The soul stands between good and evil and has the “option” of both.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Although the esoteric symbolism of the coniunctio occupies a prominent position, it does not cover all aspects of the mysterium.
In addition we have to consider the symbolism of death and the grave, and the motif of conflict.
Obviously, very different if not contradictory symbolisms were needed to give an adequate description of the paradoxical nature of the conjunction.
In such a situation one can conclude with certainty that none of the symbols employed suffices to express the whole.
One therefore feels compelled to seek a formula in which the various aspects can be brought together without contradiction.
Dorn attempted to do this with the means that were then at his disposal.
He could do so the more easily as the current idea of correspondentia came to his aid.
For a man of those times there was no intellectual difficulty in postulating a “truth” which was the same in God, in man, and in matter.
With the help of this idea he could see at once that the reconciliation of hostile elements
and the union of alchemical opposites formed a “correspondence” to the unio mentalis which took place simultaneously in the mind of man, and not only in man but in God (“that He may be one in All”).
Dorn correctly recognized that the entity in which the union took place is the psychological authority which I have called the self.
The unto mentalis, the interior oneness which today we call individuation, he conceived as a psychic equilibration of opposites “in the overcoming of the body,” a state of equanimity transcending the body’s affectivity and instinctuality.
The spirit (animus), which is to unite with the soul, he called a “spiracle [spiraculum] of eternal life,” a sort of “window into eternity” (Leibniz), whereas the soul is an organ of the spirit and the body an instrument of the soul.
The soul stands between good and evil and has the “option” of both.
It animates the body by a “natural union,” just as, by a “supernatural union,” it is endowed with life by the spirit.
~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 670
