Quaternity

The quaternity is, for Jung, the archetypal structure of wholeness. Where the trinity represents a dynamic, masculine, and ideational totality, the quaternity adds the fourth — matter, the feminine, the shadow, the inferior function — to produce a symbol of completeness that includes what the trinity excludes. Jung reads the four-fold as the native geometry of the Self: four cardinal points, four elements, four functions, four stages of the coniunctio, the cross as the Christian quaternity in which the body of the god is joined to the four directions of the world.

The tradition’s deepest treatment of the quaternity runs through Aion, Psychology and Alchemy, Answer to Job, and the Mysterium Coniunctionis. Its classical root is the Timaean division of the world-soul into four; its alchemical form is the axiom of Maria, “one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.”

Relationships

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• four-functions-quaternity
• axiom-of-maria
• cross-as-quaternity-of-the-self