Carl Jung: The archetype is ageless and ever present

Carl Jung: The archetype is ageless and ever present

Letters Volume II

To John Trinick

Dear Mr. Trinick, 1 October 1957

First of all I must ask your forgiveness for having caused this long delay of my reaction.

My plan was to study your MS1 in my summer vacation with the necessary leisure.

But the god of chance had another idea and crammed any amount of disturbances and obligations into my

holidays and on top of everything I had to finish a little book and I was forced to lose a certain amount of time with the International Psychiatric Congress in Zurich.

Thanks to your generous permission to keep your MS for the time being, I have been able to read it with attention not only once but in several parts twice.

Such a continuous argument as your “enquiry” demands some concentration, as in certain places at least it is no easy reading.

This is of course only an external difficulty.

The real reason for the inevitable slowing down of the reading process is the controversial and enigmatic nature of the subject itself.

You have to state that a is not b, that above is not below, that the perfume of the Spiritus Sanctus is not the

malus odor sepulchrorum sive inferni and that the nuptiae spirituales are not the carnal union of bodies.

Yet in the archetypal unimaginable event that forms the basis of Conscious apperception, a is b, stench is perfume,

sex is amor Dei, as inevitably as the conclusion that God is the complexio oppositorum.

The alchemists were more or less aware of this shocking state of affairs, although rarely explicitly so.

Usually, whether consciously or not, they tried not to commit themselves, yet they also did not avoid symbolic allusions or pictures of an alluring kind.

They expressed f.i. shock at the idea of incest, yet they could not refrain from using the term, just as li􀂂le as undoubtedly Christian poets did, f.i. Chretien de Troyes: “Dieu qui fit de Sa fille Sa mere.”

The fact is that the figures behind the epistemological curtain, i.e., the archetypes, are “impossible” unions of opposites, transcendental beings which can only be apperceived by contrasts.

Good can only be understood by “not bad,” “day” by “not night,” etc.

Alchemy tries to express the Good, the Splendid, the Light, the Gold, the Incorruptibile et Aeternum by the materia vilis and is therefore forced to speak of Death, Putredo, Incineratio, Nigredo, Venenum, Draco, Malus Odor, P estilentia, Leprositas, etc.

Since the coniunctio is an essentially transcendental, i.e., archetypal process and since our mental attitude is still essentially Christian we emphasize the Spirit, the Good, the Light, the Above, the spiritualized, i.e., subtle body,

purity, chastity, etc. and separate all that from the contrary, which we have to mention nevertheless, even by explicitly denying, disregarding and condemning it.

It will be there, because it belongs inevitably to the transcendental, archetypal reality.

Good cannot exist without Evil, nor luminositas sine nigredine Mysteria revelata vilescunt.

In trying to reveal that which no mortal being is able to conceive, we distort and say the wrong things.

Instead of creating light, we conceal in darkness, instead of lighting up, we expose the treasure to ridicule and contempt.

Instead of opening a way, we barricade it by an inextricable snarl of paradoxes.

“In Mercurio” spirit and matter are one.

This is a mystery nobody is ever going to solve.

It is real, but we are unable to express its reality.

An alchemist very wisely said: Artifex non est magister Lapidi sed potius efus minister.

When the artifex speaks, he will always say the wrong things, or at least things that are also wrong.

It is neti-neti in other words: beyond our grasp, although it is a definite experience.

It is said of the Stone: habet mille nomina, which means that there is not one name expressing the Mystery.

Your attempts to formulate it are not vain or futile; on the contrary, our labours are witnesses to the living Mystery, honest attempts to find words for the Ineffable.

The “way” is not an upward-going straight line, f.i. from earth to heaven or from ma􀂂er to spirit, but rather a circumabulatio of and an approximation to the Centrum.

We are not liberated by leaving something behind but only by fulfilling our task as mixta composita i.e., human beings between the opposites.

The spiritualism of a Berdyaev and others is only the contrary of materialism, one half of the truth.

There is not God alone but also His creation, i.e., the will of God in Chris􀢢an terminology.

Homo sapiens has to envisage both.

That was the great discovery of Mater Alchimia.

Your opus ought to be published, as it is a link in the Aurea Catena reaching through twenty centuries down to our benighted present.

With all my good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396.

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