This is Jung’s take on how the roots of alchemy and psychology are intimately intertwined. Of course, he weaves in his theories on archetypes, symbolism, religion, and the collective unconscious. Jung begins with the Self. “The self is a union of opposites par excellence…. The self, however, is absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis, and at the same time synthesis…. Without the experience of opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures. For this reason Christianity rightly insists on sinfulness and original sin, with the obvious intent of opening up the abyss of universal opposition in every individual…. Alchemy is rather like an undercurrent to the Christianity that ruled on the surface. It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness…. The unconscious does not simply act contrary to the conscious mind but modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner.” The proto-chemistry elements of alchemy were fused with the symbolism of religious myths, digging into the unconscious nature of man. “Myth is the primordial language natural to these psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery. Such processes are concerned with the primordial images, and these are best and most succinctly reproduced by figurative language.”
For Jung, the role of the archetypal shadow, his theory of opposites, and religious symbolism relate directly to the formation of alchemical studies. “The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a great—indeed, the decisive—role in alchemy, since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hierosgamos or “chymical wedding.” Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese yang and yin), are melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore incorruptible.”
A large chunk of this book is devoted to analyzing the dreams of the Austrian physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. Jung mines these dreams for archetypal symbols and other hints at the unconscious. At one point, Jung relates, “The transferring of the water of life to the sister really means that the mother has been replaced by the anima…. This is really a normal life-process, but it usually takes place quite unconsciously. The anima is an archetype that is always present…. The mother is the first carrier of the anima-image, which gives her a fascinating quality in the eyes of the son. It is then transferred, via the sister and similar figures to the beloved…. By acknowledging the reality of the psyche and making it a co-determining ethical factor in our lives, we offend against the spirit of convention which for centuries has regulated psychic life from outside by means of institutions as well as by reason…. The water that the mother, the unconscious, pours into the basin belonging to the anima is an excellent symbol for the living power of the psyche…. [The alchemists] called it aqua nostra, mercurius vivus, argentum vivum, vinum ardens, aqua vitae, succus lanriae, and so on, by which they meant a living being not devoid of substance, as opposed to the rigid immateriality of mind in the abstract.”
Jung examines another of Pauli’s dreams, relating it explicitly to pagan myths. “Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. Humanity, huddling behind the walls of its culture, believes it has escaped this experience, until it succeeds in letting loose another orgy of bloodshed…. The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the “strange son of chaos” who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother…. It must now be admitted that things exist in the psyche about which we know little or nothing at all, but which nevertheless affect our bodies in the most obstinate way, and that they possess at least as much reality as the things of the physical world.”
Pauli had many dreams centered around the mandala symbol. Jung relates, “A dmigs-pa (pronounced “migpa”), [is] a mental image, which can be built up only by a fully instructed lama through the power of imagination…. No mandala is like any other…. The true mandala is always an inner image, which is gradually built up through (active) imagination, at such times when psychic equilibrium is disturbed or when a thought cannot be found and must be sought for…. They are all based on a quaternary system, a quadratura circuli…. They are among the oldest religious symbols of humanity.”
Jung goes on to expound on the ambivalent role of intuition in the dream process, “We should not rise above the earth with the aid of “spiritual” intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions. We can never reach the level of our intuitions and should therefore not identify ourselves with them. Only the gods can pass over the rainbow bridge; mortal men must stick to the earth and are subject to its laws…. Man’s earthiness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality. He is compounded not only of his best intuitions, his highest ideals and aspirations, but also of the odious conditions of his existence…. Man may have lost his ancient saurian’s tail, but in its stead he has a chain hanging on to his psyche which binds him to the earth…. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots.” Here, in a footnote, Jung makes another explicit connection to the traditions of pagan myth, “The Homeric chain in alchemy is the series of great wise men, beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, which links earth with heaven. At the same time it is the chain of substances and different chemical states that appear in the course of the alchemical process.” Jung continues, “But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt.”
While using Pauli’s dreams as a jumping off point, Jung, again, riffs on the relation of the Self, the psyche, and the unconscious, “It would be wildly arbitrary and therefore unscientific to restrict the self to the limits of the individual psyche, quite apart from the fundamental fact that we have not the least knowledge of these limits, seeing that they also lie in the unconscious. We may be able to indicate the limits of consciousness, but the unconscious is simply the unknown psyche and for that very reason illimitable because indeterminable. Such being the case, we should not be in the least surprised if the empirical manifestations of unconscious contents bear all the marks of something illimitable, something not determined by space and time…. When we attempt to give these numina the slip and angrily reject the alchemical gold which the unconscious offers, things do in fact go badly with us…. We can at least comfort ourselves with the reflection that the unconscious is a necessary evil which must be reckoned with, and that it would therefore be wiser to accompany it on some of its strange symbolic wanderings, even though their meaning be exceedingly questionable.”
In the latter part of this book, Jung dispenses with the dream interpretations and analyses directly alchemical symbolism, imagery, and processes. “The real mystery does not behave mysteriously or secretively; it speaks a secret language…. The real nature of matter was unknown to the alchemist: he knew it only in hints. In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it. In order to explain the mystery of matter he projected yet another mystery—his own unknown psychic background…. I am therefore inclined to assume that the real root of alchemy is to be sought less in philosophical doctrines than in the projections of individual investigators…. Since it was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the fact that the experience had nothing to do with matter itself…. What he was really experiencing was his own unconscious…. The dread and resistance which every natural human being experiences when it comes to delving too deeply into himself is, at bottom, the fear of the journey to Hades…. That dark realm of the unknown, exercises a fascinating attraction that threatens to become the more overpowering the further he penetrates into it.”
After hundreds of pages analyzing specific alchemic imagery for their hidden meanings, in minute detail, Jung finishes this opus by bringing it back to the unity of the psyche, “Only by virtue of psychic existence do we have any “being” at all. Consciousness grasps only a fraction of its own nature, because it is the product of a preconscious psychic life which made the development of consciousness possible in the first place. Consciousness always succumbs to the delusion that it developed out of itself, but scientific knowledge is well aware that all consciousness rests on unconscious premises, in other words on a sort of unknown prima materia; and of this the alchemists said everything that we could possibly say about the unconscious…. We are then confronted with the underlying human psyche which, unlike consciousness, hardly changes at all in the course of many centuries…. From this point of view, the recent past and the present seem like episodes in a drama that began in the grey mists of antiquity and continues through the centuries into a remote future. This drama is an “Aurora consurgens”—the dawning of consciousness in mankind.” Jung continues with the historical development of alchemy, “Owing to the impersonal, purely objective nature of matter, it was the impersonal, collective archetypes that were projected…. The state of relative unconsciousness in which man found himself, and which he felt to be painful and in need of redemption, was reflected in matter and accordingly dealt with in matter…. The projection of the redeemer-image, i.e., the correspondence between Christ and the lapis, is therefore almost a psychological necessity, as is the parallelism between the redeeming opus or officium divinum and the mastery…. The Christian earns the fruits of grace ex opere operato, but the alchemist creates for himself—ex opere operantis in the most literal sense—a “panacea of life” which he regards either as a substitute for the Church’s means of grace or as the complement and parallel of the divine work of redemption that is continued in man.”
Jung concludes by bringing it all back to modernity and man’s trouble with his own consciousness, “It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego…. Of course, what we discover is there is nothing that can be held up to the masses—only some hidden thing that we can hold up to ourselves in solitude and in silence…. The psyche is a reality which we cannot grasp with our present means of understanding…. I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion…. The alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation into the phenomena of chemical change…. In the last analysis, it is exceedingly doubtful whether human reason is a suitable instrument for this purpose. Not for nothing did alchemy style itself an “art,” feeling—and rightly so—that it was concerned with creative processes that can be truly grasped only by experience…. Experience, not books, is what leads to understanding.”
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