Stairs

“Stairs” are alleged to have a well-established sexual meaning: they represent the sexual act because of the rhythmic climbing… If I attach a symbolic value to the ascent of the stairs, I must also attach a symbolic value to the images called mother, sister, and baby.

Jung challenges the Freudian reduction of stairs to sexual symbolism by demonstrating that selective symbolic interpretation is logically incoherent, opening stairs to a more differentiated hermeneutic.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961thesis

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stairs, a variant of ascent by a tree, post, rope, and so forth… its original meaning implied the shaman’s ascending to heaven to ask the celestial God to put an end to the sickness.

Eliade establishes stairs as a cross-cultural shamanic instrument of celestial ascent, situating the symbol within a pan-Asian ritual complex of vertical cosmic transit.

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis

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we may cite an example that shows the existence of the ideology and ritual of celestial ascent by means of stairs.

Eliade traces the stair-ascent ideology into Thracian priestly ritual, extending the shamanic symbolism of stairs to encompass Indo-European religious traditions.

Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis

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These tales and traditions are like the stairs going down: by them the people have preserved a means of reconnecting to the unconscious, though the stairs have become hidden or invisible.

Von Franz employs stairs as a metaphor for the latent but preserved channels through which folk tradition maintains access to the unconscious, emphasizing their bidirectional and potentially occluded character.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis

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I go up the stairs… I usually go upstairs two or three steps at a time; and this was recognized in the dream itself as a wish-fulfilment: the ease with which I achieved this assured me as to the functioning of my heart.

Freud documents a personal dream in which stair-climbing serves as somatic wish-fulfillment, demonstrating the ease-of-ascent as a reassurance of cardiac vitality rather than purely sexual symbolism.

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900supporting

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I saw that it had very thick walls. We climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor… In the dream I suddenly saw that from the center a steep flight of stairs ascended to a spot high up on the wall.

Jung’s autobiographical dream locates stairs within a mandala-like architectural complex, where ascending stairs lead toward a sacred center, exemplifying the symbol’s function as vertical passage between psychic levels.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963supporting

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Before us rose an imposing belfroi, through whose gate a wide stone staircase was visible. We could just manage to see that it terminated above in a columned hall… I understood that this was the castle of the Grail.

In a castle-of-the-Grail dream, a stone staircase serves as the visible threshold between outer courtyard and the dimly illuminated, sacred interior, functioning as a liminal ascent toward numinous experience.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963supporting

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I thought of the conscious as of a room above, with the unconscious as a cellar underneath and then the earth wellspring, that is, the body, sending up the instincts.

Jung’s vertical architectural metaphor — conscious above, unconscious below — implies a staircase topology as the structural relation between psychic levels, providing the implicit spatial framework for stair symbolism.

Jung, C.G., Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, 1989supporting

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He also wanted to build a palace with lacquered stairs. A minister said, ‘That is an excellent idea. If the stairs are lacquered, enemies will stop invading.’ Because of this remark, that project was also given up.

In a Zen anecdote, lacquered stairs appear as a pretext for ministerial remonstrance against royal excess, illustrating the symbol’s appearance in an ethical-political rather than depth-psychological context.

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