Knot

The term ‘knot’ occupies a richly polysemous position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a structural metaphor for psychic entanglement, a symbol of binding and liberation in mythological and spiritual traditions, and an etymological node connecting archaic cosmological thought to modern therapeutic practice. The most philosophically concentrated usage appears in Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga, where ‘master-knots’ name the four fundamental bonds — desire, ego, duality, and the gunas — whose dissolution constitutes spiritual liberation. Hillman’s Senex and Puer deploys the ‘primary knot’ of spirit and matter as the archetypal ground of neurosis, linking the mother-son entanglement to tragedy in the ancient sense. Govinda’s Tibetan mysticism renders the knot as a pedagogical instrument of the Buddha himself, demonstrating bondage and the path of untying. Yalom’s existential-therapeutic corpus transforms the knot into a Gestalt therapeutic object, asking the patient to personify and address it. Onians brings classical philological weight to bear, tracing the knot through Greek rope-imagery, fate-binding, and battle cosmology. Across these registers, a core tension persists: the knot is at once a figure of constraint demanding dissolution and a figure of connection whose untying carries real loss. The corpus consistently treats the knot not as mere metaphor but as an operative symbol of psychic reality.

In the library 11 passages

the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots — other and deeper twistings than the instrumental knots of the mind

Aurobindo identifies four ‘master-knots’ — desire, ego, duality, and the gunas — as the structural psychic bonds whose severing constitutes liberation, distinguishing them from secondary, instrumental knots.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the attempts to untie this primary knot are truly in the ancient sense agonizing and tragic. The primary knot of spirit and matter is personified in the clinging embrace of mother and son.

Hillman names the mother-son entanglement the ‘primary knot’ of spirit and matter, framing it as the archetypal root of neurosis whose untying is experienced as both agonizing and tragic.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the process of liberation consists merely in the untying of the knots of our own being, through which we have fettered ourselves and have become slaves of our confused illusions.

Govinda presents the Buddha’s teaching that liberation is fundamentally an act of self-untying, as the knots of our being are self-imposed bonds of illusion rather than external constraints.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

he asked the patient to have a conversation with the knot. ‘Place the knot in the other chair and talk to it. You lay the role of you and the role of the knot. Give it a voice.’

Yalom, following Perls, employs the knot as a therapeutic Gestalt object to be personified and addressed, treating it as a dramatization of the patient’s own unacknowledged agency in self-binding.

Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

She is aware of the dark bundles in a woman’s mind that are tied round and round with ropes and bands. These spaces in a woman’s mind do not respond to light or grace, so covered over are they.

Estés figures psychic secrets as knotted bundles in the mind, arguing that the Wild Woman within perceives these bindings even when the conscious psyche cannot access or illuminate them.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

They put the two ends, rope-ends, or ropes — whatever peirata may mean here — one over the other as in making a knot. The scholiasts or their sources also use epiplekein, sumplekein, sunaptein to express the same idea.

Onians traces the Greek philological field of ‘knot’ through the scholiasts’ interpretations of Homeric battle imagery, establishing that knotting, crossing, and binding form a single semantic cluster in archaic cosmological thought.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

We may compare strangalis, ‘tight band’, ‘knot’ with Photius’ citation from Pherecrates long before: strangalides: ta dusaluta ommata: ‘YmEis gar aei strangalidas ezaphiggete’

Onians links the knot etymologically to the Sphinx as ‘tight-binder’ and to indissoluble bonds in Greek magical and poetic tradition, deepening the association between knotting and deadly constraint.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the varying puzzled attempts to interpret him are our witness. If we examine the cognate perainō in Homer, we find it used twice in an undeniably concrete sense of knotting or fastening a cord

Onians demonstrates through Homeric philology that the abstract Greek verb for ‘accomplish’ has its root in the concrete act of knotting, suggesting that finality and binding are etymologically identical.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

ETocAA&^ocvTes must here express the crossing over upon itself or tying of the rope to form a loop or open knot, so that there remains only ET’ &nq>OTSpoicn T&vuCTcrav

Onians argues that divine binding of armies in Homeric epic is expressed through the image of a rope knotted over itself, identifying the knot as the operative gesture by which cosmic powers fix the fate of battle.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The second and final process, binding (or weaving), is less familiar, but if we turn our eyes once more to the North we find remarkable parallels.

Onians, in discussing Norse fate imagery, situates knotting and binding as the second great cosmic operation complementing spinning, linking the motif to victory-girdles and magical bracelets.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Related terms