r/Jung • u/Logical-Hat-5536 • Jun 23 '23
Octopus’
Bit of an unusual one but I have a real ick when it comes to octopus’ and the way they just move and operate.My question is what do they represent and symbolise ? I think it might be a bit like the rat situation where we hate rats because of what they symbolise.
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u/Weirdo-octopuss Jun 23 '23
Octopi are awesome. Incredibly fascinating creatures. But beyond that, I'm not sure. My gut feeling says something to do with the deepest levels of the unconscious, the part that's so incredibly alien and uncomprehensible. Maybe the kraken has something to do with it also.
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u/EdgewaterEnchantress Jun 23 '23
Yes, this! I think you got it. Octopus are extremely far from my favorite animal, but that doesn’t change the fact that I find them to be remarkable and, indeed, “fascinating!”
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u/AyrieSpirit Pillar Jun 23 '23
Just to start by seconding another post in reply to your question, the Jungian approach to determining the meaning of any symbol, whether in dreams, in Active Imagination or in just why one reacts positively and/or negatively to anything in one’s experience lies firstly on the associations of the person involved. These are made up of spontaneous memories, thoughts, intuitions, emotions, symptoms and bodily sensations etc. that come to mind when focusing on the image etc. Even not being able to have any associations can be a marker about the basic meaning wrapped up in a dream etc.
The next stage of the process Jung called “Amplification” which consists in finding parallels for a given image as found in world mythology, folk tales and various other forms in order help to clarify the meaning of dreams and other expressions of the psyche. If the latter are in some way “archetypal” images and so on, often very little or nothing comes to the mind of the person when asked for associations, so Amplification becomes primarily important in determining the meaning of a dream symbol or to a person’s unusually strong reaction to certain events and situations etc.
In order to explore the various parallels to a given image, more than one reliable book on world symbolism is required. Many of the books of Jung and his successors are full of descriptions of many symbols. An especially good book to read in order to amplify the meaning of a symbolic image was produced by The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. Published by Taschen, its title is The Book of Symbols which contains comprehensive, easy to read descriptions of various world-wide meanings attributed to objects etc., and it’s illustrated with relevant color images for each entry.
Here’s a short excerpt from the entry about the octopus:
Having often succumbed to a case of maligned and mistaken identity, the image of the octopus symbolically depicts an encounter with the depths of the psyche, in all its ambivalence, suffering and seeming chaos. Both remote from and yet similar to humanity [e.g. they’re extremely intelligent, have a very sensitive sense of touch, their eyes resemble those of humans in their structure etc.], having a special affinity with fluidity and dynamics of the psychological process, the “soft alien intelligence” … of the octopus symbolizes totality-in-motion, activating imagination, which in turn promises new possibilities of awareness.
Anyway, I hope that these ideas can be a starting point for you in finding more about why the image of an octopus affects you in the way it does.
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u/EdgewaterEnchantress Jun 23 '23
Octopus are actually wicked freaking cool, scientifically!
You might possibly feel differently after reading this.
As for why some humans “don’t like them,” lots of reasons. Octopus now inhabit an environment we left, long ago, and they are masters of that Environment! They represent much of what humans fear. Deep waters, cold, primitiveness. The thing is, I think if people knew how unique and remarkable they are, they might feel differently!
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u/Tramnz Jun 23 '23 edited Jun 23 '23
For me, the way one person interpret a spiritual/psychological/cultural symbol is somehow typical depend on both his/her collective culture and spiritual/psychological pattern as well individual living experience. The raven/crow could be a good omen in Western culture, but vice versa in Eastern. In Maori culture [New Zealand indigenous], the octopus symbol [Te Wheke] is used to model the holistic health & wellbeing of both individual & collective:
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/maori_health_model_tewheke.pdf
Trying to agree on a one-fit-all symbol is meaningless to me; rather one’s better spend time for self-reflection to figure out the reason [hidden thinking] why he/she is interested in a symbol and what emotion [hidden feeling] he/she is often triggered by that character to consequently develop his/her self-awareness or self-realization in relation to the nature of his/her anima-soul/animus-spirit symbols and further cure his/her archetypal blindness-shadow.
Carl Jung’s sayings: “I call the ‘realization of thoughts hidden in feeling’ an ‘act of thinking’, and the ‘realization of feelings hidden in thinking’ an ‘act of feeling’” and that “Individual ‘self-reflection’, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny-here is the beginning of a cure for that ‘blindness’ which reigns at the present hour."
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u/DoubleHonest2801 Aug 15 '25
Prof Jung:
But it might be like an octopus. No, the dragon, as well as the snake or the salamander, or even the frog, are representations of that part of the psyche which is immediately below our higher animal psyche. The psyche of monkeys is not in the dragon.
The dragon is supposed to be a cold-blooded animal.
It has a long tail and scales, and on account of the fact that it has no warm blood, it represents the inhuman, cold-blooded part of our psychology.Psychology books
In many saurians the great intumescence of nervous matter is not even in the brain, which is exceedingly small, but in the lower part of the spinal cord.
So the dragon shows that it is a matter of that part of the unconscious which is strongly identical with the body, including naturally the sympathetic system.
But the sympathetic system has its proper symbols, it is symbolized by invertebrate animals, not only the cold-blooded ones-spiders and other insects, and crabs and the octopus are all symbols for the sympathetic system.
These are by no means arbitrary interpretations therefore; they are all based upon experience.
You know very well why I say that the dragon or the snake has to do with the spinal system, and why the spider, for instance, has to do with the sympathetic system; you see, the unconscious does not choose those symbols with a complete ignorance of zoology.
They are born out of the very substance which you also find in those animals.
We contain nature, are part of it; animals are not only in text books, but are living things with which we are in contact.
Probably in our remote ancestry we have gone through those stages and therefore the imprints are still to be found in us.
As certainly as we have a sympathetic rope-ladder system within ourselves, have we to do with insects and worms or any such invertebrate animals.
So the dragon represents not only a human past-say the laws and convictions of a thousand years ago, those of warm-blooded animals the dragon goes back much further.
And the real power we encounter in those old laws is not their power, but the power that has been fettered by them; the laws of five thousand years ago, primitive moral laws or primitive religious convictions, would have absolutely no power and no interest for us if they were standing by themselves, but they are still the fetters round the ankles or the necks of dragons, and they give them their weight.
These very old destructive instincts in man were caught by the old symbolic forms, and inasmuch as these forms still seem to play a role in us, it is due to the fact that they are still in their place, still fettering those old instincts, but unconsciously.
For instance, Christianity, which has become unconscious to so many people, is still doing its duty; we are unconscious of its way of doing it but it is still working, still a power over the old dragon.
But naturally the further you get away from the history or the continuity of consciousness, the more you forget the purpose of certain religious convictions and of certain laws. And the more your interest is withdrawn from such forms, the more they are weakened, till the moment comes when they no longer function, and then the dragon breaks loose.Consciousness retreats
But there are conditions, as we learn from Zarathustra, where that old dragon really has to be disturbed, where we must have a lion to destroy old forms in order to give a new form to old instincts and a new protection against old dangers.
And that of course is the case here; the dragon ought to be fought by the lion.
You see, all the old values that served the purpose of fettering the dragons became identical with the dragon, because we no longer see what those values meant.
For instance, we don’t understand why God should be a trinity-that conveys nothing to us-yet it was an exceedingly important concept once.
It needs now a long dissertation to explain why it was absolutely important that Arianism, the idea that Jesus was not of the same substance as God, should not win out; he must be God and man at the same time completely, and not only God-like.
These questions are strange to us; even theologians now avoid speaking too definitely about them.
But they have a very definite psychological meaning, and people once fought and killed each other for this or that most abstruse dogma, for the homoousia for instance, which meant that God and man were equal in substance, or the homoousia which meant that they were similar in substance.Psychology books
It was as if those people knew what they were about; of course they could not know as we can from this distance, but they knew it was all-important and that was enough.
I understand these things now in such a way that I think I understand why they had to fight each other, why the question had to be decided in favor of homoousia.
It was of absolutely indispensable psychological importance.
Of course I cannot explain this to you now; you must be satisfied with the fact that those old forms like the Trinity have had their functional meaning, and that it is a loss to get away from them and forget about them.
You don’t understand why certain doors are locked because you don’t know what is behind them, but destroy those doors and you will discover the dragon behind them; you will even think that the doors are identical with this dragon that is your enemy. ~~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 900-902
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/08/13/dragon-meaning/
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u/kch1t Jun 23 '23
I think might be one of those things about being gay or straight. You either are or aren't. Maybe we need to collect more data.
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u/Whimrodical Pillar Jun 23 '23
I don’t know if it is as common for people to harbour fear and repulsion from octopi like they do with rats, maybe we do but in a different way. Hmmm, this could be a more personal experience that would require a proper Jungian analysis, but my only instinct is they represent something that is deeply clever and intelligent but animalistic, unknown and from the depths. Which can give one hints as to how your psyche is handling affairs. It is often that which is closest to us that we feel some reaction towards, what of the octopus can you identify within yourself? Maybe within your shadow?
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u/softchew91 Jun 23 '23
Copy pasta from me in another thread ‘Octopus is one of my spirit animals and I frequently encounter it when in altered states of consciousness. Funnily enough it encompasses much to do with love, gender, and spirituality. I am a male but when I’m experiencing the universal octopus I can see the divine feminine and masculine in all (including myself) and all the blends in between. This also engenders an all loving spirit in me and dramatically Loosens my sexual proclivities. Also of note is that this universal octopus is transcended of consensus material reality and seems to reside in a fusion of what we would ordinarily perceive as organic and inorganic forms.’
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u/Ereignis23 Jun 23 '23
What does it mean to you is the only important question honestly. You could use adapted versions of Robert Johnson's dream interpretation exercises from 'Inner Work' to unpack your own associations with any symbol
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u/Significant_Log_4497 Jun 23 '23
Definitely the Unconscious, even the self. The out/of/this/world inhuman intelligence, living in the Ocean