The Power of (Re)Naming
The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende is one of my favorite books, though I only got to read it when I was ten or eleven (the school librarian was convinced it was too difficult for me at nine)1. At that stage, I was already familiar with the story because I’d rented the VHS from the local video shop (a number of times). Like anyone else who grew up with that movie, I remember the trauma of watching Artax, the white horse, sink into the Swamp of Sadness. The terror I felt at the sight of Gmork, servant to the masters of the Nothing, as he lay pinned beneath the rubble of the ruined city during his final confrontation with Atreyu is a defining memory of the movie. Like most of the English-speaking world online, I had no idea what name Bastion screamed into the storm when he renamed the Childlike Empress. I remember asking both my parents to listen to that part to tell me what he shouted. They also couldn’t hear it. It’s impossible to make out.
When the librarian eventually decided that I had the necessary number of years under my belt to read the book, I finally learned that name: Moon Child. Today, thanks to the magic of subtitles, that confusion is mostly a thing of the past. It took many more years for me to recognize that this pattern of renewal arriving through the act of renaming is far older than Ende’s wonderful novel. In mythology from all over the world, the act of giving old or corrupted things new names is an almost universal mechanism by which they can be restored2. By giving the Childlike Empress a new name, Bastion performs an act of creative renewal, restoring (and reforming) the inner world of the imagination.
This pattern runs deeper than fantasy. In folktales and mythology from around the world, we find the same principle at work: to renew something broken, lost, or enchanted, we must clothe it in a new name. In the story of the Six Swans, a sister breaks the spell over her brothers not by speaking, but by weaving nettle shirts in silence. It takes her 6 years, over the course of which, people become convinced she is a witch. In the end, as she is about to be burned at the stake, she throws the shirts over her swan-brothers (who conveniently happen to be flying by), clothing them once more in their true identities and forms3.
It’s a powerful image, isn’t it? Identity restored not through force or argument, but through silent dedication and symbolic action that mirrors the act of renaming. And this, too, is the task at hand. Especially when the symbolic language we’ve inherited no longer serves us.
In this essay, I explore what happens when the symbolic language we use to describe the inner life—particularly Jung’s archetypal terms “masculine” and “feminine”—no longer reflects the realities we’re experiencing. Drawing on myth, Taoist cosmology, and my own experiences as an educator, I suggest a shift: from gendered archetypes to the more fluid framework of yīn and yáng. This isn’t just about semantics—it’s about finding a vocabulary spacious enough to honor complexity, one that invites reflection instead of division. In a time when identity is both deeply personal and politically charged, the language we use matters. And perhaps, by reaching for symbols that move and breathe, we can begin to imagine new ways of understanding ourselves—and each other.
When Symbols Get Stuck
The terms Carl Jung used to describe archetypal images4—words like masculine and feminine—were once fluid, symbolic tools for expressing psychic patterns. But in today’s climate, so charged with political and cultural tension, those words have become too heavily burdened with misinterpretation. To renew their meaning, I propose a shift: one that draws on the language of classical Chinese philosophy. This move away from familiar, gendered terminology invites a more elemental and less prescriptive view of psychic dynamics. By turning to culturally distinct concepts like yīnyáng (陰陽), we not only broaden our symbolic vocabulary, but also sidestep the limitations imposed by current ideological frameworks.
Jung Encounters the East
In 1928, a new world opened up for Jung. After encountering a Taoist alchemical text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, through his friend Richard Wilhelm, Jung began looking beyond the Greco-Christian symbolic tradition that shaped much of his early vocabulary (CW 13, Foreword to the Second German Edition). Having previously only had access to a deficient translation of the text, he found in the I Ching (now translated by Wilhelm) and in Taoist cosmology more broadly, a symbolic system that mirrored his own psychological insights presented with a fluidity and humility he felt Western thought lacked (CW 11, §791)5.
The Taoist concept of yīn (陰) and yáng (陽) speaks not of static categories, but of relationship, rhythm, and change. These are not gender roles or fixed traits. They are dynamic expressions or polarities of qì (氣)—the life-force of Nature which flows through all things according to the the Tao (道)—The Way. Yang is associated with motion, assertion, heat, and light—qualities often labeled masculine in both Chinese philosophy and Western psychology.. Yīn, by contrast, is receptive, cool, still, and dark—often read as feminine6. But crucially, in Taoist thought, neither is superior, and neither exists in isolation. Each arises in response to and directly from the other (Wong, 2011, p. 126).
Jung recognized this. In The Collected Works, he described yáng as “the spirit,” conditioned by ideals and vision, and yīn as “the earth,” grounded and instinctual But rather than casting them in opposition, he emphasized their interdependence. “Yáng and yīn,” he wrote, “are deadly enemies who need one another”(CW 10, § 913)7. This tension between irreconcilable yet united opposites is, according to Jung’s observations, the engine that drives the psyche’s movement toward wholeness (CW 9, § 294).
This movement is what Jung called individuation8, the process whereby the conscious and unconscious parts of the self come into relationship over the course of a person’s life, leading them to a condition of wholeness. Some Jungian writers, like Robert Johnson, have evoked the image of paired dragons to illustrate the dance of yīn and yáng—locked in motion, distinct yet inseparable (Johnson, 2009, p. 50). But even without metaphor, the symbolic language of yīn and yáng offers something masculine and feminine no longer can: a way to speak of opposites without collapsing them into gender norms. They preserve the polarity of the concepts without reinforcing outdated and potentially confusing binaries.
A Question After Class
The need for a shift in vocabulary was never more clear to me than one Friday afternoon. I’d just wrapped up one of my favorite classes—an extracurricular course on global mythology and folklore. The story we’d been discussing was Tatterhood, a Norwegian folktale that’s become something of a legend among my students. I’ve been teaching this course at the same high school since 2021, and every semester without fail, someone asks, “When are we going to do the one with the girl and the goat ?” They rarely remember her name, but they do remember her.
After class, I was doing the usual tidying up and making sure everything was left as we’d found it (sadly, there isn’t a dedicated venue for this class — if there were, imagine the fun I could have decorating it!) As I was straightening things up, one of the students lingered near the door. She hung around for a while, fidgeting with unimportant stuff in her bag, looking as if she had something to say but hadn’t quite figured out how or if to say it.
Then asked:
“What if… I don’t really think of myself as feminine?”
Her question wasn’t just about identity. She is a very confident young lady who is vocal about her opinions and (at least to me) doesn’t seem plagued with the same insecurities many others grapple with. She is well on her way to solidifying her sense of identity and is quite vocal about it. This was a question about language. Specifially, about the language I had been using in the class, as we discussed a the images from a folktale called Tatterhood9.
I had framed Tatterhood as a tale of the archetypal (that is, a deep, recurring psychic image or pattern) feminine in its shadowed form: wild, disheveled, and defiantly other. But that framing carries an implicit contrast: if that’s the shadow, then the “conscious” feminine should, by contrast, be tame, beautiful, and conforming. That’s not a view I hold—or find particularly useful. And it was certainly not the message I was hoping to convey to the class.
As I stood there, listening to her trying to explain what she meant, I began to understand why I’ve felt uneasy with certain terminology when teaching the transformative power of myth and folktales: the language we’ve inherited to talk about archetypal imagery is one that can too easily begin to feel prescriptive10. Luckily (or perhaps, Jung would say, synchronistically) an answer presented itself in a most unexpected place—slightly above my right shoulder, to be precise.
Every classroom in South Korea displays the national flag, the Taegeukgi (태극기). The flag itself is striking in its simplicity. A white field serves as the background as a symbol of peace and purity, though I suspect it also speaks to emptiness in the Taoist sense: not absence, but open potential.
In each corner sits a trigram drawn from the Bagua (八卦), the eight-fold arrangement of broken and unbroken lines used in Taoist cosmology and divination. Each trigram is made up of three lines, which represent combinations of yīn (- -) and yáng (—): broken lines for yīn, solid lines for yáng. These are not static symbols but dynamic expressions of how qì (氣), the vital energy that animates all things, moves and shifts through the universe.
At the center of it all is the taegeuk (태극) — a red and blue swirl that is Korea’s own traditional version of the Chinese Taijitu (太極圖). Though it mirrors the more familiar black-and-white symbol, this version carries its own cultural hues and connotations. The red above symbolizes active, bright, and assertive energy; the blue below holds receptive, dark, and yielding power. Together, they represent balance and mutual becoming.
I’ve looked at that flag hundreds of times over the years of working in South Korea, but at that moment, the swirls prompted a thought process that resulted in a new approach to teaching about mythology and archetypal imagery for me.
That Friday afternoon, our conversation led to and understanding that what Jung once called feminine archetypal images might be better understood as yīn-dominant, and what he called masculine might map more clearly onto the idea of being yáng-dominant (that is, expressing more of the qualities traditionally associated with yīn—cool, receptive, interior—rather than claiming a fixed identity.
In these terms, dominant simply refers to which energy or mode is currently most active in the moment or image but it does not limit the contents. A yīn-dominant image must also include a certain amount of yáng characteristics. As the language shifted, so too did understanding. The conversation became less about identity and more about the movement, quality, and pattern of things inside ourselves.
So, that’s what led me to the framework of Yīn and Yáng. But before we can use that framework, it’s important to be honest about where Jung’s system ends and where other ways of seeing might help us go further.
When trying to understand foundational concepts like yīn-yáng, it’s a good idea to be wary of relying solely on Jung's analysis and turn instead to culturally informed sources. Jung's approach, while insightful in its own right, was rooted in the Eurocentric perspective of his time11, one that could "impede his [and our] full understanding of non-Western approaches" (Katz, 2018, p. 189-190).
In multiple places in his Collected Works (CW 13 §16; CW 15 §89), he warned Western readers against adopting non-Western spiritual paths. On the surface, that might sound like an early caution against what we now think of as cultural appropriation12. To be fair, Jung was concerned with depth and authenticity in his work of understanding and healing the psyche and he didn’t want people skipping over the hard work of self-knowledge by outsourcing it to someone else’s tradition.
Still, there’s a paradox here. In warning us against the adoption of spiritual paths rooted in non-European cultures, Jung is showing signs of a Eurocentric, self-imposed barrier to genuinely understanding and valuing Indigenous or Eastern wisdom on its own terms13. This makes his interpretation less reliable for those seeking an authentic, culturally-rooted understanding of concepts like Yīn-Yáng. When reading Jungian authors, it is therefore wise to read references to these concepts as metaphors within a Jungian system rather than as faithful representations of Taoist thought.
That brings me to my own position. Yes, I’m borrowing the vocabulary of Chinese philosophy and applying it to a framework Jung helped develop. And yes, that’s already a kind of cross-cultural translation. I’m not, however, suggesting that we simply swap old words for new ones, or try to dress up the ideas of feminine and masculine in more fashionable language. What I am proposing is that we step into a broader worldview in which these energies aren’t gendered roles or fixed identities, but interdependent patterns of energy with us — informed by the way the Chinese classical philosophers saw them.
Mapping the Tao
Since I’ve been going on about it for a bit, let me pause to do you the mild disservice of trying to explain the basics of Yīn, Yáng, and the Taoist cosmology from which this concept emerges. I say “disservice” because these ideas resist simplification. Any attempt to do so feels a lot like what I’ve just been cautioning against—but I’ll do my best anyway. In what follows, I lean heavily on the work of people far more qualified than I am to speak on these matters—Eva Wong, whose writings on Taoism stem from authentic personal practice, and Benebell Wen, a younger but no less scholarly voice in the study of Chinese metaphysics and mystical traditions.
In classical Chinese thought, the creation of the universe is a process of division. As seen in Figure 2, it all begins with Wújí (無極) a term that literally means without limit. It is a depiction of the undifferentiated field encompassing all that is. Within this limitless field of undifferentiated creation, the Tao is self-created. It is expressed by the image of the Tàijítú (太極圖) with its three concentric rings of alternating black and white symbolising yīn and yáng polarities14. These opposing poles are like the peaks and valleys in a sine wave—they are not separate entities but rather oppose positions on a single spectrum, and this spectrum is divided into different “shades” of yīn and yáng.
This idea of division can most clearly be seen in the way the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching are derived from the single lines representing yīn (- -) and yáng (—).
Modern depictions of the Tàijítú look like two swirls, one black and one white, each containing a dot of the other (see Figures 3 and 4). It represents the Great Ultimate: the interplay of polarity within unity. At the risk of being repetitive, it is important to understand that Wújí describes the pre-existent state of un-differentiation. Taiji with its the polarities of yīn and yáng move in Wújí, ordering what the Tao Te Jing describes as the Myriad Things—that is, the physicality and activity of the universe:
The Tao gave Birth
To the One.
The One gave Birth
To the Two.
The Two gave Birth
To the Three.
The Three gave Birth
To the Myriad Things,…
—(Laozi & Minford, 2019, ch. 42).
This is poetic language, yes—but it’s also a reminder that what we call “things” arise not from solidity, but from dynamic balance and the breath-like movement of Nature's ultimate laws.
Wújí and Taiji form a pair of opposites (undifferentiated and differentiated polarities) that, in Taoist cosmology, are not hierarchical but equivalent. Wuji, as previously mentioned, is the totality of undifferentiated creation—the limitless potential before form. Taiji, by contrast, is the emergence of polarity15 within the whole. Yīn and yáng exist within the greater form of the Wújí circle, reminding us that the two sets of opposites (Wújí and Taiji, yīn and yáng) are one. This is the Tao. If your head is spinning, that’s okay.
“What does that mean exactly? Chinese philosophers have been debating that point and writing dense treatises on just that topic for the last three thousand years,” writes Benebell Wen with characteristic humility and wit (Wen, 2023, p. 160). Holding the image of Wújí and Taiji in mind as a kind of living paradox is part of what makes Taoist thought so enduring—and so valuable to those of us raised in a culture that prefers its answers neat and its categories stable. You don’t have to fully grasp the cosmology; just feel into the paradox. That’s where the richness lives.
The Taiji is an image, a graphic representation of the Tao (道) that is, The Way16. It depicts the unchanging nature of change itself as yīn grows, reaches its fullness, then gives rise to yáng, and yáng, in turn, grows, reaches its fullness, and gives rise to yīn. Although these two energetic expressions are opposites in every way, they are also equals, each finding its beginning and its end in the other. This is precisely the tension that Western thought often tries to dissolve. In his lectures, Jung commented on how deeply embedded such oppositional thinking was in Eastern philosophy:
“[…] Yin is by no means just the earth, it is also the earth, it contains the earth, the darkness of humanity, perhaps the cave, perhaps the black snake… it is absolutely characteristic in contrast to Yang. You see, the Eastern mind always thinks in these pairs of opposites, while we [Westerners] are always trying to establish the uniqueness of things… But the Eastern mind cannot think of a definite Yin without having the concept of Yang always in mind at the same time. […] In the fully developed Yin, the Yang germ is already underway, and in the fully developed Yang, Yin begins. That is the Chinese paradox. Sunset begins at midday, and sunrise begins at midnight.”
— (Jung & Douglas, 1997, p. 355)17
Revisiting Jung Through a Taoist Lens
Now that we’ve circled back to Jung, let’s take another look at his terminology. Jung is right to note that “yīn is by no means just the earth.” As an archetypal image, yīn carries earth as one of its meanings—alongside shadow, cold, receptivity, and wetness. Likewise, yáng isn’t the sky itself, but it evokes sky—alongside light, warmth, creative force, and activity. And this extends to the concepts of masculine and feminine.
In Zhou Dunyi’s Taijitu Diagram (Figure 2), the Chinese text on the left is translated as, “The Qian (乾) Path (道) transforms into the masculine (男).” While the text on the right says, “The Kun (坤) Path (道) transforms into the feminine (女).”At first glance, this might seem like just another nod to gendered language, so why bother shifting terminology at all? Well, you will notice that this illustration is organised vertically. It describes a process of becoming.
What we’re seeing is a cosmological unfolding that begins with Wújí, the limitless source, moves through Taiji, and continues into the polarity of yīn and yáng—all the way to the generation of the “ten thousand things.” Note how the image moves downward, showing a dynamic and dividing evolution of energy into matter and identity.
Now, this might feel like a lot to hold onto. That’s because it is.
But that’s also the point: Taoist images are meant to be lived with, not solved—rather like the idea of the collective unconscious or the archetypes.
All of this is to say that while it was clear to Jung that men and women both contain masculine and feminine aspects — the animus and anima images — that idea poses a real barrier to discussion and exploration in our time. Yīn and yáng may contain qualities we associate with masculinity or femininity, but in Taoist cosmology, each gives rise to the other. Nothing remains static. What is yīn becomes yáng. What is yáng becomes yīn. The roles reverse. The energy flows. This kind of fluid movement is harder to express using the language of gender and sex. Gendered terms are designed to offer clarity and stability—which makes them useful when describing people, but limiting when exploring symbols meant to flow, merge, and transform.
The motion of yīn and yáng—that cycle in which one matures and then births the other from within itself—is precisely what gets lost when we flatten archetypes through the use of language that refers to culturally reinforced stereotypes. It’s what the Jungian lexicon relying on gendered words, for all its brilliance, often misses18.
Moving Energy, Not Roles
In the framework of yīn- and yáng-dominant imagery, psychic energy doesn’t demand that we “become more masculine” or “embrace the feminine within.” Instead, it asks us to attend to patterns of energetic movement. Are we pushing outward when we need to turn inward? Are we holding back when life calls us to act? The language of yīn and yáng allows us to name these psychic currents without collapsing them into gendered identities. It restores symbolic clarity.
Instead of being distracted, and potentially misled by culturally conditioned associations with gender roles (many of which are also unconscious and accepted as some kind of biological fact of life), wisdom lies in knowing when to move with yang and when to yield with yīn. Often, the really difficult lessons we learn is how to live within the tension between these two polarities, rather than resolving it prematurely. This way of seeing honors the dual nature of what we perceive to be opposites, without creating an image of two separate characters (CW 11, §791). It welcomes paradox, elasticity, and emergence.
It also aligns with Jung’s core belief that archetypes are “not determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form, and then only to a very limited degree” (CW 9, §55). They are not rules to follow. They are patterns to witness—arising, dissolving, and always transforming.
Yīn and yáng offer us a symbolic vocabulary that stays true to that insight. They do not ask us to question our identity, but to examine how energy is moving through us. They don’t tell us which side to be on. They show us that life itself unfolds in cycles of differentiation and return, expansion and contraction, fire and water.
Naming for Renewal
While ideas about exactly what it means to be a man or a woman, male or female, will certainly continue to evolve across generations and cultures, shaping how people present themselves and inhabit social roles, these terms need not be carried into the abstract, interior world of the psyche. Male and female may describe a certain biological aspect of what we are, but calling psychic principles or archetypal images masculine or feminine can shrink or even twist their meaning.
Renaming these qualities as yīn-dominant and yang-dominant offers a more abstract, less culturally loaded vocabulary which is better suited to the exploration of the complex, paradoxical nature of archetypes in our time. It helps us avoid the trap of reducing inner figures to fixed gender roles.
These new names support a deeper, more flexible engagement with the archetypes, those dynamic images and instinctual patterns which must, again and again, be subject to reinterpretation. By framing them in terms of yīn and yáng, analysis can better guide individuals toward integrating their conscious and unconscious selves, without reinforcing outdated or culturally fraught binaries.
This shift in language honors the evolving nature of the psyche. And, in a way, this essay is me, leaning from a window, shouting a new name — Moon Child!— into the maelstrom of political and social discourse surrounding gender and identity, in the hope of being able to bring renewal to both these images and the students (or other people) with whom I share them.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to reply, comment, or share with someone who might be wrestling with these images too.
You can also join me on my monthly podcast, each episode of which explores a mythological story (or scene from a story) in terms of what it might mean for us in our modern lives.
References
Edescas2. (n.d.). Zhou Dunyi Taijitu with English labels [Image]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zhou_Dunyi_Taijitu_English.png
Hanziyuan. (n.d.). Character analysis: 極, 太, 無. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from https://hanziyuan.net/
Johnson, R. A. (2009). Inner work: Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth. Harperone.
Jung, C. G., & Douglas, C. (1997). Visions : notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934. Vol. 1. Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (2023). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton University Press.
Katz, R. (2018). Indigenous healing psychology : honoring the wisdom of the first peoples. Healing Arts.
Laozi, & Minford, J. (2019). Tao te ching (Daodejing) : the tao and the power. Penguin Books, [8.
Maxwell, G. (n.d.). Yin yang [Image]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_yang.svg
Lee, E.-j., Park, Y.-h., Great Brightstar, & others. (n.d.). Flag of South Korea (Taegeukgi) [Image]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_South_Korea.svg
Sonu Shamdasani. (2003). C.G. Jung and the making of modern psychology : the dream of a science. Cambridge University Press.
Tyler, R. (1987). Japanese Tales. Pantheon.
Wen, B. (2023). I Ching The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes. North Atlantic Books.
Wong, E. (2011). Taoism : an essential guide. Shambhala. https://archive.org/details/TaoismEvaWong
Matos, L., Machado, J., Monteiro, F., & Greten, H. (2021). Understanding Traditional Chinese Medicine therapeutics: An overview of the basics and clinical applications. Healthcare, 9(3), 257. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9030257
An aside for book nerds: When I finally got my hands on a copy of the book (it was not too difficult, at all), I could not put it down. The night I finished it, I remember my parents having guests over. They were laughing over board games downstairs, and I was upstairs, turning the final pages of the book (secretly, because I was supposed to be asleep). When I finished the final page, I turned back a few pages and read them again. I didn’t want the book to be over. I didn’t want to give the book back to the library. I cried. When one of my parents came in to check that I was sleeping, I was still crying.
I can’t remember whether it was my mother or father, but whoever it was either got me to confess the source of my grief, or figured it out themselves. The next day we went to a big bookshop in the center of town, and I found The Neverending story. On the way out, my father suggested that since I’d read it already, why don’t I rather buy Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. So after a moment of deliberation, we ended up walking out of the store with Journey to the Center of the Earth. It seemed like a good idea in the light of day.
I don’t think we even made it home before I felt a deep sense of guilt. I had betrayed my friends in Fantastica by leaving them there on the shelf. Again, the memory is hazy, but I am relatively certain there were more tears. And dad turned the car around (probably realising that there would be no peace in my young heart until that book was in my possession). I was (and still am) a weird kid.
The act of renaming as a form of transformation shows up all over the mythic landscape. In Japanese folklore, En no Ozunu (えんのおづぬ - En the Pilgrim) is renamed En no Gyōja (えんのぎょうじゃ – En the Ascetic or En the Practitioner) and becomes legendary for his magical powers and embodies the shift from seeker to ascetic master (Tyler, 1987, p. 128-130).
Among the Lakota, during a vision quest, a person may receive a new name reflecting the vision or spiritual calling revealed in solitude.
In Yoruba culture, individuals are often given oríkì, poetic praise names or spiritual titles that link them to ancestral identity and destiny. These names may even evolve as one’s life path deepens.
Even in spiritual traditions that are widely accepted as historical or theological truth, we see the same archetypal move: the shedding of one name and the taking on of another, to mark rebirth into a new state of being. In the Bible, God renames Abram to Abraham (Genesis 17:5) and Jacob to Israel (Genesis 32:28), transforming them symbolically into founders of peoples and lineages. In the New Testament, Saul, once an enthusiastic persecutor of Christians, takes the name Paul after his conversion (Acts 9; Acts 13:9), signaling a radical change in identity and allegiance. In Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama becomes the Shakyamuni Buddha (the Sage of the Shakya Clan) after attaining enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree. His transformation is so complete that the name Siddhartha rarely appears outside biographical contexts; it is the Buddha-name that signifies his true awakening and role in the world.
The pattern is clear: when a name changes, so does the self — or at least the story we tell about the self. It’s a kind of psychological rebirth when physical transformation is not yet possible.
Although the parallel between clothing and naming may not be immediately apparent, consider the way in which we still use uniforms today. Other stories like Cinderella, also hint at this.
By archetypal image, I mean an image or pattern that repeats across cultures and myths, embedded in the human psyche. Jung believed these images arise from what he called the collective unconscious (CW 9, §91-92).
CW 11, §791: The gods are archetypal thought-forms belonging to the sambhogakāya. Their peaceful and wrathful aspects, which play a great role in the meditations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, symbolize the opposites. In the nirmānakāya these opposites are no more than human conflicts, but in the sambhogakāya they are the positive and negative principles united in one and the same figure. This corresponds to the psychological experience, also formulated in Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, that there is no position without its negation. Where there is faith, there is doubt; where there is doubt, there is credulity; where there is morality, there is temptation. Only saints have diabolical visions, and tyrants are the slaves of their valets de chambre [personal attendants].
If we carefully scrutinize our own character we shall inevitably find that, as Lao-tzu says, “high stands on low,” which means that the opposites condition one another—that they are really one and the same thing. This can easily be seen in persons with an inferiority complex: they foment a little megalomania somewhere. The fact that the opposites appear as gods comes from the simple recognition that they are exceedingly powerful. Chinese philosophy therefore declared them to be cosmic principles, and named them yang and yin. Their power increases the more one tries to separate them. “When a tree grows up to heaven its roots reach down to hell,” says Nietzsche. Yet, above as below, it is the same tree.
It is characteristic of our Western mentality that we should separate the two aspects into antagonistic personifications: God and the Devil. And it is equally characteristic of the worldly optimism of Protestantism that it should have hushed up the Devil in a tactful sort of way, at any rate in recent times. Omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine [All good comes from God, all evil from man.] the uncomfortable consequence.
Since Jung’s time, there have been numerous translations of the I Ching and a wealth of information about Chinese tradition and culture has become available to non-Chinese. Benebell Wen, in her translation and commentary on the text of the I Ching writes:
“Considering the core principles and operational capacity of yin and yang does not, however, assign strict gender values to the two forms of qi. While historically there are I Ching scholars who ascribe the feminine to yin and masculine to yang in an absolutist manner, […] scholars such as Cheng Yi did not. Any gender has the capacity to emanate with either yin or yang.” (Wen, 2023, p. 156)
CW 10 § 913: “Aristocratic” and “unaristocratic” are value-judgments, subjective and arbitrary, and are therefore best left out of the discussion. The very word “aristocrat” is a value-judgment. Let us speak rather of the “man of the spirit” and the “man of earth.” The spirit, as we know, is always above, a shining, fiery, aerial being, a mighty rushing wind, while the earth lies below, solid and dark and cold. This perennial image is expressed in the yang and yin of classical Chinese philosophy. The “man of the spirit” represents the yang principle; his chief characteristic is an attitude conditioned by ideas, often called “idealistic” or “spiritual.” The “man of earth” represents yin, and he is characterized by an earth-bound attitude. Yang and yin are deadly enemies who need one another. The man whose attitude is permeated by the earth under his feet is the exponent of a principle that leaves nothing to be desired in the way of aristocratic panache, for it is the eternal adversary and partner of the spirit. Keyserling’s man is the aristocrat of yang, the Swiss the aristocrat of yin. So at least does Keyserling conceive him, when he calls him the non-aristocrat par excellence. I fully agree, but with the proviso that this judgment includes all those nations and parts of nations upon whom nature has set her mighty seal.
CW 11, § 401 provides a great definition for this term: Self-reflection—or, what comes to the same thing, the urge to individuation—gathers together what is scattered and multifarious, and exalts it to the original form of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way, our existence as separate beings, our former ego-nature, is abolished; the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up. This approximation to the self is a kind of repristination or apocatastasis, in so far as the self has an “incorruptible” or “eternal” character on account of its being pre-existent to consciousness. This feeling is expressed in the words from the benedictio fontis: Et quos aut sexus in corpore aut aetas discernit in tempore, omnes in unam pariat gratia mater infantiam (“And may Mother Grace bring forth into one infancy all those whom sex has separated in the body, or age in time”).
An amazing folktale that is not well known outside of Norway and Iceland but deserves to be!
This is not to suggest that this terminology was ever intended by Jung to be prescriptive at all. In fact, Jung, when talking about his own approach to helping patients towards healing stated:
“One should not be dogmatic and say toevery patient, “Now you paint.” There are people who think: “Dr. Jung’s treatment consists in telling his patients to paint,” just as formerly they thought: “He divides them into introverts and extraverts and says ‘you should live in such and such a way, because you belong to this type or that.’ That is certainly not treatment. Each patient is a new problem for the doctor, and he will only be cured of his neurosis if you help him to find his individual way to the solution of his conflicts” (CW 18, §414).
He even goes so far as to suggest that practitioners of depth psychology (a term he preferred when other were beginning to talk about Jungian psychology) needs to approach the practical material presented by the unconscious (whether in themselves or from their patients) mente vacua, that is, without any preconceived theories (CW 18, §1808).
However, as we can see from the notes from his Visions Seminar from 1930-1934, Jung himself struggled on a few occasions with the prescriptive nature of terms and concepts like masculinity and femininity (Jung & Douglas, 1997, p. xiii - xv).
I refer you again to Jung’s difficulty in reconciling the reported experiences of one of his female patients with his own ideas of what was proper for femininity described in the introduction section of the notes on his Visions Seminars (Jung & Douglas, 1997, xiii-xv).
In one particular passage, Jung is hilariously blunt on this topic. He writes:
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practise Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world, all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.” (Collected Works, Vol. 12, §126)
In fact, regarding the translations of certain Taoist texts by Richard Wilhelm (a friend of Jung’s), Taoist scholar and practitioner Eva Wong notes that: “There are two translations of the controversial T’ai-i chin-hua tsung-chih (The Secret of the Golden Flower). One is by Richard Wilhelm, who rendered the text into German, which was then translated into English by Cary F. Baynes. […] Wilhelm’s translation is inaccurate and is based on an incomplete Chinese text. Moreover, I find the Wilhelm-Baynes version too biased by Jungian psychology.” (Wong, 2011, p. 186)
The Chinese text to the left of the Taijitu reads 陽動 — yáng motion. On the right, it says 陰靜 — yīn stillness. This reflects the classic Taoist pairing of Yang with motion (動) and Yin with stillness (靜), a foundational polarity in both Taoist cosmology and traditional Chinese medicine.
An interesting aside: the Chinese character 極 (jí) has among its meanings that of a pole or extremity. Thus, the combination of 太 and 極 (Tài and jí) quite literally amounts to big (extreme) pole/extermity, whereas Wújí (無極) means no pole/extermity.
Now, I’ll admit I’ve toyed with the idea of describing the Tao as “Nature” or even as a kind of “Unified Theory of Everything.” And while both of those comparisons are almost helpful, they’re also slightly misleading if we don’t qualify them.
When you see the Tao referred to as “Nature,” it doesn’t mean forests and foxes and carbon cycles (though yes, it includes those, too). It’s referring to Nature as the process underlying everything that happens.
As for the “Unified Theory” bit—it’s a useful metaphor for those of us raised in the church of science. But the Tao isn’t about explaining the world so much as attuning to the underlying law of harmony that moves through everything.
It’s not something to be solved, like an equation; it’s something to walk with, like a path.
In short, you might say: If Western science wants to crack the code of the cosmos, Taoist thought teaches us how to move with it.
And as Laozi (Lao Tzu) would remind us:
“The Tao that can be Told [or spoken about] is not the True Tao; Names that can be Named are not True Names ” (Laozi & Minford, 2019, ch. 1).
For folks like me who have grown up in the Western paradigm of trying to pin such things down, that should be our cue to cease struggling against the unresolved tension and start inhabiting it instead.
Do you feel as uncomfortable as I do when reading this reference? It’s unthinkable by today’s standards to refer to “the Eastern mind” in such sweeping terms. But let this stand as a reminder that, as our culture has evolved and our access to knowledge has broadened, we can no longer afford to prop ourselves up on unconscious assumptions of Western superiority. Many of Jung’s writings bear the blind spots of his time—understandable, perhaps, but still important to recognize and correct.
Now, sure, there’s a strong case to be made for using these symbolic shifts to deepen our collective understanding of gender. And I’m not opposed to that. But I also don’t think I should have to deliver a full sermon on the politics of sex and gender every time I talk about mythology. In most settings, it would be out of place. Even worse, it would turn a reflective inner journey into an ideological debate. These conversations are often deeply personal, and when someone feels like their identity is being explained to them or questioned, they shut down. I’d rather open doors than close them. So I’m choosing (and inviting you) to work with a more fluid kind of language. Not to dodge the topic, but to suggest that other binaries we’ve long taken for granted may be more fluid than we thought.
A really great piece. Helped me understand several concepts that I was yet unfamiliar with. Thank you for this, it was incredibly thoughtful.
Love your writin, thoughts and references that bring curiousity towards these themes, and such a relevant thread as emerging frequencies being to restructure and rewire the identity of a species