The Shadow
The Shadow is one of the few entries in Archetype Matrix that comes straight out of Jung’s own vocabulary.
What Jung wrote
Jung used the word for everything in us that we would rather not see, the qualities that do not fit the picture we hold of ourselves. In Aion he describes the Shadow as a moral problem for the whole personality, because nobody becomes aware of it without real effort.
He noticed that the Shadow is usually met first in other people. What irritates us most in someone else often belongs, he argued, to our own unlived side. In dreams it tends to appear as a figure of the same sex as the dreamer, sometimes threatening, sometimes just a stranger in the house.
- C. G. Jung, Aion, Collected Works, Vol. 9ii
What the world is logging
Logged with the mood
- Anxious36%
- Tired29%
- Happy21%
- Calm14%
Where it is logged most
- Azerbaijan3
- Russia2
- Argentina2
- Germany1
- Türkiye1
Most common moon phase
New Moon (6 entries)
Counted from anonymous Archetype Matrix entries. Updated October 8, 2026.
What we don’t do
We won’t tell you what your shadow means. Jung himself distrusted fixed dream dictionaries and held that a symbol can only be read in the life of the person who dreams it. Archetype Matrix only counts: who logged the same image, where, and in what mood.
Other symbols
ForestSnakeOceanBoatAlienOld WomanLionDogWolfWaterEagleMirrorFishHorseGoldOld Man
