Tapestry

A tapestry is being brought down from the attic. It is in two separate parts which are to be joined—the burlap backing and the threaded design… We were supposed to study the design of the tapestry in order to understand it. This would involve the counting of the threads.

Edinger reads a conception dream’s tapestry image as a coagulatio symbol encoding the soul-flesh distinction and the Fate Lachesis’s measuring function, making it a key oneiric index of the psyche’s response to biological inception.

Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis

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the assigning of the portion, the Láchos or moira, by Lachesis with scales… then the spinning of it by Klotho… and lastly the binding or weaving of it by Atropos.

Onians’s philological reconstruction of the Moirai’s distinct functions — allotting, spinning, and weaving fate — provides the mythological substrate against which Edinger’s tapestry dream is amplified.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

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Kourie, C. (2015). Weaving colourful threads: A tapestry of spirituality and mysticism. HTS: Theological Studies, 71(1), 1–9.

A bibliographic citation confirms the tapestry as an operative metaphor in transpersonal scholarship on spirituality, where interwoven threads figure the synthesis of mystical and psychological dimensions.

Dennett, Stella, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025supporting

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‘The Muse is joining together gold and white ivory and the lily-flower which she has taken from the dew of the sea.’ Piece afte[r piece]

Pindar’s image of the Muse weaving disparate materials into aesthetic unity offers an analogical context for the tapestry’s function as a symbol of meaningful composition from heterogeneous elements.

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the variety of colors of a woven cloth, the medley of designs representing, in a more or less stylized form, a scene of plants and animals directly suggesting the powers of life — all these combine to make the work of the goldsmiths and weavers a sort of concentration of living light from which charis shines out.

Vernant’s account of woven cloth as a concentration of living light and charis situates weaving within Greek aesthetic-religious thought as a medium of divine radiance, contextualising the depth-psychological valuation of the tapestry image.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside

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