Horizontal

the terms ‘vertical and horizontal time’ derive from symbolic interpretations of the crucifixion, where Eternity, embodied in Christ as the Son of God, intersected the ‘horizontal’ movement history, that is, the death of one human being.

Pollack establishes ‘horizontal’ as the plane of ordinary historical time and physical existence, constitutively defined by its contrast with the vertical dimension of eternity, with the cross as the archetypal image of their meeting.

Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis

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a vertical and a horizontal circle, having a common centre. This is the world clock. It is supported by the black bird. The vertical circle is a blue disc with a white border divided into 4 × 8 = 32 partitions.

Von Franz, citing Jung’s visionary ‘world clock,’ presents the horizontal circle as one of two structurally necessary axes whose conjunction constitutes the Self as a totality-symbol.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis

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we shall be observing their interconnections on the horizontal axis – how each experience encountered along the way evokes the one that follows it… we shall also be making connections on the vertical axis between these Trumps and those directly above them.

Nichols systematically assigns the horizontal axis to sequential, causal narrative development in the Tarot, distinguishing it from the vertical axis of archetypal correspondence between levels of meaning.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis

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Those reared with experiences only of vertical stripes would readily play with a pencil presented vertically but seemed blind to one proffered horizontally.

Conforti uses an experiment on perceptual field-formation in kittens to illustrate how exclusive conditioning to one orientation produces blindness to its opposite, implicitly modelling the psychological cost of one-sidedness.

Conforti, Michael, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999supporting

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The horizontal line at the top symbolizes Heaven… When the symbol is placed on a horizontal plane, then its meaning

Huang’s I Ching exegesis assigns the horizontal line to the symbolic register of Heaven and uses horizontal orientation to modulate the meaning of the gua, situating the term within a non-Western cosmological semiotics.

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

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The sun’s course and the horizon-sector actually coincide only when viewed from the Pole. The further south you go, the later the sun’s arrival over the principal points.

Jung and Kerényi’s discussion of cosmic orientation invokes the horizon as an astronomically and culturally variable reference plane, grounding archetypal spatial symbolism in actual celestial mechanics.

Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting

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Astrologically interpreted, the designation of Christ as one of the fishes identifies him with the first fish, the vertical one. Christ is followed by the Antichrist, at the end of time.

Jung’s astrological reading of the Pisces constellation implicitly mobilises vertical and horizontal as orientational markers distinguishing the two fishes, with eschatological significance.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951aside

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