The Journey into the Unconscious — the Aeneid and Carl Jung
This is the next in a long series discussing Carl Jung’s ‘confrontation with the unconscious’. (For what has preceded please see this list.) I’ve recently been exploring the links between Jung and shamanism, and I may return to that later. Here I’m going to take a break from that and discuss the journey into the Underworld as found in ancient hero myths. The most significant of these for my purposes is that of Aeneas as recounted by Virgil in Book Six of the Aeneid, which is called ‘The Visit to the Underworld’.
One recurrent theme of this journey is the receiving of teachings from an inner guide, which one uses upon the return to the upper world for the benefit of society. In the case of Jung, his inner journey was the inspiration for the rest of his life’s work. He had many early followers, but seventy to eighty years later his influence is growing ever stronger. Another example worthy of mention is the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides who, during his journey to the Underworld, received profound teachings from a goddess which he brought back for the benefit of humanity. His story is told in great detail by Peter Kingsley in his book Reality, which I highly recommend.
This inner teaching is also perceived to be central to one’s destiny, the essential meaning of one’s life journey. In the case of Aeneas this is to found the city of Rome, which Virgil announces right at the beginning of book 1: “Fated to be an exile, he was the first to sail from the land of Troy and reach Italy, at its Lavinian shore. He met many tribulations on his way… And he had also to endure great suffering in warfare. But at last he succeeded in founding his city, and installing the gods of his race in the Latin land: and that was the origin of the Latin nation, the Lords of Alba, and the proud battlements of Rome”.
Here we find two familiar archetypal motifs: death (of Troy) leading to rebirth (the foundation of Rome), and the foundation of a new city as the goal of the spiritual journey (compare the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation). In addition to any literal meaning, I take the image of the city to represent an organised, coherent whole, thus an ideal model for society. At a personal level it may therefore also symbolise an integrated personality.
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What follows is a summary of Virgil’s account of the journey of Aeneas into the Underworld. The most significant part of this is the teaching that he receives from his dead father Anchises, so some readers may wish to skip forward to that below (it is clearly marked). I include the preamble because I believe it offers some interesting insights into how the ancients perceived the nature of this journey.
While some young Trojans preoccupied themselves with mundane activities, “Aeneas the True made his way to the fastness where Apollo rules enthroned on high, and to the vast cavern beyond, which is the awful Sibyl’s own secluded place; here the prophetic Delian God breathes into her the spirit’s visionary might, revealing things to come. They were already drawing near to Diana’s Wood, and to the golden temple there”.
The Trojans are invited into the temple, “a cleft in the flank of the Euboean Rock forming a vast cavern. A hundred mouthways and a hundred broad tunnels lead into it, and through them the Sibyl’s answer comes forth in a hundred rushing streams of sound. They had reached the threshold when the maid cried: ‘The time to ask your fate has come. Look, the God! The God is here!’ ”.
Aeneas requests to be able to found a new home for the Trojans in Italy. He also desperately wants to meet the spirit of his dead father Anchises: “I make one prayer to you. Since it is said that here is the Entrance Gate of the Infernal King and near here the marsh in the darkness where Acheron’s stream bends round, may I be granted this blessing, to be allowed to come within sight of my dear father face to face; may you fling wide the holy gates and explain the way to me… He it was who charged and entreated me to visit you and stand in supplication at your gates”.
The prophetess replied: “The descent to Avernus is not hard. Throughout every night and every day black Pluto’s door stands wide open. But to retrace the steps and escape back to upper airs, that is the task and that is the toil”. (We can note here Jung’s great relief that he managed to escape and return, also that in the case of psychosis and schizophrenia, victims are overwhelmed by the contents of the unconscious and fail to escape.) There are dangers on the way, “yet if indeed so passionate and so strong is your heart’s desire twice to float on the lake of Styx, and twice to see the dark of Hell, and if you choose to give yourself up to this mad adventure, hear what tasks must first be completed”.
Aeneas must acquire some produce from a golden bough which Proserpine, the goddess of the Underworld. requires as an offering. Also, the body of a lifeless friend requires burying. He does not know where the golden bough is, but fortunately for him “a pair of doves chanced to come flying from the sky directly before his very eyes, and settled on the green turf”, which Aeneas recognised as his own mother’s birds. He entreats them to guide him to the glade of the golden bough, which they do. (An interesting connection between humans and the natural world!)
His tasks completed, he returns to the Sibyl, ready for his journey into the Underworld. “There was a deep rugged cave, stupendous and yawning wide, protected by a lake of black water and the glooming forest”. The Priestess invites him to begin the journey: “It is now that you need courage and a stout heart”. “Saying no more she plunged frantically down into the opened cavern, and strode onwards”, and Aeneas followed.
AENEAS’S ENCOUNTER WITH ANCHISES
There follows a long account of the journey into Hell, until Aeneas finds his father who “was passing under a thoughtful, devoted survey certain souls who were then penned deep in a green vale but destined to ascend to the Upper Light. For it chanced that he was reviewing the whole company of his line, his own dear grandsons to be, and the destiny and fortune which would be theirs, their characters and their deeds”. Then he sees Aeneas approaching: “Tears started down his cheeks; and a cry broke from him: ‘You have come at last! Your father knew that you would be true’. He had been expecting him, and had calculated how long it would take. “Aeneas answered: ‘Father, it was ever the vision of yourself, so often mournfully appearing to me, which compelled me to make my way to the threshold of this world”.
Aeneas mistakenly believes that he is in the presence of his father in the flesh, rather than a ghost: “Three times he tried to cast his arms about his father’s neck’ but three times the clasp was vain and the wraith escaped his hands, like airy winds or the melting of a dream”.
He then sees the river of Lethe (oblivion) where “the souls of countless tribes and nations were flitting”. This startles him and he seeks an explanation. Anchises replies: “They are souls who are destined to live in the body a second time, and at Lethe’s wave they are drinking the waters which abolish care and give enduring release from memory”. He describes them as descendants of his line. Aeneas replies: “Oh, Father, am I therefore to believe that of these souls some go, soaring hence, up to the world beneath our sky and return once more into dreary matter? Why should the poor souls so perversely desire the light of our day?”
This provokes Anchises to give Aeneas a lesson as to how the universe works: “Now, first. The sky and the lands, the watery plains, the moon’s gleaming face, the Titanic Sun and the stars are all strengthened by Spirit working within them, and by Mind, which is blended into all the vast universe and pervades every part of it, enlivening the whole mass. From Spirit and Mind are created men and the beasts; and from Spirit and Mind the flying things, and the strange creatures which ocean beneath its marbled surface brings into being, all have their lives. The strength in their seeds is the strength of fire and their origin is of Heaven; in so far as they not hampered by the body’s evil, nor their perceptions dazed by their members which are of the earth, and the parts of them which are imbued with death. The body is the cause of fear and of desire, of sorrow and of joy, and is the reason why, enclosed within the darkness of their windowless prison, they cannot look with wide eyes at free air. And indeed, even when on their last day the light of life departs, all evil and all the ills of the body still do not entirely pass from the sad soul, for it cannot but be that many engrafted faults have long been mysteriously hardening within, growing inveterate. Accordingly, souls are ceaselessly schooled by retribution, and pay in punishment for their old offences. Some are hung, stretched and helpless, for the winds to blow on them. From others the pervasive wickedness is washed away deep in an enormous gulf, or it is burnt out of them by fire. Each of us finds the world of death fitted to himself. Then afterwards we are released to go free about wide Elysium, and we few possess the Fields of Joy, until length of days, as time’s cycle is completed, and has removed the hardened corruption, and leaves, without taint now, a perception pure and bright, a spark of elemental fire. Now when these souls have trodden the full circle of a thousand years, God calls all of them forth in long procession to Lethe River, and this he does so that when they again visit the sky’s vault they may be without memory, and a wish to re-enter bodily life may dawn”.
Readers familiar with my earlier writings may be able to guess why I’ve chosen to write about this now. In this extraordinarily rich and dense passage (which takes up less than one page in the book) we have allusions to animism and the philosophy of idealism. There then follow some lines reminiscent of Genesis chapter 1 on the creation of life. Then we have a quasi-Buddhist idea that living in the body results in suffering, followed by a lesson in reincarnation and karma, along with the processes taking place in the afterlife, which bear some resemblance to the Christian idea of purgatory. Also thrown in is a phrase reminiscent of Plato’s allegory of the cave, ‘enclosed within the darkness of their windowless prison’. Dare I also suggest that we find ideas similar to that of David Bohm’s worldview of implicate and explicate orders?
Anchises appears to be teaching Aeneas essential lessons about life and the spiritual world, which perhaps he was only able to learn once he had died. In indigenous and traditional societies, it is considered vitally important to maintain a connection with the ancestors. Examples would be the Australian Aborigines and Native Americans. At a simple level veneration of the ancestors is a way of showing honour and respect to members of one’s own family, and to the history of the tribe and community as a whole. At a deeper level it is also believed that the elders of the tribe have important knowledge, sacred secrets to pass on to future generations, thus the importance of maintaining ancient traditions.
The most obvious example among modern religions is Judaism, where the festivals maintain a deep connection with ancient history. Also in modern times, in Mexico there is the festival of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), when the spirits of the dead are believed to return home and spend time with their relatives, and families create offerings to honour their departed family members.
Something similar is clearly what is happening in the Aeneid. Anchises is desperate to pass on his message to his son, to maintain the ongoing connection between the generations. He therefore appears in visions, calling his son to him. Aeneas is equally desperate to meet his father in the Underworld in order to receive his message.
There is an interesting connection here with Carl Jung. Without going into detail, he found his father, who was a “poor country parson”, inadequate, someone with whom he could not relate at a spiritual level. His connection with his ancestors and their wisdom was therefore broken. Here is one interesting quote: “There arose in me profound doubts about everything my father said… What he said sounded stale and hollow, like a tale told by someone who knows it only by hearsay and cannot quite believe it himself. I wanted to help him but I did not know how… Later I had many discussions with my father, always with the secret hope of being able to let him know about the miracle of grace and thereby help to mitigate his pangs of conscience… But our discussions invariably came to an unsatisfactory end… ‘Oh, nonsense’, he was in the habit of saying, ‘you always want to think. One ought not to think, but believe’. I would think, ‘No, one must experience and know’, but I would say, ‘Give me this belief’, whereupon he would shrug and turn resignedly away”¹.
It is not surprising therefore that Jung, during his visit to the Underworld, found an alternative source of spiritual inspiration, his inner guide Philemon whom he considered to be his spiritual ‘father’ for the rest of his life.
All this leads me to wonder whether one of the deepest problems in modern Western society is that we have lost connection with our ancestors, the remote origins of our civilisation, going back as far as the Greek pre-Socratics and perhaps beyond, also with the worldwide tradition of shamanism. (The so-called ‘Enlightenment’ has taught us that all this religious stuff is antiquated superstition and nonsense.) That was what Jung believed, and he spent the second half of his life trying to re-establish the connection between the psyche of modern humans and their primal depths in the unconscious.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All of those articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here). My most recent articles, however, are only on Medium; for those please check out my lists.
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Footnote:
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Collins Fount Paperbacks 1977, Sixteenth Impression 1982, p59
