The term ‘pillar’ in the depth-psychology corpus carries a remarkable density of symbolic registers, functioning simultaneously as cosmological axis, architectural microcosm, sacrificial locus, eschatological image, and psychic symbol of erect life overcoming death. Eliade is the dominant voice, anchoring the pillar as axis mundi — the cosmic support that orients sacred space, opens celestial passage, and is replicated in the central post of shamanic dwellings across Arctic, North American, and Central Asian cultures. His work in both Shamanism and The Sacred and the Profane establishes the pillar’s structural role: it is the point where heaven and earth communicate, the place of prayer and sacrifice. Edinger extends this into analytical psychology, reading the vertical pole as phallic spirit-striving and the Djed column of Osiris as triumph of life over inertia. Neumann, treating the djed pillar, situates it within the symbolism of Osiris as sun-generating principle and the matriarchal-patriarchal transition in Egyptian religion. Campbell traces the pillar into comparative iconography — the Djed-pillar’s eyes, the Buddhist stupa — as world-mountain symbols mediating between temporal and eternal orders. Alexiou reveals the pillar’s metaphorical register in Greek lament: the dead man mourned as ‘sturdy pillar of a lofty roof.’ Across these readings, tensions emerge between the pillar as cosmological given and as psychological achievement, between its architectural literalism and its role as individuation symbol.
The central pillar is a characteristic element in the dwellings of the primitive peoples of the Arctic and North America… Sacrifice and prayer are conducted at the foot of the pillar, for it opens the road to the celestial Supreme Being.
Eliade establishes the central pillar as the definitive axis mundi of archaic domestic space, the site where cosmological communication with the divine is made structurally available.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
In simplest terms it represents the phallic, striving, vertical thrust towards the upper spirit realm. It may signify the axis mundi which is the connection between the human world and the trans-personal divine world.
Edinger reads the pole or pillar as a dual psychic symbol: the phallic upward striving of ego-spirit and the axis mundi bridging human and transpersonal dimensions.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972thesis
The sacred pole of the Achilpa supports their world and ensures communication with the sky. Here we have the prototype of a cosmological image that has been very widely disseminated — the cosmic pillars that support heaven and at the same time open the road to the world of the gods.
Eliade identifies the sacred pole as the prototype of cosmic pillars universally conceived as world-supports that also serve as celestial thoroughfares.
, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957thesis
To both corresponds the djed pillar of Osiris, from which the sun, as Ra and soul, rises up in the morning. For Osiris is also a tree god and a god contained in a tree.
Neumann identifies the djed pillar as the sun-generating masculine principle equivalent to the Great Tree Goddess, linking it to the solar rebirth symbolism of Osirian religion.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955thesis
As the eyes of Osiris, looking from the Djed-pillar, tell of an eternal life not quenched by apparent death, so too the eyes of Buddha-consciousness, here gazing from this famous Buddhist stupa in Nepal.
Campbell reads the Djed-pillar’s eyes as a universal symbol of eternal consciousness persisting through death, homologous to the Buddha’s gaze from the stupa as world-mountain.
, The Mythic Image, 1974thesis
The tree is a fiery pillar as seen from below, a solar pillar as seen from above, and a pneumatic pillar throughout; it is a tree of light. The reference to the motif of the pillar is significant.
Jung, citing Coomaraswamy, identifies the alchemical tree with the pillar across three registers — fiery, solar, and pneumatic — establishing its equivalence as a unifying symbol of vertical cosmic energy.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
The earliest Osiris symbol is the djed, and his earliest place of worship, Dedu, the old Busiris on the Nile delta. The interpretation of the djed pillar has remained a puzzle to this day.
Neumann situates the djed pillar as the primal symbol of Osirian religion, acknowledging its interpretive opacity while connecting it to the matriarchal-patriarchal transition in Egyptian consciousness.
, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
The first man and the perfect final man manifest in this statue-pillar and then all of the gathered light that has been brought together from the earth streams out of this statue-pillar into the heavens where it came from.
Edinger reads the Manichaean statue-pillar as an eschatological individuation symbol — the culminating opus gathering scattered light and returning it to its divine source, parallel to the alchemical lapis.
, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995supporting
The pillar that originally served as the offering place for the celestial god Num becomes, among the Yurak-Samoyed, a sacred object to which blood sacrifices are offered.
Eliade documents the historical degradation and ritual substitution by which the cosmic pillar as celestial offering-place becomes a sacred idol, tracing religious transformation through the pillar motif.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
pillar/Pillar(s): central, of dwelling, 262f; Golden/Iron/Solar, 261; World, 122n, 261 ff, see also Axis; Center of World
Eliade’s own index entry for the pillar maps its variant forms — central domestic, golden, solar, world — as aspects of a single cosmological motif aligned with axis and world-center.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
Clytemnestra greets Agamemnon, with grim irony, as ‘the sturdy pillar of a lofty roof, a father’s only child.’ The image is traditional.
Alexiou identifies the pillar as a traditional Greek metaphor in lament and tragedy for the deceased as irreplaceable structural support of the household, linking architectural and social symbolism.
, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 1974supporting
Pillar) of the Romanians (see A. Rosetti, Colindele Ro-manilor, pp. 70 ff.). The idea is common to the Ugrian and Turko-Mongol peoples.
Eliade notes the cross-cultural distribution of the sacred pillar concept from Romanian folk tradition to Ugrian and Turko-Mongol peoples, situating it within his comparative cosmological project.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside
Within the circular enclosures, archaeologists uncovered imposing T-shaped pillars, some towering at an impressive 16 feet and weighing up to 10 tons.
This passage describes the monumental T-shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe as evidence of advanced archaic cosmological and communal organization, situating them as physical artifacts of sacred space.
, Woman’s Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, 1955aside
spiritual treatment: the ‘fifth pillar’ 291, 292, 299, 307
Alexander employs ‘pillar’ in a secular therapeutic context — the ‘fifth pillar’ of spiritual treatment for addiction — entirely detached from its mythological resonances.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008aside