The Planets
The seven governors
The seven wanderers, each ruling a metal, a day, and a temper.
The Planets: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The alchemists joined each planet to a metal: Saturn to lead, Jupiter to tin, Mars to iron, the Sun to gold, Venus to copper, Mercury to quicksilver, and the Moon to silver. Jung read the old doctrine of the seven as a map of the psyche’s powers, projected into the sky.
The Gnostics set the seven as archons, the governors of fate through whose spheres the soul must pass, and Jung wrote of the compulsion of the stars, heimarmene, as the power of the unconscious over those who do not know it.
The Planets: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The seven days of the week; the seven heavens; the ladder of the Mithraic mysteries with its seven gates; the planetary temperaments.
From the Sources
Redgrove explains that the alchemists very generally held the growth of each metal to be under the influence of one of the heavenly bodies.
“The idea that the growth of each metal was under the influence of one of the heavenly bodies (a theory in harmony with the alchemistic view of the unity of the Cosmos), was very generally held by the alchemists”
H. Stanley Redgrove, Alchemy: Ancient and Modern, Chapter II, § 21, 'Alchemy and Astrology'. Second and revised edition; London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1922 (first published 1911) (Project Gutenberg eBook #43240). The text, read in part
Silberer writes of the matter, and so the soul, passing through the spheres of all the planets, subjected in turn to the regimen of all seven.
“…in which the materia (and BO the soul) pass through the spheres of all the planets. They have to be subjected successively to the domination (the regimen) of all seven planets.”
Dr. Herbert Silberer, Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, Part III, Section II, 'The Goal of the Work'. 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
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
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
- “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,” 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 Heavens
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Planets.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/planets.
Nearby in the alphabet: Philemon: A figure of the psyche who knew more than Jung did. The Phoenix: Burned, and risen from its own ashes. Possession: An archetype taking hold of the whole person. The Prima Materia: The chaos from which the work begins: despised, everywhere, and everything.