Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'cloud' functions as a remarkably polysemous symbol whose semantic range spans alchemical process, divine presence, cosmological potency, and the phenomenology of consciousness and death. Jung's most sustained treatment, in Mysterium Coniunctionis, traces a dense intertextual genealogy: alchemical cloud-imagery (the 'water of the cloud' as Mercurius, 'black clouds' as nigredo) interweaves with patristic typology (Christ prefigured by the pillar of cloud, Augustine's apostles as cloud concealing the Creator, Hildegard's pneumatological 'clouds') to yield a composite symbol of transformative, liminal matter. Von Franz, elaborating the Aurora Consurgens, specifies that cloud denotes the medium in which Mercurius is fixed and 'triturated' — simultaneously destructive and fertilizing, a vehicle of the prima materia's passage from blackness toward albedo. Edinger, reading the Annunciation through the Greek episkiazō, identifies the cloud with the divine overshadowing that both illuminates from without and darkens from within, linking it structurally to the archetype of sacred enclosure. Onians recovers an archaic stratum in which cloud as death-vapour envelops the dying warrior's sight. The I Ching tradition — in Wilhelm, Huang, and Ritsema/Karcher — employs cloud as the presage of creative action, the tension of potential energy preceding rain. Across these registers the cloud marks a threshold state: neither form nor formlessness, it is the liminal medium through which transformation passes.
In the library
12 passages
the 'water of the cloud' is Mercurius... 'Black clouds' are the nigredo... the cloud represents the 'comfort of the Holy Ghost and Christ's ascension'... Augustine likens the apostles to a cloud, which symbolizes the concealment of the Creator under the flesh
Jung assembles a layered concordance demonstrating that 'cloud' in alchemical and patristic sources simultaneously designates Mercurius, the nigredo, the Holy Spirit's comfort, and the veiling of divinity — establishing the term as a multi-valent symbol of transformative obscuration.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
The word 'overshadow' (episkiazō) refers to being enveloped in the cloud of the divine presence. The cloud is bright when viewed from the outside but causes darkening when one is enveloped in it.
Edinger identifies the cloud as the archetypal medium of divine overshadowing, structurally paradoxical — luminous externally yet darkness-inducing internally — and thus equivalent to the transformative numinosum that simultaneously illuminates and overwhelms consciousness.
Edinger, Edward F., The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ, 1987thesis
'The quicksilver is fixed in the cloud that is of the same essence.' ... 'Triturate the cloud in the sun.' ... 'The potential cloud works upon the potential ore, and they dwell in amity.'
Von Franz documents ancient Greek alchemical sayings in which the cloud is the specific medium that fixes Mercurius and acts upon the prime ore, establishing cloud as an active, operative substance in the alchemical process.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966thesis
the flood and the cloud in the preceding parable have acquired a new aspect: they are not only destructive but fertilizing
Von Franz argues that in the Aurora Consurgens the cloud transcends its purely nigredo-destructive valence to become a generative, fertilizing agent — a key dialectical reversal within the alchemical opus.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
'I came out of the mouth of the most high, and covered the earth as a cloud'
Bulgakov cites the Wisdom literature's image of divine Sophia spreading over the earth like a cloud, placing the symbol within a sophiological framework in which cloud denotes the theophanic dispersal of divine wisdom into creation.
Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting
'thy cloud, O Naisi, in the air, and it is a cloud of blood'... 'a whirling cloud grew and closed around the inlets of his sight and observation'... mists and death-clouds came upon him which closed a dark and gloomy veil over the open inlet windows of that prince's sight
Onians traces an archaic Celtic and Homeric stratum in which cloud appears as the perceptual and vital substance of dying — a death-vapour that literally occludes the organs of consciousness, providing the pre-alchemical substratum of cloud as the symbol of mortal obscuration.
Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
the strange idea that the black cloud possesses a sort of nervous system, and a psyche or intelligence to match, is not an original invention
Jung analyses a contemporary science-fiction treatment of a 'black cloud' with autonomous intelligence as a modern mythological projection of the UFO archetype, noting its genealogical continuity with ancient symbolic complexes involving the cloud as a cosmic, animate entity.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Civilization in Transition, 1964supporting
'Clouds over Thunder symbolizes Beginning'... the structure presents a vivid picture of a tremendous power of energy, represented by thunder, lying at the base of clouds... When dark clouds fill the sky, sooner or later rain will come. This gua holds the potential to create.
In the I Ching commentarial tradition, clouds over thunder constitute the image of Beginning — cloud as the condition of latent creative potential that has not yet released its transformative energy as rain.
Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
The clouds pass and the rain does its work, and all individual beings flow into their forms.
Wilhelm's I Ching commentary presents cloud-and-rain as the cosmological mechanism through which the Creative's sublimity differentiates into the particular forms of all beings — cloud as the transitional medium between undivided potential and manifest individuation.
Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Arjuna compares himself to such a cloud and asks Sri Krishna, 'What will happen if some great calamity... picks me up, cuts up my consciousness, and scatters my mind, my resolve, and my will in all directions, making my desire for the spiritual life disappear like a cloud?'
Easwaran's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita deploys the cloud as a figure for dispersed, endangered spiritual resolve — the cloud scattered by wind becomes a metaphor for the fragmentation of psychic and spiritual integration under duress.
Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
'Cloud Chief said, "I, too, consider myself a demented drifter, but the people follow me wherever I go, and I have no choice but to think of them."'
In Zhuangzi, 'Cloud Chief' appears as a personification of the wandering, non-purposive disposition that seeks instruction in inaction — the cloud name signaling unbound, drifting movement as an embodiment of Taoist spontaneity.
Watson, Burton, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013aside
the clouds and mists rise from the lake to the mountain
In the trigram commentary, clouds and mists rising from lake to mountain exemplify the reciprocal, cyclical exchange of complementary forces — cloud here functioning as the visible medium of elemental circulation between opposing principles.
Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside