Harvest

Within the depth-psychology corpus, Harvest operates on at least three distinct registers that the scholarly reader must hold in simultaneous view. First, as a cosmological-divinatory term rooted in Chinese classical thought: Ritsema and Karcher’s monumental I Ching translation establishes LI (Harvest) as the third phase of the Time Cycle — autumn, the blade that reaps, and the profit gathered — linking sharpness of discernment to the yield of completed action. Alfred Huang’s complementary I Ching commentary extends this into an ethical dimension, where humility conditions the greatness of harvest (Da You, Hexagram 14). Second, as an archaic agricultural-religious motif: Hesiod encodes harvest into cosmic timing (the rising of the Pleiades), while Burkert’s anthropology of Greek religion situates harvest festivals at the boundary where first-fruit offering, animal sacrifice, and communal feasting converge. Third, as a psychological metaphor for consequence and ripening: Edinger reads the apocalyptic harvest-sickle imagery in Revelation as an archetype of ego dissolution by non-human dynamisms, while Easwaran’s Gita commentary deploys harvest as somatic karma — the inevitable yield of seeds sown in habitual mental states. The term thus traces an arc from temporal-agricultural precision through ritual enactment to depth-psychological reckoning with what inner cultivation has produced.

In the library 15 passages

Harvest, Harvesting, LI, as a divinatory term, indicates what is advantageous, profitable, of great benefit and full of insight. As the third phase of the Time Cycle it refers to: autumn, the West, sunset; the season’s yield of natural produce

This passage establishes the canonical depth-divinatory definition of Harvest (LI) as a cosmological term encoding the third temporal phase — autumn, completion, and the dual signification of the reaping blade and the gathered profit.

Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis

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Harvest, LI: advantageous, profitable; acute, insightful; benefit, nourish; third stage of the Time Cycle. Visualize, CH’IEN: seeing in all its aspects: vision, being visible, forming mental images

Ritsema and Karcher consistently couple Harvest with visionary perception (CH’IEN), arguing that the term’s divinatory force links material profit to the faculty of acute discernment.

Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994thesis

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it uses the same image of harvest as appears in Revelation where one angel says to another, ‘Put your sickle in and reap: harvest time has come and the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ Then the one sitting in the cloud set his sickle to work on the earth

Edinger interprets apocalyptic harvest imagery as the archetypal moment when ego-consciousness is overrun by non-human dynamisms, reading the reaping sickle as a symbol of psychic dissolution rather than agricultural fulfillment.

Edinger, Edward F., The Creation of Consciousness Jung’s Myth for Modern Man, 1984thesis

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Fire is above Heaven. An image of Great Harvest. In correspondence with this, The superior person represses evil and promotes good, Carrying out the glorious virtue of Heaven.

Huang’s commentary on Hexagram 14 (Da You) establishes Great Harvest as the supreme image of moral and cosmic abundance, where heaven’s luminosity overhead becomes the ethical template for human conduct.

Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis

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Harvest, LI: advantageous, profitable; acute, insightful; benefit, nourish; third stage of the Time Cycle. Activate, WEI: act or cause to act; do, make, manage; make active; attend to, help; because of. Outlawry, K’OU: break the laws

This hexagram commentary applies the Harvest term to a context of lawful resistance, demonstrating that LI’s profitability is conditioned by right action and that its absence (Not Harvesting) marks moral disorder.

Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting

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Harvest, LI: advantageous, profitable; acute, insightful; benefit, nourish; third stage of the Time Cycle. Wading the Great River, SHE TA CH’UAN: consciously moving into the flow of time; enter the stream of life with a goal or purpose

The passage links Harvest as temporal-divinatory concept to purposive action in time, associating the term with the courage to enter the stream of life toward a significant enterprise.

Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting

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whatever the ailment, it is the fruit and harvest of a mental state, the seeds of resentful thinking.

Easwaran employs harvest as a karmic metaphor in which somatic illness is the inevitable ripening of mental seeds sown through habitual resentment, translating agricultural temporality into depth-psychological causality.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The harvest festivals proper are not incorporated in the state calendar. The peasant or lord celebrates his thalysia once the harvest has been gathered in from his field or estate; festal eating and drinking are naturally uppermost here, even though the gods are not forgotten

Burkert situates the Greek harvest festival (thalysia) as a private, post-calendrical rite where first-fruit offering and sacrificial feasting merge, demonstrating harvest’s ritual placement at the boundary of sacred and domestic economy.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting

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The Eiresione is of course simply a portable May-pole, a branch hung about with wool, acorns, figs, cakes, fruits of all sorts and sometimes wine-jars. It was appropriate alike to the early and the late harvest-festival

Harrison’s analysis of the Eiresione branch locates the Greek harvest-festival complex within a broader vegetation-cult framework, linking early and late harvest celebrations through a common ritual object.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting

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When the Pleiads, the daughters of Atlas, begin to rise begin the harvest, and begin ploughing ere they set. For forty nights and days they are hidden, but appear again as the year wears round, when first the sickle is sharpened.

Hesiod encodes harvest within stellar-agricultural timing, making the sharpening of the sickle at the Pleiades’ return the cosmically sanctioned inauguration of the reaping season.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting

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you will sweep the cobwebs from your bins and you will be glad, I ween, as you take of your garnered substance. And so you will have plenty till you come to grey springtime

Hesiod presents timely harvest as the practical basis of household sufficiency and social independence, grounding the concept in an ethic of proper seasonal labour and its tangible rewards.

Hesiod, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting

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a husbandry, indeed, which even before the harvest time multiplies a hundredfold that which was sown, thus foreshowing that the profit to come and the harvest shortly to be reaped will be indescribable and unimaginable.

The Philokalia reframes harvest as an eschatological-spiritual metaphor: virtuous husbandry of the soul yields a harvest of divine profit that exceeds all temporal measure.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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8epoe; [n.] ‘summer’ (11.), ‘harvest’ (lA). Thence 8epaoe; ‘belonging to the summer’, fem. 8epda, -T] (scil. <opa) ‘summer’

Beekes documents the Greek etymological identity of ‘summer’ and ‘harvest’ (theros), revealing that the classical language does not sharply distinguish the season from its agricultural yield.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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