The Wind
Spirit that blows where it will.
The Wind: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The wind is spirit in the oldest sense: unseen, moving, felt only by what it moves. The solar patient’s sun made the wind; the Spirit came at Pentecost as a rushing mighty wind. In 1936 Jung wrote of Wotan, the old Germanic god of storm and frenzy, as an archetype reawakened in his own time.
The Wind: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The wind that blows where it will in the Gospel of John, Aeolus, the four winds, the storm god, the breath of life.
From the Sources
Jesus tells Nicodemus that the wind blows where it will, and no one can tell whence it comes or where it goes; so is everyone born of the Spirit.
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
The King James Version of the Bible, John 3:8. Project Gutenberg eBook #10. The text, read in part
Jung writes that to be born of the spirit is to be born from the fructifying breath of the wind, as the Greek text shows, where spirit and wind are expressed by the same word.
“To be born of the spirit means to be born from the fructifying breath of the wind; this we learn from the Greek text (where spirit and wind are expressed by the same word”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part II, Chapter V, 'Symbolism of the Mother and of Rebirth'. Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916 (Project Gutenberg eBook #65903). 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
- “Wotan” (1936), CW 10
- “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” CW 9i
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Spirit.
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 Wind.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/wind.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
The Animus (Latin: spirit, mind) · The Wise Old Man (Senex sapiens) · Violet (The ultraviolet) · The Prison (The captive spirit)
Nearby in the alphabet: The Wheel: Turning time, fortune, and the round of birth and death. White: The whitening: the first light after the dark. The Wise Old Woman: The knowing elder of the feminine: counsel, fate, and the old ways.