The Windmill and the Individuation Process in Modernity: the Mystery of Sublimatio

The Windmill and the Individuation Process in Modernity: the Mystery of Sublimatio

As an essential means of production that emerged in the Middle Ages, the windmill underwent many transformations, playing a crucial role in establishing medieval cities in the genesis of modern life. The windmill's popularity in the West was due to an essential structural change related to the combination of two rotational axes through a gear. Analogously, the modern man starts to emerge as an individual combining two axes: an external and public one, characterized by the relationship with the other and with the world; and an internal and private one, in which the relationship with oneself takes place. Based on the windmill’s history and how it was conjured up in world literature, the present work starts from the hypothesis that its symbolism refers to the process of individuation, in both its objective interpsychic level, which concerns the archetypal dynamics of alterity; and its intrapsychic level, related to the integration of unconscious content. Finally, the windmill also invites us to understand it as a symbol of the alchemical operation of sublimatio. As a metaphor for the individuation process, the sublimatio operation separates and reintegrates the unconscious contents into the psyche, bringing new insights and expanding individual existential possibilities.