The term ‘Center’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct but converging axes. In the cosmological-religious register, Mircea Eliade establishes the Center as the axis mundi — the sacred mountain, temple, or holy city standing at the intersection of heaven, earth, and underworld — a point where the profane is abolished and genuine reality is disclosed. This archaic symbolism of the omphalos and the navel of the earth recurs across shamanic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Greek sources, indicating the Center as a nearly universal organizer of sacred space. In the Jungian psychological register, the Center migrates inward: the mandala’s central luminosity becomes the protective temenos of the personality, guarding psychic coherence against dissolution. Jung and his commentators (von Franz, Chodorow) treat the Center as the Self’s gravitational locus — the still point toward which circumambulatio orients the individuation process. Jean-Pierre Vernant charts a third trajectory, showing how the Greek political imagination transposed cosmological centrality into civic geometry: the hearth (Hestia), the agora, and Cleisthenes’s reforms all instantiate a secular, isonomic center that organizes equal citizens in reciprocal space. Hillman complicates the valorization by reading ‘center’ etymologically as a goad — the kentron — arguing that modern urban ‘center city’ rhetoric drives people forward like beasts rather than gathering them in genuine community. Together these voices illuminate the Center as simultaneously cosmic axis, psychological Self, political symmetry, and ideological spur.
the true world is always in the middle, at the Center, for it is here that there is a break in plane and hence communication among the three cosmic zones.
Eliade articulates the Center as the ontological site of real existence, the axis where cosmic zones communicate and profane space is transcended.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
The architectonic symbolism of the Center may be formulated as follows: 1. The Sacred Mountain—where heaven and earth meet—is situated at the center of the world. 2. Every temple or palace… is a Sacred Mountain, thus becoming a Center.
Eliade formulates the Center’s architectural symbolism: every sacred building recapitulates the cosmic mountain, asserting the Center as the foundational structure of religious space.
, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, 1954thesis
The symbol of the mandala has exactly this meaning of a holy place, a temenos, to protect the centre. And it is a symbol which is one of the most important motifs in the objectivation of unconscious images. It is a means of protecting the centre of the personality from being drawn out and from being influenced from outside.
Jung identifies the mandala’s Center as the psychological Self — a protected locus of personality coherence that the circumambulatio safeguards against outer fragmentation.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis
In the very centre of the mandala there is the god, or the symbol of divine energy, the diamond thunderbolt… The symbol of the mandala has exactly this meaning of a holy place, a temenos, to protect the centre.
Chodorow transmits Jung’s teaching that the mandala’s Center embodies divine energy and the personality’s organizing principle, protected by the sacred precinct.
, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting
the symbolism of the ‘Center’ (Mountain, Pillar, Tree, Giant) is an organic part of the most ancient Indian spirituality. Mount Gerizim, at the center of Palestine, was doubtless invested with the prestige of the ‘Center,’ for it is called ‘navel of the earth.’
Eliade demonstrates the universality of Center symbolism across shamanic and ancient Near Eastern traditions, linking mountain, pillar, tree, and navel as equivalent axes mundi.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
the centre, in its political sense, was able to act as an intermediary between the ancient, mythical view of the center and the new, rational idea of the center, equidistant from all parts of the circumference in a mathematical space in which relationships were reciprocal.
Vernant traces the evolution of the Center concept from mythico-religious hearth (Hestia) through civic political symbol to rational geometric abstraction, showing how the polis secularized cosmic centrality.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
City originally refers to community, a fellowship of persons in places. But our patient has come to speak of it as a center… Center too is a geometrical notion… Its earlier verb form means a spoke, a stick for striking, a goad or spur to make a horse or ox ‘getta going.’
Hillman deconstructs the Center etymologically, arguing that modern use of the word substitutes a geometric abstraction and a coercive spur for genuine community and geographic place.
, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis
A luminous flower in the center, with stars rotating about it. Around the flower, walls with eight gates. The whole conceived as a transparent window.
Jung’s description of a mandala from the Red Book period concretizes the Center as luminous floral symbol within a protected circular enclosure, exemplifying the Self’s imaginal presentation.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
The center expressed in spatial terms no longer the notions of differentiation and hierarchy but rather those of homogeneity and equality.
Vernant argues that the secularized civic center in Cleisthenic Athens replaced hierarchical sacred centrality with an isonomic spatial principle expressing political equality.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
to confer the kratos upon the apeiron is indeed to make this kratos a xunon, to set it down at the center. So the rule of the apeiron is not comparable with a monarchia… The apeiron is sovereign in the manner of a common law.
Vernant shows how Anaximander’s cosmology transposes the Center from monarchic rulership to a common, impersonal mediating law — a conceptual pivot in the history of rational space.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
because of its situation at the center of the cosmos, the temple or the sacred city is always the meeting point of the three cosmic regions: heaven, earth, and hell.
Eliade substantiates the Center’s tripartite cosmic function through Mesopotamian, Hebrew, and Babylonian examples, showing the Center as the universal binding point of all cosmic strata.
, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, 1954supporting
the sphere is the most perfect figure because all points on its surface are equidistant from the center. Whatever his reasoning, Xenophanes identified the circular shape of the sph
Miller traces monotheism’s symbolic genealogy to the sphere and its center, arguing that Xenophanean theology abstracts divinity into geometric centrality — a precursor to depth psychology’s mandala symbolism.
, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
perfectly straight roads shall lead to it, converging towards the very center, and as from a star which is itself round, there will be straight rays leading off in every direction.
Vernant cites Meton’s urban-planning vision as evidence that Greek astronomical and political thought converged on the Center as organizing principle of rationally structured space.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
The intellectual Centre, in which the most immaterial qualities reside, is transformed into the organ of universal consciousness, to which the element of space or ‘Ether’ corresponds.
Govinda maps Tibetan Buddhist cakra centers as functional organs of consciousness, showing how the Center concept structures psychophysical transformation in tantric yoga.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
The design of the dreamer indicates the way in which his analysis will continue, and at the same time it is a means to concentrate him… a mandala with Christ in the centre and the evangelists in the four corners.
Jung demonstrates through clinical dream material how the mandala’s Center functions both as diagnostic indicator and concentrating device in analytic work.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
Locating a ‘center’ to Paul’s thought is one of the most common strategies among interpreters of Paul for making sense of his theology.
Thielman notes the hermeneutic strategy of finding a doctrinal Center in Pauline theology, illustrating how center-seeking is a broader interpretive habit across disciplines.
, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005aside
each household will be attached to two half-portions of land whose mean distance from the center is exactly the same as that of all the others.
Vernant describes Plato’s ideal land-distribution scheme as an application of the equidistant center principle to political geography, showing civic equality geometrically enforced.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside