Elijah Salome Vision

The Elijah-Salome vision occupies a privileged position in the depth-psychological corpus as the founding encounter of Jung’s active imagination method and the inaugural personification of his mature inner world. Recorded across three primary sources — the Red Book, the 1925 Seminar notes, and Memories, Dreams, Reflections — the vision presents a dyadic pair: Elijah, the ancient prophet embodying Logos, prophetic foresight, and the wise old man archetype; and Salome, the blind daughter figure embodying Eros, pleasure, and seductive but undifferentiated desire. Their eternal cohabitation shocked Jung precisely because the pairing defied conscious moral categorization. The scholarly literature divides principally on the question of what the pair signifies structurally: Jung’s own commentary identifies Elijah with the principle of rational form and Salome with blind libidinal energy — forethinking and desire as complementary but antagonistic psychic forces. Stein reads the vision as the first successful breakthrough of active imagination, establishing the anima-wise-old-man configuration as a recurrent archetype. Hillman situates it as the decisive moment when Jung discovered the autonomous reality of psychic figures. The accompanying black serpent amplifies the chthonic dimension. The vision’s insistence that Elijah and Salome ‘had belonged together from all eternity’ gestures toward a coniunctio of opposites that shadows all subsequent Jungian theorising on the tension between Logos and Eros.

In the library 17 passages

The old man said he was Elijah and I was quite shocked, but she was even more upsetting because she was Salome. I said to myself that there was a queer mixture: Salome and Elijah, but Elijah assured me that he and Salome had been together since eternity.

This passage, drawn from Jung’s 1925 Seminar account, provides the most explicit first-person narration of the vision, establishing the eternal pairing of Elijah and Salome as its central theological and psychological scandal.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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Near the steep slope of a rock I caught sight of two figures, an old man with a white beard and a beautiful Jung girl. I summoned up my courage and approached them as though they were real people, and listened attentively to what they told me. The old man explained that he was Eli

The autobiographical account of the descent vision confirms the appearance of the Elijah-Salome dyad at what Jung describes as a cosmically deep stratum of the unconscious, framing the encounter as a deliberate act of epistemic courage.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis

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The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros.

Jung’s editorial commentary in the Red Book furnishes the definitive theoretical gloss on the Elijah-Salome pairing as an allegory of the Logos-Eros polarity fundamental to psychic wholeness.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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A figure like the prophet, which is clear and complete in itself, arouses less curiosity than the unexpected form of blind Salome, which is why one may expect that the formative process will first address the problem of Eros.

This passage demonstrates that the asymmetry within the dyad — Elijah’s clarity versus Salome’s blindness — drives the subsequent unfolding of the active imagination sequence toward the development of Eros and relational feeling.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of the future.

Salome’s own speech within the active imagination dialogue articulates Elijah’s authority as a figure of prophetic wisdom and esoteric knowledge, simultaneously deploying that authority to seduce the ego into erotic complicity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it.

Jung’s recognition of his unconscious love for Salome marks the integration of the Eros principle that Salome embodies, illustrating the dynamic interplay between thinking-dominant consciousness and repressed feeling within the vision.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis

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Jung broke through and came upon a group of figures: an old man who named himself Elijah, a blind Jung woman companion named Salome, and a black snake.

Stein’s reconstruction of the 1925 Seminar account identifies the Elijah-Salome-serpent triad as the inaugural formation of Jung’s active imagination practice and a central reference point in his individuation process.

Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting

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Desire without forethinking gains much but keeps nothing, therefore his desire is the source of constant disappointment. Thus Elijah calls Salome back.

The Red Book commentary interprets Elijah’s authority over Salome functionally: Logos must govern and redirect Eros, lest pleasure dissipate into formless multiplicity — a dynamic enacted within the vision itself.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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What a strange couple: Salome and Elijah. But Elijah assured me that he and Salome had belonged together from all eternity.

Hillman’s citation of the MDR passage situates the Elijah-Salome encounter within his broader analysis of the anima as a personified figure, underscoring the vision’s foundational role in Jungian thinking about autonomous psychic contents.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985supporting

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First she divided herself into a serpent and a bird, then into a father and mother, and then into Elijah and Salome.

This passage situates the Elijah-Salome dyad within a larger mythologem of psychic differentiation, presenting the pair as one phase in the soul’s self-division into complementary opposites.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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My pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did not love Salome. This gave my thought the coldness of stone, and from this the idea took its solidity.

The Draft commentary reveals the psychological consequence of refusing Salome: the failure to integrate Eros petrifies thinking, illustrating the mutually constitutive relationship between the Elijah and Salome functions.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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I stepped into your house, my father, with the fear of a schoolboy. But you taught me salutary wisdom: I can also consider my thoughts as being outside my self.

The active imagination dialogue with Elijah produces the key epistemological insight of the vision: the externality of psychic contents, the foundational recognition underlying Jung’s entire subsequent theory of autonomous complexes.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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Sal: ‘But father, couldn’t I help him bear part of his burden?’ E: ‘Then he’d be your slave.’

The triangulated dialogue among Jung’s ego, Salome, and Elijah dramatises the ethical stakes of relating to the Eros principle, with Elijah enunciating the paradox that acceptance of Salome’s aid risks psychic enslavement.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting

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What was the content of the first visions and whom did Jung meet? The autobiography says: In order to seize hold of the fantasies, I frequently imagined a steep descent.

Hillman frames the descent leading to the Elijah-Salome encounter as the pivotal moment of Jung’s psychological vocation, the beginning of his advocacy for the autonomous reality of the psyche.

Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting

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Elijah is identical with the figure of Khadir or Khidr in Islamic tradition.

Jung’s identification of Elijah with al-Khadir extends the archetypal range of the prophet figure encountered in the vision, connecting it to cross-cultural mythological configurations of the divine wanderer and initiatory guide.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976aside

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Elijah is an angelic being fortified with divine power, having the magic name of Eli-YHWH, delivered from corruptibility, omniscient and omnipresent, he represents the ideal compensation not only for Christians but for Jews and Moslems also.

This theological elaboration of Elijah’s archetypal significance contextualises the figure encountered in Jung’s vision within a broader cross-religious compensation dynamic, enriching the vision’s claim to transpersonal depth.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976aside

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The serpent is the animal, but the magical animal… whenever a snake appears, you must think of a primordial feeling of fear.

Jung’s 1925 Seminar treatment of the black serpent archetype illuminates the role of the third figure accompanying Elijah and Salome in the vision, situating it within the framework of chthonic instinct and the gateway to hidden treasure.

Jung, C.G., Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, 1989aside

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