The navel occupies a remarkably dense symbolic field in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as cosmological axis, anatomical microcosm, and psychic origin-point. Eliade establishes the cosmological register most rigorously: the omphalos marks the Center of the World, the meeting-point of cosmic zones, the site where sacred space is constituted and the imago mundi replicated at every scale from temple to city to country. Rank extends this into a theory of cultural creativity, arguing that the ‘earth’s navel’ — the Omphalos — represents the humanization of the cosmos, the conceptual pivot from which geodesy, urban planning, national ideology, and ultimately art all radiate. Vernant grounds the symbol in Greek social anthropology, showing how the omphalos mediates between ancestral rootedness, maternal origin, and territorial belonging, as codified by Artemidorus. Campbell and Joyce (via Campbell’s reading) treat the navel as the umbilical point through which eternity ruptures into time — the hero himself as navel of the world. In Zen somatic tradition (Hakuin), the navel region localizes the tanden, the energetic center of ki. Abraham and Rank introduce the psychoanalytic-clinical register, where the navel appears in dream material encoding fantasies of origin, maternal fusion, and rebirth. Across these traditions, the navel is never merely anatomical; it is the mark of connection and severance — to mother, to earth, to cosmos — and its symbolic elaboration tracks the deep grammar of origin-anxiety in Western and Eastern thought alike.
the hero as the incarnation of God is himself the navel of the world, the umbilical point through which the energies of eternity break into
Campbell identifies the hero with the omphalos, the navel as the cosmological site where transcendent energy irrupts into temporal existence.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015thesis
he knew too that his city constituted the navel of the universe, and, above all
Eliade establishes the navel as the paradigmatic symbol of the Center, the point of cosmological orientation for religious humanity.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
the figuration of which as the earth’s ‘navel’ expresses a humanization of the cosmos such as was necessary if practical-technical development was likewise to find its ideology.
Rank argues the Omphalos concept is the ideological engine that converted cosmic symbolism into practical human sciences: geodesy, urban planning, and statecraft.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
The omphalos symbolizes the parents for as long as they live, or the mother country in which each was born as he was born of the umbilicus.
Vernant, citing Artemidorus, shows the omphalos as the sign of rootedness in parents and homeland, linking personal origin to territorial belonging.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
Starting from the beautiful navel-symbol of Delphi, we may safely assume that all ornamentation which consists in the tying up of separate balloon-shapes stands for the exceedingly important mother- or woman-symbol that signifies rebirth in the flesh
Rank reads the navel-symbol of Delphi as a universal mother-symbol encoding the chthonian principle of rebirth, connecting art-historical ornament to cosmological origin.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
earth becomes humanized by the aid of the Omphalos idea; that is to say, this heavenly geography was followed by a human geography, and it was through the latter that our earthly geography for the first time became possible.
Rank argues that the Omphalos is the conceptual mediator through which celestial cosmology was translated into terrestrial human geography.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
Mount Tabor, in Palestine, might signify tabbir, that is, ‘navel,’ omphalos. Mount Gerizim, at the center of Palestine, was doubtless invested with the prestige of the ‘Center,’ for it is called ‘navel of the earth.’
Eliade documents the geographic realization of the navel-center symbolism in specific sacred mountains and sites across the ancient Near East.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
we are dealing with a symbiotic representation of uterus, grave, navel-cord, and navel, while at the same time taking into consideration the elevation-tendency which gives the navel a conical form and sets it up erect.
Rank interprets the Omphalos stone as a condensed symbol uniting womb, death, and umbilical cord in a single chthonian monument.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting
Joyce treats of the principle of causality, the chain of cause and effect, in the amusing image of a telephone line of navel cords linking all of us back to Edenville, each with his own navel as the phone mouthpiece by which he might communicate with his first cause.
Campbell reads Joyce’s omphalos meditation as a modern mythological treatment of the navel as the individual’s channel of communication to cosmological and divine origins.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
We have dealt in detail with the navel as mid point of the earth, and with the liver as the centre of human life and therefore as the macrocosmic mirror of world-happenings.
Rank situates the navel within the ancient system of anatomical cosmology, in which bodily organs mirror macrocosmic structures.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting
it is always Babylon that is the scene of the connection between the earth and the lower regions, for the city had been built upon bdb apsi, the ‘Gate of the Apsu’
Eliade situates the navel-center concept within the broader cosmological topology of sacred cities as axis mundi connecting cosmic levels.
, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, 1954supporting
THE NAVEL OF GOD
Vaughan-Lee employs ‘The Navel of God’ as a section heading for a dream sequence in which spiritual union opens access to a transcendent dimension, extending the omphalos concept into Sufi-Jungian dreamwork.
, Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology, 1992supporting
the lower tanden, the ‘elixir field’ or ‘cinnabar field,’ also called the kikai tanden, ‘the ocean of ki-energy,’ the center of breathing or center of strength, located slightly below the navel.
Hakuin’s commentary locates the vital energetic center of Zen somatic practice slightly below the navel, giving the navel region a precise psychophysical function.
, Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, 1999supporting
Verbal noun from proteinnō ‘to cut off in front’, originally of the severing of the umbilical cord, then of the navel itself and the area surrounding it
Beekes traces the Greek anatomical vocabulary of the navel region to the primordial act of severing the umbilical cord, grounding the symbol in etymological fact.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
This part of the body formed a flat surface and had no navel. Where the navel ought to have been something suddenly grew out like a male organ.
Abraham presents clinical dream material in which the absence of the navel on a maternal figure condenses anxieties of origin, gender, and the longing to return to the mother.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting