The Seba library treats Samson in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Neumann, Erich, Onians, R B).
Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun's rays, she robs him of his strength. This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the 'sister-wife-mother,' the woman in the man
Jung reads the Delilah-Samson episode as the paradigmatic mythological instance of the anima in her destructive aspect draining the hero of his solar potency, structurally homologous to Isis's weakening of Ra.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
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 interprets Samson's imprisonment in Dagon's temple as the mythological pattern of masculine defeat by and regression into the Great Mother, precisely paralleling the Heracles-Omphale enslavement motif.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
Like the blinding of Samson and of Oedipus, captivity, which in many myths and fairy tales takes the form of being eaten, is a higher form of failure than dismemberment or phallic castration.
Neumann ranks Samson's blinding alongside Oedipus's as a 'higher castration'—a defeat at the level of consciousness rather than the phallus—marking an advanced but still failed stage of ego development.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
The second element is the blinding. Once again it is an 'upper' as distinct from a 'lower' castration. Upper castration, or loss of the Jehovah power, leads to the hero's captivity among the Philistines, in the realm of Astarte.
Neumann articulates a hierarchical castration typology in which Samson's blinding constitutes 'upper castration'—loss of divine masculine consciousness—leading to subjugation within the Astarte-governed underworld.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
It is a striking fact that the lion-killing heroes Samson and Heracles fight without weapons. The lion is a symbol of the fierce heat of midsummer; astrologically he is t[he sign of Leo]
Jung situates Samson within the solar-mythological complex of lion-slaying heroes, reading his bare-handed combat as emblematic of the sun at its zenith, reinforcing the Leo-midsummer symbolism.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Lion: Nemean, 182, 296f; Samson and, 121, 339; slain by heroes, 386n; and snake, 280, pl. Lximb; sun-eating, pl. xxxib; as symbol, 338, 386, 431; zodiacal sign, 121, 280, 431f
The index of Symbols of Transformation clusters Samson's lion-combat under the lion's solar and zodiacal symbolism, confirming his consistent placement within Jung's solar-hero mythologem.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
The Nazirite's offering of his hair to Yahweh may perhaps be explained as an offering of the life-substance
Onians reads the Nazirite hair-offering, the vow tradition underlying Samson's consecrated strength, as a sacrificial surrender of vital life-substance to the deity—providing a mythological substrate for the Samson hair symbolism.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside
Samson, 92
Edinger's index entry places Samson within an alchemical-psychological context alongside Saturn and sacrifice symbolism, indicating his assimilation into the transformative opus as a figure of solar suffering.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985aside