Chaos Philosophorum
Alchemy
This painting, entitled “Materia Prima Lapidis Philosophorum,” is from the Circle of the Gold and Rosicrucians, a manuscript inspired by Aurea Catena a Homeri (Kirchweger, 1781). It is the cover art used on The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. Basically, the work represents the transformation of the Chaos Philosophorum (Materia Prima or First Matter) into the Coelum Philosophorum (the perfected First Matter or Lapidis Philosophorum – Philosopher’s Stone).
Below in the green mountain of the Chaos Philosophorum are nine lapis lazuli octagons laid out in what was known as the Magic Square of Saturn, which contains the signs and numerical equivalents for all the fundamental materials of the work. Each of these octagons is embossed with a seven-pointed star symbolizing the seven steps in the formula of transformation: Calcination, Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction, Fermentation, Distillation, and Coagulation.
On top of the green mountain is an athanor or alchemical furnace in the first step of transformation (Calcination) begins. This is where the four archetypal elements of creation (Air, Fire, Earth, Water) are “cooked” in the fires of existence. On top of the athanor is the Retort of Transformation, in which the waters of Dissolution melt away the pretences of the former self.
In a process of Separation symbolized by a bird taking flight, the essences of the sacrificed self rise up from its baptism of Fire and Water. During Conjunction, the King and Queen, the archetypal powers of the Sun and Moon, work together to lift the Child of the Philosophers into the higher stages of transformation. The ensuing Fermentation is symbolized by the sudden emergence of a Peacock’s Tail of colorful blooming flowers, which is followed by a process of Distillation, as the refined essence leaves the vessel of transformation and sublimated into an entirely new level being or state of consciousness.
This final step is symbolized by the Crown of Coagulation that partakes of both the material forces Below and the spiritual forces Above. These spiritual energies are denoted by the shining Sun and inverted triangle of heavenly forces.
Chaos must come over Men.
Chaos whose children were Children Gaia, Tartarus, Erebus, Nyx, and Eros
But just as Christ knew that he was the way, the truth, and the life, in that the new torment and the renewed salvation came into the world through him,199 I know that chaos must come over men, and that the hands of those who unknowingly and unsuspectingly break through the thin walls that separate us from the sea are busy.
For this is our way, our truth, and our life.
Just as the disciples of Christ recognized that God had become flesh and lived among them as a man, we now recognize that the anointed of this time is a God who does not appear in the flesh; he is no )nan and yet is a son of man, but in spirit and not in flesh; hence he can be born only through the spirit of men as the conceiving womb of the God. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 299.
Chaos: Then you need the message of the old tamer of chaos.
The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon)
If you remain within arbitrary and artificially created boundaries, you will walk as between two high walls: you do not see the immensity of the world.
But if you break down the walls that confine your view, and if the immensity and its endless uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient sleeper awakens in you, whose messenger is the white bird.
Then you need the message of the old tamer of chaos.
There in the whirl of chaos dwells eternal wonder.
Your world begins to become wonderful.
Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul.
Consequently you must make your ordered world horrible, so that you are put off by being too much outside yourself.
Your soul is in great need, because drought weighs on its world.
If you look outside yourselves, you see the far-off forest and mountains, and above them your vision climbs to the realms of the stars.
And if you look into yourselves, you will see on the other hand the nearby as far-off and infinite, since the world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer.
Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul.
This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one.
Man lives in two worlds.
A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.
Perhaps you think that a man who consecrates his life to research leads a spiritual life and that his soul lives in / larger measure than anyone else’s.
But such a life is also external, just as external as the life of a man who lives for outer things.
To be sure, such a scholar does not live for outer things but for outer thoughts-not for himself but for his object.
If you say of a man that he has totally lost himself to the outer and wasted his years in excess, you must also say the same of this old man.
He has thrown himself away in all the books and thoughts of others.
Consequently his soul is in great need, it must humiliate itself and run into every stranger’s room to beg for the recognition that he fails to give her. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 264.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
