Alchemy
The
theoria of alchemy, as I think I have shown, is for the most part a
projection
of unconscious
contents, of those
archetypal forms which are characteristic of all pure fantasy-products, such
as are to be met with in
myths and fairytales, or in dreams, visions, and the delusional systems of
individual men and women.
That
is why all the true scientists, the true searchers among the alchemists, said,
“I am not looking for the gold of the ordinary people, I am not looking for
vulgar gold. I am seeking a higher gold, the true gold.”
AAI 19
Alchemy
describes, not merely in general outline but often in the most astonishing
detail, the same psychological phenomenology which can be observed in the
analysis of unconscious processes. The individual’s specious
unity that emphatically
says “I want, I think” breaks down under the impact of the
unconscious.
So long as the patient can think that somebody else (his father or
mother) is responsible for his difficulties, he can save some semblance of
unity (putater unus
esse!). But once he realizes that he himself has a
shadow, that his enemy is
in his own heart, then the conflict begins and one becomes two.
Since the “other” will eventually prove to be yet another duality, a
compound of opposites,
the ego
soon becomes a shuttlecock tossed between a multitude of “velleties,” with the
result that there is an “obfuscation of the
light,” i.e.,
consciousness is depotentiated and the patient is at a loss to know where
his personality
begins or ends. TPofT 34
The old master saw the
alchemical opus as a kind of apocatastasis, the restoring of an initial
state in an “eschatological” one (“the end looks to the beginning, and
contrariwise”). This is exactly what happens in
the individuation process,
whether it take the form of a
Christian transformation (“Except ye become as
little children”,), or a satori experience in Zen (“show me your original
face”), or a psychological process of development in which the original
propensity to wholeness becomes a
conscious happening. Aion 169
Everything that was naively presumed to be a knowledge of
transcendental and divine things, which human beings can never know with
certainty, and everything that seemed to be irretrievably lost with the decline
of the Middle Ages, rose up again with the discovery of the
psyche.
MC 58
It is the moral task of alchemy to bring the feminine,
maternal background of the masculine psyche, seething with passions, into
harmony with the principle of the spirit – truly a labour of Hercules!
MC41
In
one of his writings Ibn Sina confirms that through the gift of prophecy and
through certain techniques of ecstasy reached by long exercises in meditation,
the soul of man acquires some of God’s capacity even to change material things.
You see, when God said, “Let there be light,” there was light, but when a
man says the same thing, nothing happens. If, however, a man
through religious meditation, can get so close to God within himself that he
can, so to speak, get some of the power by which God can just will or wish
things and they attain material reality, then the soul acquires some of that
ability. It is on that assumption that alchemical activity
and transformation are based. AAI 37
… alchemical texts can only be understood by adopting synoptic views, by putting all the quotations together and then seeing intuitively what they are driving at. AAI 40
The alchemical image of the coniunctio, whose practical importance was proved at a later stage of development, is equally valuable from the psychological point of view: that is to say, it plays the same role in the exploration of the darkness of the psyche as it played in the investigation of the riddle of matter. Indeed, it could never have worked so effectively in the material world had it not already possessed the power to fascinate and thus to fix the attention of the investigator along those lines. The coniunctio is an a priori image that occupies a prominent place in the history of man’s mental development. If we trace this idea back we find it has two sources in alchemy, one Christian, the other pagan. The Christian source is unmistakably the doctrine of Christ and the Church, sponsus and sponsa, where Christ takes the role of Sol and the Church that of Luna. The pagan source is on the one hand the hierosgamos, on the other the marital union of the mystic with God. TPotT 5
(Alchemy
differs), for instance, from Buddhist meditation training, for in the East there
is no such return to the body (except in certain Zen Buddhist traditions).
There is always the idea that certain things like worldliness,
superficiality, and so on, have to be definitely eliminated, so that there is
always a kind of educational program. Dorn does have a bit of
that – you have to do a certain amount of it – but he always returns to the idea
that the real man, as he is, is the object and even the vehicle of the inner
transformation. That is where Jung, and I, agree with alchemy
more than any other tradition: for if you indulge in
putting away what you cannot change or transform, you will have a wonderful
idealistic result that does not hold when it comes to the test.
AAI 65
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY
The demand made by the
imitatio Christi – that we
should follow the ideal and seek to become like it – ought logically to have the
result of developing and exalting the inner man. In actual fact, however,
the ideal has been turned by superficial and formalistically-minded believers
into an external object of worship, and it is precisely this veneration for the object that prevents it from reaching down into the depths of the
psyche and
giving the latter a wholeness in keeping with the ideal.
the divine mediator stands ouside as an image, while man
remains fragmentary and untouched in the deepest part of him.
We must
not forget, however, that even a mistaken imitation may sometimes involve a
tremendous moral effort which has all the merits of a total surrender to some
supreme value, even though the real goal may never be reached and the value is
represented externally. It is conceivable that by virtue of this total
effort a man may even catch a fleeting glimpse of his
wholeness, accompanied by
the feeling of grace that always characterizes this experience.
BW 455 !!!
Western man is held in thrall
by the “ten thousand things”; he sees
only particulars, he is
ego-bound and
thing-bound, and unaware of the deep root
of all being. Eastern man on the other hand, experiences the world of
particulars, and even his own
ego, like a
dream; he is rooted essentially in the
“Ground,” which attracts him so powerfully that his relations with the world are
relativized to a degree that is often incomprehensible to us. BW 456
the ideal took upon
himself the sins of the world. But if the ideal is wholly outside then the
sins of the individual are also outside, and consequently he is more of a
fragment than ever, since superficial misunderstanding conveniently enables him,
quite literally, to “cast his sins upon
Christ” and thus to evade his deepest
responsibilities – which is contrary to the spirit of
Christianity. BW 456
If the supreme value (Christ)
and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is
void: its highest
and lowest are missing. The Eastern attitude (more particularly the
Indian) is the other way about: everything, highest and lowest, is in the
(transcendental) Subject. BW 456
… Accordingly the significance
of the Atman, the Self, is heightened beyond all bounds. But with Western
man the value of the self sinks to zero. Hence the universal depreciation
of the soul in the West.
An exclusively religious
projection may rob the soul of its values so that through sheer inanition it
becomes incapable of further development and gets stuck in an
unconscious state. BW 458
However we may picture the
relationship between God and
soul, one thing is certain: that the
soul cannot be
“nothing but.” On the contrary it has the dignity of an entity endowed
with consciousness of a relationship to Deity. Even if it were only the
relationship of a drop of water to the sea, that sea would not exist but for the
multitude of drops. The immortality of the soul insisted upon by dogma
exalts it above the transitoriness of mortal man and causes it to partake of
some supernatural quality. It thus infinitely surpasses the perishable,
conscious individual in significance, so that logically the
Christian is
forbidden to regard the soul as a “nothing but.” As the eye to
the
sun, so the soul corresponds to
God. Since our
conscious mind does not
comprehend the soul it is ridiculous to speak of the things of the
soul in a
patronizing or depreciatory manner. BW 458
It would be blasphemy to assert
that God can manifest himself everywhere save only in the human
soul. BW 458
Things have
gone rapidly downhill since the Age of Enlightenment, for, once this petty
reasoning mind, which cannot endure any
paradoxes, is awakened, no sermon on
earth can keep it down. A new task then arises: to lift this still
undeveloped mind step by step to a higher level and to increase the number of
persons who have at least some inkling of the scope of paradoxical truth. BW 464