The Giant
The first, crude powers, before the order of the gods.
The Giant: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Giants belong to the beginning: the Titans before the Olympians, the frost giants before the Aesir, the primordial body from which the world is made. Jungian writers read them as the unconscious in its crude, overwhelming, not yet differentiated form, powers of nature too large for the human scale, which the hero or the gods must overcome or outwit.
The Giant: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Ymir, from whose body the world was built, the Titans, Goliath, the Cyclops Polyphemus, the giant at the top of the beanstalk, Gargantua.
From the Sources
Bulfinch tells that Odin, Vili and Ve slew the frost giant Ymir and formed the world from his body: the earth from it, the seas from his blood, the mountains from his bones and the heavens from his skull.
“They slew the giant Ymir, and out of his body formed the earth, of his blood the seas, of his bones the mountains, of his hair the trees, of his skull the heavens, and of his brain clouds, charged with hail and snow.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, Northern Mythology (the creation). Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
Bulfinch writes that the superhuman giants who warred with the gods were of vastly larger dimensions: Tityus stretched on the plain covered nine acres, and Enceladus needed the whole of Mount Aetna laid on him to hold him down.
“But the superhuman giants, who warred with the gods, were of vastly larger dimensions. Tityus, we are told, when stretched on the plain, covered nine acres, and Enceladus required the whole of Mount Aetna to be laid upon him to keep him down.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, 'Monsters'. Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. 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
- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949)
- J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (1962)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Wholes and Extremes
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Giant.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/giant.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Fox: Cunning that survives by wit. The Garden: The walled and tended place, where nature is ordered. The Goat: Lust, vitality, and the one who bears the sins. Gold: The incorruptible: not the common gold.