It takes its rightful place as a symbol of individuation.
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
Here the vision ended.
Unfortunately I cannot see how I can make conclusively clear to the reader the extraordinarily interesting meaning of this vision.
The fragment is an excerpt from a long sequence, and one would have to explain everything that happened before and afterwards, in order to grasp the significance
of the picture.
At all events the unprejudiced reader will recognize at once the idea of a “mid-point” that is reached by a kind of climb (mountaineering, effort, struggle, etc.).
He will also recognize without difficulty the famous medieval conundrum of the squaring of the circle, which belongs to the field of alchemy.
Here it takes its rightful place as a symbol of individuation.
The total personality is indicated by the four cardinal points, the four gods, i.e., the four functions which give bearings in psychic space, and also by the circle enclosing the whole.
Overcoming the four gods who threaten to smother the individual signifies liberation from identification with the four functions, a fourfold nirdvandva (“free from opposites”) followed by an approximation to the circle, to undivided wholeness.
Thisin its turn leads to further exaltation. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 267
