Down to the Father’s Womb: Jung’s and Dante’s Encounters with the Dead

We live in a world so obsessed with individuality and self-affirmation that all ties with the world of the dead have been severed. Gone are the dead from our horizon and, with them, all that they silently stand for: our past, our roots, our shared human and cosmic identity. Yet the living call we have been so intent on heeding is proving more and more deadly by the day, not only to ourselves but also to the planet we call home. Through their work and life experience, both Jung in the twentieth century and Dante in the fourteenth century, deliberately chose to respond to the needs of the living by following an altogether different path. They pursued their own individuation by traveling the ancient, lonely road of the dead. This article retraces some of the salient moments of Jung’s and Dante’s encounters with the dead. It highlights the role the dead played in both Jung’s and Dante’s hard-won inner realization of the importance of becoming aware of the dead’s call and heeding their teachings. It al...