Copper
Venus
The metal of Venus: love, beauty, and verdigris.
Copper: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Copper was the metal of Venus, named from Cyprus, the goddess’s island, where it was mined; its green rust made it the metal of growth and of love. The alchemists counted Venus among the stages of the work, and Jung read her as the eros that joins what the work has separated.
Copper: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Aphrodite born from the sea at Cyprus, the mirror of Venus that is also copper’s sign, verdigris.
From the Sources
Basil Valentine, in the Practica, calls copper 'amatory Venus', clothed with abundant colour, her whole body one pure tincture, not unlike the red of the most precious metal.
“Amatory Venus is clothed with abundant colour, and her whole body is one pure tincture, not unlike the red colour which is found in the most precious of metals.”
Arthur Edward Waite (signed preface to the English edition), The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged, Basilius Valentinus, 'Practica', p. 319. Now first done into English from the Latin original published at Frankfort in the year 1678; in two volumes, Volume I; London: James Elliott and Co., 1893 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
Ross quotes Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale, which names the seven bodies by their planets and ends with Venus as copper.
“The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon: Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe, Mars yren, Mercurie quik-silver we clepe Saturnus leed and Jupiter is tin, And Venus coper, by my fader kin!”
Hugh Munro Ross, Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition: Alchemy, 'Alchemy', on the identification of the metals with the planets. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, as transcribed on Wikisource. 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.
Where to Read
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Metals, Principles, and Substances
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Copper.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/copper.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Cock: The herald of the light. Coniunctio: The union of opposites in the vessel. The Crab: Moving backward: the pull of the past, with a way forward hidden in it. The Creation: The world, and consciousness, coming into being.