Moly

it unites the opposites: although its root is black, its flower is milky white… the basic point is that it unites the opposites and if one has that herb, the organic entity that unites the opposites, then one is more or less immune to anima seductions.

Edinger explicates moly as a symbol of the coniunctio oppositorum and the psychological immunity it confers against anima seduction, grounding his reading in both classical commentary and Jungian amplification.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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Hermes gave Ulysses the moly, which enabled him to approach Circe and not get caught in her machinations.

López-Pedraza situates the gift of moly within the Hermes archetype’s unique psychological capacity to enter erotic and relational entanglement without being captured by it.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis

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moly, 133n, 293n, 484

Jung’s index to the Mysterium Coniunctionis places moly in the company of alchemical and mythological figures of psychic synthesis, confirming its relevance to the work’s central opus of opposites.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting

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10.304 this plant Moly: Moly is probably an imaginary plant, although the legend may be connected to the ancient idea that garlic (which also h

Wilson’s annotation to the Odyssey treats moly as a most likely fictional plant while acknowledging its connection to ancient apotropaic plant lore, providing the classical textual basis for all subsequent depth-psychological amplification.

Homer, The Odyssey, 2017supporting

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she struck them with her wand and drove them into her pig pens, and they took on the look of pigs, with the heads and voices and bristles of pigs, but the minds within them stayed as they had been before.

Lattimore’s translation of the Circe episode establishes the narrative matrix—the enchantment from which moly protects—that depth psychology interprets as the archetypal danger of regression and ego-dissolution.

Lattimore, Richmond, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting

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Du Cange gives: ‘Image, molix.’ The herbal of Tabernaemontanus mentions ‘Image, Peganum sylvestre,’

Jung’s footnote traces moly’s philological and herbal antecedents through Du Cange and Tabernaemontanus, anchoring the mythic plant within alchemical and botanical textual traditions.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955aside

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