The Unicorn
Monoceros
Wild power, tamed only by the pure.
The Unicorn: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Jung gave a long chapter of Psychology and Alchemy to the unicorn, following it through Christian allegory, alchemy, and the East. Wild and untameable, it could be caught only by a virgin, in whose lap it lay down; the Church read it as Christ, the alchemists as Mercurius, and Jung as the untamed spirit united with the receptive soul.
Jung’s chapter follows the one-horned beast from Ctesias and Pliny through the Physiologus, where the hunter catches it in the virgin’s lap, and through its forms in Persia, India, and China; he found it in the alchemists as a sign of Mercurius, the spirit in matter, wild and poisonous and yet the medicine, and set the virgin who tames it beside the alchemical bath in which the fierce spirit is softened.
The horn that purifies water, which the beasts wait for at the poisoned spring, was the alicorn of the apothecaries: the sign and the drug were one thing for five hundred years.
The Unicorn: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The unicorn tapestries, the re’em of the Bible, the qilin of China, and the unicorn’s horn of the old pharmacies, which was the tusk of the narwhal. The Lady and the Unicorn at Cluny; the unicorn in captivity in the Cloisters tapestries; the Scottish royal arms; the unicorn of Lewis Carroll, who finds Alice a fabulous monster.
From the Sources
Bulfinch relates the tale that hunters, finding the unicorn a great lover of purity and innocence, set a young virgin in its way, so that it came and laid its head in her lap and fell asleep, and was taken.
“They discovered that it was a great lover of purity and innocence, so they took the field with a young virgin, who was placed in the unsuspecting admirer's way. When the unicorn spied her, he approached with all reverence, couched beside her, and laying his head in her lap, fell asleep.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, Chapter XXXVI, "Modern Monsters": "The Unicorn". Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
Pliny describes the monoceros of India as a very fierce animal with a single black horn two cubits long projecting from the middle of its forehead, and says it cannot be taken alive.
“…a very fierce animal called the monoceros, which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length. This animal, it is said, cannot be taken alive.”
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, Vol. II, Book VIII, Chapter 31, "The Terrestrial Animals of India". Translated, with copious notes and illustrations, by the late John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., and H. T. Riley, Esq., B.A.; London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, MDCCCLV (Project Gutenberg eBook #60230). The text, read in part
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In the Materia Medica
Unicorn’s horn: the substance itself, as the old medicine used it and as it is known today.
Where to Read
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, “The Paradigm of the Unicorn”
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, ¶¶ 518–554
- Odell Shepard, The Lore of the Unicorn (1930)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Beasts
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Unicorn.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/unicorn.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Twins: The pair who are one, one mortal and one divine. The Two: The first division, and the tension that drives the psyche. The Uroboros: The serpent that devours its own tail. The Veil: What hides the mystery, and what may be lifted.