jewels
The Seba library treats Jewel in 9 passages, across 4 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Campbell, Joseph, Govinda, Lama Anagarika).
The self is the hero, threatened already at birth by envious collective forces; the jewel that is coveted by all and arouses jealous strife; and finally the god who is dismembered by the old, evil power of darkness.
Jung identifies the jewel as a direct symbol of the Self in its archetypal heroic aspect, endangered by collective opposition and equivalent to the dismembered god.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
the jewel of all the great jewels in the jewel net; indeed, the one jewel of Asia that is to be held continually before the mind through all these amplitudes of metamorphic vision.
Campbell identifies the singular jewel within Indra’s net as the supreme meditational object of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the mind’s recognition of its own luminous nature.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962thesis
He who has realized this, has truly found the Philosopher’s Stone, the jewel (mani), the prima materia of the human mind, nay, every faculty of consciousness in whatever form of life it might
Govinda equates the Buddhist mani with the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone, identifying both as symbols for the realized, enlightened ground of consciousness itself.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
The text shows unmistakably what the jewel signifies: it is a God-redeemer, a renewal of the sun.
Jung interprets the jewel as a solar redemption symbol whose appearance in the world recapitulates the imagery of the Buddha’s birth, marking the renewal of psychic life.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
The ‘threefold jewel’ (tri-ratna) is the symbol of Ratnasambhava, who is shown in the gesture of giving (dana-mudra). He is the giver of the Three Jewels: ‘Buddha, Dharma, Sangha’
Govinda expounds the tri-ratna as a structured symbolic unity—the Three Jewels—anchored in the iconography of Ratnasambhava and the gesture of liberative giving.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
The solid walls of our jail of matter melt. The jewel hands of the Bodhisattvas appear and the world that formerly meant bondage becomes a Buddha Realm.
Campbell presents the jeweled hands of the Bodhisattvas as a vision in which material imprisonment is dissolved and the phenomenal world is transfigured into a field of liberation.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
Like Vajra, Indra’s thunderbolt, or the Buddha’s diamond ecstasy or diamond throne, or that diamond throne on which the Angel of God sits in Dante’s P
Hillman traces the diamond as a cross-cultural supreme jewel, linking alchemical, Buddhist, and Dantean traditions through the shared symbolism of indestructible illuminated power.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
One hundred thousand vases made of every kind of jewel should be there, filled with various sweet perfumes and emitting incense pluming skyward.
Campbell conveys the Pure Land’s jeweled abundance as a visionary landscape in which every vessel is a gem, evoking the inexhaustible richness of the enlightened realm.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
The mystery legend of the two helpful friends promises protection to him who has found the jewel on his quest.
Jung notes that the jewel, once found through the individuation quest, attracts protective forces, situating its discovery within the narrative logic of the hero myth.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959aside