Spiral

The spiral occupies a distinctive position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as geometric form, epistemological model, archetypal symbol, and emblem of life itself. McGilchrist offers the most sustained philosophical treatment, arguing that intellectual and spiritual truth is characteristically achieved not by linear advance but by a spiral path — approaching the same locus from successively different angles, generating difference within sameness. This directly challenges the Enlightenment valorisation of linear, mathematical exposition. Jung and the Jungian tradition read the spiral as a morphological signature of the psyche’s own movement: von Franz connects it to rotation and the rotundum as an archetypal image of transformation, while Jung’s own notation of Jacob Bernoulli’s spiral epitaph — ‘Eadem mutata resurgo’ (though changed, I rise again the same) — crystallises the paradox of recursive self-transformation. Rank and Neumann trace the spiral as an ancient art-historical motif, linking it to entrail divination, vessel ornamentation, and the symbolism of the Great Mother’s life-force. Campbell situates spiral carvings at Neolithic threshold-stones and megalithic graves as markers of the boundary between life and death. Kerényi reads Minoan spiral wall-decoration as directly expressive of zoē — indestructible life permeating all things. Across these voices a productive tension persists: is the spiral primarily a figure of epistemology, of cosmic rhythm, or of sacred geography? The answer the corpus implies is: all three, and irreducibly so.

In the library 14 passages

Intellectual life also has more of the spiral than the straight line or the circle about it. I have pointed out that many important truths cannot be expressed explicitly or arrived at linearly, but must be, so to speak, taken by stealth.

McGilchrist argues that the spiral — not the straight line or the closed circle — is the proper epistemological form for philosophical truth, which must be approached from multiple converging perspectives rather than seized directly.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Like Blake’s ladder that circles its way to Heaven, and thus to spiritual truth, Donne sees truth, both spiritual and intellectual, as being achieved by a path that is spiral-like.

Drawing on Blake and Donne, McGilchrist establishes the spiral path as the canonical form of both spiritual and intellectual ascent, a form neglected since the Enlightenment’s privileging of geometric linearity.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The discoverer of the mathematics of the spiral was Jacob Bernoulli (1654–1705), of a famous Basel family, who requested that the spiral be engraved on his tombstone with the words ‘Eadem mutata resurgo’ (though changed, I rise again the same).

Jung invokes Bernoulli’s mathematical spiral and its epitaph as an emblem for the psyche’s recursive self-transformation — returning to the same point while perpetually altered — linking geometry to individuation.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Like most Cretan art, the spiral decoration so frequent on Minoan walls must be interpreted as directly relating to zoe, which suffers no interruption and permeates all things.

Kerényi reads the Minoan spiral as the visual sign of zoē — indestructible, uninterrupted life — positioning it as the central symbolic vocabulary of Dionysian religious culture.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

in these spiral drawings — of which usually a whole row is found ornament-wise on a tablet — ‘we have before us representations of the entrails (intestines) of sacrificial animals from which prophecies were made.’

Rank traces the spiral to its archaic function in Babylonian entrail divination, demonstrating that the motif’s sacred significance precedes its ornamental role and connects inner bodily form to cosmological pattern.

Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

it does indicate a connection between the hemisphere of the breast and the spiral life motif, and suggests that the double spiral and double circle often symbolize the breasts.

Neumann links the spiral to the symbolism of the Great Mother’s body — particularly the breast — establishing it as a motif of nourishment, fecundity, and the life-force expressed through vessel and female form.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

To understand this geometrization of the organic spiral motive, which we already find in the beginning of the neolithic, we must turn to the vessel which carries the meander spiral.

Rank investigates the transformation of the organic spiral into geometric ornament on Neolithic vessels, arguing that understanding the vessel-form reveals the deeper psychological and religious meaning of the motif.

Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

in the early Irish kingly burial mound of New Grange labyrinthine spirals are prominent, not only within the narrow passages to the ‘nucleus’ but also, and most conspicuously, on the great threshold-stones at the entrances, where they guard the four gates.

Campbell documents the spiral’s archaic placement at liminal thresholds in Neolithic sacred architecture, interpreting it as a guardian motif marking the passage between life, death, and underworld initiation.

Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

their various potteries again show incised, but also gracefully painted designs in meanders, spirals, and linked spiral.

Campbell maps the broad prehistoric diffusion of spiral ornamentation across Neolithic European pottery traditions, situating the motif within the westward movement of early agricultural and religious culture.

Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The circle is represented by a snake coiled about a centre, either ring-shaped (uroboros) or spiral (Orphic egg).

Jung catalogues the spiral as one of the formal variants through which the Self’s mandala expresses totality, aligning it with the uroboros and Orphic egg as symbols of enclosed, self-renewing psychic wholeness.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The series ends with the rotundum, the archetypal image of rotation (which goes beyond the static models of quaternity). This coincides again with the pneumatic Anthropos.

Von Franz positions rotation — the dynamic, spiralling movement beyond static quaternary structure — as the culminating archetypal image in the alchemical series, connecting it to the Self and the Anthropos.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the staircase is a spiral, a winding path, and this path leads upward.

Kerényi identifies the spiral as the defining structural property of the labyrinthine path in ancient sacred architecture, where its winding and ascending form encodes the initiatory movement toward the centre.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

warning: the spiral walkways do not hold) circling around like a stairway winding around a lock, a dike (dam) stretched out toward the sea; closed in on itself and open to the sea’s path.

Derrida invokes the spiral structure of the labyrinthine ear as a figure for the impossible enclosure and simultaneous openness of meaning, touching the motif tangentially within his broader meditation on the tympanum.

Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Curvature, as I have suggested, is more characteristic of the intellectual world of the right hemisphere, in which opposites can be reconciled, in which the direct approach may for many purposes be inferior to the indirect.

McGilchrist situates curvature — the geometric kinship of the spiral — within his hemispheric epistemology, contrasting the right hemisphere’s affinity for curved, recursive motion with the left hemisphere’s preference for rectilinear advance.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Related terms