The Wolf
Few animals carry as much story with them as the wolf. In Archetype Matrix it turns up in entries from many different countries.
What Jung wrote
In Psychology and Alchemy Jung reproduces an old alchemical picture: a grey wolf devouring a dead king. The wolf is then thrown into the fire, and the king rises from the flames renewed. For the alchemists the wolf was the hungry raw matter that had to swallow the old before anything new could appear, and Jung read the scene as a picture of transformation through being consumed.
Myth gives the wolf a second face. Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus, were said to have been nursed by a she wolf. The same animal that devours also feeds, and that double nature is exactly what Jung found in the great figures of the unconscious, which rarely come in only one color.
- C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12
- C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, Vol. 14
What the world is logging
Logged with the mood
- Tired33%
- Calm33%
- Happy17%
- Angry8%
- Anxious8%
Where it is logged most
- Afghanistan2
- United States2
- Netherlands1
- Türkiye1
- Sri Lanka1
Most common moon phase
Waxing Gibbous (3 entries)
Counted from anonymous Archetype Matrix entries. Updated October 8, 2026.
What we don’t do
We won’t tell you what your wolf 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 WomanShadowLionDogWaterEagleMirrorFishHorseGoldOld Man
