The Devil
Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles
The adversary, and the dark fourth.
The Devil: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Jung held that the Christian Trinity leaves the dark side of God outside it, and that the psyche’s own pictures of wholeness keep adding a fourth: matter, the feminine, and the devil. In Answer to Job he read Satan as the dark son of God, doing his father’s bidding in the testing of Job.
Psychologically the devil gathers the shadow of a whole culture: all that its ideal of the good has cast out.
The Devil: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Lucifer, the light-bearer who fell; Ahriman against Ahura Mazda; Mara tempting the Buddha; Goethe’s Mephistopheles, “part of that power which would always do evil and always does good.”
In the Press’s Books
The demons of the early modern exorcists are the world of Menghi’s The Cudgel of Demons and Canale’s manual.
From the Sources
The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that the Greek diabolos means a slanderer or accuser, answering to the Hebrew name Satan, which means an adversary or an accuser.
“For the Greek word (from diaballein, "to traduce") means a slanderer, or accuser, and in this sense it is applied to him of whom it is written "the accuser [ho kategoros] of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night" (Apocalypse 12:10). It thus answers to the Hebrew name Satan which signifies an adversary, or an accuser.”
W. Kent, Devil, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Opening section, on the name. The Catholic Encyclopedia; New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908 (New Advent web text). The text, read in part
Jung argues that if all the highest values are shifted to the unconscious, making it a summum bonum, one must then find a devil of equal weight to hold the psychological balance.
“…if I shift all the highest values over to the side of the unconscious, thus converting it into a summum bonum, I am then placed in the unfortunate position of having to discover a devil of equal weight and dimensions that could hold the psychological balance against my summum bonum.”
C. G. Jung, M.D., LL.D., Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 'The Relation of the Ego to the Unconscious', Part II, Chapter IV, 'The Mana Personality', p. 263. Authorized translation by H. G. and C. F. Baynes; London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1928 (Internet Archive OCR text). 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
- “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” CW 11
- Answer to Job (1952), CW 11
- “Christ, a Symbol of the Self,” in Aion, CW 9ii
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Spirits and Mediators
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Devil.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/devil.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Descent: Going down to the dead, to come back with knowledge. The Desert: The empty place of trial and revelation. The Dew: Grace falling in silence from above. Dionysus: Ecstasy, intoxication, and the dissolving of every boundary.