The Forest
Where the known way ends.
The Forest: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The forest is where the known road ends: dark, unmeasured, full of animals and strange meetings. In fairy tales it is where children are abandoned and where the hero loses his way and meets the helper or the witch.
Jungian readers, Marie-Louise von Franz above all, took it as a picture of the unconscious as it is first met, before any order has been found in it.
The Forest: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Dante’s dark wood “midway upon the journey of our life,” Hansel and Gretel, the enchanted forests of Arthurian romance, the sacred groves of the Celts and Germans.
From the Sources
In the old 'Parabola' that Silberer reproduces, the narrator, lost in thought, departs from the usual path and finds himself on a narrow footpath that is rough, untrodden and impassable.
“I chanced, while thinking these thoughts, to depart from the usual path, and found myself, I know not how, on a narrow foot path that was rough, untrodden and impassable”
Dr. Herbert Silberer, Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, Part I, Section I, 'The Parable', section 1 (the walk in the forest). Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1917 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
Jung quotes Seneca: on entering a grove of ancient trees whose boughs are so interwoven that the sky cannot be seen, the shadows, the privacy and the gloom strike one as with the presence of a deity.
“When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and whose boughs are so closely interwoven that the sky cannot be seen, the stately shadows of the wood, the privacy of the place, and the awful gloom cannot but strike you, as with the presence of a deity”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part I, Chapter III, 'The Hymn of Creation' (quoting Seneca). Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916 (Project Gutenberg eBook #65903). 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
- “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” CW 9i
- Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (1970)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among The Land
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Forest.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/forest.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Fool: The innocent who knows nothing and finds the way. The Foot: Standing on the earth; the point of contact and of wounding. The Fountain: The source that springs from the centre. The Fox: Cunning that survives by wit.