The Seba library treats Fetters in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including Giegerich, Wolfgang, Onians, R B, Evans-Wentz, W. Y.).
he constantly struggled to break the fetters of the personalistic conception and the mentality that is firmly locked into the consulting room… never did he have the insight necessary—or muster the courage?—to really cut through the fetters
Giegerich deploys ‘fetters’ as a critical concept to argue that Jung recognised but could not break free from the psychologistic imprisonment that constrained his entire theoretical project.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
To release a man from her fetters you must take a rope of grass in your hand and say: ‘The indissoluble fetter which the goddess Nirriti has bound about your neck, this do I unbind for life and strength’
Onians demonstrates that in Vedic religion fetters imposed by destructive deities are treated as physically real bonds requiring equally concrete ritual dissolution.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the image being of fetters about the feet—πέδαι. The same conception is Vedic also. ‘Rise up hence, O death! Casting off the foot-shackles of death, do not sink down’
Onians establishes a cross-cultural identity between Homeric and Vedic imagery of death as foot-fettering, arguing that both traditions preserve a literal rather than merely figurative conception.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The old Persian war-god Verethragna fetters the hands of the foeman behind his back. The death-demon Astovldotius binds the dying… the god of fate is equipped with noose and net.
Onians shows that Iranian mythological tradition extends the archaic fetter-imagery to war, death, and fate, confirming its pan-Indo-European distribution.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
habits born of ignorance-directed actions of the past, whether moral or immoral, exist, they will continue to be fetters until the pilgrim is already fettered to sensuousness, he should face it fearlessly, then understand it and dominate it
Evans-Wentz’s Tibetan Buddhist framework treats fetters as psycho-spiritual bondage to sensuous attachment that must be consciously confronted and transmuted rather than merely renounced.
, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting
This physical sense and the virtual equation of the mystical to a physical bond are strikingly revealed by one passage… χαλεπή δε θεού κατά μοίρα πέδησε δεσμοί τ’ αργαλέοι
Onians argues that in Homer the mystical fetter of fate and the physical shackle are functionally identical, each producing the same spatial and bodily restriction.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
To πεῖραρ we have compared the Sanscrit parvan-, par-u-s and pari; to these we may now add para, meaning precisely a hobble or shackle used e.g. for elephants.
Onians traces the Indo-European etymology of the binding/fettering root to establish that cosmic bonds in Greek epic are linguistically cognate with physical restraints across the language family.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Fetters, 125
The index of Climacus’s Ladder of Divine Ascent lists fetters as a discrete spiritual category, indicating its standing as a named impediment within the ascetic taxonomy of the Christian contemplative tradition.
, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 600aside
Many a one cannot deliver himself from his own chains and yet he is his friend’s deliverer.
Nietzsche invokes the motif of self-imposed chains as a paradox of the helping relationship, touching the fetter-theme obliquely through the psychology of liberation and bondage.
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883aside