Immersion that cleanses and joins. The Bear: Instinctive strength, and a fierce mothering. The Bird: Spirit, soul, and thought in flight. Black: The blackening at the start of the work.