Dante’s Divine Comedy through a Jungian Perspective

By

Robert Espiau M.A.

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Dante’s Divine Comedy is for me a deep reflection of

the process of one’s inner work on oneself. It reflects the

processes of psychotherapy and the work of true psychology;

the study of the human soul. The Divine Comedy was written

originally entirely in a slang which was to become the

Italian Language, it was originally intended for simple

people not for the intellectual elite. Dante felt that it

was the simpler people who could approach the inner work on

themselves without contrivances, and could also digest the

inner Kabbalistic symbolism through his own story rather

than through direct heretical teaching (Weor, 1996).

Dante’s Divine Comedy also reflects my own personal

psycho-spiritual journey back to my Divine Mother and

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Father. These archetypes have always existed for me in each

life and continue to manifest in my dreams and Samadhi

(states of absorption into silence in traditional Buddhist

Samatha meditation).

When I read Dante, I feel in each canto of the poem

that he is writing for me, that his journey is my journey.

As this paper is very short in its scope I shall be limited

to only discussing the meanings of hell and purgatory in

relationship to the search for individuation and the

increase of consciousness. I shall elaborate my own process

as Dante’s process in selected Cantos that reflect the most

poignant aspects of the Magnum Opus.

To enter into psychotherapy is to enter into a process

of psycho spiritual work. Carl Jung wrote,

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw

all his projections, then you get an individual who is

conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has

saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has

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become a serious problem to himself, as he is now

unable to say that they do this or that, they are

wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the

“House of the Gathering”. Such a man knows that

whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he

only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done

something real for the world” (CW 11, para.140).

Truly this statement precisely reflects the

experience’s and journey of Dante Allegheri in his descent

from the world of the persona to his own personal and

collective unconscious. Personal, because he will come to

see and understand himself and his own psychological defects

through the tales and lives of many other people.

Collective, because within the hell realms described by

Dante, lies numerous archetypal images which are the living

manifestations of the psychological complexes and sufferings

of mankind.

The “House of the Gathering” to me, is the place where

Christ and his disciples celebrated the last supper. The

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place where various men who all had different psychological

qualities come to be with the one who personifies compassion

and acceptance. For one thing Jesus did do was to accept his

karma at every turn without complaint. Similar is Dante who

appears in each circle of hell to be humbled at seeing the

suffering of others, and there is a recognition that he

could be suffering in the place of anyone of these people

that he sees in the circles of hell. It is an empathy that I

wish also to share with the clients that I work with. In

“Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation”, Jung (1939)

tells us that coming to terms with what lies in the

unconscious is an ongoing process within psychotherapy

(para. 489). He also explains that, like Dante, “the

manifestations of the unconscious do show traces of

personalities, like in dreams” (para. 507). In the same way

we can see the very personalities within Dante’s Inferno as

being these manifestations of disowned parts of ourselves.

At the very beginning of the tale Dante (the ego, the

self, me) realizes that he has strayed far from the

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innocence of the path of his life into the dark wood of

error. Dante feels, in a sense betrayed by his Persona,

meaning the person that he manifests in the world,

especially to the church and to those around him.

It is Easter and Dante tries to climb up the Mountain

of Joy to see the sunrise but his way is blocked, he says by

the three beasts of worldliness; The Leopard of Malice and

Fraud, the Lion of Violence, and the She Wolf which causes

one to lose their life force energy (libido). These beasts

drive him back in despair to the darkness of the forest,

back to the darkness of unconsciousness and unknowing. All

seems lost but then suddenly his Animus appears, it is

Virgil the ancient poet of Greece. Though often Jung seems

to imply that the animus is the Yang aspect within a woman

(CW 7, par. 336), meaning, her internalization of the father

qualities; however for me and many others, the animus is

also symbolic of God. God is something very real for me, not

an abstract idea or belief but something I have the gnosis

of. Being a student of Chinese medicine, I see each of us,

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whether male or female as having that Yin and Yang quality

within us. An internalized mother and father guide. Albeit

that it can be definitely influenced by our experiences with

the physical father and mother, and we may project that onto

our personal perception of God.

In Dante’s inferno Virgil is my animus, the inner guide

and father aspect and Beatrice is my anima, my spiritual

guide and divine mother aspect. Being more than just the

reflection of my physical experiences with parents, Virgil

explains to Dante that he cannot get past the beasts. The

only way to get past them and to ascend the mount of joy is

by another route. He tells him that one must descend into

hell (our personal unconscious and the recognition of the

shadow) and then and only then, if he can recognize his

shadow and take responsibility for it, can he ascend the

mount of joy through purgatory (purification).

Virgil offers to take Dante only as far as human reason

can allow but informs him that at a certain stage of the

path, to enter into a more spiritual experience and to be

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able to ascend the Mountain of Joy, he will require a

different guide and this is his Anima, Beatrice, who is

Dante’s symbol of divine love. Later on Virgil explains to

Dante that Beatrice descended into Limbo-purgatory to speak

with Virgil and to beg him to help Dante.

In the 1st part of the journey Virgil leads Dante

through the collective unconscious of hell in order to show

Dante his own personal unconscious, and shadow. As they

descend level by level into the inferno Dante constantly

sees, in each circle what Ciardi (1984) calls, “the law of

symbolic retribution. As they sinned so are they punished”

(p.41). In each section of hell people are experiencing a

justice or payback for what they did in life in a form that

exemplifies what the actions meant. For example a man who

killed others through starvation now is eaten alive by his

victims. Here Dante finds someone or a group of people

paying the karma for the unconscious actions of their life.

My Gnostic Priest and teacher, Javier Casan, taught me,

hell is a place where one is made to become conscious of

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one’s inner motivations without patience and without

compassion (personal communication, June 2008). In the

therapeutic process there is a respect of the defense

mechanisms of the client and a gradual reflection of the

unconscious. In life itself we often come into conflict with

people who insist on showing us without mercy who we are by

acting out the very things we want to disown in ourselves.

They do it without patience, without respecting our defenses

and often, unlike therapy, they do it for free.

In Limbo, Dante and Virgil find the philosophers and

intellectuals, those who were brilliant but lacked a real

conscious understanding of themselves. We could say here

that rationalization, as a defense mechanism, is what kept

these intellectuals in the darkness of Limbo.

Further into the second circle Dante and Virgil come

across an ancient archetype of Greek Myth, Minos. Minos was

one of the three sons of Zeus and Europa. Dante meets him in

the second circle and says, “He examines each lost soul as

it arrives and delivers his verdict with his coiling tail”

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(Ciardi, 1961, p. 57). Minos decides which circle of hell

each soul should descend to and shows it by making circles

in his massive tail. Dante describes many archetypal figures

as he makes his way down to the center of the earth and

eventually comes across the son of Minos, the Minotaur.

At the bottom of Hell Dante and Virgil come into

contact with Satan himself implying here that there is a

center to the unconscious and that at the bottom of the mind

something rules the unconscious. Jung (1939) says, “I would

hardly venture to assume that there is in the unconscious a

ruling principle analogous to the ego. As a matter of fact

everything points to the contrary.” (para.492). Something

that each modern Christian may want to believe when they

say, “the devil made me do it” or blame Satan in some

respect. It is in this action that we try to disown the

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unconscious desire or complex that attracted such situations

as are manifesting in one’s life

Dante states that Satan is fixed in the ice of the cold

hell to which all the rivers of guilt flow. The cold hell is

punishment for all the variations of coldhearted actions. So

many millions of souls are here frozen in the ice because of

lack of emotional intelligence. We could say that many of

the sociopaths are here; those that cannot, for whatever

reason, allow themselves to feel and to understand the

gnosis that comes through the emotional center.

What Dante has come to see in the hell realms through

the help of his Animus Virgil, he chooses to face and work

on in purgatory. As we stated previously, the demons of

hell are no more than the living reflections of those

disowned parts of ourselves that sit in the unconscious. The

shadow is extremely difficult to for most to work with

because of defense mechanisms which act like a kind of

buffer between our inner contradictions. The shadow, as

Jungian analysts Zweig and Wolf (1997) explain, “acts out

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indirectly, concealed in a sour mood, sarcasm or camouflaged

in an addictive behavior” (p.5). It is the unconscious

seeping out through a small hole in the door of our defense.

It is the way in which a complex tries to make itself known,

and few are able to see it without the assistance of a

guide, a therapist, perhaps an externalization of the animus

like Virgil.

Just before dawn on Easter Sunday the two poets emerge

from hell. They wash the filth of hell of them before they

begin the arduous climb through the Anti-purgatory to

Purgatory itself. Dante in hell appeared to have been able

to see the potential in himself to be like others. To see

his complexes and how they were formed through his

identification with others and placing his chi outside of

himself and getting it cathected within images, forms and

frustrated desires. This in turn motivates him to change, to

work in the alchemical process of purifications in

purgatory. Purgatory is the place where Dante really begins

to own his shadow, where he is willing to stand in the fire

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and feel the pain of the inner contradictions. This is

symbolized in the story as the poets climb the mountain of

purgatory the sun of dawn is rising and Dante sees his long

shadow stretched out before him, yet he also noticed that

Virgil has no shadow. Virgil explains to him that, “souls

are made as to cast no shadow” (Ciardi, 1961, p.47). This is

as to say that in an ideal state, a state of enlightenment

or individuation there is no shadow because one is capable

of seeing and accepting the unconscious without any

resistance whatsoever. This is the divine state talked about

by many sages; the state where one is no longer identified

with self in a mechanical and defended way. Purgatory,

Dante tells us, is a place of conscious works and voluntary

suffering, rather than simply a place to hide to our

disowned selves.

After the purification Virgil leaves Dante but because

he now requires a new guide to take him to a place, as

Virgil says, “where human reason cannot go”. Here he

requires the guidance of his anima, the beautiful Beatrice,

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his inner divine mother, sister and lover. Like the three

Mary’s that were always near the Christ and symbolized all

these 3 needs, Beatrice is this to Dante and this to me. It

is at this stage of the psychological work that takes us

into the realm of the transcendental. It is at this stage

before Beatrice takes Dante into the nine heavens of the Otz

Chim that she reveals to him the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil showing Dante that to go into the heavenly

realms one must move beyond the duality of the mind and its

need to constantly evaluate reality intellectually.

Finally and above all we can witness over and again

that Dante’s hell and Purgatory are representative not only

of his personal unconscious but of the Collective

unconscious. Jung tell us in his article on archetypes and

the collective unconscious that all cultures have put their

faith and understanding in gods and the belief in a world

beyond the intellect. In the time that Dante was writing the

Divine Comedy the church was very repressive of any belief

or doctrine outside of its own and Dante was able to

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reintegrate the older pre-Christian religious symbolism of

Italy with the new. Dante has used archetypes that are not

only from the Christian religion but from that of the Romans

and Greeks. Those that the church psyche wanted to disown.

Deep inside the Vatican I photographed a painting on one of

the walls (see on the next page).

Here we see the pagan god falling broken before the one

God in an attempt to displace, disown and disavow. I believe

Jung (1934) agrees with Dante’s attempt at the restoration

of this part of the unconscious when he says, “Only an

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unparalleled impoverishment of symbolism could enable us to

rediscover the gods as psychic factors, that is as

archetypes of the unconscious” (CW, 9, Para. 50). The church

was indeed psychologically impoverished at this time needing

to excommunicate Dante and all those who strayed out of its

persona of truth.

For this student of gnosis, Dante’s Divine Comedy is an

example of a man who understood psychology before we turned

it into a physical science. Dante understood the psyche at a

time when the church needed someone to explain what was

happening in plain language, in a language of the time. He

wrote it in the language of the common man, that which was

used for common conversation. In the same way I believe that

we must learn the language of the psyche but must give that

gnosis to our clients in their common tongue. Dante’s Divine

Comedy is a story that reveals the psychological path of

individuation in both the base and the most transcendental

aspects of the human mind.

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References

Alighieri, D. (1961)The Divine Comedy: The Purgatorio & The

Inferno. (J. Ciardi,

Trans.) New York: New American Library. (Original

written manuscript

published 1321 and first printed edition in 1472)

Jung, C. (1980). The Collected Works of C.G. Jung; Bollingen

Series XX (2nd ed.)

(R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). (Vol. 1-20) New Jersey:

Princeton University Press.

Sharp, D. (Eds.). (1991) C.G. Jung Lexicon: A Primer of

Terms &Concepts.

Canada: University of Toronto Press

Weor, S.A. (1996). Hell, the Devil and Karma. (Translated

from Spanish)

Canada: Anubis Publishing. (Original work published in

1973)

Zweig, C., & Wolf, S. (1997). Romancing the Shadow:

Illuminating the Dark Side of the

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Soul. New York: Ballantine Books

Images

Dore, Gustuve. (1976) The Dore Illustrations for Dante’s

Divine Comedy. New York:

Dover Publications.

Unknown. (2006) Vatican. Italy: Personal Photograph