Saturday, April 6, 2019

death and deepening





When the body is in the grave, dead and buried, or when there is a death of ego and its perspectives during one's lifetime, then a deeper spirit or soul can come to be.  A deepening of historical being occurs by way of an under-the-worldly point of view.  The descent into the underworld of souls (psychai, animae) is a descent into a soul-perspective or depth-perspective concerning history.  One might say that the descent into hell is actually the ascent of soul.  It brings a sense of soul into ascendancy in life, and it gives the human ego a perspective from a soulful point of view.  The descent is itself a resurrection.


In-fero means  "to carry inward," "to gather in."  Therefore... the descensus may be read as referring, not to some actual physical place, but rather to a "journey to the interior."  The descensus is ad inferos.  It is a "carrying inward."  Hell is a descensus, and encountering it is a "deepening." 


Tradition imagines the descent into hell as a descent into "darkness," or into a "hole," or into a "pit," or into "invisibility" (Hades' name means "invisible"), then no matter how a person may feel about such experiences of being in the "dark," in a "hole," in the "pits," or "invisible" to others, that person is encouraged to search such deep moments for their disclosures and expressions of profound "soul."





~ David Leroy Miller
from Hells and Holy Ghosts: 
A Theopoetics of Christian Belief



2 comments:

Mystic Meandering said...

"The descent itself is a resurrection"..."a journey into the interior"...

Indeed...

Reminds me of the movie - What Dreams May Come - with Robin Williams

Dean Keller said...

Yes, reminded me of the same. I've was particularly touched by the beauty of his journey to meet her in her own hell and his decision to stay there with her. Giving up all the wonders of his own heaven to be with her.