jars
The jar appears in the depth-psychology corpus as a richly layered archetypal vessel, operating simultaneously on mythological, alchemical, and narrative registers. Neumann’s analysis of the Great Mother foregrounds the jar as a primal feminine container: Pueblo pottery traditions, Peruvian ceremonial jars, and ancient neolithic figures all encode the womb-body homology in which ceramic form becomes the material expression of the containing, generative principle. Campbell extends this symbolism into the hero’s birth narrative through the Pueblo ‘Water Jar Boy’ tale, where the jar serves as a miraculous receptacle of divine conception, embodying the paradox of the child-hero who is simultaneously vessel and being. In Hesiod, the great jar (Pandora’s pithos) functions as the cosmological container of all evils and hope, directly linking the jar to questions of fate, feminine agency, and divine dispensation. Bly, drawing on Kabir, uses the image of a jar filled with water to illuminate the relationship between the individual feminine body and the infinite transpersonal Feminine—the jar as bounded manifestation of boundlessness. The alchemical tradition, represented through Jung and Abraham, transforms the jar into the vas, a sacred vessel whose hermetic containment is prerequisite for transformation. These perspectives collectively position the jar as the archetypal container: bounded, generative, dangerous, and redemptive.
she saw it was not like a baby, she saw it was a round thing with two things sticking out, it was a little jar… saw it was a little water jar. After that he was very fond of that little jar.
The Pueblo ‘Water Jar Boy’ narrative presents the jar as a miraculous container of divine birth, embodying the hero-child paradox where vessel and person are indistinguishable.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015thesis
This theme of crucifixion-resurrection can be illustrated either on the body of the hero himself, or in his effects upon his world. The first alternative we find in the Pueblo story of the water jar.
Campbell frames the water jar story as a primary mythological instance of crucifixion-resurrection, positioning the jar as the narrative body through which the hero’s transformation is enacted.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015thesis
the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils and the sea is full.
Hesiod’s pithos functions as the cosmological container of affliction and hope, with the jar’s lid as the instrument of divine will restraining the totality of human suffering.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700thesis
Women participate in the feminine as the water in a jar participates in the light when light passes through it… femaleness is as abundant as ocean or sunlight, endless, beyond jars, yet is caught here and there.
Bly employs the jar as a philosophical image for the relationship between the individual feminine body and the infinite transpersonal Feminine, using Kabir’s imagery to articulate bounded participation in the boundless.
, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990thesis
On another jar the devouring shears have become devouring animal mouths, and the Gorgon-crab appears as the body or womb of a human figure.
Neumann reads the Peruvian ceremonial jar as an archetypal form in which the devouring feminine and the womb are iconographically identified, linking jar-as-vessel to the destructive-generative polarity of the Great Mother.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955thesis
It is a kind of matrix or uterus from which the filius philosophorum, the miraculous stone, is to be born. Hence it is required that the vessel be not only round but egg-shaped.
Campbell, summarizing Jung, articulates the alchemical vessel (vas) as a mystical uterine container whose form enacts the same womb symbolism found in the ceramic jar traditions of indigenous mythology.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
Cushing, A Study of Pueblo Pottery, pp. 512 ff.
Neumann’s citation of Cushing’s work on Pueblo pottery situates the jar within an ethnographic literature that undergirds the archetypal analysis of feminine container symbolism.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.
Hesiod establishes the mythological context of Pandora’s creation, whose jar becomes the archetypal container linking feminine creation to the ambivalent gift of destructive bounty.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting
Our vessel must be such that in it matter can be influenced by the heavenly bodies. For the invisible celestial influences and the impressions of the stars are necessary to the work.
Jung’s citation of Dorn specifies the alchemical vessel’s cosmological function: it is not merely a physical jar but a permeable container whose design enables the celestial transformation of matter.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Figure 5. Paint Jar, by Anthony.
In an art therapy context, the paint jar appears as a spontaneously depicted object in a patient’s artistic repertoire, suggesting the jar’s appearance even in clinical creative expression.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004aside