horns
The term ‘horn’ occupies a remarkably dense symbolic field within the depth-psychology corpus, operating simultaneously as anatomical fact, mythological emblem, and carrier of numinous power. Onians furnishes the most systematic treatment, tracing the philological kinship between ‘horn,’ ‘brain,’ and ‘cerebrum’ across Greek, Latin, and Germanic roots to argue that horns were understood as outcroppings of the procreative life-substance concentrated in the head — a thesis that illuminates Horn imagery from Homer’s gate of true dreams (kerata) to the cornucopia and the cuckold’s horns. Burkert situates the ‘horns of consecration’ within Minoan-Mycenaean cult practice, showing how the geometric stylization of bovine horn symbols on altars and shrine facades preserves an archaic sanctity that outlasts its zoomorphic origin. Jung engages the horn principally through the unicorn, reading the single horn as an alchemical-Christological symbol of power, purity, and the coniunctio of opposites, while noting the Psalmic equation of the exalted horn with vitality and divine might. Jung also demonstrates, via the shofar passage, that the symbol lives or dies by the consciousness brought to it: a ram’s horn is merely keratin until symbolic intention transforms it into the voice of covenant. The Winnebago figure of Red Horn in Radin adds a cross-cultural mythological axis. Taken together, these voices reveal ‘horn’ as a nexus of procreation, power, consecration, and psychic transformation.
If horns were thus believed to be outcrops of the brain, the procreative element, we can understand why the name for horn and for brain should be akin.
Onians argues that horns were understood in antiquity as literal extrusions of the cranial life-substance (brain = seed), explaining the deep etymological kinship between words for horn and brain across Indo-European languages.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The ‘horn of plenty’ was a symbol of the genius… and sometimes represented containing phalli. Thus we can also explain the alternative legend that it was the horn of the prime river-god Acheloos.
Onians extends his procreative-substance thesis to the cornucopia and river-god mythology, showing how the horn’s association with fertilising liquid (rain, semen) pervades ancient symbolic thought.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
Recognition that horn had a procreative significance may also help the understanding of Diomedes’ taunt to Paris: ‘Bowman, reviler, glorious in horn (i.e. sexual power), ogler of girls’.
Onians applies the horn-as-procreative-power thesis to Homeric text, reinterpreting a Iliadic insult as a reference to sexual potency rather than archery or hair-style.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
The symbol is killed when we succeed in reducing the shofar to a ram’s horn. But again, through symbolization a ram’s horn can become the shofar.
Jung uses the shofar/ram’s horn distinction to articulate his general theory of symbolic life and death: the horn becomes a living symbol only when consciousness animates it with meaning beyond its physical substrate.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
In Homer’s time they were peculiarly honoured, being coated with gold before the animal was slain. In Minoan-Mycenaean times they had special sanctity, whence they have been called ‘horns of consecration’.
Onians documents the sacred status of animal horns in Greek and Minoan sacrifice, connecting the reverence for horns to the belief that they housed the ψυχή or life-power of the animal.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
A horned symbol from Tell Brak in Upper Mesopotamia which closely resembles the oldest cult horns on Crete is even earlier, dating from the beginning of the third millennium.
Burkert establishes the deep Near Eastern antiquity of the horned cultic symbol and traces its transmission into Minoan civilization, situating the ‘horns of consecration’ within a continuous Near Eastern-Aegean sacrificial tradition.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis
‘But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn…’ The power of evil is also compared to the strength of the unicorn, as in Psalm 22: 21.
Jung surveys the Psalmic unicorn-horn imagery — divine might, human vitality, and the power of evil — as the scriptural basis for medieval ecclesiastical and alchemical allegory of the horn.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
Ovid’s reference to his becoming angry at last because his mistress receives other lovers: venerunt capiti cornua sera meo.
Onians demonstrates that the Roman literary convention of the cuckold’s horns is rooted in the same brain-substance theory, whereby horns signify both aggressive anger and sexual inadequacy simultaneously.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
A hermit by name of Rishyashringa (gazelle’s horn), son of Vibhandaka or Ekasringa (one-horn), is fetched out of his solitary retreat by the king’s daughter Shanta, who marries him.
Jung presents the Indian Rishyashringa legend as a cross-cultural parallel to the unicorn myth, in which the horn-named hermit embodies a concentrated, solitary potency that must be humanised through erotic encounter.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
It is worth noting that the male unicorn is called ch’i and the female lin, so that the generic term is formed by the joining of both characters. The unicorn is thus endowed with an androgynous quality.
Jung identifies an androgynous dimension in the Chinese unicorn, linking the single horn to the alchemical coniunctio and to the dragon-phoenix axis of Mercurius symbolism.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Belief that the hoof was a concentration of the life-fluid may explain the legend that a spring (Hippocrene) appeared where the hoof of Pegasus struck the rock.
Onians extends the horn/life-substance argument to hoofs, nails, and the Hippocrene myth, proposing that all keratin outcroppings of the body were understood as concentrations of the same procreative fluid.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
The most important of these myth-cycles were those connected with Trickster, Hare, Red Horn, the Twins and the Two Boys.
Radin positions Red Horn as one of the central mythological cycles of Winnebago tradition, placing the horn-named hero within a structural taxonomy of culture-hero figures alongside Trickster.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting
Heaped outside the wall were eighty reindeer horns, a reindeer head almost complete, and a mammoth’s jawbone, molar, pelvis and tibia.
Onians surveys Palaeolithic burial evidence in which horns are systematically arranged with the dead, arguing this reflects the most archaic attestation of horns as repositories of the life-substance intended to attend and sustain the deceased.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
‘The horn of the unicorn acts as an alexipharmic, because it expels the poison from t[he body].’
Jung cites the medieval tradition of the unicorn horn as an antidote to poison, situating this apotropaic function within the broader alchemical symbolism of the purifying, transformative single horn.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Horn, G. (1985). Memory, imprinting and the brain: An inquiry into mechanisms.
A bibliographic citation to neuroscientist Gabriel Horn’s work on imprinting and memory, appearing in the context of affective neuroscience; the term ‘horn’ here is a proper name entirely unrelated to the symbolic register.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998aside