Alchemy and the Mystery Traditions

“The glorified lead is the female that is described, among other things, as the ‘despised . . . Thrown on the roadway.’ . . . Lead is a symbol of

the feminine personification of the spirit of the unconscious that is

rejected by the prevailing conscious views. In later Latin alchemy, this rejected spirit became known as Sapientia Dei, the

guiding principle, leading the alchemist in his work.” (Abt, CALA IB p. 78)

Alchemy

• Context: What was alchemy? How did Jung become interested in alchemy?

• An alchemical motif: The union of Sun and Moon

• A new myth for our time?

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What is Alchemy?

• “The main message in alchemy is the depiction of a coming together or a reconciliation of sun and moon, of the male and female principles, of the dayworld of consciousness with the nightworld of the unconscious. This is a compensation for the one-sided development in the ‘religions of the Book’”.(Abt, CALA IB, p. 296)

• “The alchemical work starts by looking at and finally accepting the prima materia, which is a symbol of the unacceptable ‘fascinating and threatening other’ that is incompatible with one’s world view.” (Abt, CALA IB, p. 306)

What is Alchemy?• “Alchemy, as Jung understands it, is a psychic response (enantiodromia) to the patriarchal tyranny of the Roman Church in which vicarious atonement as power rather than love is replaced by active ‘Soul-making’ in which the psyche assumes full responsibility for its own salvation. Jung describes this responsibility assumed in alchemy by the soul – as it is also described by Keats – as individuation (Keats’s ‘full alchemized’ as a ‘fellowship with essence.’” (Woodman, Romanticism, alchemy, and psychology, pg. 20)

Why was Jung Interested in Alchemy? The Red Book -- Epilogue• “I worked on this book for 16 years. My

acquaintance with alchemy in 1930 took me away from it. The beginning of the end came in 1928, when Wilhelm sent me the text of the ‘Golden Flower’, an alchemical treatise. There the contents of this book found their way into actuality and I could no longer continue working on it. To the superficial observer it will appear like madness. It would also have developed into one, had I not been able to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences. With the help of alchemy, I could finally arrange them into a whole . . .”

What was Alchemy for Jung?

• A language of symbols.

• “Finally I realized that the alchemists were talking in symbols -- those old acquaintances of mine.”(Jung)

• “The sages have a language that they agreed upon and adopted to speak in, a language of symbols.” (Muhammad Ibn Umail, 9th Century)

The Red Book• “Only later, many years after his own

encounter with the unconscious did [Jung] discover in the descriptions of the alchemical work that the old masters were speaking of the same thing that he had experienced and worked out with painstaking care in his so-called Red Book.” (Abt, CALA IB pg. 306)

Alchemy was, for Jung, “another Red Book.”

• Language

• Image

• Motifs

• SYMBOL

Language

• “I have become smelted anew in the connection with the primordial beginning, which at the same time is what has been and what is becoming. At first I come to the primordial beginning in myself. But because I am a part of the matter and formation of the world, I also come into the primordial beginning of the world in the first place.” (The Red Book, p. 247)

Image

• “With alchemy [Jung] had found an objective historical basis to describe the process of individuation . . . The alchemical myth of the reconciliation of the solar day world with the lunar night world.” (Abt, CALA IB, p. 307)

MotifsRosarium Philosophorum,

Frankfurt, 1550

Depth Psychological Interpretation of the Union of

Sun and Moon

Alchemical Union of Fire and Water in the Air, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell,

and a Painting of a Contemporary 30 Year Old Woman in Analysis

“Fire and water or sun and moon, the day-world and the night-world, are experienced by all humans in their conflicting but nonetheless creative polarity. They symbolize the transpersonal dimension of the problem of the incompatible elements in the human psyche.” (Abt, CALA IB, pg. 40)

The Union of Sun and Moon in The Red Book

• “For this is the place where day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your life, what you have renounced and damned, everything that was and could have gone wrong, awaits you from behind that wall before which you sit quietly.” (p. 296)

• “This melting together of the hot and the cold . . .The blending of sense and non-sense to produce the supreme meaning.” (p. 230)

• “Madness and reason want to be married.” (p. 317)

Zosimos and Theosobeia, 3rd-4th century, as depicted in a 13th

century Arabic text

The Mutus Liber, French, 1677

17th Century Europe

Philosophia Reformata, Frankfurt, 1622

• “The origin of the perfect lead-copper is the conjunction of sun and moon.” (Ibn Umail)

Painting of an American Man in his Mid-Twenties and the “Stone of the Sages”, Arabic,

15th century

“The eclipse is called ‘asl al-madda’ meaning the . . . materia prima of the whole work. This first union of sun and moon at the time of the eclipse is the moment of impregnation, ‘before which there is no operation.’” (Abt, CALA IB, p. 33)

“Rejoice when your matter turns black for that is the start of the work.” (Alchemical Dictum)

The Start of the Work!

Kali as the Dark Eclipse of the Sun

Zosimos and Theosobeia, 4th century Egypt

Other Images of the “Eclipse of the Sun” from 16th-17th

Century Latin Alchemy

The Death and Renewal of the King in 14th Century Arabic

Alchemy

The Shadow of the Sun

• “’The stone is the shadow of the sun’(Zosimos). The sun is a symbol for the highest value, the collective image of the divine. The stone as the shadow of the sun symbolizes therefore all that is excluded from the collectively accepted image of God, all that is generally rejected and despised, that is why the philosopher’s stone is also called the devil’s stone.” (Abt, CALA IB, p. )

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Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis

• “If the projected conflict is to be healed, it must return into the psyche of the individual, where it had its unconscious beginnings. He must celebrate a Last Supper with himself, and eat his own flesh and drink his own blood, which means that he must recognize and accept the other in himself. But if he persists in his one-sidedness, the two lions will tear each other to pieces. Is this perhaps the meaning of Christ’s teaching, that each must bear his own cross? For if you have to endure yourself, how will you be able to rend others also?” (CW 14 par. 512)

Pelican Flask and the Uroboros: Images from early Greek, Arabic,

and Later Latin Alchemy

“The Devil’s Stone”: Arabic Alchemy and Contemporary

Depth Psychology

• “It is the goal of the alchemical work to integrate gradually that black, collective autonomous complex that is called the devil.” (Abt, CALA IB p. 316)

Woman in Her Early 30’s in Depth Analysis: Early and

Late Paintings

Anselm Kiefer, “Quaternity”, 1973. (Oil and charcoal on burlap, 117

1/2 x 170 1/4 in)

Depth Analysis

• “The overwhelming impact of a divine/erotic impulse.” (Abt, CALA IB, p. 27).

• “In alchemy, the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical is fundamental. Carnal knowledge is the literal ‘Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree.’ Its spiritual fruit is the elixir of life, the philosopher’s stone, which is not a literal stone.” (Woodman, R. Romaticism, Alchemy and Psychology, p. 4)

Soror Mystica

• “Every human being carries his or her opposite gender in his body and psyche . . . The Latin alchemists called her the soror mystica. Being mainly an inner reality, she is the one that will finally give birth to the gold or the new sun, as Ibn Umail explains in the Hall ar-Rumuz. Both are symbols of a renewed consciousness. This woman-companion is for Ibn Umail, as Maria was for Ostanes, a symbol for the unconscious. Insofar as such an individual woman symbolizes the desired beloved, the black earth is also a symbol of the body with its drives and desires.” (Abt, CALA IB, p. 28)

The Alchemical Vessel

• “The main message of Ibn Umail . . . could be summarized as the creation of consciousness by continuously pondering over the symbols that emerge from the unconscious.” (Abt, CALA IB p. 10)

A 2,000 Year Old Alchemical Recipe for the Transformation

of Consciousness

TURN THE . . • Earth (= Literal Symptoms)

– INTO . . .

• Water (= Poetic Images)– INTO . . .

• Air (= Abstract Meaning)– INTO . . .

• Fire (= Illumination,Transformation)

The Start of the Work

The End of the Work. The insan kamil, or Complete

Human Being.