Shadow Work As Seance

On haunting dreams and communing with the unconscious

The Ghost of Clytemnestra Awakening the Furies by John Downman

“Even spirits appear to be psychic phenomena whose origins lie in the unconscious.”

— C.G. Jung, in the foreword to Psychology and Spiritualism

Dream journal notes:

I am in my bedroom, in the home where I grew up. I open the closet door and my red Les Paul comes flying at me. The guitar is haunted, I can sense the spiritual force that possesses it. I manage to get it back in the closet, then tell my mother what is happening. I open the door once more and show her. No matter how I move or where I turn, the guitar hurdles at me, following my every move. I sense that I need to perform some sort of spell, like a banishing.

I had this dream just a few days ago. It features some common elements typical of my symbolic landscape like my childhood home, mothering figures and an inclination towards casting magic¹. Yet there was something about the essence of the dream, both the feel and the imagery, that caught my attention.

Breaking down the components of the dream:

• Childhood home: Houses in dreams are typically linked to the psyche, the indwelling structures and dynamics that we are held within at any given point in our lives. I often dream of the house I grew up in when I am cast back in time to those developmental periods.

• Les Paul guitar: As a musician, I have only had two main guitars that I have played with. The first, my red Les Paul from around the ages of 21 - 26, and then a Stratocaster from 26 to present day. As a tool to channel creative inspiration, the guitar has always carried symbolic significance for me as a container of soul. It is a part of my being that can be expressed through sound, melody and rhythm. Upon reflection, I felt that the guitar’s presence was tasking me to focus on the era of life that I played it, my mid-twenties.

• Mother: In the last four years, mothering figures have been prevalent in my dreamscape². Although the image of my mother is shown in the dream, I have a sense that the archetypal level of mothering is being activated, and that the possession of my soul image is directly linked to interacting with the framework and pattern of The Mother.

• Possession/haunting: A telltale sign that we have entered into the shadow’s domain are dreams with a haunting quality — whether being stalked, entering into a spooky environment, interacting with ghosts, demons or wandering spirits. The guitar is animated with a disconcerting spiritual essence, something that makes me fearful and urges the dream-ego to banish it away (a typical reaction ego has to the unconscious).

• Ego’s perspective/closing of the dream: A simple, direct, and literal interpretation of the dream would see me taking up the dream ego’s task: to cast a banishing spell on the shadow possessed guitar. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel wary about this approach. As I journaled on the dream, something much more subtle seemed to whisper, “There is more here than meets the eye.”

The dream-ego (the p.o.v. or representation of oneself in a dream) is not always a reliable character. After all, being thrust into the underworld of the psyche each night is at minimum disorienting and at its worst, completely terrifying.

To habitual consciousness, the shadow is always something to be denied or suppressed. It feels incongruent with our sense of identity, what we claim as “I”. Even in dreams, the ego’s resistance to the unconscious can be tracked. At the same time, the perspective shown tells us something interesting: an element of shadow is rising higher into awareness and needs to be acknowledged.

To push back against the dream-ego’s conclusion, I decided to go in the other direction. Rather than banish, I wished to commune with this part of the shadow. The possessed guitar’s movements signaled to me that this essence would follow like a dark cloud no matter where I went, no matter the maneuvers I tried to make.

Inspired by the magical undertone, I decided I would try an active imagination where I re-enter the dream space and perform a seance for this lost part of my being. By facing it straight on, I wished to communicate and know more about this splintered (and likely neglected) aspect of myself. And perhaps, if lucky, get some clues to foster reconciliation.

Communing with the Unconscious

The Fairy Dance by Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach

“The much discussed question of whether the “manifestations” in seances represent unconscious complexes belonging to the participants or are “real spirits” becomes, from this point of view, irrelevant; they simply represent autonomous complexes that can belong either to the living or to the dead.”

— Marie Louise von Franz, Number and Time

The idea of shadow work as seance sees the unconscious contents as parts of oneself that have sunken into the underworld, requiring focused spiritual outreach that establishes a bridge beyond the veil. The lingering spirits and ghostly presences are sparks of our essence that have symbolically died, that is, been split off from conscious awareness and left in the graveyard of the psyche. They hang in psychological limbo, and if enough unresolved energy remains, it grows in strength and intensity, eventually showing up in dreams, somatic symptoms, behavior patterns, etc.

Per the quotes from both Jung and von Franz above, we can view these elements within a psychological framing. Whether dreaming or awake, when we have the experience of meeting a spirit, we are encountering phenomena whose roots begin in the unconscious, and mysteriously seem to border the realms of both psyche and matter.

With this in mind, I began my active imagination by bringing up the dream images once more in an inwardly imaginal space. I found myself in my old bedroom, established a protective circle, and put the guitar in the center of it. “Who possesses this guitar?”, I inquired. A sort of apparition appeared, a version of myself, maybe 23 years old, playing on the instrument.

“Your life is changing, you’re moving on, and I’m still here, singing my sad song,” she said to me in a soft and longing melodic cadence. “I will follow you, in the darkness by your side, whether you know it or not, in the shadow, in the light.”

There was such emotional resonance as the inner experience played out. Her feelings, my feelings, rang through with a clarity I was surprised by. Was there something deeply unresolved from this time of my life? Had I been ignoring her in favor of other, more pressing demands?

I sat with her for a time, felt her presence, acknowledged her experience, welcomed her as best I could. It was not a banishing that this part needed, not to be pushed further away and denied. She longed for her song to be heard, for a place at my side as I continued to evolve. It brought up several points for further contemplation:

• What experience from this time of my life feels most difficult to own and integrate?

• How can I move my inner work focus from being centered on the child parts to including this older version?

• What relationship does this have to the archetypal framework of The Mother that I have been tending to for years now?

Comparing the dream to the active imagination, I was struck by the difference in tone. In the dreamscape where I wish to banish her and the instrument of communication, there is fear and antagonism. In the active imagination where I am receptive, she is gentle and shares with openness.

To me, this demonstrates how different attitudes towards the unconscious can result in different experiences of it. When we are at war against ourselves, we unknowingly create a hostile atmosphere. When we attempt to bridge and relate, we see new paths for understanding.

The dream and active imagination have marked a new chapter of self-development for me. Without curiosity to understand the dream images further, I may well have brushed it off as another strange nightly occurrence. Instead, I feel there is a rich current of inner contents for me to explore and learn more about. One that clearly has an important role to play as I enter into the next stage of my life.

Join the conversation

Have you had a dream with haunting qualities to it? How did you interpret it? In what ways do you try to commune with the unconscious and its manifestations?

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1. Another dream example of this is recounted in my post Casting Magic Circles, which explores establishing protective containers for inner work.

2. Further context is explored in my post The Archetypal Ground on the presence of the mother archetype in my life.