Hades was of course the God of depths, the God of invisi-bles. He is himself invisible, which could imply that the invisi- ble connection is Hades, and that the essential "what" that holds things in their form is the secret of their death. And if. as Heraclitus said. Nature loves to hide, then nature loves Hades. Hades is said to have had no temples or altars in the upperworld6 and his confrontation with it is experienced as a violence, a violation (Persephone's rape; the assaults on simple vegetative nymphs. Leuce and Minthe: 6a and Iliad 28 THE DREAM AND THE UNDERWORLD 5, 395 or Pindar Ol 9, 33). He is so invisible in fact that the entire collection of Greek antique art shows no ideal portrait of Hades, such as we are familiar with of other Gods.7 He had no representative attributes, except an eagle, 8 which brings out his shadowy affiliation with his brother, Zeus. He leaves no trace on earth, for no clan descends from him, no generations. 9 Hades' name was rarely used. At times he was referred to as "the unseen one," more often as Pluto ("wealth," "riches") or as Trophonios ("nourishing"). These disguises of Hades have been taken by some interpreters to be covering euphemisms for the fear of death, but then why this particular euphemism and not some other? Perhaps Pluto is a descrip-tion of Hades, much as Plato understood this God. Then, Pluto refers to the hidden wealth or the riches of the invisible. Hence, we can understand one reason why there was no cult and no sacrifice to him-Hades was the wealthy one, the giver of nourishment to the soul. Sometimes, he was fused with Thanatos ("Death") 10 of whom Aeschylus wrote, "Death is the only God who loves not gifts and cares not for sacrifices or libation, who has no altars and receives no hymns ..." (frg. Niobe). On vase paintings when Hades is shown, he may have his face averted, 11 as if he were not even characterized by a specific physiognomy. All this 'nega-tive' evidence does coalesce to form a definite image of a void, an interiority or depth that is unknown but nameable, there and felt even if not seen. Hades is not an absence, but a hidden presence-even an invisible fullness.
— James Hillman
Hades has no altars because he requires nothing from you. Every other God in the Greek imaginal economy ran on exchange — sacrifice, petition, votive offering, the whole economy of *do ut des*. You gave so that the God would give back. Hades refuses the transaction entirely. Aeschylus hears this as terrifying: the God who accepts no gifts is the God you cannot placate, cannot negotiate with, cannot bribe into a better mood. But Hillman hears something else underneath the terror — that the refusal of sacrifice is also the refusal of the logic that sacrifice runs on, which is the logic that says *if I give enough, I will not have to go there.*
The richness hidden in that name, Pluto, is precisely what cannot be acquired by offering. The wealth of the invisible accumulates on its own terms, by its own timing, and it reaches the soul only when the upperworld strategies have been exhausted. This is why depth work cannot be scheduled. You do not petition your way into the underworld and you do not barter your way back out. The dreams that carry genuine underworld weight tend to arrive when the surface-world economics have stopped working — when the devotions to other Gods have run their course and something goes quiet and turns its face away, exactly as Hades does on the vases, present but without a legible countenance.
James Hillman·The Dream and the Underworld·1979