Within the depth-psychology corpus, Circe occupies a richly contested position as the archetypal enchantress whose transformative power over Odysseus and his men encodes fundamental tensions between consciousness and regression, the masculine heroic will and the feminine chthonic principle, individuation and dissolution. Campbell reads her as the dual-natured goddess — simultaneously the cannibal ogress of the Underworld and its benign guide — who initiates Odysseus into the mysteries of death and rebirth, framing her as indispensable to the hero’s psychological maturation. Greene situates Circe within a lunar-sorceress complex alongside Hekate, positioning her as the bewitching, manipulative face of an injured or stifled Moon principle capable of reducing men to bestial unconsciousness. The Homeric texts themselves, in both the Lattimore and Wilson translations, preserve the scene’s analytical richness: the potion that transforms men into swine while leaving their minds intact, the moly given by Hermes that protects Odysseus, and his sword-drawn confrontation with the goddess that resolves into erotic compact and eventual guidance toward the Underworld. Across these voices, Circe functions as a threshold figure — her island, Aiaia, is the liminal space between heroic adventure and the nekyia. The corpus treats her consistently as an anima-figure of formidable and ambivalent power: she regresses the unguarded and initiates the prepared.
Now we should look at the figure of Circe in the diagram, for the Moon is also a sorceress. Hekate, whom we have met already, is the dark luna
Greene explicitly positions Circe as an expression of the Moon’s sorceress aspect, linking her to Hekate and to the archetypal dangers of the lunar-maternal principle in depth-psychological astrology.
, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992thesis
the goddess who in her terrible aspect is the cannibal ogress of the Underworld was in her benign aspect the guide and guardian to that realm and, as such, the giver of immortal life. 7. We learn next, therefore, that Circe has offered to guide Odysseus to the Underworld.
Campbell articulates Circe’s dual nature as both terrible destroyer and initiatory guide, arguing that her offer to conduct Odysseus to Hades represents the benign, life-giving aspect of what is otherwise a devouring goddess.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis
she struck them with her wand and drove them into her pig pens, and they took on the look of pigs, with the heads and voices and bristles of pigs, but the minds within them stayed as they had been before.
The Lattimore translation preserves the canonical detail that Circe’s transformation is somatic but not noetic — the men’s minds remain intact within their animal bodies, an image central to depth-psychological readings of regression without total loss of consciousness.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009thesis
There is a mind in you no magic will work on. You are then resourceful Odysseus. Argeïphontes of the golden staff was forever telling me you would come to me.
Circe’s recognition that Odysseus’s mind resists her enchantment identifies heroic consciousness — guided by Hermes — as the faculty that withstands the goddess’s regressive power.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009thesis
She struck me with her wand and said, ‘Now go! Out to the sty, and lie there with your men!’ But I drew my sharp sword from by my thigh and leapt at her as if I meant to kill her.
The Wilson translation presents the sword-confrontation as the decisive heroic act by which Odysseus reverses Circe’s power, establishing the dynamic of masculine will overcoming feminine enchantment that depth psychology repeatedly interprets as a model of ego-anima negotiation.
, The Odyssey, 2017thesis
We came to Aiaia, which is an island. There lived Circe of the lovely hair, the dread goddess who talks with mortals, who is own sister to the malignant-minded Aietes.
The arrival at Aiaia is marked by Circe’s genealogy as sister to Aeetes and daughter of Helios, framing her as a solar-chthonic hybrid whose island functions as the liminal threshold before the nekyia.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting
The golden throne of Dawn was riding up the sky as Circe concluded, and she strode across her island.
After furnishing Odysseus with prophetic instruction for every peril ahead, Circe departs at dawn, consolidating her role as the goddess of initiatory wisdom who equips the hero for the underworld journey and the return home.
, The Odyssey, 2017supporting
‘King, clever Odysseus, Laertes’ son, now stop encouraging this lamentation. I know you and your men have suffered greatly… You must get back the drive you had when you set out from Ithaca. You are worn down and brokenhearted, always dwelling on pain and wandering.’
Circe’s therapeutic counsel to Odysseus — urging him to cease mourning and restore his vital drive — positions her as a restorative feminine figure who enables the hero’s psychological reconstitution before the final homeward journey.
, The Odyssey, 2017supporting
Odysseus had not yet released himself from identification with his group, group ideals, group judgments, etc.; but self-divestiture means group-divestiture as well.
Campbell interprets the sequence leading to Circe’s island as a lesson in the failure of collective identity, framing the encounter with the goddess as an episode in the hero’s progressive individuation from group consciousness.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964supporting
‘Come on, since we have food and drink on board… for she will transform the lot of us into pigs or wolves or lions, and so we shall guard her great house for her, under compulsion.’
Eurylochus’s warning against returning to Circe’s palace articulates the fear of bestial transformation and compelled servitude that characterizes the regressive pole of the Circean archetype.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting
Now when our ship had left the stream of the Ocean river, and come back to the wide crossing of the sea’s waves, and to the island of Aiaia, where lies the house of the early Dawn.
The return to Circe’s island after the nekyia confirms Aiaia as a cosmic hinge-point — associated with Dawn, the Sun’s rising, and the transition between the underworld and the living world.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting
such a brute was not ready for domestic life; a complete change of character was required. And the gods, who are always alert to such things, saw to it that he should fall into competent hands.
Campbell frames the Odyssey’s sequence of divine encounters — with Circe among them — as a divinely ordained programme of psychological transformation necessary to convert the warrior into a being fit for homecoming and domestic renewal.
, Myths to Live By, 1972supporting
Telegonus, xxxiii; s. of Odysseus and Circe, 165; marries Penelope, 529; kills Odysseus, marries Penelope, 631; s. of Odysseus by Calypso (sic), 533
Hesiodic mythographic tradition records Circe’s son Telegonus — the hero who unknowingly kills his father Odysseus — extending the Circean myth into a fatal irony that deepens her significance as a figure entwined with destiny and death.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting
Πέρση: daughter of Oceanus, wife of Ilelius, mother of Aeetes and Circe
The Homeric lexicon establishes Circe’s divine genealogy — daughter of Perse and Helios, sister of Aeetes — situating her within the solar and oceanic mythological family that informs her ambivalent character in the depth-psychological tradition.
, Homeric Dictionaryaside
Circe, iii. 48, 54
Cicero’s index references Circe in the context of Stoic and Academics’ discussions of divine nature, confirming her place in the broader ancient philosophical discourse on myth, gods, and rationality.
, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), -45aside