The Seba library treats Geb in 4 passages, across 2 authors (including Bly, Robert, Edinger, Edward F.).
prominent in every Egyptian moment were two other gods, Nut and Geb. Nut, the sky-mother, was painted on the inside of every coffin or mummy-lid
Bly invokes Geb as the Egyptian earth-father whose existence alongside the sky-mother Nut demonstrates that Western culture has suppressed the masculine earth and feminine sky principles, reducing a quaternary symbolic system to a binary one.
, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990thesis
Shu thrust himself between Geb and Nut, thus breaking their close embrace… Shu was usually represented as a bearded man standing or kneeling over Geb with arms upraised to support Nut.
Edinger reads the mythic separation of Geb (earth) and Nut (sky) by Shu as the Egyptian paradigm of the alchemical separatio, wherein the forced parting of the World Parents creates the differentiated space necessary for creation and consciousness.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
The Separation of Heaven and Earth: Nut Lifted Above Geb by Shu. Drawing after an illustration in A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des Alten Orients
Edinger’s figure list confirms that the Geb-Nut-Shu separation myth is treated as primary visual evidence for the alchemical separatio operation within his systematic account of psychotherapeutic symbolism.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting
In the West, the sky belongs to men, and the earth to women… two other phrases have fallen into oblivion: sky-mother and the earth-father.
Bly frames Geb’s significance as an antidote to the Western reduction of gendered cosmological symbolism, arguing that the earth-father is a suppressed but psychologically necessary image.
, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990supporting