arrows
The arrow traverses the depth-psychology corpus as a symbol of remarkable semantic density, gathering together the masculine, the solar, the aggressive, the erotic, and the shamanic into a single image. Jung reads it foremost as a masculine-phallic emblem: the arrow carries procreative force, announced at a son’s birth in Chinese custom, declared in Psalm 127, and discharged from Cupid’s solar quiver as both fertilizing and destroying energy. Hiawatha’s threefold arrow-shot at the magician-sorcerer’s crown becomes, for Jung, the hero’s conquest of the Terrible Mother and the unconscious’s death-grip on ego-consciousness. Von Franz notes the bow-and-arrow motif in Senior’s alchemical revision of the emerald-tablet narrative, where eagles shoot at the statue — an image that grafts martial aggression onto the tradition of transformative wisdom. In Ndembu ritual analysis (Turner), the arrow is explicitly equated with the husband and with the marriage payment (nsewu), domesticating eros into social structure. Radin’s Trickster cycle treats the arrow as a locus of naïveté and gradual technical initiation. Bremmer, interrogating Dodds, contests the identification of the arrow as shamanic soul-vehicle, arguing instead for its healing and plague-expelling functions in the figure of Abaris. The I Ching lexicon associates arrow with swift directness, metallic acquisition, and the extinction of obstacles. Across these voices the arrow figures as a vector of directed psychic energy — penetrating, procreative, and potentially transformative.
The arrow has a masculine significance; hence the Oriental custom of describing brave sons as the arrows or javelins of their father. ‘To make sharp arrows’ is an Arabic expression for begetting valiant sons.
Jung establishes the arrow as a primary symbol of masculine-phallic and procreative energy, cross-culturally attested in Arabic idiom, Chinese birth-custom, and biblical poetry.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
There Hiawatha shoots in three arrows and so makes an end of Megissogwon. He then steals the magic belt of wampum which makes him invisible.
Jung interprets Hiawatha’s triple arrow-strike at the magician’s crown as the hero’s archetypal conquest of the devouring Terrible Mother and liberation of ego-consciousness from the unconscious.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
an arrow representing the husband, inserted in the chipang’u shrine. This arrow stands for the patient’s husband. In the girls’ puberty ritual, an arrow placed in the mudyi tree symbolizes the bridegroom, and indeed the term for the main marriage payment is nsewu, which means ‘arrow.’
Turner demonstrates that in Ndembu ritual the arrow is the symbolic equivalent of the husband and the formal token of the marriage payment, encoding masculine procreative force within social institution.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
the arrow as a vehicle for Abaris is found only in later testimonies, while the earliest clearly describe him with the arrow in his hand. The purpose of Abaris’ arrow is unclear, but several uses are possible. Just as the plague was thought to be caused by arrows, so people believed in the healing power of arrows.
Bremmer challenges Dodds’s reading of the arrow as shamanic soul-vehicle, arguing that Abaris’s arrow functions instead as an instrument of healing and plague-expulsion, and that its soul-carrying role is a later interpolation.
, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983thesis
Dodds obviously infers too much from the following passage: ‘The object in which the soul is contained may be the sole of a shoe or a braid of horse-hair, a golden sword, or arrow, or some other small object which is kept carefully hidden away.’
Bremmer scrutinizes Dodds’s comparative evidence for the arrow as a container of the external soul in Tatar shamanism, finding the inference unsupported by the source text.
, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983supporting
Bind the holy Sebastian to a tree and slowly and rationally shoot arrow after arrow into his twitching flesh. When you do so, remind yourself that each arrow that strikes him spares one of your dwarfish and lame brothers.
In the Red Book, Jung employs the arrow as an image of deliberate, rational wounding — each directed shot at the idealized figure of Sebastian paradoxically liberating the repressed, diminished aspects of the psyche.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
THE HOPPING WITH THE ARROW The conclusion of the rites further emphasizes the sexual division. At sundown, the senior practitioner takes the winnowing basket… then he puts the remaining ritual equipment on
Turner describes the ritual use of the arrow in Wubwang’u’s closing rite as a concrete enactment of the sexual division and duality central to Ndembu twinship symbolism.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966supporting
He put the arrow in the fork of a tree in line with the elk and said, ‘Arrow, go!’ Then he pushed it but it would not go. He flattered it and tried again to direct it but it would not go.
Radin’s Trickster episode treats the arrow as the object of naive misunderstanding, illustrating the Trickster’s ignorance of technical causality and requiring the grandmother’s corrective instruction about the bow.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting
‘That arrow is mine. It is a fear-inspiring thing.’ … So he took one out. As he did so the entire lodge became filled with lightning.
In the Trickster cycle Hare’s arrow is charged with numinous, lightning-like power that fills the lodge, signifying the arrow’s identity as an object of dangerous sacred force.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting
Arrow, SHIH: arrow, javelin, dart; swift, direct as an arrow; marshal together.
The I Ching lexicon defines the arrow ideographically as a symbol of swiftness, directness, and the marshalling of forces — a semantic field that underlies its oracular appearances in hexagrams 21, 40, and 56.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
Shooting a pheasant. The-one arrow extinguishing. Completing uses praising fate.
The I Ching hexagram 56 associates the single arrow’s extinction of the pheasant with the completion of fate, linking precision of aim to a destined, conclusive act.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
Senior adds something which I have not found in any of the other tales of the finding of the tablet, namely the nine or ten eagles which, in the picture, shoot at the statue with bow and arrow.
Von Franz notes that Senior’s alchemical variant uniquely introduces the bow-and-arrow motif — eagles shooting the statue — as an image absent from other tabula smaragdina traditions, suggesting an aggressive, transformative intent directed at the vessel of wisdom.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
let go an arrow against haughty Menelaos… make your prayer to Apollo the light-born, the glorious archer, that you will accomplish a grand sacrifice of lambs first born.
In the Iliad, the arrow fired by Pandaros at Menelaos — instigated by Athene’s divine deception — functions as the instrument by which the gods violate the sacred truce, linking the arrow to transgression and divine manipulation.
, The Iliad of Homer, 2011aside
Artemis laid the giant low with her arrows; according to another, it was the child Apollon who did this.
Kerényi records competing mythological traditions in which Artemis’s or Apollo’s arrows destroy the phallic giant Tityos, aligning the divine archer’s weapon with the punishment of transgressive sexual violence.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside