Freddie Taborda | Jungian Analysis for the Living and for the Dead: Lessons from the Jaguar-Man in a Tomb

In a previous article that I wrote (“What The Death May Teach The Living About the Individuation Process”), I stated the hypothesis that archetypal images, carved on stone statues by an aboriginal group and located on a necropolis, could provide psychological guidance for the journey of life, death, and rebirth, specifically for the journey of the afterlife. It seems that each person and his/her spirit may have to go through the journey of living, dying, and rebirth. Therefore, the individual spirit of a human being may go through three phases; a) the living (“incarnated spirit”); b) the Death (“spirit”), and c) the Rebirth (“reincarnated spirit”) (Credit for the Image: UNESCO-Sacred Sites-Martin Gray).

You may be skeptical and question the relevance of talking about death and the afterlife when we are still alive and want to fulfill our individuation process. That is a reasonable point of view. However, I would like to invite the reader to consider the following two issues: 1) that there are certain archetypal images, while we are alive, that appear in dreams, visions, paintings, sculptures, etc that will be, also, essential and relevant, after we die, during the journey to the afterlife. If we could determine what similar archetypal images are crucially relevant for both, the cycle of living and for the afterlife, then, each of us will have not only a much larger “vision and mission” about life and death but, also, less karma that would decrease the necessity to reincarnate. Those archetypally relevant (images), if related consciously during living, would contribute, first, towards enlightment, second towards decreasing the individual karma that forces reincarnation and, third, following Jung’s thought about the afterlife, the spirit of a person who has died and who did not fulfilled, on earth, the Destiny (the archetypal endowments) that was given to him/her, will be forced, after death, to continue atempting to relate and integrate those archetypal images that were not realized during the living phase. Unfortunately, and according to Jung, the ‘dead’ or the ‘spirits of the dead’ will not be able to integrate the archetypal messages because the opposite -being humanly alive- is not available to them for consciousness to be realized. This article will attempt to further discuss these ideas within the context of the statue of the Jaguar-Man that is located at the entrance of a tomb in a necropolis in San Agustin, Colombia.

     The journey is not just about life; it is also about death, the afterlife, and possibly about the beyond (i.e., Rebirth). Therefore, the sculpture to be discussed in this article may provide important archetypal information for the living during the phase of living and dying; 2) that the dead, or the world of the spirits, as it is known in indigenous cultures, may provide valuable existential and psychological information to the living.

  Jungian analysis has focused its efforts on the phase of living; however, Jung’s thoughts on the subtle body and the Philosopher’s Stone may enlarge the scope of Jungian analysis that includes, also, the phase of death, and rebirth. Therefore, rather than exclusively focusing and emphasizing the process of individuation during the phase of “living” life, Jungian analysis, with its emphasis on the collective unconscious and God Within, could broaden and facilitate the analytical process for the individual to go not only through the phase of life (the individuation process) but, also, to prepare AND continue for and during the phases of death, the afterlife, and the beyond, which may include resurrection, rebirth, and reincarnation.