Carl Jung on Stones Anthology

Carl Jung on Stones Anthology

Nothing was left but the hole in which the snake was said to dwell. There the honey cakes were placed and the obolus thrown in. The sacred cave in the temple at Cos consisted of a rectangular pit covered by a stone slab with a square hole in it ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577

In Hierapolis (Edessa) a temple was built over the earth where the flood subsided, and in Jerusalem the foundation-stone of the temple was laid over the great abyss, in the same way that Christian churches are often built over caves, grottoes, wells, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 577

It should never be forgotten—and of this the Freudian school must be reminded—that morality was not brought down on tables of stone from Sinai and imposed on the people, but is a function of the human soul, as old as humanity itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 30.

We are concerned here, then, with the psychological phenomenon that lies at the root of magic by analogy. We should not think that is an ancient superstition which we have long since outgrown. If you read the Latin text of the Mass carefully, you will constantly come upon the famous “sicut”; this always introduces an analogy by means of which a change is to be produced. Another striking example of analogy is the making fire on Holy Saturday. In former times, the new fire was struck from the stone, and still earlier it was obtained by boring into a piece of wood, which was the prerogative of the Church.

Therefore in the prayer of the priest it is said: O God, who through thy Son, who is called the cornerstone, hast brought the fire of thy light to the faithful, make holy for our future use this new fire struck from the firestone. By the analogy of Christ with the cornerstone, the firestone is raised to the level of Christ himself, who again kindles a new fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 8 Para 314

Hitler’s picture has been erected upon Christian altars. There are people who confess on their tombstones that they died in peace since their eyes had beheld not the Lord but the Fuhrer. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1329

Another striking example of analogy is the making fire on Holy Saturday. In former times, the new fire was struck from the stone, and still earlier it was obtained by boring into a piece of wood, which was the prerogative of the Church ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

Therefore in the prayer of the priest it is said: O God, who through thy Son, who is called the cornerstone, hast brought the fire of thy light to the faithful, make holy for our future use this new fire struck from the firestone ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

By the analogy of Christ with the cornerstone, the firestone is raised to the level of Christ himself, who again kindles a new fire ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 314

Over and over again in the “metamorphosis of the gods,” he rises up as the prophet or first-born of a new generation and appears unexpectedly in the unlikeliest places (sprung from a stone, tree, furrow, water, etc.) and in ambiguous form (Tom Thumb, dwarf, child, animal, and so on). ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 267

The alchemists projected the inner event into an outer figure, so for them the inner friend appeared in the form of the “Stone,” of which the Tractatus aureus: “Understand, ye sons of the wise, what this exceeding precious Stone crieth out to you: Protect me and I will protect thee. Give me what is mine that I may help thee.” To this a scholiast adds: “The seeker after truth hears both the Stone and the Philosopher speaking as if out of one mouth.” The Philosopher is Hermes, and the Stone is identical with Mercurius, the Latin Hermes. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 283

From the earliest times, Hermes was the mystagogue and psycho pomp of the alchemists, their friend and counselor, who leads them to the goal of their work. He is “like a teacher mediating between the stone and the disciple.” To others the friend appears in the shape of Christ or Khidr or a visible or invisible guru, or some other personal guide or leader figure. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, para. 283

I am in a church made of grey sandstone. The apse is built rather high. Near the tabernacle a girl in a red dress is hanging on the stone cross of the window. (Suicide?) ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par 354

The fact is that archetypal images are so packed with meaning in themselves that people never think of asking what they really do mean. That the gods die from time to time is due to man’s sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone. In reality, however, he has merely discovered that up till then he has never thought about his images at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 22

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.  ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 248

This primary substance is round (massa globosa, rotundum, 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,” ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 376

Magnesia is rather the “complete or conjoined mixture from which this moisture is extracted, i.e., the root-matter of our Stone” ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 241.

The magnesia is feminine, just as the magnet is masculine by nature. Hence it carries “in its belly the sal Armoniacum et vegetabile,” meaning the arcane substance of the Stone. Even in Greek alchemy magnesia or “magnes” denoted the hermaphroditic transformative substance ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 241

Rosinus: Take therefore this animate Stone, the Stone which has a soul in it, the mercurial, which is sensible and sensitive to the presence and influence of the magnesia and the magnet, and [which is] the calaminary and the living Stone, yielding and repelling by local motion ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 241.

In Milton’s time these ideas were very much in the air, forming part of the general stock of culture, and there were not a few Masters who realized that their philosophical stone was none other than the “total man.” The Satan-Prometheus parallel shows clearly enough that Milton’s devil stands for the essence of human individuation and thus comes within the scope of psychology. This close proximity, as we know, proved a danger not only to the metaphysical status of Satan, but to that of other numinous figures as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 471

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.

The medieval representations of the circle are based on the idea of the microcosm, a concept that was also applied to the stone. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 95.

The stone was a “little world” like man himself, a sort of inner image of the cosmos, reaching not into immeasurable distances but into an equally immeasurable depth-dimension, i.e., from the small to the unimaginably smallest. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 95.

Just as the alchemists knew that the production of their stone was a miracle that could only happen “Deo concedente,” so the modern psychologist is aware that he can produce no more than a description, couched in scientific symbols, of a psychic process whose real nature transcends consciousness just as much as does the mystery of life or of matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 296.

The statement that “the various names given to it [the Mind] are innumerable” proves that the Mind must be something as vague and indefinite as the philosophers’ stone. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 302.

[From an early treatise]: “Thus it [the stone] comes from man, and you are its mineral (raw material); in you it is found and from you it is extracted, and it remains inseparably in you” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, para 53

And Gerhard Dorn cries out, “Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!” 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.

By means of the philosophical opus, this entity was freed from darkness and imprisonment, and finally it enjoyed a resurrection. It is clear that these ideas can have nothing to do with the empirical ego but are concerned with a “divine nature” quite distinct from it, and hence, psychologically speaking, with a consciousness-transcending content issuing from the realm of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, para 154.

In Milton’s time these ideas were very much in the air, forming part of the general stock of culture, and there were not a few Masters who realized that their philosophical stone was none other than the “total man.” The Satan-Prometheus parallel shows clearly enough that Milton’s devil stands for the essence of human individuation and thus comes within the scope of psychology. This close proximity, as we know, proved a danger not only to the metaphysical status of Satan, but to that of other numinous figures as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 471

The spiritual man says to the worldly man, “Are you capable of knowing your soul in a complete manner? If you knew it, as is fitting, and if you knew what makes it better, you would be able to recognize that the names the philosophers formerly gave it are not its true names. O dubious names that resemble the true names, what errors and agonies you have provoked among men!” The names refer in turn to the philosopher’s stone. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, para 153.

The center, as a rule, is emphasized. But what we find there is a symbol with a very different meaning. It is a star, a sun, a flower, a cross with equal arms, a precious stone, a bowl filled with water or wine, a serpent coiled up, or a human being, but never a god ~Carl Jung, CW 11. Para 136

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 ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 154

In other dreams the circle is represented by rotation for instance, four children carry a “dark ring” and walk in a circle. Again, the circle appears combined with the quaternity, as a silver bowl with four nuts at the four cardinal points, or as a table with four chairs. The center seems to be particularly emphasized. It is symbolized by an egg in the middle of a ring; by a star consisting of a body of soldiers; by a star rotating in a circle, the cardinal points of which represent the four seasons; by the pole; a precious stone, and so on ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 109

With this we come back to our modern experiences. They are obviously similar in nature to the basic medieval and classical ideas, and can therefore be expressed by the same, or at any rate similar, symbols. The medieval representations of the circle are based on the idea of the microcosm, a concept that was also applied to the stone. The stone was a “little world” like man himself, a sort of inner image of the cosmos, reaching not into immeasurable distances but into an equally immeasurable depth-dimension, i.e., from the small to the unimaginably smallest. Mylius therefore calls this center the “punctum cordis” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 155

In Milton’s time these ideas were very much in the air, forming part of the general stock of culture, and there were not a few Masters who realized that their philosophical stone was none other than the “total man.” The Satan-Prometheus parallel shows clearly enough that Milton’s devil stands for the essence of human individuation and thus comes within the scope of psychology. This close proximity, as we know, proved a danger not only to the metaphysical status of Satan, but to that of other numinous figures as well ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 471

For medieval man, however, analogy was not so much a logical figure as a secret identity, a remnant of primitive thinking which is still very much alive. An instructive example of this is the rite of hallowing the fire on the Saturday before Easter. The fire is “like unto” Christ, an imago Christi. The stone from which the spark is struck is the “cornerstone” another imago; and the spark that leaps from the stone is yet again an imago Christi. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 451

The analogy with the extraction of the pneuma from the stone in the saying of Ostanes forces itself upon us. We are already familiar with the idea of pneuma as fire, and with Christ as fire and fire as the earth’s inner counter-element; but the stone from which the spark is struck is also analogous to the rocky sepulchre, or the stone before it. Here Christ lay as one asleep or in the fetters of death during the three days of his descent into hell, when he went down to the ignis gehennalis, from which he rises again as the New Fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 451

It is by virtue of the wisdom and art which he himself has acquired, or which God has bestowed upon him, that he can liberate the world-creating Nous or Logos, lost in the world’s materiality, for the benefit of mankind. The artifex himself bears no correspondence to Christ; rather he sees this correspondence to the Redeemer in his wonderful Stone. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 452

From this it is clear that the horn of the unicorn signifies the health, strength, and happiness of the blessed. “Thus,” says Tertullian, “Christ was named the bull on account of two qualities: the one hard [ferus, wild, untamed'] as a judge, the other gentle [mansuetus,tame’] as a saviour.

His horns are the ends of the cross.” Justin Martyr interprets the same passage in a similar way: “Cornua unicornis cornu eius. For no one can say or prove that the horns of the unicorn could be found in any other object or in any other shape than in that represented by the cross.” For the might of God is manifest in Christ. Accordingly Priscillian calls God one-horned: “One-horned is God, Christ a rock to us, Jesus a cornerstone, Christ the man of men” ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 521

Paracelsus and Böhme between them split alchemy into natural science and Protestant mysticism. The Stone returned to its former condition: vilis vilissimus, the vilest of the vile, in via eiectus, thrown out into the street, like Spitteler’s jewel. Morienus could say again today: “Take that which is trodden underfoot in the dunghill, for if thou dost not, thou wilt fall on thine head when thou wouldst climb without steps “meaning that if a man refuses to accept what he has spurned, it will recoil upon him the moment he wants to go higher. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 514

The Nous is therefore a kind of dyestuff or tincture, that ennobles base substances. Its function is the exact equivalent of the tincturing stone-extract, which is also a Pneuma and, as Mercurius, possesses the Hermetic dual significance of redeeming psychopomp and quicksilver. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 409

Thus the Christian projection acts upon the unknown in man, or upon the unknown man, who becomes the bearer of the “terrible and unheard-of secret.” The pagan projection, on the other hand, goes beyond man and acts upon the unknown in the material world, the unknown substance which, like the chosen man, is somehow filled with God. And just as, in Christianity, the Godhead conceals itself in the man of low degree, so in the “philosophy” it hides in the uncomely Stone. In the Christian projection the descensus spiritus sancti stops at the living body of the Chosen One, who is at once very man and very God, whereas in alchemy the descent goes right down into the darkness of inanimate matter whose nether regions, according to the Neopythagoreans, are ruled by evil. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 413Shorten with AI

Since it is not man but matter that must be redeemed, the spirit that manifests itself in the transformation is not the “Son of Man” but, as Khunrath very properly puts it, the filius macrocosmi. Therefore, what comes out of the transformation is not Christ but an ineffable material being named the “stone,” which displays the most paradoxical qualities apart from possessing corpus, anima, spiritus, and supernatural powers. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 420

A,E. Waite has expressed the opinion that the first author to identify the stone with Christ was the Paracelsist, Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605), whose Amphitheatrum appeared in 1598. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 453

I may define “self” as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche, but this totality transcends our vision; it is a veritable lapis invisibilitatis [stone of invisibility]. In so far as the unconscious exists it is not definable; its existence is a mere postulate and nothing whatever can be predicated as to its possible contents. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 247

King Nebuchadnezzar had a vision of a fourth, like the “Son of God,” as we are told in Daniel 3:25. This vision is not without bearing on alchemy, since there are numerous passages in the literature stating that the Stone is Trinus et unus. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 449

For medieval man, however, analogy was not so much a logical figure as a secret identity, a remnant of primitive thinking which is still very much alive. An instructive example of this is the rite of hallowing the fire on the Saturday before Easter (fig. 191). The fire is “like unto” Christ, an imago Christi. The stone from which the spark is struck is the “cornerstone” another imago; and the spark that leaps from the stone is yet again an imago Christi ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 451

The analogy with the extraction of the pneuma from the stone in the saying of Ostanes forces itself upon us. We are already familiar with the idea of pneuma as fire, and with Christ as fire and fire as the earth’s inner counter-element; but the stone from which the spark is struck is also analogous to the rocky sepulchre, or the stone before it. Here Christ lay as one asleep or in the fetters of death during the three days of his descent into hell, when he went down to the ignis gehennalis, from which he rises again as the New Fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 451

It is by virtue of the wisdom and art which he himself has acquired, or which God has bestowed upon him, that he can liberate the world-creating Nous or Logos, lost in the world’s materiality, for the benefit of mankind. The artifex himself bears no correspondence to Christ; rather he sees this correspondence to the Redeemer in his wonderful Stone ~Carl Jung, CW 12. Para 452

The chaos is a massa confusa that gives birth to the Stone. The hylic water contains a hidden elemental fire. The idea of the rotating aquasphere reminds us of the Neopythagoreans: in Archytas the world-soul is a circle or sphere; in Philolaos it draws the world round with it in its rotation. The original idea is to be found in Anaxagoras, where the Nous gives rise to a whirlpool in chaos ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 433

The diamond is an excellent symbol because it is hard, fiery, and translucent. Orthelius tells us that the Philosophers have never found a better medicament than that which they called the noble and blessed Stone of the Philosophers, on account of its hardness, transparency, and rubeous hue ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511

This waking dream shows that the dreamer is still preoccupied with the dark centre. The bear stands for the chthonic element that might seize him. But then it becomes clear that the animal is only leading up to the four colours, which in their turn lead to the lapis, i.e., the diamond whose prism contains all the hues of the rainbow. The way to the east probably points to the unconscious as an antipode. According to the legend the Grail-stone comes from the east and must return there again. In alchemy the bear corresponds to the nigredo of the prima materia (fig. 090), whence comes the colourful cauda pavonis ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 263

Paracelsus and Böhme between them split alchemy into natural science and Protestant mysticism. The Stone returned to its former condition: vilis vilissimus, the vilest of the vile, in via eiectus, thrown out into the street, like Spitteler’s jewel. Morienus could say again today: “Take that which is trodden underfoot in the dunghill, for if thou dost not, thou wilt fall on thine head when thou wouldst climb without steps” meaning that if a man refuses to accept what he has spurned, it will recoil upon him the moment he wants to go higher ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 514

We meet this symbol in the very earliest Greek alchemy, but there are good reasons for thinking that the Stone symbol is very much older than its alchemical usage. The Stone as the birthplace of the gods (e.g., the birth of Mithras from a stone) is attested by primitive legends of stone-births which go back to ideas that are even more ancient for instance, the view of the Australian aborigines that children’s souls live in a special stone called the “child-stone.” They can be made to migrate into a uterus by rubbing the “child-stone” with a churinga ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 128

Churingas may be boulders, or oblong stones artificially shaped and decorated, or oblong, flattened pieces of wood ornamented in the same way. They are used as cult instruments. The Australians and the Melanesians maintain that churingas come from the totem ancestor, that they are relics of his body or of his activity and are full of arunquiltha or mana. They are united with the ancestor’s soul and with the spirits of all those who afterwards possess them. They are taboo, are buried in caches or hidden in clefts in the rocks. In order to “charge” them, they are buried among the graves so that they can soak up the mana of the dead. They promote the growth of field produce, increase the fertility of men and animals, heal wounds, and cure sicknesses of the body and the soul. Thus, when a man’s vitals are all knotted up with emotion, the Australian aborigines give him a blow in the abdomen with a stone churinga. The churingas used for ceremonial purposes are daubed with red ochre, anointed with fat, bedded or wrapped in leaves, and copiously spat on (spittle = mana) ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 128Shorten with AI

These ideas of magic stones are found not only in Australia and Melanesia but also in India and Burma, and in Europe itself. For example, the madness of Orestes was cured by a stone in Laconia. Zeus found respite from the sorrows of love by sitting on a stone in Leukadia. In India, a young man will tread upon a stone in order to obtain firmness of character, and a bride will do the same to ensure her own faithfulness. According to Saxo Grammaticus, the electors of the king stood on stones in order to give their vote permanence. The green stone of Arran was used both for healing and for taking oaths on ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 129

A cache of “soul stones,” similar to churingas, was found in a cave on the river Birs near Basel, and during recent excavations of the pole-dwellings on the little lake at Burgaeschi, in Canton Solothurn, a group of boulders was discovered wrapped in the bark of birch trees. This very ancient conception of the magical power of stones led on a higher level of culture to the similar importance attached to gems, to which all kinds of magical and medicinal properties were attributed. The gems that are the most famous in history are even supposed to have been responsible for the tragedies that befell their owners ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 129

A myth of the Navaho Indians of Arizona gives a particularly graphic account of the primitive fantasies that cluster round the stone. In the days of the great darkness, the ancestors of the hero saw the Sky Father descending and the Earth Mother rising up to meet him. They united, and on the top of the mountain where the union took place the ancestors found a little figure made of turquoise. This turned into (or in another version gave birth to) Estsánatlehi “the woman who rejuvenates or transforms herself.” She was the mother of the twin gods who slew the primordial monsters and was called the mother or grandmother of the gods (yéi). Estsánatlehi is the most important figure in the matriarchal pantheon of the Navaho. Not only is she the “woman who transforms herself,” but she also has two shapes, for her twin sister, Yolkaíestsan, is endowed with similar powers. Estsánatlehi is immortal, for though she grows into a withered old woman she rises up again as a young girl a true Dea Natura. From different parts of her body four daughters were born to her, and a fifth from her spirit. The sun came from the turquoise beads hidden in her right breast, and from white shell beads in her left breast the moon. She issues reborn by rolling a piece of skin from under her left breast ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 130Shorten with AI

This matriarchal goddess is obviously an anima figure who at the same time symbolizes the Self. Hence her stone-nature, her immortality, her four daughters born from the body, plus one from the spirit, her duality as sun and moon, her role as paramour, and her ability to change her shape. The Self of a man living in a matriarchal society is still immersed in his unconscious femininity, as can be observed even today in all cases of masculine mother-complexes. But the turquoise goddess also exemplifies the psychology of the matriarchal woman, who, as an anima figure, attracts the mother-complexes of all the men in her vicinity and robs them of their independence, just as Omphale held Herakles in thrall, or Circe reduced her captives to a state of bestial unconsciousness not to mention Benoît’s Atlantida, who made a collection of her mummified lovers ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 131Shorten with AI

All this happens because the anima contains the secret of the precious Stone, for, as Nietzsche says, “all joy wants eternity.” Thus the legendary Ostanes, speaking of the secret of the “philosophy,” says to his pupil Cleopatra: “In you is hidden the whole terrible and marvellous secret. Make known to us how the highest descends to the lowest, and how the lowest ascends to the highest, and how the midmost draws near to the highest, and is made one with it.” This “midmost” is the Stone, the mediator which unites the opposites. Such sayings have no meaning unless they are understood in a profoundly psychological sense ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 131

Widespread as is the motif of the stone-birth (cf. the creation myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha), the American cycle of legends seems to lay special emphasis on the motif of the stone-body, or animated stone. We meet this motif in the Iroquois tale of the twin brothers. Begotten in a miraculous manner in the body of a virgin, a pair of twins were born, one of whom came forth in the normal way, while the other sought an abnormal exit and emerged from the armpit, thereby killing his mother. This twin had a body made of flint. He was wicked and cruel, unlike his normally born brother. In the Sioux version the mother was a tortoise. Among the Wichita, the saviour was the great star in the south, and he performed his work of salvation on earth as the “flint man.” His son was called the “young flint.” After completing their work, both of them went back into the sky ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 132Shorten with AI

In this myth, just as in medieval alchemy, the saviour coincides with the stone, the star, the “son,” who is “super omnia lumina.” The culture hero of the Natchez Indians came down to earth from the sun and shone with unendurable brightness. His glance was death-dealing. In order to mitigate this, and to prevent his body from corrupting in the earth, he changed himself into a stone statue, from which the priestly chieftains of the Natchez were descended ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 132

Among the Taos Pueblos, a virgin was made pregnant by beautiful stones and bore a hero son, who, owing to Spanish influence, assumed the aspect of the Christ child. The stone plays a similar role in the Aztec cycle of legends. For instance, the mother of Quetzalcoatl was made pregnant by a precious green stone. He himself had the cognomen “priest of the precious stone” and wore a mask made of turquoise. The precious green stone was an animating principle and was placed in the mouth of the dead. Man’s original home was the “bowl of precious stone” ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 132

The motif of transformation into stone, or petrifaction, is common in the Peruvian and Colombian legends and is probably connected with a megalithic stone-cult, and perhaps also with the Paleolithic cult of churinga-like soul-stones. The parallels here would be the menhirs of megalithic culture, which reached as far as the Pacific archipelago ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 132

The civilization of the Nile valley, which originated in megalithic times, turned its divine kings into stone statues for the express purpose of making the king’s ka everlasting ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 132

The connection of the lapis with immortality is attested from very early times. Ostanes (possibly 4th cent. B.C.) speaks of “the Nile stone that has a spirit.” The lapis is the panacea, the universal medicine, the alexipharmic, the tincture that transmutes base metals into gold and gravel into precious stones. It brings riches, power, and health; it cures melancholy and, as the vivus lapis philosophicus, is a symbol of the saviour, the Anthropos, and immortality. Its incorruptibility is also shown in the ancient idea that the body of a saint becomes stone. Thus the Apocalypse of Elijah says of those who escape persecution by the Anti-Messiah: “The Lord shall take unto him their spirit and their souls, their flesh shall be made stone, no wild beast shall devour them till the last day of the great judgment” ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 133Shorten with AI

In a Basuto legend reported by Frobenius, the hero is left stranded by his pursuers on the bank of a river. He changes himself into a stone, and his pursuers throw him across to the other side. This is the motif of the transitus: the “other side” is the same as eternity ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 133

Mercurius, it is generally affirmed, is the arcanum, the prima materia, the “father of all metals,” the primeval chaos, the earth of paradise, the “material upon which nature worked a little, but nevertheless left imperfect”: He is also the ultima materia, the goal of his own transformation, the Stone, the tincture, the philosophic gold, the carbuncle, the philosophic man, the second Adam, the analogue of Christ, the king, the light of lights, the deus terrestris, indeed the divinity itself or its perfect counterpart. Since I have already discussed the synonyms and meanings of the Stone elsewhere there is no need for me to go into further details now ~Carl Jung, CW 13 ¶ 282

Let us, however, not delude ourselves: no more than we can separate the constituents of character from the astronomical determinants of time are we able to separate that unruly and evasive Mercurius from the autonomy of matter. Something of the projection-carrier always clings to the projection, and even if we succeed to some degree in integrating into our consciousness the part we recognize as psychic, we shall integrate along with it something of the cosmos and its materiality; or rather, since the cosmos is infinitely greater than we are, we shall have been assimilated by the inorganic. “Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!” cries an alchemist, but he did not know how infinitely slowly the Stone “becomes” ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 286Shorten with AI

Freed from his prison, Mercurius assumes the character of the suprapersonal atman. He becomes the one animating principle of all created things, the hiranyagarbha (golden germ), the supra-personal Self, represented by the filius macrocosmi, the one stone of the wise. “Rosinus ad Sarratantam” cites a saying of “Malus Philosophus” which attempts to formulate the psychological relation of the lapis to consciousness: “This stone is below thee, as to obedience; above thee, as to dominion; therefore from thee, as to knowledge; about thee, as to equals.” Applied to the Self, this would mean: “The Self is subordinate to you, yet on the other hand rules you. It is dependent on your own efforts and your knowledge but transcends you and embraces all those who are of like mind.” This refers to the collective nature of the Self since the Self epitomizes the wholeness of the personality. By definition, wholeness includes the collective unconscious, which as experience seems to show is everywhere identical ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 287Shorten with AI

Although the lapis in one aspect or another is almost always the subject discussed, there is no real consensus of opinion in regard to its actual form. Almost every author has his own special allegories, synonyms, and metaphors. This makes it clear that the Stone, though indeed an object of general experiment, was to an even greater extent an outcropping of the unconscious, which only sporadically crossed the borderline of subjectivity and gave rise to the vague general concept of the lapis philosophorum ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 289

Let us, however, not delude ourselves: no more than we can separate the constituents of character from the astronomical determinants of time are we able to separate that unruly and evasive Mercurius from the autonomy of matter. Something of the projection-carrier always clings to the projection, and even if we succeed to some degree in integrating into our consciousness the part we recognize as psychic, we shall integrate along with it something of the cosmos and its materiality; or rather, since the cosmos is infinitely greater than we are, we shall have been assimilated by the inorganic. “Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!” cries an alchemist, but he did not know how infinitely slowly the Stone “becomes” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 286Shorten with AI

Freed from his prison, Mercurius assumes the character of the suprapersonal atman. He becomes the one animating principle of all created things, the hiranyagarbha (golden germ), the supra-personal Self, represented by the filius macrocosmi, the one stone of the wise. “Rosinus ad Sarratantam” cites a saying of “Malus Philosophus” which attempts to formulate the psychological relation of the lapis to consciousness: “This stone is below thee, as to obedience; above thee, as to dominion; therefore from thee, as to knowledge; about thee, as to equals.” Applied to the Self, this would mean: “The Self is subordinate to you, yet on the other hand rules you. It is dependent on your own efforts and your knowledge but transcends you and embraces all those who are of like mind.” This refers to the collective nature of the Self since the Self epitomizes the wholeness of the personality. By definition, wholeness includes the collective unconscious, which as experience seems to show is everywhere identical. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 287Shorten with AI

Although the lapis in one aspect or another is almost always the subject discussed, there is no real consensus of opinion in regard to its actual form. Almost every author has his own special allegories, synonyms, and metaphors. This makes it clear that the Stone, though indeed an object of general experiment, was to an even greater extent an outcropping of the unconscious, which only sporadically crossed the borderline of subjectivity and gave rise to the vague general concept of the lapis philosophorum. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 289

For instance, Heinrich Khunrath says: “This [the filius philosophorum], the Son of the Macrocosm, is God and creature that [Christ], is the son of God, the θεάνθρωπος, that is, God and man; the one conceived in the womb of the Macrocosm, the other in the womb of the Microcosm, and both of a virginal womb. Without blasphemy I say: In the Book or Mirror of Nature, the Stone of the Philosophers, the Preserver of the Macrocosm, is the symbol of Christ Jesus Crucified, Saviour of the whole race of men, that is, of the Microcosm. From the stone you shall know in natural wise Christ, and from Christ the stone.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 262

Khunrath says: Of itself, from, in, and through itself is made and perfected the stone of the wise. For it is one thing only: like a tree (says Senior), whose roots, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, and fruit are of it and through it and from it and on it, and all come from one seed. It is itself everything, and nothing else makes it. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 423

In the image of Mercurius and the lapis the “flesh” glorified itself in its own way; it would not transform itself into spirit but, on the contrary, “fixed” the spirit in Stone, and endowed the Stone with all the attributes of the three Persons. The lapis may therefore be understood as a symbol of the inner Christ, of God in man. I use the expression “symbol” on purpose, for though the lapis is a parallel of Christ, it is not meant to replace him. On the contrary, in the course of the centuries the alchemists tended more and more to regard the lapis as the culmination of Christ’s work of redemption. This was an attempt to assimilate the Christ figure into the philosophy of the “science of God.” In the sixteenth century Khunrath formulated for the first time the “theological” position of the lapis: it was the filius macrocosmi as opposed to the “son of man,” who was the filius microcosmi. This image of the “Son of the Great World” tells us from what source it was derived: it 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 ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 127Shorten with AI

As well as with a feminine being, the tree is also connected with the snake, the dragon, and other animals, as in the case of Yggdrasil, the Persian tree Gaokerena in the lake of Vourukasha, or the tree of the Hesperides, not to mention the holy trees of India, in whose shadow may often be seen dozens of naga (= snake) stones. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 461

The attributes of the Stone incorruptibility, permanence, divinity, triunity, etc. are so insistently emphasized that one cannot help taking it as the deus absconditus in matter. This is probably the basis of the lapis-Christ parallel, which occurs as early as Zosimos (unless the passage in question is a later interpolation). Inasmuch as Christ put on a “human body capable of suffering” and clothed himself in matter, he forms a parallel to the lapis, the corporeality of which is constantly stressed. Its ubiquity corresponds to the omnipresence of Christ. Its “cheapness,” however, goes against the doctrinal view ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 127

The divinity of Christ has nothing to do with man, but the healing Stone is “extracted” from man, and every man is its potential carrier and creator. It is not difficult to see what kind of conscious situation the lapis philosophy compensates far from signifying Christ; the lapis complements the common conception of the Christ figure at that time. What unconscious nature was ultimately aiming at when she produced the image of the lapis can be seen most clearly in the notion that it originated in matter and in man, that it was to be found everywhere, and that its fabrication lay at least potentially within man’s reach. These qualities all reveal what were felt to be the defects in the Christ image at that time: an air too rarefied for human needs, too great a remoteness, a place left vacant in the human heart. Men felt the absence of the “inner” Christ who belonged to every man. Christ’s spirituality was too high, and man’s naturalness was too low ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 127Shorten with AI

In the image of Mercurius and the lapis the “flesh” glorified itself in its own way; it would not transform itself into spirit but, on the contrary, “fixed” the spirit in Stone, and endowed the Stone with all the attributes of the three Persons. The lapis may therefore be understood as a symbol of the inner Christ, of God in man. I use the expression “symbol” on purpose, for though the lapis is a parallel of Christ, it is not meant to replace him. On the contrary, in the course of the centuries the alchemists tended more and more to regard the lapis as the culmination of Christ’s work of redemption. This was an attempt to assimilate the Christ figure into the philosophy of the “science of God.” In the sixteenth century Khunrath formulated for the first time the “theological” position of the lapis: it was the filius macrocosmi as opposed to the “son of man,” who was the filius microcosmi. This image of the “Son of the Great World” tells us from what source it was derived: it 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 ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 127Shorten with AI

Nothing would have been easier than to equate the love story of Mars and Venus with that of Gabricus and Beya (who were also personified as dog and bitch), and it is likely that astrological influences also played a part. Thanks to his unconscious identity with it, man and cosmos interact. The following passage, of the utmost importance for the psychology of alchemy, should be understood in this sense: “And as man is composed of the four elements, so also is the Stone, and so it is [dug] out of man, and you are its ore, namely by working; and from you it is extracted, namely by division; and in you it remains inseparably, namely through the science” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 125Shorten with AI

Not only do things appear personified as human beings, but the macrocosm personifies itself as a man too. “The whole of nature converges in man as in a centre, and one participates in the other, and man has not unjustly concluded that the material of the philosophical Stone may be found everywhere” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 125

Something similar is meant by the poetic expression serenitas aerea in the Ripley Scrowle, and by the same author’s statement that Mercurius is changed into wind. He is the lapis elevatus cum vento (the Stone uplifted by the wind). The expressions spirituale corpus and spiritus visibilis, tamen impalpabilis (visible yet impalpable spirit) might also mean little more than “air” if one recalls the aforementioned vapour-like nature of Mercurius, and the same is probably true even of the spiritus prae cunctis valde purus (pre-eminently pure spirit). The designation incombustibilis is more doubtful, since this was often synonymous with incorruptibilis and then meant “eternal,” as we shall see later ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 261

“water” opened out perspectives in which the ideas of dismemberment, killing, torture, and transformation all had their place. For, beginning with the treatises of Democritus and Komarios, which are assigned to the first century A.D., alchemy, until well into the eighteenth century, was very largely concerned with the miraculous water, the aqua divina or permanens, which was extracted from the lapis, or prima materia, through the torment of the fire. The water was the humidum radicale (radical moisture), which stood for the anima media natura or anima mundi imprisoned in matter, the soul of the Stone or metal, also called the anima aquina ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 89

A Latin proverb says: canis panem somniat, piscator pisces (the dog dreams of bread, the fisherman of fish). The alchemist, too, dreams in his own specific language. This enjoins upon us the greatest circumspection, all the more so as that language is exceedingly obscure. In order to understand it [the language], we have to learn the psychological secrets of alchemy. It is probably true what the old Masters said, that only he who knows the secret of the Stone understands their words. It has long been asserted that this secret is sheer nonsense, and not worth the trouble of investigating seriously. But this frivolous attitude ill befits the psychologist, for any “nonsense” that fascinated men’s minds for close on two thousand years among them some of the greatest, e.g., Newton and Goethe must have something about it which it would be useful for the psychologist to know ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 90Shorten with AI

The element of torture, so conspicuous in Zosimos, is not uncommon in alchemical literature. “Slay the mother, cutting off her hands and feet”. “Take a man, shave him, and drag him over a stone until his body dies”. “Take a cock, pluck it alive, then put its head in a glass vessel”. In medieval alchemy the torturing of the materia was an allegory of Christ’s passion ~Carl Jung, CW 13. Para 139

The Stone was called “orphan” because of its uniqueness “it was never seen elsewhere” and it was said to be in the Emperor’s crown. It was “wine-coloured” and sometimes shone in the night, “but nowadays it does not shine [any more] in the darkness.” As Albertus Magnus was an authority on alchemy, he may have been the direct source both for Dorn and for Petrus Bonus. “Orphan” as the name of a gem may therefore mean something like the modern “solitaire” a very apt name for the unique lapis philosophorum. Apart from Dorn and Petrus Bonus, it seems that this name is found only in the Carmina Heliodori. There it refers to the (homeless orphan) who is slain at the beginning of the work for purposes of transformation ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 13Shorten with AI

They therefore imbued this arcanum with symbols intended to characterize its malicious, dangerous, and uncanny nature, choosing precisely those which in the positive sense were used for Christ in the patristic literature. These were the snake, the lion, the eagle, fire, cloud, shadow, fish, stone, the unicorn and the rhinoceros, the dragon, the night-raven, the man encompassed by a woman, the hen, water, and many others ~Carl Jung, CW 14 Par 147

The materia is visible to all eyes, the whole world sees it, touches it, loves it, and yet no one knows it. “This stone therefore is no stone,” says the Turba, “that thing is cheap and costly, dark, hidden, and known to everyone, having one name and many names.” The stone is “thousand-named” like the gods of the mystery religions, the arcane substance is “One and All”. In the treatise of Komarios, where “the philosopher Komarios teaches the Philosophy to Cleopatra,” it is said: “He showed with his hand the unity of the whole.” Pelagios asks: “Why speak ye of the manifold matter? The substance of natural things is one, and of one nature that which conquers all” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 36Shorten with AI

The materia is visible to all eyes, the whole world sees it, touches it, loves it, and yet no one knows it. “This stone therefore is no stone,” says the Turba, “that thing is cheap and costly, dark, hidden, and known to everyone, having one name and many names.” The stone is “thousand-named” like the gods of the mystery religions, the arcane substance is “One and All”. In the treatise of Komarios, where “the philosopher Komarios teaches the Philosophy to Cleopatra,” it is said: “He showed with his hand the unity of the whole.” Pelagios asks: “Why speak ye of the manifold matter? The substance of natural things is one, and of one nature that which conquers all” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 36Shorten with AI

The mystique of the king comes out even more clearly in Khunrath: “When at last,” he says, “the ash-colour, the whitening, and the yellowing are over, you will see the Philosophical Stone, our King and Lord of Lords, come forth from the couch and throne of his glassy sepulchre onto the stage of this world, in his glorified body, regenerated and more than perfect, shining like a carbuncle, and crying out, Behold, I make all things new.” ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 355

The colour green, stressed by Khunrath, is associated with Venus. The “Introitus apertus” says: “But in the gentle heat the mixture will liquefy and begin to swell up, and at God’s command will be endowed with spirit, which will soar upward carrying the stone with it, and will produce new colours, first of all the green of Venus, which will endure for a long time. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 393

Khunrath speaks of the “wondrous natural triune Son of the Great World,” whom the sages name “their Son and crowned King, artificially hatched from the egg of the world.” Elsewhere he says of the filius Mundi Maioris: The Son of the great World [Macrocosm] who is Theocosmos, i.e., a  divine power and world (but whom even today, unfortunately, many who teach nature in a pagan spirit and many builders of medical science reject in the high university schools), is the exemplar of the stone which is Theanthropos, i.e., God and man (whom, as Scripture tells us, the builders of the Church have also rejected); and from the same, in and from the Great World Book of Nature, [there issues] a continuous and everlasting doctrine for the wise and their children: indeed, it is a splendid living likeness of our Saviour Jesus Christ, in and from the Great World which by nature is very similar to him (as to miraculous conception, birth, inexpressible powers, virtues, and effects); so God our Lord, besides his Son’s Biblical histories, has also created a specific image and natural representation for us in the Book of Nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 460Shorten with AI

Just as the great personality acts upon society to liberate, to redeem, to transform, and to heal, so the birth of personality in oneself has a therapeutic effect. It is as if a river that had run to waste in sluggish side-streams and marshes suddenly found its way back to its proper bed, or as if a stone lying on a germinating seed were lifted away so that the shoot could begin its natural growth. ~Carl Jung, CW 17 Para 317

The serpent in the cave is an image which often occurs in antiquity. It is important to realize that in classical antiquity, as in other civilizations, the serpent not only was an animal that aroused fear and represented danger, but also signified healing. Therefore Asklepios, the god of physicians, is connected with the serpent; you all know his emblem which is still in use. In the temples of Asklepios, the Asklepieia, which were the ancient clinics, there was a hole in the ground, covered by a stone, and in that hole lived the sacred serpent. There was a slot in the stone through which the people who came to the place of healing threw down the fee for the doctors. The snake was at the same time the cashier of the clinic and collector of gifts that were thrown down into its cave. During the great pestilence in the time of Diocletian the famous serpent of the Asklepieion at Epidaurus was brought to Rome as an antidote to the epidemic. It represented the god himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 257Shorten with AI

Sacrifice is not destruction; sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 230.

If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 261.

But the spirit of the depths said: “No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction; sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 230.

My pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did not love Salome. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250, Draft, Footnote 198.

S: “You do me wrong. Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of the future. And what wouldn’t you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?” ~Salome to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246

If ever the devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 261

Just now some hard chunks of reality have hit you and hit all the harder because I have spoilt you but you needed spoiling in order to approach closer to the earth, where you could get at the stone. Hardness increases in proportion to the speed of approach. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 362.

And what if this has no roots in the earth? If it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut that flares up and vanishes? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 65.

God wants to be born in the flame of man’s consciousness, leaping ever higher. And what if this has no roots in the earth?  If it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut that flares up and vanishes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 65-66

I learnt to split stones in the Bollingen quarries and the masons also taught me a lot and I learnt their art relatively quickly with a certain native intelligence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 168

I’m no artist. I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.

I only try to get things into stone of which I think it is important that they appear in hard matter and stay on for a reasonably long time. Or I try to give form to something that seems to be in the stone and makes me restless. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 83.

Some of the main islands [of peace] are my garden, the view of distant mountains, my country place where I withdraw from the noise of city life, my library. Also small things like books, pictures, and stones. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 40.

But the daimon reeks nothing of that, for life, at the core, is steel on stone.  ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 119.

Unfortunately I did not know at the time when the stone was made that my father was described as Dr. theol. instead of Dr. phil. He graduated as an Orientalist, in Arabic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 129.

The essential dream-image: The Man, the Tree, the Stone, looks quite inaccessible, but only to our modern consciousness which is, as a rule, unconscious of its historical roots. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 325.

Freud, when one got to know him better, was distinguished by a markedly differentiated feeling function. His “sense of values” showed itself in his love of precious stones, jade, malachite, etc. He also had considerable intuition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 348.

Just as some alchemists had to admit that they never succeeded in producing the gold or the Stone, I cannot confess to have solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery. On the contrary I am darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem-things too big for our horizons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 393.

It is said of the Stone: habet mille nomina [has a thousand names] which means that there is not one name expressing the Mystery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 395.

Milk, as lac virginis, virgin’s milk, is a synonym for the aqua doctrinae one of the aspects of Mercurius, who had already bedeviled the Bollingen stones in the form of the trickster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 615.

Freud, when one got to know him better, was distinguished by a markedly differentiated feeling function. His “sense of values” showed itself in his love of precious stones, jade, malachite, etc. He also had considerable intuition. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

After dinner we sat on the verandah, C.G. behind the little table wearing, as usual, a blue apron, and on the table lay the stone he was carving of the family lineage on the male side. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 219

I asked him [Jung] again about the carving of the face of Mercury on the stone at the side of the Tower. He said, ‘I got terribly stuck when I was working on synchronicity, in the part about statistics. Then I saw that face in the stone and put my papers away and got my tools and carved it. It was the impish Mercury. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 298

We looked at some of the many stone carvings he has done; a small one was of a snake which had swallowed a perch and died.  ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 183

A beautiful stone in the classical style was a memorial to Mrs. Jung; this, he said, was to be put up on the wall by the loggia. ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 183

Incidentally, America no longer has the same attraction for him [Carl] as before, and this has taken a stone from my heart. ~Emma Jung to S. Freud, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 303.

The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.

The self is a fact of nature and always appears as such in immediate experiences, in dreams and visions, and so on; it is the spirit in the stone, the great secret which has to be worked out, to be extracted from nature, because it is buried in nature herself. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.

There is a story that says that when Mohammed ascended into Heaven the stone in the Temple of Jerusalem wanted to go too. The archetype manifests itself in the outer world as sympathia. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 56.

He felt the need to represent his innermost thoughts in stone and to build a completely primitive dwelling: “Bollingen was a great matter for me, because words and paper were not real enough. I had to put down a confession in stone.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xiii

KHUNRATH, who wrote in the sixteenth century, says directly: “He who knows the stone, is silent about it.” This reminds us of Lao Tsu’s words: “Whoever speaks does not know, whoever knows does not speak.” ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XV, Page 128.

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.

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.

“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.

To put it more simply: the prima materia can be won from the centre of a stone or substance, but then it is no longer designated as a substance but as an agent. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221

This means an eternal body, or the subtle body, which is designated in alchemy as the philosopher’s stone, the lapis aethereus or invisibilis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 159.

When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.Shorten with AI

I was on the way to discovering my own myth. For the building game was only a beginning. It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down. I went on with my building game after the noon meal every day, whenever the weather permitted. As soon as I was through eating, I began playing, and continued to do so until the patients arrived; and if I was finished with my work early enough in the evening, I went back to building. In the course of this activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the fantasies whose presence in myself I dimly felt. Naturally, I thought about the significance of what I was doing, and asked myself, “Now, really, what are you about? You are building a small town and doing it as if it were a rite!” I had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I This sort of thing has been consistent with me, and at any time in my later life when I came up against a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone.  Each such experience proved to be a rite d’entree for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it. Everything that I have written this year and last year, “The Undiscovered Self,” “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” “A Psychological View of Conscience,” has grown out of the stone sculptures I did after my wife’s death. The close of her life, the end, and what it made me realize, wrenched me violently out of myself.  It cost me a great deal to regain my footing and contact with stone helped me. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 174-175Shorten with AI

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of eons. ~Carl Jung, Quoting an Alchemical Text, MDR 227

At any time in my later life, when I came up at a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone. Each such experience proved to be a “rite d ‘entree” for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 175.

Everything that I have written this year and last year, “The Undiscovered Self,” “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth,” “A Psychological View of Conscience,” has grown out of the stone sculptures I did after my wife’s death. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 175

No. 2 [personality] felt that any conceivable expression of himself would be like a stone thrown over the edge of the world, dropping soundlessly into infinite night. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 87

I often thought of myself as a corrupt and inferior person, With the experience of God and the cathedral I at last had something tangible that was part of the great secret as if I had always talked of stones falling from heaven and now had one in my pocket. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 41

“The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years,” I would think, “while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.” ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 42

I was but the sum of my emotions, and the Other in me was the timeless, imperishable stone. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 42

What I dimly felt to be my kinship with stone was the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living matter. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 68

Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 4

This calendar stone is valid for 52 years and includes Venus. It weighs many, many tons and has lain buried for several hundred years. Now it is in the Museum in Mexico. James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 105

The “white stone” (calculus albus) occurs in the Apocalypse as a symbol of election. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 173

“He (Carl Jung) saw “a huge round block of stone sitting on a high plateau, and at the foot of the stone were engraved the words: “And this Shall all be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness.”  ~Miguel Serrano, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse, Page 104

Matter may be stimulated by the inner psychic process, understood archetypally, to produce something analogous. A latent tension, for example, can manifest itself in creaking wood. Matter plays along with the psychic process. There is a story that says that when Mohammed ascended into Heaven the stone in the Temple of Jerusalem wanted to go too. The archetype manifests itself in the outer world as sympathia. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 51.

There was also a relief of a bear with a ball and one of a snake. Thus these stones lived. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 135.

The spectacle of eternal nature makes me painfully aware of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. As I once dreamt, my will to live is a glowing daimon, who sometimes makes the consciousness of my mortality hellish difficult for me. One can, at most, save face like the unjust steward, and then not always, so that my lord wouldn’t find even that much to commend. But the daimon reeks nothing of that, for life. At the core is steel on stone. ~Carl Jung, Jung’s Last Years, Page 136.

For Jung the stone “contained and. at the same time was the bottomless mystery of being, the embodiment of spirit,” and his kinship with it was “the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living matter.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 76.

He felt the need to represent his innermost thoughts in stone and to build a completely primitive dwelling: “Bollingen was a great matter for me, because words and paper were not real enough. I had to put down a confession in stone.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xiii

Imperiously, the dream wiped away all the intense impressions of Lyndia and swept me back to the too-long-neglected concerns of the Occident, which had formerly been expressed in the quest for the Holy Grail as well as in the search for the philosophers’ stone. I was taken out of the world of India, and reminded that India was not my task, but only a part of the way-admittedly a significant one which should carry me closer to my goal. It was as though the dream were asking me, “What are you doing in India? Rather seek for yourself and your fellows the healing vessel, the salvator mundi, which you urgently need. For your state is perilous; you are all in imminent danger of destroying all that centuries have built up. ~ Carl Jung, Jung by Gerhard Wehr, Page 288-289Shorten with AI

In order to know C. G. Jung in his totality, it was not enough to study his books, nor to do analytic work with him in his study in Kusnacht; one had to accompany him to Bollingen and be there as he cultivated his cornfield, worked on his stone, felled trees, chopped firewood, and cooked his food. – Gerhard Wehr, Page 422

The close of her [Emma] life, the end, and what it made me realize, wrenched me violently out of myself. It cost me a great deal to regain my footing and contact with stone helped me. – Carl Jung, Jung by Gerhard Wehr, Page 425

Among the carvings he produced in Bollingen in the severe winter of 1955-56 were three stone tablets. On these, which were placed in the open courtyard, he inscribed the names of his paternal ancestors. His family colors also came into their own, as the master of the house painted the ceiling with motifs from the family coats of arms of the Jung’s and the Rauschenbachs. On this point Jung noted that his family had originally borne on its arms a phoenix, the motif that illustrated youthfulness and rejuvenation. His grandfather, C. G. Jung the elder, the enthusiastic Freemason and Grand Master of the Swiss lodge, had changed the family arms, however, ostensibly out of resistance against his father.  The grandson mentioned this revision in order to point out the historical connection with his own life and thought. In the Memories we read on this point: “In keeping with this revision of my grandfather’s my coat of arms no longer contains the original phoenix. Instead there is a cross azure in chief dexter and in base sinister a blue bunch of grapes in a field d’or; separating these is an estoile d’or in a fess azure.  The symbolism of these arms is Masonic, or Rosicrucian. Just as cross and rose represent the Rosicrucian problem of opposites (“per crucem ad rosam”), that is, the Christian and Dionysian elements, so cross and grapes are symbols of the heavenly and the chthonic spirit. The uniting symbol is the gold star, the aurum philosophorum.” Although the heraldic animal of the phoenix represented an essentially spiritual message, there is also no question that Jung was fully able to affirm the Masonic and Rosicrucian symbolism-no doubt because it symbolized the goals and methods of his own work.  ~Gerhard Wehr, Jung:  Pages 426-427Shorten with AI

 By carving the stone and building the tower, he [Jung] meant at the same time to fulfill “an impersonal karma” of his family, as if tasks had been assigned to him from out of the past which he had to carry out. ~Gerhard Wehr, Jung Page 427

Her plans for an enclosed garden at the Mellon house-something not only in the mind but in earth and stone-gave him a feeling of peace and restfulness, something to look forward to beyond the abomination of war and Germany’s Nietzschean insanity.  ~William Schoenl – C.G. Jung-His Friendships with Mary Mellon & J.B. Priestley, Page 10

Toni is a very advanced person, but she comes from a most conservative family, who has lived in Zurich for centuries, and are like hard, old wood. Her mind is the only thing movable in her. If she had not that mind she would be stone-hard.  ~Carl Jung, Jung My Mother and I, Page 234

‘so with the new ideas that were being launched two thousand years ago. If they were to bring life to mankind, someone had to give his spirit to those ideas in order to make men know that their ideas had tremendous life. Therefore Jesus Christ was labeled as the foundation stone of the Christian Church.’  ~Carl Jung, Jung’s Apprentice, Page 307

You understand the stone as a statement about a more or less limitless world of thought-images. I quite agree with your view. One can read the symbols like that. When I hewed the stone I did not think, however. I just brought into shape what I saw on its face.  ~Carl Jung, The Stone Speaks, xvi

Although there was much to see and enjoy in the short visit with Dr. and Mrs. Jung, it was Jung himself, and especially what he had carved on the central face of a stone placed in his walled garden, that captured me and remained most clearly in my thoughts. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 12

Erica Anderson showed me a small photograph she had taken of the mandala-face of Jung’s curved Stone. It seemed to jump out at me! There was no doubt that it was an “Opener of the Door.” It spoke to me and seemed to say, “I am a Stone that heals makes whole, if you become aware of my significance for you.”  ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 13

At times it was a difficult and subjective experience not unlike an analysis, for it seemed that I had made a transference to the Stone in the way an analysand transfers expectations for a basic change onto the analyst. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 14

My friends, how can I help you? I realize how difficult your task is. The Stone is nothing. I am not an artist; I did it to amuse myself. It is a holiday thing-as if I sang a song. ~Carl Jung, The Stone Speaks, Page 15

I hope I have given you some ideas of what I am.” Then he [Jung] looked directly at me, saying, “I need not have written any books; it is all on the Stone.” ~Carl Jung, The Stone Speaks, Page 16

As you can imagine, I am quite astonished to hear about your project although I am fully aware of the fact that an imaginative person could easily write not one but several volumes about my stone. All the volumes I had written are “in nuce” contained in it. The mandala itself is just a sort of hieroglyph, hinting at and trying to express a vast background in a most abbreviated form. Your method to realize its contents through your subjective experience is unexceptionable, as a matter of fact the only correct way of reading its message. That is just the virtue of symbolic expression that it can be read in many different ways by many different individuals. And if they are honest, the reading will be correct. Thus, as you see, I am prepared for the shock to get the MS about a thing most emphatically belonging to my innermost self. I only ask you to be patient with the slow ways of old age-Deo concedente you will get an answer. -Inshallah! [If God Wills It.] ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 17-18Shorten with AI

Dear Miss Oakes,                               February 2, 1956

I have read your meditation about the stone with much interest. Your method of reading its messages is adequate and in this case the only one yielding positive results. You understand the stone as a statement about a more or less limitless world of thought-images. I quite agree with your view. One can read the symbols like that. When I hewed the stone I did not think, however. I just brought into shape what I saw on its face. Sometimes you express yourself (in the MS), as if my symbols and my text were sort of a confession of a belief. Thus it looks as if I were moving in the vicinity of Theosophy. In America, especially, one blames me for my so-called mysticism. Since I don’t claim at all to be the happy proprietor of metaphysical truths, I should prefer that you attribute to my symbols the same tentativeness which characterizes your explanatory attempts. You see, I have no religious or otherwise convictions about my symbols. They can change tomorrow. They are mere allusions, they hint at something, they stammer and often lose their way. They try only to point in a certain direction, viz. to those dim horizons beyond which lies the secret of existence. They are just no Gnosis, no metaphysical assertions. They are partly even futile or dubious attempts at pronouncing the ineffable. Their number therefore is infinite and the validity of each is to be doubted. They are nothing but humble attempts to formulate, to define, to shape the inexpressible. “Wo fass ich Dich, unendliche Natur?” (Faust) It is not a doctrine, but a mere expression of and a reaction to the experience of an ineffable mystery. There is one point more I want to mention: the stone is not a product only of thought images, but just as much of feeling and local atmosphere i.e. of the specific ambiente of the place. The stone belongs to its secluded place between the lake and hill where it expresses the beata solitudo and the genius loci the spell of the chosen and walled-in spot. It could be nowhere else and cannot be thought of or properly understood without the secret web of threads that relate to its surroundings. Only there in its solitude it can say: Orphanus sum and only there it makes sense. It is there for its own sake and only seen by a few. Under such conditions only the stone will whisper its misty lore of ancient roots and ancestral lives. Thank you for letting me see your typescript. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages, 18-19Shorten with AI

Through my transference to the Stone it became humanized by contact with the man. Jung then became the carrier of the Self for me. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 20

Mrs. Jung was a positive feminine figure who as Jung’s wife insured that my transference would not be misunderstood as being purely personal. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 20

I touched it [The Stone] with my hand the way I would a well-loved friend and thought “You are an Opener of the Door, unlike earlier stones that Jung carved for his house. They were prospective but you are retrospective of what Jung discovered and experienced and what he goes back to in thought.” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 22

When it was time for me to leave, Dr. Jung and I stood silently gazing at the Stone. He then conducted me to the gate. His last words were a suggestion that I visit the prehistoric caves at Lascaux in France. My cousin Jerome and I went to Lascaux a month later. I will always be thankful to Dr. Jung for this great experience. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 23

Dear Miss Oakes,           October 3, 1957

Since you want to hear my opinion about your essay on the stone1 I should say that I find it a bit too intellectual inasmuch as it considers the thought-images only, but as I have already called your attention to its ambiente, I miss the all-important feeling tone of the phenomenon. This is of exclusively artistic consideration, but if you want to do justice to the stone, you have to pay particular attention to the way, in which it is embedded in its surroundings: the water1 the hills1 the view1 the peculiar atmosphere of the buildings, the nights and days1 the seasons, sun, wind and rain and man living close to the earth, and yet remaining conscious in daily meditation of everything being just so. The air round the stone is filled with harmonies and disharmonies, with memories of times long ago, of vistas into the dim future with reverberations of a world far away, yet the so-called real world, into which the stone has fallen out of nowhere. A strange revelation and admonition. Try and dwell in this wholeness for a while and see what happens to you. Sincerely yours, C. G. Jung ~Carl Jung, The Stone Speaks, Page 25Shorten with AI

The Marn Indians with whom I lived in Guatemala feel that every stone contains a spirit. On the summit of one of their holy mountains the shamans and prayer-makers worship a sacred stone in the form of a bird. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 27

In a trance, I laid my head against its hard, cold surface and asked the spirit of the Stone to give me of its mana. The Stone sank down, down within me, rather like a sinker on a fishing line. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 28

To Lao Tzu the Uncarved Block is a symbol of our own original nature; I must return to my “original nature” by the way of the carved Stone. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 28

For years I had kept a record of my dreams and even illustrated them, trying to understand what they were telling me. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 28

It seemed perfectly natural to me that Jung’s Stone mandala should be an Opener of the Door and that the little figure in the center-his discovered treasure1 the end of his treasure hunt should represent my inner journey’s beginning. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 32

While I was engrossed in thinking of the opposites a voice seemed to say to me: “Look at me in the center of Jung’s Stone. I stand between the opposites. As the center of this mandala I am between the four radiating lines of energy. I am between the Moon and the Sun and Jupiter and Venus; Mars is beneath my feet and Saturn is above my head.  ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Pages 43-44

Again I heard the voice: “I am the Spirit of the Stone. I am as important to you as I was to my carver-creator Jung. Now is the time to tum away from me and rediscover me again within yourself.” “But I need you,” I said aloud. “I can’t give you up when I have just found you.” “I shall always be here; for I am within you and outside you and all about you, as you will soon know.”  ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 64

When the spiral-shaped sperm cell with its male and female chromosomes penetrates the female egg it is like the snake line of the Stone entering the inner circle in which Mercury stands it is similar also to the line that divides the Yang and Yin of the Taoists. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 48

1. S. Eliot: “And any action is a step to the block to the fire down the sea’s throat. Or to an illegible stone; and that is where we start.” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 92

“The Stone does not belong to me. You might have come by boat and stepped into the garden to photograph it.”  ~Carl Jung, The Stone Speaks, Page 85

Jung once told me that the mandala that he carved on the Stone was the eye of a fish and that in the small circle one can see his own reflection.  ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 102

The last line on the central face of the Stone [Jung’s] is a quotation from Homer: ‘He points the way to the Gates of the Sun.’” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 108

 With my eyes still closed, I pictured the Stone’s mandala face very clearly in my mind. Hermes, with Mercury on his tunic, was between the Sun and the Moon and four other planetary symbols, making seven archetypal images. I knew that I must look on them with great care and be constantly aware that their message for me, a woman, is different from what they symbolize for Jung, a man. It was also possible that some of these symbols wouldn’t speak to me at all. Collectively, they are “The Sacred Seven of the Heavenly Bodies,” the inspiration for countless myths and gods that man has worshipped as a close family. In my research I had found an even more interesting fact: All these gods have in some way been worshipped as, or connected with, stones. Kronos-Saturn was fated to be overcome by Zeus-Jupiter he was tricked into swallowing a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes that he thought was his son. Zeus-Jupiter was worshipped in the form of a stone that was used in the taking of oaths, as we use the Bible. Aphrodite-Venus was worshipped in the form of a dorm or a conical stone, either black or white in color, showing the negative and positive sides of her nature. Ares-Mars was knocked down by a stone thrown by Athena-Minerva during the battle of the gods. Hermes-Mercury was also worshipped as a herm, a carved stone placed on roads to protect the traveler. The Sun-god, Mithra, was born from a stone and the earliest representation of the moon in the form of a cone. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, 91-92Shorten with AI

 In New Mexico I have seen Navaho medicine men heal patients with mandala-form sand paintings, in the same way that Jung’s Stone healed me. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 29

At times it was a difficult and subjective experience not unlike an analysis, for it seemed that I had made a transference to the Stone in the way an analysand transfers expectations for a basic change onto the analyst. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 14

When I had questioned Jung about the symbolism of the foundation, he said, “The whole base was constructed on the bases of six and two. Six had the implication of Venus-the feminine-her number. It also represented the Star of David. The Stone’s foundation had three levels: the first level of six rocks; on top of them two rocks; and surmounting them the Stone as One itself.” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 125

Jung also said: 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 i we would say that the stone is a projection of the unified self . . . the stone is a transcendent unity.” ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Pages 131-132

It is most significant that on Jung’s Stone there is one uncarved face. He must have had an important reason to leave that face of emptiness-perhaps to allow things to happen. ~Maud Oakes, The Stone Speaks, Page 133

Here stands the mean, uncomely stone,

‘Tis very cheap in price

The more it is despised by fools,

The more loved by the wise. ~Arnaldus de Villanova

The Stone which the builders rejected

has become the head of the comer.

This is the Lord’s doing;

it is marvelous in our eyes.  ~Psalms 118:22

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