The Seba library treats Mistletoe in 4 passages, across 4 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Simondon, Gilbert, Beekes, Robert).
the mistletoe which killed Baldur was ‘too Jung’; hence this clinging parasite could be interpreted as the ‘child of the tree.’ But as the tree signifies the origin in the sense of the mother,
Jung reads the mistletoe in the Baldur myth as the ‘child of the tree’—the forbidden rejuvenating self that the incest prohibition renders lethal—connecting its parasitic nature to fire-mother symbolism and Druidic ritual.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
the more well-adapted and vigorous the parasite is, the more it damages and diminishes its host, since it does not respect the host’s functional autonomy. If the parasite develops too much, it winds up destroying its host and can then destroy itself, just as mistletoe kills the tree on which it settles.
Simondon invokes mistletoe as a biological exemplar of parasitic self-destruction, supplying a structural-scientific parallel to Jung’s mythological reading of the plant as the agent that annihilates what it clings to.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
ucpéap, -éapo<; [n.] Arcad. name of the mistletoe, ‘Viscum album’ (Thphr.)… traditionally derived from Cypr. u- and *cpeFap, which would be a verbal noun to écpuv ‘grew’, following the explanation in H.: ‘what grows on firs’.
Beekes traces the Arcadian Greek name for mistletoe (Viscum album) to a verbal root meaning ‘what grows on’ a host tree, grounding the plant’s symbolic identity as a dependent, epiphytic growth in its very etymology.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
HOLLY AND MISTLETOE BRING CHRISTMAS SPIRIT TO A HOME — Holiday spirit as an attempt to preserve for individuals the wealth and power of racial background. Social warmth.
Rudhyar assigns mistletoe a Sabian-symbol valence of preserved ancestral warmth and seasonal communal bonding, representing the domesticated, culturally normalized stratum of a symbol that elsewhere carries numinous destructive force.