Theory of the Underworld
If, as Lucretius argues in what is now known as the law of conservation, that nothing comes from nothing, and everything must go somewhere, then why would we not assume that just as the body is recycled so too is the mind? This speculative realm to which the mind returns, as the body returns to the earth, has been known to us from time immemorial, found variously across diverse traditions: the bardo realm, hades, sheol, the land of the dead, the spirit realm, the underworld, and, most vividly in the recent explorations of psychedelia, DMT space. The “golden bough,” by which Aeneas gains entrance to the underworld, is clearly a tryptamine; plant wisdom can guide us into the furthest reaches of psyche and spirit, even prior to death. The “space” of this underworld can be defined as non-human, non-organic, subterranean and not-particularly-nice; the very bottom of natura naturans—what lies dreaming in rocks; a way-station of all psyche, a pool where every consciousness returns and from which all consciousness is born. It is a magic realm that pervades the real at every point; the very real of consciousness. As Freud argues in The Theme of the Three Caskets (1913), the immutable law of death and the circuitous pathways of eros are one and the same. The navel of Freud’s dream, the deepest regions of psyche, resides in our mother the earth, to which we are all returning.
The Golden Bough, 1834, JMW Turner