The Seba library treats Four Winds in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including Marie-Louise von Franz, James Hillman, von Franz, Marie-Louise, Abram, David).
the four winds, in the four angels at the four corners of the world... manifestations of a basic structural archetype in the human psyche, of the disposition in a human being that, as soon as he tries to cast a model of a total existence... tends to use a fourfold model.
Von Franz identifies the Four Winds as a cross-cultural instantiation of the quaternio archetype, arguing they express the innate psychic disposition to model totality in fourfold form.
, Lectures on Jung's Typology, 2013thesis
the four winds in the four corners of the world, if you try to pin them down by saying that one must be thinking, the other must be another function, you never get anywhere... the archetype of the quaternio as a model of the explanation of the total situation is more general than the four functions.
Von Franz cautions that the Four Winds cannot be mapped directly onto Jung's four psychological functions because the quaternio archetype that underlies them is more fundamental and general than any functional schema.
, Psychotherapy, 1993thesis
the four winds are the four quarters of the circle and mankind knows not where they may be or whence they may come... The four quarters embrace all that are in the world and all that are in the sky.
Abram transmits a Lakota shamanic account in which the Four Winds define the complete circle of existence — spatial, temporal, and cosmic — making the pipe offering to them equivalent to an offering to all gods and all times.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996thesis
a surrounding Wind enters into the child. This Wind may be sent from one of the four directions along the horizon... the particular Wind that enters with the first breath will have a powerful influence upon the whole course of that person's life.
Abram presents the Navajo doctrine that a directional Wind from one of the four quarters enters the newborn at first breath, shaping the individual's entire life course.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
she bore not only the Morning Star, Heosphoros, but also the gods of the winds: gods, that is to say, only of the principal winds, those deserving of worship. Of these, however, she bore all four.
Kerényi documents the Greek theogonic account in which Eos bears all four directional wind-gods from the starry Astraios, distinguishing these divine, beneficent winds from the destructive Typhoean gales.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
the idea of the four functions is an archetypal model for looking at things... no new theory, or new fruitful invention in the field of science, has ever been put forth without the working of an archetypal idea.
Von Franz situates the fourfold schema underlying the Four Winds within a broader claim that all productive models of totality — including scientific ones — rest on archetypal ideas such as the quaternio.
, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting
it seems to be an inborn disposition of the human being to build up a four-functional conscious system... you will find this fourfunctional structure.
Von Franz grounds the universality of fourfold symbols such as the Four Winds in an innate structural disposition of the human psyche rather than in cultural diffusion.
, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970supporting
The East and South winds rushed together, fierce-blowing West wind, and North wind, born in aither, rolling a massive wave. Odysseus's knees gave way.
Padel presents Greek tragic and epic evidence for winds from all four directions acting as daemonic agents of violence, linking directional winds to the psychic forces of fury, death, and divine punishment.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting
three times an animal tries to fish up the earth but does not succeed until the fourth time; or three times he looks at the lump of clay and it does not grow, but when he looks at it the fourth time it suddenly transforms.
Von Franz uses the recurrent mythological pattern of the decisive fourth act as comparative evidence for the fourfold archetypal model that underlies symbols such as the Four Winds.
, Creation Myths, 1995aside