Smoke

Smoke refers, on the one hand, to conditions that are obscured and confused to the daylight eye of physical perception and, on the other hand, to vaporized or psychized conditions, where the dead soul or image soul leaves the body's matter.

Hillman establishes smoke as the paradigmatic underworld substance — simultaneously an epistemological marker of obscured daylight consciousness and an ontological marker of the psychized, post-mortem soul departing matter.

Hillman, James, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979thesis

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From its mouth and snout it emitted smoke of a triple nature, the 'threefold ignorance, namely of good and evil, of true and false, of fitting and unfitting.' 'That is the smoke,' says Adam Scotus, 'which the prophet Ezekiel, in his vision of God, saw coming from the north.'

Jung, via the medieval commentator Adam Scotus, treats the dragon's smoke as a theological symbol of compound ignorance emanating from the demonic north, linking smoke to the shadow dimension of divine vision.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis

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those who in the village reverence sacrifice, merit, and alms-giving, pass into the smoke of the sacrificial fire and from the smoke into the night; from the night, into the latter fortnight of the month

Campbell documents the Upanishadic doctrine of the two cosmic paths, in which smoke marks the southern, lunar, reincarnatory road taken by the ritually meritorious dead, contrasted with the flaming solar road of the liberated.

Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting

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the spirit is firmly interlinked with it... it is a delicate construction of minute bodies, and made of much smaller primary particles than the flowing liquid of water or cloud or smoke — for it is far more mobile

Lucretius, transmitted through Long and Sedley, uses smoke as a reference point on the spectrum of material fineness to argue that spirit (anima) is of even subtler constitution, situating smoke within an ancient philosophical account of soul-substance.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting

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In anumāna, the fire itself is not actually seen, but its presence is inferred from something else that is perceived, smoke. The principle here is that there must always be an absolute and invariable relationship between the thing inferred, say, the fire, and the reason on which the inference is made, the presence of smoke.

Bryant's exposition of Patanjali presents the fire-smoke dyad as the classical Indian logical paradigm for valid inference (anumāna), grounding epistemological certainty in the invariable concomitance of phenomena.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting

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the demon of typhoid fever (tuphos, tuphomanie, tuphodes puretos), which is often associated with raving delirium, confused sensual dreams (nightmares), intoxication, and stupor, also seems to have been identified or confused with the nightmare demon Ephialtes. Clearly Typhos, which signifies smoke or fumes, must

Hillman and Roscher trace the etymology of Typhos — signifying smoke or fumes — to establish a mythological complex linking smoke-vapors with fever-delirium, nightmare, and the demonic disruption of consciousness.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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Beside the primary verb σμύχω, we find a noun in Arm. mux, gen. mxoy 'smoke'. In Celtic, OIr. much, MW mwg 'fire' may go back to IE *muk-. In Germanic, there is a primary verb with a diphthong and a root-final IE voiced stop, e.g. OE smeocan 'to smoke, fumigate'

Beekes reconstructs the Indo-European etymological family of 'smoke' across Greek, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic, revealing a root network linking smoldering, fumigation, and the volatilization of matter that underlies later symbolic usages.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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θυμιάω [v.] 'to produce smoke, fumigate' (IA). ←IE *dheuH- 'smoke'→

Beekes identifies the Greek verb for ritual fumigation as a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European root for smoke, establishing the linguistic bond between smoke, incense, and sacrificial practice.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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