Cyclone

being swept up by the cyclone — the objectified force of her own instinctive repudiation of their standpoint — Dorothy has in effect ‘killed’ introverted feeling and has to accept the psychological consequences.

Beebe reads the cyclone in The Wizard of Oz as a psychic projection — the externalized, objectified energy of Dorothy’s unconscious repudiation of introverted feeling — making it a turning-point in the individuation drama.

Beebe, John, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis

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Like desiccated leaves the sear substance of the universe leaps to the cyclone. Friction ignites the whirling tumult of highly inflammable matter; the god has turned into fire.

Zimmer presents the cyclone as the penultimate phase of Hindu cosmic dissolution, the vehicle through which desiccated universal substance is gathered and ignited into total conflagration.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis

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‘In the beginning, nothing was here where the world now stands: no earth — nothing but Darkness, Water, and Cyclone. There were no people living. Only the Hactcin existed.’

Campbell cites the Apache origin myth in which Cyclone figures as one of three pre-cosmic principles, establishing it as an ontological category preceding both earth and life.

Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959thesis

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he brought down a dense and terrible darkness and conjured up a howling cyclone. Trees splintered and hurtled through the air. The earth was rent… yet the saint remained unmoved, serene, absolutely lost in his meditation.

Zimmer recounts the cyclone as a demonic instrument of assault upon the meditating saint Pārśva, whose unmoved serenity in the face of cosmic violence exemplifies the Jain ideal of transcendence over elemental terror.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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when a cyclone blows up, there are violent harmonies. When the cruel storm calms down, all the stops are out… behind them is a driving force which causes those sounds to cease and causes them to come to life again. This driving force — who is it?

Von Franz, via a Chuang-tzu passage, uses the cyclone’s violent harmonies to pose the central depth-psychological question: what is the animating, invisible force behind the turbulent phenomena of nature and psyche?

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting

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the barometer might go up when there is a cyclone. A man finds it hard to adjust to this, he thinks there is something a bit queer about her that she is ready to let things happen to her.

Jung uses the barometric anomaly of the cyclone as a passing illustration of the feminine psyche’s openness to paradoxical, counter-rational events, contrasting it with the masculine insistence on a coherent picture of reality.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting

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It was the result of certain kinds of passes, or trick plays that Steve had learned like a comedian picks up jokes on the road, such as ‘the cyclone play’ of the Iowa State Cyclones basketball team.

Keltner makes a passing, non-symbolic reference to a basketball maneuver called ‘the cyclone play,’ which is incidental to his broader argument about collective flow and group synchrony.

Keltner, Dacher, Awe The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can, 2023aside

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He would spend the money on going to the movies, treating his friends, buying clothes he would wear only once. And he spent a lot of time at Coney Island, riding the Cyclone, or playing Mortal Kombat.

Hari mentions the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island as a detail of street-level leisure, entirely without symbolic or psychological import in context.

Hari, Johann, Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction, 2015aside

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