The term ‘steel’ in the depth-psychology corpus is not a simple material referent but a carrier of multiple symbolic registers, each illuminating a different dimension of psychic and metaphysical experience. Its most theologically charged usage appears in John of Damascus, where steel figures as an analogy for the hypostatic union: fire permeates steel just as divinity permeates Christ’s humanity, transforming without dissolving natural properties. This image migrates productively into Hillman’s archetypal psychology, where iron—the raw precursor to steel—stands as the Martian metal, forged through rage, discipline, and repeated tempering. Hillman further notes that in eighteenth-century psychiatry, ‘Steel was already there in fantasy’: the material concretized psychic energies through mesmerists’ steel magnets and the emerging materialist brain science. Merleau-Ponty perceives steel’s ductility and hardness as phenomenologically visible, exemplifying synaesthetic inter-sensory perception. Harding’s visionary fantasy depicts swords of flaming steel as instruments of psychic conflict—a vivid dramatization of animus combat. Alchemically, the corpus links steel to the prima materia through the magnet–steel adamas dyad, in which hidden salt mediates philosophical transformation. Across these registers, steel embodies hardness, penetration, transformation under heat, and the paradox of a substance that can be both the vehicle and the limit of transmutation.
just as we saw that burning permeated the steel. For, just as we confess that God became man without change or alteration, so we consider that the flesh became God without change.
John of Damascus deploys the permeation of steel by fire as the central analogy for the hypostatic union, arguing that transformation occurs without the destruction of either nature’s essential properties.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
if any one pour water over flaming steel, it is that which naturally suffers by the water, I mean, the fire, that is quenched, but the steel remains untouched (for it is not the nature of steel to be destroyed by water)
Steel here argues the impassibility of the divine nature by demonstrating that a substance retains its essence even when the element temporarily united with it is extinguished.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
just as on laboriously removing from steel
Damascus uses the removal of impurity from steel as a metaphor for the ascetic labor by which human nature is restored from the unnatural back to its original divine likeness.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
Steel was already there in fantasy. Concretization—to use that hideous and appropriate word—was the approach, expressed equally in the psyche-equals-skull formula, the steel magnets of the mesmerists
Hillman argues that the eighteenth-century materialization of psychology—through steel magnets, iron rods, and brain anatomy—was itself a fantasy projected onto matter, not a departure from imagination.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
this magnet is the common magnet. They the alchemists have given it this name only because of its natural sympathy with what they call their steel adamas. This is the ore prima materia of their gold
Jung presents the alchemical ‘steel adamas’ as the prima materia paired with the philosophical magnet, demonstrating how material and psychic symbolism are inextricably fused in alchemical thought.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
‘adamant’ means an impregnable hardness, and hard as steel. In Western natural history, which has become for us mere folklore and symbolism, the diamond had the properties of the lapis
Hillman traces the etymological and symbolic equivalence of adamant and steel, positioning extreme hardness as a property shared by the alchemical lapis and the diamond in their roles as transformative agents.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
Iron imposes its discipline. Enter the forge of rage, melt, and coagulate, submit to the hammer and harden, be plunged again and again into the fire and the cooling bath.
Hillman reads the metallurgical process of forging iron—tempering through repeated fire and cooling—as a psychological discipline resonant with the Martian archetype of hardening through endured intensity.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
One sees the springiness of steel, the ductility of red-hot steel, the hardness of a plane blade, the softness of shavings.
Merleau-Ponty invokes steel’s visible ductility and hardness as a paradigm case of synaesthetic perception, where material qualities are apprehended by the whole sensing body rather than isolated senses.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting
they drew their swords of flaming steel from their scabbards… I heard the heavy impact of the horses’ bodies, heard the ring of steel on steel
In Harding’s analysand’s active-imagination fantasy, steel-bladed combat among four knights enacts the psychic drama of opposing animus forces contending toward a sacrificial resolution.
, the way of all women, 1970supporting
over where, precisely, the steel knife should fall, and whether and how to use the head for experimental studies
Hillman records the early psychiatric obsession with the steel guillotine blade as symptomatic of the materialist fantasy locating the soul in the skull—steel here marking the boundary between psyche and anatomy.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
adamantine, of steel, Pi. P. 4. 224, A. Pr. 6, 64… 2. met
A lexicographical note establishes that the Greek ‘adamantinos’ denotes steel in Pindar and Aeschylus, providing the philological basis for the hardness-symbolism that depth psychology inherits from antiquity.
, Greek lexicographical notes A critical supplement to theaside
of steel, * 2 564, then steel-blue, dark blue, dark; of the brows of Zeus… Kvavos: probably blue steel
The Homeric Dictionary identifies ‘kyanos’ as probably blue steel, linking the color-symbolism of Zeus’s dark brow with the metallic substance and suggesting an archaic fusion of chromatic and material qualities.
, Homeric Dictionaryaside
his shoulders the fierce warrior put the steel that saves me from doom
Hesiod’s Shield depicts steel as apotropaic armor—a life-preserving martial substance—establishing the heroic-mythological register of steel as protection against fate.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside
masterpieces of craftsmanship were likely forged in the Rhineland, now Germany, using steel ingots from Asia
This passage notes the historical provenance of high-quality medieval steel blades, offering craft-historical context for the symbolic status of steel as a rare and superior material.
, Woman’s Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, 1955aside