Selene occupies a distinctive but subordinate position within the depth-psychology corpus. Kerényi establishes her mythological profile most fully: she is the luminous moon-goddess proper, sister of Helios, bearing the name that simply denotes ‘light,’ distinguished from the culturally weightier Artemis and from the underworld avatars she and Helios assume below the visible horizon. Crucially, Kerényi insists that Selene and Helios ‘played no great part’ in Greek mythology as such — their rays were borrowed by richer, more anthropomorphically complex divinities. This analytic subordination recurs in Jung and Hillman. In the Jungian corpus Selene appears primarily as a cipher within a cluster of anima-figures — Helen (Selene), Persephone, Hecate, Aphrodite — through which the anima archetype receives its Hellenic faces. Hillman, following Jung, uses her name parenthetically to gloss Helen’s lunar dimension. In alchemical contexts, Luna rather than Selene carries the primary symbolic weight, though Jung’s index explicitly cross-references the two. Neumann places Selene within his schema of the Great Mother’s lunar pole. The corpus thus positions Selene at the intersection of three interpretive currents: mythographic identification (Kerényi), archetypal anima phenomenology (Jung, Hillman), and Great Mother symbolism (Neumann) — her significance deriving less from independent elaboration than from her role as luminous marker within richer constellations.
Selene was the sister of Helios, as purely sisterly a being as Artemis was to Apollon. Any marriage between them had to be confined entirely to the invisible, Underworldly regions
Kerényi argues that Selene’s mythological identity is defined by sisterhood with Helios and a strict celestial-chthonic boundary, her famous erotic story originating from Asia Minor and set underground.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
The Sun and the Moon—considered solely as themselves and under the names Helios and Selene, which were the Greek words for these heavenly bodies—played no great part in our mythology.
Kerényi establishes the foundational hermeneutic claim that Selene’s mythological significance is derivative, her light delegated to anthropomorphically richer divinities who conveyed life-secrets that celestial bodies alone could not.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
the other … wears the features of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene), Persephone, and Hecate. Both of them are unconscious powers, ‘gods’ in fact, as the ancient world quite rightly conceived them to be.
Hillman, citing Jung, positions Selene within the anima’s Hellenic constellation, where she functions as one of several divine faces through which the unconscious feminine archetype manifests.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis
whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment … drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month
The Homeric Hymn presents Selene’s epiphany as a ritual of luminous self-preparation — bathing, robing, and driving — establishing her as a sovereign celestial figure whose fullness serves as a sign to mortals.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700supporting
The two goddesses Eos and Selene, the sisters of Helios, go before him—the moon-goddess often in a chariot that is plunging downwards.
Kerényi locates Selene iconographically as a processional figure preceding Helios, her descending chariot encoding the moon’s nightly sinking as a visual counterpart to the sun’s rise.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
Selene, daughter of Pallas, appeared in the sky just as the son of Zeus arrived with Apollon’s cattle at the river Alpheios.
In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes as retold by Kerényi, Selene’s appearance marks a precise nocturnal threshold, functioning as temporal witness to Hermes’ mythic cattle-raid.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
moon, 167/2; Mother of God and, 284; son of the, 282; tincture compared to, 298; -plant, 210; see also Luna; Selene; Sol and Luna; sun (and moon)
Jung’s index cross-references Selene explicitly with Luna and Sol and Luna, confirming that in his alchemical psychology the Greek goddess and the alchemical symbol are treated as interchangeable amplifications of the same lunar archetype.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
Selene, 275, 317
Neumann’s index locates Selene at two significant junctures in his Great Mother schema, associating her with the lunar pole of the archetypal feminine, though without extended elaboration.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
Selene, 22, 31, 128, 164, 175, 190, 192, 196, 198
The index to Kerényi’s Gods of the Greeks records Selene’s distribution across the text, confirming her recurring but non-dominant presence across the mythographic narrative.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside
our moon had three aspects: as the waxing, the full and the waning sign of a divine presence in the sky
Kerényi’s discussion of the triple moon implicitly frames the symbolic field within which Selene operates, linking lunar phases to the triadic goddess pattern without naming Selene directly.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951aside
Selene, 176
Burkert’s index entry places Selene within a catalogue of Greek religious figures, situating her within the institutional-cultic framework of archaic Greek religion without analytical elaboration.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977aside