Sphairos

the new symbols of the unconscious broke through in two forms: (1) in the speculations of natural science, in the center of which stood the symbol of the "round thing," the sphairos, the idea of the circulation of energy, the image of a round cosmos, or of the whirling nous

Von Franz identifies the Sphairos as one of two primary symbolic forms through which the Greek unconscious expressed its transformative energy during a period of religious crisis, linking it explicitly to the circulation of psychic energy and the round cosmos.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Dreams: A Study of the Dreams of Jung, Descartes, Socrates, and Other Historical Figures, 1998thesis

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this sphere has everything that it needs within: it is round, it is full, it is content, it loves itself, and then above all it does not need either eye nor ear because by definition it is the envelope of everything which might be living

Lacan reads the Platonic sphere of the Timaeus as a figure of absolute self-sufficiency and totalized living reality, which he places in structural correspondence with Aristophanes' spherical beings and deploys as a key reference point for theorizing desire.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis

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Xenophanes of Colophon was tired of all the stories by all the poets about all the Gods and Goddesses. His new story was one of "getting it all together," and his abstract name for its presiding "deity" was the sphere, a single God

Miller reads Xenophanes' identification of the single deity with the sphere as a founding gesture of Western theological monotheism, demonstrating how the Sphairos functions as the symbolic vehicle for suppressing polytheistic multiplicity into abstract totality.

Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis

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A day will come when, after all struggle has been done away, 'Love' alone will have absolute rule; and this means for the poet — who in his description even of this world of mechanical attraction and repulsion interpolates half-realize

Rohde's discussion of Empedoclean cosmology evokes the Sphairos as the eschatological endpoint of cosmic process, the state of absolute unity under Love to which all particular phenomena tend to return.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting

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two by two, coupled belly to belly with a great whirling of four arms, of four legs and of their two heads going head over heels for one or more circuits

Lacan's vivid description of the coupled, whirling bodies in Aristophanes' comic chorus prepares the ground for his later analysis of the sphere, gesturing toward the corporeal image underlying the Symposium's account of the spherical primordial beings.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015aside

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