Incantation

Incantation occupies a liminal position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a technical term from archaic religious practice and as a psychologically charged metaphor for the power of voiced or written language to activate unconscious processes. The range of treatment is considerable. Hillman discovers incantation embedded in the etymology of healing itself, arguing that the affective, voiced dimension of ancient medicine — through prayer, lament, and ritual speech — belongs to the therapist’s proper task no less than to the shaman’s. Kalsched, drawing on Plato via von Franz, situates incantation within the daimonic sphere: it is one of the priestly rites through which intermediate beings mediate between the divine and the human, making it structurally indispensable to any psychology that takes the transpersonal seriously. Dodds traces the term’s Platonic ambivalence, noting how Socratic cross-examination is itself recast as incantation in the Charmides, while the Laws deploys incantatory technique as social control — a tension between emancipatory and coercive uses of ritual speech that resonates throughout later analytical practice. Von Franz and Hillman extend the field: Hillman reads a dying man’s repetition of Proust’s yellow wall as a spontaneous incantatory act, while von Franz presents Hellenistic magical formulae as psychologically intelligible invocations of inner ordering principles. Across these positions, incantation marks the boundary where logos yields to carmen — where rational discourse surrenders its monopoly to the affective, rhythmic, and transformative power of the spoken word.

In the library 10 passages

They form the medium of the prophetic arts, of the priestly rites of sacrifice, initiation, and incantation, of divination and of sorcery, for the divine will not mingle directly with the human

Citing Plato’s Symposium via von Franz, Kalsched establishes incantation as one of the daimonic mediating rites that alone permits intercourse between the human and the divine, making it structurally central to any depth-psychological account of the transpersonal.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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The affective level of treatment through incantation, prayer, and lament aided the primitive physician to drive out the demons. He took part with his voice and spoke from levels below rational knowledge.

Hillman roots incantation in the etymology of healing itself, arguing that the physician’s ancient task was affective and voiced — a medicine-man’s art that modern analytical detachment risks losing entirely.

Hillman, James, Suicide and the Soul, 1964thesis

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he repeats to himself as if an incantation ‘Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof, little patch of yellow wall.’

Hillman identifies Bergotte’s dying repetition in Proust as a spontaneous incantatory act, illustrating how the psyche under extremity reverts to the rhythmic, mantra-like invocation of a sensory image as a last hold on being.

Hillman, James, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting

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Its application in the Charmides (157 A-C) is significantly different: there the ‘incantation’ turns out to be a Socratic cross-examination.

Dodds traces Plato’s ambivalent use of the term, showing that in the Charmides rational dialogue is itself recast as incantation, while in the Laws the concept slides toward manipulative social suggestion — a tension fundamental to the psychology of ritual speech.

E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting

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In the same writings, we find another magical formula, a ‘method for bringing the beloved’: Inscribe with a bronze stylus on an unfired shard: Hecate, Hecate, three-formed one

Von Franz presents Hellenistic incantatory formulae as psychologically intelligible procedures for mobilising inner ordering principles, locating magical speech within a broader framework of psyche-matter correspondence.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting

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The scriptural legacy of the Thunder Rites seems derived from the Divine Incantation Scripture of the Cavernous Abyss… reworked by heavy Tantric overlays, with a more comprehensive religious vision.

Kohn documents the incantatory scriptures of Daoist Thunder Rites, showing how incantation functions as the textual and ritual core of an exorcistic tradition that absorbed successive cross-cultural overlays.

Kohn, Livia, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting

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the incantation of him, celebration of him, attempt to erect him from neglect is a principal aim of pornography

Hillman extends the concept of incantation into cultural poetics, reading pornography’s obsessive repetition as a quasi-ritual incantatory effort to restore the neglected god Priapos to psychic reality.

Hillman, James, Mythic Figures, 2007supporting

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For the adept in occultism, to know the mantra of any deity is to know how to set up psychic or gift-wave communication… with that deity.

Evans-Wentz frames the mantra — the Tibetan analog of incantation — as vibratory knowledge that grants operative power over specific psychic or spiritual entities, integrating the concept within an occultist theory of resonance.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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in India, the atharvan is endowed with magical powers. This conception finds expression in the collection of magical hymns called precisely the Atharva-Veda.

Benveniste’s linguistic analysis of the Indo-Iranian priest-figure links the Atharva-Veda’s magical hymns to an ancient priestly function that encompasses incantatory power alongside sacrificial duty.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside

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