The Wolf
Devouring hunger, and a fierce kind of nurture.
The Wolf: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The wolf is devouring hunger, the wild appetite that swallows. In Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1617) a grey wolf devours the dead king and is burned, and the king rises renewed: the alchemists’ antimony purifying gold. The she-wolf who suckles Romulus and Remus shows the other face.
In “Wotan” (1936) Jung wrote of the god whose beasts are the wolves, the storm-god of ecstasy and war who had seized a nation; Fenrir, bound by the gods, breaks his chain at the end and devours Odin. The wolf is the hunger that cannot be bound for ever.
The she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, and the wolf-nurse of Mowgli, carry the other face: the wild mother whose milk makes founders. Marie-Louise von Franz read Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf as the devouring aspect of the mother, cut open to let the swallowed out.
The Wolf: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Fenrir, who swallows Odin, Little Red Riding Hood, the werewolf, and antimony, the alchemists’ grey wolf. The wolves of Odin, Geri and Freki; Saint Francis and the wolf of Gubbio; the werewolf trials of the sixteenth century; the Capitoline wolf; Hesse’s Steppenwolf.
From the Sources
In the Grimms' "Little Red-Cap" the wolf goes straight to the grandmother's bed and devours her, then puts on her clothes and cap and lies down in her bed.
“The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother’s bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.”
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, "Little Red-Cap". Text based on translations from the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. The text, read in part
Writing of the hero's two mothers, Jung notes that the foster mother is sometimes an animal, as with the she-wolf of Romulus and Remus.
“Maya dies after the birth and Buddha is given a stepmother. The stepmother is sometimes an animal (the she-wolf of Romulus and Remus, etc.).”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part II, Chapter VII, "The Dual Mother Rôle". 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
- Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (1617), Emblem XXIV
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12
- “Wotan” (1936), CW 10
- Marie-Louise von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (1970)
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 Wolf.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/wolf.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Wise Old Woman: The knowing elder of the feminine: counsel, fate, and the old ways. The Witch: The mother’s dark face, who binds and devours. The Womb: The vessel of life, and of rebirth. The Wounded Healer: The one who heals by virtue of a wound.