Circumambulatio

round which he has to do the circumambulatio. Attention is thus directed towards the centre, and at the same time all the disparate elements come under observation and an attempt is made to unify them. The circumambulatio had always to be done clockwise.

Jung defines circumambulatio as the mandatory clockwise movement around the mandala-temenos that simultaneously focuses attention on the psychic centre and draws disparate contents into unified observation.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis

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The walk round, the circumambulatio, is done in a spiral; the pilgrims pass the figures of all the different lives of the Buddha, until on the top there is the invisible Buddha, the Buddha yet to come.

Chodorow presents Borobudur's spiral pilgrimage as the architectural embodiment of circumambulatio, in which the walk through progressive stations culminates in an encounter with the transcendent, invisible centre.

Chodorow, Joan, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997thesis

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Consciousness keeps on returning to it and circles round it fascinated, meditating and cogitating, thus completing the circumambulatio which recurs in so many dramatically enacted rites and religious ceremonies.

Neumann argues that circumambulatio is the structural response of consciousness to the living symbol: the psyche cannot assimilate the numinous directly but must circle it repeatedly, mirroring the enacted rites of religious traditions.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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The tablets describe the ceremony of the annual lustration performed by the priests; it consists of a circumambulation of the territory of the city. The procession is interrupted by stations at each gateway of the town, each one occasioning oblations and recitations of formulae.

Benveniste documents the Indo-European ritual basis of circumambulatio in the Umbrian lustratio, showing that the circling of territorial boundaries with litanic oblations is a structural archetype underlying later psychological usage.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting

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The purifiers, priests or kings, made a circuit round the group of people or the building which was to be purified, always proceeding towards the right. Thus the purification occasioned a circumambulation: consequently lustrare denoted 'to traverse, to review' as well as 'to purify.'

Benveniste establishes that the rightward direction of circumambulation is constitutive of the purificatory act in Roman ritual, providing the linguistic and ceremonial ground for Jung's insistence on clockwise movement.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting

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by means of these concrete performances, the attention, or better said, the interest, is brought back to an inner, sacred domain, which is the source and goal of the soul and which contains the unity of life and consciousness.

In commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, Jung describes how ritual circumambulatory performances function apotropaically, redirecting interest from dispersal toward the innermost temenos that unifies life and consciousness.

Wilhelm, Richard, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931supporting

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It has the obvious purpose of drawing a sulcus primigenius, a magical furrow around the centre, the temple or temenos (sacred precinct), of the innermost personality, in order to prevent an 'outflowing' or to guard by apotr

Jung situates the mandala's apotropaic function within the logic of circumambulatio, arguing that the primary furrow drawn around the personality's centre prevents psychic dispersal and guards against external deflection.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting

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circumambulating, circumambulatio 62, 244

Giegerich's index entry places circumambulatio alongside coagulatio and deconstruction, signalling that the concept occupies a position in his critique of psychological literalism and its substitutes for genuine logical transformation.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside

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