Circumference appears in the depth-psychology corpus as a figure of fundamental ontological and psychological significance, moving between cosmological speculation, theological paradox, and the analytic vocabulary of selfhood. Its most persistent and charged appearance is in the Hermetic-scholastic formula — ‘God is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere’ — which Jung, von Franz, and Edinger each mobilise as a psychological proposition: the Self, like the God-image, exceeds any fixed boundary while remaining oriented around a centre. This creates an essential tension between circumference as limit (Blake’s ‘outward circumference of Energy,’ where reason contains but can never fully enclose vitality) and circumference as the totality that embraces both known and unknown, conscious and unconscious. Samuels captures the Jungian synthesis precisely: the Self is not only centre but ‘also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious.’ McGilchrist draws the figure through Donne, Blake, and Shelley to argue that the sphere and circumference are characteristic expressions of right-hemispheric, holistic cognition. Rudhyar, Nichols, and Pauli approach circumference through cosmological geometry — the circle, the periphery of the wheel, the reciprocal relation of circumferential and central figures. The tension between bounded and unbounded, peripheral and central, gives the term its depth-psychological vitality.
the self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious
Samuels identifies circumference as Jung’s defining topological term for the Self as totality, encompassing rather than merely centring the personality.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
Deus est circulus cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia vero nusquam (God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere).
Jung cites the Hermetic-scholastic formula as foundational to the psychological symbolism of totality, linking the boundless circumference to the God-image.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
Deus est sphaera infinita, cuius centrum est ubique circumferentia nusquam (God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere).
Von Franz traces the intellectual genealogy of the paradoxical circumference-formula from Pseudo-Aristotle through the Liber XXIV philosophorum to Meister Eckhart, establishing its theological and psychological range.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Leviathan, which we can recognize as a symbolic image of the primordial psyche… is the center and circumference of the human psyche.
Edinger applies the centre-and-circumference formula to the collective unconscious itself, identifying the primordial psyche as simultaneously bounded and boundless.
, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis
God is an intellectual figure whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere… the circle signified the Deity.
Jung connects the alchemical and scholastic circumference-formula to the psychological symbolism of the circle as God-image, anima mundi, and perfected substance.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
God himselfe… conceived a conveniency for his glory, to draw a Circumference about the Center, Creatures about himselfe… Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
McGilchrist reads Donne’s and Blake’s circumference-figures as expressions of right-hemispheric holism, in which the vital energetic sphere is always approximated but never captured by rational demarcation.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
the circumference is a curve every point of which is equally distant from a common center. This symbolizes a state of being in which absolute universality of viewpoints is attained.
Rudhyar equates the geometric circumference with spiritual universality, making it a figure for the Perfect Personality or God as the equilibrium of all forms.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
the most universal symbol of this law of cosmic relationship is to be found in the value of Pi which measures the relation of circumference to diameter… the coefficient of indeterminacy in all integrative processes.
Rudhyar links the mathematical irrationality of the circumference-to-diameter ratio to cosmic indeterminacy and the freedom of the Soul.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
the center and the circumference of the Tarot Wheel to illustrate some differences between the Eastern and Western philosophies… The Westerner begins near the circumference and works inward.
Nichols uses the wheel’s circumference as a cultural-psychological metaphor, situating Western consciousness at the periphery and orienting its individuation path inward toward centre.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
the reciprocal connection of the circumferential figure with a central figure… the peripheral angle between two adjacent sides of the latter is equal to the central angle.
Pauli presents Kepler’s geometric correspondence between circumferential and central figures as an archetypal schema linking the circular form and the point-form of the soul.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
the sphere is the most perfect figure because all points on its surface are equidistant from the center.
Miller invokes the sphere’s circumference — all points equidistant from centre — as the geometric basis for Xenophanes’ monotheistic abstraction, illustrating the theological stakes of circular symbolism.
, The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
in the round dance there is a circular circumambulation round the Lord as the central point.
Jung reads the ritual round dance as a circumferential movement around a divine centre, a psychic figure of synthesis and wholeness.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
No part has the property of ‘being above (or below) the centre,’ or has any better right to that description than a point on the opposite side… neither the centre nor any part of the circumference exhibits any corresponding difference of nature.
Plato’s Timaeus establishes the metaphysical equivalence of all circumference-points relative to the centre, undergirding the later theological and psychological uses of the figure.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
he turned its shape rounded and spherical, equidistant every way from centre to extremity—a figure the most perfect and uniform of all.
The Timaeus establishes the sphere’s uniform distance from centre to extremity as the cosmological archetype of perfection, the ultimate source for the circumference symbolism in later philosophical and psychological usage.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
Circumference thou Bride of Awe / Possessing thou shalt be / Possessed by every hallowed Knight / That dares—to Covet thee
Bloom cites Dickinson’s self-identification as ‘Circumference’ — the sublime periphery that possesses and is possessed — as her most audacious claim to a transpersonal poetic vocation.
, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015aside
the circle signified the Deity… assigned to the most perfect substance, to the gold, also to the anima mundi… because the macrocosm, the Great World, was made by the creator in a form round and globo
Jung traces how alchemical tradition assigned the circular/spherical form to gold, anima mundi, and the macrocosm, establishing circumference as an emblem of perfected matter and cosmic totality.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944aside