The Spiral
Returning to the same place, a little higher.
The Spiral: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The dreams Jung followed in Psychology and Alchemy did not advance in a line; they circled the centre, coming back to the same themes, each time from a little nearer. He took the spiral as the shape of individuation: repetition that is not mere repetition but development.
Jung wrote that the process of individuation is not linear but a circumambulation of the self: the dreams go round the centre and come back, in a spiral, each turn closer. The spirals cut on the stones of Newgrange and Malta five thousand years ago mark tombs and temples with the same sign, the way in and the way out.
The alchemists’ circulatio, the repeated distillation that rises and falls through the vessel, and the serpent coiled about the staff and the tree, are the spiral in the laboratory and in myth.
The Spiral: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The carved spirals of Newgrange, the nautilus and the snail, the whirlpool, the coiled serpent, the gyres of Yeats’s A Vision (1925). The spiral galaxy and the whirlpool; the ammonite and the ram’s horn; the labyrinth of Chartres, which is a spiral folded; Yeats’s gyres; the golden spiral of the shell.
From the Sources
The Britannica defines a spiral as the path traced by the end of a line that changes in length as it turns about a fixed point.
“SPIRAL, in mathematics, the locus of the extremity of a line (or radius vector) which varies in length as it revolves about a fixed point (or origin).”
Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition: Spiral, 'Spiral', opening definition. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, as transcribed on Wikisource. The text, read in full
Plato's Timaeus says that the planets, carried by the motion of the same, all turned in a spiral, so that the swiftest appeared to follow the sphere of the same most nearly.
“…for the motion of the same made them all turn in a spiral, and, because some went one way and some another, that which receded most slowly from the sphere of the same, which was the swiftest, appeared to follow it most nearly.”
Plato, Timaeus, Timaeus's account of the planets and the creation of time. Translated by Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg eBook #1572). 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, “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy”
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), “Confrontation with the Unconscious”
- Jill Purce, The Mystic Spiral (1974)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Individuation.
Also among Shapes
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Spiral.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/spiral.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
The Self (Das Selbst) · The Mandala (Sanskrit: circle) · The Tree (Arbor philosophica)
Nearby in the alphabet: The Spider: The weaver at the centre of the web. The Spine: The axis of the body, climbed by the serpent power. The Square: Stability, the earth, and the four made firm. Squaring the Circle: The impossible figure of the whole.