Mother

As a general, archetypal image, the mother symbolizes the (collective) unconscious, the earthly, caregiving, the source of life, darkness, absorption, and so on. The image is often marked by “relationship” in a broad sense, as well as origin, birth, and rebirth.

The feminine, as a symbol, is more passive, grounded, and corporeal compared to the active, spiritual, and intellectual masculinity. The archetypal connection between the mother and the physical is evident, for example, in the Latin words materia (matter) and mater (mother), variations of which we recognize in more familiar languages today. Archetypally, "the mother pertains to origins, nature, that which passively creates, and thus substance and matter. It also signifies the unconscious, our natural and instinctive life … the body in which we dwell or by which we are enclosed" (Practice of Psychotherapy, par. 344).

When the mother symbol, or something emerging from the earth, appears in dreams, it suggests something that is about to manifest or take form in reality—if accepted by the dreamer (Visions, p. 790).

A wise old woman can be an expression of the Self. (In men with an “excessively youthful conscious attitude,” the anima often appears as an old woman (Mysterium Coniunctionis, par. 92).)

The Earth Mother is chthonic and often associated with blood and the moon. In dreams, she may occasionally appear with multiple breasts. She plays a significant role in the unconscious of women and is always described as “powerful.” According to Jung, the Earth Mother emerges in women’s dreams when consciousness is weak and needs strength (Introduction to a Science of Mythology, p. 222).

The mother archetype is not expressed solely in the form of a woman. Other symbolic manifestations include representations of “the object of our longing for reconciliation, such as paradise, the kingdom of God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, par. 156). Jung continues: “That which inspires devotion or awe, such as the church, university, city, or country, heaven, earth, forest, sea, or any still body of water, even matter, the underworld, and the moon, can all be mother symbols.”

The mother image is further connected to fields, wells, vessels, transformation, and water. The aforementioned "vessel" can take the form of a forest, an encompassing church, a university one never leaves, a creed or ideological conviction, and so on. It may also appear, for example, as a pool of water in dreams—something external that contains us.

Additionally, the concept of “roundness” is tied to the mother image, which “can be explained by the fact that the mother, the unconscious, is the locus where the symbol of the unconscious arises” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, par. 500).

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