The Seba library treats Cornucopia in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Campbell, Joseph, Harrison, Jane Ellen, Onians, R B).
In his lap is a cornucopia, and from it pours, inexhaustibly, the food. This is the Grail, the vessel of inexhaustible vitality. The Grail is that fountain in the center of the universe from which the energies of eternity pour into the world of time.
Campbell identifies the cornucopia held by the antlered Cernunnos with the Holy Grail as a universal symbol of the cosmos’s inexhaustible generative energy pouring into temporal existence.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
the cornucopia appears erected on a pillar as an adjunct to the ordinary parting scenes… functions as a daimon were forgotten, the cornucopia became cumbersome. Tradition held to it… It could not, like the branch, be transformed from a fertility-emblem into a weapon; it had to be accounted for.
Harrison argues that the cornucopia on Greek grave-reliefs was originally a daimonic fertility attribute, becoming symbolically inert and iconographically awkward only once its ritual function as a marker of the hero-daimon’s generative power was forgotten.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
The ‘horn of plenty’ was a symbol of the genius… sometimes represented containing phalli… The horn of Amaltheia was believed to be the source of the fertilising liquid above, rain.
Onians establishes the cornucopia’s root in archaic physiology, linking it to the genius, to phallic procreation, and to the fertilising liquid believed to be generated in the head and horn.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the Grail vessel, which has long been recognised as a fertility symbol and which like the cornucopia (see pp. 239 f.) was a miraculous source of supply, is replaced by a head on a dish.
Onians equates the cornucopia with the Grail as a shared archetype of miraculous, inexhaustible supply, both rooted in the procreative power anciently associated with the severed head.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Tyche, the Goddess of Good Fortune, appears with a boy-child (sometimes named Ploutos), holding what has generally been read as a cornucopia of ‘fertility.’ But Tychon is also another one of the forms Priapos takes, a kind of phallic dactyl.
Hillman situates the cornucopia within the puer-Tyche-Priapos complex, revealing that the conventional reading as ‘fertility’ conceals an underlying phallic, erective, and good-fortune symbolism.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
people coming to Jungian therapy hoping to tap into this metaphysical cornucopia may come away disappointed, because psychotherapy may not necessarily go in that direction.
Sedgwick employs the cornucopia metaphorically to characterize the fantasy of the collective unconscious as an inexhaustible spiritual storehouse, cautioning that Jungian therapy does not automatically fulfil such expectations.
, An Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship, 2001aside
Tyche, the goddess of fortune, touches the initiate with a wand that elevates his spirit above mortality, holding on her left arm
Campbell’s description of Tyche in the Eleusinian initiatory sequence places her—conventionally depicted with cornucopia—as the figure who elevates the mystes beyond mortal limitation.
, The Mythic Image, 1974aside