Within the depth-psychology corpus and its allied disciplines of comparative religion, classical studies, and ritual anthropology, 'procession' appears not merely as a liturgical form but as a structurally significant act through which communities renew their relationship to the sacred. The dominant interpretation, advanced most fully by von Franz, situates procession within a universal logic of renewal: by bringing the divine image out of its sequestered temple and into contact with the community, the rite dissolves the spiritual segregation that accumulates in the interval between festivals. Burkert, working from a rigorously ethological and anthropological vantage point, analyzes the sacrificial procession as a choreographed drama of consent and collective solidarity — a movement through marked sacred space that transforms participants into a temporary cultic body. Kerényi extends this into Dionysian phenomenology, showing how the ship-car procession that bore the god's statue into Athens operated as a mythicizing act, animating cult image into living deity. Harrison reads processional forms as social enactments of seasonal and cosmic sequences — visible rituals of world-renewal whose inner logic precedes their mythological interpretation. A theological counterpoint appears in John of Damascus, for whom 'procession' names the eternal emanation of the Holy Spirit from the Father — a metaphysical usage that shares with ritual procession the logic of derived power moving outward from a generative origin. The term thus stands at the intersection of rite, cosmology, and psychology, linking communal renewal, sacred transit, and ontological derivation.
In the library
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Processions are not an invention of the Catholic Church. There were already processions in the antique mystery cults, in the Egyptian religion and in many other religions all over the world. Generally they are connected with the idea of renewal and the aim of including all the people in the religious act.
Von Franz argues that procession is a universal, cross-cultural religious form whose essential psychological function is communal renewal and the integration of all participants into a shared sacred act.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
A blameless maiden at the front of the procession carries on her head the sacrificial basket in which the knife for sacrifice lies concealed beneath grains of barley or cakes... Once the procession has arrived at the sacred spot, a circle is marked out which includes the site of sacrifice, the animal, and the participants.
Burkert details the sacrificial procession as a precisely structured ritual sequence that moves from public space to consecrated ground, demarcating the sacred from the profane and constituting the community as a collective sacrificial body.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis
the Son alone is generate, for He was begotten of the Father's essence without beginning and without time. And only the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father's essence, not having been generated but simply proceeding. For this is the doctrine of Holy Scripture. But the nature of the generation and the procession is quite beyond comprehension.
John of Damascus employs 'procession' as a precise theological term for the Holy Spirit's eternal emanation from the Father, distinguishing it from generation and insisting that its inner nature exceeds rational comprehension.
John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016thesis
Nine days later, on the 12th Skirophorion, the Skira festival is celebrated with a curious procession... This is no normal pompe, but a leading away, an apopompe: the city goddess and the king of old, represented
Burkert distinguishes the apopompe — a processional leading-away — from ordinary festival pompe, showing how this specific Athenian ritual reverses the normal orientation of sacred procession to enact symbolic dissolution of civic order.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis
Processions with cult images are more the exception... Terror spreads when the otherwise unmoved image is moved. The image of Artemis of Pellene 'usually stands untouched in the temple, but when the priestess moves it and carries it out, no one looks on it, but all avert their gaze.'
Burkert demonstrates that processional movement of cult images is religiously anomalous and charged with numinous danger, revealing how procession makes the normally static divine presence dynamically present and threatening.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis
'Those who had spent their boyhood purely and blamelessly took up a sacred shield and thus led the procession: this was their honor.' Boyhood was over; it was time to bear arms. Thus, the festival procession marked an initiation.
Burkert reveals how the Argive festival procession functioned as an initiatory rite, publicly marking the transition from boyhood to warrior status through the ceremonial act of leading the sacred column.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
The procession of the Daphnephoria is to the sanctuary of Apollo Ismenios and Him-of-the-Hail. Our sequence of cults is uttered in visible ritual form with a clearness, an actuality, beyond anything we might have dared to hope.
Harrison reads the Daphnephoria procession as a ritual text that makes cosmological sequences — earth, moon, sun — visible and actual, encoding the year's structure in processional choreography.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
The ship places the arrival of the strange procession in the perspective of the sea... The wheels show that the journey to Athens was made over land, but the ship took on a ritual significance which the vase painters easily raised to the level of myth.
Kerényi shows how the Dionysian ship-car procession mythologized the god's transit, transforming a practical vehicle into a sacred emblem of divine advent that vase painters then elevated to the level of living myth.
Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting
Neither goats nor rams nor bulls joined in the procession, but, rather, ewes and cows. The proud horse was there as well, as no one who has seen the Parthenon frieze can ever forget, but not as a sacrificial animal.
Burkert demonstrates that the composition of the Panathenaic procession was ritually codified, with specific animals assigned symbolic rather than sacrificial roles, pointing to the procession's function as a structured symbolic statement about civic identity.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
They also led Dionysos from the hearth to the theater by torchlight and sent for the Dionysia a bull worthy of the god, which they sacrificed in the holy precinct when the procession entered it.
Kerényi cites epigraphic evidence for the torchlit Dionysian procession that escorted the god's statue from hearth to theater, where its arrival triggered the sacrificial rite, articulating procession as the threshold act of the festival.
Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting
The Komos or triumphal procession of the victor resembles the Ovation described by Lydus as a most venerable festival among the Romans... The consul, dressed in white and riding a white horse, led the procession up the Capitoline hill. Both the dress and the horse assimilated him to Jupiter.
Harrison draws a comparative line between Greek victory komos and Roman ovation, arguing that triumphal procession ritually assimilates the victor to the divine, enacting apotheosis through ceremonial form.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
Procession with a sacrificial animal, on an Attic skyphos... Procession led by a salpinx. Transcript of a painting on the same lekythos.
Kerényi's iconographic catalogue records processional scenes on Attic pottery, including salpinx-led formations and sacrificial-animal escorts, documenting the visual grammar through which ancient artists represented sacred procession.
Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting
cites an edict of 1365 from Crete which forbids the custom of taking the procession round by the main streets... but the same custom is described in Crete by Tournefort.
Alexiou notes Byzantine and early modern edicts restricting funeral processions through main streets, showing how ecclesiastical authority repeatedly attempted to regulate the processional expression of communal grief.
Alexiou, Margaret, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 1974aside
to sacrifice animals before the procession to the grave was a very ancient custom, and it seems as if Solon forebade this too.
Rohde documents Solon's legislative restriction on pre-funeral procession animal sacrifice, indicating that the processional ritual of death was politically regulated as well as religiously meaningful in archaic Athens.
Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894aside
This image would then be carried seven times around the temple, ever to the sound of hymns and the flute, until returned at last to the crypt.
Campbell describes a mystery-cult procession in which a sacred idol is carried sevenfold around the temple, illustrating how circular processional movement generates the ritual experience of sacred time and divine birth.
Magpies and parrots, peacocks and other birds flew to the fore of the procession and placed their wings tip to tip in an effort to halt the procession. Vultures and kites struck the King and the minister with their beaks.
Evans-Wentz records a Tibetan narrative in which all of nature protests a royal procession bearing away a sacred child, using the procession as a dramatic axis around which cosmic sympathy and resistance are organized.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954aside