The Seba library treats Leaking Jars in 8 passages, across 6 authors (including Hillman, James, Plato, Harrison, Jane Ellen).
the leaky soul 'can be swayed and easily persuaded.' These souls are sieves that cannot close on themselves and so worship at springs (continually bubbling forth) and riversides, trusting in flow.
Hillman identifies the leaking jar with Plato's sieve-soul, reading psychic porosity as the defining pathology of puer consciousness: an inability to retain substance, leading to perpetual dissolution into environmental flow.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
there are philosophers who maintain that even in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he repres
Plato introduces, via Callicles and the Sicilian allegorist, the leaking jar as the image of the insatiable desiring soul—the very philosophical root from which Hillman draws his depth-psychological reading.
, Gorgias, -380thesis
the souls of the dead were evoked from the grave-jars (pithoi); the Opening of the Jars was at once a spring-festival of first-fruits—on that day they broached the new wine—and a temporary release of the spirits of the dead from the prison of the grave.
Harrison documents the ritual function of the grave-pithos in the Anthesteria, establishing the jar as a container whose opening releases otherwise-contained psychic contents—souls—into the living world.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
we have Kfipes- It will also throw light upon Hesiod's story of Prometheus and Pandora with her garlands and necklaces and the jar containing what, including 'EAiris, appear to be Kfjpes
Onians links the Hesiodic pithos of Pandora with the Kēres, the lot-spirits of fate, situating the leaking or opened jar at the cosmological origin of human suffering and hope.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
the woman removed the lid from the great vessel, and caused it to overflow everywhere, to the sore grief of mankind. Only Elpis, 'Hope', was left inside, in unbreakable captivity, beneath the rim of the vessel
Kerényi's rendering of the Pandora myth presents the archetypal leaking jar: the released overflow of evils versus the one retained content, Hope, establishing the vessel's ambivalent logic of containment and escape.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
Interior life is sealed up tight, like those images of Mary, the Closed Gate, Enclosed Garden, Semper Virgo. The virginal anima that has not been pierced to the emotions by the experience of physis keeps puer persons youngly innocent
Hillman presents the counter-image to the leaking jar—the hermetically sealed vessel—as equally pathological, demonstrating that the depth-psychological problem is one of calibrated permeability rather than simple closure.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
A pan-Hellenic myth tells of another opening of a cask which likewise attracted wild guests: Herakles stopped at the house of Pholos in the Pholoe Mountains, and in his honor, his host opened the b
Burkert notes that the ritual opening of a sealed cask—parallel to the Anthesteria pithos—releases uncontrollable forces, reinforcing the mythological pattern in which breached containment invites dangerous or liminal presences.
, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972aside
Excavations in Crete and at Mykenai, etc. have shown that pithoi were used for storing various kinds of wealth, and pots and jars of various shapes have been used by various peoples for containing what is spun.
Onians contextualises the pithos as a material container of spun fate-threads, providing the archaeological and conceptual background for understanding Zeus's jars as repositories of destined lots.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside