The Seba library treats Mandorla in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Nichols, Sallie, Neumann, Erich).
Christ in the mandorla, surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists.—Mural painting, church of Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets
Jung cites the mandorla as the visual container of the Christ-Self symbol, structurally paralleled with Horus and the four sons of Osiris, establishing the image as a quaternary archetype of wholeness.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
Together they form a square which contains within it the mandorla. The overall design of this card, which is essentially a circle encompassed by a square, brings together earthly and heavenly reality
Nichols identifies the mandorla as the inner circular element of the World card’s ‘squaring of the circle,’ interpreting it as the alchemical and Jungian symbol for the miraculous actualization of Self.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
mandala, 60, 200 mandorla, 145; Pl. 62
Neumann catalogs the mandorla alongside the mandala as a discrete symbolic form within the iconographic index of the Great Mother, assigning it a specific plate reference that situates it within the visual grammar of the Archetypal Feminine.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
Four figures frame the woman in the mandorla, like four basic energies harmoniously united in the service of the same center.
Jodorowsky reads the mandorla as the cosmological center of the World card, organizing the four elemental or evangelical figures into a unified field of archetypal energies.
, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, 2004thesis
The dancer’s wreath creates a safe asylum for the newly emerging self, so that its unity can never be disrupted by invasion from the outside.
Nichols treats the wreath-mandorla of the World dancer as a protective temenos ensuring the integrity and indestructibility of the individuated Self at the final stage of psychological development.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
A Tribute to James Hillman: Reflections on a Renegade Psychologist, Edited by Jennifer Leigh Selig and Cailo Francisco Ghorayeb, Mandorla Books, Carpenteria, CA., 2014
A bibliographic reference reveals that ‘Mandorla Books’ was the imprint of a tribute volume to James Hillman, indicating the term’s currency as a named symbol within the Archetypal Psychology community.
, Life and Ideas of James Hillman, 2023aside