Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'herb' appears not as a botanical category but as a charged symbol operating across mythological, alchemical, and archaic-medical registers. Its most sustained presence is in the alchemical literature where specific plants — Chelidonia, Lunaria, mandrake — carry numinous properties that mirror psychic processes: the cure of blindness, the extraction of the mercurial soul, the growth of the philosophical stone. Jung himself mobilizes herbal lore from Tabernaemontanus and Dioscorides to anchor symbolic amplifications, treating the medicinal herb as a carrier of the anima mundi. In classical and mythological contexts, Campbell and Kerenyi locate the herb within hero-narratives: Shen Nung's pharmacopoeia, the moly given by Hermes to Odysseus, and the Atharvaveda charm invoking the virility-herb all treat the plant as a liminal object mediating between mortal and divine orders. Cicero's natural-theological account of animals self-medicating with dittany and hartwort represents an older, teleological reading of herb-knowledge as providential. The Red Book contributes a Vedic invocation of the herb as a force of 'lusty strength.' Across all these registers, herb functions as a threshold substance — neither purely natural nor purely spiritual — whose transformative potency makes it symbolically homologous to the prima materia of psychological and alchemical work.
In the library
11 passages
He explains that the woman of the house is a wicked sorceress who has transformed his friends and would do the same to him if he did not use prudence in dealing with her and protect himself against her enchantments with a magic herb.
Otto reads the herb given by Hermes to Odysseus as the material form of a divine, illuminating moment — the herb's protective magic is inseparable from the epiphanic encounter with the god.
Otto, Walter F., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, 1929thesis
This herb shall make thee so very full of lusty stre
Jung's annotation of the Atharvaveda virility charm frames the herb as a primordial, magico-sacral substance invoked to restore generative power, connecting Vedic plant-lore to the broader symbolic vocabulary of the Red Book.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
Dioscorides says that with this herb swallows cure blindness in their Jung. In the Herbal of Tabernaemontanus it is cited as an eye-salve.
Jung deploys the herb Chelidonia — associated with gold and with the restoration of sight — as an alchemical pseudonym whose magico-medicinal properties illuminate the soul-extracting function of the Mercurius figure.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
In the herbal of Tabernaemontanus, in which all the magico-medicinal properties of plants are carefully listed, there is no men
Jung uses Tabernaemontanus's herbal as an authoritative source for the magico-medicinal symbolism of the moon-plant, arguing that alchemical Lunaria is closer to the mandrake than to any botanical specimen.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
wild goats in Crete, when pierced with poisoned arrows, seek a herb called dittany, and on their swallowing this the arrows, it is said, drop out of their bodies.
Cicero presents the herb as evidence of providential design in nature, where animals possess instinctive knowledge of curative plants — an archaic teleological reading that underpins later symbolic elaborations.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), -45supporting
Shen Nung discovered in one day seventy poisonous plants and their antidotes: through a glass covering to his stomach he could observe the digestion of each herb.
Campbell treats Shen Nung's encyclopaedic herb-knowledge as a marker of the divine emperor's world-sustaining power, linking plant-lore to the mythological pattern of the culture hero.
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting
Ruland's Lexicon defined the deer's antler as both 'the Beak of the Alembic' and 'a healing herb for wounds in Paracelsian medicine'.
Abraham documents the alchemical equivalence between anatomical and botanical symbols — the stag's antler as healing herb — illustrating the cross-category symbolic logic that governs alchemical imagery.
Abraham, Lyndy, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998supporting
A peculiar potency is attributed to Cheyri, which fortifies the microcosmic body so much that it 'must necessarily continue in its conservation through the universal anatomy of the four elements.'
Jung's commentary on Paracelsus presents the herb Cheyri as an arcane remedy whose potency operates at the intersection of the four elements and the microcosmic body, emblematic of Paracelsian medical philosophy.
Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
Jung cites Tabernaemontanus's Herbal as a direct source for alchemical plant symbolism, indicating the herbal tradition's foundational role in the symbolic amplifications of his alchemical studies.
Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
name of a sharp or bitter tasting herb, 'marjoram, organy, origanum'
Beekes establishes the Pre-Greek, foreign-origin etymology of the herb-name origanum, providing the philological substrate on which classical and alchemical plant-symbolism rests.
Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
School of Medicine, Deakin University, Health Education Research Building (HERB)—Level 3, Barwon Health
The acronym HERB appears here solely as an institutional building designation with no substantive connection to the symbolic or botanical meaning of the term.
McGovern, Hugh, Eigenmodes of the Deep Unconscious: The Neuropsychology of Jungian Archetypes and Psychedelic Experience, 2025aside