2. The Passing of the Grey Company
Aragorn informs his friends Legolas and Gimli that King Théoden will ride to Minas Tirith to aid Gondor. When Gimli asks Aragorn where he himself will go, he replies, “It is dark before me. I must go down also to Minas Tirith, but I do not yet see the road.” From a rational perspective, it is again difficult to understand what is happening. Why is Aragorn’s road obscure if he is to go to Minas Tirith like the others? Is it not clear that he should ride with Théoden and Éomer?
We surmise that the author has received an intuitive impulse that Aragorn has something he must accomplish before arriving at Minas Tirith and manifesting the return of the king; but what exactly remains unclear even to him—he cannot yet discern Aragorn’s path. From this, we can infer that something “irrational” and surprising will occur; that an irrational idea has emerged and will soon be realized.[1]
A first ripple of this is the unexpected arrival of a silent, grey-clad band of rangers from the outlands—Dúnedain from the north, Aragorn’s men. Elrond’s two sons ride with them. They bear a cryptic message from their father to Aragorn: “If thou art in haste, remember the Paths of the Dead.” Even having read the entire trilogy, it is not entirely clear, from a rational perspective, why Elrond sends this message. (As far as we can see, the Paths of the Dead are not a shortcut to Minas Tirith.) But in relation to what is to come, it is consistent that the Father points Aragorn toward this particular path.[2] The Father directs Aragorn to take the Paths of the Dead, much as the father figure Tom Bombadil directed Frodo toward the Barrow-downs. Intuition seems to suggest that Aragorn needs to be initiated before arriving at the king’s city. Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf are undoubtedly the saga’s three central figures, each requiring a rite of passage to fulfill their destiny.
The Dúnadan Halbarad brings a banner to Aragorn, woven by Arwen ”in secret” over a long time. (We discussed the feminine act of weaving with Galadriel.) The banner is thus veiled and rolled up. Aragorn instructs Halbarad to continue carrying it. When it is later unfurled on the Paths of the Dead and revealed to the reader, its motif cannot be discerned…! It is only after the rite of passage that the banner may be unveiled, for it belongs to the Aragorn he will become, not the one he was or still is. Thus, he does not even accept the rolled-up banner that Halbarad is to deliver.
The grey company from the north is silent and grim. Their only distinguishing feature is a star-shaped cloak clasp. (We have discussed the relationship between the star and Aragorn.) When the time comes to leave Helm’s Deep and Rohan’s riders have mounted, the grey company stands somewhat apart. This impersonal, anonymous, and silent group—that is, vague, indistinct, and mysterious—does not quite engage with others, foreshadowing what is to come. They belong to the ancestors and appear as a personified mist between the world of the living and the dead, accompanying Aragorn in his transition from one domain to the other.
With this understanding, these mysterious riders play a significant symbolic role. This is likely why the chapter is named after them, even though, as a group, they do virtually nothing—they are simply silent and mysterious.
Their self-appointed task has been to guard the borders of the Shire, unbeknownst to the hobbits. It is not entirely clear why the Dúnedain maintained this humble ambition for centuries, though it can be rationalized in various ways. But thanks to this, the hobbits could live in peace for ages—neither orcs nor other monsters ravaged their fertile land (except for a wolf invasion from the Old Forest, notably). The Good Mother’s Shire thus lies under the protection of the Grey Company, Dúnedain led by Aragorn—the motherless wanderer with a broken blade. His connection to the Good Mother has been made evident. But with the adventure of the Ring, the ambition to break the bond or symbiosis with the Mother, the Terrible Mother reacts with impulses to halt the project. She sends her Black Riders to paralyze Frodo, to extinguish this rebellious consciousness in the making. Like the Black Riders, who are wraiths, we now see that the Grey Company belongs to the same liminal realm. In this form, so to speak, they join Aragorn now, as he approaches his descent into the underworld.
But while the Grey Company, which seems to belong to ancient times and bears ghostly traits in its indistinctness and silence, does nothing, its leader Halbarad does interact with Aragorn. They sit up talking all night, it is said. The next day, Aragorn announces that he will take the road to Minas Tirith via the Paths of the Dead.
The announcement is met with general dismay among the people of Rohan. But Théoden says, “You follow your own will, Lord Aragorn. Perhaps it is your fate to tread the paths no others dare to walk.”
Here, we can discern a literary ambivalence. While Tolkien surely felt that the Paths of the Dead is the route Aragorn must take—let us say that the character gravitated toward the archetype of initiation—there must also be a rational reason for Aragorn to choose such an otherwise irrational path, now that his time has finally come and he is urgently needed in Minas Tirith.
The answer lies in the palantír. Aragorn reveals to Legolas and Gimli that he has looked into the black stone. He showed both himself and Isildur’s sword to the Dark Lord, which he believes shook Sauron to his core; for the latter did not know until then that Isildur’s heir and sword were part of the War of the Ring. For us, this establishes the relationship between Aragorn and Sauron, which we previously speculated was the intuitive reason the stone was unexpectedly (even to the author) cast out from Orthanc and later entrusted to Aragorn. Now, Isildur’s heir transitions into being Sauron’s primary adversary, while Gandalf becomes the chief opponent of the Ringwraiths and their lord, the Witch-king of Angmar.
In any case, in the stone, Aragorn saw “a great danger” from the south, that is, along the coast on the other side of the mountain. He must evidently go to meet it, and to do so, he must travel through the Paths of the Dead, which thus serve as a shortcut. This becomes the “excuse” for Aragorn’s journey through the underworld. But it does not feel firmly anchored in the narrative. For instance, he does not mention this "great danger" to Théoden, despite their discussions about the next steps, which, in these desperate times of war, is a glaring oversight for Aragorn as a war leader. At the same time, it is difficult to reconcile the strategic choice to travel the Paths of the Dead (which no one has left alive) to confront a suddenly arisen danger with the fact that Elrond, in a message written weeks ago, points to this very path, indicating that Aragorn must fulfill a prophecy concerning the “oathbreakers” (that is, the dead along the path) and the “Stone of Erech.” This ambiguity surrounding Aragorn’s motives, we argue, reflects how the author follows his inner visions while the saga, as a literary work, occasionally receives its rational veneer. Aragorn tells Legolas and Gimli that he is compelled to take this path. Necessity determines where the saga’s central characters go. “Come!” Aragorn cries, drawing his sword. “To the Stone of Erech!” he proclaims (in contrast to “the danger in the south”).
But first, they ride to Edoras to rest for a night, as it lies on the way. They reunite with Éowyn. During their conversation, it becomes clear that Aragorn will travel via the Paths of the Dead. Éowyn is, of course, shocked and protests. Aragorn declares that he will take that path—“alone, if needs be.” A curious remark in relation to his original motive of confronting an enemy host on the other side. It is evident that the conflict between the intuitive idea that gave rise to the Paths of the Dead and the subsequent rational motive persists.
Éowyn
Anhow, Éowyn begs Aragorn to take her with him. She declares that she is a shieldmaiden. “I can ride and fight, and I fear neither pain nor death,” she says. “What do you fear, then?” asks Aragorn. “A cage,” she replies.
Her desire to leave the house and follow Aragorn on his adventure, and the constraints she bitterly expresses—that she, as a woman, is “meant to stay at home”—clearly reflect traditional gender roles. But from our perspective, there is also a symbolic significance in this conflict. As mentioned, humans in the saga (unlike elves, dwarves, orcs, and so forth) mirror the consciousness of the situation, its level or disposition. For instance, during the saga’s first half, women are essentially absent—no one is married, few have mothers, and neither sisters nor daughters are present. This, as reiterated, reflects the dominance of a one-sided masculinity in the saga’s conscious universe. We recently discussed how the King represents the collective consciousness, both as a human and as a ruler. Our “human kings” are Saruman, Théoden, and Denethor. The initial encounter with each demonstrates a consciousness markedly one-sided, where the feminine is suppressed—and returns as a “symptom,” as the “enemy.” We have also seen how Théoden had the potential for redemption, that is, to accept and manifest the feminine represented by Éowyn.
But he does not do what we discussed earlier, namely, allow this new energy or feminine content to become part of his life. He does not let her ride with him when she pleads, instead ensuring she stays at home. Thus, this psychologically liberated, conscious content is pushed back by habit and convention. The risk is great that, in the long run, it will not accept or even endure this confinement. If it is not allowed to live, it will manifest as symptoms, as physical ailments or disembodied ghosts—or simply “die,” as a soulless individual may seem dead. The White Tree, discussed in the previous commentary, shows how the “tree of life” dies if not nurtured and tended.
Éowyn is desperate; she even kneels before Aragorn, pleading, with her sword at her belt. But Aragorn, who, after all, is part of the collective consciousness and must abide by it, says he cannot take her without the king’s permission. Devastated, Éowyn turns and goes back into the house, back to her “cage.”
What might happen if she remains there, while her calling is to ride out? At best, one might imagine a bitter, withdrawn woman, plagued by various symptoms, eventually depressed or worse. But in our interpretation, she is a symbol representing a specific psychic content. As such, it is not unthinkable that she—figuratively speaking—becomes yet another dead tree in a one-sidedly masculine kingdom. The new, in its way fragile, creative, and promising content was not nurtured or integrated but was sent back to the place it came from (the unconscious). Thus, it vanishes anew. The symbol must be incorporated into one’s concrete daily life to have any effect on individuation, to have any effect at all.
Jung cites Parsifal as an example:[3] He was led to the procession of the Grail but said nothing, did nothing, as if it was an image that didn't concern him personally; in the company of the Fisher King, he merely observed as it passed. He later realized this was a fatal mistake and spent the next twenty years searching for the castle to answer the question posed to him. When he saw the Grail in the presence of the ailing king, Jung argues, he should have asked: “What is this? What is the Fisher King and the Grail about?” And then acted on the answers, as something that concerned himself. But he did not give himself over to the course of events, and the next day, everything was gone.
Similarly, Théoden, when led out of his house on unsteady legs with Éowyn’s support, should have taken her with him on further adventures—that is, integrated her into his conscious life. Instead, he told her to return to the house and remain there, while he rode off with the one-sidedly masculine company. In other words, he lets Éowyn merely pass by, like a dream that briefly uplifts or unsettles but brings no lasting change because we do not carry it into our conscious lives. Thus, the symbol sinks back into the darkness of the unconscious.
This is at least a typical pattern. We know we have not seen the last of the rejected Éowyn. But it is symbolically significant that the king only sees her again when he is dying.
The Paths of the Dead
Aragorn and his company ride to the Haunted Mountain. We know from earlier that ghosts are attributes of the Terrible Mother. Near their destination, they pass a solitary stone rising like a finger of fate. The horses cannot pass unless their riders dismount and lead them calmly by. We recall the obelisk at the Barrow-downs that marked the start of Frodo’s initiation, along with the mist’s indistinctness and blurring of boundaries. When Frodo passed the gate of initiation, his pony reared and threw him off. Similarly, the horses in Aragorn’s company refuse to partake in what follows, what the stone portends, though the Dúnedain, of course, have better control of the situation than Frodo did at the time. (Initiation concerns a stage of consciousness development and is thus incompatible with animals.)
They enter the mountain. As noted in “Shelob’s Lair,” this is a recurring theme in the story. Each time the adventurers come to a mountain, they enter it. We discussed the feminine significance of the mountain’s interior and noted how often it pertains to the Terrible Mother’s domain in this saga. We also pointed out that the cave, as a symbol, is associated with the death and rebirth of initiation.
As they make their way along the Paths of the Dead, they are pursued by the restless spirits. The reader experiences the terror through Gimli. Aragorn strides fearlessly, grim and resolute, at the forefront. He is followed by the Grey Company, which we argue belongs to the mist and thus, as far as we can see, is unaffected by the Paths of the Dead. Legolas, as a high elf (or identified with the Good Mother), does not fear the wraiths of men. But Gimli lacks symbolic immunity to ghosts, and his rising fear conveys the horrifying experience the Paths of the Dead represent for mortals. In the end, he crawls on all fours, as if to underscore the nature of the environment we are in. (Frodo and Sam crawled when they saw the Nazghûl outside the Black Gate, for instance, and Merry will later crawl "like a beast" when the Witch-king lands near him on Pelennor Fields.)
Aragorn comes upon a skeleton lying in precious armor before a closed door. It holds a broken sword. Aragorn kneels by the skeleton. This represents the symbolic death of initiation. It is his old self lying here as a skeleton, with the broken blade. The closed door signifies the end of the old story. Aragorn cannot manifest the king’s return if he remains the wanderer of the north he used to be—longing and emasculated in the wilderness. That ego is obsolete and now lies as a skeleton in the underworld. Aragorn rises with a cryptic reference to “nine mounds and seven.” We note in passing the recurring numerals (necessity and fulfilment), yet his reference is likely a fateful prophecy that the Aragorn he will become on the other side will, in turn, eventually lie as a skeleton in the royal barrows of Gondor.
Then he calls to the hosts of the dead to follow him to the Stone of Erech. At this stone, the men of the mountains swore an oath to Isildur to come to Gondor’s aid in times of war. But when Sauron’s forces attacked, they did not answer Isildur’s call. So he cursed them, that they should never find rest until they fulfilled their oath. Aragorn will give them the chance to atone for their crime by aiding him in defeating the pirates along the southern coast, which is evidently crucial to the battle for Minas Tirith. Of some symbolic significance is the fact that Isildur bound them to the oath, while Aragorn offers them release from it. The ghosts, the restless spirits, thus belong to Aragorn-Isildur—they are not a random host but are tied to Aragorn’s fate.
Aragorn’s initiation shares similarities with Frodo’s—the obelisk, the underworld (tomb/cave), the ghosts. But it has a different character, as Aragorn willingly descends into the realm of the dead, gathers the ghosts around him, and communicates with them. This lends his initiation a shamanistic quality, likely stemming from his role as a healer. A shaman’s initial initiation, says Mircea Eliade, “almost always [includes] a descent to the underworld and conversations with spirits and souls.”[4] It is not uncommon for the shaman to take “the old path the ancestor used to reach the land of the dead,”[5] just as Aragorn figuratively follows the same path as Isildur once did. The shaman’s descent often aimed to bring the deceased’s soul back to earth, that is, to liberate it;[6] alternatively, the shaman might enlist the aid of “mountain spirits.”[7] Thus, we see that Aragorn’s initiation—his descent into the underworld, the death of his former self, and his ascent followed by spirits, reborn—bears traits of the shamanistic tradition. We see none of these traits in Frodo’s more traditional initiation at the Barrow-downs, nor in Gandalf’s dramatic descent and ascent in battle with a monster, but fundamentally, all their rites of passage follow the same overarching theme.
Though the journey through the Paths of the Dead is terrifying (as an initiation rite typically is, since life itself is at stake), not much else happens beyond Aragorn seeing the skeleton with the broken sword and calling the ghosts to follow him. This is significant in itself, as it suggests that the initiation described is the central focus of this episode.
They hear the sound of rushing water and emerge from the underworld. They continue on horseback. “The dead follow,” says Legolas. It is night, and Aragorn urges them to ride on; they must reach the stone before dawn. Lights go out in villages and houses they pass, doors are shut, and cries ring out: “The King of the Dead is upon us!”
This image is known from folklore, where a host of the dead, often sinners or restless spirits for other reasons, wanders through a village or landscape.[8] The Santa Compaña is one of the better-known examples, where tormented souls roam through villages, led by a living person, often a priest or equivalent, carrying a cross or vessel of holy water. The Wild Hunt is a Nordic variant (“a host of phantoms or similar rushing through the air”), but according to religious historian Åke Ohlmarks, this motif appears “in a range of European countries.”[9] In our case, it is not a priest leading the sinners but his pagan counterpart, the shaman.
They ascend the hill with the black stone where the oath was sworn long ago. This, too, is a known historical motif: “the common custom of swearing an oath on a stone can partly be explained by the belief that the stone’s solidity contributes to the oath’s endurance.”[10]
Aragorn proclaims that if the ghost army defeats his enemy, they shall find rest. He calls himself Elessar and has the great banner unfurled, which had not been revealed since it left Arwen’s loom. “And behold! It was black.” As mentioned earlier, no emblem can be seen in the darkness. This likely reflects the fact that Aragorn is still symbolically in the realm of the dead. Only when the oath is fulfilled, the spirits find rest, and Aragorn sets sail for Minas Tirith does the transformation complete, and the banner is revealed.
In the morning, they continue with the shadow host at their heels. When the sun sets again, the host vanishes from “the sight of mortals, but the dead followed them.”
Here ends the chapter “The Passing of the Grey Company.” We do not actually learn what happened next with the ghost army and the pirates until Legolas recounts it to Merry and Pippin several chapters later. The evidently significant aspect of this section is not Aragorn’s battle against the great danger he saw in the palantír, which prompted him to take the Paths of the Dead to neutralize it, but his journey down into the underworld and out again—his death as Aragorn the Ranger with a broken blade and his rebirth as King Elessar with the sword that cut the finger from Sauron. Until this happens, he cannot save Minas Tirith as king and healer.
Savior, king, and healer bring to mind Christ (without further comparisons, of course), who, after his death on the cross but before ascending to heaven, descended to the underworld for three days. Just as Christ, in some accounts,[11] frees souls from sin and saves them from death through his descent, Aragorn frees the sinners in the mountain through his own descent and ascent. Aragorn’s story is hardly an imitation of Christ but rather a reflection of corresponding archetypal motifs.
Jung comments on the psychological significance of this ancient mythological motif, descensus ad inferos, known from Orpheus, Heracles, Dante, and others:
“The psychological equivalent ... is the integration of the collective unconscious, which is an absolutely essential component of the individuation process.”[12]
The Path of the Dead was an absolute necessity for Aragorn. He had no choice but to leave King Théoden’s host to undertake this unexpected detour, alone if need be. It is true that the pirates on Gondor’s southern coast are defeated as a result, but it is clear that this is of secondary importance. The primary purpose was for Aragorn to become who he truly is before arriving at Minas Tirith.
Here, Aragorn/Elessar fades from the narrative for a time, returning only when the battle on the Pelennor Fields rages. Then he comes back from “the other side” on a ship. Ships appear in the saga only in this scene and when Galadriel, Gandalf, Frodo, and others sail across the sea—both associated with the journey to or from the realm of the dead (in a broad sense).[13] Small boats are used by the Fellowship of the Ring as they travel down the Anduin, leading to Frodo crossing to the other side and the fallen Boromir drifting past Faramir in his “boat-grave” toward the sea. Symbolically, Aragorn arrives from the realm of the dead, transformed, and only then does he unfurl Arwen’s banner for all to see—manifesting, as it were, his true or eternal self.
Footnotes
[1] By "irrational" we do not mean against reason, but—as in Jung—beyond reason. See e.g. "Definitions", in Psychological Types, vol. 6 of Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. H. G. Baynes, ed. Herbert Read et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), para. 776f.
[2] Aragorn’s actual father, Arathorn II, died when Aragorn was merely two years old, whereupon Elrond took him into his care. Moreover, Elrond becomes Aragorn’s father-in-law and is, if anyone, his father in the tale.
[3] Jung, Visions, pp. 1313ff. See also Mysterium Conciunctionis, par. 763.
[4] Eliade, Shamanism, p. 34.
[5] Ibid., p. 309.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., p. 90.
[8] Motif E491 in Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955–1958), accessed November 9, 2025, https://archive.org/details/Thompson2016MotifIndex.
[9] Ohlmarks, Fornnordiskt lexikon.
[10] Frazer, Den gyllene grenen, p. 48.
[11] Hjärpe et. al., Religionslexikonet.
[12] Jung, Aion, par. 72.
[13] See Neumann, The Great Mother, pp. 256ff, for an excursus on the ship symbol relevant to our discussion.