The Seba library treats Clotho in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Campbell, Joseph, Onians, R B, Neumann, Erich).
The classical triad of the Moirai may have contributed to this image; namely of Clotho, the 'Spinner,' who spins the life thread; Lachesis, 'Disposer of Lots,' determining its length; and Atropos, 'Inflexible,' who cuts it.
Campbell identifies Clotho as the originating spinner of the life-thread within the triadic Fate-goddess structure, and traces her symbolic influence into Norse and fairy-tale imagery of the spindle as destiny.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968thesis
Plato's next words show that it was as unspun wool, the moira to be spun by Clotho: Sv TrpcoTov [xkv ocyeiv ccOrf)v irp6s Tf)v KXcoQco vrrr6 Ti\v foeivris X&P& TE KO1 ^iriaTpo9i! iv TTJS TOO drpdKTOu 6(vr|s KupoOvra f|v Aaxcbv efAe-ro laolpocv.
Onians demonstrates philologically that in Plato's eschatology the soul's allotted fate (moira) is literally unspun wool brought to Clotho, establishing the equation between the daimonic lot and Clotho's act of spinning.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos are grouped with the Kēres on the battle-field. For Quintus Smyrnaeus at a much later date the assimilation was complete. The Kēres spin destiny.
Onians establishes the deep mythological assimilation of Clotho and her sisters with the Kēres, death-powers who spin destiny, showing that the Moirai's spinning function was interchangeable with older Greek fate-demons.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The old story goes that at the birth of Meleager the Fates appeared to his mother, and the first of them, Clotho, prophesied that he would be a man of noble spirit, the second, Lachesis, that he would be a hero, and the last, Atropos, that he would live as long as the log burning then on the hearth was not consumed.
Campbell narrates Clotho's role as the first and prophetically originating Fate at a hero's birth, illustrating her function as the opener of individual destiny in mythological narrative.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis
just as Pelops, after being boiled in a sacred kettle, was renewed by Clotho the goddess of destiny or Rhea the Mother Goddess, so Dionysus also became 'whole and perfect' after being 'cooked over' in a magical kettle of transformation.
Neumann associates Clotho with the Great Mother in her transformative aspect, positioning her as a goddess of renewal and rebirth whose function overlaps with Rhea in the transformative vessel myth.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
The Norns who sit under the world-ash are well-known personifications of fate, like Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. With the Celts the conception of the Fates probably passed into that of the matres and matronae, who were considered divine by the Teutons.
Jung situates Clotho within a cross-cultural genealogy of fate-goddesses — Norns, matres, matronae — linking her to the archaic mother-complex and to the etymology of death-words across Indo-European languages.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Coming into this particular body, and being born of these particular parents, and in such a place, and in general what we call external circumstances. That all happenings form a unity and are spun together is signified by the Fates [Moirai].
Hillman, quoting Plotinus, frames the Moirai — and thus Clotho's spinning — as the mythological emblem of the soul's unity with its circumstances, grounding his acorn theory of calling in the Fate-complex.
, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
Clother, 162, 230
An index entry in Neumann's Great Mother confirming that Clotho (rendered 'Clother') is discussed in the body of the text as a figure within the Great Mother archetype's symbolic field.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955aside
Atropos 13, 18, 27, 348
Greene's index to The Astrology of Fate lists Atropos with page references, confirming that the Moirai triad — which includes Clotho — is substantively engaged in her astrological-psychological treatment of fate.
, The Astrology of Fate, 1984aside