Ax

In ancient women’s religion, this sort of ax innately belongs to the Goddess, not to the father. This sequence in the fairy tale strongly suggests that the father’s ownership of the ax comes about in the story as a result of the scrambling together of the old and the newer religions

Estés argues that the ax is an originally Goddess-owned ritual implement whose patriarchal reassignment in the fairy tale reflects the historical suppression and dismemberment of pre-patriarchal women’s religion.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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the silver of the ax is related to the silver hands that will eventually belong to the maiden. Here is a tricky passage, for it presents the idea that the removal of psychic hands may be ritual.

The ax’s silver quality links it symbolically to the maiden’s eventual wholeness, framing the act of severance as initiatory ritual rather than mere violence.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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THE PATH OF THE SWINGING AX The day had dawned; the Coronation of the King was at hand. Again I found myself in the vast cathedral, but now the scene had changed.

In Jung’s dream seminar, the swinging ax names a liminal arc traced within a cathedral during a royal coronation, functioning as an oneiric boundary-marker between states of collective and individual transformation.

Jung, C.G., Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014supporting

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ἀξίνη [f.] ‘axe’ (ll.), Νατομος πέλεκυς ‘two-edged axe’ (H.) … Compared with Lat. ascia ‘axe’ and Germanic words for ‘axe’, Go. aqizi, etc., but this does not lead to an IE reconstruction.

Beekes documents the Greek term for axe as a probable substrate loanword, possibly cognate with Semitic forms, resisting a clean Indo-European etymology and implying cultural transmission rather than native formation.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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the AX compound was conditioned with shock. When the suppressing effects of A alone and X alone were then tested separately, A suppressed bar pressing but X did not.

This passage uses ‘AX’ as a technical notation for a compound stimulus in classical conditioning research, bearing no symbolic or depth-psychological significance.

James, William, The Principles of Psychology, 1890aside

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