Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘gravity’ operates on at least three distinct registers, each generating its own interpretive tradition. At the cosmological level, gravity figures as the binding force Newton introduced to render the celestial machine coherent — a notion Armstrong notes some contemporaries found dangerously close to Aristotelian animism, and which Tarnas reads as one of the Saturnian reality-structures subverted by the Uranus-Neptune opposition and the Einsteinian revolution. At the somatic-psychological level, Ogden and Hillman treat gravity as an ever-present corporeal fact whose downward pull becomes a phenomenological teacher: for Ogden, yielding to gravity is the very definition of grounding and somatic presence; for Hillman, ‘gravity’s sag’ is the biological signature of aging, redirecting libido from ascent to descent. Most philosophically charged is Nietzsche’s ‘Spirit of Gravity’ — the weight of inherited values, the camel’s burden, the enemy of self-overcoming — which enters the corpus as an archetypal figure for the oppressive superego and collective conditioning. Neumann invokes gravity metaphorically as the psyche’s inertia, its pull toward unconsciousness. Rudhyar speaks of maintaining one’s ‘center of gravity’ as a condition of psychological equilibrium. Levine argues that understanding the laws of gravity does not free us from it but enables its use — a precise analogy for working with instinctual and somatic forces rather than against them. These positions create productive tension between gravity as constraint and as resource.
the Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that. Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.
Nietzsche personifies gravity as the archetypal oppressor that instils inherited moral weight from birth, preventing self-affirmation and burdening the strong with ‘foreign’ values.
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883thesis
In later years, the pull of gravity takes over. Ambitious, upwardly mobile social climbing, career and class, no longer offer glamour… Instead, the Great Sag: eye pouches, double chins, jowls, pendent breasts, hanging skin on upper arms, droopy belly.
Hillman reads the physical effects of gravity in aging as a psychological reorientation — a somatic initiation from ascending ambition to descending interiority, framed as ‘Gravity’s Sag.’
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999thesis
We live in relationship to the earth’s gravitational field, and gravity continually holds us to the earth. Grounding is the concrete sensation of connecting to the earth, of our body responding to the pull of gravity by settling downward.
Ogden grounds sensorimotor therapy in the literal gravitational field, defining psychological grounding as the somatic act of yielding to gravity’s downward pull.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
the law of gravity, the inertia of the psyche, the desire to remain unconscious, is a fundamental human trait.
Neumann deploys gravity as a metaphor for the psyche’s constitutional inertia — the tendency to resist consciousness and remain in the uroboric state of unconscious containment.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
Understanding the laws of gravity does not make us free of gravity … it means we can use it to do other things.
Levine uses the epistemology of gravity as an analogy for somatic and neurological self-knowledge: understanding a force does not transcend it but enables its creative use.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis
retaining a constant position or state of equilibrium at the ‘center of gravity’ of this whole-nature and destiny. It means not being thrown out of equilibrium by (i.e., involved into) the intensification of any one functional part.
Rudhyar transposes the physical concept of center of gravity into a psychological ideal of equilibrium — the capacity to remain centred amid the intensification of any single psychic function.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
The notion of gravitational force, which Newton introduced, drew the component parts of his system together. The notion of gravity offended some scientists, who accused Newton of reverting to Aristotle’s idea of the attractive powers of matter.
Armstrong situates Newton’s gravitational force at the intersection of scientific mechanics and theology, noting how the concept was theologically contested as a covert return to animism.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
the characteristic Uranus-Neptune theme of the subversion of established reality structures associated with Saturn — absolute time, solid matter, gravity, and consensus reality.
Tarnas reads Newtonian gravity as one of the Saturnian ‘reality structures’ that Einstein’s relativity revolution — correlating with the Uranus-Neptune opposition — fundamentally destabilised.
, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
The energy of the body can feel as if pulled upward, which can prevent our feet from fully contacting the solidit[y of the ground].
Ogden describes chronic ungroundedness as a failure to align with gravity, manifested in somatic patterns that direct bodily energy upward rather than downward into earth contact.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
standing he has to think about his center of gravity and he must produce opposing movements to keep his balance.
Gallagher uses pathological loss of proprioception to reveal how ordinarily tacit gravitational orientation becomes explicit and cognitively effortful when the body schema fails.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), with his formulation of the laws of gravity, ‘supplied the single weight.’ ‘God had been the Creator of the machine, but it could run without his interference.’
Campbell presents Newton’s law of gravity as the conceptual ‘weight’ that completed Kepler’s clockwork cosmos, effectively displacing divine intervention from the running of the universe.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
People who wish to justify astrology to the majority often invoke the ‘law’ of gravity to explain the astrological influences, despite the fact that the kind of influence that each planet is said to exert depends largely on the mythological associations assigned to that planet.
Pollack notes the rhetorical misuse of gravitational law as a rationalising cover for astrological influence, exposing the disjunction between physical mechanics and mythological symbolism.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980aside
Light and heavy are wrongly explained with reference to a lower and higher in place. For in the universe, which is a sphere, there is no opposition of above or below.
Plato’s Timaeus deconstructs naive gravity-as-heaviness, replacing directional weight with a relational account of elemental affinity — anticipating later relativistic critiques of absolute spatial orientation.
, Timaeus, -360aside
Everything in the world which is constituted by its own tenor has parts which move towards the centre of the universe… It is therefore correct to say that all the parts of the world move towards its centre, and particularly those with weight.
Zeno’s Stoic cosmology, as reported by Sedley, articulates a proto-gravitational centripetal ordering of the cosmos, linking weight to cosmic coherence rather than merely to terrestrial heaviness.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside
Rilke enlarges the falling leaves into the earth falling through space and time, into the experience of loss and fall as universal, and intimates that there is a secret unity underneath the falling which sustains it.
Hollis reads Rilke’s imagery of falling as a depth-psychological valorisation of gravity’s downward pull — loss, descent, and fall as movements held within a sustaining, paradoxical unity.
, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places, 1996aside