Tetragrammaton

The Tetragrammaton — YHVH, the four-lettered divine name of Hebrew scripture — occupies a significant, if specialized, position within the depth-psychological corpus, appearing most densely at the intersection of Kabbalistic symbolism, alchemical quaternio thinking, and Jungian analytical psychology. Jung himself invokes it principally as an archetype of fourfoldness: the four letters enact the psychological drama of the three-and-four problem, wherein a seeming quaternity conceals an internal repetition that implicates the undifferentiated feminine. Edinger elaborates this reading with precision, showing how the doubled heh — Mother and Daughter, upper and lower Shekinah — encodes the incomplete differentiation of the feminine in the masculine psyche, making the Tetragrammaton not merely a divine epithet but a structural map of individuation’s unfinished business. Pollack and Place approach the term from the Tarot tradition, where the four letters correspond to the four suits and the four elements, functioning as a cosmogonic formula rather than a personal name. Pauli frames it within the dignity of the quaternary number as the origin of Godhead and the foundation of natural philosophy. Hoeller links the name obliquely to Gnostic amulet traditions via the cognate JAO. Across these treatments, the Tetragrammaton serves as a shared node connecting divine unknowability, quaternary wholeness, and the psychology of the Self.

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it is highly significant that although the Tetragrammaton is made up of four letters and is therefore a quaternity, one of the letters duplicates itself and therefore the issue of the three and the four appears.

Edinger argues that the Kabbalistic structure of the Tetragrammaton enacts the three-and-four problem of individuation, with the doubled feminine letter revealing the undifferentiated status of the anima in masculine symbolic systems.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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The letters do not form a ‘name’ in the human sense of a label that stands for a person, but rather they depict a formula. And that formula describes the process of creation. The tetragrammaton and the four elements do not really form two separate systems, but in fact one unified symbol.

Pollack contends that the Tetragrammaton is not a divine proper name but a cosmogonic formula identical in structure to the fourfold elemental system underlying the Tarot suits.

Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980thesis

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God’s name in Christian tradition is usually translated as Jehovah or Yahweh, in Hebrew, it is spelled with only four letters, yod, heh, vau, heh, which are referred to as the Tetragrammaton, the ‘four-lettered word.’ In Hebrew tradition, the true pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was said to be known only by the high priests of ancient Israel.

Place situates the Tetragrammaton historically and esoterically, emphasizing its guarded pronunciation as the source of its magical potency and its structural equivalence to the sacred quaternity.

Place, Robert M., The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis

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this name alone expresses the essence of God and no other is known as ‘Tetra-grammaton’. And this is the reason why this number is called by the wise the ‘Origin and Source of the whole Godhead’. Nature herself, deriving her origin from the Godhead, also lays claim to this number as to her fundamental principle.

Pauli’s text presents the Tetragrammaton as the supreme expression of the quaternary number, grounding both divine essence and natural philosophy in the fourfold principle.

Pauli, Wolfgang, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting

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view of the history of symbols: ‘Yod [the first letter of the tetragrammaton, the divine name]-anima mundi-sol-lapis philosophorum-cor-Lucifer.’

Jung inserts the Tetragrammaton’s initial letter into an alchemical-symbolic hierarchy linking the divine name to anima mundi, the solar principle, and the lapis, establishing its place in a chain of psychic archetypes.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting

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the shield and a whip, the former usually inscribed with the sacred name JAO, reminiscent of the Jewish Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of God, conjecturally pronounced ‘YAHWEH.’

Hoeller links the Gnostic deity Abraxas to the Tetragrammaton through the amulet inscription JAO, situating the divine name within a tradition of magical protective formulae.

Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting

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The Monogenes is thought of as standing upon a τετράπεζα, a platform supported by four pillars, corresponding to the Christian quaternarium of the Evangelists, or to the Tetramorph, the symbolic steed of the Church, composed of the symbols of the four evangelists.

Jung situates quaternary divine structures — including those cognate with the Tetragrammaton’s fourfoldness — within a broader pattern spanning Gnostic, Christian, and alchemical symbolism of wholeness.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting

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the Essential Name has four letters, three different, and the fourth a repetition of the second: for the first he is the spouse of the yod; and the second, the spouse of the vau. The first emanated from yod, directly, and the second from vau, in a converse and reflex way.

Jung cites the Kabbalistic source explaining the internal structure of the Tetragrammaton as a system of spousal emanations, underscoring the gender dynamics encoded in its four-letter sequence.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting

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