The term ‘tail’ appears throughout the depth-psychology corpus with remarkable semantic range, clustering most densely around two major symbolic axes: the alchemical and the mythological-trickster. In the alchemical tradition, as documented by Abraham, von Franz, and Hillman, the tail figures principally in two configurations — the ouroboros (the serpent devouring its own tail as the emblem of closed circulatio) and the peacock’s tail (cauda pavonis), the iridescent display of colours that marks the transition from nigredo to albedo. These are not merely decorative symbols; they index specific stages of psychological transformation. Hillman’s treatment of the Pelican as a ‘tail-eater’ extends the ouroboros logic into a theory of iterative psychic digestion. The Trickster material from Radin introduces an entirely different register: the tail as social currency, a marker of identity and desire that the Trickster can bestow, falsify, and dissolve — a comic inversion of the alchemical gravitas. Easwaran’s meditative use of the tail-catching monkey-thought metaphor offers a third inflection, deploying the image to illustrate the associative chaining of mental phenomena in contemplative psychology. The etymological stratum (Beekes on Greek οὐρά) grounds the term in ancient somatic and military vocabulary. Taken together, these passages reveal ‘tail’ as a threshold concept — marking endings, circular returns, and the ambiguous boundary between symbol and body.
The Pelican, too, is a tail-eater: the lower end is consumed by the upper end, the head, but the process does not stop there with mental reflection. The head sends its product down again into the body, repeatedly.
Hillman argues that the Pelican vessel sophisticates the ouroboros image by transforming the self-devouring tail into a model of continuous psychic circulation and iterative refinement — the opus that feeds itself.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010thesis
the peacock’s tail the stage occurring immediately after the deathly black stage or nigredo, and just prior to the pure white stage or albedo. After the nigredo, the blackened body of the Stone is washed and purified by the mercurial water.
Abraham establishes the peacock’s tail (cauda pavonis) as a precise technical term in alchemical psychology designating the multi-coloured transitional phase between nigredo and albedo, a sign of dawning transformation.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis
in old alchemy, for in the old Greek texts we find a drawing of the snake which eats its own tail. Usually the head has stars on it and the rest is black, which would be the secret opposition.
Von Franz identifies the ouroboros — the snake consuming its own tail — as the foundational alchemical emblem of secret opposition between light and dark, psychologically understood as the tension of opposites within the unconscious.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
‘O, Kunu, how that tail becomes you! If only I were that way!’ Then, after a while, the bear again spoke, ‘O, Kunu, how that tail becomes you!’
Radin’s Trickster narrative deploys the tail as a locus of social envy and illusory identity — the Trickster offers the bear a counterfeit tail, exposing the psychological theme of false self-transformation through borrowed symbols.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956thesis
A thought does not even have a tail; that is the comedy of it. And what happens in meditation is that each individual thought begins to feel a little silly.
Easwaran employs the image of monkey-thoughts catching one another’s tails to illustrate the absurd associative chaining of mental contents, which meditation dissolves by revealing that each thought has no genuine connection to the next.
, Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spiritualitysupporting
catches on to another monkey’s tail, a third catches the tail of the second, and so on, until you have ten or twelve monkeys all hanging on to the leader and running all over the place. That is thinking.
In a parallel formulation, Easwaran uses the chain of monkey-tails as a pedagogical image for the compulsive linkage of thoughts, contrasting this with the meditative recognition that thought-chains lack genuine continuity.
, The Upanishadssupporting
jackdaw a symbol of the stage known as the nigredo, the putrefaction which leads to the stage of the peacock’s tail.
Abraham positions the jackdaw/crow complex as the symbolic predecessor of the peacock’s tail, demonstrating how the tail functions as a telos within the sequential symbolic grammar of the alchemical opus.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998supporting
After the long, long night as long as the dragging tail of the copper pheasant morning finally dawns!
Dōgen’s use of the pheasant’s dragging tail as a temporal metaphor — the long night of darkness before dawn — creates a structural parallel to alchemical nigredo symbolism, linking the tail to endurance preceding illumination.
supporting
dragon’s tail identical with devil, 316
Jung’s index entry signals that in alchemical psychology the dragon’s tail is equated with the devil, reinforcing the tail as a symbol of the chthonic, destructive, or shadow dimension of psychic energy.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907aside
οὐρά [f.] ‘tail’ (ll.), later often metaph. ‘rear (guard)’ (X., Plb.). IE *h₁ers- ‘tail’, PG?
Beekes traces the Greek word for tail (οὐρά) to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘tail,’ documenting its extension from literal anatomical reference to military metaphor as the rear-guard — the terminal, trailing element.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
The alternation between οὐρά and ὀρρός, -ορρός mirrors that between κουρά and κόρρη, κοράη.
Beekes illuminates the morphological alternation in Greek tail-words, connecting them to cognates in Old Irish and Germanic, grounding the symbolic term in comparative linguistics.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside