Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Mare’ operates on at least three distinct registers that the scholarly literature holds in productive tension. The first is etymological and daemonological: Jung’s ‘Symbols of Transformation’ traces the Indo-European root *mer/*mor (‘to die’) through the Germanic Mara and the Latin mors, arguing that the nightmare-figure who treads sleepers to death is a personification of fate cognate with the Moirai, the matres, and the matronae — thus binding the nocturnal incubus directly to the archetype of the devouring mother. The second register is symbolic and mythological: Demeter’s theriomorphic manifestation as a mare (attested in Kerényi and the Jungian–Kerényi collaborative volume) locates the mare within the grain-goddess and underworld-mother complex, making it an avatar of chthonic fertility. The third register is cosmological and hexagrammatic: the I Ching commentary tradition (both Richard Wilhelm and Hellmut Wilhelm) assigns the mare as the proper animal-symbol of the Receptive hexagram K’un — strong, swift, gentle, devoted, emblematic of earth-consciousness rather than heaven’s creative dragon. Jung’s fairy-tale analysis in ‘The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious’ synthesises these streams, reading the three-legged mare as simultaneously Princess B and the shadow of the anima. The term thus stands at the intersection of archetype, etymology, fate, and feminine symbolism.
The Indo-European root *mer, *mor, means ‘to die.’ From it also come Lat. mors, Gr. μόρος, ‘fate,’ and possibly Μοῖρα, the goddess of fate.
Jung derives the nightmare-Mare etymologically from the Indo-European root for death, binding it to fate-goddesses and the devouring-mother archetype.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
the three-legged horse is a mare, an equivalent of Princess A. She (the mare) is Princess B, who in the shape of a horse corresponds to Princess A’s shadow (i. e., her inferior
Jung identifies the fairy-tale mare as a shadow-figure equivalent to the anima, collapsing horse-symbolism, the feminine, and the inferior function-triad into one image.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
the perseverance is characterized as that of the mare, the animal form in which the earth goddess was imagined. The furthering perseverance is thus of a definite, unequivocal sort
Hellmut Wilhelm establishes the mare as the I Ching’s canonical symbol of the Receptive, the earth goddess’s theriomorphic form expressing devoted, undivided perseverance.
, Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, 1960thesis
the Creative is symbolized by the dragon, the Receptive by the mare, and the Clinging by the cow.
Richard Wilhelm’s I Ching commentary fixes the mare as the definitive animal emblem of K’un, the Receptive principle, contrasting it systematically with the dragon of the Creative.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
mare: Demeter as, 170; mother as, 46
The Kerényi–Jung volume explicitly equates Demeter’s theriomorphic aspect with the mare, grounding the grain-mother archetype in horse-form.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting
The horse now is released and allowed to run at will for one year in the company of a hundred nags but no shining mares
Campbell documents the Vedic ashvamedha rite in which the exclusion of shining mares marks a ritual boundary around the sacred stallion, illuminating the mare’s charged symbolic status in sacrificial contexts.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
Lilith changed into a nightmare or lamia (pl. xxxviia) who haunted pregnant women and kidnapped new-born infants.
Jung traces the Lilith-lamia figure as a parallel transformation of the demon-wife into a nightmare-being, contextualising the Mare within a broader series of devouring feminine spectres.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
mar, 245 mare tenebrositatis, 140
The index entry ‘mare tenebrositatis’ in the Archetypes volume signals a distinct alchemical usage of mare as the sea of darkness, intersecting nocturnal and prima materia symbolism.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
Hippothoe, “swift as a mare”; Hipponoe, “unruly as a mare” … Menippe, “the courageous mare”
Kerényi’s Nereid catalogue shows how Greek mythological nomenclature encodes the mare as an epithet of power, swiftness, and wild femininity within the divine feminine pantheon.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
mare nostrum, 332
A passing index reference to mare nostrum situates the Latin word mare (sea) alongside the psychological term, noting the semantic overlap between the sea as the unconscious and the nocturnal Mare.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964aside