The Seba library treats Crypt in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Jung, C.G., Kalsched, Donald, Nichols, Sallie).
the crypt or mystery-place leads us to something below the Christian Weltanschauung, something older than Christianity, like the pagan well below the cathedral at Chartres, or like an antique cave inhabited by a serpent
Jung defines the crypt as an archaeological and psychological stratum beneath conscious Christianity, signifying pre-Christian initiatory space where death and rebirth are enacted.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis
if a True Mass is being celebrated in the chancel, a Black Mass is being celebrated in the crypt. It becomes evident, accordingly, that the psychotherapist is the true successor to the exorcist
Fairbairn, cited by Kalsched, uses the crypt as a figure for the unconscious site of pathological internal object relations, where destructive shadow-liturgy operates beneath the surface of the personality.
, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis
the candidate descended into a crypt where he remained in a state of suspended animation watched over by a priest and priestess. At the end of three days, he was awakened from his trance by a herald to rise reborn
Nichols locates the crypt at the centre of Eleusinian initiatory ritual, establishing it as the structural locus of symbolic death and psychological rebirth.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
Diocletian dedicated a crypt to Hecate, with 365 steps leading down to it. Cave mysteries in her honour seem also to have been celebrated in Samothrace
Jung connects the crypt to the chthonic mother-goddess Hecate and the solar cycle of death-and-rebirth, grounding it in historical mystery-cult evidence.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
they carry it down again into the crypt. But if you ask them what this mysterious performance means, they answer: Today, at this hour, the Kore, that is to say the virgin, has given birth to the Aeon
Jung cites Epiphanius’s account of the Aion-cult ritual in which a sacred idol is ceremonially descended into the crypt, linking the term to the mystery of cosmic birth emerging from underground darkness.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
bearing torches, descend joyously to the crypt to carry up on a bier her seated, naked idol with the signs of a cross and a star of gold marked on her hands, her knees, and her brow
Campbell amplifies the same Kore-Aion ritual, presenting the descent into the crypt and the return of the idol as a paradigmatic mythic enactment of seasonal and psychic renewal.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
beneath which a vaulted crypt represents the world of the dead. Perhaps there was a machine for producing ghostly appearances
Burkert documents the architectural crypt as the literal underworld center in Greek oracular installations, where numinous experience and ritual manipulation converged.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
The initiated then entered the cave dressed in black woollen garments, and remained within for thrice nine days. Everything points to the existence of conceptions similar to those that we found expressed in the cult of Zeus Trophonios
Rohde’s account of initiation into Cretan cave-cults of Zeus provides comparative mythological grounding for the crypt as a site of sanctioned descent into the chthonic divine presence.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
the symbology of the labyrinthine chambers of the soul every one of the high religions and most of the primitive, also, have received instruction
Campbell frames the prehistoric painted cave — the primordial crypt — as the originary mythogenetic source from which all subsequent religious symbolism of inward descent descends.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside