Senex

The senex — Latin for old man — is the archetypal figure of age, gravity, form, law, limit, and duration. In Hillman‘s articulation across the essays gathered in [[hillman-senex-and-puer|Senex and Puer]], the senex is the principle by which the psyche holds its form: the old king, the lawgiver, the judge, the figure of established order who gives weight to what has accumulated.

In its mature form the senex appears as wise old man, the trusted elder, the one whose long sight balances the younger generations. In its pathological form — cut off from its paired puer — the senex appears as Saturn in his depressive aspect: rigid, suspicious, devouring of the young, unable to receive the new. The health of the psyche requires the senex-puer polarity kept in living relation rather than split: form held open to inspiration, inspiration held within form. The father-complex has the senex archetype at its core; the cultural pathology of patriarchy is often the senex unaccompanied by its puer correlate. See senex-saturn and puer-senex.

Relationships

• senex-saturn
• puer-aeternus
• hillman-senex-and-puer