Within the depth-psychology corpus, Hell functions far less as a doctrinal afterlife destination than as a living symbolic register for the psyche's extremity. Jung, in the Red Book, treats Christ's descent into Hell not as historical curiosity but as an enacted paradigm: the necessary penetration of the deepest unconscious, where folly and the 'holiest mysteries' are inseparable. Edinger draws on Origen to reframe hellfire as psychologically interior — the sinner's own passions as tormenting flame, a reading he calls 'remarkably psychological.' Campbell, drawing on Spengler, insists that the Gothic vision of Hell and the Virgin Mary are symbolically co-dependent: neither image can exist without its polar opposite. He further pursues, via Blake and Dante, the paradox that Hell may be one's 'proper place,' furnishing a dark joy inaccessible to the outsider's perspective. Hollis, following Milton, locates Hell in the self that cannot escape itself — 'Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.' Hillman uses Dante's ice-bottomed Hell to anatomize Hitler's 'cold heart.' Zimmer, via Vasubandhu, radically subjectivizes Hell: it is nothing but a projection of ignorance, a 'notion of hell inflicted on us by our peculiar style of imagination.' Across these positions, Hell operates as a mirror of the unconscious — punitive, transformative, and inescapably subjective.
In the library
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every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into a fire which has been previously kindled by someone else... in the very essence of the soul certain torments are produced from the harmful desires themselves
Edinger cites Origen to establish a depth-psychological interpretation of hellfire as the soul's own destructive passions turned inward, rendering Hell an interior rather than external punishment.
Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
No one knows what happened during the three days Christ was in Hell. I have experienced it... It was folly and monkey business, an atrocious Hell's masquerade of the holiest mysteries.
Jung claims personal experiential knowledge of the descent into Hell, identifying it with an encounter with the unconscious in which the holiest and most absurd are indistinguishable.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
Hollis invokes Milton's Satan to articulate the depth-psychological insight that Hell is not a place but an inescapable condition of the ego that cannot transcend itself.
Hollis, James, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places, 1996thesis
Hell is nothing but a notion of hell, inflicted on us by our peculiar style of imagination. There are no infernal ministers... yet sinners, owing to their sins, fancy that they see the infernal ministers
Zimmer, via Vasubandhu, argues that Hell is entirely a subjective projection of avidyā — a form of consciousness-created suffering with no objective referent.
Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951thesis
The Mary-myths and the Devil-myth formed themselves side by side, neither possible without the other. Disbelief in either of
Campbell, following Spengler, argues that the Gothic image of Hell and the Devil is the necessary symbolic counterpart to the Virgin Mary, each defining the other as poles of a unified mythological system.
Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968thesis
For the point about Hell — as of Heaven — is this: when there, you are in your proper place, which, finally, is exactly where you want to be.
Campbell, drawing on Blake and Dante, articulates the paradox that Hell represents one's authentic dwelling — a place of terrible joy rather than unmitigated torment from the inside perspective.
the fire of hell is of another quality and was created by God to torture and punish the unrepentant sinner... the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is especially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury.
Campbell documents the literalist medieval theology of Hell as a sustained torment designed by God — presenting the target doctrine that depth psychology subsequently internalizes and reinterprets.
Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
The very bottom of hell, according to Dante, is a realm of ice, inhabited by the archcriminals Cain, Judas, and Lucifer.
Hillman uses Dante's frozen bottom of Hell as a psychological diagnostic image, correlating Hitler's 'ice-cold heart' with the archetypal coldness associated with supreme evil.
Hillman, James, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
the eternal damnation that awaits the unelected majority of humankind; the cruelty of God's divine retribution. All these constitute a doctrine that Calvin described as horribilis
Tarnas identifies the Calvinist doctrine of eternal damnation as an expression of the Saturn-Pluto archetypal complex, locating Hell-theology within a broader astrological-psychological framework.
Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
there has been prepared for the devil and his demons, and those who follow him, fire unquenchable and everlasting punishment
John of Damascus presents the orthodox theological definition of Hell as eternal punitive fire, providing the doctrinal baseline against which psychological reinterpretations are measured.
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021supporting
His work, Heaven and Its Wonders, the World of Spirits, and Hell: from Things Heard and Seen, states: 'That heaven as one whole represents one man, is an arcanum not yet known in the world, but very well known in the heavens.'
Zimmer cites Swedenborg's visionary cosmology, in which Hell and Heaven form parts of an anthropomorphic universe, as a comparative reference point for depth-psychological conceptions of inner worlds.
Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951aside