From Kathryn Holt, "The Archetype of Rebirth and C.G. Jung":

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“The pattern of rebirth is found in the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent and resurrection. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, descends to pay her condolences to her sister of the underworld, Ereshkigal, following the death of Ereshkigal’s husband. A summary is as follows according to Silvia Brinton Perera’s interpretation (1981):

'Inanna descends, making sacrifices of her vestments as she faces the seven gates of the underworld. Eventually Inanna is naked and surrenders, facing her sister.

Ereshkigal then completes Inanna’s sacrifice by murdering and hanging her on a meat hook. Yet Inanna has allies in the upper world who plead to the gods and goddesses for help in finding Inanna. Enki offers dirt from under his fingernails who become two beings, 'little mourners,' capable of slipping through the passages of the underworld carrying water and food of life. These beings enter the underworld and wail with Ereshkigal until she is satiated.

She then gives Inanna’s body to them and they restore her to life. When Inanna returns to the upper world, her husband and sister are sent in her wake to the underworld.'

Imagining into Inanna, a sense of ultimate sacrifice and transformation emerges. Sacrifices, in the form of her regalia and life, are made so that Inanna can be reborn as an initiated goddess. Psychologically, this disrobing can be imagined as de-potentiating the conscious personality—a surrender of what is familiar...

Perera (1981) described Inanna’s sacrifice which leads to her rebirth as a necessary 'return to the dark, unacceptable feminine goddess' in order to be 'reborn in an inner process and connected to the full range of feminine instinctual patterns' (p. 56).” (Holt).

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From Maria J. Pérez Cuervo, "A Coin for the Ferryman: Charon and the Journey to Hades":

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From Maria J. Pérez Cuervo, "A Coin for the Ferryman: Charon and the Journey to Hades":

“The coins had a purpose: to allow the dead to pay for their passage to the Otherworld. In Ancient Greece, this was the realm of Hades, separated from the land of the living by five rivers. It was a perilous journey, and there was only one guide to take the recently departed to their final destination. His name was Charon, he of the keen gaze…

Although the messenger-god Hermes escorted the dead to the river Acheron, once they reached it they were at the mercy of Charon’s moods. The unfortunate souls who didn’t have a coin (because their bodies hadn’t received a proper burial) were condemned to wander along the banks of the Cocytus, the river of lamentation, for all eternity…

they would then descend through underground corridors and cross three gates that replicated the ones in Hades and that took them to the dark chamber, the most secret place of all. It was here that the dead would come to speak, as shadows fluttering over the dimly-lit stone walls…

We know most of these details from totenpässe, the so-called passports of the dead, thin gold foil pieces found in the mouths of skeletons, inscribed with details to navigate the other realm.

The most important instructions from these totenpässe are those regarding Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. According to Ovid, it flowed through the cave of Hypnos, the god of sleep. Lethargic and groggy, the dead were asked to drink from its waters, but this would make them forget their earthly lives…

The myth of the ferryman, embodied in Charon’s oboli and totenpässe, reflects a universal constant: the belief that the journey to the Otherworld is a perilous adventure, so the presence of a psychopomp, even when he’s belligerent, bad tempered and unreliable, is crucial to the fate of our souls.” (Cuervo, 2016).