Marie Louise Von Franz: Alchemy.
Alchemy by Marie-Louise Von Franz
From Lecture 8, p. 238, Alchemy (Marie-Louise von Franz)…
“Question: Would you connect this with what you said earlier about the over analysed person who had to jump into the stream with the golden fish? Because that person was also staying outside the experience.
Dr. von Franz: Yes, but if he returns now and swims with the fish, he will not think he is a fish and he will not be caught in the fish existence. One returns to experience, naive experience, but one is no longer caught by it. To return to the water, to use the metaphor of the dream, would mean to go completely and spontaneously into the experience while something yet remains outside, as if a second part of the personality were watching the experience.
If you use Eastern terms, you could say that you go on living spontaneously but one part of you is concerned with Tao all the time. You are not caught by what is happening, but are directed towards Tao, and if you can detach from life as much as that you have reached immortality; that is something which cannot be altered even by death – death becomes a chance event which does not affect the nucleus of the personality, so that at least subjectively it is an experience of being immortal.
Question: Jumping into the water is like jumping consciously into the unconscious, isn’t it?
Dr. von Franz: No, not always; in that case I would say it meant jumping consciously into some experience, an experience of life. With an introvert it would be that. In this case it was not jumping into the unconscious – he did that long ago – it was jumping into life, beginning to live again without always thinking: ‘That’s my anima,’ and so on.
Remark: It would mean the river of live.
Dr. von Franz: Yes, getting into the river of life.”
From Jung, My Mother, and I, p. 351 (Jane Cabot Reid). “Onkel” is Dr. Carl Jung…
“I went on to tell Onkel that this being in Tao, as it were, was a wonderful feeling, like being carried on the crest of a wave. It was such a relief not to have to be a monkey on a stick and dance to everyone’s tune, and such a feeling of relief to feel harmony. Wonderful!
Onkel said that when the unconscious is predominant, it is just as if one were carried on a wave by a strong wind, and there is no effort. It is like a child being carried on one’s mother’s arms. It is a state of paradise, a definite condition of blessedness. One is carried on a wave of bliss. Then Onkel asked me if I remembered when I was a child, and went out on a lovely summer’s morning and was happy all day – at one with the whole of Nature and existence.
At that moment, one is contained in the eternal flow of life. It is a state of blessedness. You are ‘at one,’ and it is paradise and a very definite religious experience. You are now in the stream, and God works from within, from the hidden treasure in the Self, conceived as God’s treasure.” — at Piltvice Lakes National Park-Croacia.
Alchemy, Lead, Quicksilver
Alchemical Studies (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.13)
Cold, inert metal certainly seems to be the direct opposite of spirit but what if the spirit is as dead and as heavy as lead?
A dream might then easily tell us to look for it in lead or quicksilver!
It seems that nature is out to prod man’s consciousness towards greater expansion and greater clarity, and for this reason continually exploits his greed for metals, especially the precious ones, and makes him seek them out and investigate their properties.
Carl Jung and Alchemy
Throughout the history of alchemy we find—besides a considerable knowledge of substances (minerals and drugs) and a limited knowledge of the laws of chemical processes—indications of an accompanying “philosophy” which received the name “Hermetic” in the later Middle Ages.
This natural philosophy appears first and particularly clearly in the Greek alchemists of the first to the sixth centuries a.d. ( Pseudo-Demokritus, Zosimos of Panopolis, and Olympiodorus).
It was also especially evident in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it reached its full development.
This development owed a great deal to Paracelsus and his pupils (Gerard Dorn and Heinrich Khunrath). In the interval between these two periods, philosophical speculation gave way to a more religious tendency (ideas were produced which ran parallel to the dogmatic concepts), hand in hand with a “mystical” tendency which gives alchemy its peculiar character.
This explains a peculiarity of the texts: on the one hand, the authors repeat what was said by their predecessors again and again and, on the other, they give a free rein to unlimited subjective fantasy in their symbolism.
Comparative research has proved that the alchemical symbols are partly variations of mythological motifs, belonging to the conscious world of the alchemists, and partly spontaneous products of the unconscious.
This becomes evident in the parallel character of the symbolism in modern dreams and that of alchemy.
The alchemical symbols portray partly the substances or their unknown “mystical” nature and partly the process which leads to the goal of the work.
It is the latter aspect that gives rise to the most highly pictorial development.
His portrait in the texts agrees in all essentials with the characteristics of the unconscious.
At the beginning of the process, he is in the massa confusa, the chaos or nigredo (blackness).
In this condition, the elements are fighting each other.
Here Mercurius plays the role of the prima materia, the transforming substance.
He corresponds to the Nous or Anthropos, sunk in Physis, of Greek alchemy.
In later days he is also called the “world soul in chains,” a “system of the higher powers in the lower,” etc. This depicts a dark (“unconscious”) condition of the adept or of a psychic content.
The procedures in the next phase have the purpose of illuminating the darkness by a union of the opposed elements.
This leads to the albedo (whitening), which is compared to the sunrise or to the full moon.
It is considered to be feminine and is therefore called sponsa (bride), silver, or moon.
Whereas the transformation of the darkness into light is symbolized by the theme of the fight with the dragon, it is the motif of the hierosgamos (sacred marriage of sister and brother or mother and son) which appears in this phase.
The quaternity {quaternio) of the elements here becomes a duality (binarius). The reddening (rubedo) follows the whitening.
By means of the coniunctio the moon is united with the sun, the silver with the gold, the female with the male.
The development of the prima materia up to the rubedo {lapis rubeus, carbunculus, tinctura rubra, sanguis spiritualis s. draconis, etc.) depicts the conscious realization (illuminatio) of an unconscious state of conflict which is henceforth kept in consciousness.
During this process, the scum (terra damnata) which cannot be improved must be thrown out.
The white substance is compared to the corpus glorificationis, and another parallel is the ecclesia.
The feminine character of the lapis albus corresponds to that of the unconscious, symbolized by the moon.
The sun corresponds to the “light” of consciousness.
Becoming conscious of an unconscious content amounts to its integration in the conscious psyche and is therefore a coniunctio Solis et Lunae.
This process of integration is one of the most important, helpful factors in modern psychotherapy, which is preeminently concerned with the psychology of the unconscious, for both the nature of consciousness and that of the unconscious are altered by it.
As a rule the process is accompanied by the phenomenon of the transference, that is, the projection of unconscious contents on to the doctor.
The coniunctio produces the lapis philosophorum, the central symbol of alchemy.
This lapis has innumerable synonyms.
On the one hand, its symbols are quaternary or circular figures and, on the other, the rebis or the hermaphroditic Anthropos who is compared to Christ. He has a trichotomus form {habat corpus, animam et spiritum) and is also compared to the Trinity (trinus et unus).
The symbolism of the lapis corresponds to the mandala (circle) symbols in dreams, etc., which represent wholeness and order and therefore express the personality that has been altered by the integration of the unconscious.
The alchemical opus portrays the process of individuation but in a projected form because the alchemists were unconscious of this psychic process. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Pages 751-753
