The Eternal Return
Eternal recurrence
All things return, endlessly: the heaviest thought.
The Eternal Return: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The idea that every moment returns without end came to Nietzsche, he wrote, at Sils-Maria in August 1881, “6,000 feet beyond man and time.” In the Zarathustra seminar Jung took it seriously as a psychological experience: the breaking in of the archetypal, the timeless round of death and rebirth, which Nietzsche took for a law of the cosmos.
Its figure is the circle and the serpent that swallows its tail, and its test, for Nietzsche, was whether one could will it.
The Eternal Return: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The demon of The Gay Science who asks whether you would live this life again, innumerable times; the Stoic conflagration and renewal of the world; the Great Year; the wheel of rebirth.
In the Press’s Books
Zarathustra is “the teacher of the eternal return,” and in Thus Spake Zarathustra his animals tell him so.
From the Sources
In 'The Convalescent' Zarathustra's animals sing of the eternal return: everything goes and returns, dies and blossoms again, breaks and is put together anew, and the ring of existence remains eternally true to itself.
“Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence. Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth itself the same house of existence.”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Third Part, LVII, "The Convalescent", §2. Translator: Thomas Common (Project Gutenberg eBook #1998). The text, read in part
At the gateway called 'This Moment', Zarathustra asks the dwarf whether he and they, whispering there of eternal things, must not all have already existed, and must not eternally return.
“…and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have already existed? —And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane—must we not eternally return?”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Third Part, XLVI, "The Vision and the Enigma", §2. Translator: Thomas Common (Project Gutenberg eBook #1998). 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
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science §341; Ecce Homo
- Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939 (1988)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Eternal recurrence.
Also among Death and Birth
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Eternal Return.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/eternal-return.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
Nearby in the alphabet: The Enchantment: Held under a spell, waiting to be released. The End of the World: Destruction, revelation, and what comes after. The Eternal Youth: The youth who will not be bound by time. Exaltatio: Raising the matter to its highest degree.