Syzygy

The syzygy — from Greek συζυγία, “yoking together” — is carl-jung‘s term for the archetypal pair whose unity constitutes a single structural whole. The anima-animus pair is the central syzygy of analytical psychology, but the structure is older and wider than its modern psychological instantiation.

Jung locates the concept in the ancient tradition: “We encounter the anima historically above all in the divine syzygies, the male-female pairs of deities. These reach down… into Classical Chinese philosophy, where the cosmogonic pair of concepts are designated yang (masculine) and yin (feminine)” (Jung, CW 9i, §120, cited Hillman 1985). The Gnostic pleroma is structured as a series of syzygies; the Hermetic tradition’s cosmos is organized by male-female principles at every level.

The key insight is structural: neither half of the syzygy can be understood alone. “The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism” (Jung, CW 9ii, §427). The pair is the unit. When the tradition (Jungian or classical) speaks of anima or animus in isolation, it does so as a provisional analytical move; the archetypal reality is the pair.

james-hillman makes the structural claim explicit: “as spirit is not soul, so animus is not anima, and neither can be neglected nor substituted for the other. The syzygy means both” (Hillman 1985, hillman-anima-anatomy-personified). The attempt to speak of anima without animus — or vice versa — always falsifies, because the archetypal reality is the yoking itself.

The coniunctio is the syzygy consummated, the pair joined in the inner marriage that constitutes the self. Every figure of the divine marriage — Christ and Sophia, Shiva and Shakti, yang and yin, sun and moon in alchemy — is an image of the syzygy.

Relationships

• anima
• animus
• coniunctio
• hierosgamos
• self
• polytheistic-psychology

Primary sources

• jung-aion (Jung 1951, CW 9ii §§427, 28)
• The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Jung CW 9i, §120)
• hillman-anima-anatomy-personified (Hillman 1985)