"The secret of alchemy was in fact the transcendent function, the transformation of personality through the blending and fusion of the noble with the base components, of the differentiated with the inferior functions, of the conscious with the unconscious. No one who has undergone the process of assimilating the unconscious will deny that it gripped his very vitals and changed him.. [moving the center of awareness to the Middle Plane between the inner and outer worlds] where the centre of the total personality no longer coincides with the ego, but with a point midway between the conscious & the unconscious. This would be the point of new equilibrium.. which ensures.. a new & more solid foundation."
C,G, Jung, Two Essays, para.365
C,G, Jung, Two Essays, para.365
“The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree, and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man, who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven - the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible. It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own “existence” and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.”
― C.G. Jung, Psychological Types
― C.G. Jung, Psychological Types
For the alchemists the process of individuation represented by the opus was an analogy of the creation of the world, and the opus itself an analogy of God’s work of creation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 550
"What is radically new does not follow the current, even when it is apparently a contemporary event . [ ... ] We are immersed in the psyche . How insisted the alchemists, the gold of the potential lies in the bad waste of what we have at hand. Working this raw material has always been the real unconscious by the task which not only expressed his personal suffering, but reflected the torment Soul mundi, the suffering in the roots. For the artist, I mean ' artifex,' the author, be it artist, alchemist or analyst. He who collects the wood carried by the current, the cacophonous sounds, DIY parts, and returns this inconscietà to its roots. The artifex works with the soul in ' Anima mundi." --James Hillman
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight into an endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task].
The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavour was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700.
"What is radically new does not follow the current, even when it is apparently a contemporary event . [ ... ] We are immersed in the psyche . How insisted the alchemists, the gold of the potential lies in the bad waste of what we have at hand. Working this raw material has always been the real unconscious by the task which not only expressed his personal suffering, but reflected the torment Soul mundi, the suffering in the roots. For the artist, I mean ' artifex,' the author, be it artist, alchemist or analyst. He who collects the wood carried by the current, the cacophonous sounds, DIY parts, and returns this inconscietà to its roots. The artifex works with the soul in ' Anima mundi." --James Hillman
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight into an endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task].
The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavour was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700.
“The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feed-back’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which […] unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious.” ~ Carl G. Jung
The glass corresponds to the unum vas of alchemy (fig. 86) and its contents to the living, semi-organic mixture from which the body of the lapis, endowed with spirit and life, will emerge
—or possibly that strange Faustian figure who bursts into flame three times: the Boy Charioteer, the Homunculus who is dashed against the throne of Galatea, and Euphorion (all symbolizing a dissolution of the "centre" into its unconscious elements).
We know that the lapis is not just a "stone" since it is expressly stated to be composed "de re animali, vegetabili et minerali," and to consist of body, soul, and spirit; moreover, it grows
from flesh and blood.
For which reason the philosopher (Hermes in the 'Tabula smaragdina") says: 'The wind hath carried it in his belly" (fig. 210).
Therefore "wind is air, air is life, and life is soul." "
The stone is that thing midway between perfect and imperfect bodies, and that which nature herself begins is brought to perfection through the art."
The stone "is named the stone of invisibility" (lapis invisibilitatis).
~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 178.
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight intoan endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task]. The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavor was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight into an endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task].
The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavour was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it
were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700.
—or possibly that strange Faustian figure who bursts into flame three times: the Boy Charioteer, the Homunculus who is dashed against the throne of Galatea, and Euphorion (all symbolizing a dissolution of the "centre" into its unconscious elements).
We know that the lapis is not just a "stone" since it is expressly stated to be composed "de re animali, vegetabili et minerali," and to consist of body, soul, and spirit; moreover, it grows
from flesh and blood.
For which reason the philosopher (Hermes in the 'Tabula smaragdina") says: 'The wind hath carried it in his belly" (fig. 210).
Therefore "wind is air, air is life, and life is soul." "
The stone is that thing midway between perfect and imperfect bodies, and that which nature herself begins is brought to perfection through the art."
The stone "is named the stone of invisibility" (lapis invisibilitatis).
~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 178.
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight intoan endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task]. The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavor was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700
Alchemy, with its wealth of symbols, gives us an insight into an endeavour of the human mind which could be compared with a religious rite, an opus divinum [divine task].
The difference between them is that the alchemical opus was not a collective activity rigorously defined as to its form and content, but rather, despite the similarity of their fundamental principles, an individual undertaking on which the adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity.
It was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites, which, characteristically, were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
Since the object of this endeavour was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it
were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700.
Sun and Moon Allegory
A perennial theme of humankind, transformation as a basic change in character, cognition, and direction has been explored in religion, psychology and art. Rites of passage, as a summons to wisdom, can include a psychological and sacred dimension. Rites of initiation provide a symbolic death and rebirth experience. It addresses the question of how a person finds a personal path worthy of the soul.
Ritual Consummation
The hieros gamos, divine marriage, is usually found at the top of an ancient genealogical line. The genealogical myth begins when younger gods are born. The hieros gamos myth is a genealogical myth connected to the ruling family and fertility from ancient times.
Cosmic Disaster
The divine marriage is modeled on the union of sun and moon, either in eclipse or at solstice. A sliver of sunlight still enters the earth passage tomb at New Grange on the darkest day of the year fructifying mother earth, and entreating the ancestors to bless their fertility, through meaningful alignment of sun, earth, and moon. By coming together they 'force' or generate the re-creation of the universe. The royal couple mimics cosmological events -- "As above; so below."
The first known megalithic building begun at Gobekli Tepe (navel-like hill) has been linked to the cataclysmic massive Laurentian comet (10,900 BC Younger Dryas impact event) around 12,000 years ago. Many of the circular temples (womb chambers) repeat a 12 around 2 pattern, that is thought to represent primordial parents (Sun/Moon) as humanoid statues and the circle of the zodiac. In womb-like chambers, the souls of shaman and the spirits of the dead, could quite literally journey to the source of creation. The area was rich in essential obsidian for blades and trade.
"The elite of the Halaf and Ubaid were probably the forerunners of the god-kings who ruled the first city-states down on the Mesopotamian plain, which eventually became the civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon. Their scribes preserved in cuneiform writing the ruling dynasties' mythical history, in which the founders of the Neolithic revolution are known as the Anunnaki, the gods of heaven and earth. Their birthplace was said to have been the Duku, a primeval mound located on the summit of a world mountain called Kharsag, or Hursag, and now identified with both Göbekli Tepe and Bingöl Mountain. Here the Anunnaki are said to have given humankind the first sheep and grain, a memory almost certainly of the introduction of animal husbandry and agriculture at the time of the Neolithic revolution, which occurred in the same region as Göbekli Tepe around 9000-8000 BC. The Anunnaki are occasionally likened to serpents, reflecting the snake-like appearance of Göbekli Tepe's ruling elite, as well as those of the later Halaf and Ubaid cultures." (Collins)
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Go_Tep_launch.htm
In the third millennium earth passed through massive debris (The Taurids) from the breakup of comet Encke, and the fall of massive fireballs changed many Neolithics from earth to sky/fire religion. 'Dragons' fought massive battles in the sky, or so the ancestors imagined. Comets are also implicated in Bronze Age collapse.
As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet appeared as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth. The beginning of the Dark Ages came from a comet fall near the equator that virtually blotted out the sun and led to famine and plague.
In ancient cities, the priest/king and his temple consort reenacted the rite, the sacred mating of Heaven and Earth. The royal union is called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy. The Marriage of Inner & Outer Worlds unites internal/external and macrocosm/microcosm, the sacred and profane. Later clear parallels to the ancient rites turn up in the Grail cycle.
The central theme of alchemy, this marriage is represented by the two snakes of the caduceus, the opposing forces of our nature, joined together at the head, which correspond to the Moon and the Sun. The entwined serpents are an ancient glyph for the DNA double-helix, and might describe how two serpents twine up the trunk of our family tree.
When we each get “infused” with the sacred essence of the divine male and female, we can dissolve in the unity of cosmic consciousness. The celestial pair are reunited. "Heaven on earth” describes divine union on earth, dissolving into time, mirroring the notion of "As above, so below." The ascent or descent is a function or goal of the hieros gamos itself. The union with the Goddess implied the meeting of human and divine.
The genealogical relationship to the soul has to do with its mystical-genealogical origin. Genealogy has its virtually infinite series of primal couples -- the grandfathers and grandmothers who give birth in a cascading union of opposites. They engender the souls of the newborn -- the seed of a fate-laden new creation.
Alchemical symbolism calls this a marriage of the Sun (spirit) and the Moon (soul), solar and lunar ways of knowing. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul have the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox so we can become whole. Such is the Chemical Marriage, Courtly Love and tantric secrets that might conceive a magical child.
Sacred kingship is the basic myth of genealogy, destiny, and eros. Jung tells us that the queen symbolizes the body, the king stands for the spirit, and the soul unites the two in the royal marriage. Therefore, our psyche is a half bodily and half spiritual substance.
The hieros gamos myth is multifunctional, combining enthronement, genealogical myth, cosmology, and legitimization of rule. When king and queen (animus/anima) unite, they form a magical hermaphroditic being which is a union of opposite energies. Symbolically, their sacred marriage results in the manifestation of all things.
In alchemical manuscripts, coniunctio, mystical marriage, is depicted as the union or coitus of King and Queen, the red man and white woman, or just by man and wife. The mother is the unconscious, the son is the conscious. It is a ‘regressus ad uterum’ or the return to the uterus of the mother.
Penetration of the female is the same as the penetration of the water or the unconscious. Thus we see that the coniunctio is depicted as the coitus of man and wife, king and queen, but also by the king taking a bath, or drinking water. Sometimes consummation between man and woman happens in water, in a bath or in a fountain.
In the sacred marriage, such acts refer to the union of our divine spirit with the soul, and finally with the body. As a grand union of opposites, mystic marriage symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc.
Ordinarily, spirit, soul and body are separated from each other, even while in dynamic interaction. But when the Great Work is complete, the divine spirit is brought ‘down’ to shine through the soul and body. It unifies itself with them, so they all form one and the same ‘body’.
Jung used the poetic term syzygy for the union of opposites, wholeness and completion and the divine couple. The pattern repeats endlessly. Pulsating life is the substrate of our existence. The perfect partnership includes physical and psychic compatibility of anima and animus, which fire the quest for love and myths of the soulmate.
The parental pair has many symbols from the medieval West and sacred duos of the East, including yin/yang. The Divine inner marriage—or the syzygy—of the masculine/dynamic and feminine/magnetic yokes the anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche, and the animus, the male aspect of the female psyche.
The experience of spiritual rebirth via the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage is characterized as the union of the Sun (+) and Moon (-), positive-negative; male-female; god-devil; spirit-matter; father-mother; etc.
The sacred marriage, or coniunctio, creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child. This process creates a cellular, alchemical, energetic rebirth into a higher order of being, symbolically called a spiritual androgyne.
The syzygy has three components: a man's femininity and woman's masculinity; the experience man has of woman and vice versa; and the masculine and feminine archetypal image. Archetypal symbolic pairings are 'yoked together' by this term.
Contrasexual (male-female) pairings occur in dream symbolism. They refer to internal communication between the unconscious and conscious minds of any individual.
“It is a psychological fact that as soon as we touch on these identifications we enter the realm of the syzygies, the paired opposites, where the One is never separated from the Other, its antithesis. It is a field of personal experience which leads directly to the experience of individuation, the attainment of the self. ...In this still very obscure field of psychological experience, where we are in direct contact, so to speak, with the archetype, its psychic power is felt in full force. This realm is so entirely one of immediate experience that it cannot be captured by any formula, but can only be hinted at to one who already knows.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 194)
Female archetypes of earth and sky symbolize the Great Mother, who is both conscious protector, spiritual guide, and nurturer, while at the same time the unconscious forces of birth and death, life and destruction. The anima lurks in the unconscious, wielding her supernatural power to drive our lives either towards mystical knowledge, consciousness and individuation, or towards oblivion in sensual urges.
The sky mothers and animas can transcend the body and ego, but in so many myths, they crave balance through the experience of the underworld, the unconscious drives of the instincts and the non-rational, and through this unity, express a balanced whole.
The union of seemingly separate elements give birth to and reveal a higher form. This is often referred to as the royal marriage. This marriage is of fundamental concern to alchemists because it is a key to transformation. Using an alchemical metaphor, Jung often referred to marriage as the crucible of consciousness.
In Sacred Marriage relationship is Immortality. All our cultural experience and individual conscious existence depends on the fabric of life, the germ line, from the mutual sexual relationship of genders. The female is the sole bearer of cytoplasmic inheritance and the principal investor in time and resources. The male contributes half of the genetic material. Immortality is thus not the domain of one gender but of the relationship between woman and man.
The Philosopher's Stone is equated with the Body of Light, the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone (lapis) is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. The transcendent function is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun and Moon.
Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, father-mother, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical, numinous, or divine child.
Progeny of the divine couple have various alchemical names: the philosopher’s gold, the filius Philosophorum, the infans solaris (sun child), the red tincture, the sun/moon child, etc. Making the Philosopher's Stone is a repetition of the creation myth via imagery. The Stone is made in Nature, and with and by “Nature” in the visible and invisible worlds -- within the material, spiritual,and psychological worlds. Light unveiled begets light.
The transformative imperative is a a mystic marriage or union, symbolized in alchemy by the coniunctio -- conjunction of conscious and unconscious. Individuation is the integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. Potential is embodied as a psychologically whole self-realized or self-actualizing person. The "royal wedding" is the final alchemical synthesis of ego and unconscious, matter and spirit, male and female, that brings forth the Philosopher's Stone (the Self).
Alchemist Gerard Dorn called the unus mundus a unification of the Stone with body, soul, and spirit -- a perfect synthesis of conscious and unconscious. This "one world" is the physical-psychological, transcendental, "third thing" continuum underlying all existence -- the metaphysical equivalent of the collective unconscious. Mercurius or the Dragon's "treasure hard to attain" are images for the archetype of unity -- the self.
We need to be related to another individual, according to Jung, to experience the full depth of our own psyche. From an internal perspective, spiritual marriage is an inner experience which is not projected onto another living individual. In the royal marriage of the soul with the Self, the projections of anima and animus have been returned to their proper level in the personal unconscious.
Our partner no longer carries an essentially religious function for us. The King and Queen are united, or conjoined, synthesizing the opposites. When the opposites to be united are the masculine consciousness (of our day world) and the feminine unconscious (the night world), this royal marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies the psychic totality of personal wholeness.
Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception.
This flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.
- Moon is dissolving, Sun is sublimating in Solve et Coagula;
- Moon is passive, Sun Active;
- Sun is Fixed, Moon is Volatile inside vessel – crucible or Microcosm;
- Sun is hot, Moon is frozen inside vessel – crucible or Microcosm;
- Sun is fixed, or Soul and Moon is volatile or Principle of Life inside nature or Macrocosm;
- Union of Mercurius or Mercurius Philosophorum with calcinated metallic gold;
- Union of Mercurius Philosophorum and “ Golden” Mercurius Philosophorum;
- Gathering of Astronomical Sun beams through Astronomical Moon;
- Union of Soul and Principle of Life in a new body;
- Union of Alchemical light and Natural light;
- Union of Natural light and Cosmic light;
- Union of Macrocosm and Microcosm;
- The Alchemical Marriage or Double or Mercurius Duplicatus.
A perennial theme of humankind, transformation as a basic change in character, cognition, and direction has been explored in religion, psychology and art. Rites of passage, as a summons to wisdom, can include a psychological and sacred dimension. Rites of initiation provide a symbolic death and rebirth experience. It addresses the question of how a person finds a personal path worthy of the soul.
Ritual Consummation
The hieros gamos, divine marriage, is usually found at the top of an ancient genealogical line. The genealogical myth begins when younger gods are born. The hieros gamos myth is a genealogical myth connected to the ruling family and fertility from ancient times.
Cosmic Disaster
The divine marriage is modeled on the union of sun and moon, either in eclipse or at solstice. A sliver of sunlight still enters the earth passage tomb at New Grange on the darkest day of the year fructifying mother earth, and entreating the ancestors to bless their fertility, through meaningful alignment of sun, earth, and moon. By coming together they 'force' or generate the re-creation of the universe. The royal couple mimics cosmological events -- "As above; so below."
The first known megalithic building begun at Gobekli Tepe (navel-like hill) has been linked to the cataclysmic massive Laurentian comet (10,900 BC Younger Dryas impact event) around 12,000 years ago. Many of the circular temples (womb chambers) repeat a 12 around 2 pattern, that is thought to represent primordial parents (Sun/Moon) as humanoid statues and the circle of the zodiac. In womb-like chambers, the souls of shaman and the spirits of the dead, could quite literally journey to the source of creation. The area was rich in essential obsidian for blades and trade.
"The elite of the Halaf and Ubaid were probably the forerunners of the god-kings who ruled the first city-states down on the Mesopotamian plain, which eventually became the civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon. Their scribes preserved in cuneiform writing the ruling dynasties' mythical history, in which the founders of the Neolithic revolution are known as the Anunnaki, the gods of heaven and earth. Their birthplace was said to have been the Duku, a primeval mound located on the summit of a world mountain called Kharsag, or Hursag, and now identified with both Göbekli Tepe and Bingöl Mountain. Here the Anunnaki are said to have given humankind the first sheep and grain, a memory almost certainly of the introduction of animal husbandry and agriculture at the time of the Neolithic revolution, which occurred in the same region as Göbekli Tepe around 9000-8000 BC. The Anunnaki are occasionally likened to serpents, reflecting the snake-like appearance of Göbekli Tepe's ruling elite, as well as those of the later Halaf and Ubaid cultures." (Collins)
http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Go_Tep_launch.htm
In the third millennium earth passed through massive debris (The Taurids) from the breakup of comet Encke, and the fall of massive fireballs changed many Neolithics from earth to sky/fire religion. 'Dragons' fought massive battles in the sky, or so the ancestors imagined. Comets are also implicated in Bronze Age collapse.
As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet appeared as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth. The beginning of the Dark Ages came from a comet fall near the equator that virtually blotted out the sun and led to famine and plague.
In ancient cities, the priest/king and his temple consort reenacted the rite, the sacred mating of Heaven and Earth. The royal union is called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy. The Marriage of Inner & Outer Worlds unites internal/external and macrocosm/microcosm, the sacred and profane. Later clear parallels to the ancient rites turn up in the Grail cycle.
The central theme of alchemy, this marriage is represented by the two snakes of the caduceus, the opposing forces of our nature, joined together at the head, which correspond to the Moon and the Sun. The entwined serpents are an ancient glyph for the DNA double-helix, and might describe how two serpents twine up the trunk of our family tree.
When we each get “infused” with the sacred essence of the divine male and female, we can dissolve in the unity of cosmic consciousness. The celestial pair are reunited. "Heaven on earth” describes divine union on earth, dissolving into time, mirroring the notion of "As above, so below." The ascent or descent is a function or goal of the hieros gamos itself. The union with the Goddess implied the meeting of human and divine.
The genealogical relationship to the soul has to do with its mystical-genealogical origin. Genealogy has its virtually infinite series of primal couples -- the grandfathers and grandmothers who give birth in a cascading union of opposites. They engender the souls of the newborn -- the seed of a fate-laden new creation.
Alchemical symbolism calls this a marriage of the Sun (spirit) and the Moon (soul), solar and lunar ways of knowing. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul have the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox so we can become whole. Such is the Chemical Marriage, Courtly Love and tantric secrets that might conceive a magical child.
Sacred kingship is the basic myth of genealogy, destiny, and eros. Jung tells us that the queen symbolizes the body, the king stands for the spirit, and the soul unites the two in the royal marriage. Therefore, our psyche is a half bodily and half spiritual substance.
The hieros gamos myth is multifunctional, combining enthronement, genealogical myth, cosmology, and legitimization of rule. When king and queen (animus/anima) unite, they form a magical hermaphroditic being which is a union of opposite energies. Symbolically, their sacred marriage results in the manifestation of all things.
In alchemical manuscripts, coniunctio, mystical marriage, is depicted as the union or coitus of King and Queen, the red man and white woman, or just by man and wife. The mother is the unconscious, the son is the conscious. It is a ‘regressus ad uterum’ or the return to the uterus of the mother.
Penetration of the female is the same as the penetration of the water or the unconscious. Thus we see that the coniunctio is depicted as the coitus of man and wife, king and queen, but also by the king taking a bath, or drinking water. Sometimes consummation between man and woman happens in water, in a bath or in a fountain.
In the sacred marriage, such acts refer to the union of our divine spirit with the soul, and finally with the body. As a grand union of opposites, mystic marriage symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc.
Ordinarily, spirit, soul and body are separated from each other, even while in dynamic interaction. But when the Great Work is complete, the divine spirit is brought ‘down’ to shine through the soul and body. It unifies itself with them, so they all form one and the same ‘body’.
Jung used the poetic term syzygy for the union of opposites, wholeness and completion and the divine couple. The pattern repeats endlessly. Pulsating life is the substrate of our existence. The perfect partnership includes physical and psychic compatibility of anima and animus, which fire the quest for love and myths of the soulmate.
The parental pair has many symbols from the medieval West and sacred duos of the East, including yin/yang. The Divine inner marriage—or the syzygy—of the masculine/dynamic and feminine/magnetic yokes the anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche, and the animus, the male aspect of the female psyche.
The experience of spiritual rebirth via the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage is characterized as the union of the Sun (+) and Moon (-), positive-negative; male-female; god-devil; spirit-matter; father-mother; etc.
The sacred marriage, or coniunctio, creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child. This process creates a cellular, alchemical, energetic rebirth into a higher order of being, symbolically called a spiritual androgyne.
The syzygy has three components: a man's femininity and woman's masculinity; the experience man has of woman and vice versa; and the masculine and feminine archetypal image. Archetypal symbolic pairings are 'yoked together' by this term.
Contrasexual (male-female) pairings occur in dream symbolism. They refer to internal communication between the unconscious and conscious minds of any individual.
“It is a psychological fact that as soon as we touch on these identifications we enter the realm of the syzygies, the paired opposites, where the One is never separated from the Other, its antithesis. It is a field of personal experience which leads directly to the experience of individuation, the attainment of the self. ...In this still very obscure field of psychological experience, where we are in direct contact, so to speak, with the archetype, its psychic power is felt in full force. This realm is so entirely one of immediate experience that it cannot be captured by any formula, but can only be hinted at to one who already knows.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 194)
Female archetypes of earth and sky symbolize the Great Mother, who is both conscious protector, spiritual guide, and nurturer, while at the same time the unconscious forces of birth and death, life and destruction. The anima lurks in the unconscious, wielding her supernatural power to drive our lives either towards mystical knowledge, consciousness and individuation, or towards oblivion in sensual urges.
The sky mothers and animas can transcend the body and ego, but in so many myths, they crave balance through the experience of the underworld, the unconscious drives of the instincts and the non-rational, and through this unity, express a balanced whole.
The union of seemingly separate elements give birth to and reveal a higher form. This is often referred to as the royal marriage. This marriage is of fundamental concern to alchemists because it is a key to transformation. Using an alchemical metaphor, Jung often referred to marriage as the crucible of consciousness.
In Sacred Marriage relationship is Immortality. All our cultural experience and individual conscious existence depends on the fabric of life, the germ line, from the mutual sexual relationship of genders. The female is the sole bearer of cytoplasmic inheritance and the principal investor in time and resources. The male contributes half of the genetic material. Immortality is thus not the domain of one gender but of the relationship between woman and man.
The Philosopher's Stone is equated with the Body of Light, the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone (lapis) is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. The transcendent function is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun and Moon.
Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, father-mother, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical, numinous, or divine child.
Progeny of the divine couple have various alchemical names: the philosopher’s gold, the filius Philosophorum, the infans solaris (sun child), the red tincture, the sun/moon child, etc. Making the Philosopher's Stone is a repetition of the creation myth via imagery. The Stone is made in Nature, and with and by “Nature” in the visible and invisible worlds -- within the material, spiritual,and psychological worlds. Light unveiled begets light.
The transformative imperative is a a mystic marriage or union, symbolized in alchemy by the coniunctio -- conjunction of conscious and unconscious. Individuation is the integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. Potential is embodied as a psychologically whole self-realized or self-actualizing person. The "royal wedding" is the final alchemical synthesis of ego and unconscious, matter and spirit, male and female, that brings forth the Philosopher's Stone (the Self).
Alchemist Gerard Dorn called the unus mundus a unification of the Stone with body, soul, and spirit -- a perfect synthesis of conscious and unconscious. This "one world" is the physical-psychological, transcendental, "third thing" continuum underlying all existence -- the metaphysical equivalent of the collective unconscious. Mercurius or the Dragon's "treasure hard to attain" are images for the archetype of unity -- the self.
We need to be related to another individual, according to Jung, to experience the full depth of our own psyche. From an internal perspective, spiritual marriage is an inner experience which is not projected onto another living individual. In the royal marriage of the soul with the Self, the projections of anima and animus have been returned to their proper level in the personal unconscious.
Our partner no longer carries an essentially religious function for us. The King and Queen are united, or conjoined, synthesizing the opposites. When the opposites to be united are the masculine consciousness (of our day world) and the feminine unconscious (the night world), this royal marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies the psychic totality of personal wholeness.
Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception.
This flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.
ANCESTRAL ALCHEMY
Marriage of the Sun & the Moon: Primordial Parents
"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the Kingdom." (Gospel of Thomas, 22)
The Marriage of Inner & Outer Worlds unites internal/external and macrocosm/microcosm. Genealogy has its virtually infinite series of primal couples -- the grandfathers and grandmothers who give birth in a cascading union of opposites, engendering the souls of the newborn.
Alchemical symbolism sometimes refers to this as the marriage of the Sun (spirit) and the Moon (soul), solar and lunar ways of knowing. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul have the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox so we can become whole. Such is the Chemical Marriage, Courtly Love and tantric secrets that conceive a magical child.
Jung tells us that the queen symbolizes the body, the king stands for the spirit, and the soul unites the two in the royal marriage. Therefore, our psyche is a half bodily and half spiritual substance. When king and queen (animus/anima) unite, they form a magical hermaphroditic being which is a union of opposite energies. Their union is a hieros gamos, or sacred marriage which results in the manifestation of all things.
In alchemical manuscripts, coniunctio, mystical marriage, is depicted as the union or coitus of King and Queen, of the red man and the white woman, or just by man and wife. The mother is the unconscious, the son is the conscious. It is a ‘regressus ad uterum’ or the return to the uterus of the mother.
Penetration of the female is the same as the penetration of the water or the unconscious. Thus we see that the coniunctio is depicted as the coitus of man and wife, king and queen, but also by the king taking a bath, or drinking water. Sometimes the coitus between man and woman happens in water, in a bath or in a fountain.
In the sacred marriage, such ‘coitus’, refers to the union of our divine spirit with the soul, and finally with the body. As a grand union of opposites, mystic marriage symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy.
Ordinarily, spirit, soul and body are separated from each other, even while in dynamic interaction. But when the Great Work is complete, the divine spirit is brought ‘down’ to shine through the soul and body and unifies itself with them, so they all form one and the same ‘body’.
Jung used the poetic term syzygy for the union of opposites, wholeness and completion and the divine couple. The pattern repeats endlessly. Pulsating life is the substrate of our existence. The perfect partnership includes physical and psychic compatibility of anima and animus, which fire the quest for love and myths of the soulmate.
The parental pair has many symbols from the medieval West and sacred duos of the East, including yin/yang. The Divine inner marriage—or the syzygy—of the masculine/dynamic and feminine/magnetic yokes the anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche, and the animus, the male aspect of the female psyche.
The experience of spiritual rebirth via the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage is characterized as the union of the Sun (+) and Moon (-), positive-negative; male-female; god-devil; spirit-matter; father-mother; etc.
The sacred marriage, or coniunctio, creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child. This process creates a cellular, alchemical, energetic rebirth into a higher order of being, symbolically called a spiritual androgyne.
The syzygy has three components: a man's femininity and woman's masculinity; the experience man has of woman and vice versa; and the masculine and feminine archetypal image. Archetypal symbolic pairings are 'yoked together' by this term.
Contrasexual (male-female) pairings occur in dream symbolism. They refer to internal communication between the unconscious and conscious minds of any individual.
“It is a psychological fact that as soon as we touch on these identifications we enter the realm of the syzygies, the paired opposites, where the One is never separated from the Other, its antithesis. It is a field of personal experience which leads directly to the experience of individuation, the attainment of the self. ...In this still very obscure field of psychological experience, where we are in direct contact, so to speak, with the archetype, its psychic power is felt in full force. This realm is so entirely one of immediate experience that it cannot be captured by any formula, but can only be hinted at to one who already knows.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 194)
Female archetypes of earth and sky symbolize the Great Mother, who is both conscious protector, spiritual guide, and nurturer, while at the same time the unconscious forces of birth and death, life and destruction.
The anima lurks in the unconscious, wielding her supernatural power to drive our lives either towards mystical knowledge, consciousness and individuation, or towards oblivion in sensual urges. The sky mothers and animas can transcend the body and ego, but in so many myths, they crave balance through the experience of the underworld, the unconscious drives of the instincts and the non-rational, and through this unity, express a balanced whole.
The union of seemingly separate elements give birth to and reveal a higher form. This is often referred to as the royal marriage. This marriage is of fundamental concern to alchemists because it is a key to transformation. Using an alchemical metaphor, Jung often referred to marriage as the crucible of consciousness.
In Sacred Marriage relationship is Immortality. All our cultural experience and individual conscious existence depends on the fabric of life, the germ line, from the mutual sexual relationship of genders. The female is the sole bearer of cytoplasmic inheritance and the principal investor in time and resources. The male contributes half of the genetic material. Immortality is thus not the domain of one gender but of the relationship between woman and man.
The Philosopher's Stone is equated with the Body of Light, the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone (lapis) is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. The transcendent function is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun and Moon.
Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, father-mother, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical, numinous, or divine child.
Progeny of the divine couple have various alchemical names: the philosopher’s gold, the filius Philosophorum, the infans solaris (sun child), the red tincture, the sun/moon child, etc. Making the Philosopher's Stone is a repetition of the creation myth via imagery.
The transformative imperative is a a mystic marriage or union, symbolized in alchemy by the coniunctio -- conjunction of conscious and unconscious. Individuation is the integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. Potential is embodied as a psychologically whole self-realized or self-actualizing person. The "royal wedding" is the final alchemical synthesis of ego and unconscious, matter and spirit, male and female, that brings forth the Philosopher's Stone (the Self).
Alchemist Gerard Dorn called the unus mundus a unification of the Stone with body, soul, and spirit -- a perfect synthesis of conscious and unconscious. This "one world" is the physical-psychological, transcendental, "third thing" continuum underlying all existence -- the metaphysical equivalent of the collective unconscious. Mercurius or the Dragon's "treasure hard to attain" are images for the archetype of unity -- the self.
We need to be related to another individual, according to Jung, to experience the full depth of our own psyche. From an internal perspective, spiritual marriage is an inner experience which is not projected onto another living individual. In the royal marriage of the soul with the Self, the projections of anima and animus have been returned to their proper level in the personal unconscious.
Our partner no longer carries an essentially religious function for us. The King and Queen are united, or conjoined, synthesizing the opposites. When the opposites to be united are the masculine consciousness (of our day world) and the feminine unconscious (the night world), this royal marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies the psychic totality of personal wholeness.
Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception.
This flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.
Marriage of the Sun & the Moon: Primordial Parents
"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the Kingdom." (Gospel of Thomas, 22)
The Marriage of Inner & Outer Worlds unites internal/external and macrocosm/microcosm. Genealogy has its virtually infinite series of primal couples -- the grandfathers and grandmothers who give birth in a cascading union of opposites, engendering the souls of the newborn.
Alchemical symbolism sometimes refers to this as the marriage of the Sun (spirit) and the Moon (soul), solar and lunar ways of knowing. We live, life moves, at the confluence of these polarities of spirit and matter, body and soul have the capacity to hold contradiction and paradox so we can become whole. Such is the Chemical Marriage, Courtly Love and tantric secrets that conceive a magical child.
Jung tells us that the queen symbolizes the body, the king stands for the spirit, and the soul unites the two in the royal marriage. Therefore, our psyche is a half bodily and half spiritual substance. When king and queen (animus/anima) unite, they form a magical hermaphroditic being which is a union of opposite energies. Their union is a hieros gamos, or sacred marriage which results in the manifestation of all things.
In alchemical manuscripts, coniunctio, mystical marriage, is depicted as the union or coitus of King and Queen, of the red man and the white woman, or just by man and wife. The mother is the unconscious, the son is the conscious. It is a ‘regressus ad uterum’ or the return to the uterus of the mother.
Penetration of the female is the same as the penetration of the water or the unconscious. Thus we see that the coniunctio is depicted as the coitus of man and wife, king and queen, but also by the king taking a bath, or drinking water. Sometimes the coitus between man and woman happens in water, in a bath or in a fountain.
In the sacred marriage, such ‘coitus’, refers to the union of our divine spirit with the soul, and finally with the body. As a grand union of opposites, mystic marriage symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy.
Ordinarily, spirit, soul and body are separated from each other, even while in dynamic interaction. But when the Great Work is complete, the divine spirit is brought ‘down’ to shine through the soul and body and unifies itself with them, so they all form one and the same ‘body’.
Jung used the poetic term syzygy for the union of opposites, wholeness and completion and the divine couple. The pattern repeats endlessly. Pulsating life is the substrate of our existence. The perfect partnership includes physical and psychic compatibility of anima and animus, which fire the quest for love and myths of the soulmate.
The parental pair has many symbols from the medieval West and sacred duos of the East, including yin/yang. The Divine inner marriage—or the syzygy—of the masculine/dynamic and feminine/magnetic yokes the anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche, and the animus, the male aspect of the female psyche.
The experience of spiritual rebirth via the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage is characterized as the union of the Sun (+) and Moon (-), positive-negative; male-female; god-devil; spirit-matter; father-mother; etc.
The sacred marriage, or coniunctio, creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child. This process creates a cellular, alchemical, energetic rebirth into a higher order of being, symbolically called a spiritual androgyne.
The syzygy has three components: a man's femininity and woman's masculinity; the experience man has of woman and vice versa; and the masculine and feminine archetypal image. Archetypal symbolic pairings are 'yoked together' by this term.
Contrasexual (male-female) pairings occur in dream symbolism. They refer to internal communication between the unconscious and conscious minds of any individual.
“It is a psychological fact that as soon as we touch on these identifications we enter the realm of the syzygies, the paired opposites, where the One is never separated from the Other, its antithesis. It is a field of personal experience which leads directly to the experience of individuation, the attainment of the self. ...In this still very obscure field of psychological experience, where we are in direct contact, so to speak, with the archetype, its psychic power is felt in full force. This realm is so entirely one of immediate experience that it cannot be captured by any formula, but can only be hinted at to one who already knows.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 194)
Female archetypes of earth and sky symbolize the Great Mother, who is both conscious protector, spiritual guide, and nurturer, while at the same time the unconscious forces of birth and death, life and destruction.
The anima lurks in the unconscious, wielding her supernatural power to drive our lives either towards mystical knowledge, consciousness and individuation, or towards oblivion in sensual urges. The sky mothers and animas can transcend the body and ego, but in so many myths, they crave balance through the experience of the underworld, the unconscious drives of the instincts and the non-rational, and through this unity, express a balanced whole.
The union of seemingly separate elements give birth to and reveal a higher form. This is often referred to as the royal marriage. This marriage is of fundamental concern to alchemists because it is a key to transformation. Using an alchemical metaphor, Jung often referred to marriage as the crucible of consciousness.
In Sacred Marriage relationship is Immortality. All our cultural experience and individual conscious existence depends on the fabric of life, the germ line, from the mutual sexual relationship of genders. The female is the sole bearer of cytoplasmic inheritance and the principal investor in time and resources. The male contributes half of the genetic material. Immortality is thus not the domain of one gender but of the relationship between woman and man.
The Philosopher's Stone is equated with the Body of Light, the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone (lapis) is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. The transcendent function is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun and Moon.
Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, father-mother, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical, numinous, or divine child.
Progeny of the divine couple have various alchemical names: the philosopher’s gold, the filius Philosophorum, the infans solaris (sun child), the red tincture, the sun/moon child, etc. Making the Philosopher's Stone is a repetition of the creation myth via imagery.
The transformative imperative is a a mystic marriage or union, symbolized in alchemy by the coniunctio -- conjunction of conscious and unconscious. Individuation is the integration of unconscious contents into consciousness. Potential is embodied as a psychologically whole self-realized or self-actualizing person. The "royal wedding" is the final alchemical synthesis of ego and unconscious, matter and spirit, male and female, that brings forth the Philosopher's Stone (the Self).
Alchemist Gerard Dorn called the unus mundus a unification of the Stone with body, soul, and spirit -- a perfect synthesis of conscious and unconscious. This "one world" is the physical-psychological, transcendental, "third thing" continuum underlying all existence -- the metaphysical equivalent of the collective unconscious. Mercurius or the Dragon's "treasure hard to attain" are images for the archetype of unity -- the self.
We need to be related to another individual, according to Jung, to experience the full depth of our own psyche. From an internal perspective, spiritual marriage is an inner experience which is not projected onto another living individual. In the royal marriage of the soul with the Self, the projections of anima and animus have been returned to their proper level in the personal unconscious.
Our partner no longer carries an essentially religious function for us. The King and Queen are united, or conjoined, synthesizing the opposites. When the opposites to be united are the masculine consciousness (of our day world) and the feminine unconscious (the night world), this royal marriage is a transcendent symbol of the Self, and embodies the psychic totality of personal wholeness.
Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception.
This flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.
Hieros Gamos
Deciphering its inherent meaning is a Quest for the Grail and the journey of psychological transformation. The hierosgamos is the holy grail of sexual rites, a psychobiological and symbolic act. Alchemy refers to the reconciliation of Sol and Luna as The Chymical Wedding. Jung's theory of the psychic conjunction of polarities was inspired by this teaching. Over centuries, the alchemists generated a wide range of symbolic images as homologues for the anatomy of the unconscious, relating form and dynamic function.
In biology, two things are homologous if they bear the same relationship to one another. Homology is a relationship between structures or DNA derived from a common ancestor. Homologous traits of organisms are therefore explained by descent from a common ancestor. Homology can also be described at the level of the gene. In genetics homology can refer to both the gene (DNA) and the corresponding protein product.
What we seek is spiritual union, sacred marriage of the gods -- found by joining the male and female within, returning Eros to our process. They guide us into a new holistic era. We now turn to the Feminine, which gives birth to new forms, including the non-physical field of epigenetic and wave-genetic inheritance patterns.
The balance of opposites is called the ‘alchemical wedding’ or mysterium coniunctionis. It was celebrated in Morganatic marriages between human representatives of the God and Goddess that have less to do with inheritance and succession than with renewal of community. Art that contains the archetype, including the genealogical art, is the art that best serves the global community. Like the Caduceus, the two intertwined snakes, it serves as a symbol for perpetually incarnating life, healing and wholeness.
The unification of archetypes embodies the Self. Jung said, “The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima.” (Cw 9i) Any distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy.
The Great Rite, also called the Hieros Gamos, dates to Inanna of ancient Sumeria, around 2600 BCE, if not before -- gods and goddesses, kings of the land and queens of sovereignty incarnate on the earth. The hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, is one of the earliest recorded public ceremonies in written history. The Sumerian rites were deemed essential for the fertility of the land. Symbols arising from the changeable coniunctio reflect the natural process of life/death/rebirth arising from the fixed constellations.of the patriarchal archetypes. The feminine gives birth to the Self before she can birth the new man. Hierosgamos is the symbol of the absolute that reigns over the ego.
The myth of the Holy Grail had to do with the Fisher King whose impotence reflected the drought, the wasteland. Sexual union is a microcosm of the god and goddess, the two fundamental aspects of the cosmos whose union completes the whole. Mystically, the sexual union of male and female is the source of both immortality and personal individuation and redemption.
No one who sets forth on the grail quest remains unchanged. The incarnatio is a spontaneous act of creation in the matter of the universe as the result of the today constellated act of the conuinctio. Synchronicity is the conjunction of individual and cosmos in a way that accelerates and deepens life in an unforeseen way that celebrates Life. The only place of power and change is the Present.
Deciphering its inherent meaning is a Quest for the Grail and the journey of psychological transformation. The hierosgamos is the holy grail of sexual rites, a psychobiological and symbolic act. Alchemy refers to the reconciliation of Sol and Luna as The Chymical Wedding. Jung's theory of the psychic conjunction of polarities was inspired by this teaching. Over centuries, the alchemists generated a wide range of symbolic images as homologues for the anatomy of the unconscious, relating form and dynamic function.
In biology, two things are homologous if they bear the same relationship to one another. Homology is a relationship between structures or DNA derived from a common ancestor. Homologous traits of organisms are therefore explained by descent from a common ancestor. Homology can also be described at the level of the gene. In genetics homology can refer to both the gene (DNA) and the corresponding protein product.
What we seek is spiritual union, sacred marriage of the gods -- found by joining the male and female within, returning Eros to our process. They guide us into a new holistic era. We now turn to the Feminine, which gives birth to new forms, including the non-physical field of epigenetic and wave-genetic inheritance patterns.
The balance of opposites is called the ‘alchemical wedding’ or mysterium coniunctionis. It was celebrated in Morganatic marriages between human representatives of the God and Goddess that have less to do with inheritance and succession than with renewal of community. Art that contains the archetype, including the genealogical art, is the art that best serves the global community. Like the Caduceus, the two intertwined snakes, it serves as a symbol for perpetually incarnating life, healing and wholeness.
The unification of archetypes embodies the Self. Jung said, “The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima.” (Cw 9i) Any distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy.
The Great Rite, also called the Hieros Gamos, dates to Inanna of ancient Sumeria, around 2600 BCE, if not before -- gods and goddesses, kings of the land and queens of sovereignty incarnate on the earth. The hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, is one of the earliest recorded public ceremonies in written history. The Sumerian rites were deemed essential for the fertility of the land. Symbols arising from the changeable coniunctio reflect the natural process of life/death/rebirth arising from the fixed constellations.of the patriarchal archetypes. The feminine gives birth to the Self before she can birth the new man. Hierosgamos is the symbol of the absolute that reigns over the ego.
The myth of the Holy Grail had to do with the Fisher King whose impotence reflected the drought, the wasteland. Sexual union is a microcosm of the god and goddess, the two fundamental aspects of the cosmos whose union completes the whole. Mystically, the sexual union of male and female is the source of both immortality and personal individuation and redemption.
No one who sets forth on the grail quest remains unchanged. The incarnatio is a spontaneous act of creation in the matter of the universe as the result of the today constellated act of the conuinctio. Synchronicity is the conjunction of individual and cosmos in a way that accelerates and deepens life in an unforeseen way that celebrates Life. The only place of power and change is the Present.
Each of our ancestors is a gate to our Inner Sanctum, to the wonder-world of our soul. Genealogy is the relational mode of understanding. The tale of our genesis is our prima materia (cosmic egg, oroboros) and our ultima materia, the unknown and self-knowledge. Like the oroboros serpent we recursively turn back toward our origins.
We must incorporate symbolic relationships. The basic alchemical sequence begins with a male and female soror mystica) sealing the prima materia (original substance; sea, darkness, void) into a vessel -- in this case the family tree. Here we can gently 'cook' our existential woes: rootlessness, anxiety, fear, pain, emptiness, discontent, and despair.
The retort of genealogy gives new meaning to the notion that "like cures like." We fill the retort with our ancestors' names, seal them with documentation, and fire up the slow burning oven of integration. With reflection on the wounds therein we remember past traumas and give voice to feelings previously inexpressible in metaphorical language.
We cling to our surface story and impressions as we bunge jump down our lines of descent. As we work, the House of our Flesh becomes a high tempered glass house, transparent to transcendence. Their breath is our breath, including aspirations and A-ha moments that enliven the experience within.
We have no choice but to live through unendurable times in our lives that nearly break us. Our dreams and their life stories will indicate if the hot fires of an initiatory
experience are to be. Psyche leads us through the labyrinth with her dim light.
In the beginning everything is chaotic, fluid, co-mingled, and undifferentiated. The chaos hides the Stone, contains it, yet is it, but hidden by our inability to see it. Its metaphorical names include quicksilver, shadow, water of life, dragon, and poison of the contaminated opposites. The problems that block us are like the brick walls in our pedigree.
The shadow that plagues us is an undead zombie -- not just a historical profile wrongly marked as living. This is the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, made mute and will-less, by a seemingly supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.
We must endure and endure with devotion, dissolving defenses with emotional congruence to illuminate our undiscovered inner life, clarifying the step-by-step process. In the stillness we feel what needs attention. As the opposites co-mingle through the centuries, it changes our life potential.
We must be patient, humble, and loving with this work. We must handle the tension of not-knowing, of ambiguity, of caring for the unloved, rejected, and forgotten. Our first attempts to extract the gold from the unrefined narrative may be difficult. It is a long journey, sorting through undifferentiated hurt feelings, anger, traumatic reactions, fear, depressed moods, and restlessness, back to find our first royal marriage. Symptoms become patterns.
Its alchemical symbol is a 3-headed serpent or dragon, of Sulpher, Mercury, and Salt. This represents the dance of Sun and Moon, King and Queen, the archetypal superpatterns of male and female, and their material offspring. We spring from the soul and remain the child of our ancestors.
In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286
First matter gives universe its properties. It organizes into the Elements, (fire, water, air, and earth), which are the building blocks of words, thought-ideas or archetypes. It is liminal, between manifest and unmanifest. It is the spiritualized essence or soul of substance: identity, form, and function oscillating between creation and destruction.
We must go a bit deeper and realize that with the instinct of creation is always connected a destructive something; the creation in its own essence is also destructive. You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people's organic health. It is dangerous because there is that extraordinary destructive quality in the creative thing. Just because it is the deepest instinct, the deeper power in man, a power which is beyond conscious control, and because it is on the other side the function which creates the greatest value, it is most dangerous to interfere with it.
(Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654).
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560).
"The transformation of Mercurius, as prima materia, in the heated, sealed vessel is comparable to cooking the basic instinctive drives in their own affect until their essential fantasy content becomes conscious."
“Instead of arguing with the drives which carry us away, we prefer to cook them and . ask then what they want. . . . That can be discovered by active imagination, or through experimenting in reality, but always with the introverted attitude of observing objectively what the drive really wants.” (Marie von Franz, Alchemy, p. 129)
It is often suggested the prima materia is found in "feces" or lead which is alchemical code for matter or the physical body and what gets shoved down into the unconscious. The first matter is cyclic, contains all the elements, and is the source of the Philosopher's Stone -- the egg or light of Nature; Anima Mundi or Soul of the World.
The alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultuum Lapidem means “Visit the innermost parts of the earth; by setting things right (‘rectifying’), you will find the hidden Stone.”
Jung more or less identified the unconscious with the autonomic nervous system. Such sympathetic identification is integral, interiorized or internalized knowing instead of conceptual knowing: unmediated, direct perception by the body and the emotions and the intellect -- the soul. Emotions are part of the reasoning process itself -- bodily intelligence.
This psychophysical mimesis, or power of imitation, is direct experience by total submergence of the unconscious tendencies of the ancestors. So, we can visit the interior of our own earth, our physical body for the treasure of embedded ancestral memories it has hidden for good or ill.
We must incorporate symbolic relationships. The basic alchemical sequence begins with a male and female soror mystica) sealing the prima materia (original substance; sea, darkness, void) into a vessel -- in this case the family tree. Here we can gently 'cook' our existential woes: rootlessness, anxiety, fear, pain, emptiness, discontent, and despair.
The retort of genealogy gives new meaning to the notion that "like cures like." We fill the retort with our ancestors' names, seal them with documentation, and fire up the slow burning oven of integration. With reflection on the wounds therein we remember past traumas and give voice to feelings previously inexpressible in metaphorical language.
We cling to our surface story and impressions as we bunge jump down our lines of descent. As we work, the House of our Flesh becomes a high tempered glass house, transparent to transcendence. Their breath is our breath, including aspirations and A-ha moments that enliven the experience within.
We have no choice but to live through unendurable times in our lives that nearly break us. Our dreams and their life stories will indicate if the hot fires of an initiatory
experience are to be. Psyche leads us through the labyrinth with her dim light.
In the beginning everything is chaotic, fluid, co-mingled, and undifferentiated. The chaos hides the Stone, contains it, yet is it, but hidden by our inability to see it. Its metaphorical names include quicksilver, shadow, water of life, dragon, and poison of the contaminated opposites. The problems that block us are like the brick walls in our pedigree.
The shadow that plagues us is an undead zombie -- not just a historical profile wrongly marked as living. This is the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, made mute and will-less, by a seemingly supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.
We must endure and endure with devotion, dissolving defenses with emotional congruence to illuminate our undiscovered inner life, clarifying the step-by-step process. In the stillness we feel what needs attention. As the opposites co-mingle through the centuries, it changes our life potential.
We must be patient, humble, and loving with this work. We must handle the tension of not-knowing, of ambiguity, of caring for the unloved, rejected, and forgotten. Our first attempts to extract the gold from the unrefined narrative may be difficult. It is a long journey, sorting through undifferentiated hurt feelings, anger, traumatic reactions, fear, depressed moods, and restlessness, back to find our first royal marriage. Symptoms become patterns.
Its alchemical symbol is a 3-headed serpent or dragon, of Sulpher, Mercury, and Salt. This represents the dance of Sun and Moon, King and Queen, the archetypal superpatterns of male and female, and their material offspring. We spring from the soul and remain the child of our ancestors.
In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286
First matter gives universe its properties. It organizes into the Elements, (fire, water, air, and earth), which are the building blocks of words, thought-ideas or archetypes. It is liminal, between manifest and unmanifest. It is the spiritualized essence or soul of substance: identity, form, and function oscillating between creation and destruction.
We must go a bit deeper and realize that with the instinct of creation is always connected a destructive something; the creation in its own essence is also destructive. You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people's organic health. It is dangerous because there is that extraordinary destructive quality in the creative thing. Just because it is the deepest instinct, the deeper power in man, a power which is beyond conscious control, and because it is on the other side the function which creates the greatest value, it is most dangerous to interfere with it.
(Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654).
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560).
"The transformation of Mercurius, as prima materia, in the heated, sealed vessel is comparable to cooking the basic instinctive drives in their own affect until their essential fantasy content becomes conscious."
“Instead of arguing with the drives which carry us away, we prefer to cook them and . ask then what they want. . . . That can be discovered by active imagination, or through experimenting in reality, but always with the introverted attitude of observing objectively what the drive really wants.” (Marie von Franz, Alchemy, p. 129)
It is often suggested the prima materia is found in "feces" or lead which is alchemical code for matter or the physical body and what gets shoved down into the unconscious. The first matter is cyclic, contains all the elements, and is the source of the Philosopher's Stone -- the egg or light of Nature; Anima Mundi or Soul of the World.
The alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultuum Lapidem means “Visit the innermost parts of the earth; by setting things right (‘rectifying’), you will find the hidden Stone.”
Jung more or less identified the unconscious with the autonomic nervous system. Such sympathetic identification is integral, interiorized or internalized knowing instead of conceptual knowing: unmediated, direct perception by the body and the emotions and the intellect -- the soul. Emotions are part of the reasoning process itself -- bodily intelligence.
This psychophysical mimesis, or power of imitation, is direct experience by total submergence of the unconscious tendencies of the ancestors. So, we can visit the interior of our own earth, our physical body for the treasure of embedded ancestral memories it has hidden for good or ill.
"Individual consciousness is only the flower and the fruit of a season, sprung from the perennial rhizome beneath the earth; and it would find itself in better accord with the truth if it took the existence of the rhizome into its calculations. For the root matter is the mother of all things." -- C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation Whole Person Transformation
You heard in the "nomina" that the prima materia was thought of as "Hyle", "abyss," "primaeva terra chaotica" (primary chaotic earth) and "initium omnium" [beginning of all) .
So the alchemists regard it as the principle of existence in general. Zosimos said that men do not impart information about the prima materia, and Pseudo Demokritos sought the information from an inhabitant of Hades.
Comarius also speaks of it as b eing in Hades, and Olympiodor, quoting Zosimos, calls it the "habitation of souls'; and, in the same passage "the egg" and the "entrance to the West.”
The West is the land of the dead, the sun sinks in the West, it is there that the day, and life itself, sink, so to speak, into eternity.
This land of the dead, Hades, is regarded as the dark sky, the night, which stands opposed, so to speak, to the light sky of the day.
The alchemists assumed that the darkness was still in a chaotic state, and therefore the prima materia was to be found in it.
Dorneus, quoting Paracelsus, calls the prima materia an "increatum" (a non-created) which has existed since the beginning of time, side by side with the creation of God, as it were.
Therefore the Rosarium calls it: "radix ipsius" (the root of itself), it was not created but arose out of itself.
According to Mylius it is "primum subjectum" (the first subject), or, as we should say today, the first object.
The idea is, that the prima materia is co-eternal with God, and that he used it as his working material, he prepared it as the text says.
It is thought of as a sort of sub stance underlying everything.
Mylius also calls it "perpetua" (perpetual).
It is eternal and "susceptible", that is, it receives the eternal images which God impresses on it, and therefore all living beings find their origin in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 27 June 1941.
You heard in the "nomina" that the prima materia was thought of as "Hyle", "abyss," "primaeva terra chaotica" (primary chaotic earth) and "initium omnium" [beginning of all) .
So the alchemists regard it as the principle of existence in general. Zosimos said that men do not impart information about the prima materia, and Pseudo Demokritos sought the information from an inhabitant of Hades.
Comarius also speaks of it as b eing in Hades, and Olympiodor, quoting Zosimos, calls it the "habitation of souls'; and, in the same passage "the egg" and the "entrance to the West.”
The West is the land of the dead, the sun sinks in the West, it is there that the day, and life itself, sink, so to speak, into eternity.
This land of the dead, Hades, is regarded as the dark sky, the night, which stands opposed, so to speak, to the light sky of the day.
The alchemists assumed that the darkness was still in a chaotic state, and therefore the prima materia was to be found in it.
Dorneus, quoting Paracelsus, calls the prima materia an "increatum" (a non-created) which has existed since the beginning of time, side by side with the creation of God, as it were.
Therefore the Rosarium calls it: "radix ipsius" (the root of itself), it was not created but arose out of itself.
According to Mylius it is "primum subjectum" (the first subject), or, as we should say today, the first object.
The idea is, that the prima materia is co-eternal with God, and that he used it as his working material, he prepared it as the text says.
It is thought of as a sort of sub stance underlying everything.
Mylius also calls it "perpetua" (perpetual).
It is eternal and "susceptible", that is, it receives the eternal images which God impresses on it, and therefore all living beings find their origin in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 27 June 1941.
Everyone who gives creative expression to
the experience of the unconscious is an alchemist.
http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.jungalchemical.toc.htm
The third degree of [Alchemical] conjunction is universal: it is relation or identity of the personal with the supra-personal atman, and of the individual tao with the universal tao. . . . ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 762
Mircea Eliade said, "...both Tantrist and alchemist strive to dominate 'matter'. They do not withdraw from the world as do the ascetic and metaphysician, but dream of conquering it and changing its ontological regime. In short, there is good ground for seeing in the tantric 'sâdhana', and in the work of the alchemist, parallel efforts to free themselves from the laws of Time, to 'decondition' their existence and gain absolute freedom.”
[Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, Univ. of Chicago Press,
1956 by Flammarion, 1978, 2nd Edition, pg.129.]
To produce transformations the magician uses the conception of "dynamic interconnectedness” to describe the physical world as the sort of thing that imagination and desire can affect. This holistic world is an independent whole, a web in which no strand is autonomous. Mind and body, galaxy and atom, sensation and stimulus, are intimately bound. Oneness is the backdrop of all that exists.
The primordial unbound state is nothing. All things are independent yet interrelated. The worldview is that all things come from the One Thing, or First Cause. Beyond delusory illusions of projection and archetypal possession, those who value human imagination and perceive cosmic oneness in worldly differences, can transcend the worldly vision, with meanings and revelations.
In Taoist and Vedic thought, the cosmic holistic entity – the universe – manifests its desire for self-expression as many – unity in diversity. This cyclic expression is oscillation – energetic flux -- of eternal growth and decay. Dualism is reconciled in complementary functions radiating cosmic forces. Integral gender vitality is the meaning of the sacred wedding. The unmanifest accounts for the overall stability of the universe. Holistic consciousness that guides nature is the invincible Silent Witness.
Universe is a spiritual arena, the domain of ‘desire-based consciousness. This power is integrating if it is turned into earth, grounded and balanced in manifest life. Self-healing flourishes optimally when dualism is transcended. Freed of the personal limitations of the individual mind, ‘compatible’ entities remain in ‘complementary’ pairs. The mystery of immortality is tied to that of death/rebirth. The nature of life is immortality.
“‘Desire for self-existence’ of the source permeates through all the minds of its aberrations, eternally establishing immortality in the universe,” says Rengarajan. [ DNA Decipher Journal | August2015 | Volume 5 | Issue 1| pp. 35-54Rengarajan, S. , Cosmic Intelligence & DNA (Part III) ]
Such passion explains even the absurd, as we learned in Episode One. We have come full circle. The serpent bites its own tail. The mirror cracks. The Mystery of death, immortality, and the deep unconscious woods is preserved – the eternal cycle continues, interweaving spirituality, culture, and nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW1NySW-24
the experience of the unconscious is an alchemist.
http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.jungalchemical.toc.htm
The third degree of [Alchemical] conjunction is universal: it is relation or identity of the personal with the supra-personal atman, and of the individual tao with the universal tao. . . . ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 762
Mircea Eliade said, "...both Tantrist and alchemist strive to dominate 'matter'. They do not withdraw from the world as do the ascetic and metaphysician, but dream of conquering it and changing its ontological regime. In short, there is good ground for seeing in the tantric 'sâdhana', and in the work of the alchemist, parallel efforts to free themselves from the laws of Time, to 'decondition' their existence and gain absolute freedom.”
[Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, Univ. of Chicago Press,
1956 by Flammarion, 1978, 2nd Edition, pg.129.]
To produce transformations the magician uses the conception of "dynamic interconnectedness” to describe the physical world as the sort of thing that imagination and desire can affect. This holistic world is an independent whole, a web in which no strand is autonomous. Mind and body, galaxy and atom, sensation and stimulus, are intimately bound. Oneness is the backdrop of all that exists.
The primordial unbound state is nothing. All things are independent yet interrelated. The worldview is that all things come from the One Thing, or First Cause. Beyond delusory illusions of projection and archetypal possession, those who value human imagination and perceive cosmic oneness in worldly differences, can transcend the worldly vision, with meanings and revelations.
In Taoist and Vedic thought, the cosmic holistic entity – the universe – manifests its desire for self-expression as many – unity in diversity. This cyclic expression is oscillation – energetic flux -- of eternal growth and decay. Dualism is reconciled in complementary functions radiating cosmic forces. Integral gender vitality is the meaning of the sacred wedding. The unmanifest accounts for the overall stability of the universe. Holistic consciousness that guides nature is the invincible Silent Witness.
Universe is a spiritual arena, the domain of ‘desire-based consciousness. This power is integrating if it is turned into earth, grounded and balanced in manifest life. Self-healing flourishes optimally when dualism is transcended. Freed of the personal limitations of the individual mind, ‘compatible’ entities remain in ‘complementary’ pairs. The mystery of immortality is tied to that of death/rebirth. The nature of life is immortality.
“‘Desire for self-existence’ of the source permeates through all the minds of its aberrations, eternally establishing immortality in the universe,” says Rengarajan. [ DNA Decipher Journal | August2015 | Volume 5 | Issue 1| pp. 35-54Rengarajan, S. , Cosmic Intelligence & DNA (Part III) ]
Such passion explains even the absurd, as we learned in Episode One. We have come full circle. The serpent bites its own tail. The mirror cracks. The Mystery of death, immortality, and the deep unconscious woods is preserved – the eternal cycle continues, interweaving spirituality, culture, and nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW1NySW-24
Eve Berni
The goal of alchemy is not merely material, it is partly in "the Beyond", and is almost exactly similar to the goal of Taoism, where the whole effort is directed towards finding or creating Tao. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers' stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~ Jung, ETH, Page 143.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Jung, ETH, Page 143.
This means, applied to alchemy, that it is death to take alchemy as an external occupation, but the man who regards it as an inward experience, can live and rejoice.
~Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The central idea of Taoism is no moral question, but is the Tao, the indefinable essence of the right way, and this is also the mystery of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.
The "art of gold making" is a sort of creating of the world, or it is based on the pattern of the creation of the world, and, as in Genesis, a cosmos is fashioned from the chaos.
~Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The earth, in the alchemistic sense, means the body and in a double sense: chemical bodies (substances), minerals etc., and the human body. ~Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 101.
Mercury is the anima mundi, the soul of the world, and entered matter as an emanation of God, and since then it is concealed in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 180.
"Go to the streams of the river Nile and there thou wilt find a stone which has a spirit. Take this stone, divide it and put thy hand inside it and draw out its heart: for its soul is in its heart." ~Ostanes cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Page 205.
The alchemists think of the Redeemer as lying hidden or sleeping in the materia,
he does not only descend from heaven but comes also from the depths of matter.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.
Every profound student of alchemy knows that the making of gold was not the real purpose and that the process was a western form of Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 107.
Who would have thought that the alchemists, popularly supposed to be searching for gold, were really promising themselves freedom from illusion, exaggerated emotion, passion, excess and all possible vices? ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 108.
There can hardly be any doubt that not a few of those seekers had the dawning knowledge that the secret nature of the stone was man's own self. This "self"was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a "hidden nature" dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 94.
In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 202.
It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers' stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~ Jung, ETH, Page 143.
The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Jung, ETH, Page 143.
This means, applied to alchemy, that it is death to take alchemy as an external occupation, but the man who regards it as an inward experience, can live and rejoice.
~Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The central idea of Taoism is no moral question, but is the Tao, the indefinable essence of the right way, and this is also the mystery of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.
The "art of gold making" is a sort of creating of the world, or it is based on the pattern of the creation of the world, and, as in Genesis, a cosmos is fashioned from the chaos.
~Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.
The earth, in the alchemistic sense, means the body and in a double sense: chemical bodies (substances), minerals etc., and the human body. ~Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 101.
Mercury is the anima mundi, the soul of the world, and entered matter as an emanation of God, and since then it is concealed in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 180.
"Go to the streams of the river Nile and there thou wilt find a stone which has a spirit. Take this stone, divide it and put thy hand inside it and draw out its heart: for its soul is in its heart." ~Ostanes cited by Carl Jung, ETH, Page 205.
The alchemists think of the Redeemer as lying hidden or sleeping in the materia,
he does not only descend from heaven but comes also from the depths of matter.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.
Every profound student of alchemy knows that the making of gold was not the real purpose and that the process was a western form of Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 107.
Who would have thought that the alchemists, popularly supposed to be searching for gold, were really promising themselves freedom from illusion, exaggerated emotion, passion, excess and all possible vices? ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 108.
There can hardly be any doubt that not a few of those seekers had the dawning knowledge that the secret nature of the stone was man's own self. This "self"was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a "hidden nature" dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 94.
In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 202.
INTRODUCTION TO ALCHEMY
In Archetypal Psychology
by Iona Miller, 1986
Alchemical Imagination: Making Psyche Matter
"Search the anima mundi means to me across the world as a tribal hunter ... a gold digger. Means to scrutinize everything carefully and 'divine' as it says, the specific genius loci. To do this we must be sensitive to the representations of the world ... " (James Hillman, The pleasure of thinking)
Prepared as a class for Spring Quarter 1986, Rogue Community College. This class provided feedback and interaction which fed into my Phanes Press book, THE MODERN ALCHEMIST: A Guide to Personal Transformation, Miller & Miller (1994), covering both therapeutic healing and spiritual development through a series of alchemical plates from the Book of Lambspring, as a typical metaphorical process.
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books. Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library. Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity.
Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold. Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness. Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness.
Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life. For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts. Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians: 1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise von Franz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few. 2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth." Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course. There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally.
Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational. Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference. Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths. All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body. Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age. These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development). They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities.
11. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage.
12. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
13. Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature.
Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton. Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493. His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions.
Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations.
Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove). This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus.
Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason.
However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories.
Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs! It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues.
Science is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter." Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world.
VonFranz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ...Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea." These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation. One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory.
VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness." This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors." "...scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world." This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute."
Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions. Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was basically the same, as we shall see. Some modern schools of the Hermetic Arts see an identity between medieval European alchemy and the eastern practice of Yoga. They see a metaphysical or symbolic correspondence between the planetary and metallurgical attributions of alchemy and the chakras. Yoga is also experimental in nature; the experiment is performed on oneself.
The qualities of the metals correspond to the planets and chakras as follows. Lead Saturn Sacral Plexus Iron Mars Sexual Ganglion Tin Jupiter Solar Plexus Gold Sun Cardiac Plexus Copper Venus Pharyngeal Plexus Silver Moon Pituitary Body Quicksilver Mercury Pineal Gland Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium. Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis.
We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas.
Mercury..........Sattva
Sulphur.........Rajas
Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh).
The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas. They are: Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth). Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage.
The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called idapingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus. The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows." In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows:
1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy.
2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities:
a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury;
b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher;
c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt.
3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth.
4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists.
5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher.
6. Yoga says 1) Prana or Surya, sun, 2) Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury.
7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies.
8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is 1). to recognize what goes on in his body, and 2). to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality. This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT).
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious changes the alchemist him/herself into a new creature. Jung asserted that the medieval alchemists were unaware of the natural process of psychological transformation which went on in their subconscious. Therefore, they projected this process into their experiments as a science of the soul.
In other words, they projected an inner process outside of themselves. Had they been more conscious in their intent or more sophisticated in their psychology like the yogis, they would have been more consistently successful at producing the coveted lapis or Philosopher's Stone, a sort of "quantum Tantra." But why is a study of alchemy relevant to our modern lives, even if we have a spiritual orientation? We are not daily occupied with pseudo-alchemical experiments like the alchemists, or are we? In many metaphorical ways we are thinking like alchemists all the time.
Also, Jung observed that the dreams of his clients repeatedly stressed the main alchemical themes, especially the conflict and union of opposites. One of the main symbols of reconciliation of this conflict are various mandala forms, present from alchemy to Tibetan Buddhism. The alchemical symbolism is widespread in dreams of modern individuals, and can shed light on these more primitive aspects of our subconscious life. It is important for our understanding of our own unconscious, and how it transcends and subverts us.
Plato enjoined us to "Know Thyself." In Alchemical Active Imagination, vonFranz states, "True knowledge of oneself is the knowledge of the objective psyche as it manifests in dreams and in the manifestations of the unconscious. Only by looking at dreams, for instance, can one see who one truly is; they tell us who we really are, that is something which is objectively there. To meditate on that is an effort towards self-knowledge, because that is scientific and objective and not in the interest of the ego but in the interest of "what I am" objectively. It is knowledge of the Self, of the wider, objective personality." We could view alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy, which originally had the meaning 'to heal,' and the implication of 'service to the gods.'
Psychotherapy basically means service to the psyche, and offers us a way to reconnect with out unconscious, thus experiencing wholeness. It also opens an avenue to increased physical health, since those ailments which remain unconscious often manifest as psychosomatic diseases. Knowledge of alchemy's symbolism can lead us to psychological insight in terms of our own conditions, especially that reflected in dreams. Alchemy may be carried out as either a physical or mental operation.
The Jungian orientation is primarily mental, though it often takes a physical form or expression. For example, you might choose to ritually 'act out' certain aspects of the Great Work in active imagination. The Jungian interpretation that alchemy is a passive and unconscious process comes from a basically mental, or Greek orientation. The type of alchemy that aims at rejuvenation or preserving the physical body is descended from the physically-oriented Egyptian alchemy. The main traditions of conscious, inner spiritual alchemy come mainly from the Islamic and Oriental philosophies.
Jung's original interest in alchemy came from a dream he had of a library filled with arcane tomes from medieval times and the Renaissance. During the next 15 years he spent collecting this library, he learned to recognize the major symbols of the unconscious. He was reading about them in alchemy books and hearing about them in his patients' dreams and fantasies. Their projections recurrently told him of an inner quest, a sealed vessel, the conflict of opposites, a philosophical tree, a fountain of eternity, a golden flower, a Stone, a sacred wedding, etc. Slowly Jung familiarized himself with their alchemical meaning. Then he, himself, became a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone -- a guide to the depths of the unknown. In his case this power manifested as the ability to heal at the psychophysical level -- in other words, to release any blocks hindering the natural process of growth and transformation. When proceeding in the direction of their individuation his clients' harmony was restored, self-equilibration returned. Jung equated individuation with self-realization.
We should be careful here not to dichotomize between "mental" and "physical" too much or we will lose our proper alchemical perspective. Alchemy cannot be reduced to a metaphor of psychological or philosophical transformation -- it requires first-hand experimentation. Grossinger says that "what Carl Jung recognized was that the stages of the alchemists also corresponded to a process of psychological individuation. The psychic stages were as precise and rigorous as the chemical ones by which they became imagined. Furthermore, they generated a physical and even quantitative terminology for an undiagnosed tension of opposites in the human psyche arising from male and female archetypes, a struggle they sought to resolve by the creative unity of the chemicals in the Stone."
Alchemy sought to unite Spirit (male), and Matter (female) through a Royal Union (coniunctio) to create their synthesis in the homunculus, hermaphrodite, or lapis. This is an alchemical metaphor or version of the generic process of spiritual rebirth. The entire body of alchemical literature covers many variations on the theme of the Great Work. No single person will ever express all of the operations and symbols described in alchemy, just as no single person ever embodies the totality of the Self.
We each have unique experiences of the common roots of humanity or the collective unconscious. Thus, the various operations of alchemy come in different order for the various practitioners. The alchemical writings seem to contradict one another about the evolution of the process. Some claim to have made the Stone and lost it, over and over -- like the elusive revelations of a psychedelic trip. Likewise, in dreams we sometimes find the symbols of the end-product (like a mandala, or flower, or child) appearing at the beginning of the process. They symbolize what is latent and seeks manifestation.
Nevertheless, in both alchemy and Jungian psychology there are classic stages in the process of individuation or personal experience of the unconscious -- psychic milestones. One major recurrent theme in modern dreams is the symbolism of the planets, which correspond with the alchemical metals. These metals, or planets (astrology), archetypes (depth psychology) or Spheres (QBL) can be understood psychologically as the building blocks of the ego, which forms itself from fragments of these divine archetypal qualities. These spiritual principles seek concretization through the unique experience of an individual ego. This links spirit and matter; it comes down to earth. The sacredness of the Opus, or Great Work, is the central idea behind alchemy. It is a holistic perspective. One must be self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented. The adept is also diligent, patient and virtuous.
In other words, in order to create the Stone, you must have that integrative potential within yourself for self-realization -- for becoming whole or 'holy.' It requires an inward seeking, just like the process of individuation. It is a solitary task for no one may follow where you go. But there may be guides who will help inspire your faith and dedication to the task. Others have been to the territory you will explore, but none will accompany you.
The secret of alchemy is that it is a personal journey of transformation, and cannot be explained but only experienced. It is "eating the dish," not just reading about it in an alchemical cookbook. Its effects must be channeled into spiritual growth, for if alchemy is used to gratify personal desire the work is lost. This means the ego gets inflated with its own importance when the real power source lies within the Self. This naturally produces a regression back into an unconscious state, back to the prima materia, raw psychic material.
The instinctual urge for growth and transformation lies within us. For this urge to be considered evolutional requires that the ego must cooperate quite deliberately and consciously with the Self. This leads toward self-realization. The main purpose of the Opus is "to create a transcendent, miraculous substance which is variously symbolized as the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, or the universal medicine (panacea).
The procedure is, first, to find the suitable material, the so called prima materia (lead), and then to subject it to a series of operations which will turn it into the Philosopher's Stone (gold)." (Edinger, 1978). The First Matter is a homogenous unity of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt. It is therefore 'three,' but can also be expressed as 'four' elements, which are again essentially 'one.' Jung felt that the secret of the psyche was contained in this question of the 'three' and the 'four.'
In alchemy it is expressed as the axiom of Maria Prophetessa: "Therefore the Hebrew prophetess cried without restraint: 'one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.'" Today, physicists echo this statement when they call 'plasma' both the fourth and first state of matter (the others being liquid, gas and solid). In Jungian psychology, the prima materia is the original undifferentiated condition of ordinary consciousness, which is really unconsciousness -- subjective awareness.
Mystics of all times have repeated that in the ordinary state we are all asleep or even "dead" to the true Reality. In psychology the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth). In Jungian theory we have a dominant function and limited access to one or two others, but the fourth function is inaccessible, elusive, maladapted, or hard to integrate. It is what keeps us from "getting it all together." Thus, we are out-of-balance.
Balancing the four functions means achieving an integrated personality, harmony and well-being. This requires undergoing a symbolic process of the union of opposites, which is what both alchemy (and Tantra) and Jungian analysis are all about. Both alchemy and Jungian psychology require a period of depth analysis (solutio) to distinguish the original, undifferentiated contents.
The ego learns what part of the personality comes from itself and which parts from the Self. It reflects on its own component parts (subpersonalities) and learns to see itself as a small part of a greater whole, the larger unity of the Self. Edinger says, "The fixed, settled aspects of the personality which are rigid and static are reduced or led back to their original, undifferentiated condition as part of the process of psychic transformation," i.e. back to a state of 'innocence.'
cont.Further, Edinger compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy. He gives some hints:
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious. There is no set number of alchemical operations, just as there is no set number or order to archetypes. However, certain of the operations seem to recur more often in the literature and experience. We could consider these as the skeletal frame of the alchemical process. Their order switches around also.
Edinger lists seven operations which seem to typify the major transformations of the alchemical process. These include: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio. Other major operations include nigredo, albedo, rubedo, solificatio, multiplicatio, projectio, separatio, circulatio, and more. We can detail the nature of each of these operations later.
For now, it is enough to grasp the overview which is best stated by Jung, himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis:
"...the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis [solve or solutio] on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation [coagula or coagulatio] on the other. For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly, there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia. And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end. There are countless speculations on the nature of the end state, all of them reflected in its designations. The commonest are the ideas of its permanence (prolongation of life, immortality, incorruptibility), its androgyny, its spirituality and corporeality, its divinity and its resemblance to man (homunculus)."
He goes on to point out what this might mean psychologically. We could view it as conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels creating splits in the personality. Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis. The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims at uniting them permanently. The images of the goal which then appear in dreams often run parallel with the corresponding alchemical symbols." He reiterates the value of accessing the alchemical symbolism for increasing insight.
"Investigation of the alchemical symbolism, like a preoccupation with mythology, does not lead one away from life anymore than a study of comparative anatomy leads away from the anatomy of the living man. On the contrary, alchemy affords us a veritable treasure-house of symbols, knowledge of which is extremely helpful for an understanding of neurotic and psychotic processes. This, in turn, enables us to apply the psychology of the unconscious to those regions in the history of the human mind which are concerned with symbolism."
Each of the operations of alchemy functions as the center of focus of an elaborate symbol-system. Other symbols which are related to the operation cluster around the theme of the operation -- they share a common essence. These central symbols provide basic categories which we can use to understand our own personal psychic life, and even the transformation processes of others.
Taken together, the alchemical operations illustrate almost all of the full range of experiences which are involved in the process of individuation. As Grossinger points out, "Alchemy is thus a form of chemical research into which unresolved psychic elements were projected. The alchemical nigredo, the initial phase of the operation which produces 'black blacker than black,' is also an internal experience of melancholia, an encounter with the shadow."
But this is also the necessary first stage in Jungian analysis -- confronting that which has been rejected or repressed is essential to becoming whole. This realm of the shadow can often provide more real substance for the spiritual quest than mimicking the teachings of a spiritual master without really changing oneself. Though stumbling around in the dark seems frustrating, if it is honest and heartfelt, and one really grapples with the shadow problem, the way is cleared for progress that will be sustained by a firm foundation gained in the early phases.
Throughout the alchemical process, the lapis functions as an inner guide by presenting itself in diverse symbolism. It symbolizes the growing manifestation of your latent potential for wholeness. It frequently manifests in mandala symbolism. This includes such forms as a revolving wheel or the zodiac, the petals of a magnificent flower, or a serpent eating its tail. As a grand union of opposites, it symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy Alchemy is a means of understanding our unconscious projections of archetypes into the world. In "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines,"
Rudolf Bernoulli summarizes the basics of extroverted and introverted alchemy. He says, "There are two kinds of alchemy: one strives to know the cosmos as a whole and to recreate it; it is in a sense the precursor of modern natural science. It aspires to create gold as the supreme perfection in this sphere...The other alchemy strives higher; it strives for the great wonder, the wonder of all wonder, the magic crystal, the philosopher's stone."
"This is not a substance susceptible of chemical analysis. It does not represent a spiritual or psychological state that can be reduced to a clear formula. It is something more than perfection, something through which perfection can be achieved. It is the universal instrument of magic. By it we can attain to the ultimate. By it we can completely possess the world. By it we can make ourselves free from the world, by soaring above it. This is alchemy in the mystical sense ...The goal is reached only when a man succeeds in creating the ...stone within himself, and this is made possible only the intervention of the 'inner master.'" i.e. the Self. Psychologically, the union of body and spirit or of conscious and unconscious can be safely attempted only when both have undergone a purification brought about by the earlier stages of analysis, in which the conscious character and the personal unconscious are reviewed and set in order. (Psychic Energy, p. 452-3).
In the alchemistic literature there is evidence that the mysterious coniunctio took place in three stages. The first is that of the union of opposites, the double conjunction, which chiefly concerns us here. The second stage effects a triple union, that of body, soul, and spirit; or, as it is said elsewhere, "the Trinity is reduced to a Unity."
In the Book of Lambspring, published in 1625, this triple union is represented first by two fishes swimming in the sea, pictured with the legend, "The sea is the Body, the two fishes are the Soul and the Spirit", and later by a second picture showing a deer and a unicorn in a forest, with the following text: In the Body [the forest] there is Soul [the deer] and Spirit [the unicorn] ...He that knows how to tame and master them by art, and to couple them together, may justly be called a master, for we rightly judge that he has attained the golden flesh.
The literature offers far less material about this more advanced stage of the work than about the simple coniunctio, and still less about the third stage, the union of the four elements, from which the fifth element, the "quintessence," arises. However, Jung's latest works are largely concerned with the problems of this fourfold coniunctio, through which not only are the personal parts of the psyche -- ego and anima, or ego and animus -- consummated, but these, in a further stage of development, are in turn united with their transpersonal correlates -- wise man and prophetess, or great mother and magician (under whatever names these superordinate elements are conceived).
The subject is by no means simple, but it amply repays careful study. Further definitions and descriptors of the dynamics of alchemy can be found in my book THE MODERN ALCHEMIST, (Phanes Press, 1994) which is divided into two major parts, each representing an 'octave' of the famous alchemical dictum, "Solve et Coagula":
I. Metamorphosis of Soul; therapy or personal growth, and
II. Personification of Spirit on spiritual development.
Chapters in Part I include:
The Prima Materia on Persona, the social mask
The Nigredo on the Shadow, or chaos, depression and inertia
The Union of Opposites, on Anima or the archetypal Feminine
Participation Mystique, on Animus as the archetypal Masculine
Solutio, the operation of liquification and the Adversary archetype
Coagulatio, the operation of embodiment, archetype of the Great Mother
Sublimatio, operation of ennobling, archetype of Wise Old Man
Albedo, Rubedo and Coniunctio, the miracle marriage of opposites
Part II covers the following:
Solificatio, operation of the sun and the Hero archetype
The Philosopher's Stone on the lapis and shamanic Mana Personality
Puer/Senex on the dynamics of youth and maturity, magickal child archetype
The Transcendent Function on the Self or God-Image in the soul
Devouring Father on the conception of divine child
Anima Consciousness on the return of the Feminine and Incubation
Individuation and Rebirth on spiritual rebirth phenomena
Ultima Materia on culmination of the Great Work in the Adept or God-Man/Woman
In Archetypal Psychology
by Iona Miller, 1986
Alchemical Imagination: Making Psyche Matter
"Search the anima mundi means to me across the world as a tribal hunter ... a gold digger. Means to scrutinize everything carefully and 'divine' as it says, the specific genius loci. To do this we must be sensitive to the representations of the world ... " (James Hillman, The pleasure of thinking)
Prepared as a class for Spring Quarter 1986, Rogue Community College. This class provided feedback and interaction which fed into my Phanes Press book, THE MODERN ALCHEMIST: A Guide to Personal Transformation, Miller & Miller (1994), covering both therapeutic healing and spiritual development through a series of alchemical plates from the Book of Lambspring, as a typical metaphorical process.
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books. Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library. Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity.
Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold. Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness. Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness.
Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life. For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts. Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians: 1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise von Franz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few. 2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth." Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course. There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally.
Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational. Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference. Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths. All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body. Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age. These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development). They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities.
11. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage.
12. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
13. Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature.
Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton. Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493. His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions.
Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations.
Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove). This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus.
Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason.
However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories.
Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs! It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues.
Science is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter." Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world.
VonFranz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ...Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea." These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation. One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory.
VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness." This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors." "...scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world." This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute."
Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions. Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was basically the same, as we shall see. Some modern schools of the Hermetic Arts see an identity between medieval European alchemy and the eastern practice of Yoga. They see a metaphysical or symbolic correspondence between the planetary and metallurgical attributions of alchemy and the chakras. Yoga is also experimental in nature; the experiment is performed on oneself.
The qualities of the metals correspond to the planets and chakras as follows. Lead Saturn Sacral Plexus Iron Mars Sexual Ganglion Tin Jupiter Solar Plexus Gold Sun Cardiac Plexus Copper Venus Pharyngeal Plexus Silver Moon Pituitary Body Quicksilver Mercury Pineal Gland Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium. Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis.
We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas.
Mercury..........Sattva
Sulphur.........Rajas
Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh).
The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas. They are: Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth). Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage.
The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called idapingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus. The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows." In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows:
1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy.
2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities:
a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury;
b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher;
c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt.
3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth.
4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists.
5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher.
6. Yoga says 1) Prana or Surya, sun, 2) Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury.
7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies.
8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is 1). to recognize what goes on in his body, and 2). to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality. This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT).
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious changes the alchemist him/herself into a new creature. Jung asserted that the medieval alchemists were unaware of the natural process of psychological transformation which went on in their subconscious. Therefore, they projected this process into their experiments as a science of the soul.
In other words, they projected an inner process outside of themselves. Had they been more conscious in their intent or more sophisticated in their psychology like the yogis, they would have been more consistently successful at producing the coveted lapis or Philosopher's Stone, a sort of "quantum Tantra." But why is a study of alchemy relevant to our modern lives, even if we have a spiritual orientation? We are not daily occupied with pseudo-alchemical experiments like the alchemists, or are we? In many metaphorical ways we are thinking like alchemists all the time.
Also, Jung observed that the dreams of his clients repeatedly stressed the main alchemical themes, especially the conflict and union of opposites. One of the main symbols of reconciliation of this conflict are various mandala forms, present from alchemy to Tibetan Buddhism. The alchemical symbolism is widespread in dreams of modern individuals, and can shed light on these more primitive aspects of our subconscious life. It is important for our understanding of our own unconscious, and how it transcends and subverts us.
Plato enjoined us to "Know Thyself." In Alchemical Active Imagination, vonFranz states, "True knowledge of oneself is the knowledge of the objective psyche as it manifests in dreams and in the manifestations of the unconscious. Only by looking at dreams, for instance, can one see who one truly is; they tell us who we really are, that is something which is objectively there. To meditate on that is an effort towards self-knowledge, because that is scientific and objective and not in the interest of the ego but in the interest of "what I am" objectively. It is knowledge of the Self, of the wider, objective personality." We could view alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy, which originally had the meaning 'to heal,' and the implication of 'service to the gods.'
Psychotherapy basically means service to the psyche, and offers us a way to reconnect with out unconscious, thus experiencing wholeness. It also opens an avenue to increased physical health, since those ailments which remain unconscious often manifest as psychosomatic diseases. Knowledge of alchemy's symbolism can lead us to psychological insight in terms of our own conditions, especially that reflected in dreams. Alchemy may be carried out as either a physical or mental operation.
The Jungian orientation is primarily mental, though it often takes a physical form or expression. For example, you might choose to ritually 'act out' certain aspects of the Great Work in active imagination. The Jungian interpretation that alchemy is a passive and unconscious process comes from a basically mental, or Greek orientation. The type of alchemy that aims at rejuvenation or preserving the physical body is descended from the physically-oriented Egyptian alchemy. The main traditions of conscious, inner spiritual alchemy come mainly from the Islamic and Oriental philosophies.
Jung's original interest in alchemy came from a dream he had of a library filled with arcane tomes from medieval times and the Renaissance. During the next 15 years he spent collecting this library, he learned to recognize the major symbols of the unconscious. He was reading about them in alchemy books and hearing about them in his patients' dreams and fantasies. Their projections recurrently told him of an inner quest, a sealed vessel, the conflict of opposites, a philosophical tree, a fountain of eternity, a golden flower, a Stone, a sacred wedding, etc. Slowly Jung familiarized himself with their alchemical meaning. Then he, himself, became a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone -- a guide to the depths of the unknown. In his case this power manifested as the ability to heal at the psychophysical level -- in other words, to release any blocks hindering the natural process of growth and transformation. When proceeding in the direction of their individuation his clients' harmony was restored, self-equilibration returned. Jung equated individuation with self-realization.
We should be careful here not to dichotomize between "mental" and "physical" too much or we will lose our proper alchemical perspective. Alchemy cannot be reduced to a metaphor of psychological or philosophical transformation -- it requires first-hand experimentation. Grossinger says that "what Carl Jung recognized was that the stages of the alchemists also corresponded to a process of psychological individuation. The psychic stages were as precise and rigorous as the chemical ones by which they became imagined. Furthermore, they generated a physical and even quantitative terminology for an undiagnosed tension of opposites in the human psyche arising from male and female archetypes, a struggle they sought to resolve by the creative unity of the chemicals in the Stone."
Alchemy sought to unite Spirit (male), and Matter (female) through a Royal Union (coniunctio) to create their synthesis in the homunculus, hermaphrodite, or lapis. This is an alchemical metaphor or version of the generic process of spiritual rebirth. The entire body of alchemical literature covers many variations on the theme of the Great Work. No single person will ever express all of the operations and symbols described in alchemy, just as no single person ever embodies the totality of the Self.
We each have unique experiences of the common roots of humanity or the collective unconscious. Thus, the various operations of alchemy come in different order for the various practitioners. The alchemical writings seem to contradict one another about the evolution of the process. Some claim to have made the Stone and lost it, over and over -- like the elusive revelations of a psychedelic trip. Likewise, in dreams we sometimes find the symbols of the end-product (like a mandala, or flower, or child) appearing at the beginning of the process. They symbolize what is latent and seeks manifestation.
Nevertheless, in both alchemy and Jungian psychology there are classic stages in the process of individuation or personal experience of the unconscious -- psychic milestones. One major recurrent theme in modern dreams is the symbolism of the planets, which correspond with the alchemical metals. These metals, or planets (astrology), archetypes (depth psychology) or Spheres (QBL) can be understood psychologically as the building blocks of the ego, which forms itself from fragments of these divine archetypal qualities. These spiritual principles seek concretization through the unique experience of an individual ego. This links spirit and matter; it comes down to earth. The sacredness of the Opus, or Great Work, is the central idea behind alchemy. It is a holistic perspective. One must be self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented. The adept is also diligent, patient and virtuous.
In other words, in order to create the Stone, you must have that integrative potential within yourself for self-realization -- for becoming whole or 'holy.' It requires an inward seeking, just like the process of individuation. It is a solitary task for no one may follow where you go. But there may be guides who will help inspire your faith and dedication to the task. Others have been to the territory you will explore, but none will accompany you.
The secret of alchemy is that it is a personal journey of transformation, and cannot be explained but only experienced. It is "eating the dish," not just reading about it in an alchemical cookbook. Its effects must be channeled into spiritual growth, for if alchemy is used to gratify personal desire the work is lost. This means the ego gets inflated with its own importance when the real power source lies within the Self. This naturally produces a regression back into an unconscious state, back to the prima materia, raw psychic material.
The instinctual urge for growth and transformation lies within us. For this urge to be considered evolutional requires that the ego must cooperate quite deliberately and consciously with the Self. This leads toward self-realization. The main purpose of the Opus is "to create a transcendent, miraculous substance which is variously symbolized as the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, or the universal medicine (panacea).
The procedure is, first, to find the suitable material, the so called prima materia (lead), and then to subject it to a series of operations which will turn it into the Philosopher's Stone (gold)." (Edinger, 1978). The First Matter is a homogenous unity of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt. It is therefore 'three,' but can also be expressed as 'four' elements, which are again essentially 'one.' Jung felt that the secret of the psyche was contained in this question of the 'three' and the 'four.'
In alchemy it is expressed as the axiom of Maria Prophetessa: "Therefore the Hebrew prophetess cried without restraint: 'one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.'" Today, physicists echo this statement when they call 'plasma' both the fourth and first state of matter (the others being liquid, gas and solid). In Jungian psychology, the prima materia is the original undifferentiated condition of ordinary consciousness, which is really unconsciousness -- subjective awareness.
Mystics of all times have repeated that in the ordinary state we are all asleep or even "dead" to the true Reality. In psychology the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth). In Jungian theory we have a dominant function and limited access to one or two others, but the fourth function is inaccessible, elusive, maladapted, or hard to integrate. It is what keeps us from "getting it all together." Thus, we are out-of-balance.
Balancing the four functions means achieving an integrated personality, harmony and well-being. This requires undergoing a symbolic process of the union of opposites, which is what both alchemy (and Tantra) and Jungian analysis are all about. Both alchemy and Jungian psychology require a period of depth analysis (solutio) to distinguish the original, undifferentiated contents.
The ego learns what part of the personality comes from itself and which parts from the Self. It reflects on its own component parts (subpersonalities) and learns to see itself as a small part of a greater whole, the larger unity of the Self. Edinger says, "The fixed, settled aspects of the personality which are rigid and static are reduced or led back to their original, undifferentiated condition as part of the process of psychic transformation," i.e. back to a state of 'innocence.'
cont.Further, Edinger compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy. He gives some hints:
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious. There is no set number of alchemical operations, just as there is no set number or order to archetypes. However, certain of the operations seem to recur more often in the literature and experience. We could consider these as the skeletal frame of the alchemical process. Their order switches around also.
Edinger lists seven operations which seem to typify the major transformations of the alchemical process. These include: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio. Other major operations include nigredo, albedo, rubedo, solificatio, multiplicatio, projectio, separatio, circulatio, and more. We can detail the nature of each of these operations later.
For now, it is enough to grasp the overview which is best stated by Jung, himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis:
"...the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis [solve or solutio] on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation [coagula or coagulatio] on the other. For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly, there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia. And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end. There are countless speculations on the nature of the end state, all of them reflected in its designations. The commonest are the ideas of its permanence (prolongation of life, immortality, incorruptibility), its androgyny, its spirituality and corporeality, its divinity and its resemblance to man (homunculus)."
He goes on to point out what this might mean psychologically. We could view it as conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels creating splits in the personality. Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis. The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims at uniting them permanently. The images of the goal which then appear in dreams often run parallel with the corresponding alchemical symbols." He reiterates the value of accessing the alchemical symbolism for increasing insight.
"Investigation of the alchemical symbolism, like a preoccupation with mythology, does not lead one away from life anymore than a study of comparative anatomy leads away from the anatomy of the living man. On the contrary, alchemy affords us a veritable treasure-house of symbols, knowledge of which is extremely helpful for an understanding of neurotic and psychotic processes. This, in turn, enables us to apply the psychology of the unconscious to those regions in the history of the human mind which are concerned with symbolism."
Each of the operations of alchemy functions as the center of focus of an elaborate symbol-system. Other symbols which are related to the operation cluster around the theme of the operation -- they share a common essence. These central symbols provide basic categories which we can use to understand our own personal psychic life, and even the transformation processes of others.
Taken together, the alchemical operations illustrate almost all of the full range of experiences which are involved in the process of individuation. As Grossinger points out, "Alchemy is thus a form of chemical research into which unresolved psychic elements were projected. The alchemical nigredo, the initial phase of the operation which produces 'black blacker than black,' is also an internal experience of melancholia, an encounter with the shadow."
But this is also the necessary first stage in Jungian analysis -- confronting that which has been rejected or repressed is essential to becoming whole. This realm of the shadow can often provide more real substance for the spiritual quest than mimicking the teachings of a spiritual master without really changing oneself. Though stumbling around in the dark seems frustrating, if it is honest and heartfelt, and one really grapples with the shadow problem, the way is cleared for progress that will be sustained by a firm foundation gained in the early phases.
Throughout the alchemical process, the lapis functions as an inner guide by presenting itself in diverse symbolism. It symbolizes the growing manifestation of your latent potential for wholeness. It frequently manifests in mandala symbolism. This includes such forms as a revolving wheel or the zodiac, the petals of a magnificent flower, or a serpent eating its tail. As a grand union of opposites, it symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy Alchemy is a means of understanding our unconscious projections of archetypes into the world. In "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines,"
Rudolf Bernoulli summarizes the basics of extroverted and introverted alchemy. He says, "There are two kinds of alchemy: one strives to know the cosmos as a whole and to recreate it; it is in a sense the precursor of modern natural science. It aspires to create gold as the supreme perfection in this sphere...The other alchemy strives higher; it strives for the great wonder, the wonder of all wonder, the magic crystal, the philosopher's stone."
"This is not a substance susceptible of chemical analysis. It does not represent a spiritual or psychological state that can be reduced to a clear formula. It is something more than perfection, something through which perfection can be achieved. It is the universal instrument of magic. By it we can attain to the ultimate. By it we can completely possess the world. By it we can make ourselves free from the world, by soaring above it. This is alchemy in the mystical sense ...The goal is reached only when a man succeeds in creating the ...stone within himself, and this is made possible only the intervention of the 'inner master.'" i.e. the Self. Psychologically, the union of body and spirit or of conscious and unconscious can be safely attempted only when both have undergone a purification brought about by the earlier stages of analysis, in which the conscious character and the personal unconscious are reviewed and set in order. (Psychic Energy, p. 452-3).
In the alchemistic literature there is evidence that the mysterious coniunctio took place in three stages. The first is that of the union of opposites, the double conjunction, which chiefly concerns us here. The second stage effects a triple union, that of body, soul, and spirit; or, as it is said elsewhere, "the Trinity is reduced to a Unity."
In the Book of Lambspring, published in 1625, this triple union is represented first by two fishes swimming in the sea, pictured with the legend, "The sea is the Body, the two fishes are the Soul and the Spirit", and later by a second picture showing a deer and a unicorn in a forest, with the following text: In the Body [the forest] there is Soul [the deer] and Spirit [the unicorn] ...He that knows how to tame and master them by art, and to couple them together, may justly be called a master, for we rightly judge that he has attained the golden flesh.
The literature offers far less material about this more advanced stage of the work than about the simple coniunctio, and still less about the third stage, the union of the four elements, from which the fifth element, the "quintessence," arises. However, Jung's latest works are largely concerned with the problems of this fourfold coniunctio, through which not only are the personal parts of the psyche -- ego and anima, or ego and animus -- consummated, but these, in a further stage of development, are in turn united with their transpersonal correlates -- wise man and prophetess, or great mother and magician (under whatever names these superordinate elements are conceived).
The subject is by no means simple, but it amply repays careful study. Further definitions and descriptors of the dynamics of alchemy can be found in my book THE MODERN ALCHEMIST, (Phanes Press, 1994) which is divided into two major parts, each representing an 'octave' of the famous alchemical dictum, "Solve et Coagula":
I. Metamorphosis of Soul; therapy or personal growth, and
II. Personification of Spirit on spiritual development.
Chapters in Part I include:
The Prima Materia on Persona, the social mask
The Nigredo on the Shadow, or chaos, depression and inertia
The Union of Opposites, on Anima or the archetypal Feminine
Participation Mystique, on Animus as the archetypal Masculine
Solutio, the operation of liquification and the Adversary archetype
Coagulatio, the operation of embodiment, archetype of the Great Mother
Sublimatio, operation of ennobling, archetype of Wise Old Man
Albedo, Rubedo and Coniunctio, the miracle marriage of opposites
Part II covers the following:
Solificatio, operation of the sun and the Hero archetype
The Philosopher's Stone on the lapis and shamanic Mana Personality
Puer/Senex on the dynamics of youth and maturity, magickal child archetype
The Transcendent Function on the Self or God-Image in the soul
Devouring Father on the conception of divine child
Anima Consciousness on the return of the Feminine and Incubation
Individuation and Rebirth on spiritual rebirth phenomena
Ultima Materia on culmination of the Great Work in the Adept or God-Man/Woman
The ancient spiritual alchemy behind the later Arthurian legends of the Holy Grail was most visible in a landmark work published in 1616 AD, that historians “consider to be one of the most intriguing documents ever to surface in Europe,” called The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rozenkreutz. With its very title referring to the old English word for “alchemy”, and the name of the main character referring to the “Rosicrucian” tradition derived from the Templar’s “red cross”, the story is essentially about “a ‘magical wedding’ of a king and queen in a mysterious land. The story is couched in alchemical symbolism”.
“Alchemy was a popular study and owed little to the modern conception that it existed merely to turn base metals into gold. In fact the true search of the alchemist was a sort of spiritual enlightenment that lay at the heart of the ‘Utopian’ ideals of whoever wrote The Chymical Wedding. … But what is even more interesting… is the fact that the book has all of the hallmarks of the much earlier ‘Holy Grail’ stories.” Indeed, this work of esoteric alchemical folklore “seems to be the Holy Grail brought up to date.” [12]
The medieval understanding of the ancient tradition of alchemy, was the Quest (or search by scientific or spiritual exploration) for the “philosopher’s stone”, which would give enlightenment. The connection of medieval alchemy and the “philosopher’s stone” to the fabled “Holy Grail” of the Knights, is demonstrated at Chartres Cathedral in France, which was built by the 12th century Templars of the Order of the Temple of Solomon.
In Chartres Cathedral, a scene of Melchizedek presenting the Communion sacrament (which by biblical definition is supposed to be “bread and wine”) to Abraham [13] is depicted as a statue at the northern entrance, called the “Gate of the Initiates”. In this sculpture, Melchizedek is presenting a “stone” within a sacred “Grail” chalice, thereby clearly signifying that the knightly “Holy Grail” is in fact the “philosopher’s stone” of alchemy. [14]
While thinly veiled in well-known symbolism of the time, this association of the Holy Sacrament with the Holy Grail as the alchemical Quest for the philosopher’s stone would be considered “heretical” at the time. Nonetheless, this evidence demonstrates that this concept was in fact part of the core Templar beliefs and secret teachings of the middle ages.
Evidence confirms that the ancient Gnostic esoteric knowledge of the Cathars (which is traditionally an integral part of Templarism) was itself central to the alchemical enlightenment associated with the “Holy Grail”. One of the Arthurian legend stories tells of a lady “Esclarmonde”, who assumes the form of a “white dove” which “escaped and flew over the walled crest”, in order to carry the Holy Grail away from the persecutors of the Gnostic Cathars. This legendary figure was identified and confirmed by historians to be Esclarmonde de Foix (ca.1151-1215 AD), a Saint of contemporary Gnostic Churches. [15]
“Alchemy was a popular study and owed little to the modern conception that it existed merely to turn base metals into gold. In fact the true search of the alchemist was a sort of spiritual enlightenment that lay at the heart of the ‘Utopian’ ideals of whoever wrote The Chymical Wedding. … But what is even more interesting… is the fact that the book has all of the hallmarks of the much earlier ‘Holy Grail’ stories.” Indeed, this work of esoteric alchemical folklore “seems to be the Holy Grail brought up to date.” [12]
The medieval understanding of the ancient tradition of alchemy, was the Quest (or search by scientific or spiritual exploration) for the “philosopher’s stone”, which would give enlightenment. The connection of medieval alchemy and the “philosopher’s stone” to the fabled “Holy Grail” of the Knights, is demonstrated at Chartres Cathedral in France, which was built by the 12th century Templars of the Order of the Temple of Solomon.
In Chartres Cathedral, a scene of Melchizedek presenting the Communion sacrament (which by biblical definition is supposed to be “bread and wine”) to Abraham [13] is depicted as a statue at the northern entrance, called the “Gate of the Initiates”. In this sculpture, Melchizedek is presenting a “stone” within a sacred “Grail” chalice, thereby clearly signifying that the knightly “Holy Grail” is in fact the “philosopher’s stone” of alchemy. [14]
While thinly veiled in well-known symbolism of the time, this association of the Holy Sacrament with the Holy Grail as the alchemical Quest for the philosopher’s stone would be considered “heretical” at the time. Nonetheless, this evidence demonstrates that this concept was in fact part of the core Templar beliefs and secret teachings of the middle ages.
Evidence confirms that the ancient Gnostic esoteric knowledge of the Cathars (which is traditionally an integral part of Templarism) was itself central to the alchemical enlightenment associated with the “Holy Grail”. One of the Arthurian legend stories tells of a lady “Esclarmonde”, who assumes the form of a “white dove” which “escaped and flew over the walled crest”, in order to carry the Holy Grail away from the persecutors of the Gnostic Cathars. This legendary figure was identified and confirmed by historians to be Esclarmonde de Foix (ca.1151-1215 AD), a Saint of contemporary Gnostic Churches. [15]
Jung on “Meditation” in Alchemy.
Lecture V 30th May, 1941
We began to speak about "meditation" in the last lecture and I have still some excerpts to read from the writings of the alchemists on this subject.
MICHAEL MAIER (a famous alchemist who lived at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries) says:
"Chemistry inspires those who practise it to meditate on heavenly things."
Here again we see that the alchemistic opus is not just a laboratory work, but also a religious exercise. Meditation on "heavenly things " must refer to spiritual things.
The next passage comes from a medieval lexicon of alchemistic terminology and concepts, compiled by a Dr. RULANDUS.
Under the word "meditatio" he says:
"The word meditation is used, when someone holds an inner dialogue (colloquium) with someone else who is invisible, and also when God is invoked, or when someone speaks to himself or
to his good angel."
Those of you, who heard my lectures on the Ignatian exercises, will remember that the term "colloquies" is also used in those exercises: dialogues take place with the chief figures in the world of
Christian imagery, with the Mother of God, with Christ or with one of the saints.
These inner conversations are called colloquies, but are not described as meditation in the Ignatian exercises, whereas Rulandus definitely defines meditation as an inner conversation with a "vis-a-vis".
He does not say whether these inner figures answer, but there is sufficient proof in the alchemistic literature for us to conclude that they did.
In the Ignatian exercises such conversations are one-sided, we are never told that anybody answers which would be rather essential in a "colloquium".
But the alchemists really try to establish an objective relation to a "second" in their meditation, and this "second" has been regarded since olden times as the so-called "paredros", a spiritual
helper, who is present during the work and who gives instructions.
There is a text where the "spiritus Mercurii" first appears as a vapour which gradually condenses until it takes on a more or less recognisable human form.
This figure is a typical ghost, and agrees with the descriptions of ghosts which we find in all places and all ages.
There is an excellent collection of such apparitions in the book "Phantasms of the Living ".
This book consists of two thick volumes, which give the reader an unsurpassable insight into the phenomenology of such apparitions.
The purpose of the book is to corroborate the existence of telepathy and similar things, n-at primarily to describe the apparitions.
But all such phenomena are exceedingly important for every psychologist and for all those interested in psychology, for they have played a considerable role in human culture since the
earliest times.
Every culture has recognised the existence of such phenomena, and it is only the interpretations which differ.
And so we find them in alchemy also, and the fact is recorded that in deep meditation a dissociation occurs between the ego and a "second", that takes on the form of an inner figure, or represents
Something quite objective which will answer questions or produce enlightening remarks.
Sacrifices were even made to this "paredros" in antiquity, and there are instructions in the literature as to how these figures can be conjured, called up or cast out.
I have already mentioned that it is usually a matter of the spirits of the planets which correspond to the substances used, or those. which play a special role in the horoscope of the alchemist.
The planets were regarded then as gods or spirits, and not just as stars, as we think of them today.
We must never forget to reckon with the fact that the psyche was projected into practically everything.
Meditation then, as defined by Rulandus, does not merely consist of reflecting about the meaning of the authentic books, nor about the nature of the substances on which the alchemists were
working, but it also reveals the presence of a personification of the unconscious.
We find quite a different use of the term meditation in the writings of a later seventeenth century alchemist, which is nevertheless also very typical of the peculiar psychology of alchemy.
This author speaks of a "nova volatilitas" and says:
""The stone will meditate a new volatility."
The volatility of matter means that it is vapourisable.
This sentence occurs in a passage which is concerned with a volatile substance that has solidified, and is now considering a condition of new volatility, as if the substance itself could meditate.
This is a pure projection of psychical events into matter.
A substance meditating seems a ridiculous idea to us, but it was not to the mentality of those days.
On the primitive level every stone, tree or animal can have a soul, or can suddenly develop a voice.
At any moment a tree or a stone can become animated, and such an occurrence is no miracle to the primitive, but merely belongs to the course of nature.
And in the seventeenth century, it was still more or less self-evident that the substances with which the alchemists were working should suddenly take on the nature of animated beings.
It is from this fact that the legends of the hob goblins arise.
My compatriot, Paracelsus, was absolutely convinced of the reality of these hobgoblins, who appeared to the miners and workmen in the darkest parts of the mines.
We find similar phenomena on the sea, such as the "Klab autermann" that appears to sailors before a storm or an accident.
He is also a kind of homunculus, and such figures are either a direct animation of some object or appear independently in nature.
The fylgias in the Icelandic saga are another example.
I know of such phenomena myself with quite normal Swiss people who saw a homunculus of the mountains during a mountain accident.
In the same treatise we read:
"If thou wilt meditate deeply on that which I have indicated here, thou wilt have the key which will enable thee to solve all the seeming contradictions between the philosophers."
You see here that meditation requires deep reflection on all those riddles which the alchemist encounters in the alchemistic treatises with their contradictory style.
The contradictions dissolve through meditation.
So we must assume that these contradictions, which are frequent in the literature, are symbolical expressions, which become clear when one penetrates behind them and finds out what is
really referred to.
Another author says:
"It requires deep meditation, before thou canst understand our sea and its ebb and flow."
The mystery, which should be fathomed during the meditation, is called "our sea" in this passage.
The sea of the alchemists is an old and well known symbol for the unconscious; that is, it really represents the unconscious , but in the language of the alchemists "our sea" refers to the
"humidum radicale" (radical humidity) in the substances, the soul of matter.
This again is a projection of the existence of the soul which the human being feels within himself.
If we translate "our sea" as the unconscious, this passage tells us that there are tides in the unconscious.
Phenomena, which could be metaphorically compared with ebb and flow, do actually take place in the unconscious: sometimes it is nearer to us and sometimes further away.
In other words: there are times when there is a danger that consciousness may be flooded by the unconscious, at other times this danger do{es not exist or is at least much less acute.
This is particularly obvious with primitive people, though we can also see it in ourselves; there are certain seasons when the unconscious has a general tendency to gain the upper hand.
Advent is such a classical time, it has been known since olden days as a season when evil spirits are abroad.
There is a saying in the Canton Lucerne even today that Wotan's host is out or abroad.
Presumably such ideas are connected with the longest nights, when the sun sets at its earliest.
It is a piece of natural life which has survived till today.
Blackouts were general, you must remember, before the discovery of gas and electricity, and man was forced then to live with nature.
Oil was very expensive, and burning chips unreliable and short lived, so people went to bed with the cocks and hens.
Human consciousness blacks itself out, so to speak, at the beginning of the winter, and the unconscious overcomes the conscious as the night overcomes the day.
This is the reason why the night is always the time when things become uncanny, for the light of the conscious has been blacked out.
Such things are more obvious with primitives, for we have fallen somewhat out of mature with all our technical novelties, and have become less aware of the night.
Yet children often suffer from night terrors, and how many women look under their beds or into the cupboard before going to bed?
And these people are civilised Europeans, not primitives!
It is as Faust says: "Es eignet sich, es zeigt sich an, es warnt . . . . Die P£orte knarrt, und niemand kommt herein." (It becomes peculiar, it announces itself, it warns. . The door creaks and no one enters.)
This passage describes a typical nocturnal phenomenon, the fear of darkness, and this is the reason why the primitive has a totally different "Weltanschauung" in the night than in the day.
Ghosts are abroad at night, unheard of things can happen, and the slightest noise lets loose a panic.
We rationalise such noises as burglars, but many people, who would ridicule the idea of ghosts by day, believe in them at night.
These are "ebb and flow" phenomena and, like the tides, they have some connection with the moon.
We say that people are moonstruck, and epilepsy is supposed to be connected with the moon.
The mentally diseased are still called lunatics in English, and their hospitals lunatic asylums (luna = moon).
It is clear, therefore, why our author says that it re quires deep meditation in order to unravel the secret of the unconscious.
In summing up the alchemists' point of view with regard to meditation, I must point out that in one respect all meditation is similar.
It is a kind of submersion, a method of psychical submersion, with which the idea of spiritualisation is connected.
Spritualisation is prepared through meditation: "The stone will meditate a new volatility”.
The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here - those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the
Ignatian excercises - the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula.
You will remember the very dogmatic injunctions for imagining the Amitabha Land, the Buddha and so on in the Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra.
There is nothing of the same kind in alchemy, the subject of meditation is a mystery, and the alchemist must meditate in order to understand this mystery.
He has no idea what he should imagine, and he has only a highly contradictory terminology at his disposal.
When he thinks about this secret it is unknown to him, he has no idea what it is.
He does not meditate on his sins or his plans, nor does he, so to speak, think about himself at all, but he thinks about the unknown element in the world, in the substances and in himself.
The object of his meditation is essentially unknown, and his meditation serves the purpose of perceiving this unknown, of making it clearer, and of gaining certain images of it.
In other words: meditation is making his unconscious conscious.
I read you a passage from Dorneus where he said the essential thing for the alchemist was to know himself, and to find out who he really was.
Dorneus became conscious that the secret was not merely in matter but was also in man.
There are many such passages in the old authors, where they definitely state that man, as well as chemical matter, contains the origin of the mysterious substance which becomes the philosophers'
stone.
Meditation is intrinsically a method of understanding for the alchemists; they hope, through the application of meditation, to become aware of certain mysteries which are intangible and invisible.
The knowledge, which they thus acquire, they call the "scientia".
VIII. Scientia
I have collected a further series of excerpts from the alchemistic writings on this subject, in which we shall also meet some very peculiar things.
Alphidius says:
"The food of whoever finds this knowledge will be legitimate and eternal"
Alphidius is an author who lived perhaps as early as the thirteenth or even the twelfth century.
Very likely he wrote in Arabic or Hebrew, but this is uncertain.
In any case he refers in this passage to Leviticus "All the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute forever in your generations concerning the offerings of the Lord made
by fire: every one that toucheth them shall be holy."
The idea of a legitimate and eternal food is to be found in both passages.
"The food", in the text of Alphidius, is the unleavened bread of Leviticus, which "shall be a statute forever in your generations."
One might perhaps assume that Alphidius was a Jew, for there were a great many Hebrew treatises written in Spain during the time of the Moors, and Alphidius belonged to that region.
This knowledge" is equal then to an eternal, legitimate food of life, a food which bestows life.
It is found through meditation, and is a panacea which enriches life and makes it fuller or healthier.
This is something which we experience also.
It is when our lives have become so flat and meaningless that we can hardly go on living, that the moment comes when we turn to the unconscious and to our dreams and phantasies.
We meditate on these in order to discover the contents of the unconscious, and to find a new meaning in life.
The result is something very similar to receiving a "legitimate and eternal food", the right food which reanimates life, for everything depends on our attitude to it.
Even a very bad situation can change when we look at it differently.
The "Aurora Consurgens" asks the question:
"What is the science? It is the gift and sanctuary of the Deity, it is a divine thing, and is hidden by the Wise in symbolical words and in many ways."
This author is quite sure that the contradictory statements of the alchemists are made with the purpose of expressing this thing, but in such a way that no one can understand.
One is never certain, when one reads these texts, whether the author has really understood something, and is expressing himself symbolically in order to keep it a secret, or whether he has not
really understood himself, and is expressing himself as clearly as he can.
The subject is exceedingly difficult, for it really is a mystery.
What is the unconscious?
Whenever we speak of it, we express ourselves involuntarily in a peculiar metaphorical language in order to get somewhere near its character.
So it is possible that these people were speaking as clearly as they could in their language, and the reader who knew understood.
When I was reading these texts I often thought: "Yes I know what you mean", but I was never absolutely sure that I did, till I came on an old treatise which was underlined and had marginal notes in an
old handwriting, which probably belonged to the early seventeenth century.
Just those passages were underlined that I should have underlined myself, I could have read the meaning of the whole treatise from the places he had marked.
Then I knew that we both understood the text in the same way.
In one obscure passage, for instance, just as I came to the conclusion that the author meant the devil, I came on the marginal note "Diabolus".
But on the other hand, when a certain monastery sold all its alchemistic books (assuming they were nonsense) I came across a book which a monk had read in his old age.
He also had underlined in red pencil, but exactly the places which I should not have marked, namely the passages concerned with gold making.
This interest in gold was a grievous sin against the fundamental spirit of alchemy; this monk was evidently too fond of money, in spite of living in a monastery.
Another Father wrote of him: "He studied this book for several years but it did him no good.
"I thought: "Naturally not with such a point of view", but it was really impossible that anyone who lived in the Catholic world of the eighteenth century should understand.
The anonymous author of the "Aurora Consurgens" says further "The science is nothing less than a gift of God and a sacrament."
The manuscript of this text, which we have in Zurich, belongs to the fourteenth or even the fifteenth century, but the original text, judging by its whole character and make up, must have belonged to
about the end of the thirteenth century.
The chief authority quoted is St. Thomas of Aquinas (1225-74) .
One must keep the date in mind, and also the fact that the author was a cleric.
When such a man calls the science of the alchemists a sacrament, one cannot take it seriously enough; for in those days and in that milieu it was the strongest expression which the author could possibly
have used to describe a mystery.
The author continues:
"There are three precious words in which the mystery is concealed. These must be given to the devout, namely the poor, from the first to the last man."
These words are an allusion to an alchemistic tradition of which you may have heard, namely the Aurea Catena (the golden chain). This chain reaches from the earliest dawn of mankind into the most distant future, and consists of people who know the secret. One hands on the golden bucket secretly to the next and the chain stretches through all ages.
The science, according to this author, is a sacrament, a divine mystery, so these "three divine words" in which it is concealed are thus made equal to the Gospel. And therefore it must be given to the poor in spirit.
These same poor were also mentioned by Joannes de Rupescissa, as "les pauvres hommes evangelisans"; who, as we saw, were the alchemists themselves elves. Alchemy is a sort of divine message, a gospel, to these "poor men", a science which comes from God and must be handed on secretly from one to the next down the ages.
These "three precious words" refer to a treatise which is possibly of Arabic origin, though this is rather uncertain. The treatise is ascribed to one of the older so-called "arabizantes", KALID BEN YEZYD, who is presumably a legendary authority. It is called the "Liber trium verborum Kallid acutissimi " (the book of three words by the most intelligent Kallid.)
These three precious words are elucidated in the treatise. I will read you a passage from it: (The art consists of three words: "It is said that the water preserves the foetus for three months in the uterus. The air warms it for three months. The fire preserves it for the same length of time. And all this is said as a parable of Mercury. And this word, discourse and dark way of speaking are made known in order that the truth should be seen."
The author claims here to have disclosed the secret in order that one might see the truth; but naturally it is all very obscure. We can make out, however, that it is a matter of the three elements: water, air and fire, and that mercury is being spoken of. Mercury, as the metal, could represent the earth, so we may assume that this pregnancy produces the fourth element, the earth.
In other words it is the fourth element which alchemy is concerned with. This is a very important hint. The idea of three plays a considerable role in the whole of alchemy, particularly in medieval alchemy where the triad is directly called the "ternarius supernaturalis" (the supernatural triad), and is termed the gift of God. The pneuma, the mind (which deals with matter) has a part in the divine pneuma, the divine triad, whereas the fourth is the earth.
Psychologically the earth always refers to the body, for the body consists, so to speak, of earth.
We can therefore assume, psychologically speaking, that the object which is to be transformed in alchemy is connected with the human body: it is a mystery of the body. You know that the unconscious has a great deal to do with the body, many symptoms of a bodily nature, for instance, are directly caused by the unconscious. There are certain disturbances of the unconscious, in the sympathetic system, which produce symptoms exactly like organic disturbances.
I once saw a case where forty centimeters of the large intestine (colon descendens) had been removed, because, as the result of a disturbance in the sympathetic system, a paralysis of the large intestine had set in, so the surgeon had simply cut out forty centimetres. Three weeks after the operation,' when the patient was getting up, the trouble began again at the hitherto normal end.
This was too much and, not wanting to have the whole of her inside cut out, the woman came to consult me. She brought her X-ray plates with her, showing a really horrible condition, but it was simply a disturbance in the sympathetic system.
I was able to assure her that she would survive it, and it got better through psychological treatment. It had been quite unnecessary to cut out those forty centimetres. I do not want to assert that all illness comes from psychological disturbances, but amazing things do happen.
The unconscious can cause eruptions of the skin, for instance, and even tuberculosis, and when one sees such things one realizes how much the unconscious affects the body. It is therefore possible to reach the body through the unconscious, the old hypnotists and magnetisers knew long ago that one could bring about the most marvellous changes through hypnotic suggestion. This procedure is very archaic but one can reach the unconscious with such arts, whilst the Latin and Greek terminology of modern medicine makes no impression whatever up on it.
Stinking ointments, however, and even the laying on of hands, reach the unconscious and then it reacts, but it merely despises our modern erudition and academic style. My respected predecessor, Paracelsus, said similar things; he also told the doctors, in his language, that they should use prescriptions which would impress the unconscious . We must honour the sciences, but the vital thing in illness is to respect the nature of the patient.
In such matters, the alchemists, as you see, came on the track of highly modern things. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 171-178.
Lecture V 30th May, 1941
We began to speak about "meditation" in the last lecture and I have still some excerpts to read from the writings of the alchemists on this subject.
MICHAEL MAIER (a famous alchemist who lived at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries) says:
"Chemistry inspires those who practise it to meditate on heavenly things."
Here again we see that the alchemistic opus is not just a laboratory work, but also a religious exercise. Meditation on "heavenly things " must refer to spiritual things.
The next passage comes from a medieval lexicon of alchemistic terminology and concepts, compiled by a Dr. RULANDUS.
Under the word "meditatio" he says:
"The word meditation is used, when someone holds an inner dialogue (colloquium) with someone else who is invisible, and also when God is invoked, or when someone speaks to himself or
to his good angel."
Those of you, who heard my lectures on the Ignatian exercises, will remember that the term "colloquies" is also used in those exercises: dialogues take place with the chief figures in the world of
Christian imagery, with the Mother of God, with Christ or with one of the saints.
These inner conversations are called colloquies, but are not described as meditation in the Ignatian exercises, whereas Rulandus definitely defines meditation as an inner conversation with a "vis-a-vis".
He does not say whether these inner figures answer, but there is sufficient proof in the alchemistic literature for us to conclude that they did.
In the Ignatian exercises such conversations are one-sided, we are never told that anybody answers which would be rather essential in a "colloquium".
But the alchemists really try to establish an objective relation to a "second" in their meditation, and this "second" has been regarded since olden times as the so-called "paredros", a spiritual
helper, who is present during the work and who gives instructions.
There is a text where the "spiritus Mercurii" first appears as a vapour which gradually condenses until it takes on a more or less recognisable human form.
This figure is a typical ghost, and agrees with the descriptions of ghosts which we find in all places and all ages.
There is an excellent collection of such apparitions in the book "Phantasms of the Living ".
This book consists of two thick volumes, which give the reader an unsurpassable insight into the phenomenology of such apparitions.
The purpose of the book is to corroborate the existence of telepathy and similar things, n-at primarily to describe the apparitions.
But all such phenomena are exceedingly important for every psychologist and for all those interested in psychology, for they have played a considerable role in human culture since the
earliest times.
Every culture has recognised the existence of such phenomena, and it is only the interpretations which differ.
And so we find them in alchemy also, and the fact is recorded that in deep meditation a dissociation occurs between the ego and a "second", that takes on the form of an inner figure, or represents
Something quite objective which will answer questions or produce enlightening remarks.
Sacrifices were even made to this "paredros" in antiquity, and there are instructions in the literature as to how these figures can be conjured, called up or cast out.
I have already mentioned that it is usually a matter of the spirits of the planets which correspond to the substances used, or those. which play a special role in the horoscope of the alchemist.
The planets were regarded then as gods or spirits, and not just as stars, as we think of them today.
We must never forget to reckon with the fact that the psyche was projected into practically everything.
Meditation then, as defined by Rulandus, does not merely consist of reflecting about the meaning of the authentic books, nor about the nature of the substances on which the alchemists were
working, but it also reveals the presence of a personification of the unconscious.
We find quite a different use of the term meditation in the writings of a later seventeenth century alchemist, which is nevertheless also very typical of the peculiar psychology of alchemy.
This author speaks of a "nova volatilitas" and says:
""The stone will meditate a new volatility."
The volatility of matter means that it is vapourisable.
This sentence occurs in a passage which is concerned with a volatile substance that has solidified, and is now considering a condition of new volatility, as if the substance itself could meditate.
This is a pure projection of psychical events into matter.
A substance meditating seems a ridiculous idea to us, but it was not to the mentality of those days.
On the primitive level every stone, tree or animal can have a soul, or can suddenly develop a voice.
At any moment a tree or a stone can become animated, and such an occurrence is no miracle to the primitive, but merely belongs to the course of nature.
And in the seventeenth century, it was still more or less self-evident that the substances with which the alchemists were working should suddenly take on the nature of animated beings.
It is from this fact that the legends of the hob goblins arise.
My compatriot, Paracelsus, was absolutely convinced of the reality of these hobgoblins, who appeared to the miners and workmen in the darkest parts of the mines.
We find similar phenomena on the sea, such as the "Klab autermann" that appears to sailors before a storm or an accident.
He is also a kind of homunculus, and such figures are either a direct animation of some object or appear independently in nature.
The fylgias in the Icelandic saga are another example.
I know of such phenomena myself with quite normal Swiss people who saw a homunculus of the mountains during a mountain accident.
In the same treatise we read:
"If thou wilt meditate deeply on that which I have indicated here, thou wilt have the key which will enable thee to solve all the seeming contradictions between the philosophers."
You see here that meditation requires deep reflection on all those riddles which the alchemist encounters in the alchemistic treatises with their contradictory style.
The contradictions dissolve through meditation.
So we must assume that these contradictions, which are frequent in the literature, are symbolical expressions, which become clear when one penetrates behind them and finds out what is
really referred to.
Another author says:
"It requires deep meditation, before thou canst understand our sea and its ebb and flow."
The mystery, which should be fathomed during the meditation, is called "our sea" in this passage.
The sea of the alchemists is an old and well known symbol for the unconscious; that is, it really represents the unconscious , but in the language of the alchemists "our sea" refers to the
"humidum radicale" (radical humidity) in the substances, the soul of matter.
This again is a projection of the existence of the soul which the human being feels within himself.
If we translate "our sea" as the unconscious, this passage tells us that there are tides in the unconscious.
Phenomena, which could be metaphorically compared with ebb and flow, do actually take place in the unconscious: sometimes it is nearer to us and sometimes further away.
In other words: there are times when there is a danger that consciousness may be flooded by the unconscious, at other times this danger do{es not exist or is at least much less acute.
This is particularly obvious with primitive people, though we can also see it in ourselves; there are certain seasons when the unconscious has a general tendency to gain the upper hand.
Advent is such a classical time, it has been known since olden days as a season when evil spirits are abroad.
There is a saying in the Canton Lucerne even today that Wotan's host is out or abroad.
Presumably such ideas are connected with the longest nights, when the sun sets at its earliest.
It is a piece of natural life which has survived till today.
Blackouts were general, you must remember, before the discovery of gas and electricity, and man was forced then to live with nature.
Oil was very expensive, and burning chips unreliable and short lived, so people went to bed with the cocks and hens.
Human consciousness blacks itself out, so to speak, at the beginning of the winter, and the unconscious overcomes the conscious as the night overcomes the day.
This is the reason why the night is always the time when things become uncanny, for the light of the conscious has been blacked out.
Such things are more obvious with primitives, for we have fallen somewhat out of mature with all our technical novelties, and have become less aware of the night.
Yet children often suffer from night terrors, and how many women look under their beds or into the cupboard before going to bed?
And these people are civilised Europeans, not primitives!
It is as Faust says: "Es eignet sich, es zeigt sich an, es warnt . . . . Die P£orte knarrt, und niemand kommt herein." (It becomes peculiar, it announces itself, it warns. . The door creaks and no one enters.)
This passage describes a typical nocturnal phenomenon, the fear of darkness, and this is the reason why the primitive has a totally different "Weltanschauung" in the night than in the day.
Ghosts are abroad at night, unheard of things can happen, and the slightest noise lets loose a panic.
We rationalise such noises as burglars, but many people, who would ridicule the idea of ghosts by day, believe in them at night.
These are "ebb and flow" phenomena and, like the tides, they have some connection with the moon.
We say that people are moonstruck, and epilepsy is supposed to be connected with the moon.
The mentally diseased are still called lunatics in English, and their hospitals lunatic asylums (luna = moon).
It is clear, therefore, why our author says that it re quires deep meditation in order to unravel the secret of the unconscious.
In summing up the alchemists' point of view with regard to meditation, I must point out that in one respect all meditation is similar.
It is a kind of submersion, a method of psychical submersion, with which the idea of spiritualisation is connected.
Spritualisation is prepared through meditation: "The stone will meditate a new volatility”.
The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here - those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the
Ignatian excercises - the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula.
You will remember the very dogmatic injunctions for imagining the Amitabha Land, the Buddha and so on in the Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra.
There is nothing of the same kind in alchemy, the subject of meditation is a mystery, and the alchemist must meditate in order to understand this mystery.
He has no idea what he should imagine, and he has only a highly contradictory terminology at his disposal.
When he thinks about this secret it is unknown to him, he has no idea what it is.
He does not meditate on his sins or his plans, nor does he, so to speak, think about himself at all, but he thinks about the unknown element in the world, in the substances and in himself.
The object of his meditation is essentially unknown, and his meditation serves the purpose of perceiving this unknown, of making it clearer, and of gaining certain images of it.
In other words: meditation is making his unconscious conscious.
I read you a passage from Dorneus where he said the essential thing for the alchemist was to know himself, and to find out who he really was.
Dorneus became conscious that the secret was not merely in matter but was also in man.
There are many such passages in the old authors, where they definitely state that man, as well as chemical matter, contains the origin of the mysterious substance which becomes the philosophers'
stone.
Meditation is intrinsically a method of understanding for the alchemists; they hope, through the application of meditation, to become aware of certain mysteries which are intangible and invisible.
The knowledge, which they thus acquire, they call the "scientia".
VIII. Scientia
I have collected a further series of excerpts from the alchemistic writings on this subject, in which we shall also meet some very peculiar things.
Alphidius says:
"The food of whoever finds this knowledge will be legitimate and eternal"
Alphidius is an author who lived perhaps as early as the thirteenth or even the twelfth century.
Very likely he wrote in Arabic or Hebrew, but this is uncertain.
In any case he refers in this passage to Leviticus "All the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute forever in your generations concerning the offerings of the Lord made
by fire: every one that toucheth them shall be holy."
The idea of a legitimate and eternal food is to be found in both passages.
"The food", in the text of Alphidius, is the unleavened bread of Leviticus, which "shall be a statute forever in your generations."
One might perhaps assume that Alphidius was a Jew, for there were a great many Hebrew treatises written in Spain during the time of the Moors, and Alphidius belonged to that region.
This knowledge" is equal then to an eternal, legitimate food of life, a food which bestows life.
It is found through meditation, and is a panacea which enriches life and makes it fuller or healthier.
This is something which we experience also.
It is when our lives have become so flat and meaningless that we can hardly go on living, that the moment comes when we turn to the unconscious and to our dreams and phantasies.
We meditate on these in order to discover the contents of the unconscious, and to find a new meaning in life.
The result is something very similar to receiving a "legitimate and eternal food", the right food which reanimates life, for everything depends on our attitude to it.
Even a very bad situation can change when we look at it differently.
The "Aurora Consurgens" asks the question:
"What is the science? It is the gift and sanctuary of the Deity, it is a divine thing, and is hidden by the Wise in symbolical words and in many ways."
This author is quite sure that the contradictory statements of the alchemists are made with the purpose of expressing this thing, but in such a way that no one can understand.
One is never certain, when one reads these texts, whether the author has really understood something, and is expressing himself symbolically in order to keep it a secret, or whether he has not
really understood himself, and is expressing himself as clearly as he can.
The subject is exceedingly difficult, for it really is a mystery.
What is the unconscious?
Whenever we speak of it, we express ourselves involuntarily in a peculiar metaphorical language in order to get somewhere near its character.
So it is possible that these people were speaking as clearly as they could in their language, and the reader who knew understood.
When I was reading these texts I often thought: "Yes I know what you mean", but I was never absolutely sure that I did, till I came on an old treatise which was underlined and had marginal notes in an
old handwriting, which probably belonged to the early seventeenth century.
Just those passages were underlined that I should have underlined myself, I could have read the meaning of the whole treatise from the places he had marked.
Then I knew that we both understood the text in the same way.
In one obscure passage, for instance, just as I came to the conclusion that the author meant the devil, I came on the marginal note "Diabolus".
But on the other hand, when a certain monastery sold all its alchemistic books (assuming they were nonsense) I came across a book which a monk had read in his old age.
He also had underlined in red pencil, but exactly the places which I should not have marked, namely the passages concerned with gold making.
This interest in gold was a grievous sin against the fundamental spirit of alchemy; this monk was evidently too fond of money, in spite of living in a monastery.
Another Father wrote of him: "He studied this book for several years but it did him no good.
"I thought: "Naturally not with such a point of view", but it was really impossible that anyone who lived in the Catholic world of the eighteenth century should understand.
The anonymous author of the "Aurora Consurgens" says further "The science is nothing less than a gift of God and a sacrament."
The manuscript of this text, which we have in Zurich, belongs to the fourteenth or even the fifteenth century, but the original text, judging by its whole character and make up, must have belonged to
about the end of the thirteenth century.
The chief authority quoted is St. Thomas of Aquinas (1225-74) .
One must keep the date in mind, and also the fact that the author was a cleric.
When such a man calls the science of the alchemists a sacrament, one cannot take it seriously enough; for in those days and in that milieu it was the strongest expression which the author could possibly
have used to describe a mystery.
The author continues:
"There are three precious words in which the mystery is concealed. These must be given to the devout, namely the poor, from the first to the last man."
These words are an allusion to an alchemistic tradition of which you may have heard, namely the Aurea Catena (the golden chain). This chain reaches from the earliest dawn of mankind into the most distant future, and consists of people who know the secret. One hands on the golden bucket secretly to the next and the chain stretches through all ages.
The science, according to this author, is a sacrament, a divine mystery, so these "three divine words" in which it is concealed are thus made equal to the Gospel. And therefore it must be given to the poor in spirit.
These same poor were also mentioned by Joannes de Rupescissa, as "les pauvres hommes evangelisans"; who, as we saw, were the alchemists themselves elves. Alchemy is a sort of divine message, a gospel, to these "poor men", a science which comes from God and must be handed on secretly from one to the next down the ages.
These "three precious words" refer to a treatise which is possibly of Arabic origin, though this is rather uncertain. The treatise is ascribed to one of the older so-called "arabizantes", KALID BEN YEZYD, who is presumably a legendary authority. It is called the "Liber trium verborum Kallid acutissimi " (the book of three words by the most intelligent Kallid.)
These three precious words are elucidated in the treatise. I will read you a passage from it: (The art consists of three words: "It is said that the water preserves the foetus for three months in the uterus. The air warms it for three months. The fire preserves it for the same length of time. And all this is said as a parable of Mercury. And this word, discourse and dark way of speaking are made known in order that the truth should be seen."
The author claims here to have disclosed the secret in order that one might see the truth; but naturally it is all very obscure. We can make out, however, that it is a matter of the three elements: water, air and fire, and that mercury is being spoken of. Mercury, as the metal, could represent the earth, so we may assume that this pregnancy produces the fourth element, the earth.
In other words it is the fourth element which alchemy is concerned with. This is a very important hint. The idea of three plays a considerable role in the whole of alchemy, particularly in medieval alchemy where the triad is directly called the "ternarius supernaturalis" (the supernatural triad), and is termed the gift of God. The pneuma, the mind (which deals with matter) has a part in the divine pneuma, the divine triad, whereas the fourth is the earth.
Psychologically the earth always refers to the body, for the body consists, so to speak, of earth.
We can therefore assume, psychologically speaking, that the object which is to be transformed in alchemy is connected with the human body: it is a mystery of the body. You know that the unconscious has a great deal to do with the body, many symptoms of a bodily nature, for instance, are directly caused by the unconscious. There are certain disturbances of the unconscious, in the sympathetic system, which produce symptoms exactly like organic disturbances.
I once saw a case where forty centimeters of the large intestine (colon descendens) had been removed, because, as the result of a disturbance in the sympathetic system, a paralysis of the large intestine had set in, so the surgeon had simply cut out forty centimetres. Three weeks after the operation,' when the patient was getting up, the trouble began again at the hitherto normal end.
This was too much and, not wanting to have the whole of her inside cut out, the woman came to consult me. She brought her X-ray plates with her, showing a really horrible condition, but it was simply a disturbance in the sympathetic system.
I was able to assure her that she would survive it, and it got better through psychological treatment. It had been quite unnecessary to cut out those forty centimetres. I do not want to assert that all illness comes from psychological disturbances, but amazing things do happen.
The unconscious can cause eruptions of the skin, for instance, and even tuberculosis, and when one sees such things one realizes how much the unconscious affects the body. It is therefore possible to reach the body through the unconscious, the old hypnotists and magnetisers knew long ago that one could bring about the most marvellous changes through hypnotic suggestion. This procedure is very archaic but one can reach the unconscious with such arts, whilst the Latin and Greek terminology of modern medicine makes no impression whatever up on it.
Stinking ointments, however, and even the laying on of hands, reach the unconscious and then it reacts, but it merely despises our modern erudition and academic style. My respected predecessor, Paracelsus, said similar things; he also told the doctors, in his language, that they should use prescriptions which would impress the unconscious . We must honour the sciences, but the vital thing in illness is to respect the nature of the patient.
In such matters, the alchemists, as you see, came on the track of highly modern things. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 171-178.
It is not my responsibility that alchemy is occult and mystical, and I am just as little guilty of the mystical delusions of the insane or the peculiar creeds of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 184-187.