Salome appears in the depth-psychology corpus primarily through Jung’s own foundational encounter with her as an autonomous figure of the unconscious, documented most extensively in The Red Book: Liber Novus and corroborated in the 1925 Analytical Psychology seminar and Memories, Dreams, Reflections. She emerges in Jung’s active imagination as the beautiful but blind companion of the prophet Elijah—a pairing Jung interprets as the archetypal polarities of Logos and Eros, forethought and desire, wisdom and pleasure. Her blindness signifies the absence of rational foresight in the erotic-feeling principle she embodies; her association with John the Baptist’s execution marks her as an agent of dangerous, instinct-driven femininity that the ego-consciousness must confront rather than flee. Commentators including Beebe, Stein, and Edinger emphasize that Jung’s eventual acceptance of Salome—his overcoming of moral repugnance toward her—constitutes a pivotal movement in his individuation and in his attempt to reform Christianity by restoring the body, the feminine, and the pagan to its purview. The figure thus carries multiple valences simultaneously: she is soul-image, temptress, anima in its negative and positive aspects, and a cipher for the integration of Eros into a Logos-dominated consciousness. Tension between Salome as seductive threat and Salome as necessary counterpart to prophetic wisdom remains the central unresolved polarity the corpus circles around.
she was Salome. I said to myself that there was a queer mixture: Salome and Elijah, but Elijah assured me that he and Salome had been together since eternity. This also upset me.
Jung reports his first active-imagination encounter with Salome, establishing her as the eternal Eros-companion to Elijah’s Logos and registering his initial disquiet at their inseparable pairing.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros.
Jung’s theoretical gloss on the Elijah–Salome dyad identifies them as archetypal personifications of the Logos–Eros polarity that structures the psyche’s foundational opposites.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
A figure like the prophet, which is clear and complete in itself, arouses less curiosity than the unexpected form of blind Salome, which is why one may expect that the formative process will first address the problem of Eros.
Jung’s commentary argues that Salome’s blindness and her association with Eros make her the primary psychic problem the active-imagination process must work through before genuine understanding can emerge.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
By overcoming his disdainful, moral repugnance toward Salome and taking her seriously, he begins to meet his obligation to the Christians of the past to include the body and the feminine and perhaps even the inevitability of evil.
Beebe argues that Jung’s acceptance of Salome is not merely a personal psychological achievement but a conscientious reformation of Christianity to encompass embodiment, the feminine, and the shadow.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017thesis
you are Salome, a tiger, your hands are stained with the blood of the holy one. How should I love you?
Jung’s ego-figure confronts Salome with her murderous Biblical identity, dramatizing the moral horror that must be worked through before the Eros principle can be consciously integrated.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it.
Jung acknowledges an unexpected erotic attachment to Salome, framing her as the feeling-dimension suppressed by the thinker’s one-sidedness and now irrupting from the unconscious.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
Near the steep slope of a rock I caught sight of two figures, an old man with a white beard and a beautiful Jung girl. I summoned up my courage and approached them as though they were real people.
In his autobiography Jung recounts the visionary descent in which Salome first appeared alongside Elijah, emphasizing his deliberate decision to treat these inner figures as having independent reality.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
he broke through and came upon a group of figures: an old man who named himself Elijah, a blind Jung woman companion named Salome, and a black snake.
Stein summarizes Jung’s first active-imagination breakthrough, identifying Salome, Elijah, and the serpent as the triad of autonomous figures that initiated Jung’s sustained encounter with the unconscious.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
I thought that Salome loves me because I resemble John or you. This thought seemed unbelievable to me… she loves her badness in my badness. This thought was devastating.
Jung explores the transference-like dynamic between himself and Salome, linking her desire to the complex of John the Baptist and confronting the shadow dimension she projects onto him.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
My pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did not love Salome. This gave my thought the coldness of stone.
A draft passage reveals the psychological cost of rejecting Salome: the failure to love the Eros figure petrifies feeling and endows abstract thought with a sterile rigidity.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Salome, my pleasure, moves to the left, the side of the impure and bad… Elijah calls Salome back. If pleasure is united with forethinking, the serpent lies before them.
Jung’s draft commentary maps Salome’s movement toward impurity as desire unmediated by forethought, while Elijah’s recall of her models the necessary union of Eros and Logos.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
First she divided herself into a serpent and a bird, then into a father and mother, and then into Elijah and Salome—How are you, my good fellow?
Jung describes the soul’s self-differentiation into opposing principles, with the Elijah–Salome pair representing the final and most personalized expression of the soul’s inner polarization.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
Sal: ‘If you don’t want to accept me, then surely I cannot accept you?’ … I: ‘I lack the strength to hoist another fate onto my shoulders. I have enough to carry.’
The dialogue between Jung’s ego and Salome stages the tension between the demand of the Eros principle for acceptance and the ego’s resistance, framed in terms of the burden of relationship.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
‘You’re not forcing your feeling into the background at all; rather it suits you much better not to agonize further over Salome.’ I: ‘If you’re speaking the truth, it’s quite bad. Is that why Salome is still crying?’
The serpent challenges Jung’s self-deception about suppressing feeling, revealing that Salome’s continued grief signals an unresolved obligation toward the Eros dimension.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009supporting
The great wise man… plays an important role in man’s psychology… The serpent is the animal, but the magical animal… It is hidden and therefore dangerous.
Jung’s seminar discussion of the wise-old-man and serpent archetypes provides the theoretical context within which Salome, the accompanying feminine figure, takes her psychological meaning.
, Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, 1989supporting
Elijah climbs down from the stone, his form becomes smaller in descending, and finally becomes dwarflike, unlike himself.
The transformation of Elijah into Mime within the same visionary sequence contextualizes Salome’s companion figure as a shape-shifting principle of wisdom, indirectly illuminating the fluid archetypal world she inhabits.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside