The Cattle of the Sun from The Odyssey by Homer

Bull for the Cave Paintings at Lascaux

A truly horrifying scene, where, after killing and dismembering the sun god Helios' cattle, and roasting them as a sacrifice, they return to life, but still in pieces.

'As soon as I reached our ship at the water's edge
I took the men to task, upbraiding each in turn,
but how to set things right? We couldn't find a way.
The cattle were dead already...
and the gods soon showed us all some fateful signs-
the hides began to crawl, the meat both raw and roasted,
bellowed out on the spits, and we heard a noise
like the moan of lowing oxen'

translated by Robert Fagles

The Land of the Dead

Death on a Pale Horse - J.M.W. Turner

   Sooner or later the hero travels to the Land of the Dead, the shadow realm... seeking secret knowledge. What world is this of half light, and half truths, and half remembered things, where those who used to walk with us are now but phantoms of their former selves? Memories, I say. Not of the deceased alone, but of the departed, the unreachable ones, those who have passed away either in mind or in body or in spirit. And the only form they have now is that which the hero imparts to them by his rememberance.
   There can be no satisfaction gained here; the elixir will not be obtained. For when we question those who reside here, we merely question ourselves, our memory, the simulacrum of those who have passed far and strange away from us, and who are out of ear shot. And what can we tell ourselves about what those who are not here might think? Nothing... and what is more, when we speak with them (in our thoughts), we become as them... faded and wan and little more than a ghost of what we once were when life was all about. This is the meaning of the hero passing yonder. And what is the secret knowledge that he seeks? What balm? Just this, that he too is a ghost haunting someone else's dark dream. It is the death wish, the desire to be remembered; but with that also, to be as faded as these pale reflections and less than alive.

Eidolons from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Hermes as Psychopomp

I met a seer,

Passing the hues and objects of the world,

The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,

To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he,

No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,

Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,

That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning,

Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,

Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)

Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable,

Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,

Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,

Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you,

Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,

We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,

But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent,

Myrrha,  Gustave Doré

The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,

Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life,

(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)

The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,

In its eidolon.

The old, old urge,

Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,

From science and the modern still impell'd,

The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here,

America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,

Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,

To-day's eidolons.

These with the past,

Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,

Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,

Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades,

Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,

Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,

Eidolons everlasting.

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,

The visible but their womb of birth,

Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,

The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time,

(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,

Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)

Fill'd with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads,

The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,

The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,

The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world,

Nor these the universes, they the universes,

Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,

Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,

Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,

Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,

The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix'd yet fix'd,

Ever shall be, ever have been and are,

Sweeping the present to the infinite future,

Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard,

Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,

Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,

God and eidolons.

And thee my soul,

Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,

Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,

Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent,

The body lurking there within thy body,

The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,

An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs,

No special strains to sing, none for itself,

But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,

A round full-orb'd eidolon.