The Witch
The mother’s dark face, who binds and devours.
The Witch: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The witch of the fairy tale is the Great Mother on her dark side: she who binds, poisons, enchants, and devours, who keeps the children in the cage and the prince under a spell. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz read her as the negative aspect of the mother archetype, and her spell as the paralysis that falls on a life held fast by it.
She is also the keeper of hidden knowledge of herbs and the dark, and the tales sometimes send the hero to her for help.
The Witch: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Baba Yaga in her hut on hens’ legs, Circe turning men to swine, the witch of Hansel and Gretel, Hecate, Medea, and the sorceress of the ballads.
In the Press’s Books
The belief in witchcraft and its harm, and the remedies against it, is the subject of Canale’s On the Manner of Discerning and Healing the Bewitched, and of the amulets in the Symbolarium.
From the Sources
In the Grimms' tale the kindly old woman is in reality a wicked witch who lies in wait for children, having built the house of bread to entice them, and who kills, cooks and eats any child in her power.
“The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her.”
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, 'Hansel and Gretel'. Text based on translations from the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. The text, read in part
Jung writes that Lamia persecutes and destroys children, and that the motive recurs in fairy tales where the mother appears as a murderess or devourer of men, Hansel and Gretel being a German example.
“Since that time the raging Lamia is the persecutor of children, whom she destroys wherever she can. This motive frequently recurs in fairy tales, where the mother often appears directly as a murderess or as a devourer of men; a German paradigm is the well-known tale of Hansel and Gretel.”
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' (on Lilith and the Lamias). Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916. 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
- “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” CW 9i
- Marie-Louise von Franz, The Feminine in Fairy Tales (1972)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Parents and Elders
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Witch.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/witch.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Wise Old Man: Spirit in the form of a knowing elder. The Wise Old Woman: The knowing elder of the feminine: counsel, fate, and the old ways. The Wolf: Devouring hunger, and a fierce kind of nurture. The Womb: The vessel of life, and of rebirth.