C. G. Jung’s katabasis- from ancient myths to modern visionary experiences

Abstract

This article aimed to revisit C.G. Jung experiences of katabasis, or in other words the experiences of descending to the underworld, or world of the dead, followed by the return to the world of the living, the anabasis. In psychological terms, these experiences mean confronting the unconscious and the subsequent expansion of consciousness. To revisit C.G. Jung's experiences of katabasis, it was rescued historically (1) in classical antiquity through greek mythology, (2) in the medieval and modern period, through the works of Dante Alighieri, Emmanuel Swedenborg and William Blake, and (3) finally in Jung's own life with an emphasis on the constitution of The Red Book. The katabasis experiences were of vital importance to Jung and culminated in the genesis of analytical psychology.

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C. G. Jung’s katabasis: from ancient myths to
modern visionary experiences
Pedro Henrique Costa de Resende*
Mateus Donia Martinez**
* PhD student in psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de
Fora (UFJF), Master in psychology from the Federal University
of São João Del-Rei (UFSJ), graduated in psychology and phi-
losophy from UFSJ. Member of Research Center in Spirituality
and Health (NUPES) at UFJF. email: <pedrohenriresende@
icloud.com>
** PhD student and Master in social psychology from the Uni-
versity of São Paulo (USP) and graduated in psychology from
the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). He is a
member of Laboratory of Psychosocial Studies: belief, subjec-
tivity, culture & health (INTERPSI) at USP and Research Group
on Religious Experience and Altered States of Consciousness
(GEALTER) at PUC-SP. e-mail: <mdmartinez@usp.br>
Abstract
This article aimed to revisit C.G. Jung experienc-
es of katabasis, or in other words the experiences
of descending to the underworld, or world of the
dead, followed by the return to the world of the
living, the anabasis. In psychological terms, these
experiences mean confronting the unconscious
and the subsequent expansion of consciousness.
To revisit C.G. Jung’s experiences of katabasis, it
was rescued historically (1) in classical antiquity
through greek mythology, (2) in the medieval and
modern period, through the works of Dante Alighie-
ri, Emmanuel Swedenborg and William Blake, and
(3) nally in Jung’s own life with an emphasis on
the constitution of The Red Book. The katabasis ex-
periences were of vital importance to Jung and cul-
minated in the genesis of analytical psychology. ■
Keywords
Katabasis and
anabasis, C.G.
Jung, The Red
Book, history
of psychology,
life and work.

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C. G. Jung’s katabasis: from ancient myths to modern visionary experiences
1. Introduction
The term katabasis was commonly used in
ancient literature to designate a descent into the
underworld, or the home of the dead (DANTAS;
CORNELLI, 2019). Several heroes made their des-
cents in search of different elements. For instan-
ce, Heracles went down to Hades to fulll one
of his 12 tasks. Theseus and Pheritoos made a
journey through the underworld to conquer Per-
sephone and Orpheus went down to Hades in
an attempt to rescue Eurydice, inaugurating the
katabasis proposal in the orphic-Pythagorean
initiation rites. In Odyssey, this path made by
Odysseus was associated with nekyia, that is,
the rite in which the spirits of the deceased are
called to reveal the future (BRANDÃO, 1987a). La-
ter, in the medieval and renaissance period, the
descent was associated with the Christian hell,
with classics such as Dante Alighieri’s Divine Co-
medy describing various plans of hell and para-
dise (ALIGHIERI, 2006). Likewise, the anabasis,
or the return from the mansion of the dead, was
associated with resurrection in the Judeo-Chris-
tian tradition.
Modern visionaries like Emanuel Swedenborg
and William Blake also made their descents to
hell through visions and dreams, writing their
stories in works like Heaven and Hell (SWE-
DENBORG, 1987) and The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell (BLAKE, 2004). Shamdasani (2014) su-
ggests that C. G. Jung’s visionary experiences
from 1913 and his production of The Red Book
represent a continuation of this tradition. Jung
also reportedly performed his own katabasis,
which began in a period of personal crisis. In this
sense, when reecting on this period of his life,
from 1913 to 1915, “Jung described those years in
which he pursued ‘the inner images’ as the most
important time in his life” (BAIR, 2003, p. 330),
because, as he himself says:
Everything that I accomplished in later life
was already contained in them [...]. My
science was the only way I had of extri-
cating myself from that chaos [...]. I took
great care to try to understand every single
image, every item of my psychic inventory,
and to classify them scientically - so far
as this was possible - and, above all, to
realize them in actual life (JAFFÉ, 2016, p.
198).
It can be understood, therefore, that, as a
way of integrating and making meaning to all this
“material” and his own existence, in a kind of
anabasis, Jung developed a scientic project and
therapeutic proposal, the analytical psychology.
2. The katabasis in classical antiquity
Regardless of the ontological existence, the
Jungian symbolic perspective is considered the
epistemological bridge between the material and
immaterial realms (PENNA, 2013, p. 140). Thus,
the concept of katabasis may be associated, sym-
bolically, with the comprehension of the existen-
ce of a double nature in man, which would invol-
ve two dimensions: on the one hand, a material
one, and on the other, a spiritual one. Taking into
consideration body aging changes and the possi-
bility of death, it is quite fair to question/inquire/
ponder if the limits and purposes of human exis-
tence are genuine when one realizes about the
human body aging changes and the possibility of
death. In this context, religions seek to provide
answers and rituals to deal with these questions
about the ultimate reality. The transition from a
material to a spiritual realm, embodied by death,
would then represent an experience of katabasis
and anabasis, or vice-versa.
Since the most remote antiquity, worshiping
the dead has been practiced due to hygienic ne-
eds, to respect for the deceased and even to the
belief that if the living revere those who have left,

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this attention and care could assuage their bad
inuences on the physical world. The religious
experience related in this possible contact with
another realm can also be understood through
the concept of numinous formulated by Rudolf
Otto (2011), a set of emotional reactions that ge-
nerate both rapture and strangeness. Being clo-
se to a Nume, as described by Hesiod (1995), in
his Theogony, promotes awe and reverence, on
the one hand, as well as terror and fear, on the
other. The numinous is, therefore, “a somewhat
singular event, which, due to its depth, escapes
intelligent interpretation” (OTTO, 2011, p. 97).
Likewise, the reection on the whereabouts
of the beings that preceded us in the passage
to the other domain of life, be those who pre-
sent good feelings and behaviors, such as kind-
ness, wisdom, courage, etc., or those who were
ungodly and corrupt, fed the belief in specic
places or spaces to shelter the different disem-
bodied human types. Good souls would be sent
to gardens and spaces of bliss, for instance: in
Sumer, the land of Dilmun was believed a kind
of Mesopotamian Eden; in Egyptian mythology,
there was the Sekhet-Aaru, or reed elds, for
those who passed the trial of Osiris; in Ancient
Greece the Champs Elysees; and in the Christian
religion, paradise is situated in heaven. In con-
trast, the dark and sinister places are destined
for the souls of evil men, in the deepest parts
of the earth, from which the condemned cannot
leave. It is interesting to note how the ancients
were convinced that the righteous and the unfair
would not occupy the same space after death
(SERRANO, 1999).
It is also found in many cultures the belief
that the deceased who suffered and fought had
knowledge acquired from experience and that
they could bring clarication to those who ven-
tured to meet them, descending into the unde-
rworld. However, not all people agreed on this
point. For example, among the orphic cults of
Ancient Greece, the soul of the common man
was nothing more than a shadow, who would for-
get everything when reborn, because he would
drink from the waters of the river Lethe, while
the one initiated into the rites and knowledge of
Orpheus, could move more safely in the other re-
alm, having access to the source of memory, he
could retain clarications to be used in his future
birth (BRANDÃO, 1987a).
Some of the main gods and heroes of anti-
quity also took the journey of descending into
the underworld and returning to the world of the
living in katabasis and anabasis that reected
the cycles of nature. This was the case of Inan-
na in Sumeria, Marduk in Babylon, Ra and Osiris
in Egypt, the Cretan Megistos Kouros, the Syrian
Adonis, the Phrygian Atig and agrarian gods
Dionysus and Persephone celebrated in Eleusis.
Among the heroes related to the classical pe-
riod, Heracles, Theseus, Perithoos, Orpheus and
Odysseus performed the katabasis with different
objectives. In Christianity, Lazarus and Christ
himself descended to the mansion of the dead.
In the Renaissance world, Dante was taken by
Virgílio to the different abodes of souls (SERRA-
NO, 1999).
The joining of the natural cycles, the chan-
ging of the seasons in a continuous process of
death and rebirth was associated the katabasis
with several initiation cults. For Edmonds (2004,
p. 113) “the initiatory interpretation is attractive,
primarily due to the common equation in the his-
tory of the katabasis with a process of death and
rebirth”. Agreeing with this view Eliade states
that “the descent to Hades means going throu-
gh an initiatory death, the experience of this type
establishes a new way of being” (ELIADE, 1972,
p. 27). In the initiation process, man was inte-
grated with nature, participating in its renewal
cycles, at the same time, from the point of view
of reection, he was offered the opportunity to
transform his conceptions of the world and emer-
ge as a “new man” (BRANDÃO, 1987a).
From all these elements, we try to focus on
the analysis of the history of some heroes of the
Greek mythology, as a way to clarify the different
aspects presented in the experience of kataba-
sis. Even before this assessment, we aim to des-

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cribe in the case of Hades how the ancients con-
ceived the structuring of the world of dead.
According to Hesiod (1995), in his Theogony,
the transition between the physical world and
the underworld could happen through the Cha-
ron’s barge over the waters of the river Stige and
Acheron, although Hades could also be reached
through crevices and caves in specic geogra-
phical spaces. Heracles, for instance, went down
via cape Taenarum, in Laconia, one of the classic
entrances that gave direct access to the world of
the dead (BRANDÃO, 1987b).
The Hades entrance was from a cave that
worked as a portico, where Cerberus was. This
erce guardian prevented the exit of the dead
and the entry of the living. He was represented
as a monstrous dog with three heads and its
back also had several heads of serpents, whose
tail was a snake. Past this cave, there was the
dwelling of children who died at a young age.
The shadows of innocent, condemned and kil-
led on false charges lived on a contiguous spa-
ce. The souls of the suicides and of those who
became disgusted with life wandered further.
The continuation of this space extended throu-
gh the so-called eld of sighs and tears, where
all those consumed by Eros and corroded by
their sentences were concentrated. In a deeper
space, passing through a forest of myrtle, was
the place destined for the warriors. From that
point on, there was a forked path. The right led
to the palace of Hades, which had to be passed
in order to reach the Champs Elysees, and the
path on the left led to Tartarus, a place where
the souls of the wicked would receive terrible
torments. This bifurcation also included the un-
derworld court, chaired by three judges: Rada-
manto, Eaco and Minos. They were severe but
fair judges and made the dead go through the
examination of their acts, even forcing criminals
to confess their crimes (HESÍODO, 1995; SERRA-
NO, 1999).
The Elysian Fields on the right and the island
of the fortunate were conceived as green havens,
full of forests and located in the west of the world,
surrounded by the Ocean River. The souls of the
righteous delighted themselves in these places.
On the left, there was the Phlegethon a river of
re in constant ux of ames. In a spacious room
with columns, there was also a space for the
murderers who were punished by Tisiphone, the
avenger of the murder, one of the Erinias, who
ogged the guilty until they went crazy. Immedia-
tely afterwards, there was the abyss of Tartarus,
the depth of which is described as the double
distance of the one between the earth and the
sky. At its bottom, imprisoned by Zeus, the Titans
were to be found.
In the descent made by some heroes to Ha-
des, Martínez (2000) makes an interesting dis-
tinction between the characteristics and the
objectives involved. He highlights three types of
katábasis, 1) Hybristiké katabasis, present in the
myths of Heracles, Theseus and Pirítoo, 2) the ro-
mantic katabasis of Orpheus and 3) the named
necromancer Odisseu’s Katabasis.
The rst type of katábasis is dened by
hybris, an expression understood by the Greeks
as a counterpoint to the good order, an attitude
that ignores the limits in the relationship with
others. The term ends up having different fa-
cets, while Plato understands that hybris exists
whenever one overcomes the measure of what
is just. Aristotle denes it as the free offense for
the pleasure of feeling superior (ABBAGNANO,
2007). Heracles’ katabasis is found in his eleven-
th work, the search for the dog Cerberus by king
Euristeu’s imposition. In the presence of the god
Hades, Heracles asked for permission to take the
monstrous dog to the surface. Hades agreed as
long as Heracles controlled the animal without
using a weapon or injuring him. This mythologe-
ma is highlighted by Brandão as follows:
Regarding Heracles’ katábasis, it is known
that it constitutes the supreme initiation
rite, the symbolic death, it is the indis-
pensable condition for an anabasis, an
ascent, a denite climb in the search for
self-knowledge for changing of what re-

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mains from the old man in the new man
(BRANDÃO, 1987b, p. 114).
In this case, within an analytical perspective,
the encounter with monstrous creatures, such
as Cerberus, concerns the recognition of inhi-
biting psychic residues and their overcoming.
Breaking the limits, which in this case, requires
physical effort.
In the Theseus and Pirithus katabasis, there
are also hybris elements. The two heroes had
gone down to Hades to capture Persephone, so
that she could marry Pyrithus. Theseus, in this
case, is just a companion, who returns a favor to
his friend, because together they had captured
Helena for Theseus. At Hades, the two heroes
are invited to a banquet and make two mistakes,
sit at the table and eat the food offered. The two
friends end up trapped in their chairs. Theseus
is later rescued by Heracles. Pirithus, however,
remains forever in the underworld. For Brandão
(1987b), this descent also has ritualistic charac-
teristics. In ancient cultures, the male element
should descend into the earth to fertilize it and
thus bring new life to the surface. From the point
of view of analytical psychology, we nd in this
myth the search for the feminine element in the
depths of the unconscious, the rescue of the ani-
ma from the devouring maternal aspect.
In the second type of katabasis, the romantic
element, in its most general sense, stands out as
a central theme. We have this image in the myth
of Orpheus, the poet son of the muse Calliope
and Apollo. Eurydice, Orpheus’s wife, had died
after being bitten by a serpent and the poet,
whose own name means obscure (orphnós), was
destined to descend the darkness of the unde-
rworld. Orpheus’ proof of love moved Hades and
Persephone who allowed Eurydice to return, but
with one condition: the poet should go ahead wi-
thout looking back and his wife would follow him
from behind. On the way up, Orpheus, feeling he-
sitant whether his beloved was really following
him, looked back and then she was gone forever
in a shadow. According to Brandão (1987a), after
returning from Hades, Orpheus instituted a set of
ritualistic mysteries, which were forbidden to wo-
men. In one version of the myth, because of this
prohibition, the Menades would have killed Or-
pheus and his followers. The symbolic element
of this katabasis would be represented by the
need for detachment. Orpheus’ mistake in Hades
was to have looked back, to have gone back to
the past, holding on to the matter symbolized by
Eurydice. “An authentic orphic never returns. It
detaches completely, from the viscous, from the
concrete and leaves to never return” (BRANDÃO,
1987a, p. 144). Orpheus would not yet be ready
for his harmonious and denitive union with his
anima, only through his death, the supreme sa-
crice, he attains liberation.
For Martínez (2000), the most complete kata-
basis is found in the myth of Odysseus. In the
episode of Nekya, which occupies a central part
of the Odyssey, Martínez calls Odysseus kataba-
sis as a necromancer katabasis, which is its very
essence. After the Trojan War, Odysseus con-
fronts the gods and because of his hybris begins
a painful journey back home. In the process he
will be depleted of all his possessions and will
lose the company of all of his crew, even his fee-
lings of pride and power will be sacriced in the
end. His descent to Hades represents the death
of the old and natural man so to give birth to an
enlightened man who no longer guides his life by
the glories of the world.
Even before descending to Hades, the en-
counter with Calypso and Circe represents con-
tact with another domain. These two goddesses
inhabited paradisiacal places similar to the Ely-
sian Fields. However, both Calypso and Circe re-
present a life of illusion. Pleasure without know-
ledge that intoxicates reason in the rst, and
domination by the senses that turns man into ir-
rational in the second. In Nekyia’s episode, Mar-
tínez (2000) identies a necromancy. Odysseus
should offer the blood of animals to the souls
of the dead, so that the hero could access the
Hades and obtain clarication. The contact with
the dead, especially the sage Tiresias, brings the

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expansion of Odysseus’ consciousness. By the
knowledge acquired in this encounter, the hero
connects his entire past journey to the present,
and still has his future foreseen.
In these three types of katábasis we nd the
essential elements of the descent into the unde-
rworld, or the search for contact with the spirits
and the Numes. In the rst, the aspect of terror,
facing and overcoming the limits established by
the physical realm. In the second, the detach-
ment of matter for an encounter with beings that
have already left. And nally, in the third, the in-
tegration of individuality through the enlighten-
ment brought by the Numes from the other world.
3. The katabasis in the medieval and
modern period
In the medieval period, the same process
linked to the katabasis of the ancient Greeks
is revived in the famous work of Dante Alighie-
ri (1265 – 1321), The Divine Comedy. The work,
written at different times during the author’s life,
started to be written in 1306 in the castle of Val
di Magra, with the writing of a collection of po-
ems about hell. Dante nished it in 1321 with the
narrative of Paradise, the same year of his death.
The work presents a complex worldview, and re-
veals not only a historical analysis of the medie-
val man, but also Dante’s internal experiences in
the time and his beliefs about afterlife.
Shamdasani (2014) highlights the word as a
milestone in the visionary tradition, descent into
hell has its introduction in the prominence placed
on the portico of the entrance to the underworld,
which has the same, deep kinship with Jung’s
Red Book. “All hope abandon, ye [you] who enter
in!” (ALIGHIERI, 2006, p. 95). The words recorded
on a dark sign bafed Dante himself, who asked
his guide, the poet Virgil, to clarify them “Here all
the suspicion needs to be abandoned, all cowar-
dice must here be extinct” (ALIGHIERI, 2006, p.
95), that is, it was necessary to arm themselves
with strength of spirit and abandon all expecta-
tions, as they would confront the darkest facets
of human experience.
In the apocryphal apocalypse of Peter, we
can nd some descriptions of the Christian hell.
In this work, Christ shows Peter that after death
souls are punished for their sins in life. In this
place in the underworld, the apostle sees peo-
ple hanging by their tongues, others with aming
tongues, mud lakes, worm clouds and so on. Al-
brecht Dieterich in 1839 argued that these apo-
cryphal descriptions were inspired in the source
of the orphic Pythagorean traditions (SHAMDA-
SANI, 2014). The fusion of ancient traditions
about the underworld and Christian propositions
reaches its peak in The Divine Comedy. Alighieri
himself, in a letter to Cangrande I della Scala, a
politician from Verona, says that the work could
be read in two ways. The rst way, literal, that
is, an indicative of a different layer or places to
which souls might go after death. The second
way, allegorical, in a sense that the focus is on
man walking his inner journey. We can evaluate,
following the second proposal, that, before the
court of his own conscience, the man who acts
would be freer and more condent to exercise
his will, while the one who chooses the error or
evil, would feel embarrassed and disturbed. The
various images presented by Dante in Hell would
be, in this case, metaphorical representations of
a state of mind of internal weakness, suffering
and misery. As a hermetic work, The Divine Co-
medy would have different interpretative stratum
(ALIGHIERI, 2006, SHAMDASANI, 2014).
Two gures who lived in the 18th and 19th
centuries also contributed to the expansion of
ideas about the state of the soul in hell and pa-
radise: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772) and
William Blake (1757 - 1827). The hell described
by Swedenborg has characteristics similar to
Dante’s. Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist
and mystic, and one of the known facts of his
life was a personal crisis that he went through
around 1740, which culminated in a visionary
experience in 1745. On one day of that year,
Swedenborg was sitting in a tavern in London
and he heard a stranger tell him not to eat so
much. He returned home and dreamed of the

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same individual from the tavern who revea-
led himself as Christ himself, and said that he
would take him through heaven and hell, that
he would talk to the dead, angels and demons,
and that upon his return he should reveal to pe-
ople about true faith. He was told to write down
everything that was seen and heard in order to
reveal the symbolic meaning of the Bible. In
Swedenborg’s work, heaven and hell are strictly
dichotomous. The two, basically, would be in
a rudimentary state within each human being.
And after death, the opening of the door to one
of these places would be determined according
to the choices and actions in this world. Love for
God and neighbor would be the key to paradise,
while all vices and errors in relation to God and
other men would be the key to hell (SHAMDASA-
NI, 2014; SWEDENBORG, 1987).
In Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg (1987) des-
cribes what he experienced in his visions. There
would be several hells, which could be accessed
by cracks in the rocks, holes, pits and caves.
In some, the appearance was like that of cities
destroyed by war; in others, the aspects were of
ruins of historical monuments, others still pre-
sented themselves as deserts. The diversity of
hells was proportional to the diversity of human
vices and failures. In these places, souls would
meet with regard to their similarities, and in the
same way it would happen in different paradises.
William Blake was a reader of Swedenborg’s
works and since his youth, he claimed going
through visionary experiences. For a certain time
he attended Swedenborg’s church in London.
However, he later criticized the institutionali-
zation of Swedenborg’s ideas. In 1790 he pu-
blished the book The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell (BLAKE, 2004). In this work, Blake (2004)
presents a critique of Swedenborg’s interpreta-
tion of heaven and hell; for him the two spaces
were not radically irreconcilable. The problem
for Blake is that Swedenborg has become too
attached to heaven and his conversations with
angels. For a comprehensive view of the totality,
it would be necessary to give the same weight to
hell, dialoguing with its inhabitants. The devil
and the demons should be interviewed.
In his works, Blake presents the attempt to ar-
ticulate the opposites between heaven and hell,
as two polarities of human life, also represented
by forces such as attraction and repulsion, re-
ason and energy, love and hate. These opposi-
tions would be necessary for the completeness
of human experience. Blake also presents his cri-
tique of organized religion. At the end of his life,
Blake became increasingly interested in Dante
Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, producing a series of
images that illustrates different moments of the
passage through hell and the plans of paradise
(BLAKE, 2004; SHAMDASANI, 2014).
Just as Eugene Taylor (1997) placed Jung’s
anomalous experiences within the visionary tra-
dition, Shamdasani (2014) sought to locate The
Red Book in direct correspondence with the line-
age of the treatises of Dante, Swedenborg and
Blake. From a personal crisis that began in 1913,
Jung also experienced his katabasis, descending
into hell, experiencing in this process a series of
the so-called anomalous events. The account of
these experiences contained in The Red Book can
be interpreted in the same way that Dante evalua-
ted his work, that is, in two ways: an objective
one, in which it is considered the possibility of
parapsychological experiences, and a subjective
one, his confrontation with the unconscious and
the subsequent assimilation of its images.
4. The C. G. Jung’s katabasis
Between 1913 and 1914, Jung went through a
period of self-experimentation inducing waking
fantasies, his rst descent into hell. For Sham-
dasani (2014), the chronological reading of the
events makes clear a religious experience of re-
covering certain lost aspects of Jung’s life. The
contact with psychoanalysis and its subsequent
disconnection from Freud becomes secondary in
this process. The author suggests that Jung’s pe-
riod of obscurantism would be his psychoanaly-
tic phase, properly. His crisis from 1913 onwards
would mean the recovery of his authenticity and,

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therefore, the structuring of his experiences in a
new scientic perspective, the analytical psycho-
logy.
At that time, a fantasy was constantly repe-
ated to Jung: the idea that there was something
dead that continued to live. For instance, there
were visionary experiences related to corpses
that were placed in crematoriums, but then it
was discovered that they were still alive. These
fantasies culminated in a dream. Jung points out:
I was in a region like Alyscamps near Ar-
les. There, they have a lane of sarcopha-
gi, which go back to Merovingian times.
In the dream, I was coming from the city
and saw before me a similar lane with a
long row of tombs. They were pedestals
with stone slabs, on which the dead lay.
They reminded me of old church burial
vaults where knights in armors lie ou-
t-stretched. Thus, the dead lay in my
dream, with their antique clothing and
hands clasped. The only difference was
that they were not hewn out of stone, but
mummied in a curious fashion (JAFFÉ,
2016, p. 178 -179).
In the dream described above, Jung passes in
front of the rst grave of a deceased person from
the 1830s, observes his clothes when the per-
son begins to move, returning to life. Jung claims
that this would have happened because he had
looked at him. Feeling uneasy, he continues
his journey and approaches another dead man
pertaining to the 18th century, and, hence, the
same happens, the body starts to move and the
individual comes back to life. Jung goes through
a row arriving in front of a deceased of the 12th
century, dressed in a chainmail with the hands
on his chest; he was a knight templar, who also
returns to life after being seen by Jung (JAFFÉ,
2016).
For Freud, unconscious contents were inter-
preted as repressed residues of conscious ac-
tivity (LAPLANCHE, 2010), or as corpses from a
forgotten past, while for Jung, the unconscious,
such as the kingdom of the dead, presented its
own dynamics and was full of vitality. This dream
was followed by a Jung’s will of rescuing some-
thing in the past, so his childhood games were
revived in the process of building small houses,
castles and churches on the banks of the lake,
close to his home in Zurich. “The building game
was only a beginning. It released a stream of fan-
tasize which I later carefully wrote down.” (JAFFÉ,
2016, p. 181). According to Jaffé, Jung reveals that
it was in 1913 that he decided to try something
more extreme:
I was sitting at my desk once more,
thinking over my fears. Then I let myself
drop. Suddenly, it was as though the
ground literally gave way at my feet, and
I plunged down into dark depths. I could
not fend off a feeling of panic. But then,
abruptly, at not to great a depth, I landed
my feet in a soft, sticky mass. I felt great
relief, although I was apparently in com-
plete darkness. After a while, my eyes
grew accustomed to the gloom, which was
rather like a deep twilight. Before me was
the entrance to a dark cave (JAFFÉ, 2016,
p. 185).
In other dreams of the same time, Jung pre-
sents this descent into his abyss in similar ways:
“First came the image of a crater, and I had the
feeling that I was in the land of the dead”(JAF-
FÉ, 2016, p.185). The descent into hell in the
1913 experiments is a search for lost contents, in
the same way the ancient heroes did: Heracles,
Theseus, Perithoos, Orpheus, and Odysseus.
Jung sought to rescue signicant aspects only
accessed in this descent to the deepest of him-
self, which does not rule out the possibility of pa-
rapsychic events involved in the process. In this
sense, Jung himself considers some of his views
of the period to be precognitive, for example his
view of 1913, described in his Memories and in
the author’s biographies.

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For Shamdasani (2009) The Red Book pre-
sents two main moments. The rst is Jung’s ac-
ceptance of his inner chaos, and the stimulation
of images that would allow a closer dialogue
with the unconscious. The second is an accom-
modation of his visionary experiences in psycho-
logy, elaborating and interpreting the visions.
Following the historical line composed by Ali-
ghieri, Swedenborg and Blake, Jung established
how the work should be read. For a long time he
had pursued science, in the way it was develo-
ped in its time, in which many contents of human
experience were relegated to the margins of the
vast majority of studies. However, for Jung, it was
necessary to encompass the totality of human
experiences, what he called madness or irratio-
nality. In fact, something closer to divine mad-
ness, as listed by Plato in Phaedrus (PLATÃO,
2000) when mentioning the altered states of the
pythons in Delphi.
In these experiences, Jung meets the dead.
For instance, on January 12 of 1914, he was faced
with an entanglement of human bodies. On Fe-
bruary 2, in dialogues with his soul, this one sta-
tes that he had arrived in hell. However, it is on
January 14-16 of 1914, that Jung reports a greater
sequence of experiences. He found himself in a
library, looking for the book Imitation of Christ by
Thomas Kempis, where he talked to the librarian
about Christianity, Nietzsche and Goethe. Then
he found himself talking to a woman who asked
him if he was a spiritual being. Shortly after, dark
forms appeared. These were men who claimed to
be Anabaptists, dead 300 years ago. Their leader
claimed that his name was Ezekiel and that he
and his group were going to Jerusalem to visit the
holy sites. Jung asked if he could go with them,
but his request was denied. Ezekiel said that he
could not go along, because he still had a body.
At that time, Jung expresses that in the midst
of his own darkness, nothing was more desirab-
le than having a guru, gifted with the knowledge
to guide him through his visionary experiences.
He says: “This task, undertaken by the gure of
Philemon, whom in this respect I was unwilling
and reluctant to recognize as my psychagogue
[psichopompo]. And the fact was that he referred
me to several internal enlightenments” (JAFFÉ,
2016, p. 189 - 190). Upon returning from the Ana-
baptists’ shadow crowd, Jung writes the Septem
Sermones ad Mortuos.
Boechat (2014) afrms that, among all the
apparitions and interferences of the dead of The
Red Book, the main one is found in the third part
of the book, Scrutinies, when Philemon pronou-
nces the seven sermons to the dead. The crowd
of dead who came from Jerusalem did not nd
what they were looking for. Thus, they are as if
indoctrinated by Philemon, about the nature of
God, man and destiny. In The Red Book, it is clear
that the author of Septem Sermones is Philemon.
Jung mentions:
Philemon came up to me, dressed in the
white robe of a priest, and lay his hand
on my shoulder. Then I said to the dark
ones, So speak, you dead. And immedia-
tely they cried in many voices. We have
come back from Jerusalem, where we did
not nd what we sought. We implore you
to let us in. You have what we desire. Not
your blood, but your light. That is it. Then
Philemon lifted his voice and taught them,
saying [and this is the rst sermon to the
dead] (2009, p. 447 – 448).
For Boechat (2014), the dead are a fundamen-
tal key on the comprehension of The Red Book.
There is a suggestion that they need to be cla-
ried. “The multitude of the unsaved dead has
become greater than the number of living Chris-
tians, so it is time that we intervene in favor of the
dead” (JUNG, 2009, p. 297). Boechat formulates
two psychological hypotheses to explain the role
of the dead in the dialogues of the Red Book.
At rst, he speculates that we ourselves are
the dead, that we have not found adequate
answers for our spiritual needs in ofcial reli-
gions, which seems to have lost themselves in
excessive ritualism, forgetting the essential role

96 ■ Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Psicologia Analitica, 1º sem. 2020
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of individual experience in the search for the sa-
cred and its meaning. For the author, it would be
necessary that religion, especially Christianity,
recovers its gnostic aspect, that is, to recover the
human aspect of the relationship with the divi-
ne. “A truth that makes sense to our souls again
and has not been worn out due to the automatic
ritual” (BOECHAT, 2014, p. 1782). The essential
truths of Christianity were plagued by an excess
of philosophical speculations, the essential and
benecial background had been lost by cen-
turies of conict. The interpretation of this rst
hypothesis is that man, in general, needs a way
back to himself, not the way of the outer Jerusa-
lem, but of the sacred that is found within. The
dead would be the contents of the psychological
shadow that return asking for the integration of
consciousness. Therefore, they would be devi-
talized parts of the psyche, forgotten about the
past, despised or repressed, asking for help.
The second hypothesis is of historical aspect.
Jung started writing The Red Book in the period of the
First World War. In the European crisis, thousands of
young people were sent to their deaths on the battle-
eld. Death is a daily issue in Europe’s collective un-
conscious and, probably, in the world’s unconscious
too. “The unimaginable number of deaths across Eu-
rope invades the collective imagination” (BOECHAT,
2014, p. 1790). The war’s cruelty question, in which
the great world powers manipulated the masses’ li-
ves as if they were pawns in a game of chess, impac-
ted the population.
Boechat, however, also points out that “all of
these approaches are, in a way, convincing. But
are they sufciently comprehensive?” (BOECHAT,
2014, p. 1793). To which himself replies: “We must
not forget that the dead, specically, have interes-
ted Jung since his earliest childhood [...] it is known
that Jung’s maternal ancestors have always had
great intimacy with spiritualist manifestations”
(BOECHAT, 2014, p. 1800 - 1801). In our view, it is
essential to consider the parapsychological pers-
pective in the approach of the events in question.
Jung states that so much imagination needed
solid ground and that he should return to hu-
man reality. His anabasis, marked by the scien-
tic understanding was, then, a psychological
necessity. In that sense, he felt the urgency to
draw strong conclusions from the unconscious
insights, and that task was to become a life work
(JAFFÉ, 2016). Jung still adds: “It all began then;
the later details are only supplements and cla-
rications of the material that burst forth from
the unconscious, and at rst overwhelmed me.
It was the primary material for a lifetime’s work”
(JAFFÉ, 2016, p. 204).
The process of katabasis experienced by Jung
led him to understand the psychotherapeutic
process itself. The exploration of images in The
Red Book is an attempt to reconcile the science
of his time and the internal transformations of
his confrontation with the unconscious. A dialo-
gue between the spirit of the time and the spi-
rit of the depths. From these experiences, Jung
would guide his patients through the steps he
had taken, transforming the practice of psycho-
therapy into a kind of initiation rite of descent
into the underworld. As indicated in Aion (JUNG,
1979), this descent is part of the fundamental
process of individuation, represented in the
Christian tradition by the descent of Jesus to the
mansion of the dead and his subsequent ascent
to heaven on the third day of his resurrection.
Shamdasani (2014) points out that in Jung’s 1934
work presented in Eranos, Archetypes of the col-
lective unconscious, he argued that the symbolic
process is only possible when the ego is in close
relationship with the image, whatever it may be,
when no obstacle is encountered, which would
correspond to a temporary renounce of cons-
cious individuality to unconscious forces. This
process, however, poses risks to consciousness,
especially if it succumbs entirely to the uncons-
cious forces’ pressure. However, when it is well-
-succeed, a close dialogue between the ego and
the image is established, there is an opening for
the development of the personality, or in other
words, for the individuation process, the modi-
cation of the psyche, of its dispositions and atti-
tudes towards the world (JUNG, 1975).

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Junguiana
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5. Conclusion
The term katabasis was used in classical lite-
rature in reference to the descent into the unde-
rworld that several heroes made. In this article,
we addressed some examples to clarify the sym-
bolic meaning of the term. In its different forms,
hybristiké, romantic and necromancer, the con-
cept of katabasis, followed by anabasis, has in
common with psychical research the process of
expanding consciousness. In this descent, or en-
try into the other world, we nd several possible
layers of interpretation. From the point of view of
analytical psychology, they mean facing perso-
nal impediments, acquiring knowledge and as-
similating deep emotions, nally, restructuring
individuality. Jung highlights:
The Nekyia is no aimless and purely des-
tructive fall into the abyss, but a meaning-
ful katabasis eis antron, a descent into the
cave of initiation and secret knowledge.
The journey through the psychic history of
mankind has as its object the restoration
of the whole man, by awakening the me-
mories in the blood (1971, par. 213).
In the same way, we rescue experiences of
descent into the realm of the dead carried out
by writers and visionaries such as Alighieri, Swe-
denborg and Blake. All of these experiences ser-
ve as a parameter for Jung’s experiences from the
period 1913 - 1930, which is also called confron-
tation with the unconscious. At that time, we had
the production of The Red Book, a work of ines-
timable value for depth psychology, which must
also be understood as belonging to a visionary
tradition.
The Red Book can be claried as the des-
cription of an initiatory process. As Hillman and
Shamdasani express:
Descending into his own depths, [Jung]
found images that, somehow, had pre-
ceded him. [It was] a descent to human
ancestry. [...] This is not a mere metaphor
[...] When he speaks of the dead, he me-
ans the dead. They are present in ima-
ges. They still continue to live (HILLMAN;
SHAMDASANI, 2015, p. 12).
In conclusion, Jung made his descent into
the underworld and returned, elaborating the
material collected in a rich theory of explana-
tions about the psyche. Complex psychology
establishes the individual’s plunge in search of
himself, which is more than a gurative langua-
ge. The descent to the underworld represents the
encounter with ancestry, the home of the dead. ■
Received on: 25/02/2020 Revised on: 06/30/2020

98 ■ Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Psicologia Analitica, 1º sem. 2020
Junguiana
v.38-1, p.87-100
Resumo
A katábasis de C. G. Jung: dos mitos antigos às experiências visionárias mod-
ernas
Este artigo buscou revisitar as experiências
de katábasis de C.G. Jung, ou, em outras pala-
vras, as experiências de descida ao submundo,
ou mundo dos mortos, seguidas pelo retorno
ao mundo dos vivos, a anábasis. Em termos
psicológicos, essas experiências signicam o
confronto com o inconsciente e a subsequente
ampliação da consciência. Para revisitar as ex-
periências de katábasis de C.G. Jung resgatou,
historicamente, a katábasis (1) na antiguidade
clássica através da mitologia grega, (2) no perío-
do medieval e moderno, por meio das obras de
Dante Alighieri, Emmanuel Swedenborg e Wil-
liam Blake, e, nalmente, (3) na própria vida
de Jung, com ênfase na constituição de O Livro
Vermelho. As experiências de katábasis foram
de vital importância para Jung e culminaram na
gênese da psicologia analítica. ■
Palavras-chave: Katábasis, C.G. Jung, O Livro Vermelho, história da psicologia, vida e obra.
Resumen
La catábasis de C. G. Jung: de los mitos antiguos a las experiencias visionarias
modernas
Este artículo buscó volver a examinar las ex-
periencias de catábasis de C.G. Jung, o, en otras
palabras, las experiencias de descender al infra-
mundo, el mundo de los muertos, seguido por
el retorno al mundo de los vivos, la anábasis. En
términos psicológicos, estas experiencias suponen
la confrontación con el inconsciente y la posterior
expansión de la conciencia. Para volver a examinar
las experiencias de catábasis de C.G. Jung, fue res-
catada, históricamente, la catábasis (1) en la anti-
güedad clásica a través de la mitología griega, (2)
en el período medieval y moderno, a través de las
obras de Dante Alighieri, Emmanuel Swedenborg y
William Blake, y (3) nalmente, en la propia vida de
Jung, con énfasis en la constitución del Libro Rojo.
Las experiencias de catábasis fueron de vital impor-
tancia para Jung y culminaron en la génesis de la
psicología analítica. ■
Palabras clave: Catábasis, C. G. Jung, El Libro Rojo, historia de la psicología, vida y obra.

Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Psicologia Analitica, 1º sem. 2020 ■ 99
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