The Seba library treats Omphale in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Neumann, Erich, Marvin W. Meyer, Rank, Otto).
Samson’s captivity is therefore an expression of the servitude of the conquered male under the Great Mother, just as were the labors of Herakles under Omphale, when he wore women’s clothes—another well-known symbol of enslavement to the Great Mother
Neumann reads the Heracles-Omphale myth as the paradigmatic symbol of male heroic enslavement to the Great Mother, directly parallel to Samson’s captivity under Astarte.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
Omphale, who is the same as Babel or Aphrodite, got involved with him and seduced him and stripped him of his strength, namely the orders of Baruch that Elohim commanded, and she clothed him in her own robe—that is, the power of Eden, the power below.
The Gnostic Book of Baruch identifies Omphale with Babel/Aphrodite as the seductive maternal power that strips Heracles of divine spiritual orders and clothes him in the inferior power of Eden.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005thesis
Heracles, who himself represents such a hero bound eternally to a woman (Omphale), from whom he continually but vainly attempts to
Rank frames Heracles’ servitude to Omphale as a structural repetition compulsion — the hero perpetually bound to and attempting escape from the engulfing feminine.
, The Trauma of Birth, 1924thesis
it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again… This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the ‘sister-wife-mother,’ the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality.
Jung theorizes the mythological pattern underlying figures like Omphale as the anima’s forcible feminization of masculine consciousness, enacted through archetypal enslavement imagery.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Omphale, 307n
Jung’s index in Psychology and Alchemy registers Omphale as a reference point within the alchemical discussion, indicating her presence in the symbolic matrix of the opus.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Omphale 506
Harrison’s index entry places Omphale in close proximity to the omphalos, suggesting a structural or etymological relationship between the queen and the sacred navel-stone in Harrison’s comparative religious framework.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside
clothe women in men’s chitons and chlamydes and men in the peploi and veils of women
Harrison’s account of the Hybristika festival — ritual gender inversion — provides the cultic context for the transvestism central to the Omphale myth.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside