Symbolism: Kore

"Flora" by Gustave Jacquet

From Fine Art America


Woman as a girl; flower-like and innocent. She's the new life and renewal of spring to the Mother's fertile summer and the Crone's wise, austere winter. She’s largely characterized by her helplessness and vulnerability and is often required to undergo a nekyia, or descent to the underworld. In a woman, she’s an image of the supraordinate personality (an aspect of the psyche superior to, and transcending, the ego), or the Self; in a man she’s an aspect of the anima.

As a matter of practical observation, the Kore often appears in woman as an unknown young girl... The maiden's helplessness exposes her to all sorts of dangers, for instance of being devoured by reptiles or ritually slaughtered like a beast of sacrifice. Often there are bloody, cruel, and even obscene orgies to which the innocent child falls victim. Sometimes it is a true nekyia, a descent into Hades and a quest for the “treasure hard to attain,” occasionally connected with orgiastic sexual rites or offerings of menstrual blood to the moon. Oddly enough, the various tortures and obscenities are carried out by an “Earth Mother.”...  The maiden who crops up in case histories differs not inconsiderably from the vaguely flower-like Kore in that the modern figure is more sharply delineated and not nearly so “unconscious.”

- Jung, “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore,” CW 9i, par. 311

Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine consciousness both upwards and downwards. They add an “older and younger,” “stronger and weaker” dimension to it and widen out the narrowly limited conscious mind bound in space and time, giving it intimations of a greater and more comprehensive personality which has a share in the eternal course of things... We could therefore say that every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter... The conscious experience of these ties produces the feeling that her life is spread out over generations - the first step towards the immediate experience and conviction of being outside time, which brings with it a feeling of immortality.

- Jung, “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore,” CW 9i, par. 316

Another vulnerable goddess, like Hera and Demeter.  She adapted to the experience of powerlessness by responding with depression, acceptance, and only a diffuse awareness.  She fulfilled the dual figure of the Maiden (Kore or young girl) and mature Queen who claimed for herself whatever she wanted.  On the one hand, she was carefree, compliant, passive, acted upon by others rather than active herself, did not know “who she was” and unaware of her desires and strengths, malleable, innately receptive, adaptable (to meet a man’s wishes), and unaware of her sexual attractiveness, innocent, lacked passion, nonorgasmic, demure, youthful, vital, young in spirit, receptive to change, accommodating, conformed to circumstances or stronger personalities, open, flexible, uncertain of getting married (“bartered bride”), introverted or dormant sexuality, and the most indistinct and unthreatening of all the goddesses.  Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.  Persephone avoided anger but could become narcissistic, devious, dishonest, and manipulative.  Her work was unimportant until she entered the underworld and became Queen, whereupon she became possessive, creative, spiritual, psychic, artistic, unorthodox, deeply personal.  Only when she lacked someone to do things for her or someone to blame could she grow.

- Library of Halexandria, “Archetypes”


See next: The Great Mother