Carl Jung: Psychology and Alchemy Quotations

Carl Jung: Psychology and Alchemy Quotations

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The thirty-two pulses may conceivably derive from the multiplication of 4 x 8, as we know from experience that the quaternity found at the centre of a mandala often becomes 8, 16, 32, or more when extended to the periphery. The number 32 plays an important role in the cabala. Thus we read in the Sepher Yezirah “Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, the living God and King of the world has graven his name in thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 313

Moreover we have the testimony of the humanist Patrizi that Hermetic philosophy was not felt to be in any way inimical to the Christianity of the Church. On the contrary, people regarded it as a mainstay of the Christian faith. For which reason Patrizi addressed a plea to Pope Gregory XIV requesting him to let Hermes take the place of Aristotle. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 147

Apart from the moral difficulty there is another danger which is not inconsiderable and may lead to complications, particularly with individuals who are pathologically inclined. This is the fact that the contents of the personal unconscious (i.e., the shadow) are indistinguishably merged with the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious and drag the latter with them when the shadow is brought into consciousness. This may exert an uncanny influence on the conscious mind; for activated archetypes have a disagreeable effect even or I should perhaps say, particularly on the most cold-blooded rationalist ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 38

Although the list could admit of many more modifications and additions, it ought to define by and large the main situations in which the analytical or psychotherapeutic process reaches a temporary or sometimes even a definitive end. Experience shows, however, that there is a relatively large number of patients for whom the outward termination of work with the doctor is far from denoting the end of the analytical process.

It is rather the case that the dialectical discussion with the unconscious still continues and follows much the same course as it does with those who have not given up their work with the doctor. Occasionally one meets such patients again after several years and hears the often highly remarkable account of their subsequent development ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 4

It was experiences of this kind which first confirmed me in my belief that there is in the psyche a process that seeks its own goal independently of external factors, and which freed me from the worrying feeling that I myself might be the sole cause of an unreal and perhaps unnatural process in the psyche of the patient.

This apprehension was not altogether misplaced inasmuch as no amount of argument based on any of the nine categories mentioned above not even a religious conversion or the most startling removal of neurotic symptoms can persuade certain patients to give up their analytical work. It was these cases that finally convinced me that the treatment of neurosis opens up a problem which goes far beyond purely medical considerations and to which medical knowledge alone cannot hope to do justice ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 4

Its method of explanation “obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius” (the obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown) was incompatible with the spirit of enlightenment and particularly with the dawning of the science of chemistry towards the end of the century. But these two new intellectual forces only gave the coup de grace to alchemy ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 332

Alchemy’s inner decay had begun at least a century earlier, in the time of Jakob Böhme, when many alchemists deserted their alembics and melting-pots and devoted themselves entirely to (Hermetic) philosophy. It was then that the chemist and the Hermetic philosopher parted company.

Chemistry became natural science, whereas Hermetic philosophy lost the empirical ground from under its feet and aspired to bombastic allegories and inane speculations which were only kept alive by memories of a better time. This was a time when the mind of the alchemist was really grappling with the problems of matter, when the exploring consciousness was confronted by the dark void of the unknown, in which figures and laws were dimly perceived and attributed to matter although they really belonged to the psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 332

Everything unknown and empty is filled with psychological projection; it is as if the investigator’s own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness. What he sees in matter, or thinks he can see, is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it. In other words, he encounters in matter, as apparently belonging to it, certain qualities and potential meanings of whose psychic nature he is entirely unconscious. This is particularly true of classical alchemy, where empirical science and mystical philosophy were more or less undifferentiated ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 332

Alchemy, as is well known, describes a process of chemical transformation and gives numberless directions for its accomplishment. Although hardly two authors are of the same opinion regarding the exact course of the process and the sequence of its stages, the majority are agreed on the principal points at issue, and moreover from the earliest times, i.e., since the beginning of the Christian era ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 333

This division of the process into four was called the, the quartering of the philosophy. Later, about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the colours were reduced to three, and the xanthosis, otherwise called the citrinitas, gradually fell into disuse or was but seldom mentioned. Instead, the viriditas sometimes appears after the melanosis or nigredo in exceptional cases, though it was never generally recognized ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 333

Whereas the original tetrameria was exactly equivalent to the quaternity of elements, it was now frequently stressed that although there were four elements (earth, water, fire, and air) and four qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist), there were only three colours: black, white, and red. Since the process never led to the desired goal and since the individual parts of it were never carried out in any standardized manner, the change in the classification of its stages cannot be due to extraneous reasons but rather to the symbolical significance of the quaternity and the trinity; in other words, it is due to inner psychological reasons ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 333

The nigredo or blackness (fig. 115) is the initial state, either present from the beginning as a quality of the prima materia, the chaos or massa confusa, or else produced by the separation (solutio, separatio, divisio, putrefactio) of the elements. If the separated condition is assumed at the start, as sometimes happens, then a union of opposites is performed in the likeness of a union of male and female (called the coniugium, matrimonium, coniunctio, coitus) followed by the death of the product of the union (mortificatio, calcinatio, putrefactio) and a corresponding nigredo ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 334

From this the washing (ablutio, baptisma) either leads direct to the whitening (albedo), or else the soul (anima) released at the “death” is reunited with the dead body and brings about its resurrection, or finally the “many colours” (omnes colores), or “peacock’s tail” (cauda pavonis), lead to the one white colour that contains all colours ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 334

At this point the first main goal of the process is reached, namely the albedo, tinctura alba, terra alba foliata, lapis albus, etc., highly prized by many alchemists as if it were the ultimate goal. It is the silver or moon condition, which still has to be raised to the sun condition. The albedo is, so to speak, the daybreak, but not till the rubedo is it sunrise.

The transition to the rubedo is formed by the citrinitas, though this, as we have said, was omitted later. The rubedo then follows direct from the albedo as the result of raising the heat of the fire to its highest intensity. The red and the white are King and Queen, who may also celebrate their “chymical nuptials” at this stage (fig. 116) 3~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 34

I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared to him as the particular behaviour of the chemical process. Since it was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the fact that the experience had nothing to do with matter itself (that is, with matter as we know it today). He experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own unconscious. In this way he recapitulated the history of man’s knowledge of nature 3~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 46

As we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the “gods,” as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character. Astrology is a primordial experience similar to alchemy. Such projections repeat themselves wherever man tries to explore an empty darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 346

This being so, I turned my attention to the question of whether the alchemists themselves had reported any such experiences in the course of their practice. I had no reason to hope for a very rich find, since it is a matter of “unconscious” experiences which would escape record for precisely that reason. But in point of fact there are one or two unmistakable accounts in the literature. Characteristically enough, the later accounts are more detailed and specific than the earlier ones ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 346

The picture is divided into two parts. On the right is a laboratory where a man, clothed only in trunks, is busy at the fire; on the left a library, where an abbot, a monk, and a layman are conferring together. In the middle, on top of the furnace, stands the tripod with a round flask on it containing a winged dragon ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 404

The liquid metal, argentum vivum “living silver,” quicksilver was the wonderful substance that perfectly expressed the nature of the: that which glistens and animates within. When the alchemist speaks of Mercurius, on the face of it he means quicksilver, but inwardly he means the world-creating spirit concealed or imprisoned in matter ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 404

The dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol in alchemy of which we have documentary evidence. It appears as the, the tail-eater in the Codex Marcianus (fig. 147), which dates from the tenth or eleventh century, together with the legend:(the One, the All.) Time and again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail (fig. 020), (fig. 044), (fig. 046). For this reason the opus was often called circulare (circular) or else rota (the wheel) (fig. 080) 404

Sometimes this is the white or red tincture (aqua permanens); sometimes the Philosophers’ Stone, which, as hermaphrodite, contains both; or again it is the panacea (aurum potabile, elixir vitae), philosophical gold, golden glass (vitrum aureum), malleable glass (vitrum malleabile) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 335

Side by side with the idea of the prima materia, that of water (aqua permanens) and that of fire (ignis noster) play an important part. Although these two elements are antagonistic and even constitute a typical pair of opposites, they are yet one and the same according to the testimony of the authors. Like the prima materia the water has a thousand names; it is even said to be the original material of the Stone. In spite of this we are on the other hand assured that the water is extracted from the Stone or prima materia as its life-giving soul (anima) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 336

These composite waters form the philosophical Mercurius from which it must be assumed that the substance, or prima materia itself, consists of composite water. Some [alchemists] put three together, others, only two. For myself two species are sufficient: male and female or brother and sister (fig. 118). But they also call the simple water poison, quicksilver [argentum vivum] cambar aqua permanens, gum, vinegar, urine, sea-water, dragon and serpent ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 336

This account makes one thing very evident: the philosophical water is the Stone or the prima materia itself; but at the same time, it is also its solvent ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 337

It can also be shown that fire played the same role as water. Another, no less important, idea is that of the Hermetic vessel (vas Hermetis), typified by the retorts or melting-furnaces that contained the substances to be transformed (fig. 119). Although an implement, it nevertheless has peculiar connections with the prima materia as well as with the lapis, so it is no mere piece of apparatus~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 338

For the alchemists the vessel is something truly marvellous: a vas mirabile. Maria Prophetissa (fig. 078) says that the whole secret lies in knowing about the Hermetic vessel. “Unum est vas” (the vessel is one) is emphasized again and again. It must be completely round, in imitation of the spherical cosmos, so that the influence of the stars may contribute to the success of the operation. It is a kind of matrix or uterus from which the filius philosophorum, the miraculous Stone, is to be born (fig. 120). Hence it is required that the vessel be not only round but egg-shaped (fig. 121); (cf. fig. 022) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 338

One naturally thinks of this vessel as a sort of retort or flask; but one soon learns that this is an inadequate conception since the vessel is more a mystical idea, a true symbol like all the main ideas of alchemy. Thus we hear that the vas is the water or aqua permanens, which is none other than the Mercurius of the Philosophers. But not only is it the water, it is also its opposite: fire ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 338

The secret of the cup is also the secret of the horn, which in its turn contains the essence of the unicorn as bestower of strength, health, and life (fig. 263). The alchemists attribute the same qualities to their Stone, calling it the “carbuncle” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 552

The horn as an emblem of vigour and strength has a masculine character, but at the same time it is a cup, which, as a receptacle, is feminine. So we are dealing here with a “uniting symbol” that expresses the bipolarity of the archetype (fig. 264) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 553

These assorted unicorn symbolisms aim at giving no more than a sample of the extremely intricate and tangled connections between pagan natural philosophy, Gnosticism, alchemy, and Church tradition, which, in its turn, had a deep and lasting influence on the world of medieval alchemy. I hope that these examples have made clear to the reader just how far alchemy was a religious-philosophical or “mystical” movement. It may well have reached its peak in Goethe’s religious Weltanschauung, as this is presented to us in Faust ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 554

The amplificatio is always appropriate when dealing with some dark experience which is so vaguely adumbrated that it must be enlarged and expanded by being set in a psychological context in order to be understood at all. That is why, in analytical psychology, we resort to amplification in the interpretation of dreams, for a dream is too slender a hint to be understood until it is enriched by the stuff of association and analogy and thus amplified to the point of intelligibility ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 403

The aborigines of central Australia even identify themselves with their mythical ancestors of the alcheringa period, a sort of Homeric age. Similarly the Pueblo Indians of Taos, in preparation for their ritual dances, identify themselves with the sun, whose sons they are. This atavistic identification with human and animal ancestors can be interpreted psychologically as an integration of the unconscious, a veritable bath of renewal in the life-source where one is once again a fish, unconscious as in sleep, intoxication, and death. Hence the sleep of incubation, the Dionysian orgy, and the ritual death in initiation ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 171

Naturally the proceedings always take place in some hallowed spot. We can easily translate these ideas into the concretism of Freudian theory: the temenos would then be the womb of the mother and the rite a regression to incest. But these are the neurotic misunderstandings of people who have remained partly infantile and who do not realize that such things have been practised since time immemorial by adults whose activities cannot possibly be explained as a mere regression to infantilism. Otherwise the highest and most important achievements of mankind would ultimately be nothing but the perverted wishes of children, and the word “childish” would have lost its raison d’être ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 171

The symbolism of the rites of renewal, if taken seriously, points far beyond the merely archaic and infantile to man’s innate psychic disposition, which is the result and deposit of all ancestral life right down to the animal level hence the ancestor and animal symbolism. The rites are attempts to abolish the separation between the conscious mind and the unconscious, the real source of life, and to bring about a reunion of the individual with the native soil of his inherited, instinctive make-up. Had these rites of renewal not yielded definite results they would not only have died out in prehistoric times; they would never have arisen in the first place ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 174

The case before us proves that even if the conscious mind is miles away from the ancient conceptions of the rites of renewal, the unconscious still strives to bring them closer in dreams. It is true that without the qualities of autonomy and autarky there would be no consciousness at all, yet these qualities also spell the danger of isolation and desolation since, by splitting off the unconscious, they bring about an unbearable alienation of instinct. Loss of instinct is the source of endless error and confusion ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 174

This impression is an extension of vision 7, (par. 67). The rejection in dream 18 evidently amounted to the destruction of the whole development up to that point. Consequently the initial symbols reappear now, but in amplified form. Such enantiodromias are characteristic of dream-sequences in general. Unless the conscious mind intervened, the unconscious would go on sending out wave after wave without result, like the treasure that is said to take nine years, nine months, and nine nights to come to the surface and, if not found on the last night, sinks down to start all over again from the beginning ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 111

The globe probably comes from the idea of the red ball. But, whereas this is the sun, the globe is rather an image of the earth, upon which the anima stands worshipping the sun (fig. 032). Anima and sun are thus distinct, which points to the fact that the sun represents a different principle from that of the anima. The latter is a personification of the unconscious, while the sun is a symbol of the source of life and the ultimate wholeness of man (as indicated in the solificatio) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 112

Now, the sun is an antique symbol that is still very close to us. We know also that the early Christians had some difficulty in distinguishing the (the rising sun) from Christ. The dreamer’s anima still seems to be a sun-worshipper, that is to say, she belongs to the ancient world, and for the following reason: the conscious mind with its rationalistic attitude has taken little or no interest in her and therefore made it impossible for the anima to become modernized (or better, Christianized) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 112

It almost seems as if the differentiation of the intellect that began in the Christian Middle Ages, as a result of scholastic training, had driven the anima to regress to the ancient world. The Renaissance gives us evidence enough for this, the clearest of all being the Hypnerotomachia, where Poliphile meets his anima, the lady Polia, at the court of Queen Venus, quite untouched by Christianity and graced with all the “virtues” of antiquity ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 112

A man’s unconscious is likewise feminine and is personified by the anima. The anima also stands for the “inferior” function and for that reason frequently has a shady character; in fact she sometimes stands for evil itself. She is as a rule the fourth person. She is the dark and dreaded maternal womb (fig. 074), which is of an essentially ambivalent nature ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

The Christian deity is one in three persons. The fourth person in the heavenly drama is undoubtedly the devil. In the more harmless psychological version he is merely the inferior function. On a moral valuation he is man’s sin; therefore a function belonging to him and hence masculine ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

The female element in the deity is kept very dark, the interpretation of the Holy Ghost as Sophia being considered heretical. Hence the Christian metaphysical drama, the “Prologue in Heaven,” has only masculine actors, a point it shares with many of the ancient mysteries. But the female element must obviously be somewhere so it is presumably to be found in the dark. At any rate that is where the ancient Chinese philosophers located it: in the Yin ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

In the psychology of the functions there are two conscious and therefore masculine functions, the differentiated function and its auxiliary, which are represented in dreams by, say, father and son, whereas the unconscious functions appear as mother and daughter. Since the conflict between the two auxiliary functions is not nearly so great as that between the differentiated and the inferior function, it is possible for the third function that is, the unconscious auxiliary one to be raised to consciousness and thus made masculine. It will, however, bring with it traces of its contamination by the inferior function, thus acting as a kind of link with the darkness of the unconscious ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

It was in keeping with this psychological fact that the Holy Ghost should be heretically interpreted as Sophia, for he was the mediator of birth in the flesh, who enabled the deity to shine forth in the darkness of the world. No doubt it was this association that caused the Holy Ghost to be suspected of femininity, for Mary was the dark earth of the field “illa terra virgo nondum pluviis irrigata” (the virgin soil not yet watered by the rains), as Tertullian called her ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

The fourth function is contaminated by the unconscious and, on being made conscious, drags the whole of the unconscious with it. We must then come to terms with the unconscious and try to bring about a synthesis of opposites. At first a violent conflict breaks out, such as any reasonable man would experience when it became evident that he had to swallow a lot of absurd superstitions. Everything in him would rise up and he would defend himself desperately against what looked to him like murderous nonsense (See dream symbolism: Mandala Dr-19) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 193

Alchemy regarded this synthesis of opposites as one of its chief tasks. The Turba philosophorumsays: (Join therefore a male son of a red slave with his sweet-scented wife and joined together they will produce the Art). This synthesis of opposites was often represented as a brother-and-sister incest, which version undoubtedly goes back to the “Visio Arislei” where the cohabitation of Thabritius and Beya, the children of the Rex marinus [King of the Sea], is described ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 193

In an outward form of religion where all the emphasis is on the outward figure (hence where we are dealing with a more or less complete projection), the archetype is identical with externalized ideas but remains unconscious as a psychic factor. When an unconscious content is replaced by a projected image to that extent, it is cut off from all participation in and influence on the conscious mind.

Hence it largely forfeits its own life, because prevented from exerting the formative influence on consciousness natural to it; what is more, it remains in its original form unchanged, for nothing changes in the unconscious. At a certain point it even develops a tendency to regress to lower and more archaic levels. It may easily happen, therefore, that a Christian who believes in all the sacred figures is still undeveloped and unchanged in his inmost soul because he has “all God outside” and does not experience Him in the soul ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 12

The unconscious is always the fly in the ointment, the skeleton in the cupboard of perfection, the painful lie given to all idealistic pronouncements, the earthiness that clings to our human nature and sadly clouds the crystal clarity we long for ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 207

Sometimes this is the white or red tincture (aqua permanens); sometimes the Philosophers’ Stone, which, as hermaphrodite, contains both; or again it is the panacea (aurum potabile, elixir vitae), philosophical gold, golden glass (vitrum aureum), malleable glass (vitrum malleabile) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 335

The conceptions of the goal are as vague and various as the individual processes. The lapis philosophorum, for instance, is often the prima materia, or the means of producing the gold; or again it is an altogether mystical being that is sometimes called Deus terrestris, Salvator, or filius macrocosmi, a figure we can only compare with the Gnostic Anthropos, the divine original man (fig. 117) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 335

Side by side with the idea of the prima materia, that of water (aqua permanens) and that of fire (ignis noster) play an important part. Although these two elements are antagonistic and even constitute a typical pair of opposites, they are yet one and the same according to the testimony of the authors. Like the prima materia the water has a thousand names; it is even said to be the original material of the Stone. In spite of this we are on the other hand assured that the water is extracted from the Stone or prima materia as its life-giving soul (anima) 336

These composite waters form the philosophical Mercurius from which it must be assumed that the substance, or prima materia itself, consists of composite water. Some [alchemists] put three together, others, only two. For myself two species are sufficient: male and female or brother and sister (fig. 118). But they also call the simple water poison, quicksilver [argentum vivum] cambar aqua permanens, gum, vinegar, urine, sea-water, dragon and serpent ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 336

This account makes one thing very evident: the philosophical water is the Stone or the prima materia itself; but at the same time, it is also its solvent ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 337

Every single one of these terms has more than one meaning; we need only look up the explanations in Ruland’s Lexicon to get a more than adequate idea of this. It is therefore pointless to go further into the variations of alchemical procedure in the present context ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 340

Such is, superficially and in the roughest outline, the framework of alchemy as known to us all. From the point of view of our modern knowledge of chemistry it tells us little or nothing, and if we turn to the texts with their hundred and one procedures and recipes left behind by the Middle Ages and antiquity, we shall find relatively few among them with any recognizable meaning for the chemist.

He would probably find most of them nonsensical, and furthermore it is certain beyond all doubt that no real tincture or artificial gold was ever produced during the many centuries of earnest endeavour. What then, we may fairly ask, induced the old alchemists to go on laboring or, as they said, “operating “so steadfastly and to write all those treatises on the “divine” art if their whole undertaking was so portentously futile? ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 341

To do the alchemists justice we must add that all knowledge of the nature of chemistry and its limitations was still completely closed to them, so that they were as much entitled to hope as those who dreamed of flying and whose successors made the dream come true after all. Nor should we underestimate the sense of satisfaction born of the enterprise, the adventure, the quaerere (seeking), and the invenire (finding).

This always lasts as long as the methods employed seem sensible: There was nothing at that time to convince the alchemist of the senselessness of his chemical operations; what is more, he could look back on a long tradition which contained not a few testimonies of such as had achieved the marvellous result. Finally the matter was not entirely without promise, since a number of useful discoveries did occasionally emerge as by-products of his labours in the laboratory.

As the forerunner of chemistry alchemy had a sufficient raison d’être. Hence, even if alchemy had consisted in if you like an unending series of futile and barren chemical experiments, it would be no more astonishing than the venturesome endeavours of medieval medicine and pharmacology ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 341

If the alchemist is admittedly using the chemical process only symbolically, then why does he work in a laboratory with crucibles and alembics? And if, as he constantly asserts, he is describing chemical processes, why distort them past recognition with his mythological symbolisms? ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 342

This puzzle has proved something of a headache to many an honest and well-meaning student of alchemy. On the one hand the alchemist declares that he is concealing the truth intentionally, so as to prevent wicked or stupid people from gaining possession of the gold and thus precipitating a catastrophe.

But, on the other hand, the same author will assure us that the gold he is seeking is not as the stupid suppose the ordinary gold (aurum vulgi), it is the philosophical gold or even the marvellous stone, the lapis invisibilitatis (the stone of invisibility) or the lapis aethereus (the ethereal stone) or finally the unimaginable hermaphroditic Rebis (fig. 125) , and he will end up by saying that all recipes whatsoever are to be despised ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 343

For psychological reasons, however, it is highly unlikely that the motive prompting the alchemist to secrecy and mystification was consideration for mankind. Whenever anything real is discovered it is usually announced with a flourish of trumpets. The fact is that the alchemists had little or nothing to divulge in the way of chemistry, least of all the secret of goldmaking ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 343

By this is meant firstly the Ascensus and descensus, as for instance the rise and fall of birds symbolizing the precipitation of vapours, and secondly the rotation of the universe as a model for the work, and hence the cycling of the year in which the work takes place. The alchemist was not unaware of the connection between the rotatio and his drawings of circles ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 214

Böhme’s mysticism is influenced by alchemy in the highest degree. Thus he says: “The form of its birth is as a revolving wheel, which Mercurius makes in the sulphur.” The “birth” is the “golden child” (filius philosophorum = archetype of the divine child) whose “work-master” is Mercurius ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 215

Mercurius himself is the “fiery wheel of the essence” in the form of a serpent. Similarly the (unenlightened) soul is just “such a fiery Mercurius.” Vulcan kindles the fiery wheel of the essence in the soul when it “breaks off” from God; whence come desire and sin, which are the “wrath of God.” The soul is then a “worm” like the “fiery serpent,” a “larva” and a “monster” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 215

The interpretation of the wheel in Böhme reveals something of the mystical secret of alchemy and is therefore of considerable importance in this respect as well as from the psychological point of view: the wheel appears here as a concept for wholeness, which is the essence of mandala symbolism and therefore includes the mysterium iniquitatis ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 216

The eagle signifies height. (Previously the stress was on depth: people descending to the water.) It seizes the whole mandala and, with it, the control of the dreamer, who, carried along on a ship, sails after the bird (fig. 097) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 305

Birds are thoughts and the flight of thought. Generally it is fantasies and intuitive ideas that are represented thus (the winged Mercurius, Morpheus, genii, angels) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 305

The ship is the vehicle that bears the dreamer over the sea and the depths of the unconscious. As a man-made thing it stands for a system or method The flight of thought goes ahead and methodical elaboration follows after. Man cannot walk the rainbow bridge like a god but must go underneath with whatever reflective afterthoughts he may have ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 305

The eagle synonymous with phoenix, vulture, raven is a well-known alchemical symbol. Even the lapis, the Rebis (compounded of two parts and therefore frequently hermaphroditic as an amalgam of Sol and Luna), is often represented with wings (fig. 022), (fig. 054), (fig. 208), denoting intuition or spiritual (winged) potentiality. In the last resort all these symbols depict the consciousness-transcending fact we call the Self. This visual impression is rather like a snapshot of an evolving process as it leads on to the next stage ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 305

To go for a walk is to wander along paths that lead nowhere in particular; it is both a search and a succession of changes. The dreamer finds a blue flower blossoming aimlessly by the wayside, an accidental child of nature, evoking friendly memories of a more romantic and lyrical age, of the youthful season when it came to bud, when the scientific view of the world had not yet broken away from the world of actual experience or rather when this break was only just beginning and the eye looked back to what was already the past ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 101

The flower is in fact like a friendly sign, a numinous emanation from the unconscious, showing the dreamer, who as a modern man has been robbed of security and of his communion in all the things that lead to man’s salvation, the historical place where he can meet friends and brothers of like mind, where he can find the seed that wants to sprout in him too ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 101

But the dreamer knows nothing as yet of the old solar gold which connects the innocent flower with the obnoxious black art of alchemy and with the blasphemous pagan idea of the solificatio. For the “golden flower of alchemy” (fig. 030) can sometimes be a blue flower: “the sapphire blue flower of the hermaphrodite” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 101

The cave represents the darkness and seclusion of the unconscious; the two boys correspond to the two unconscious functions. Theoretically the third must be the auxiliary function, which would indicate that the conscious mind had become completely absorbed in the differentiated function. The odds now stand 1: 3, greatly in favour of the unconscious. We may therefore expect a new advance on its part and a return to its former position. The “boys” are an allusion to the dwarf motif (fig. 077), of which more later ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 197

The psychic autonomy of the pneuma is attested by the Neopythagoreans; in their view the soul was swallowed by matter and only mind nous was left. But the nous is outside man: it is his daemon. One could hardly formulate its autonomy more aptly. Nous seems to be identical with the god Anthropos: he appears alongside the demiurge and is the adversary of the planetary spheres. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 410

But scarcely has he [the Anthropos] set foot upon the earth when Physis locks him in a passionate embrace. From this embrace are born the seven first hermaphroditic beings. The seven are an obvious allusion to the seven planets and hence to the metals (which in the alchemical view spring from the hermaphrodite Mercurius. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 410

In the overwhelming majority of cases alchemy identifies its transforming substance with the argentum vivum or Mercurius. Chemically this term denotes quicksilver, but philosophically it means the spiritus vitae, or even the world-soul, so that Mercurius also takes on the significance of Hermes, god of revelation. (This question will be dealt with in detail elsewhere) ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 172

The anima now becomes a life-giving factor, a psychic reality which conflicts strongly with the world of the father. Which of us could assert, without endangering his sanity, that he had accepted the guidance of the unconscious in the conduct of his life, assuming that anyone exists who could imagine what that would mean? Anyone who could imagine it at all would certainly have no difficulty in understanding what a monstrous affront such a volte face would offer to the traditional spirit, especially to the spirit that has put on the earthly garment of the Church.

It was this subtle change of psychic standpoint that caused the old alchemists to resort to deliberate mystification, and that sponsored all kinds of heresies. Hence it is only logical for the father to reject the dreamer—it amounts to nothing less than excommunication. (Be it noted that the dreamer is a Roman Catholic.) By acknowledging the reality of the psyche and making it a co-determining ethical factor in our lives, we offend against the spirit of convention which for centuries has regulated psychic life from outside by means of institutions as well as by reason. 

Not that unreasoning instinct rebels of itself against firmly established order; by the strict logic of its own inner laws it is itself of the firmest structure imaginable and, in addition, the creative foundation of all binding order. But just because this foundation is creative, all order which proceeds from it—even in its most “divine” form—is a phase, a steppingstone.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the establishment of order and the dissolution of what has been established are at bottom beyond human control. The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. It is well that these things are difficult to understand and thus enjoy a wholesome concealment, for weak heads are only too easily addled by them and thrown into confusion. From all these dangers dogma—whether ecclesiastical, philosophical, or scientific—offers effective protection, and, looked at from a social point of view, excommunication is a necessary and useful consequence. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 93

Hermes is associated with the idea of roundness and also of squareness, as can be seen particularly in Papyrus V (line 401) of the Papyri Graecae Magicae, where he is named “round and square.” He is also called, “quadrangular.” He is in general connected with the number four; hence there is a “four-headed Hermes.” These attributes were known also in the Middle Ages, as the work of Cartari. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 172

It is easy to see why such qualities made Mercurius an eminently suitable symbol for the mysterious transforming substance of alchemy; for this [symbol] is round and square, i.e., a totality consisting of four parts (four elements). Consequently the Gnostic quadripartite original man (fig. 064) as well as Christ Pantokrator is an imago lapidis ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 173

Western alchemy is mainly of Egyptian origin, so let us first of all turn our attention to the Hellenistic figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who, while standing sponsor to the medieval Mercurius, derives ultimately from the ancient Egyptian Thoth. The attribute of Thoth was the baboon, or again he was represented outright as an ape.

This idea was visibly preserved all through the numberless editions of the Book of the Dead right down to the most recent times. It is true that in the existing alchemical texts which with few exceptions belong to the Christian era the ancient connection between Thoth-Hermes and the ape has disappeared, but it still existed at the time of the Roman Empire ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 173

Mercurius, however, had several things in common with the devil which we will not enter upon here and so the ape once more crops up in the vicinity of Mercurius as the simia Dei (fig. 067), [the Ape of God].

It is of the essence of the transforming substance to be on the one hand extremely common, even contemptible (this is expressed in the series of attributes it shares with the devil, such as serpent, dragon, raven, lion, basilisk, and eagle), but on the other hand to mean something of great value, not to say divine. For the transformation leads from the depths to the heights, from the bestially archaic and infantile to the mystical homo maximus ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 173

One might almost say that the dream goes on with the “explanation” of what is happening in the square space. Animals are to be changed into men; a “shapeless life-mass” is to be turned into a transfigured (illuminated) human head by magic contact with a reptile. The animal lump or life-mass stands for the mass of the inherited unconscious which is to be united with consciousness. This is brought about by the ceremonial use of a reptile, presumably a snake. The idea of transformation and renewal by means of a serpent is a well-substantiated archetype.

It is the healing serpent, representing the god. It is reported of the mysteries of Sabazius:(A golden snake is let down into the lap of the initiated and taken away again from the lower parts). Among the Ophites, Christ was the serpent. Probably the most significant development of serpent symbolism as regards renewal of personality is to be found in Kundalini yoga. The shepherd’s experience with the snake in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra would accordingly be a fatal omen (and not the only one of its kind the prophecy at the death of the rope-dancer) ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 184

The “shapeless life-mass” immediately recalls the ideas of the alchemical “chaos,” the massa or materia informis or confusa which has contained the divine seeds of life ever since the Creation. According to a Midrashic view, Adam was created in much the same way: in the first hour God collected the dust, in the second made a shapeless mass out of it, in the third fashioned the limbs, and so on ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 185

But if the life-mass is to be transformed a circumambulatio is necessary, i.e., exclusive concentration on the centre, the place of creative change. During this process one is “bitten” by animals; in other words, we have to expose ourselves to the animal impulses of the unconscious without identifying ourselves with them and without “running away;” for flight from the unconscious would defeat the purpose of the whole proceeding.

We must hold our ground, which means here that the process initiated by the dreamer’s self-observation must be experienced in all its ramifications and then articulated with consciousness to the best of his understanding. This often entails an almost unbearable tension because of the utter incommensurability between conscious life and the unconscious process, which can only be experienced in the innermost soul and cannot touch the visible surface of life at any point ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 186

The tendency to run away, however, is attributed not to the operator but to the transforming substance. Mercurius is evasive and is labelled servus (servant) or cervus fugitivus (fugitive stag). The vessel must be well sealed so that what is within may not escape. E

irenaeus Philalethes says of this servus: “You must be very careful how you manage him, for if he can find an opportunity he will elude your vigilance, and pass through, and leave you stuck in a heap of misfortunes.” It did not occur to these Philosophers that they were chasing a projection, and that the more they attributed to the substance the further away they were getting from the psychological source of their expectations ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 187

The arrangement of the snakes in the four corners is indicative of an order in the unconscious. It is as if we were confronted with a pre-existent ground plan, a kind of Pythagorean tetraktys. I have very frequently observed the number four in this connection. It probably explains the universal incidence and magical significance of the cross or of the circle divided into four. In the present case the point seems to be to capture and regulate the animal instincts so as to exorcise the danger of falling into unconsciousness. This may well be the empirical basis of the cross that vanquishes the powers of darkness ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 189

The monster and the tree both stand for the elixir, the alexipharmic, and the panacea. The tree’s peculiar power to change into any animal shape is also attributed to Mercurius ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 538

The ass is a daemon triunus, a chthonic trinity, which is portrayed in Latin alchemy as a three-headed monster and identified with Mercurius, salt and sulphur. The classical rumour about the worship of an ass in the Temple of Jerusalem, and the graffito on the Palatine showing a mock crucifixion, I will mention only in passing; likewise the saturnine aspect of Jehovah and Ialdabaoth as demiurges, which brings these figures into conjunction with the equally saturnine prima materia ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 539

In the Chymical Wedding, as in the royal arms of England, lion and unicorn are combined; both are symbols of Mercurius in alchemy, just as they are allegories of Christ in the Church. Lion and unicorn stand for the inner tension of opposites in Mercurius. The lion, being a dangerous animal, is akin to the dragon; the dragon must be slain and the lion at least have his paws cut off ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 547

The uncompromising Christian interpretation of God as the summum bonum obviously goes against nature; hence the secret paganism of alchemy comes out in the ambivalent figure of Mercurius. By contrast, the androgyny of Christ is conceived as exclusively spiritual and symbolic, and therefore outside the natural context. On the other hand the very existence of a counterpart, “the Lord of this world,” betrays the polarity of God as shown in the androgynous nature of the Son in whom he is manifest ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 547

In another version of the devouring theme, Mars feeds the body of the King to the famished wolf (fame acerrima occupatus), the son of Saturn (lead). The wolf symbolizes the prima materia’s appetite for the King, who often takes the place of the Son ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 440

From this point of view, alchemy seems like a continuation of Christian mysticism carried on in the subterranean darkness of the unconscious indeed some mystics pressed the materialization of the Christ figure even to the appearance of the stigmata. But this unconscious continuation never reached the surface, where the conscious mind could have dealt with it. All that appeared in consciousness were the symbolic symptoms of the unconscious process.

Had the alchemist succeeded in forming any concrete idea of his unconscious contents, he would have been obliged to recognize that he had taken the place of Christ or, to be more exact, that he, regarded not as ego but as Self, had taken over the work of redeeming not man but God. He would then have had to recognize not only himself as the equivalent of Christ, but Christ as a symbol of the Self.

This tremendous conclusion failed to dawn on the medieval mind. What seems like a monstrous presumption to the Christian European would have been self-evident to the spirit of the Upanishads. Modern man must therefore consider himself fortunate not to have come up against Eastern ideas until his own spiritual impoverishment was so far gone that he did not even notice what he was coming up against. He can now deal with the East on the quite inadequate and therefore innocuous level of the intellect, or else leave the whole matter to Sanskrit specialists CW 12 Para 452

It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness, and just as the dream compensates the conflicts of the conscious mind, so alchemy endeavours to fill in the gaps left by the Christian tension of opposites. The historical shift in the world’s consciousness towards the masculine is compensated by the chthonic femininity of the unconscious.

In certain pre-Christian religions the male principle had already been differentiated in the father-son specification, a change which was to be of the utmost importance for Christianity. Were the unconscious merely complementary, this change of consciousness would have been accompanied by the production of a mother and daughter, for which the necessary material lay ready to hand in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 26

Thus the higher, the spiritual, the masculine inclines to the lower, the earthly, the feminine; and accordingly, the mother, who was anterior to the world of the father, accommodates herself to the male principle and, with the aid of the human spirit (alchemy or “the philosophy ”), produces a son not the antithesis of Christ but rather his chthonic counterpart, not a divine man but a fabulous being conforming to the nature of the primordial mother. And just as the redemption of man the microcosm is the task of the “upper” son, so the “lower” son has the function of a salvator macrocosmi. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 26

This, in brief, is the drama that was played out in the obscurities of alchemy. It is superfluous to remark that these two sons were never united, except perhaps in the mind and innermost experience of a few particularly gifted alchemists.

But it is not very difficult to see the “purpose” of this drama: in the Incarnation it looked as though the male principle of the father-world were approximating to the female principle of the mother-world, with the result that the latter felt impelled to approximate in turn to the father-world. What it evidently amounted to was an attempt to bridge the gulf separating the two worlds as compensation for the open conflict between them. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 27

I hope the reader will not be outraged if my exposition sounds like a Gnostic myth. We are moving here in those psychological regions where, as a matter of fact, the Gnosis is rooted. The message of the Christian symbol is Gnosis, and the compensation effected by the unconscious is Gnosis in an even higher degree. Myth is the primordial language natural to these psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery. Such processes deal with the primordial images, and these are best and most succinctly reproduced by figurative speech. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 28

Thus the filius philosophorum is not just the reflected image, in unsuitable material, of the son of God; on the contrary, this son of Tiamat reflects the features of the primordial maternal figure. Although he is decidedly hermaphroditic he has a masculine name a sign that the chthonic underworld, having been rejected by the spirit and identified with evil, has a tendency to compromise. There is no mistaking the fact that he is a concession to the spiritual and masculine principle, even though he carries in himself the weight of the earth and the whole fabulous nature of primordial animality. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 29

Alchemy is pre-eminently concerned with the seed of unity which lies hidden in the chaos of Tiamat and forms the counterpart to the divine unity. Like this, the seed has a trinitarian character in Christian alchemy and a triadic character in pagan alchemy. According to other authorities it corresponds to the unity of the four elements and is therefore a quaternity.

The overwhelming majority of modern psychological findings speaks in favor of the latter view. The few cases I have observed which produced the number three were marked by a systematic deficiency in consciousness, that is to say, they were unconscious of the “inferior function.” The number three is not a natural expression for wholeness, since four represents the minimum number of determinants in a whole judgment.

It must nevertheless be stressed that side by side with the distinct leanings of alchemy (and of the unconscious) towards quaternity there is always a vacillation between three and four which comes out over and over again. Even in the axiom of Maria Prophetissa the quaternity is muffled and alembicated. Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 31

In alchemy there are three as well as four regimina or procedures, three as well as four colours. There are always four elements, but often three of them are grouped together, with the fourth in a special position sometimes earth, sometimes fire. Mercurius is of course quadratus, but he is also a three-headed snake or simply a three in one. This uncertainty has a duplex character in other words, the central ideas are ternary as well as quaternary.

The psychologist cannot but mention the fact that a similar puzzle exists in the psychology of the unconscious: the least differentiated or “inferior” function is so much contaminated by the collective unconscious that, on becoming conscious, it brings up among others the archetype of the Self as well as Maria Prophetissa says. Four signifies the feminine, motherly, physical; three the masculine, fatherly, spiritual. Thus the uncertainty as to three or four amounts to a wavering between the spiritual and the physical a striking example of how every human truth is a last truth but one. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 31

For this reason I have found myself obliged to give the corresponding archetype the psychological name of the “Self” a term on the one hand definite enough to convey the sum of human wholeness and on the other hand indefinite enough to express the indescribable and indeterminable nature of this wholeness. The paradoxical qualities of the term are in keeping with the fact that wholeness consists partly of the conscious man and partly of the unconscious man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 20

The Christ-symbol is of the greatest psychological importance in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the Self, apart from the figure of Buddha. We can see this from the scope and substance of all the pronouncements that have been made about Christ: they agree with the psychological phenomenology of the Self in unusually high degree, although they do not include all the aspects of this archetype.

The almost limitless range of the Self might be deemed a disadvantage as compared with the definiteness of a religious figure, but it is by no means the task of science to pass judgments of value. Not only is the Self indefinite but paradoxically enough it also includes the quality of definiteness and even that of uniqueness. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 22

This is probably one of the reasons why precisely those religions founded by historical personages have become world religions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. The inclusion in a religion of a unique human persona fits especially when conjoined to an indefinable divine nature is consistent with the absolute individuality of the Self, which combines uniqueness with eternity and the individual with the universal. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 22

If it were only resistance that he felt, it would not be so bad. In actual fact, however, the psychic substratum, that dark realm of the unknown, exercises a fascinating attraction that threatens to become the more overpowering the further he penetrates into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 439

The psychological danger that arises here is the disintegration of personality into its functional components, i.e., the separate functions of consciousness, the complexes, hereditary factors, etc. Disintegration which may be functional or occasionally a real schizophrenia is the fate which overtakes Gabricus (in the Rosarium version): he is dissolved into atoms in the body of Beya this being equivalent to a form of mortification. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 439

In the hero myth this state is known as being swallowed up in the belly of the whale or dragon (fig. 174). The heat there is usually so intense that the hero loses his hair, i.e., he is reborn bald as a babe. This heat is the ignis gehennalis, the hell into which Christ descended m order to conquer death as part of his opus. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 440

The encounter with the dark half of the personality, or “shadow,” comes about of its own accord in any moderately thorough treatment. This problem is as important as that of sin in the Church. The open conflict is unavoidable and painful. I have often been asked, “And what do you do about it?” I do nothing; there is nothing I can do except wait, with a certain trust in God, until, out of a conflict borne with patience and courage, there emerges the solution destined although I cannot foresee it for that particular person. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 37

He is afraid that the lowest form of conviction, namely superstition, is, as he thinks, forcing itself on him. But superstition properly so called only appears in such people if they are pathological, not if they can keep their balance. It then takes the form of the fear of “going mad” for everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane.

It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears. The psychological elucidation of these images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 38

The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind’s eye, with a sort of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 38

Thus an old alchemist and he a cleric! prays:(Purge the horrible darknesses of our mind, light a light for our senses!) The author of this sentence must have been undergoing the experience of the nigredo, the first stage of the work, which was felt as “melancholia” in alchemy and corresponds to the encounter with the shadow in psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 41

The power of evil is also compared to the strength of the unicorn, as in Psalm 22\21: “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns;.” On these metaphors is based Tertullian’s allusion to Christ: “His glory is that of the bull, his horn is that of the unicorn.” This refers to the blessing of Moses. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 520

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

St. Basil takes the filius unicornium to be Christ. The origin of the unicorn is a mystery, says St. Ambrose, like Christ’s procreation. Nicolas Caussin, from whom I have culled these extracts, observes that the unicorn is a fitting symbol for the God of the Old Testament, because in his wrath he reduced the world to confusion like an angry rhinoceros (unicorn) until, made captive by love, he was soothed in the lap of a virgin.

This ecclesiastical train of thought has its parallel in the alchemical taming of the lion and the dragon. Concerning the conversion of the Old Testament Jehovah into the God of Love in the New Testament, Picinelli says: “Of a truth God, terrible beyond measure, appeared before the world peaceful and wholly tamed after dwelling in the womb of the most blessed Virgin” ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 522

As I said before, the unicorn has more than one meaning. It can also mean evil. The Physiologus Graecus, for instance, says of the unicorn that “it is a swift-running animal, having one horn, and evilly disposed towards man”. And St. Basil says: “And take heed unto thyself, O man, and beware of the unicorn, who is the Demon (fig. 249). For he plotteth evil against men, and he is cunning in evil-doing” ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 525

Originally a monstrous and fabulous beast, it harbours in itself an inner contradiction, a complexio oppositorum, which makes it a singularly appropriate symbol for the monstrum hermaphroditum of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 526

This remarkable vision made a deep and lasting impression on the dreamer, an impression of “the most sublime harmony,” as he himself puts it. The world clock may well be the “severe image” which is identical with the Cabiri, the four children or four little men with the pendulums. It is a three-dimensional mandala a mandala in bodily form signifying realization. (Unfortunately medical discretion prevents my giving the biographical details. It must suffice to say that this realization did actually take place.) Whatever a man does in reality he himself becomes. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 308

Just why the vision of this curious figure should produce an impression of “the most sublime harmony” is, in one sense, very difficult to understand; but it becomes comprehensible enough as soon as we consider the comparative historical material. We must therefore assume that the image is a singularly happy expression for an otherwise unknowable psychic fact which has so far only been able to manifest apparently disconnected aspects of itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 309

We shall hardly be mistaken if we assume that our mandala aspires to the most complete union of opposites that is possible, including that of the masculine trinity and the feminine quaternity on the analogy of the alchemical hermaphrodite. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 311

Since the figure has a cosmic aspect world clock we must suppose it to be a small-scale model or perhaps even a source of space-time, or at any rate an abstract of it and therefore, mathematically speaking, four-dimensional in nature although only visible in a three-dimensional projection. I do not wish to labour this argument, for such an interpretation lies beyond my powers of proof. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 312

Cornelius Agrippa mentions that “the learned Jews attribute the number 32 to Wisdom, for so many are the ways of Wisdom described by Abram” ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 313

There is also a connection with the symbolism of Horus: On the one hand we have Christ enthroned with the four emblems of the evangelists three animals and an angel; on the other, we have Father Horus with his four sons, or Osiris with the four sons of Horus (fig. 102). Horus is also the (rising sun), and Christ was still worshipped as such by the early Christians. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 314

There is, however, one thing more to be asked: “Three there are but where is the fourth?” Why is blue missing? This colour was also missing in the “distorted” mandala of our dreamer. Curiously enough, the calendrier that intersects the golden circle is blue, and so is the vertical disc in the three-dimensional mandala. We would conjecture that blue, standing for the vertical, means height and depth (the blue sky above, the blue sea below), and that any shrinkage of the vertical reduces the square to an oblong, thus producing something like an inflation of consciousness.

Hence the vertical would correspond to the unconscious. But the unconscious in a man has feminine characteristics, and blue is the traditional colour of the Virgin’s celestial cloak (fig. 105). Guillaume was so absorbed in the Trinity and threefold aspect of the roy that he quite forgot the reyne. Faust prays to her in these words: “Supreme Mistress of the world! Let me behold thy secret in the outstretched azure canopy of heaven” ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 320

The mystical and philosophical trend became ever more pronounced, while on the other hand chemistry proper began to mark itself more distinctly. The age of science and technology was dawning, and the introspective attitude of the Middle Ages was fast approaching its decline. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 502

Religious and metaphysical values became less and less able to give adequate expression to the psychic experiences brought to light by the opus alchymicum. Only after the lapse of several centuries did it fall to empirical psychology to throw new light on the obscure psychic content of Hermetic experiences. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 502

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 lapis-Christus parallel recurs all through the last days of alchemy in the seventeenth century, but only in epigonic form. This was the age that saw the rise of the secret societies, above all the Rosicrucians the best proof that the secret of alchemy had worn itself out. For the whole raison d’être of a secret society is to guard a secret that has lost its vitality and can only be kept alive as an outward form.

Michael Maier allows us a glimpse into this tragedy: at the end of his chef-d’oeuvre he confesses that in the course of his grand peregrinatio he found neither Mercurius nor the phoenix, but only one phoenix feather his pen! ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 515

This is a delicate hint at his realization that the great adventure had led to nothing beyond his copious literary achievements, whose merits would no doubt have gone unremembered had it depended solely on the spirit of the next three centuries. But, although the growing materialism of the age dismissed alchemy as a huge disappointment and an absurd aberration, there is yet “quaedam substantia in “Mercurio quae nunquam moritur” a fascination that never entirely disappeared, even when wrapped in the fool’s garb of goldmaking. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 515

After the creation of the world, God filled this vessel with Nous (= Pneuma) and sent it down to earth as a kind of baptismal font. By so doing God gave man, who wished to free himself from his natural, imperfect, sleeping state of (or, as we should say, insufficient consciousness), an opportunity to dip himself in the Nous and thus partake of the higher state of, i.e., enlightenment or higher consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 409

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

Nevertheless an unconscious event which eludes the conscious mind will portray itself somehow and somewhere, it may be in dreams, visions, or fantasies. The idea of the Pneuma as the Son of God, who descends into matter and then frees himself from it in order to bring healing and salvation to all souls, bears the traits of a projected unconscious content. Such a content is an autonomous complex divorced from consciousness, leading a life of its own in the psychic non-ego and instantly projecting itself whenever it is constellated in any way that is, whenever attracted by something analogous to it in the outside world. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 410

He [Pneuma, or Anthropos], rends the circle of the spheres and leans down to earth and water (i.e., he is about to project himself into the elements). His shadow falls upon the earth, but his image is reflected in the water. This kindles the love of the elements, and he himself is so charmed with the reflected image of divine beauty that he would fain take up his abode within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 410

In such visionary images as the Anthropos glimpsing his own reflection there is expressed the whole phenomenon of the unconscious projection of autonomous contents. These myth-pictures are like dreams, telling us that a projection has taken place and also what has been projected. This, as contemporary evidence shows, was Nous, the divine daemon, the god-man, Pneuma, etc. In so far as the standpoint of analytical psychology is realistic, i.e., based on the assumption that the contents of the psyche are realities, all these figures stand for an unconscious component of the personality which might well be endowed with a higher form of consciousness transcending that of the ordinary human being. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 411

Experience shows that such figures always express superior insight or qualities that are not yet conscious; indeed, it is extremely doubtful whether they can be attributed to the ego at all in the proper sense of the word. This problem of attribution may appear a captious one to the layman, but in practical work it is of great importance. A wrong attribution may bring about dangerous inflations which seem unimportant to the layman only because he has no idea of the inward and outward disasters that may result. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 411

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 413

Evil and matter together form the Dyad, the duality (fig. 156). This is feminine in nature, an anima mundi, the feminine Physis who longs for the embrace of the One, the Monad, the good and perfect. The Justinian Gnosis depicts her as Edem, virgin above, serpent below (fig. 157). Vengefully she strives against the Pneuma because, in the shape of the demiurge, the second form of God, he faithlessly abandoned her. She is “the divine soul imprisoned in the elements,” whom it is the task of alchemy to redeem. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 413

The product is generally called the “quintessence,” though this is by no means the only name for the ever hoped for and never-to-be-discovered “One.” It has, as the alchemists say, a “thousand names,” like the prima materia. Heinrich Khunrath has this to say about the circular distillation: “Through Circumrotation or a Circular Philosophical revolving of the Quaternarius, it is brought back to the highest and purest Simplicity of the plusquamperfect Catholic Monad.… Out of the gross and impure One there cometh an exceeding pure and subtile One,” and so forth. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 165

Hence Khunrath refers to a passage from Pseudo-Aristotle, where the circle re-emerges from a triangle set in a square. This circular figure, together with the Uroboros—the dragon devouring itself tail first—is the basic mandala of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para165

Thus Khunrath declares that the “red” gum is the “resin of the wise”—a synonym for the transforming substance. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 209

Khunrath is of the opinion that one could “perfectly prepare our Chaos Naturae [= prima materia] in the highest simplicity and perfection” from a “special Secret Divine Vision and revelation, without further probing and pondering of the causes.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 356

Hence, according to Khunrath, the salt is not only the physical centre of the earth but at the same time the sal sapientiae, of which he says: “Therefore direct your feelings, senses, reason and thoughts upon this salt alone.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 360

Khunrath says: Therefore study, meditate, sweat, work, cook … so will a healthful flood be opened to you which comes from the Heart of the Son of the great World, a Water which the Son of the Great World pours forth from his Body and Heart, to be for us a True and Natural Aqua Vitae…  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 390

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

1598. 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

This text [Aurora Consurgens], which is at least a century older than Khunrath, shows beyond all doubt that the connection between the mystery of Christ and the mystery of the lapis was even then so obvious that the philosophical opus seemed like a parallel and imitation—perhaps even a continuation—of the divine work of redemption. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 463

The text of Aurora is of historical importance in that it must be more than two hundred years older than Khunrath (1598) and Böhme (1610). Curiously enough, Böhme’s first work bears the title “Aurora, oder die Morgenröte im Aufgang” (Aurora, or the Rising Dawn). Can it be that Böhme knew Aurora consurgens, at least by name? ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 332

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, para 44.

But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 146

I do not hold myself responsible for the shortcomings in the lay public’s knowledge of psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 4.

I for my part prefer the precious gift of doubt, for the reason that it does not violate the virginity of things beyond our ken.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 8.

On the contrary it [The Soul] has the dignity of an entity endowed with consciousness of a relationship to Deity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 10.

As the eye to the sun, so the soul corresponds to God. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 10.

The archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalents of religious dogmas. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 17.

In the West the archetype is filled out with the dogmatic figure of Christ; in the East, with Purusha, the Atman, Hiranyagarbha, the Buddha, and so on. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 17.

The Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal—Christ—in its outward aspect and thus to rob it of its mysterious relation to the inner man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 8.

If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 8.

True, the “sense” is often something that could just as well be called “nonsense,” for there is a certain incommensurability between the mystery of existence and human understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 222

In the self, good and evil are indeed closer than identical twins! ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24. 

We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect; friendliness softens its features. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 29

The experience of the unconscious is a personal secret communicable only to very few, and that with difficulty. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 61

The archetype is, so to speak, an “eternal” presence, and it is only a question of whether it is perceived by the conscious mind or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 329

There is always an attraction between conscious mind and projected content. Generally it takes the form of a fascination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 436.

So long as a content remains in the projected state it is inaccessible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 555.

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.

The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself.  Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 32

Our psychic prehistory is in truth the spirit of gravity, which needs steps and ladders because, unlike the disembodied airy intellect, it cannot fly at will. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 79

Experience of the opposites has nothing whatever to do with intellectual insight or with empathy. It is more what we would call fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 23.

Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24.

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557

It has yet to be understood that the Mysterium magnum [the great mystery] is not only an actuality but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.

The man who does not know this from his own experience may be a most learned theologian, but he has no idea of religion and still less of education. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.

Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18

Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18

The alchemist related himself not only to the unconscious but directly to the very substance which he hoped to transform through the power of imagination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 394

Since all the essentials [in Alchemy] are expressed in metaphors they can be communicated only to the intelligent, who possess the gift of comprehension. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 423.

They [Alchemists] rarely have pupils, and of direct tradition there seems to have been very little, nor is there much evidence of any secret societies or the like. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 422

“True” alchemy was never a business or a career, but a genuine opus to be achieved by quiet, self-sacrificing work.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 422.

It seems as if all the personal entanglements and dramatic changes of fortune that make up the intensity of life were nothing but hesitations, timid shrinking, almost like petty complications and meticulous excuses for not facing the finality of this strange and uncanny process of crystallization. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 326.

Often one has the impression that the personal psyche is running around this central point like a shy animal, at once fascinated and frightened, always in flight, and yet steadily drawing nearer. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 326.

But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes sense of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 330

Experience, not books, is what leads to understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 564

In religious matters it is a well-known fact that we cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 15

Christian education has done all that is humanly possible; but it has not been enough. Too few people have experienced the divine image as the innermost possession of their own souls. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 12

And what kind of an answer did the next generation give to the individualism of Nietzsche’s superman? It answered with a collectivism, a mass organization, a herding together of the mob, tam ethice quarn physice, that made everything that went before look like a bad joke. Suffocation of the personality and an impotent Christianity that may well have received its death-wound—such is the unadorned balance-sheet of our time. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 559

I do not call the man who admits his ignorance an obscurantist; I think it is much rather the man whose consciousness is not sufficiently developed to be aware of his ignorance. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 564

Although man and woman unite they nevertheless represent irreconcilable opposites which, when activated, degenerate into deadly hostility. This primordial pair of opposites symbolizes every conceivable pair of opposites that may occur; hot and cold, light and dark, north and south, dry and damp, good and bad, conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

Nobody can meddle with fire or poison without being affected in some vulnerable spot; for the true physician does not stand outside his work but is always in the thick of it. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 5

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 563

It is so much easier to preach the universal panacea to everybody else than it is to take it oneself, and, as we all know, things are never so bad when everybody is in the same boat.  No doubts can exist in the herd; the bigger the crowd the better the truth—and the greater the catastrophe. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 563

Oddly enough, the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 10.

We simply do not know the ultimate derivation of the archetype any more than we know the origin of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 14.

But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 380.

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 81.

Life that just happens in and for itself is not real life; it is real only when it is known. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 81.

Natural man is not a “self”—he is the mass and a particle in the mass, collective to such a decree that he is not even sure of his own ego. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 81.

I conjecture that the treasure is also the “companion,” the one who goes through life at our side—in all probability a close analogy to the lonely ego who finds a mate in the self, for at first the self is the strange non-ego. ~CW 12, Page 117.

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 117.

For the alchemist, the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 312.

In the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can also be called “individuation.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 222.

Hildegard von Bingen transcended the animus; that is one woman’s service to the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 30.

Just as the father represents collective consciousness, the traditional spirit, so the mother stands for the collective unconscious, the source of the water of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 71.

Not for nothing did alchemy style itself an “art,” feeling—and rightly so—that it was concerned with creative processes that can be truly grasped only by experience, though intellect may give them a name. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 482.

It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 44.

That from which things arise is the invisible and immovable God. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 323.

We can never reach the level of our intuitions and should therefore not identify ourselves with them. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 114.

We should not rise above the earth with the aid of “spiritual” intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 114.

But Mercurius is the divine winged Hermes manifest in matter, the god of revelation, lord of thought and sovereign psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 292.

When I say as a psychologist, that God is an archetype, I mean by that the “type” in the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 149

Wholeness is realized for a moment only—the moment that Faust was seeking all his life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 321

Suffocation of the personality and an impotent Christianity that may well have received its death-wound—such is the unadorned balance-sheet of our time. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 559

To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 208

I have been accused of deifying the soul. Not I but God Himself deified it.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.

Such a change can begin only with individuals, for the masses are blind brutes, as we know to our cost. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 563

Hence the must fix his eye not on what is done but on how it is done, because therein is decided the whole character of the doer. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 31, Para 36.

True, what the soul imagines happens only in the mind, but what God imagines happens in reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 280.

All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 222.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 99.

“Sense” and “nonsense” are merely man-made labels which serve to give us a reasonably valid sense of direction. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 222, Para 330.

Hence one could say —cum grano salis —that history could be constructed just as easily from one’s own unconscious as from the actual texts. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 86.

In the first case man attributes to himself the need of redemption and leaves the work of redemption, the actual opus, to the autonomous divine figure ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 414

In the latter case man takes upon himself the duty of carrying out the redeeming opus, and attributes the state of suffering and consequent need of redemption to the anima mundi imprisoned in matter ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 414

In Christianity the life and death of the God-man, as a unique sacrifice, bring about the reconciliation of man, who craves redemption and is sunk in materiality, with God. The mystical effect of the God-man’s self-sacrifice extends, broadly speaking, to all men, though it is efficacious only for those who submit through faith or are chosen by divine grace; but in the Pauline acceptance it acts as an apocatastasis and extends also to non-human creation in general, which, in its imperfect state, awaits redemption like the merely natural man ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 415

By a certain “synchronism” of events, man, the bearer of a soul submerged in the world of flesh, is potentially related to God at the moment when He, as Mary’s Son, enters into her, the Virgo terrae and representative of matter in its highest form; and, potentially at least, man is fully redeemed at the moment when the eternal Son of God returns again to the Father after undergoing the sacrificial death. ~Carl Jung, CW 12. Para 415

The ideology of this mysterium, [the mystical effect of God-man’s self-sacrifice], is anticipated in the myths of Osiris, Orpheus, Dionysus, and Hercules and in the conception of the Messiah among the Hebrew prophets. These anticipations go back to the primitive hero-myths where the conquest of death is already an important factor. The projections upon Attis and Mithras, more or less contemporary with the Christian one, are also worth mentioning

. The Christian projection differs from all these manifestations of the mystery of redemption and transformation by reason of the historical and personal figure of Jesus. The mythical event incarnates itself in Him and so enters the realm of world history as a unique historical and mystical phenomenon ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 416

In alchemy she always appears as Sapientia Dei, and in the writings of the Church Fathers the south wind is an allegory of the Holy Ghost, presumably because it is hot and dry. For the same reason the process of sublimation is known in Arabic alchemy as the “great south wind,” referring to the heating of the retort ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 473

The Holy Ghost, too, is fiery and causes an exaltation. His equivalent, so to speak, is the hidden fire, the spiritus igneus dwelling in Mercurius, whose opposite poles are an agens (i.e., fire) and a patiens (i.e., quicksilver). When therefore Abu’l Qasim speaks of the fire as the “great south wind,” he is in agreement with the ancient Greek view that Hermes was a wind-god. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 473

This spirit was eventually interpreted as the Holy Ghost in accordance with the ancient tradition of the Nous swallowed up by the darkness while in the embrace of Physis with this difference, however, that the devourer is not the supreme feminine principle, earth, but Nous in the form of Mercurius or the tail-eating Uroboros. In other words, the devourer is a sort of material earth-spirit, an hermaphrodite possessing a masculine-spiritual and a feminine-corporeal aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 447

The original Gnostic myth has undergone a strange transformation: Nous and Physis are indistinguishably one in the prima materia and have become a natura abscondita ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 447

The psychological equivalent of this theme is the projection of a highly fascinating unconscious content which, like all such contents, exhibits a numinous “divine” or “sacred” quality. Alchemy set itself the task of acquiring this “treasure hard to attain” and of producing it in visible form, as the physical gold or the panacea or the transforming tincture in so far as the art still busied itself in the laboratory ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 448

But since the practical, chemical work was never quite free from the unconscious contents of the operator which found expression in it, it was at the same time a psychic activity which can best be compared with what we call active imagination. This method enables us to get an active grasp of things that also find expression in dream life.

The process is in both cases an irrigation of the conscious mind by the unconscious, and it is related so closely to the world of alchemical ideas that we are probably justified in assuming that alchemy deals with the same, or very similar, processes as those involved in active imagination and in dreams, i.e., ultimately with the process of individuation ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 448

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

Trinus et unus consists of the four elements with fire representing the spirit concealed in matter. This is the fourth, absent and yet present, who always appears in the fiery agony of the furnace and symbolizes the divine presence succour and completion of the work ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 449

And in their hour of need, Arisleus and his companions see their master Pythagoras in a dream and beg him for help. He sends them his disciple Harforetus, “the author of nourishment.” So the work is completed and Thabritius comes to life again ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 449

The Christian receives the fruits of the Mass for himself personally and for the circumstances of his own life in the widest sense. The alchemist, on the other hand, receives the fructus arboris immortalis not merely for himself but first and foremost for the King or the King’s Son, for the perfecting of the coveted substance. He may play a part in the perfectio, which brings him health, riches, illumination, and salvation; but since he is the redeemer of God and not the one to be redeemed, he is more concerned to perfect the substance than himself ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 451

The alchemist always stresses his humility and begins his treatises with invocations to God. He does not dream of identifying himself with Christ; on the contrary, it is the coveted substance, the lapis, that alchemy likens to Christ. It is not really a question of identification at all, but of the hermeneutic sicut “as” or “like unto” which characterizes the analogy ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 451

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

Without knowing it, the alchemist carries the idea of the imitatio a stage further and reaches the conclusion we mentioned earlier, that complete assimilation to the Redeemer would enable him, the assimilated, to continue the work of redemption in the depths of his own psyche. This conclusion is unconscious, and consequently the alchemist never feels impelled to assume that Christ is doing the work in him ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 452

his uncreated mystery was prepared (praeparatum) by God in such a way that nothing will ever be like it in the future nor will it ever return to what it was. For it was so corrupted as to be beyond reparation (which presumably refers to the Fall). Dorn’s rendering is true to the original text ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 430

The above examples clearly show that the alchemists came to project even the highest value God into matter. With the highest value thus safely embedded in matter, a starting-point was given for the development of genuine chemistry on the one hand and of the more recent philosophical materialism on the other, with all the psychological consequences that necessarily follow when the picture of the world is shifted 180 degrees. However remote alchemy may seem to us today, we should not underestimate its cultural importance for the Middle Ages. Today is the child of the Middle Ages and it cannot disown its parents ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 432

The prima materia has the quality of ubiquity: it can be found always and everywhere, which is to say that projection can be made always and everywhere. The English alchemist George Ripley (c. 1415-90) writes: “The Philosophers tell the inquirer that birds and fishes bring us the lapis, every man has it, it is in every place, in you, in me, in everything, in time and space. It offers itself in lowly form [vili figura]. From it there springs our eternal water [aqua permanens]” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 433

According to Ripley the prima materia is water; it is the material principle of all bodies, including mercury. It is the hyle which the divine act of creation brought forth from the chaos as a dark sphere (sphaericum opus:) ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 433

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 cosmogony of Empedokles is also of importance: here the (spherical being) springs from the union of dissimilars. The definition of this spherical being as “most serene God,” sheds a special light on the perfect, “round” nature of the lapis, which arises from, and constitutes, the primal sphere; hence the prima materia is often called lapis ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 433

The initial state is the hidden state, but by the art and the grace of God it can be transmuted into the second, manifest state. That is why the prima materia sometimes coincides with the idea of the initial stage of the process, the nigredo. It is then the black earth in which the gold or the lapis is sown like the grain of wheat (cf. fig. 048). It is the black, magically fecund earth that Adam took with him from Paradise, also called antimony and described as “black blacker than black” (nigrum nigrius nigro) Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 433

Alchemy was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the same time spirit. In this it finds common ground with Chinese alchemy, as we have learned from the text of The Secret of the Golden Flower. There the main concern is the “diamond body,” in other words, the attainment of immortality through the transformation of the body ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511

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

In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; CW 12; Page 202.

I wish everybody could be freed from the burden of their sins by the Church. But he to whom she cannot render this service must bend very low in the imitation of Christ in order to take the burden of his cross upon him. The ancients could get along with the Greek wisdom of the ages: “Exaggerate nothing, all good lies in right measure.” But what an abyss still separates us from reason! ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 37

If the theologian really believes in the almighty power of God on the one hand and in the validity of dogma on the other, why then does he not trust God to speak in the soul. Why this fear of psychology? Or is, in complete contradiction to dogma, the soul itself a hell from which only demons gibber.” Even if this were really so it would not be any the less convincing; for as we all know the horrified perception of the reality of evil has led to at least as many conversions as the experience of good. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 19

This objectivity is just what my psychology is most blamed for: it is said not to decide in favour of this or that religious doctrine. Without prejudice to my own subjective convictions I should like to raise the question: Is it not thinkable that when one refrains from setting oneself up as an arbiter mundi and, deliberately renouncing all subjectivism, cherishes on the contrary the belief, for instance, that God has expressed himself in many languages and appeared in divers forms and that all these statements are true—is it not thinkable,

I say, that this too is a decision? The objection raised, more particularly by Christians, that it is impossible for contradictory statements to be true, must permit itself to be politely asked: Does one equal three? How can three be one?  Can a mother be a virgin? And so on. Has it not yet been observed that all religious statements contain logical contradictions and assertions that are impossible in principle, that this is in fact the essence of religious assertion? ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18

Religious symbols are phenomena of life, plain facts and not intellectual opinions. If the Church clung for so long to the idea that the sun rotates round the earth, and then abandoned this contention in the nineteenth century, she can always appeal to the psychological truth that for millions of people the sun did revolve round the earth and that it was only in the nineteenth century that any major portion of mankind became sufficiently sure of the intellectual function to grasp the proof of the earth’s planetary nature. Unfortunately there is no “truth” unless there are people to understand it. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 166

The Church represents a higher spiritual substitute for the purely natural, or “carnal,” tie to the parents. Consequently it frees the individual from an unconscious natural relationship which, strictly speaking, is not a relationship at all but simply a condition of inchoate, unconscious identity. This, just because it is unconscious, possesses a tremendous inertia and offers the utmost resistance to any kind of spiritual development. It would be hard to say what the essential difference is between this state and the soul of an animal.

With the methods employed hitherto we have not succeeded in Christianizing the soul to the point where even the most elementary demands of Christian ethics can exert any decisive influence on the main concerns of the Christian European. The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13

The pagan religions met this danger by giving drunken ecstasy a place within their cult. Heraclitus doubtless saw what was at the back of it when he said, “But Hades is that same Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat.” For this very reason orgies were granted religious licence, so as to exorcise the danger that threatened from Hades. Our solution, however, has served to throw the gates of hell wide open. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 182

The great events of our world as planned and executed by man do not breathe the spirit of Christianity but rather of unadorned paganism. These things originate in a psychic condition that has remained archaic and has not been even remotely touched by Christianity. The Church assumes, not altogether without reason, that the fact of semelcredidisse (having once believed) leaves certain traces behind it; but of these traces nothing is to be seen in the broad march of events.

Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside—in image and in word, in Church and Bible—but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 12

The competence of psychology as an empirical science only goes so far as to establish, on the basis of comparative research, whether for instance the imprint found in the psyche can or cannot reasonably be termed a “God-image.” Nothing positive or negative has thereby been asserted about the possible existence of God, any more than the archetype of the “hero” proves the actual existence of a hero. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 15

What does “wholeness” mean? I feel that there is every reason here for some anxiety, since man as a whole being casts a shadow. The fourth was not separated from the three and banished to the kingdom of everlasting fire for nothing. Does not an uncanonical saying of our Lord declare, “Whoso is near unto me is near unto the fire”? Such dire ambiguities are not meant for grown-up children —which is why Heraclitus of old was named “the dark,” because he spoke too plainly and called life itself an “ever-living fire.” And that is why there are uncanonical sayings for those that have ears to hear. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 297

The demand made by the imitatio Christi—that we should follow the ideal and seek to become like it—ought logically to have the result of developing and exalting the inner man. In actual fact, however, the ideal has been turned by superficial and formalistically-minded believers into an external object of worship, and it is precisely this veneration for the object that prevents it from reaching down into the depths of the psyche and giving the latter a wholeness in keeping with the ideal.

Accordingly the divine mediator stands outside as an image, while man remains fragmentary and untouched in the deepest part of him. Christ can indeed be imitated even to the point of stigmatization without the imitator coming anywhere near the ideal or its meaning. For it is not a question of an imitation that leaves a man unchanged and makes him into a mere artifact, but of realizing the ideal on one’s own account Deo concedente—in one’s own individual life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 7

Western man is held in thrall by the “ten thousand things”; he sees only particulars, he is ego-bound and thing-bound, and unaware of the deep root of all being. Eastern man, on the other hand, experiences the world of particulars, and even his own ego, like a dream; he is rooted essentially in the “Ground,” which attracts him so powerfully that his relations with the world are relativized to a degree that is often incomprehensible to us. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 8

The intellect may be the devil, but the devil is the “strange son of chaos” who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. The Dionysian experience will give this devil plenty to do should he be looking for work, since the resultant settlement with the unconscious far outweighs the labours of Hercules. In my opinion it presents a whole world of problems which the intellect could not settle even in a hundred years—the very reason why it has so often gone off on a holiday to recuperate on lighter tasks.

And this is also the reason why the psyche is forgotten so often and so long, and why the intellect makes such frequent use of magical, apotropaic words like “occult” and “mystic,” in the hope that even intelligent people will think these mutterings really mean something. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para119

Rational truths are not the last word, there are also irrational ones. In human affairs, what appears impossible by way of the intellect has often become true by way of the irrational. Indeed, all the greatest changes that have ever affected mankind have come not by way of intellectual calculation, but by ways which contemporary minds either ignored or rejected as absurd, and which were recognized only long afterwards because of their intrinsic necessity. More often than not they are never recognized at all, for the all-important laws of mental development are still a book with seven seals. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 135

In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man’s earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality. He is compounded not only of his best intuitions, his highest ideals and aspirations, but also of the odious conditions of his existence, such as heredity and the indelible sequence of memories which shout after him: “You did it, and that’s what you are!”

Man may have lost his ancient saurian’s tail, but in its stead he has a chain hanging on to his psyche which binds him to the earth—an anything but-Homeric chain of given conditions which weigh so heavy that it is better to remain bound to them, even at the risk of becoming neither a hero nor a saint.

(History gives us some justification for not attaching any absolute value to these collective norms.)

That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upwards but downwards as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 148

To remain a child too long is childish, but it is just as childish to move away and then assume that childhood no longer exists because we do not see it. But if we return to the “children’s land” we succumb to the fear of becoming childish, because we do not understand that everything of psychic origin has a double face. One face looks forward, the other back. It is ambivalent and therefore symbolic, like all living reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 74

The labours of the doctor as well as the quest of the patient are directed towards that hidden and as yet unmanifest “whole” man, who is at once the greater and the future man. But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.

It is on this longissima via that we meet with those experiences which are said to be “inaccessible.” Their inaccessibility really consists in the fact that they cost us an enormous amount of effort they demand the very thing we most fear, namely the “wholeness” which we talk about so glibly and which lends itself to endless theorizing, though in actual life we give it the widest possible berth. It is infinitely more popular to go in for “compartment psychology,” where the left-hand pigeon-hole does not know what is in the right. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 6

But in no circumstances may we anticipate that this meaning will fit in with any of our subjective expectations; for quite possibly, indeed very frequently, the dream is saying something surprisingly different from what we would expect. As a matter of fact, if the meaning we find in the dream happens to coincide with our expectations, that is a reason for suspicion; for as a rule the standpoint of the unconscious is complementary or compensatory to consciousness and thus unexpectedly “different.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 48

I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare. Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 48

The doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a sink of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones. Were it so, then God had made a sorry job of creation, and it were high time for us to go over to Marcion the Gnostic and depose the incompetent demiurge.

Ethically, of course, it is infinitely more convenient to leave God the sole responsibility for such a Home for Idiot Children, where no one is capable of putting a spoon into his own mouth. But it is worth man’s while to take pains with himself, and he has something in his own soul that can grow. It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 126

Whoever speaks of the reality of the soul or psyche is accused of “psychologism.” Psychology is spoken of as if it were “only” psychology and nothing else. The notion that there can be psychic factors which correspond to the divine figures is regarded as a devaluation o£ the latter.

It smacks of blasphemy to think that a religious experience is a psychic process; for, so it is argued, a religious experience “is not only psychological.” Anything psychic is only Nature and therefore, people think, nothing religious can come out of it. At the same time such critics never hesitate to derive all religions—with the exception of their own — from the nature of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 9

I do not underestimate the psyche in any respect whatsoever, nor do I imagine for a moment that psychic happenings vanish into thin air by being explained. Psychologism represents a still primitive mode of magical thinking, with the help of which one hopes to conjure the reality of the soul out of existence, after the manner of the “Proktophantasmist” in Faust: Are you still there? Nay, it’s a thing unheard. Vanish at once!  We’ve said the enlightening word. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 750

Were it not a fact of experience that supreme values reside in the soul (quite apart from the antimimon pneuma who is also there), psychology would not interest me in the least, for the soul would then be nothing but a miserable vapour.

I know, however, from hundredfold experience that it is nothing of the sort, but on the contrary contains the equivalents of everything that has been formulated in dogma and a good deal more, which is just what enables it to be an eye destined to behold the light. This requires limitless range and unfathomable depth of vision. I have been accused of “deifying the soul.” Not I but God himself has deified it! ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 14

I did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is natitraliter religiosa, i.e., possesses a religious function. I did not invent or insinuate this function; it produces itself of its own accord without being prompted thereto by any opinions or suggestions of mine.

With a truly tragic delusion theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. For it is obvious that far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figures and their own psyche they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images are lying dormant in their own unconscious.

In order to facilitate this inner vision we must first clear the way for the faculty of seeing. How this is to be done without psychology, that is, without making contact with the psyche, is, frankly, beyond my comprehension. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 14

The immortality of the soul insisted upon by dogma exalts it above the transitoriness of mortal man and causes it to partake of some supernatural quality. It thus infinitely surpasses the perishable, conscious individual in significance, so that logically the Christian is forbidden to regard the soul as a “nothing but.”

As the eye to the sun, so the soul corresponds to God. Since our conscious mind does not comprehend the soul it is ridiculous to speak of the things of the soul in a patronizing or depreciatory manner. Even the believing Christian does not know God’s hidden ways and must leave him to decide whether he will work on man from the outside or from within, through the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 11

The old alchemists were nearer to the central truth of the psyche than Faust when they strove to deliver the fiery spirit from the chemical elements and treated the mystery as though it lay in the dark and silent womb of nature. It was still outside them. The upward thrust of evolving consciousness was bound sooner or later to put an end to the projection, and to restore to the psyche what had been psychic from the beginning. Yet, ever since the Age of Enlightenment and in the era of scientific rationalism, what indeed was the psyche It had become synonymous with consciousness.

The psyche was “what I know.” There was no psyche outside the ego. Inevitably, then, the ego identified with the contents accruing from the withdrawal of projection. Gone were the days when the psyche was still for the most part “outside the body” and imagined “those greater things” which the body could not grasp. The contents that were formerly projected were now bound to appear as personal possessions, as chimerical phantasms of the ego-consciousness.

The fire chilled to air, and the air became the great wind of Zarathustra and caused an inflation of consciousness which, it seems, can be damped down only by the most terrible catastrophe to civilization, another deluge let loose by the gods upon inhospitable humanity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 562

All that is not encompassed by our knowledge, so that we are not in a position to make any statements about its total nature. Microphysics is feeling its way into the unknown side of matter; just as complex psychology is pushing forward into the unknown side of the psyche. Both lines of investigation have yielded findings which can be conceived only by means of antinomies, and both have developed concepts which display remarkable analogies. If this trend should become more pronounced in the future, the hypothesis of the unity of their subject-matters would gain in probability.

Of course there is little or no hope that the unitary Being can ever be conceived, since our powers of thought and language permit only of antinomian statements. But this much we do know beyond all doubt, that empirical reality has a transcendental background. It is a remarkable fact, which we come across again and again, that absolutely everybody, even the most unqualified layman, thinks he knows all about psychology as though the psyche were something that enjoyed the most universal understanding.

But anybody who really knows the human psyche will agree with me when I say that it is one of the darkest and most mysterious regions of our experience. There is no end to what can be learned in this field. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para

Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. Humanity, huddling behind the walls of its culture, believes it has escaped this experience, until it succeeds in letting loose another orgy of bloodshed. All well-meaning people are amazed and blame high finance, the armaments industry, the Jews, or the Freemasons. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 118

Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

The difficulty lies in striking the dead centre. For this an awareness of the two sides of man’s personality is essential, of their respective aims and origins. These two aspects must never be separated through arrogance or cowardice. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 148

We know of course that without sin there is no repentance and without repentance no redeeming grace, also that without original sin the redemption of the world could never have come about; but we assiduously avoid investigating whether in this very power of evil God may not have placed some special purpose which it is most important for us to know. One often feels driven to some such view when, like the psychotherapist, one has to deal with people who are confronted with their blackest shadow. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

Christianity has made the antinomy of good and evil into a world problem and, by formulating the conflict dogmatically, raised it to an absolute principle. Into this as yet unresolved conflict the Christian is cast as a protagonist of good, a fellow player in the world drama.

Understood in its deepest sense, being Christ’s follower involves a suffering that is unendurable to the great majority of mankind. Consequently the example of Christ is in reality followed either with reservation or not at all, and the pastoral practice of the Church even finds itself obliged to “lighten the yoke of Christ.” This means a pretty considerable reduction in the severity and harshness of the conflict and hence, in practice, a relativism of good and evil.

Good is equivalent to the unconditional imitation of Christ and evil is its hindrance. Man’s moral weakness and sloth are what chiefly hinder the imitation, and it is to these that probabilism extends a practical understanding which may sometimes, perhaps, come nearer to Christian tolerance, mildness, and love of one’s neighbour than the attitude of those who see in probabilism a mere laxity. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 25

On paper the moral code looks clear and neat enough; but the same document written on the “living tables of the heart” is often a sorry tatter, particularly in the mouths of those who talk the loudest. We are told on every side that evil is evil and that there can be no hesitation in condemning it, but that does not prevent evil from being the most problematical thing in the individual’s life and the one which demands the deepest reflection.

What above all deserves our keenest attention is the question “Exactly who is the doer?” For the answer to this question ultimately decides the value of the deed. It is true that society attaches greater importance at first to what is done, because it is immediately obvious; but in the long run the right deed in the hands of the wrong man will also have a disastrous effect.  No one who is far-sighted will allow himself to be hoodwinked by the right deed by the wrong man, any more than by the wrong deed of the right man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 36

As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 12: Page 32.

It would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest Himself everywhere save only in the human soul. Indeed the very intimacy of the relationship between Cod and the soul automatically precludes any devaluation of the latter. It would be going perhaps too far to speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself the faculty of relation to God, i.e. a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about This correspondence is, in psychological terms, the archetype of the God-image [q.v.]” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, par. 11.

Christ espoused the sinner and did not condemn him. The true follower of Christ will do the same, and, since one should do unto others as one would do unto oneself, one will also take the part of the sinner who is oneself. And as little as we would accuse Christ of fraternizing with evil, so little should we reproach ourselves that to love the sinner who is oneself is to make a pact with the devil. Love makes a man better; hate makes him worse—even when that man is oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 37

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not—which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. The unconscious is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to drill it are only apparently successful, and moreover harmful to consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 51

The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives. Since “the soul is by nature Christian” this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus we all have to be “crucified with Christ,” i.e., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to veritable crucifixion.

In practice this is only possible up to a point, and apart from that is so unbearable and inimical to life that the ordinary human being can afford to get into such a state only occasionally, in fact as seldom as possible. For how he could remain ordinary in the face of such suffering! ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24

The one great exception is Christ. As, the Son of Man, and as the Son of God, he embodies the God-man; and as an incarnation of the Logos by ‘pneumatic” impregnation, he is an avatar of the divine Nous. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 412

Once they have been activated, the regius filius—spirit, Logos, Nous—is swallowed up by Physis; that is to say, the body and the psychic representatives of the organs gain mastery over the conscious mind. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 440

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. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 452

We have seen that the “heavenly horn of the moon” is closely connected with the unicorn. Here it means not only “Geryon of the threefold body” and the Jordan, but the hermaphroditic Man as well, who is identical with the Johannine Logos. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 551

The content is the water that Jesus changed into wine, and the water is also represented by the Jordan, which signifies the Logos, thus bringing out the analogy with the Chalice.  ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 551