Lapis Philosophorum
The “thousand names” of the lapis
philosophorum correspond to the innumerable Gnostic designations for the
Anthropos, which make it quite obvious what is meant: the greater, more
comprehensive Man, that indescribable whole consisting of the sum of
conscious
and unconscious processes. This objective whole, the antithesis of the
subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called
the
self,
and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the
Anthropos.
Magic exercises a compulsion
that prevails over the conscious mind and will of the victim: an alien will rise
up in the bewitched and proves stronger than his
ego. The only comparable effect
capable of psychological verification is that exerted by the
unconscious
contents, which by their compelling power demonstrate their affinity with or
dependence on man’s totality, that is, the
self and its “karmic” functions. We
have already seen that the alchemical fish
symbols points ultimately to an
archetype of the order of magnitude of the
self.
Philosopher’s
Stone. In
alchemy, a metaphor for the
successful transmutation of base metal into gold; psychologically, an archetypal
image of wholeness.
The
prima materia
as well as the end product of the process, variously called
lapis
philosophorum, elixir vitae, aurum nostrum, infans, puer, filius philosophorum,
Hermaphroditus,
by an indirect route, the alchemical fish attains the dignity of a
symbol for
the Salvator mundi.
Hunted
for centuries and never found, the prima materia or lapis
philosophorum is, as a few alchemists rightly suspected, to be discovered in
man himself. TPofT 24
Now,
one of the concepts that plays the greatest role in
alchemy is that of the
prima materia, the
prime or basic matter, the one stuff from which everything else is made.
AAI 15
In addition to the prima materia, space, time, and particle energy, one of the basic concepts of alchemy is the concept of what one might call chemical affinity, which at that time was understood as the inexplicable attraction of certain substances to one another and the inexplicable repulsion of others. This meant that a chemical substance was assessed by its value in effecting certain combinations or amalgamations – hence the famous motif of the coniunctio.
Part 11 – The alchemical interpretation of the fish
Dorn writes: “The magnetic stone teaches us, for in it the power of magnetizing and attracting iron is not seen (with the eyes); it is a spirit hidden within, not perceptible to the sense.”
Thus the doctrine, which may be consciously acquired
“through a kind of divine inspiration,” is at the same time the instrument
whereby the object of the doctrine or theory can be freed from its imprisonment
in the body, because the symbol for the doctrine – the “magnet” – is at the same
time the mysterious “truth” of which the doctrine speaks. The doctrine enters
the consciousness of the adept as a gift of the Holy Ghost. It is a thesaurus of
knowledge about the secret of the art, of the treasure hidden in the prima
materia, which was thought to be outside man. The treasure of the doctrine
and the precious secret concealed in the darkness of
matter are one and the same
thing.
He who does not understand how to free the “truth’ in
his own soul from its fetters will never make a success of the physical opus,
and he who knows how to make the stone can only do so on the basis of right
doctrine, through which he himself is transformed, or which he creates through
his own transformation.
“All those who have all things with them have no need
of outside aid.” (not Jung…??) God says Morienus, made the world out of four
unequal elements and set man as the “greater ornament” between them: “This thing
is extracted from thee, for thou art its ore; in thee they find it, and, to
speak more plainly, from thee they take it; and when thou hast experienced this,
the love and desire for it will be increased in thee.” This “thing” is the
(Lapis).
The procedure for making the stone “cannot be
performed with hands,” for it is a “human attitude” (dispositio hominum). This
alone accomplishes the “changing of the natures.” The transformation is brought
about by the coniunctio, which forms the essence of the work.
“This stone is below thee, as to obedience; above thee, as to dominion; therefore from thee, as to knowledge; about thee, as to equals.”
The passage is somewhat obscure. Nevertheless, it can
be elicited that the stone stands in an undoubted psychic relationship to man:
the adept can expect obedience from it, but on the other hand the stone
exercises dominion over him. Since the stone is a matter of “knowledge” or
science, it springs from man. But it is outside him, in his surroundings, among
his “equals,” i.e., those of like mind. This description fits the paradoxical
situation of the self, as its symbolism shows. It is the smallest of the small,
easily overlooked and pushed aside. Indeed, it is in need of help and must be
perceived, protected, and as it were built up by the
conscious mind, just as if
it did not exist at all and were called into being only through man’s care and
devotion. As against this, we know from experience that it had long been there
and is older than the
ego, and that it is actually the secret spiritus rector
of our fate. The self does not become conscious by itself, but has always been
taught, if at all, through a tradition of knowing (the purusha/atman
teaching, for instance). Since it stands for the essence of
individuation, and
individuation is impossible without a relationship to one’s environment, it is
found among those of like mind with whom individual relations can be
established. The self, moreover, is an
archetype that invariably expresses a
situation within which the
ego is contained. Therefore, like every
archetype,
the self cannot be localized in an individual ego-consciousness, but acts like a
circumambient atmosphere to which no definite limits can be set, either in
space
or in time. (Hence the
synchronistic phenomena so often associated with
activated archetypes.)
“This stone is something which is fixed more in thee [than elsewhere], created of God, and thou art its ore, and it is extracted from thee, and wheresoever thou art it remains inseparably with thee … And as man is made up of four elements, so also is the stone, and so it is [dug] out of man, and thou art its ore, namely by working; and from thee it is extracted, that is by division; and in thee it remains inseparably, namely by knowledge. (Treaty of Rosinus)
We learn from it that the stone is implanted in man by
God, that the laborant is its prima materia, that the extraction
corresponds to the so-called divisio or separatio of the
alchemical procedure, and that through his knowledge of the stone man remains
inseparably bound to the self. The procedure here described could easily be
understood as the realization of an unconscious content.
… through this knowledge the
self, as a content of the
unconscious, is made
conscious and “fixed” in the mind. For without the
existence of conscious concepts apperception is, as we know, impossible. This
explains numerous neurotic disturbances which arise from the fact that certain
contents are constellated in the
unconscious but cannot be assimilated owing to
the lack of apperceptive concepts that would “grasp” them. That is why it is so
extremely important to tell children fairy-tales and legends, and to inculcate
religious ideas (dogmas) into grown-ups, because these things are instrumental
symbols with whose help
unconscious contents can be canalized into
consciousness, interpreted, and integrated. Failing this, their
energy flows off
into conscious contents which, normally, are not much emphasized, and
intensifies them to pathological proportions. We then get apparently groundless
phobias and obsessions – crazes, idiosyncrasies, hypochondriac ideas, and
intellectual perversions suitably camouflaged in social, religious, or political
garb.
The
union of opposites in the stone is possible only
when the adept has become One himself. The unity of the stone is the equivalent
of individuation, by which man is made one; we would say that the stone is a
projection of the unified
self.
… This formulation is psychologically correct.
It does not, however, take sufficient account of the fact that the stone is a
transcendent unity. We must therefore emphasize that though the
self can become
a symbolic content of consciousness, it is, as a supra-ordinate
totality,
necessarily transcendental as well.
“Transmute yourselves from dead stones into living philosophical stones”
(The) lapis consists of the four elements or
has to be put together from them.(45) In the chaos the elements are not united,
they are merely coexistent and have to be combined through the alchemical
procedure. They are even hostile to one another and will not unite of their own
accord. They represent, therefore, an original state of conflict and mutual
repulsion. This image serves to illustrate the splitting up or unfolding of the
original unity into the multiplicity of the visible world.
Cont’d … Out of the split-up quaternity the opus
puts together the unity of the lapis in the realm of the inorganic. As
the filius macrocosmi and a living being, the lapis is not just an
allegory but is a direct parallel of Christ and the higher Adam, of the heavenly
Original Man, of the second Adam (Christ), and of the serpent. The nadir of this
third quaternion is therefore a further counterpart of the
Anthropos. Aion 237
As already mentioned, the constitution of the lapis
rests on the union of the four elements, which in their turn represent the
prima materia, the Arcanum, the primary substance, which in Paracelsus and
his followers is called the increatum and is regarded as coeternal with
God – a correct interpretation of the Tehom of Genesis1:2: “And the [uncreated]
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and
the Spirit of God [ brooded] over the face of the waters.” Aion 237
(ATOM RELATED) This
primary substance is
round (massa globosa, rotundum), like the world and the
world-soul; it is in fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. It is
the “stone that has a spirit,” in modern parlance the most elementary
building-stone in the architecture of
matter, the
atom, which is an intellectual
model.
“Reduce your stone to the four elements, rectify and
combine them into one, and you will have the whole magistery. This One, to which
the elements must be reduced, is
that little circle in the centre of this
squared figure. It is the mediator, making peace between the enemies or
elements.”
Maria Prophetess says: “The Philosophers teach
everything except the Hermetic vessel, because that is divine and is hidden from
the Gentiles by the Lord’s wisdom; and they who know it not, know not the true
method, because of their
ignorance of the vessel of Hermes.” Theobald de
Hoghelande adds: “Senior says that the vision thereof is more to be sought after
than [knowledge of] the Scriptures.” Maria Prophetess says: “This is the vessel
of Hermes, which the Stoics had, and it is no nigromantic vessel, but is the
measure of thy fire [mensura ignis tui].
… make the Hermetic vessel out of your psychic wholeness and pour into the aqua permanens, or aqua doctrinae, one of whose synonyms is the vinum ardens (cf. Repescissa’s “burning water”). This would be a hint that the adept should “inwardly digest” and transform himself through the alchemical doctrine. Aion 241
The round
Hermetic vessel in which the
mysterious transformation is accomplished is God
himself, the (Platonic) world-soul and man’s own
wholeness. It is, therefore,
another counterpart of the Anthropos, and at the same time the
universe in its
smallest and most material form. So it is easy to see why the first attempts to
construct a model of the atom took the planetary system as a prototype.
Just as the central idea of the lapis Philosophorum
plainly signifies the self, so the opus with its countless
symbols
illustrates the process of
individuation, the step-by-step development of the
self from an unconscious state to a
conscious one. This is why the lapis,
as prima materia, stands at the beginning of the process as well as at
the end.
That the Arcanum is neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor in
water is explained by Maier as a reference to the lapis, which “is found
everywhere.” It is found in all the
elements and not only in one of them.
Here Barnaud is rather more subtle, for he equated heaven with the soul,
earth with the body, and water with the spirit, and thus arrives at the idea of
the wholeness of a living organism.
“Our material,” he says, “is simultaneously in heaven, on earth, and in the
water, as if wholly in the whole and wholly in each part; so that those parts,
though otherwise divisible, can no longer be separated from one another after
they are made one: the whole Law and Prophets of
alchemy seem to depend upon
this.”
The alchemical description of the beginning corresponds psychologically to a primitive consciousness which is constantly liable to break up into individual affective processes - to fall apart, as it were, in four directions. As the four elements represent the whole physical world, their falling apart means dissolution into the constituents of the world, that is, into a purely inorganic and hence unconscious state. Conversely, the combination of the elements and the final synthesis of male and female is an achievement of the art and a product of conscious endeavour. The result of the synthesis was consequently conceived by the adept as self-knowledge, which, like the knowledge of God, is needed for the preparation of the Philosophers' Stone. Piety is needed for the work, and this is nothing but knowledge of oneself. (But piety is grace sent down from God, which teaches every man to know himself as he really is" Dorn). MC 460
Make
a round circle of man and woman, extract therefrom a quadrangle and from it a
triangle. Make the circle round, and you will have the Philosopher’s Stone.
(lapis? Stone?) (***)
Although, as we have seen, the vessel and its contents are really
identical, there is yet a subtle difference in the choice of images.
As Jung has shown, the stone in alchemy signifies the inner spiritual
man. Its divine attributes distinguish it as a particle of
God concealed in nature, an analogy to the God who, in Christ, came down to
earth in a human body, subject to suffering. On the other
hand, the “cheapness” of the stone (lapis exilis,
vilis) alludes to the fact that every human being
is its potential bearer, even its begetter. In this way the
alchemical symbol of the lapis
compensates for the overly exalted and remote spirituality of the ecclesiastical
image of Christ, which is too far removed from the natural earthly man.
TGL 157
The Lapis may therefore be understood as a symbol of the inner
Christ, of God in man.” Looked at from this point of view,
the stone represents a further development of the
Christ symbol, reaching downwards into matter.
“Without knowing it,” says Jung, “the alchemist carries the idea of the
intimatio (Christi) a
stage further and reaches the conclusion …
that complete assimilation to the Redeemer would enable him, the assimilated, to
continue the work of redemption in the depths of his own psyche.”
By this means he can even free the divine spirit imprisoned in matter.
He achieves this, not as an ego but acting in the capacity of the Self;
hence the symbol of the lapis
“came not from the conscious mind of the individual man, but
from those border regions of the psyche that open out into
the mystery of cosmic matter.” TGL 158
The
lapis of the alchemists
represents a symbol of the Self which is certainly analogous to Christ, but its
image, by returning to the depths of
matter and the psychical, is enriched
beyond that of Christ by a darker side that complements it.
Consequently, while the essential material substance of that content is
emphasized in the symbol of the stone, the aspect of the vessel stresses another
facet of the same symbol, i.e. the importance which attaches to the psychic
comprehension of the
Self. A vessel is also a material thing, but it serves the
purpose of containing other physical substances.
This
specific function of
the symbol therefore indicates that the image of
the Self,
Christ, is practically nonexistent
unless it is
realized in the human soul.
TGL 158
In
alchemy, the lapis
represents (a) light-dark
unity of the divine opposites. The alchemical
Mercurius,
who is identical with the stone, is also considered to be
duplex: good with the virtuous
and evil with sinners. He is a god-image in which the
opposites appear to be united. He is identified now with
Christ, now with the Devil, he is
masculine and
feminine, he is a
twin (geminus), he is
at the same time both
Adam and Eve, an
old man and a boy. He is a figure of the
Anthropos and of the
saviour which, engendered by the
unconscious,
compensates and completes the light figure of Christ,
a deus terrestris et absconditus,
and as such is an essential part of
the Self (the
God-image) which, as the Whole, represents a
complexion
oppositorum. TGL 151
In alchemy the dragon is considered to be the prima materia of the lapis.