The term ‘Host’ occupies a structurally significant but semantically diverse position across the depth-psychology corpus. In the I Ching commentary tradition, the host (主卦之主, the governing yao) designates the central, authoritative line within a hexagram — typically at the fifth place — whose virtue, position, and correspondence determine the governing theme of the entire gua. Huang’s exegesis and Wang Bi’s classical commentary both emphasize that the host must be virtuous, timely, and correctly positioned, rendering the concept an ethical-cosmological marker rather than a merely formal one. In the ritual and sacramental literature, Jung’s analysis of the Mass deploys a cognate logic: the consecrated Host becomes the locus of divine presence, the sacrificial body around which priest, congregation, and substance cohere into a corpus mysticum. This sacramental register connects directly to questions of sacrifice, transformation, and the union of opposites. In the socio-anthropological and literary registers — Benveniste on Indo-European hospitality, Auerbach on Arthurian romance, Vernant on the Greek hearth — the host-guest relationship (xenia, hospitalitas) structures exchange, loyalty, and the sacred boundary between inside and outside. Simondon introduces a biological valence: the host organism whose autonomy is progressively diminished by the parasite. The tensions between these registers — cosmological authority, sacramental presence, social reciprocity, and biological vulnerability — make ‘Host’ an unexpectedly rich node in the concordance.
Each six-yao gua also has a host which represents the central theme of the gua. Being the host of a gua, the yao should be virtuous and appropriate at the right time and the right position.
The host in I Ching hexagram structure is the governing yao whose virtue, timing, and positional correctness determine the entire meaning of the gua.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis
Three lines in this gua are qualified to be the host—the two yielding lines at the bottom and the solid line at the fifth place.
In the hexagram Retreat, multiple lines compete for the role of host, revealing that the designation depends on both structural position and the dynamic logic of the gua’s narrative.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998thesis
the uttering of the words of the consecration signifies Christ himself speaking in the first person, his living presence in the corpus mysticum of priest, congregation, bread, wine, and incense, which together form the mystical unity offered for sacrifice.
Jung interprets the consecrated Host as the focal point of a sacramental corpus mysticum, where divine presence is actualized in a unified sacrificial field.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
as many of us as, by participation at this altar, shall receive the most sacred body and blood of thy Son, may be filled with all heavenly benediction and grace.
The eucharistic Host functions as the vehicle through which participation in divine sacrifice confers transformation and grace upon the receiving community.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
Host and guest both belong to one social group, a sort of order, admission into which is through a ceremonial election and all members of which are bound to help one another.
In medieval romance, the host-guest relationship constitutes a quasi-sacred social bond within a chivalric order, where hospitality is a ritual obligation rather than a voluntary act.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953thesis
the more well-adapted and vigorous the parasite is, the more it damages and diminishes its host, since it does not respect the host’s functional autonomy.
Simondon positions the host organism as a site of individuation whose integrity is threatened when parasitic dependence exceeds the threshold compatible with the host’s autonomous functioning.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
Adam Belial is the body of the Messiah, the ‘entire body or the host of shards.’ In consequence of the Fall, the host of shards irrupted into Adam’s body.
Jung cites Kabbalistic imagery in which a ‘host of shards’ — the kelippoth — invades the Adamic body, mapping the Host concept onto the mythological problem of evil’s infiltration of divine form.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
The verb hestian — in both its generally accepted meanings: receiving in the home and accepting at the table — is usually applied to a guest being celebrated in the house.
Vernant traces the Greek term hestian to show that the hearth simultaneously closes the domestic circle to outsiders and opens it to honored guests, making the host function structurally ambivalent.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
To dish out the food implies that you are the host and etiquette demands that the host at a feast eats last.
Radin identifies the host’s ritual obligation to eat last as a structural rule governing feasting etiquette, which the Trickster subverts in the ‘bungling host’ episode.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting
I saw the master of the castle. I had no sooner saluted him than he came forward to hold my stirrup and invited me to dismount.
Auerbach’s narrative of Calogrenant’s reception illustrates the literary enactment of the host role as one of ceremonial welcome that initiates the knight’s adventure.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside
8OLVOOTεW ‘to host a banquet’ (Crete P-IP), 8OLvuPlloUTPLU [f.] ‘mistress of the banquet’
Beekes documents the Greek etymological family of doinē (feast/banquet), establishing the linguistic ground for the host-as-feast-giver in Indo-European institutional vocabulary.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside