The Banquet appears in the depth-psychology corpus as a remarkably polyvalent symbolic node, traversing ritual, eschatology, dream, and social ontology. At its most archaic stratum, as documented by Harrison, Burkert, and Rohde, the banquet is inseparable from sacrificial killing: the communal meal following slaughter constitutes the social bond, punctuated by guilt, pollution, and the apotropaic silences of ritual. The Hero Feast and funeral banquet bind the living to the heroized dead, while the shamanic funerary banquet documented by Eliade marks the moment of psychopomp transit. In the alchemical register, von Franz reads the banquet as hierosgamos and Eucharistic communion — an encounter with the filius philosophorum through a sacred meal that restores the adept to Christian faith transformed. The parabolic tradition analysed by Thielman casts the Great Banquet as an eschatological figure of inclusion and exclusion, a test of attachment to possessions and family over divine invitation. Campbell identifies Plato's Symposium as the apogee of a masculine logos-culture, the banquet scene as philosophical eros made manifest. In archetypal psychology proper, Berry's brief but precise observation about the dream-banquet is exemplary: to place the banquet's telos outside the dream — saying 'I feast because I starve' — is to reduce rather than read the image. The term therefore traces a trajectory from blood-sacrifice and hero-cult, through eschatological judgment, toward the inner feast as autonomous psychological image.
In the library
16 passages
a guest at the banquet. This shows plainly enough how the author has come to terms with the irrupted contents and has found a way back to his Christian faith. The alchemist now partakes of the immortal essence of the filius philosophorum by a true communion.
Von Franz reads the alchemical banquet as Eucharistic hierosgamos, the moment at which the adept, having integrated unconscious contents, communes with the immortal essence of the philosophical son, restoring faith through sacred meal.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966thesis
Let's say I dream I am having a banquet. If I place the purpose outside the dream I may say something like, 'Yes, I dream I am having a banquet and that's because in real life I'm starving.' The dream compensates and fulfills the larger assumption
Berry uses the dream-banquet as the exemplary case for arguing against reductive interpretation, insisting that displacing a dream's telos outside the image destroys its autonomous psychological meaning.
Berry, Patricia, Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
the shaman escorts the deceased to the beyond at the end of the funeral banquet, while among others (Tungus) he is summoned to fill this role of psychopomp only if the dead man continues to haunt the land of the living beyond the usual period.
Eliade establishes the funerary banquet as the ritual threshold at which shamanic psychopomp function is activated, the communal meal marking the soul's formal departure for the underworld.
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
monuments variously and instructively known as 'Sepulchral Tablets,' 'Funeral Banquets,' and 'Hero Feasts.' Over three hundred of these 'Hero Feasts' are preserved, so we may be sure they represent a deep-seated and widespread
Harrison demonstrates that the funerary banquet is not incidental but constitutive of hero-cult, with over three hundred surviving monuments attesting to its centrality in the Greek negotiation between the living and the heroized dead.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
the reasons for the rejection of the invitation to the banquet move to the foreground. Two types of excuses are offered: Two people reject the invitation because their possessions are more important to them than the banquet
Thielman analyses the Lukan Great Banquet parable as an eschatological figure in which the invitation's rejection exposes competing attachments — to property and family — that displace the ultimate claim of the kingdom.
Frank S. Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005thesis
the great banquet scene of the young and old lions at the home of the poet Agathon was the apogee. The reader recalls the magical moment. Socrates arose to tell of love — as he had learned of it from the wise woman Diotima
Campbell reads the Symposium banquet as the culminating expression of the Greek logos-culture, a philosophical eros realized in the all-male feast and given its deepest content by the absent feminine wisdom of Diotima.
Campbell, Joseph, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis
Why does this rite of new birth take place at the conclusion of a feast on a mountain-top? Why does the mimic death of the child take the form of his being dismembered, cooked, and eaten?
Harrison identifies the mythic mountain-top feast as the sacrificial-ritual context for death and rebirth, linking the banquet structurally to initiatory dismemberment and the promise of new life.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
daps or more commonly the plural dapes, which denotes the ritual meal offered after the sacrifice. This was a term which soon was drained of its religious sense and came to denote no more than 'meal.'
Benveniste traces the Indo-European term for the post-sacrificial ritual banquet, showing how daps loses its sacred meaning as it passes into common usage, marking the secularization of the communal sacred meal.
Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
this plan of ours, this murder, will fail. So let us think about our banquet. They all agreed, and went inside the house of godlike King Odysseus.
The Odyssey passage dramatises the banquet as an alternative to murderous plotting, embedding the feast within the contested social space of the hero's usurped household.
Beekes documents the Greek etymological field of the banquet term doinē, tracing its derivatives through compounds denoting host, mistress of the feast, and banqueting, grounding the symbol in archaic linguistic structure.
Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
the wedding banquet (22:1–14), the good and wicked servants (24:45–51), and the ten virgins (25:1–13) demonstrate … the kingdom of heaven contains both wheat (the sons of the kingdom) and weeds
Thielman shows the wedding banquet parable functioning within Matthew's eschatological framework as an image of mixed inclusion and final separation, mirroring the structure of divine judgment.
Frank S. Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005supporting
Truth is the banquet of all the three together. Where there is such a banquet, the father of lies, confronting a soul as it departs from this life, will not find in it any of the things he looks for.
The Philokalia passage employs the banquet as a figure for the soul's inner feast of discernment — the union of right timing, proportion, and silence — that constitutes a defence against deception at death.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
the expression 'to sacrifice to Hestia' has the same meaning as our proverb that charity begins at home … The hearth, the meal, and the food also have the property of opening the domestic circle to those who are not members of the family
Vernant analyses the hearth-meal as simultaneously a boundary-drawing and boundary-opening ritual, the domestic banquet both sealing family identity and incorporating the stranger through the logic of hospitality.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
the 'second tables,' as they are called, were handed round … on which it is the Roman custom to feast the slaves, the masters themselves undertaking for the nonce the office of servants. The custom is also Greek.
Harrison documents the ritual reversal of social hierarchy at the second course of festival banquets, a structural inversion that temporarily suspends the normal order under the sign of Kronos.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside
the 'funeral feast' offered by the king to the mourning people
Rohde notes the funerary feast as an obligatory element of the Greek burial complex, situating the communal meal within the broader cult of the dead and its duty to honour the departed.
Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894aside
the second and central day of the festival called Choes, or 'Wine-jugs.' It was considered an uncanny day … even a misanthrope would feel obliged to dine with at least one other person.
Bremmer describes the Anthesteria feast as an obligatory social communion during which normal rules are suspended, the banquet functioning as a structural reversal that nonetheless enforces minimal communal participation.
Jan N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul, 1983aside