Purgatory figures in the depth-psychology corpus not as a doctrinal fixture but as a living psychological symbol—a liminal state of purification through fire, trial, and progressive dissolution of egoic attachment. The term’s primary theoretical weight falls on two axes: the alchemical and the comparative-mythological. Edinger, drawing on Augustine and Origen, reads purgatorial fire as a projection of inner psychological torment, the calcination of carnal desires that constitute their own punishment, anticipating modern analytic accounts of suffering as self-generated. Campbell, working cross-culturally, makes the boldest structural claim: purgatory and reincarnation are homologous in function—both are post-mortem mechanisms for purging the ego of the attachments that prevent absorption into transcendence. This comparative move links Western eschatology to the Bardo Thodol’s intermediate state, which Evans-Wentz explicitly identifies as cognate with purgatorial lore, tracing Celtic and Christian purgatorial traditions to shared initiatory roots. Auerbach’s literary-historical analysis of Dante’s Purgatory adds another register: the penitents are organized according to Aristotelian-Thomist ethics, their suffering calibrated to the evil impulses requiring expiation. Jung references purgatory in passing but without elaboration. The tension across the corpus runs between the theological-eschatological reading and the psychological-symbolic one, with depth psychology consistently pressing toward the latter.
Reincarnation is the counterpart in the Orient of purgatory in the West. That is to say, it is a chance to live again, to live out the experiences that should have illuminated you.
Campbell makes the structural argument that purgatory and reincarnation are functionally equivalent post-mortem processes for purging ego-bound attachment and completing unfulfilled illumination.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
When you die, and are so bounded by your ego and its intentions and desires and fears that you can’t open to the transcendent revelation of the beatific vision which would annihilate egoism, then you have to be purged (purgatory) of your ego.
Campbell defines purgatory psychologically as the necessary purification of ego-fixation that prevents the soul from opening to transcendent vision, making it structurally parallel to the Buddhist Bardo.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
the fire of affliction shall burn such luxurious pleasures and earthly loves… and of this fire the fuel is bereavement, and all those calamities which consume these joys.
Edinger, citing Augustine on 1 Corinthians, grounds purgatorial fire in a scriptural doctrine of psychological calcinatio—the burning away of carnal attachments as the condition of salvation.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
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 or which existed before him.
Drawing on Origen, Edinger presents purgatorial fire as an internally generated psychological torment arising from harmful desires within the soul itself—a markedly depth-psychological interpretation.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
the penitents in Purgatory according to the evil impulses of which they must purify themselves.
Auerbach describes Dante’s moral architecture, in which Purgatory is organized by the graduated purification of evil impulses according to Aristotelian-Thomist ethics, situating it within the unified post-mortem order of the Comedy.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting
I have suggested how very probable it is that the purgatorial lore which centred about the cavern for mystic pagan initiations formerly existing on an island in Loch Derg, Irel
Evans-Wentz connects purgatorial doctrine to pre-Christian initiatory cave traditions, tracing the origin of Western purgatorial lore to pagan mystery ritual and aligning it comparatively with the Bardo states.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting
a gently purgatory has here superseded the usual Indian image of spiritual progress by reincarnation, and were the date of the doctrine not so early, one could suppose that a Christian influence might have come into play.
Campbell identifies a Buddhist devotional practice—prolonged gestation in a lotus bud—as functionally purgatorial, raising but ultimately resisting the hypothesis of direct Christian influence on the Indian tradition.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
we are now to experience a series of trials in the purgatorial center, the fifth stage. This is Vishuddha, where for a season of some fourteen days two series of seven visions each will be endured.
Campbell maps the Chonyid Bardo onto the Kundalini system, designating the fifth lotus stage (Vishuddha) as the ‘purgatorial center’ where the soul undergoes a systematic series of visionary trials.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
The vividly physical descriptions of Hell give way to the difficult, emotional climb up Mount Purgatory to the earthly paradise, where Beatrice upbraids him for seeing her physical being as an end in itself.
Armstrong reads Dante’s Purgatory as a progressive sublimation of the sensory and physical toward the symbolic and transcendent, culminating in the recognition that all earthly beauty points beyond itself.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
Purgatory (Limbo), lxvii, 34, 37, 39. — Origin of, 371.
Evans-Wentz’s index entry cataloguing purgatory and limbo alongside rebirth, Gnosticism, and Celtic traditions signals the text’s systematic comparative treatment of the concept across religious systems.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927aside
of purgatory, 26-27
Edinger’s index entry for the symbolism of purgatory locates its primary treatment within the chapter on calcinatio, confirming purgatorial fire as a subspecies of the alchemical operation of burning.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985aside
Purgatory, 182*2
Jung’s index reference to purgatory, appearing alongside putrefaction and purification, situates it within the alchemical symbolic matrix without extended elaboration.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954aside
Dante at the Gate of Hell and Foot of the Mountain of Purgatory. Illustration for the Divine Comedy
Campbell’s caption for a fifteenth-century illumination positions Purgatory iconographically as the threshold between infernal and paradisiacal realms in Dante’s cosmology.
, The Mythic Image, 1974aside