Levitation occupies a revealing crossroads in the depth-psychological corpus: it appears simultaneously as a literal psychophysical claim advanced by yogic and shamanic traditions, a parapsychological datum to be catalogued rather than explained, and a symbolic expression of the psyche's upward aspiration. Eliade provides the most sustained treatment, situating levitation within the broader shamanic complex of magical flight and ascent — a cluster of experiences that encode the primordial myth of free communication between earth and sky. For Eliade, levitation is inseparable from the siddhi tradition and from Buddhist accounts of translocation, all pointing to an archaic grammar of transcendence. Bryant's commentary on the Yoga Sutras grounds it technically in the pranic physiology of udana and laghima, noting that Patanjali himself lists aerial movement among the accomplishments of advanced samyama, while also conceding that the Transcendental Meditation movement's contemporary promotion of 'yogic flying' represents a popularising distortion. Jung engages levitation primarily as an index entry — 'subjective levitation' and 'parapsychic levitation' appear in the indexes to the Practice of Psychotherapy volumes — suggesting he acknowledged the phenomenon's clinical and parapsychological reality without elaborating a systematic depth-psychological theory of it. Dodds locates levitation in the Hellenic theurgical tradition, connecting it to late-antique wonder-working. The term thus marks a persistent liminal zone where somatic experience, religious miracle, and psychological symbol converge.
levitation, of flight, of mystical journeys to the heavens, and so on — all these elements have a determinative function in shamanic vocations or consecrations.
Eliade identifies levitation as one of the constitutive, functionally determinative elements of the shamanic complex, tied to the myth of a primordial era of free sky-earth communication.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
Buddhist texts speak of four different magical powers of translation (gamana), the first being ability to fly like a bird. In his list of siddhis obtainable by yogins, Patañjali cites the power to fly through the air (laghima
Eliade draws an explicit convergence between Buddhist magical flight, Hindu siddhi doctrine, and shamanic ascent, showing levitation as a cross-traditional marker of initiated transcendence.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
The members of Transcendental Meditation, a yoga group that was especially prominent in popularizing meditation in the sixties, promote levitation as a skill that can be learned through the practice of their techniques.
Bryant situates levitation within ongoing contemporary debate about the Yoga Sutras' siddhi tradition, noting its popularisation by the TM movement as an instance of contested contemporary application.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009thesis
sorts of strange phenomena occur: levitation of objects, the tent shaking, rain of stones and bits of wood, and so on.
Eliade reports levitation of objects as among the parapsychological phenomena routinely documented at shamanic séances, treated as an empirical feature of the ritual context rather than mere legend.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
parapsychology, 124; parapsychic levitation, 266
Jung's index entry associates levitation directly with parapsychology, signalling his acknowledgement of the phenomenon as a real parapsychic datum within the clinical literature he surveyed.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
levitation, subjective, 266
Jung qualifies levitation as 'subjective' in his index taxonomy, indicating his tendency to reframe the phenomenon psychologically while still registering it as a distinct clinical and parapsychological category.
, Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954supporting
ladder in, 489; levitation in, 481f; temptations of saints in, 377; see also saints
Eliade's index places Christian levitation alongside hagiographic temptation narratives, confirming his comparative project of mapping the phenomenon across religious traditions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
magical, 5, 121, 136, 138f, 140f, 154, 160, 239n, 245, 289, 400, 405, 408f, 477ff, et passim; power of, 56, 57, 126; spiritual, 479; see also ascension; levitation
Eliade's index cross-references levitation under flight — both magical and spiritual — demonstrating its systematic position within his broader taxonomy of ecstatic and ascensional techniques.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
levitation 298, 310 (124)
Dodds catalogues levitation within the Hellenic and theurgical material he examines, placing it alongside séance phenomena and wonder-working in the late-antique religious milieu.
, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951supporting
Vijnānabhiksu additionally understands the jvalanam of this sūtra as referring to the ability to self-combust. He mentions the story of Satī, the wife of Lord Śiva, as an example of someone manipulating the udāna-prāṇa in order to cast off her body by self-combustion.
Bryant's commentary on udana-prana situates bodily transcendence of gravitational and material limitation — including phenomena adjacent to levitation — within the pranic physiology that classical Yoga theory deploys to explain the siddhis.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting
The earth does not obstruct the yogī by its quality of solidness, such that the yogī can enter even a stone. Water, though moist, does not wet the yogī.
Vyasa's enumeration of the body's freedom from elemental obstruction — earth, water, fire, wind — provides the classical yogic theoretical framework within which levitation is understood as transcendence of material density.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting
he rose into the air, cut his body to pieces, let his head and limbs fall to the ground, then joined them together again before the amazed eyes of the spectators.
Eliade presents the Buddha's inaugural aerial miracle at Kapilavastu as the paradigmatic Indian instance of magical ascent and bodily transcendence, linking it directly to fakir traditions and shamanic dismemberment-and-reconstitution.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
The whole body feels light and would like to fly. This is the state of which it is said: Clouds fill the thousand mountains.
The Secret of the Golden Flower describes an interior state of luminosity and weightlessness — phenomenologically proximate to levitation — as a sign of advanced meditative union of opposing energies.
, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, 1931aside
Ascent and descent, above and below, up and down, represent an emotional realization of opposites, and this realization gradually leads, or should lead, to their equilibrium.
Edinger, citing Jung on circulatio, frames vertical movement — including ascent — as a symbolic expression of the tension and resolution of psychic opposites, providing the depth-psychological hermeneutic through which literal levitation claims are typically re-read.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985aside