The Rebis — from the Latin res bina, ‘dual thing’ — occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychological reading of alchemy as the culminating symbol of the coniunctio oppositorum. Within the Jungian corpus, the Rebis is treated primarily as the hermaphroditic figure produced at the apex of the alchemical opus: a unified being comprising masculine and feminine, solar and lunar, spiritual and material principles. Jung himself provides the foundational interpretive frame, reading the Rebis as an ‘apotheosis’ — an image of transcendental unity in which the divided opposites of the psyche are reconciled into a third, trans-rational entity. The figure is explicitly linked to the lapis philosophorum, to Christ-symbolism in medieval alchemy, and to the broader category of the hermaphrodite as a recurring archetype of wholeness. Murray Stein extends Jung’s analysis into the domain of transformative relationships, arguing that the Rebis constellates not only within the individual psyche but between persons — in marriage, in analytic dyads, and in collective communities — where it functions as an unconscious imago guiding mutual transformation. A productive tension runs through the corpus: whether the Rebis is primarily an intrapsychic symbol of individuation or also a relational and collective phenomenon. The term thus stands at the intersection of alchemy, the psychology of the self, and the theory of transference.
it shows an apotheosis of the Rebis, the right side of the body being male, the left female. The figure stands on
Jung identifies the Rosarium image as a literal apotheosis of the Rebis — a hermaphroditic culmination of the alchemical opus in which masculine and feminine polarities are unified in a single transcendent body.
, Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954thesis
the medieval Rebis had these Christian characteristics, but for the Hermaphroditus of Arabic and Greek sources we must conjecture a partly pagan tradition.
Jung traces the historical genealogy of the Rebis through its medieval Christian appropriation of hermaphrodite symbolism, situating it at the convergence of pagan, Arabic, and ecclesiastical traditions concerning the androgynous totality.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
The hermaphroditic rebis has an important part to play in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. And in our own day we hear of Christ’s androgyny in Catholic
Jung and Kerényi establish the hermaphroditic Rebis as a persistent archetype of the union of opposites, surviving from cosmogonic myth through medieval natural philosophy into modern theological discourse.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949thesis
The Rebis (Rosarium Series no. 10) is an image of archetypal unity. When the conjoint body rises from the tomb, it reassumes some of the paraphernalia of royalty
Stein reads the Rebis as the culminating image of the Rosarium sequence, embodying archetypal wholeness achieved through the alchemical transformation of two separate beings into one resurrected, crowned, and spiritualized figure.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis
The Rebis is bound by neither time nor space. And it survives the absence or even the death of a partner, maintaining the relationship beyond the seemingly final limit of the grave.
Stein argues that the Rebis, as the unconscious conjunctive imago formed between partners, transcends temporal and spatial limitation and persists even through death, constituting the eternal substrate of a transformative bond.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998thesis
a common Rebis image constellates and can be detected beneath the surface. As a unit, they portray an imago of the collective unconscious.
Stein extends the Rebis symbol beyond the dyad to collective formations — religious communities and kinship groups — where a shared unconscious imago constellates and shapes the group’s psychological unity.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
rebis, 197, 301, 306, 313, 317; apotheosis of, 312; as cibus sempiternus/lumen indeficiens, 306; symbol of transcendental unity, 302; see also hermaphrodite; lapis
The index entry confirms the Rebis as a symbol of transcendental unity cross-referenced with the hermaphrodite and lapis, and ascribes to it nourishing and luminous qualities in the alchemical tradition.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
Rebis symbol, 93–97, 96, 101–102, 103–104, 129
The index entry for Stein’s volume confirms the Rebis as a sustained analytical focus, structuring his account of transformative relationships across individual, dyadic, and collective registers.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
rebis, 434
The index entry in Psychology and Alchemy places the Rebis within the dense symbolic network of the prima materia, confirming its status as one of the key symbols of the alchemical process in Jung’s systematic treatment.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
human wholeness can only be described in antinomies, which is always the case when dealing with a transcendental idea.
Jung’s reflection on the paradoxical nature of psychological wholeness provides the broader theoretical context within which the Rebis functions as an antinomial symbol of the self’s transcendental unity.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954aside
In the Rosarium, the transformation of two separate objects into one complete unity is depicted by the Rebis. Two become one, and they create a third being
Stein articulates the triadic logic of the Rebis — two become one and generate a third — mapping the alchemical symbol onto the psychological dynamic of transformative coniunctio.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998aside