Within the depth-psychology corpus, Number Six occupies a charged symbolic register that brings together numerological, cosmological, and psychological threads. Its most persistent characterization is as the ‘first perfect number’ — a designation traceable to Pythagoras and sustained through Philo Judaeus, who named the senarius the number most suited to generation. Jung himself, reading a mandala patient’s imagery, cites the ancient tradition that six signifies creation and evolution as a coniunctio of two and three, even and odd, female and male. Tarot interpreters Nichols and Hamaker-Zondag extend this into archetypal psychology: six encodes completion, the six-pointed star of opposing triangles, and the Lover archetype’s quest for wholeness. The I Ching tradition introduces a further dimension in which ‘Six’ is the symbolic designation of yin lines within hexagrams — a usage that permeates Wilhelm’s commentary and bifurcates the term’s meaning between abstract numerological perfection and the concrete grammar of divination. Von Franz, approaching from the unus mundus perspective, ties six to the dance of four points and six lines, linking it to the structural logic of the I Ching itself. The tension in this body of literature lies between six as a static symbol of completion and six as a dynamic principle of generative polarity.
Six is unique in many ways. Pythagoras called it the first perfect number because its aliquot parts (one, two, and three) add up to itself. Six is also the number of completion.
Nichols identifies six as the Lover card’s governing number, grounding its archetypal meaning in Pythagorean perfection and the Genesis account of six-day creation.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
According to old tradition the number 6 means creation and evolution, since it is a coniunctio of 2 and 3 (even and odd = female and male). Philo Judaeus therefore calls the senarius (6) the ‘number most suited to generation.’
Jung grounds six in ancient cosmological tradition, reading it as the generative union of opposites and citing Philo Judaeus as an authority on its procreative symbolism.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
SIX IS OFTEN TREATED as 2 x 3, but has several remarkable characteristics of its own. If you add the divisors of six (1, 2, and 3) you get six again. There is hardly another number where that happens.
Hamaker-Zondag establishes six’s mathematical self-sufficiency as the foundation for its symbolic distinctiveness, differentiating it from mere multiplication of its factors.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997thesis
‘Do you now at least see the four and the six? Spatially four points and six lines or six pairs based on four points. They are the same six lines that are in the I Ching.’
Von Franz links six structurally to the I Ching’s hexagram form, showing that four spatial points necessarily generate six lines, thereby grounding the number in dynamic geometric and divinatory necessity.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
Water in the north has sprung from the one of heaven, which is complemented by the six of earth.
In the Ho T’u cosmological map, six is assigned as the earth-complement to heaven’s one, encoding six as the feminine-receptive counterpart in the generative number pairs.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Water in the north has sprung from the one of heaven, which is complemented by the six of earth.
Wilhelm’s Yellow River Map commentary positions six as earth’s complement to heaven’s one, situating the number within the cosmological yin-yang number system.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
yin transforms eight to six and together they also make fifteen. Thus the sum of the symbol and that of the transformed symbol is the same.
Hellmut Wilhelm explains that yin’s symbolic transformation produces six, situating the number at the heart of the I Ching’s numerical-cosmological equivalences.
, Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, 1960supporting
Each gua is composed of six horizontal lines, arranged one over the other… Yin yao symbolize the feminine, the yielding, the weak, the even numbers, as well as all passive things.
Huang locates six structurally as the number of lines in each hexagram and connects it to the yin principle through the classification of even numbers as feminine and passive.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
the so-called progression of the natural number series is probably nothing other than a sequence of typical procedures of this kind created by ordering rhythms.
Von Franz frames natural numbers, including six, as expressions of archetypal ordering rhythms in the collective unconscious, providing a metapsychological context for number symbolism.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside
The ruler of the hexagram is the six in the second place… The six in the second place is in the inner trigram just at the time when good fortune begins.
Wilhelm identifies a yin ‘six’ line as the governing ruler of the After Completion hexagram, illustrating how positional context determines the interpretive weight of six within I Ching divination.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside