The Mountain
The height to be climbed, where heaven and earth meet.
The Mountain: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The mountain is the goal of a laborious ascent and the place where heaven and earth meet and revelation is given. Jung read the climb as the work of becoming conscious, and the summit as an image of the Self; the alchemists placed their treasure inside the mountain of the philosophers.
The mountain is also solitude, the withdrawal above the world, and the view from it.
The Mountain: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Sinai and the tablets of the law, Olympus, Meru at the centre of the world, the mount of the Transfiguration, Dante’s mountain of Purgatory, Petrarch’s ascent of Mont Ventoux (1336).
In the Press’s Books
“When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains,” where he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude for ten years before going down again: the opening of Thus Spake Zarathustra.
From the Sources
At Sinai the Lord comes down upon the top of the mountain and calls Moses up to it.
“And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.”
The King James Version of the Bible, Exodus 19:20. Project Gutenberg eBook #10. The text, read in part
Zarathustra calls himself a wanderer and mountain-climber who does not love the plains and cannot long sit still.
“I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Third Part, XLV, 'The Wanderer'. Translated by 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
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12
- Alchemical Studies, CW 13
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 Mountain.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/mountain.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Moon: The light of the night, waning and returning. Mortificatio: The killing of what has ruled too long. Multiplicatio: The finished stone increasing its power. The Navel: The centre of the body, and of the world.