The Seba library treats Anvil in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C.G., Kerényi, Karl).
the ego standing between them, as between hammer and anvil. But over against this ego, tossed like a shuttlecock between the outer and inner demands, there stands some scarcely definable arbiter
Jung posits the ego as structurally positioned between hammer and anvil — outer collective demands and inner unconscious forces — a condition that necessitates recourse to a ‘scarcely definable arbiter’ beyond ordinary conscience.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
the spirit is an anvil and a hammer. You see, the spirit is not only a dynamic manifestation, but is at the same time a conflict. That is indispensable; without the conflict there would not be that dynamic manifestation of the spirit.
Jung interprets Nietzsche’s hammer-and-anvil image as a figure for the constitutive tension within spirit itself, arguing that the dyad of opposites is not incidental but essential to spiritual dynamism.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis
It may also seem as though he were a helpless object caught between hammer and anvil; not in the least a Hercules at the parting of the ways, but rather a rudderless ship buffeted between Scylla and Charybdis.
Jung contrasts heroic moral agency with the psyche’s passive subjection to the collision of eternal principles, using the hammer-and-anvil image to denote the suffering form of ‘godlikeness’ — crucifixion rather than mastery.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
Akmon means ‘anvil’; Damnameneus means ‘the compeller’ — that is to say, in this case, the hammer; Kelmis most probably means ‘knife’. This last was the unfortunate one of the three brothers, between the anvil and the hammer.
Kerényi identifies the Idaean Daktylos Akmon as a personification of the anvil, embedding the hammer-anvil dyad in mythological figures of the first smiths and locating the tragic fate of what is forged between them.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth.
Hesiod’s Theogony employs the falling brazen anvil as the primary measure of cosmic depth, structuring the vertical axis of the Greek mythological world as the foundational archaic usage that later writers amplify.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting
An anvil dropped from the sky falls for nine nights, and on the tenth it reaches the earth; and likewise it falls nine nights and days from the earth, and on the tenth day it reaches Tartaros.
Kerényi transmits the Hesiodic cosmological anvil-measure in his mythographic synthesis, confirming the image’s canonical status as an index of the abyss beneath ordered reality.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
aKf.lwv, -ovo~ [m.] ‘anvil’ (ll.), also ‘meteoric stone’ (Hes. Th. 722), = oupUVO~ ~alo’lpov ‘heaven, iron’ (H.)
Beekes’ etymological entry establishes that the Greek word for ‘anvil’ (akmōn) is cognate with terms for ‘stone,’ ‘heaven,’ and ‘iron,’ rooting the image in the Proto-Indo-European word for the sky-stone and thus grounding its cosmological uses in linguistic prehistory.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting