Old Wise Man

The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other person possessing authority. The archetype of spirit in the shape of a man, hobgoblin, or animal always appears in a situation where insight, understanding, good advice, determination, planning, etc., are needed but cannot be mustered on one's own resources.

Jung's foundational definition of the Old Wise Man as the compensatory archetype of spirit that constellates specifically when conscious resources of insight and direction prove insufficient.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis

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The two magicians are, indeed, two aspects of the wise old man, the superior master and teacher, the archetype of the spirit, who symbolizes the pre-existent meaning hidden in the chaos of life. He is the father of the soul, and yet the soul, in some miraculous manner, is also his virgin mother.

Jung establishes the Old Wise Man as the dual-aspected archetype of spirit — simultaneously light and dark — who embodies pre-existent meaning and stands in a paradoxical generative relation to the soul.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis

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In any situation full of doubt and risk where the ordinary mind does not know what to do, the immediate reaction is to apply to the archetypal figure of the wise old man. An archetype comes into existence, then, because it is a customary or habitual way of dealing with critical situations.

Jung explains the evolutionary and psychological origins of the Old Wise Man archetype as a habitual, culturally sedimented response to critical situations that exceed individual competence.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis

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In fairy tales, it appears as the old wise man or as the little old dwarf who always comes in helpful moments. And he generally comes, as Jung points out in his essay, when the hero badly needs intelligence and doesn't have it.

Von Franz confirms and extends Jung's structural thesis by locating the Old Wise Man's activation in fairy tales at the precise narrative moment when heroic consciousness lacks the intelligence required to advance.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis

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These representations—elders, mentors, analysts, and old wise men and women—provide an authority and wisdom that is beyond the experience of the dreamer, 'helping' to keep him helplessly dependent. Therefore it tends to have him rather than he it.

Hillman critiques the Old Wise Man as a senex manifestation that, when unconsciously operative, fosters dependency and arrests development rather than facilitating individuation.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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As Jung himself pointed out in that passage referred to above the old wise man is no solution, for the antidote and poison are inseparable. So withdrawal from the scene to go about the Father's spiritual business—solitude, reflection, wisdom—may only produce more blackening of the brain, more of the dragon.

Hillman, citing Jung's own caveat, argues that the Old Wise Man figure cannot resolve the senex problem because wisdom and its pathology are structurally inseparable within the archetype.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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One cannot possibly live as the wise old man day and night; one would be something between a corpse and a fool. People would think so and right they would be... that is the external appearance of a fellow who has been swallowed by the wise old man.

Jung warns that ego-identification with the Old Wise Man archetype produces inflation and psychic dissolution, using Nietzsche as the paradigmatic case of a person 'swallowed' by this figure.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis

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The tendency of the old man to set one thinking also takes the form of urging people to 'sleep on it.' He also sees through the gloomy situation of the hero who has got himself into trouble, or at least can give him such information as will help him on his journey.

Jung catalogues the Old Wise Man's practical functions in folklore — counsel, forewarning, guidance through danger — as consistent expressions of its compensatory spiritual role.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

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The figure of the superior and helpful old man tempts one to connect him somehow or other with God... In this story the old man is taken for God in the same naïve way that the English alchemist, Sir George Ripley, describes the 'old king' as 'antiquus dierum'—'the Ancient of Days.'

Jung traces the folkloric conflation of the Old Wise Man with divine figures, connecting it to the alchemical 'Ancient of Days' and demonstrating the archetype's proximity to the God-image.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

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In a modern series of visions in which the figure of the wise old man occurred several times, he was on one occasion of normal size and appeared at the very bottom of a crater... on another occasion he was a tiny figure on the top of a mountain.

Jung documents the morphological range of the Old Wise Man in modern visionary experience, linking its diminutive or paradoxically scaled appearances to a broader symbolic field including homunculi and dwarfs.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

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The Self, however, does not always take the form of a wise old man or wise old woman. These paradoxical personifications are attempts to express something that is not entirely contained in time—something simultaneously young and old.

Jung clarifies the relationship between the Old Wise Man and the Self, positioning the former as one among several personifications of the latter rather than its exhaustive symbol.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Man and His Symbols, 1964supporting

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We must further conclude that the negative senex is the senex split from its own puer aspect. He has lost his 'child.' The archetypal core of... ego-consciousness split from archetypal reality, the gods.

Hillman articulates the structural pathology underlying the negative Old Wise Man as a splitting of the senex–puer archetype, in which the figure loses its animating youthful counterpart and becomes rigidly authoritarian.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting

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William Blake's image of God the Father as a wise old man with a beard, a typical personification of the Self, archetype of wholeness and the centre of the personality.

Von Franz identifies the bearded wise old man in visual iconography — specifically Blake's God the Father — as a canonical personification of the Self as archetype of wholeness.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting

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He would be unconscious of the nature of the anima—that is excluded since he is always associated with the anima... Krishna contained all this... Utterly unconscious because he is the hero god and not the wise old man.

Jung distinguishes the Old Wise Man from the hero archetype on the criterion of anima-consciousness, arguing that the wise old man is structurally and essentially associated with the anima in a way the hero is not.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting

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Statue of wise old man (Hermes Trismegistus) holding tablet, from Senior's De chemia.

Von Franz presents the alchemical figure of Hermes Trismegistus as an iconographic instantiation of the wise old man archetype within the Western esoteric tradition.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting

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A further personification of this archetype in the Grail legend is Parzival's uncle Trevrezent, who lives as a recluse in a hermitage. On his longest quest, the search for the Grail, Parzival returns to this place time and again until he has found his true path.

Banzhaf identifies Trevrezent as a literary embodiment of the Old Wise Man archetype in the Grail legend, functioning as the hermit guide who imparts both self-knowledge and the 'magic formula' at the critical juncture of the hero's journey.

Banzhaf, Hajo, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000supporting

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Like the stern mother with authority, the Wise Old Woman can also help someone say 'no' when necessary... One of the Wise Old Woman's roles, especially as the Crone, is to help a woman come to terms with limitations and the unknown.

Signell maps the feminine counterpart of the Old Wise Man — the Wise Old Woman or Crone — as she functions in women's dreams, extending the archetype's scope to include limit-setting, truth-witnessing, and confrontation with the unknown.

Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting

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This understanding of the milk reflects the mother complex redeemed and is the secret of prophet, poet, mystes, messiah, king, child, culture, hero, priest, and sage—images of archetypal forms of living, ambivalent and not split into polarities.

Hillman includes the sage among a constellation of archetypal roles that, when unredeemed from polarity, decompose into the negative senex, situating the Old Wise Man within a broader typology of spiritual and cultural archetypes.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015aside

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Wise Old Man, 257, 258, 284-285, 286... Wise Old Woman, 67, 144-145, 151, 247-248

Signell's index entry documents the sustained treatment of both the Old Wise Man and the Wise Old Woman as distinct but related archetypal figures throughout her clinical discussion of women's dreams.

Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991aside

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