Carl Jung |Psychology and Alchemy| audiobook

Psychology and Alchemy by Carl G young Audi book created by lug prefatory note to the English edition to the reader who knows little or nothing of my work a word of explanation may be helpful some 35 years ago I noticed to my amazement that European and American men and women coming to me for psychological advice were producing in their dreams and Fantasies symbols similar to and often Identical with the symb found in the mystery religions of antiquity in mythology folklore fairy tales and the Apparently meaningless formulations of such esoteric Cults as Alchemy experience showed moreover

that these symbols brought with them new energy and new life to the people to whom they came from long and careful comparison and Analysis of these products of the unconscious I was led to postulate a collective unconscious a Source of energy and insight in the depth of the human and psyche which has operated in and through man from the earliest periods of which we have records in this present study of alchemy I have taken a particular example of symbol formation extending in all over some 17 centuries and have subjected it to intensive examination linking it

at the same time with an actual series of Dreams recorded by a modern European not under my direct supervision and having No knowledge of what the symbols appearing in the dreams might mean It Is by such intensive comparisons as this and not one but many that the hypothesis of the collective unconscious of an activity in the human psyche making for the spiritual development of the individual human being may be scientifically established introduction to the religious and psychological problems of alchemy the bruised Reed he shall not break and the Smoking flax he shall not quench Isaias

423 for the reader familiar with analytical psychology there is no need of any introductory remarks to the subject of the following study but for the reader whose interest is not professional and who comes to this book unprepared some kind of preface will probably be necessary the concepts of alchemy and the individuation process are matters that seem to lie very far apart so that The imagination finds it impossible at first to conceive of any bridge between them to this reader I owe an explanation more particularly as I have had one or two experiences since the publication

of my recent lectures which lead me to infer a certain bewilderment in my critics what I now have to put forward as regards the nature of the human psyche is based first and foremost on my observations of people it has been objected that these observations deal With experiences that are either unknown or barely accessible 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 anyone 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 hardly a day passes in my practice but I come across something new and unexpected true enough my experiences are not common places lying on the surface of Life they are however within easy reach of every psychotherapist working in this particular field it is therefore rather absurd to say the least that ignorance of the experiences I have to offer should be twisted

into an accusation Against me I do not hold myself responsible for the shortcomings in the lay Public's knowledge of psychology there is in the analytical process that is to say in the dialectical discussion between the conscious mind and the unconscious a development or an advance towards some goal or end the perplexing nature of which has engaged my attention for many years psychological treatment may come to an end at any stage in the Development without one's always or necessarily having the feeling that a goal has also been reached typical and temporary terminations may occur one after

receiving a piece of good advice two after making a fairly complete but nevertheless adequate confession three after having recognized some hitherto unconscious but essential psychic content whose realization gives a new impetus to one's life and activity four after a hardw separation from the Childhood psyche five after having worked out a new and rational mode of adaptation to perhaps difficult or unusual circumstances and surroundings six after The Disappearance of painful symptoms seven after some positive turn of Fortune such as an examination engagement marriage divorce change of profession etc8 after having found one's way back to the

church or Creed to which one previously belonged or after a conversion and finally nine after having Begun to build up a practical philosophy of Life a philosophy in the classical sense of the word 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 defini 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 and here's the often highly remarkable account of their subsequent Development 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 in as much as no amount of argu 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

although the early days of analysis now lie nearly half a century Behind us with their pseudo biological interpretations and their depreciation of the whole process of psychic development memories die hard and people are still very fond of describing a lengthy analysis as running away from Life unresolved transference autoeroticism and by other equally unpleasant epithets but since there are two sides to everything it is legitimate to condemn this so-called hanging on as negative to life only if it can be shown That it really does contain nothing positive the very understandable impatience felt by the doctor does

not prove anything in itself only through infinitely patient research has the new science succeeded in building up a profounder knowledge of the nature of the psyche and if there have been certain unexpected therapeutic results these are due to the self-sacrificing perseverance of the doctor unjustifiably negative judgments Are easily come by and at times harmful moreover they arouse the suspicion of being a mere cloak for ignorance if not an attempt to evade the responsibility of a thoroughgoing analysis for since the analytical work must inevitably lead sooner or later to a fundamental discussion between I and you

and you and I on a plane stripped of all human pretenses it is very likely indeed it is almost certain that not only the patient but the doctor as well Will find the situation getting under his skin 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 this hanging on as it is called may be something undesired by both parties something incomprehensible and even unendurable without necessarily being negative to life on the contrary it

can Easily be a positive hanging on which although it constitutes an apparently insurmountable obstacle represents just for that reason a unique situation that demands the maximum effort and therefore enlists the energies of the whole man in fact one could say that while the patient is unconsciously and unswervingly seeking the solution to some ultimately insoluble problem the art and technique of the doctor are doing their best to help him towards It ARS totem required hominum exclaims an old Alchemist it is just this homo totus whom we seek the labors 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 longisa not straight but snake-like a path that unites the Opposites in the manner of The Guiding caducus a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in Terrors it is on this long jisim 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 birth Port one it is infinitely more popular to go in for compartment psychology where the left-and pigeon hole does not know what is in the right I am afraid that we cannot hold the unconsciousness and impotence of the individual entirely responsible for this state of affairs it is due also to the general psychological education

of the European not only is this education the proper concern of the ruling religions It belongs to their very nature for religion excels all rationalistic systems in that it alone relates to the outer and inner man in equal degree we can accuse Christianity of Arrested Development if we are determined to excuse our own shortcomings but I do not wish to make the mistake of blaming religion for something that is due mainly to human incompetence I am speaking therefore not of the deepest and best understanding of Christianity but of the superficialities and disastrous misunderstandings that are

plain for all to see the demand made by the imitatia Christie that we should follow the ideal and seek to become like it ought logically to have the result of developing and exalting the man in actual fact however the ideal has been turned by superficial and formalistic 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 consente in one's own individual life we must not forget however that even a mistaken imitation May sometimes involve a tremendous moral effort which has all the merits of a total surrender to some Supreme value even

though the real goal may never be reached and the value is represented externally it is conceivable that by virtue of this total effort a man may Even catch a fleeting glimpse of his wholeness accompanied by the feeling of Grace that always characterizes this experience the mistaken idea of a merely outward imitatia Christi is further exacerbated by a typically European Prejudice which distinguishes the Western attitude from the eastern western man is held inthrall by the 10,000 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 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 it Is this Prejudice for instance which impels the Protestant interpreters of the Bible to interpret image referring to the

kingdom of God as among you instead of within you I do not mean to say anything about the validity of the western attitude we are sufficiently convinced of its rightness but if we try to come to a real understanding of Eastern man as the psychologist must we find it hard to rid ourselves of certain misgivings anyone Who can square it with his conscience is free to decide this question as he pleases though he may be unconsciously setting himself up as an Arbiter Mundy 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 Christ the ideal took upon himself the sins of the world but if the ideal is wholly outside then the of the individual are also outside and consequently he is more of a fragment Than ever since superficial misunderstanding conveniently enables him quite literally to cast his sins upon Christ and thus to evade his deepest responsibilities which is contrary to the spirit of Christianity such formalism and laxity were not only one of the Prime causes of the Reformation they are also present within the body of

protestantism if the Supreme value Christ and the Supreme negation sin are Outside then the Soul Is void its highest and lowest are missing the Eastern attitude more particularly the Indian is the other way about everything highest and lowest is in the transcendental subject accordingly the significance of the Aton the self is heightened beyond all bounds but with Western man the value of the self sinks to zero hence the universal depreciation of the soul in the west 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 Divine figures is regarded as a devaluation of 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 it is a telling fact that

two theological reviewers of my book psychology and religion one of them Catholic the other Protestant assiduously overlooked my demonstration of the psychic origin of religious Phenomena faced with this situation we must really ask how do we know so much about the psyche that we can say only psychic for this is how Western man whose soul is evidently of little worth speaks and thinks if much were in his soul he would speak of it with reverence but since he does not do so we can only conclude that there is nothing of value in it not that

this is necessarily so always and everywhere but only with people who put nothing into their souls And have all God outside a little more M eart would be a very good thing sometimes an exclusively religious projection May Rob the soul of its values so that through sheer inanition it becomes incapable of further development and gets stuck in an unconscious State at the same time it falls victim to the delusion that the cause of all Misfortune lies outside and people no longer stop to ask themselves how far it is their own doing so Insignificant does the

soul seem that it is regarded as hardly capable of evil much less of good but if the soul no longer has any part to play religious life congeal into externals and formalities however we may picture the relationship between God and soul one thing is certain that the soul cannot be nothing but three on the contrary it has the Dignity of an entity endowed with consciousness of a relationship to deity even if it were only the relationship of A drop of water to the sea that sea would not exist but for the multitude of drops 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 outside or from within through the soul so the believer should not Boggle at the fact that there are somnia adoma dreams sent by God and illuminations of the Soul which cannot be traced back to any External causes 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 God and the soul precludes from the start 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 relationship 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 every archetype is capable of endless development and differentiation it is therefore possible for it to be more developed or less 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 his deciding motive his ruling interests and impulses do not spring from the sphere of Christianity but from the unconscious and undeveloped psyche which is as Pagan And archaic as ever not the individual alone but the sum total of individual lives in a nation proves the truth of this contention 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 sarius 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 that is to say the inner correspondence with the outer God image is undeveloped for lack of psychological culture and has therefore got stuck in heathenism Christian education has done all that is humanly possible but it has Not been enough too few people have experience the Divine image as the innermost possession of their own Souls Christ only meets them from without never from within the soul that is why dark paganism still Reigns there a paganism which

now in a form so blatant that it can no longer be denied and now in all too threadbear disguise is swamping the world of so-called Christian civilization with the methods employed hither to we have not succeeded In christianizing the soul to the point where even the most ele 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 Christianity must indeed Begin Again from

the very beginning if it is to meet its high Educative task so long as religion is only faith and outward form and the religious function is not experienced in our own Souls nothing of any importance has happened it has yet to be understood that the mysterium Magnum is not only an actuality but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche 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 yet when I point out that the

soul possesses by Nature a religious function seven and when I stipulate that it is the prime task of all education of adults to convey the archetype of the god image or its emanations and effects to the conscious mind then it is precisely the Theologian who seizes me by the arm and accuses me of psychologism but were it not a fact of experience that Supreme values reside in the soul quite apart from the who is Also there psychology would not interest me in the least for the soul would then be nothing but a miserable Vapor I

know however from hundredfold experience that it is nothing of the sort but on the contrary contains the equivalence 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 I did not attribute a religious function to the soul I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is natural religios I.E possesses a religious function

I did not invent or insinuate this function it produces itself of its own accord without being prompted ther too by any opinions or suggestions of mine with a truly tragic delusion these 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 realize 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 compreh apprehension another equally serious misunderstanding lies in imputing to psychology the wish to be a new and possibly heretical Doctrine if a blind man can

gradually be helped to see it is Not to be expected that he will at once discern new truths with an Eagle Eye one must be glad if he sees anything at all and if he begins to understand what he sees psychology is concerned with the act of seeing and not with the construction of new religious truths when even the existing teachings have not yet been perceived and understood in religious matters it is a well-known fact that we cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly For it is in the inward experience that the

connection between the psyche and the outward image or Creed is first revealed as a relationship or correspondence like that of sponsus and sponsa accordingly when I say as a psychologist that God is an archetype I mean by that the type in the psyche the word type is as we know derived from blow or imprint thus an archetype presupposes an imprinter psychology as the science of The Soul has to confine itself to its subject and guard against overstepping its proper boundaries by metaphysical assertions or other professions of Faith should it set up a god even as

a hypothetical cause it would have implicitly claimed the possibility of proving God thus exceeding its competence in an absolutely illegitimate way science can only be science there are no scientific professions of faith and similar contradictions in Adicto we simply do not know the ultimate derivation of the archetype anymore than we know the origin of the psyche 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 posits the actual existence of a hero now if my psychological researches have demonstrated the existence of certain psychic types and their correspondence with well-known religious ideas then we have opened up a possible approach to those experienceable contents which manifestly and undeniably form the empirical foundations of all religious experience the religious-minded man is free to accept whatever metaphysical Explanations he pleases about the origin of these images not so the intellect which must keep strictly to the Principles

of Scientific interpretation and avoid trespassing beyond the bounds of what can be known nobody can prevent The Believer from accepting God perusia the Atman or taao as the prime cause and thus putting an end to the fundamental disquiet of man the scientist is a scrupulous worker he cannot take Heaven by storm Should he allow himself to be seduced into such an extravagance he would be sawing off the branch on which he sits the fact is that with the knowledge and actual experience of these inner images a way is opened for reason and feeling to gain

access to those other images which the teachings of religion offer to mankind psychology thus does just the opposite of what it is accused of it provides possible approaches to a better understanding of these things it opens People's eyes to to the real meaning of dogmas and far from destroying it throws open an empty house to new inhabitants I can corroborate this from countless experiences people belonging to Creeds of all imaginable kinds who had played the apostate or cooled off in their faith have found a new approach to their old truths not a few Catholics among

them even a par SE found the way back to the zoroastrian fire temple which should bear witness to the Objectivity of my point of view but this objectivity is just what my psychology is most blamed for it is said not to decide in favor 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 Mundy and deliberately renouncing all subjectivism cherishes on the contrary the belief for Instance that God has expressed himself

in many languages and appeared in diverse 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 in fact the very essence of religious

assertion as witness to this we have tertullian's a vowel and the Son of God is dead which is worthy of belief because it is absurd and when buried he rose again which is certain because it is impossible if Christianity demands faith in such contradictions it does not seem to me that it can very well condemn Those who assert a few paradoxes more oddly enough the Paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness 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 non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus Unsuited to express the incomprehensible not everyone possesses the spiritual strength of a tertullian it is evident not only that he had the strength to sustain paradox boes but that they actually afforded him the highest degree of religious certainty the inordinate number of spiritual weaklings makes paradoxes dangerous so long as the Paradox remains unexamined and is taken for granted as a customary part of life it is harmless Enough but when it occurs to

an insufficiently cultivated mind always as we know the most sure of itself to make the paradoxical nature of some tenant of Faith the object of its lucubrations as Earnest as they are impotent it is not long before such a one will break out into iconoclastic and scornful laughter pointing to the Manifest absurdity of the mystery things have gone rapidly downhill since the Age of Enlightenment For once this Petty reasoning mind which cannot endure any paradoxes is awakened no sermon on Earth can keep it down a new task then arises to lift this still undeveloped mind

step by step to a higher level and to increase the number of persons who have at least some inkling of the scope of paradoxical truth if this is not possible then it must be admitted that the spiritual approaches to Christianity are as good as Blocked we simply do not understand anymore what is meant by the paradoxes contained in dogma and the more external our understanding of them becomes the more we are affronted by their irrationality until finally they become completely obsolete curious relics of the past the man who is stricken in this way cannot estimate

the extent of his spiritual loss because he has never Experienced the sacred images as his inmost possession and has never realized their kinship with his own psychic structure but it is just this indispensable knowledge that the psychology of the unconscious can give him and its scientific objectivity is of the greatest value here where psychology bound to a Creed it would not and could not allow the unconscious of the individual that free play which is the basic condition for the production of Archetypes it is precisely the spontaneity of archetypal contents that convinces whereas any prejudiced intervention

is a bar to genuine experience 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 the archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalence of religious dogmas in the hermeneutic language of the fathers the church possesses a rich store of analogies with the individual and spontaneous products to be found in Psychology what the the unconscious expresses is far from being merely arbitrary or opinionated it is precisely the spontaneity of archetypal contents that convinces whereas any prejudiced intervention is a bar to genuine experience 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 the archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalence of religious dogmas in the hermeneutic language of the fathers

the church possesses a rich Store of analogies with the individual and spontaneous products to be found in psychology what the unconscious expresses is far from being merely arbitrary or opinionated it is something that happens to be just so as is the case with every other natural being it stands to reason that the expressions of the unconscious are natural and not formulated dogmatically they are exactly like the patristic allegories which draw the Whole of nature into the orbit of their amplifications if these present us with some astonishing allegoria Christi we find much the same sort of

thing in the psychology of the unconscious the only difference is that the patristic allegory ad christum spectat refers to Christ whereas the psychic archetype is simply itself and can therefore be interpreted according to time place and milu in the west the archetype is filled out with the Dogmatic figure of Christ in the East with perusia the Atman hiran Garba the Buddha and so on the religious point of view understandably enough puts the ACC on the imprinter whereas scientific psychology emphasizes the typos the imprint the only thing it can understand the religious point of view understands

the imprint as the working of an imprinter the scientific point of view understands it as the symbol of an unknown and incomprehensible content Since the typos is less definite and more variegated than any of the figures postulated by religion psychology is compelled by its empirical material to express the typos by means of a terminology not bound by time place or milu if for example the typos agreed in every detail with the dogmatic figure of Christ and if it contained no determinant that went beyond that figure we would be bound to regard the typos as at

least a faithful copy of the dogmatic Figure and to name it accordingly the typos would then coincide with Christ but as experience shows this is not the case seeing that the unconscious like the allegories employed by the church Church fathers produces countless other determinants that are not explicitly contained in the dogmatic formula that is to say non-Christian figures such as those mentioned above are included in the typos but neither do these figures Comply with the indeterminate nature of the archetype it is altogether inconceivable that there could be any definite figure capable of expressing archetypal indefiniteness

for this reason I have found myself obliged to give the corresponding archetyp type the psychological name of the self a term on the one hand definite enough to convey the essence 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 a reflection of the fact that wholeness consists partly of the conscious man and partly of the unconscious man but we cannot Define the latter or indicate his boundaries hence in its scientific usage the term self refers neither to Christ

nor to the Buddha but to the totality of the figures that are Its equivalent and each of these figures is a symbol of the self this mode of expression is an intellectual necessity in scientific psychology and in no sense denotes a transcendental Prejudice on the contrary as we have said before this objective attitude enables one man to decide in favor of the determinant Christ another in favor of the Buddha and so on those who are irritated by this objectivity should reflect that science Is quite impossible without it consequently by denying psychology the right to objectivity

they are making an untimely attempt to extinguish the lifel light of a science even if such a Preposterous attempt were to succeed it would only widen the already catastrophic Gulf between the secular mind on the one hand and church and religion on the other it is quite understandable for a science to concentrate more less exclusively on its Subject indeed that is its absolute raison dator since the concept of the self is of central interest in Psychology the latter naturally thinks along lines diametrically opposed to theology for psychology the religious figures point to the self whereas

for theology the self points to its theology's own central figure in other words theology might possibly take the psychological self as an allegory of Christ this opposition is no doubt very Irritating but unfortunately inevitable unless psychology is to be denied the right to exist at all I therefore plead for tolerance nor is this very hard for psychology since as a science it makes no totalitarian claims the Christ symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self apart from the figure

of the 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 aspects of this archetype the almost Limitless range of the self might be deemed a disadvantage as compared with the definit of a religious figure but it is by no means the task of science to pass value judgments not only is the self Indefinite but paradoxically enough it also includes the quality of death definiteness and even of

uniqueness 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 personality especially when conjoined to an indeterminable divine nature is consistent with the absolute Individuality of the self which combines uniqueness with eternity and the individual with the universal the self is a union of opposites par excellence and this is where it differs essentially from the Christ symbol the androgyny of Christ is the utmost consession the church has made to the problem of

opposites the opposition between light and good on the one hand and darkness And Evil on the other is left in a state of open conflict since Christ simply represents good and his counterpart the devil evil this opposition is the real world problem which at present is still unsolved the self however is is absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis and at the same time synthesis psychological proofs of this assertion abound though it is impossible for me to quote them here in Extenso I would refer the knowledgeable reader to the symbolism

of the mandala once the exploration of the unconscious has led the conscious mind to an experience of the archetype the individual is confronted with the abysmal contradictions of human nature and this confrontation in turn leads to the possibility of a direct experience of light and darkness of Christ and the devil For Better or Worse there is only a bare possibility of this and not a Guarantee for experiences of this kind cannot have necessity be induced by any human means there are factors to be considered which are not under our control experience of the Opposites has

nothing whatever to do with intellectual Insight or with empathy it is more what we would call fate such an experience can convince one person of the truth of Christ another of the truth of the Buddha to the exclusion of all other evidence without the experience of the Opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures for this reason Christianity rightly insists on sinfulness and original sin with the obvious intent of opening up the abyss of universal opposition in every individual at least from the outside but this method is

bound to break down in the case of a moderately alert intellect Dogma is then simply no longer Believed and on top of that is thought absurd such an intellect is merely one-sided and sticks at the inep mysteri it is miles from tertullian's antinomies in fact it is quite incapable of enduring the suffering such a tension involves cases are not unknown where the rigorous exercises and prings of the Catholics and a certain type of Protestant education that is always sniffing out sin have brought about psychic damage that leads not to the Kingdom of heaven but to

the Consulting room of the doctor although insight into the problem of opposites is absolutely imperative there are very few people who can stand it in practice a fact which has not escaped the notice of the confessional by way of a reaction to this we have the paliative of moral probabilism a doctrine that has suffered frequent attack from all quarters because it tries to mitigate the crushing effect of Sin whatever one may think of this phenomenon one thing is certain that apart from anything else it holds within it a large humanity and an understanding of human

weakness which compensate for the world's unbearable antinomies the tremendous Paradox implicit in the insistence on original sin on the one hand and the concession made by probabilism on the other is for the psychologist a necessary AR consequence of the Christian problem of Opposites outlined above for in the self good and evil are indeed closer than identical twins 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 could he remain ordinary in face of such suffering a more or less probabilistic attitude to the problem of evil is therefore unavoidable hence the truth about the Self the

unfathomable Union of Good and Evil comes out concretely in the Paradox that although sin is the gravest and most pernicious thing there is it is still not so serious that it cannot be disposed of with probabilist arguments nor is this necessarily A LAX or frivolous proceeding but simply a practical necessity of Life the confessional proceeds like life itself which successfully struggles against being engulfed in an irreconcilable Contradiction note that at the same time the conflict remains in full force as is once more consistent with the antinomial character of the self which is itself both conflict

and unity Christianity has made the antinomy of Good and Evil into a world problem 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 neighbor than the attitude of those who see in probabilism a mere Laxity although one must concede a number of cardinal Christian virtues to the

probest Endeavor one must still not Overlook the fact that it obviates much of the suffering in involved in the imitation of Christ and that the conflict of Good and Evil is thus robbed of its harshness and toned down to tolerable proportions this brings about an approach to the psychic archetype of the self where even these opposites seem to Be United though as I say it differs from the Christian symbolism which leaves the conflict open for the latter there is a rift running through the world light Wars against Knight and the upper against the lower the

two are not one as they are in the psychic archetype but even though religious Dogma May condemn the idea of two being one religious practice does as we have seen allow the natural psychological symbol of the self at one with itself an Approximate means of expression on the other hand Dogma insists that three are one while denying that four are one since olden times not only in the west but also in China uneven numbers have been regarded as masculine and even numbers as feminine the Trinity is therefore a decidedly masculine deity of which the androgyny

of Christ and the special position and veneration accorded to the mother of God are not the real Equivalent with this statement which may strike the reader as peculiar we come to one of the central axioms of alchemy namely the saying of Maria propesa one becomes two two becomes three and out of the third comes the one as the fourth as the reader has already seen from from its title this book is concerned with the psychological significance of alchemy and thus with a problem which with very few exceptions has so far eluded scientific Research until quite

recently science was interested only in the part that Alchemy played in the history of chemistry concerning itself very little with the part it played in the history of philosophy and religion the importance of alchemy for the historical development of chemistry is obvious but its cultural importance is still so little known that it seems almost impossible to say in a few words wherein that Consisted in this introduction therefore I have attempted to outline the religious and psychological problems which are gerine to the theme of alchemy the point is that Alchemy is rather like an undercurrent to

the Christianity that ruled on the surface 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 Endeavors to f in the gaps left open by the Christian Tension of opposites perhaps the most pregnant expression of this is the Axiom of Maria prophetis quoted above which runs like a light motive throughout almost the whole of the lifetime of alchemy extending over more than 17 centuries in this aphorism the even numbers which signify the feminine principle Earth the regions under the Earth and

evil itself are interpolated between the uneven numbers of the Christian dogma They are personified by the serpent mercurii the dragon that creates and destroys itself and represents the primma Materia this fundamental idea of alchemy points back to the Tome to Tiamat with her Dragon attribute and thus to the primordial matriarchal World which in the theomachy of the Marduk myth was overthrown by the masculine world of the Father the historical shift in the world's Consciousness towards the Masculine is compensated at first by the cathic femin inity of the unconscious in certain pre-christian religions the differentiation of

the masculine principle had taken the form of the fatherson specification a change which was to be of the utmost importance for Christianity were the unconscious merely complimentary this shift 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 demer and pany but as Alchemy shows the unconscious chose rather the ciliatus type in the form of the Prima Materia and the filus macrocosm thus proving that it is not complimentary but compensatory this goes to show that the unconscious does not

simply act contrary to the conscious mind but modifies it More in the manner of an opponent or partner the sun type does not call up a daughter as a complimentary image from the depths of the konic unconscious it calls up another Sun this remarkable fact would seem to be connected with the Incarnation in our Earthly human nature of a purely spiritual God brought about by the Holy Ghost impregnating the womb of the Blessed Virgin 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 masculine principle and with the aid of the human Spirit Alchemy or the philosophy produces a sun not the antithesis of Christ but rather his thonic 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 Sun so the lower sun has the function of A Salvador macrocosm 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 masculine principle of the father world were approximating to the Feminine 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 I hope

the reader will not be offended if my Exposition sounds like a gnostic myth we are moving in those psychological regions where as a matter Of fact gnosis is rooted the message of the Christian symbol is gnosis and the compensation affected by the unconscious issis in 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 are concerned with the primordial images and these are best and most succinctly reproduced by figurative Language the process described above displays all the

characteristic features of psychological compensation 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 it is not a question of mere Optical reflection but of an autonomous answer which reveals the self-sufficing nature of that which Answers thus the philus 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 thonic 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 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 this answer of the mother World shows that the gulf between it and the father world is not unbridgeable seeing that the unconscious holds the seed of the unity of both the essence of the conscious mind is discrimination it must if

it is to be aware of things separate the Opposites And it does this contr naturum in nature the Opposites seek one another less extrem to touch and so it is in the unconscious and particularly in the archetype of unity the self here as in the deity the Opposites cancel out but as soon as the unconscious begins to manifest itself they split aunder as at the creation for Every Act of dawning Consciousness is a creative act and it is from this psychological experience that all our cosmogonic symbols are Derived Alchemy is preeminently 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 of unity has a trinitarian character in Christian Alchemy and a triatic 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 by an unconsciousness of the inferior function

the number three is not a natural expression of wholeness since four represents the minimum number of determinance 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 over again even in the Axiom of Maria propesa the quaternity is muffled and alembicated in alchy there are three as well as four regima or procedures three as well as four colors there are always four elements but often three of

them are grouped together with the fourth in a special position sometimes Earth sometimes fire mercurious 13 is of Course quadratus but he is also a three-headed snake or simply a trunity this uncertainty has a duplex character in other words the central ideas are tary 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 with the collective unconscious that on becoming conscious It brings up among others the archetype of the self as well toet tin

as Maria propesa says for 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 I began my introduction with human wholeness as the goal to which the psychotherapeutic process ultimately Leads this question is inextricably bound up with one's philosophical or religious assumptions even when as frequently happens the patient believes himself to be quite unprejudiced in this respect the assumptions underlying his thought mode of Life

morale and language are historically conditioned down to the Last Detail a fact of which he is often kept unconscious by lack of Education combined with lack of Self-criticism the analysis of his situation will therefore lead sooner or later to a clarification of his General spiritual background going far beyond his personal determinance and this brings up the problems I have attempted to sketch in the preceding Pages this phase of the process is marked by the production of symbols of unity the so-called mandalas which occur either in dreams or in the form of concrete visual Impressions often

as the Most obvious compensation of the contradictions and conflicts of the conscious situation it would hardly be correct to say that the gaping Rift 14 in the Christian order of things is responsible for this since it is easy to show that Christian symbol symbolism is particularly concerned with healing or attempting to heal this very wound it would be more correct to take the open conflict as a symptom of the psychic Situation of Western man and to deplore his inability to assimilate the whole range of the Christian symbol as a doctor I cannot demand anything of

my patience in this respect also I lack the church's means of Grace consequently I am faced with the task of taking the only path open to me the archetypal image Imes which in a certain sense correspond to the dogmatic images must be brought into Consciousness at the same time I must Leave my patient to decide in accordance with his assumptions his spiritual maturity his education Origins and temperament so far as this is possible without serious conflicts 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 coer 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 I I would be only too

delighted to leave this anything but Easy task to the Theologian were it not that it is just from the Theologian that many of my patients come they ought to have hung on to the community of the church but they were shed like dry leaves from the great tree and now find themselves hanging on to the treatment something in them clings often with the strength of Despair as if they or the thing they cling to would drop off into the void the moment they relaxed their hold They are seeking firm ground on which to stand since

no outward support is of any use to them they must finally Discover it in themselves admittedly the most unlikely place from the rational point of view but an altogether possible one from the point of view of the unconscious we can see this from the archetype of the lowly origin of the Redeemer the way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first and only gradually do the signs Increase that it is leading anywhere the way is not straight but appears to go round in circles more accurate knowledge has proved it to go in spirals the

dream motifs always return after certain intervals to definite forms whose characteristic it is to define a center and as a matter of fact the whole process revolves about a central point or some arrangement around a center which may in certain circumstances appear even in the initial Dreams as manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams rotate or Circ ambulate round the center drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in distinctness and in scope owing to the diversity of the symbolical material it is difficult at first to perceive any kind of order at all nor should it

be taken for granted that dream sequences are subject to any governing principle but as I say the process of development proves on closer Inspection to be cyclic or spiral we might draw a parallel between such spiral courses and the processes of growth in plants in fact the plant Motif tree flower Etc frequently recurs in these dreams and Fantasies and is also spontaneously drawn or painted 15 in alchemy the tree is the symbol of hermetic philosophy the first of the following two studies that which composes part two Deals with a series of Dreams which contain numerous

symbols of the center or goal the development of these symbols is almost the equivalent of a healing process the center or goal thus signifies salvation in the proper sense of the word the justification for such a terminology comes from the dreams themselves for these contain so many references to religious phenomena that I was able to use some of them as the subject of my book psychology and Religion it seems to me beyond all doubt that these processes are concerned with the religion creating archetypes whatever else religion may be those psychic ingredients of it which are

empirically verifiable undoubtedly consist of unconscious manifestations of this kind people have dwelt far too long on the fundamentally sterile question of whether the assertions of Faith are true or not quite apart from the impossibility of Ever proving or refuting the truth of a metaphysical assertion the very existence of the assertion is a self-evident fact that needs no further proof and when a consensus gendi allies itself thereto the validity of the statement is proved to just that extent the only thing about it that we can verify is the psychological phenomenon which is incommensurable with the category

of objective rightness or truth no phenomenon can ever be disposed of by Rational criticism and in religious life we have to deal with phenomena and facts and not with arguable hypotheses during the process of treatment the dialectical discussion leads logically to a meeting between the patient and his shadow that dark half of the psyche which we invar get rid of by means of projection either by burdening our neighbors in a wider or narrower sense with all the faults which we obviously have ourselves or by casting Our sins Upon A Divine mediator with the aid of

krio or the milder atrio 16 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 might 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 17 at any rate the doctor cannot afford

to point with a gesture of faasil moral superiority to the tablets of the law and say thou shalt not he has to examine things objective ly and weigh up possibilities for he knows less from religious training and education than from Instinct and experience that there Is something very like a Felix kulpa he knows that one can miss not only one's happiness but also one's final guilt without which a man will never reach his wholeness wholeness is in fact a Charisma which one can manufacture neither by Art nor by cunning one can only grow into it

and endure whatever its Advent may bring no doubt it is a great nuisance that mankind is not uniform but compounded of individuals whose psychic structure spreads them Over a span of at least 10,000 years hence there is absolutely no truth that does not spell salvation to one person and Damnation to another all universalisms get stuck in this terrible dilemma earlier on I spoke of Jesuit probabilism this gives a better idea than anything else of the tremendous Catholic task of the church even the best intentioned people people have been horrified by probabilism but when brought face

to face with the Realities of Life many of them have found their horror evaporating or their laughter dying on their lips the doctor too must weigh and Ponder not whether a thing is for or against the church but whether it is for or against life and health 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 farsighted will allow himself to be Hoodwinked by the right deed of the wrong man any more than by the wrong deed of the right man hence the psychotherapist 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 evil needs to be Pondered just just as much as good for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing and both belong to the K roscuro of Life in The Last Resort there is no good that cannot

produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good 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 in pain 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 born with patience and fortitude there emerges the solution destined although I cannot foresee it

for that particular person not that I am passive or inactive meanwhile I help the patient to understand all the things that the unconscious produces during the Conflict the reader May believe me that these are no ordin AR products on the contrary they are among the most significant things that have ever engaged my attention nor is the patient inactive he must do the right thing and do it with all his might in order to prevent the pressure of evil from becoming too powerful in him he needs justification by works for justification by faith alone has remained

an empty sound for him as for so many others Faith can sometimes be a substitute for lack of experience in these cases is what is needed is real work 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 the danger in this point of view is the same as in the imitation of Christ but the Pharisee in us will never allow himself to be caught talking to publicans and I must emphasize of course that psychology invented neither Christianity nor the imitation of Christ 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 birth of his cross upon him the Ancients could get along with the Greek wisdom of the ages image exaggerate nothing all good lies in right measure but what an abyss still separates us from reason 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 coldblooded rationalist he is afraid that the lowest form of conviction namely Superstition is as he thinks forcing itself on him but Superstition in the truest sense 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 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 some kind 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 part two of this volume gives a large number of such examples the reader will be particularly struck by the numerous connections between individual dream symbolism and medieval Alchemy this is not as one might suppose a prerogative of the case in

question but a general fact which only struck me Some 10 years ago when first I began to come to grips with the ideas and symbolism of alchemy part three contains an introduction to the symbolism of alchemy in relation to Christianity and gnosticism as a bare introduction it is naturally far from being a complete exposition of this complicated and obscure subject indeed most of it is concerned only with the lapis Christ parallel true this parallel gives rise to a comparison between the aims of the Opus alchemic and the central ideas of Christianity for both are of

the utmost importance in understanding and interpreting the images that appear in dreams and in assessing their psychological effect this has considerable bearing on the practice of psychotherapy because more often than not it is precisely the more intelligent and cultured patients who finding a return to the church impossible come up against archetype Material and thus set the doctor problems which can no longer be Mastered by a narrowly personalistic psychology nor is a mere knowledge of the psychic structure of a Neurosis by any means sufficient for once the process has reached the sphere of the collective unconscious

we are dealing with healthy material I.E with the universal basis of the individually varied psyche our understanding of these deeper Layers of the psyche is helped not only by a knowledge of PR primtive psychology and mythology but to an even greater extent by some familiarity with the history of our modern Consciousness and the stages immediately preceding it on the one hand it is a child of the church on the other of Science in whose Beginnings very much lies hid that the church was unable to accept that is to say remnants of the classical Spirit and

the classical feeling for nature which Could not be exterminated and eventually found refuge in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages as the spirus metalum and the astrological components of Destiny the old gods of the planets lasted out many a Christian century point 18 whereas in the church the increasing differentiation of ritual and Dogma alienated Consciousness from its natural roots in the unconscious Alchemy and astrology were ceaselessly engaged in preserving the bridge to Nature I.E To the unconscious psyche from Decay astrology led the conscious mind back again and again to the knowledge of him marony

that is the dependence of character and Destiny on certain moments in time and Alchemy afforded numerous hooks for the projection of those archetypes which could not be fitted smoothly into the Christian process it is true that Alchemy always stood on the verge of heresy and that certain decrees leave no doubt as to the Church's attitude towards it 19 but on the other hand it was effectively protected by the obscurity of its symbol ISM which could always be explained as harmless allegory for many Alchemists the allegorical aspect undoubtedly occupied the foreground to such an extent that

they were firmly convinced that their sole concern was with chemical substances but there were always a few for whom laboratory work was primarily a Matter of symbols and their psychic effect as the texts show they were quite conscious of this to the point of condemning the naive gold makers as Liars frauds and dupes their own standpoint they proclaimed with propositions like Orum nostrum nonest Orum vuli although their labors over the retort were a serious effort to elicit the secrets of chemical transformation it was at the same time And often in overwhelming degree the reflection of

a parallel psychic process which could be projected all the more easily into the unknown chemistry of matter since that process is an unconscious phenomenon of nature just like the mysterious alteration of substances what the symbolism of alchemy expresses is the whole problem of the evolution of Personality described above the so-called individuation process whereas the church's great buttress is The imitation of Christ The Alchemist without realizing it and certainly without wanting it easily fell victim in the loneliness and obscure problems of his work to the promptings and unconscious assumptions of his own mind since unlike the

Christians he had no clear and unmistakable models on which to rely the authors he studied provided him with symbols whose meaning he thought he understood in his own way but in reality they touched and stimulated His unconscious ironical towards themselves the Alchemists coined the phrase obscurum per obscurius but with this method of explaining the Obscure by the more obscure they only sank themselves deeper in the very process from which the church was struggling to redeem them while the dogmas of the church offered analogies to the alchemical process these analogies in strict contrast to Alchemy had

become detached from the world of nature through their connection with the historical figure of the Redeemer the alchemical 4in one the philosophical gold the lapis angularis the aquad Divina became in the church the for armed cross on which the only begotten had sacrificed himself once in history and at the same time for all etern eternity the Alchemists ran counter to the church in preferring to seek through knowledge rather than to Find through faith though as medieval people they never thought of themselves as anything but good Christians paracelsus is a classical example in this respect but

in reality they were in much the same position as modern man who prefers immediate personal experience to belief in traditional ideas or rather has it forced upon Him Dogma is not arbitrarily invented nor is it a unique Miracle although it is often described as Miraculous with the obvious intent of lifting it out of its natural context the central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy which in accordance with psychological laws simply had to grow up at a time when the classical religions had become obsolete it was founded on the perception of symbols thrown up

by the unconscious individuation process which always sets in when the collective dominance of human life fall into decay K at such a time there is bound to be a considerable number of individuals who are possessed by archetypes of a numinous nature that force their way to the surface in order to form new dominance this state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identify themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious and because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new

Content still to be understood OD they exemplify these concretely in their own lives thus becoming prophets and reformers in so far as the archetypal content of the Christian drama was able to give satisfying expression to the uneasy and clamorous unconscious of the many the consensus omnium raised this drama to a universally binding truth not of course by an act of judgment but by the irrational fact of possession Which is far more effective thus Jesus became The tutelary IM image or amulet against the archetypal powers that threaten to possess everyone the Glad Tidings announced it has

happened but it will not happen to you in as much as you believe in Jesus Christ the son of God yet it could and it can and it will happen to everyone in whom the Christian dominant has decayed for this reason there have always been people who not satisfied with the dominance of conscious life set forth Under cover and by devious paths to their destruction or salvation to seek direct experience of the Eternal roots and following the lure of the Restless unconscious psyche find themselves in the wilderness where like Jesus they come up against the

son of Darkness the Hees thus an old Alchemist and he a cleric prays horidas nostr mentis perga tenas accende Lumin sensus 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 negredo the first stage of the work which was felt as Melancholia in alchemy and corresponds to the encounter with the shadow in Psychology when therefore modern Psychotherapy once more meets with the activated archetypes of the collective unconscious it is merely the repetition of a phenomenon that has often been observed

in moments of great religious Crisis although it can also occur in individuals For Whom the ruling ideas have lost their meaning an example of this is the the census ad inferos depicted in FA which consciously or unconsciously is an opus alchemic the problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a great indeed the decisive role in alchemy since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hyos or chemical Wedding here the Supreme opposites male and female as in the Chinese Yang and Yin

are melted into a Unity purified of all opposition and therefore Incorruptible the prerequisite for this of course is that the artifacts should not identify himself with the figures in the work but should leave them in their objective impersonal state so long as the Alchemist was working in his laboratory he was in a favorable position psychologically speaking for he Had no opportunity to identify himself with the archetypes as they appeared since they were all projected immediately into the chemical substances the disadv advantage of this situation was that The Alchemist was forced to represent The Incorruptible substance

as a chemical product an impossible undertaking which led to the downfall of alchemy its place in the laboratory being taken by chemistry but the psychic part of the Work did not disappear it captured new interpreters as we can see from the example of faou and also from the signal connection between our modern psychology of the unconscious and alchemical symbolism individual dream symbolism in relation to Alchemy a study of the unconscious processes at work in dreams easy is The Descent to aess night and day the door of gloomy disc stands open but to recall thy steps

and pass out to the upper air this is the task this the Toil Virgil sit 126 to 29 introduction the material the symbols of the process of individuation that appear in dreams are images of an archetypal nature which depict the centralizing process or the uction of a new center of Personality a general idea of this process may be got from my essay the relations between the ego and the unconscious for certain reasons mentioned there I call this Center the self which should be understood as the Totality of the psyche the self is not only the

center but also the whole circumference which Embraces both conscious and unconscious it is the center of this totality just as the ego is the center of Consciousness the symbols now under consideration are not concerned with the manifold stages and transformations of the individuation process but with the images that refer directly and exclusively to the new center as it comes into Consciousness these images belong to a definite category which I call mandala symbolism in The Secret of the Golden Flower published in collaboration with Richard Wilhelm I have described this symbolism in some detail in the present

study I should like to put before you an individual series of such symbols in chronological order the material consists of over a thousand dreams and visual Impressions coming from a young man of excellent Scientific education one for the purposes of this study I have worked on the first 400 dreams and Visions which covered a period of nearly 10 months in order to avoid all personal influence I asked one of my pupils a woman doctor who was then a beginner to undertake the observation of the process this went on for 5 months the dreamer then continued

his observations alone for 3 months except for a short interview at the very beginning before the commencement of the Observation I did not see the dreamer at all during the first 8 months thus it happened that 355 of the dreams were dreamed away from any personal contact with myself only the last 45 occurred under my observation no interpretations worth mentioning were then attempted because the dreamer owing to his excellent scientific training and ability did not require any assistance hence conditions were really ideal for unprejudiced Observation and recording first of all then I shall present extracts

from the 22 initial dreams in order to show how the mandala symbolism makes a very early appearance and is embedded in the rest of the dream material later on I shall pick out in chronological order the dreams that refer specifically to the mandala with few exceptions all the dreams have been abbreviated either by extracting the part that carries the main thought or by Condensing the whole text to Essentials this simplifying procedure has not only curtailed their length but has also removed personal Illusions and complications as was necessary for reasons of discretion despite this somewhat doubtful

interference I have to the best of my knowledge and scrupulosity avoided any arbitrary Distortion of meaning the same considerations had also to apply to my own interpretation so that certain Passages in the dreams may appear to have been overlooked had I not made this sacrifice and kept the material absolutely complete I should not have been in a position to publish this series which in my opinion could hardly be surpassed in intelligence Clarity and consistency it therefore gives me great pleasure to express my sincere gratitude here and now to the author for the service he has

rendered to science the method in my writings and lectures I Have always insisted that we must give up all preconceived opinions when it comes to the analysis and interpretation of the objective psyche three in other words the unconscious we do not yet possess a general theory of dreams that would enable us to use a deductive method with impunity any more than we possess a general theory of Consciousness from which we can draw deductive conclusions the manifestations of the Subjective psyche or Consciousness can be predicted to only the smallest degree and there is no theoretical argument

to prove Beyond doubt that any causal connection necessarily exists between them on the contrary we have to reckon with a high percentage of arbitrariness and chance in the complex actions and reactions of the conscious mind similarly there is no empirical still less a theoretical reason to assume that the same does not apply to the Manifestations of the unconscious the latter are just as manifold unpredictable and arbitrary as the former and must therefore be subjected to as many different ways of approach in the case of conscious utterances we are in the fortunate position of being directly

addressed and presented with a Content whose purpose we can recognize but with unconscious manifestations there is no directed or adapted language in our sense of the Word there is merely a psychic phenomenon that would appear to have only the loosest connections with conscious contents if the expressions of the conscious mind are incomprehensible we can always ask what they mean but the objective psyche is something alien even to the conscious mind through which it expresses itself we are therefore obliged to adopt the method we would use in deciphering a fragmentary text or one Containing unknown words

we examine the context the meaning of the unknown word may become evident when we compare a series of passages in which it occurs occurs the psychological context of dream contents consists in the web of associations in which the dream is naturally embedded theoretically we can never know anything in advance about this web but in practice it is sometimes possible granted long enough experience even so careful analysis will never rely Too much on technical rules the danger of deception and suggestion is too great in the analysis of isolated dreams above all this kind of knowing in

advance and making assumptions on the grounds of practical expectation or general probability is positively wrong 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 we can then apply the meaning we have thus discovered to the text of the dream itself and see whether this yields a fluent reading or rather whether a satisfying meaning and emerges 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 complimentary or compensatory for to Consciousness and thus unexpect expectedly different 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 now the method

I adopt in the present study seems to run directly counter to this basic principle of dream interpretation it looks as if the dreams were being interpreted without the least regard for the context and in fact I have not taken up the context at all seeing that the dreams in this series were not dreamed as mentioned above under my observation I proceed rather as if I had had the dreams myself and were therefore In a position to supply the context this procedure if applied to isolated dreams of someone unknown to me personally would indeed be a

gross technical blunder but here we are not dealing with isolated dreams they form a coherent Series in the course of which the meaning gradually unfolds more or less of its own accord the series is the context which the dreamer himself supplies it is as if not one text but many lay before us throwing light from All sides on the unknown terms so that a reading of all the texts is sufficient to elucidate the difficult passages in each individual one moreover in the third chapter we are concerned with a definite archetype the mandala that has long

been known to us from other sources and this considerably facilitates the interpretation of course the interpretation of each individual passage is bound to be largely Conjecture but the series as a whole gives us all the clues we need to correct any possible errors in the preceding passages it goes without saying that while the dreamer was under the observation of my puple he knew nothing of these interpretations and was therefore quite unprejudiced by anybody else's opinion moreover I hold the view based on wide experience that the possibility And danger of prejudgment are exaggerated experience shows that

the objective psyche is independent in the highest degree were it not so it could not carry out its most characteristic function the compensation of the conscious mind 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 ful and moreover are harmful to Consciousness it is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control in a realm where nature and her

Secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted where we can listen but may not meddle the initial dreams first Dream the dreamer is at a social gathering on leaving he puts on a stranger's hat instead of his own the Hat as a covering for the head has the general sense of something that epitomizes the head just just as in summing up we bring ideas under one head unter and Hut so the Hat as a sort of leading idea covers the whole personality and imparts its own significance to it coronation endows the ruler with the divine

nature of the Sun the doctor's Hood bestows the Dignity of a scholar and a stranger's hat imparts a strange Personality Marin uses this theme in his novel The Golem where the hero puts on the hat of athanasius pernath and as a result becomes involved in a strange experience it is clear enough in the Golem that it is the unconscious which entangles the hero in Fantastic Adventures let us stress at once the significance of the Golem parallel and assume that the hat in the dream is the Hat of an athenus an immortal a being Beyond Time

the universal and everlasting man as distinct from the ephemeral and accidental mortal man en circling the head the hat is round like the sundisk of a crown and therefore contains the first illusion uson to the mandala we shall find the attribute of Eternal duration confirmed in the ninth mandala dream 134 while the mandala character of the hat comes out in the 35th mandala dream paron 54 as a general result of the exchange Of hats we may expect a development similar to that in the Golem an emergence of the unconscious the unconscious with its figures is

already standing like a shadow behind the dreamer and pushing its way into cons ious second dream the dreamer is going on a railway journey and by standing in front of the window he blocks the view for his fellow passengers he must get out of their way the process is beginning to move and the dreamer Discovers that he is keeping the light from those who stand behind him namely the unconscious components of his personality we have no eyes behind us consequently behind is the region of the Unseen the unconscious if the dreamer will only stop blocking

the window Consciousness the unconscious content will become conscious third hypnogogic visual impression by the seash shore the sea breaks into the land flooding everything then the dreamer is sitting On a Lonely Island the sea is the symbol of the collective unconscious because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface those who stand behind the shadowy personifications of the unconscious have burst into the terrafirma of Consciousness like a flood such invasions have something uncanny about them because they are irrational and incomprehensible to the person concerned they bring about a momentous alteration of his personality since they

Immediately constitute a painful personal secret which alienates and isolates him from his surroundings it is something that we cannot tell anybody we are afraid of being accused of mental abnormality not without reason for much the same thing happens to lunatics even so it is a far cry from the intuitive perception of such an invasion to being inundated by it pathologically though the Layman does not realize this Isolation by a secret results as a rule in an animation of the psychic atmosphere as a substitute for loss of contact with other people it causes an activation of

the unconscious and this produces something similar to the Illusions and hallucinations that beset lonely Wanderers in the desert seafarers and Saints the mechanism of these phenomena can best be explained in terms of energy our normal relations to objects in the World At Large are maintained by a certain expenditure of energy if the relation to the object is cut off there is a retention of energy which then creates an equivalent substitute for instance just as persecution Mania comes from a relationship poisoned by mistrust so as a substitute for the normal animation of the environment an illusory

reality Rises up up in which weird ghostly Shadows flit about in place of people That is why primitive man has always believed that lonely and desolate places are haunted by devils and suchlike apparitions fourth dream the dreamer is surrounded by a throng of vague female forms CF fig 33 a voice within him says first I must get away from Father Here the psychic atmosphere has been animated by what the Middle Ages would call succubi we are reminded of the visions of St Anthony in Egypt so eruditely described by flar in L tentation Des s Antoine

the element of hallucination shows itself in the fact that the thought is spoken aloud the words first I must get away call for a concluding sentence which would begin with in order to presumably it would run in order to follow the unconscious I.E the alluring female forms fig nine the Father the embodiment of the traditional Spirit as expressed in religion or a general philosophy of life is standing in his way he imprisons the Dreamer in the world of the conscious mind and its values the traditional masculine world with its intellectualism and rationalism is felt to

be an impediment from which we must conclude that the unconscious now approaching him stands in direct opposition to the Tendencies of the conscious mind and that the dreamer despite this opposition is already favorably disposed towards the unconscious for this reason the latter should not be subordinated to the Rationalistic judgments of Consciousness it ought rather to be an experience Su generous naturally it is not easy for the intellect to accept this because it involves at least a partial if not a total sacrificium intellectus furthermore the problem thus raised is very difficult for Modern Man to grasp

for to begin with he can only understand the unconscious as an inessential and unreal appendage of the conscious mind and not as a special Sphere of experience with laws of its own in the course of the later dreams this conflict will appear again and again until finally the right formula is found for the correlation of conscious and unconscious and the personality is assigned its correct position between the two moreover such a conflict cannot be solved by understanding but only by experience every stage of the experience must be lived through there is no feat of interpretation

or any other trick by Which to circumvent this difficulty for the union of conscious and unconscious can only be achieved step by step the resistance of the conscious mind to the unconscious and the depreciation of the latter were historical Necessities in the development of the human psyche for otherwise the conscious mind would never have been able to differentiate itself at all but modern man's Consciousness has strayed rather too far from the fact of the Unconscious we have even forgotten that the psyche is by no means of our design but is for the most part autonomous

and unconscious consequently the approach of the unconscious induces a panic fear in civilized people not least on account of the menacing analogy with Insanity the intellect has no objection to analyzing the unconscious as a passive object on the contrary such an activity would coincide with our rational expectations but to let the Unconscious go its own way and to experience it as a reality is something that exceeds the courage and capacity of the average European he prefers simply not to understand this problem for the spiritually weak need this is the better course since the thing is

not without its dangers the experience of the unconscious is a personal secret communicable only to very few and that with difficulty hence the isolating effect we noted above but isolation Brings about a compensatory animation of the psychic atmosphere which strikes us as uncan the figures that appear in the dream are feminine thus pointing to the feminine nature of the unconscious they are fairies or fascinating sirens and Lamas who infatuate the Lonely Wanderer and lead him astray likewise seductive maidens appear at the beginning of the nekia 2 of pul 3 fig the 33 and the melusina

of paracelsus 4 is another such Figure fifth visual impression a snake describes a circle around the dreamer who stands rooted to the ground like a tree the drawing of a spellbinding circle is an ancient magical device used by everyone who has a special or secret purpose in mind he thereby protects himself from the Perils of the soul that threaten him from without and attack anyone who is isolated by a secret the same procedure has also been used since olden times to set a place Apart as holy and inviable in founding a city for instance they

first drew the sulkus progenius or original Furrow the fact that the dreamer stands rooted to the center is a compensation of his almost insuperable desire to run away from the unconscious he experienced an agreeable feeling of relief after this vision and rightly since he has succeeded in establishing a protected temos a taboo area where he will be able to meet the Unconscious sixth visual impression directly following upon fifth the veiled figure of a woman Seated on a stair the motif of the unknown woman whose technical name name is Thea appears here for the first time

like the throng of vague female forms in dream 4 she is a personification of the animated psychic atmosphere from now on the figure of the unknown woman reappears in a great many of the dreams personification always indicates An autonomous activity of the unconscious if some personal figure appears we may be sure that the unconscious is beginning to grow active the activity of such figures very often has an anticipatory character something that the dreamer himself will do later is now being done in advance in this case the illusion is to a stare thus indicating an Ascent

or a descent since the process running through dreams of this kind has an historical analogy in The rights of initiation it may not be Superfluous to draw attention to the important part which the stairway of the seven planets played in these rights as we know from appus among others the initiations of late classical syncretism already saturated with Alchemy CF the visions of zosimos were particularly concerned with the theme of ascent I.E sublimation the ascent was often represented by a ladder hence the burial gift in Egypt of a small ladder for the C of the Dead

the idea of an Ascent through the seven spheres of the planets symbolizes the return of the soul to the sun god from whom it originated as we know for instance from firmicus maternis thus the Isis mystery described by pus culminated in what early medieval Alchemy going back to alexandrian tradition as transmitted by the Arabs called the solico where the intian was crowned as Helios seventh visual impression the veiled woman uncovers her Face it shines like the sun the solico is consummated on the person of the Ana the process would seem to correspond to the illumino

or Enlightenment this mystical idea contrasts strongly with the rational attitude of the conscious mind which recognizes only intellectual Enlightenment as the highest form of understanding and insight naturally this attitude never reckons with the fact that scientific Knowledge only satisfies the little tip of Personality that is contemporaneous with ourselves not the collective psyche that reaches back into the gray Mists of antiquity and always requires a special right if it is to be United with present day Consciousness it is clear therefore that a lighting up of the unconscious is being prepared which has far more the character

of an illumin than of rational elucidation the solico is infinitely far Removed from the conscious mind and seems to it almost chimerical eighth visual impression a rainbow is to be used as a bridge but one must go under it and not over it whoever goes over it will fall and be killed only the gods can walk rainbow bridges in safety mere mortals fall and meet their death for the rainbow is only a love semblance that spans the sky and not a highway for human beings with bodies these must pass under it fig 16 But water

flows under bridges too following its own gradient and seeking the lowest place this hint will be confirmed later ninth dream a green land where many sheep are pastured it is the land of sheep this curious fragment inscrutable at first glance May derive from childhood Impressions and particularly from those of a religious nature which would not be far to seek in this connection EG he maketh me to lie down in Green Pastures or the early Christian allegories of sheep and Shepherd the next Vision points in the same direction 10th visual impression the unknown woman stands in

the land of sheep and points the way the Ana having already anticipated the solico now appears as the psychopomp the one who shows the way the way begins in the Children's Land I.E at a time when rational Pres day Consciousness was not yet separated from the historical psyche the collective Unconscious the separation is indeed inevitable but it leads to such an alienation from that dim psyche of the dawn of mankind that a loss of instinct ensues the result is instinctual atrophy and hence disorientation in everyday human situations but it also follows from the separation that

the Children's Land will remain definitely infantile and become a Perpetual source of child inclinations and impulses these intrusions are Naturally most unwelcome to the conscious mind and it consistently represses them for that reason but the very consistency of the repression only serves to bring about a still greater alienation from The Fountain Head thus increasing the lack of instinct until it becomes lack of Soul as a result the conscious mind is either completely swamped by childishness or else constantly obliged to defend itself in vain against the inundation by means Means of a cynical affectation of old

age or embittered resignation we must therefore realize that despite its undeniable successes the rational attitude of present-day Consciousness is in many human respects childishly unadapted and hostile to life life has grown desiccated and cramped crying out for the rediscovery of the Fountain Head but the Fountain Head can only be found if the conscious mind will suffer itself to be led back to the Children's Land There to receive guidance from the unconscious as before 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 we stand up a peak of Consciousness believing in a childish way that the path leads upward to yet higher Peaks beyond that is the chamical Rainbow Bridge in order to reach the next Peak we must first go down into the land where the

paths begin to divide 11th dream a voice says but you are still a child this dream forces the dreamer to admit that even a highly differentiated Consciousness has not by any means Finished with childish things and that a return to the world of child childhood is necessary 12th dream a dangerous walk with father and mother up and down many ladders a childish Consciousness is always tied to father and mother and is never by itself return to Childhood is always the return to father and mother to the whole burden of the psychic non-ego as represented by

the parents with its long and momentous history regression spells disintegration into Our historical and hereditary determinants and it is only with the Great greatest effort that we can free ourselves from their embrace 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 disintegration into the jumble of historical determinant is like losing one's way where even what is Right seems an alarming mistake as hinted above the Steps and laders theme points to the process of psychic transformation with all its ups

and downs we find a classic example of this in zosimos ascent and Descent of the 15 Steps of light and darkness it is of course impossible to free oneself from one's childhood without devoting a great deal of work to it as Freud's researches have long since shown nor can it be achieved through intellectual knowledge only what is alone effective is a remembering that is Also a reexperiencing the Swift passage of the years and the overwhelming inrush of the newly discovered World lead leave a mass of material behind that is never dealt with we do not

shake this off we merely remove ourselves from it so that when in later years we return to the memories of childhood we find bits of our personality still alive which cling round us and suffuse us with the feeling of earlier times being still in their Childhood State these fragments are very powerful in their effect they can lose their infantile aspect and be corrected only when they are reunited with adult Consciousness this personal unconscious must always be dealt with first that is made conscious otherwise the gateway to the collective unconscious cannot be opened the journey with

father and mother up and down many ladders represents the making conscious of infantile contents that have not yet Been integrated 13th dream the father calls out anxiously that is the seventh during the walk over many ladders some event has evidently taken place which is spoken Spen of as the seventh in the language of initiation seven stands for the highest stage of Illumination and would therefore be the coveted goal of all desire but to the conventional mind the solfa is an outlandish mystical idea bordering on Madness we assume that it was only in The dark ages

of Misty Superstition that people thought in such a nonsensical fashion but that the lucid and hygienic mentality of our own enlightened days has long since outgrown such nebulous noes itions so much so indeed that this particular kind of Illumination is to be found nowadays only in a lunatic asylum no wonder the father is scared and anxious like a hen that has hatched out ducklings and is driven to despair by The Aquatic proclivities of its young if This interpretation that the seventh represents the highest stage of Illumination is correct it would mean in principle that the

process of integrating the personal unconscious was actually at an end thereafter the collective unconscious would begin to open up which would suffice to explain the anxiety the father felt as the representative of the traditional Spirit nevertheless the return to the Dim Twilight of the unconscious does not mean that we should entirely abandon the precious acquisition of our forefathers namely the intellectual differentiation of Consciousness it is rather a question of the man taking the place of the intellect not the man whom the dreamer imag himself to be but someone far more rounded and complete this would

mean assimilating all sorts of things into the sphere of his personality which the dreamer still Rejects as disagreeable or even impossible the father who calls out so anxiously that is the seventh is a psychic component of the dreamer himself and the anxiety is therefore his own so the interpretation must bear in mind the possibility that the seventh means not only a sort of culmination but something rather ominous as well we come across this theme for instance in the fairy tale of Tom Thumb and the ogre Tom Thumb is the youngest Of Seven Brothers his dwarf-like

stature and his cunning are harmless enough yet he is the one who leads his brothers to the ogres Lair thus proving his own dangerous double nature as a bringer of good and bad luck in other words he is also the ogre himself since olden times the seven have represented the seven gods of the planets they form what the pyramid inscriptions call a pot neteru a company of gods although a company is described As nine it often proves to be not nine at all but 10 and sometimes even more thus mpero tells us that the first

and last members of the series can be added to or doubled without injury to the number nine something of the sort happened to the classical pot of the Greco Roman or Babylonian Gods in the postclassical age when the gods were degraded to Demons and retired partly to the distant stars and partly to the metals inside the earth it then Transpired that Hermes or mercurious possessed a double nature being aonic God of Revelation and also the spirit of quicksilver for which reason he was represented as a hermaphrodite as the planet Mercury he is nearest to the

sun hence he is preeminently related to Gold but as Quicksilver he dissolves the gold and extinguishes its sunlike brilliance all through the Middle Ages he was the object of much puzzled speculation on The part of the natural philosophers sometimes he was a ministering and helpful Spirit apotos literally assistant comrade or familiar is and sometimes the service or service fugitivus the Fugitive Slave or stag an elusive deceptive teasing Goblin who drove the Alchemists to Despair and had many of his attributes in common with the devil for instance he is dragon lion eagle Raven to mention only

the most important of them in the alchemical Hierarchy of gods mercurious comes lowest as primma Materia and highest as lapis philosophorum the spirius mercurialis is the alchemist's guide Hermes psychopompos and their tempter he is their good luck and their ruin his dual nature enables him to be not only the seventh but also the eighth the eighth on Olympus whom nobody thought of it may seem odd to the reader that anything as remote As medieval Alchemy should have relevance here but the black Art is not nearly so remote As we think for as an educated man

the dreamer must have read faou and faou is an alchemical drama from beginning to end although the educated man of today has only the haziest notion of this our conscious mind is far from understanding everything but the unconscious always keeps an eye on the ageold sacred things however strange they may be and reminds us of them at a suitable opportunity no doubt faou affected our Dreamer much as as Gea was affected when as a young man in his lipic days he studied theopus paracelsus with frine Von kenberg it was then as we certainly may assume

that the mysterious equivalence of seven and eight sank deep into his soul without his conscious mind ever unraveling the mystery the following dream will show that this reminder of faou is not out of place 14th dream the dreamer is in America looking for an employee with a pointed Beard they say that everybody has such an employee America is the land of practical straightforward Thinking uncontaminated by our European sophistication the intellect would there be kept very sensibly as an employee this naturally sounds like Les majeste and might therefore be a serious matter so it is consoling

to know that everyone as is always the case in America does the same the man with a pointed beard is our time-honored Mesto whom fa employed And who was not permitted to triumph over him in the end despite the fact that fa had dared to descend into the dark chaos of the historical psyche and steep himself in the everchanging seamy side of life that rose up out of that bubbling cauldron from subsequent questions it was discovered that the dreamer himself had recognized the figure of mephistophiles in the man with the pointed Beard versatility of mind

as well as the inventive gift and scientific leanings are attributes of the astrological mercurious hence the man with the pointed beard represents the intellect which is introduced by The Dream as a real familiar is an obliging if somewhat dangerous Spirit the intellect is thus degraded from the supreme position it once occupied and is put in the second Rank And at the same time branded as demonic not that it had ever been anything but demonic only the dreamer had not noticed before how possessed he was by the intellect as the tacitly recognized supreme power now he

has a chance to view this function which till then had been the uncontested dominant of his psychic life at somewhat closer quarters well might he exclaim with faou so that's what was inside the poodle mephistophiles is the Diabolical aspect of every psychic function that has broken loose from the hierarchy of the total psyche and now enjoys Independence and absolute power fig 36 but this aspect can be perceived only when the function becomes a separate entity and is objectivated or personified as in this dream amusingly enough the man with the pointed beard also crops up in

alchemical literature in one of the Parabo contained in the Gilden ENT trat from philosophes and Stein written in 1625 which Herbert silur has analyzed from a psychological point of view among the company of old white-bearded philosophers there is a young man with a black pointed beard silur is uncertain whether he should assume assume this figure to be the devil mercurious as Quicksilver is an eminently suitable symbol for the fluid ible intellect therefore in alchemy Mercurious is sometimes a spirit and sometimes a water the so-called Aqua permanence which is none other than argentum vivum 15th dream

the dreamer's mother is pouring water from one Basin into another the dreamer only remembered in connection with vision 28 of the next series that this Basin belonged to his sister this action is performed with great solemnity it is of the highest significance for the outside world then The dreamer is rejected by his father once more we meet with the theme of exchange see if dream one one thing is put in the place of another the father has been dealt with now Begins the action of the mother 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 seos the maternal significance of pii the Fon signatus as an attribute of the Virgin Mary Etc fig 26 the unconscious has altered the Locust of the life forces thus indicating a change of attitude the dreamer's subsequent recollection enables us to see who is now the source of life it is the sister the mother is superior to the son but the sister is his equal thus the deposition of the intellect frees the dreamer from the domination of the unconscious and hence

from his infantile attitude although the Sister is a remnant of the past we know definitely from later dreams that she was the carrier of the anima image we may therefore assume that the transferring of the Water of Life to the sister really means that the mother has been replaced by the anima 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 during 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 vol 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 stepping stone despite Appearances to the contrary the establishment of order and the dis ution 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 the water that the mother the unconscious pours into the Basin belonging to Thea is an excellent symbol for the living power of the psyche the old Alchemists never tired of devising new and expressive synonyms for this water they called it Aqua Nostra mercurious Vivas argentum vivum Venum Ardens aquavite sucus lunar and so on by which they meant a living being not devoid of substance as opposed to the rigid immateriality of Mind in the abstract the expression sucus lunaria sap of the Moon plant refers clearly enough to the nocturnal origin

of the water and oostra like mercurious Vivas to its earthliness acetum fontis is a powerful corrosive water that dissolves all created things and at the same time leads to the most Durable of all products the mysterious lapis these analogies may seem very far-fetched but let me refer the reader to dreams 13 and 14 in the next section where the water Sy symbolism is taken up again the importance of the action for the outside world noted by the dreamer himself points to the collective significance of the dream as also does the fact which had a far-reaching

influence on the conscious attitude of the dreamer that he is rejected by the Father the saying extra ecclesium nasalis outside the church there is no salvation rests on the knowledge that an institution is a safe practicable Highway with a visible definable goal and that no paths and no goals can be found outside it we must not underestimate the devastating effect of getting lost in the chaos even if we know that it is the sin quanan of any regeneration of the spirit and the personality 16th dream an ace of clubs Lies before the dreamer a seven

appears beside it the ace as one is the lowest card but the highest in value the Ace of clubs being in the form of a cross points to the Christian symbol hence in Swiss German the club is often called Cruz cross at the same time the three leaves contain an illusion to the three-fold nature of the one God lowest and highest are beginning and end Alpha and Omega the seven appears after the Ace of clubs and not before presumably The idea is first the Christian conception of God and then the seven stages the seven stages

symbolize the transformation which begins with the symbolism of cross and Trinity and judging by the earlier archaic Illusions in dreams 7 and 13 culminates in the solfa but this solution is not hinted at here now we know that the regression to the Helios of antiquity vainly attempted by Julian the apostate was succeeded in the Middle Ages by another movement that Was expressed in the formula perrus ad rosum through the cross to the Rose which was later condensed into the rosy Cross of the rosac crucians here the essence of the Heavenly Soul descends into the flower

Earth's answer to the sun's countenance the solar quality has survived in the symbol of the Golden Flower of Chinese Alchemy the well-known blue flower of the romantics might well be the last Nostalgic perfume of the Rose it looks back in true romantic fashion to the medievalism of ruined cloysters yet at the same time modestly proclaims something new in Earthly loveliness but even the golden Brilliance of the sun had to submit to a descent and it found its analogy in the glitter of Earthly gold although as AUM nostrum this was far removed from the gross materiality

of the metal at least for suler Minds one of the most Interesting of the alchemical texts is the rosarium philosophorum subtitled sukunda pars Alima dilap philosophical verom Modo preparando Kum figuris Ray Perfection Aon dbus 1550 the anonomous author was very definitely a philosopher and was apparently aware that Alchemy was not concerned with ordinary gold making but with a philosophical secret for these Alchemists the gold undoubtedly had a symbolic nature and was therefore Distinguished by such attributes as vitrium or philosophum it was probably owing to its all too obvious analogy with the Sun that gold was

denied the highest philosophical honor which fell instead to the lepus philosophorum the Transformer is above the transformed and transformation is one of the magical properties of The Marvelous Stone the rosarium philosophorum says for our Stone namely the living Western Quicksilver which has placed itself above the golden vanquished it is that which kills and quickens as to the philosophical significance of the lapus the following quotation from A Treatise ascribed to Hermes is particularly enlightening understand ye sons of the wise what this exceeding precious stone proclaims and my light conquers every light and my virtues are more

excellent Than all virtues I beget the light but the darkness too is of my nature 17th dream the dreamer goes for a long walk and finds a blue flower on the way 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 a chance child of nature evoking friendly memories of a more romantic and lyrical age of the youthful season when it came To buzz 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 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 participation 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 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 solico for the Golden Flower of alchemy can sometimes be a blue flower the sapphire blue flower of the hermaphrodite 18th dream a man offers Him some golden coins in his outstretched hand the dreamer indignantly throws the them to the ground and immediately afterwards deeply regrets his action a variety performance then takes place in an enclosed space the blue flower has already begun to drag its history after it

the gold is offered and is indignantly refused such a misinterpretation of the Orum philosophum is easy to understand but hardly has it happened when there comes A Pang of remorse that the precious secret has been rejected and a wrong answer given to the riddle of the Sphinx the same thing happened to the hero in Marin's Golem when the ghost offered him a handful of grain which he spurned the gross materiality of the yellow metal with its odious fiscal flavor and the mean look of the grain make both rejections comprehensible enough but that is precisely why

it is so hard to find the lapis it is exilus Uncomely it is thrown out into the street or on the dung Hill it is the commonest thing to be picked up anywhere in planety in montibus at Aquis it has this ordinary aspect in common with spittler Jewel in Prometheus and Epimetheus which for the same reason was also not recognized by the worldly wise but the stone which the builders rejected the same has become the head of the corner and the intuition of this possibility arouses the liveliest regret In the dreamer it is all part

of the banality of its outward aspect that the gold is minted I.E shaped into coins stamped and valued applied psychologically this is just what n refuses to do in his zarathustra to give names to the virtues by being shaped and named psychic life is broken down into coined and valued units but this is Possible only because it is intrinsically a great variety of things and accumulation of unintegrated Hereditary units natural man is not a self he is the mass and a particle in the mass Collective to such a degree that he is not even sure

of his own ego that is why since time IM Memorial he has needed the transformation Mysteries to turn him into something and to rescue him from the Animal Collective psyche which is nothing but a VAR but if we reject this unseemly VAR of man as he is it is impossible for him to attain integration to become a self And that amounts to spiritual death life that just happens in and for itself is not real life it is real only when it is known only a unified personality can experience life not that personality which is split

up into partial aspects that bundle of odds and ends which also calls itself man the dangerous plurality already hinted at in dream 4 is compensated in Vision 5 where the snake describes a magic circle and thus marks off the taboo area the temos in much the Same way and in a similar situation the temos reappears here drawing the many together for a United variety performance a gathering that has the appearance of an entertainment though it will shortly lose its entertaining character the play of goats will develop into a tragedy according to all the analogies the

SAT play was a mystery performance from which we may assume that its purpose as everywhere was to reestablish Man's connection with his natural ancestry and thus with the source of Life much as the obscene stories astrologia told by Athenian ladies at the mysteries of elus were thought to promote the Earth's fertility C also Herod us' account of the exhibitionistic performances connected with the Isis festivities at bubastis the illusion to the compensatory significance of the temos however is still wrapped in obscurity For the dreamer as Might Be Imagined he is much more concerned with the danger

of spiritual death which is conjured up by his rejection of the historical context 19 visual impression a death's head the dreamer wants to kick it away but cannot the skull gradually changes into a red ball then into a woman's head which emits light the skull soliloquies of faou and of Hamlet are reminders of the appalling senselessness of human life When sicklied or with the pale cast of thought it was traditional opinions and judgments that cause the dreamer to dash aside the doubtful and uninviting looking offerings but when he tries to ward off the Sinister vision

of the death's head it is transformed into a red ball which we may take as an illusion to to the Rising Sun since it at once changes into The Shining head of a woman reminding us directly of vision 7 evidently in an antio dromia a play of Opposites has occurred after being rejected the unconscious insists on itself all the more strongly first it produces the classical symbol for the unity and Divinity of the self the sun then it passes to the motif of the unknown woman who personifies the unconscious naturally this Motif includes not merely

the archetype of the anima but also the dreamer's relationship to a real woman who is both a human personality and a vessel for Psychic projections Basin of the sister in dream 15 in neoplatonic philosophy the soul has definite affinities with the sphere the sole substance is laid round the concentric spheres of the four elements above the fiery Heaven 20 visual impression a globe the unknown woman is standing on it and worshiping the sun this impression 2 is an amplification of vision 7 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 an antio dromia 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 Back to start all over again from the beginning 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 Ana stands worshiping the sun Ana and Sun are thus distinct which points to the fact that the sun represents a different principle from that of Thea the latter is a personification of the unconscious while the sun is a symbol of of the source of Life and the ultimate wholeness of man as indicated in the solico 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 Elios anatol 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 ude has taken Little or no interest in her and therefore made it impossible for Thea to become modernized or better christianized 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 Ana to regress to the ancient world the Renaissance gives us evidence enough for this the clearest of all

being the hypnerotomachia of Francesco Colona where PFO meets hisa the lady polia at The court of Queen Venus quite Untouched by Christianity and graced with all the virtues of antiquity the book was rightly regarded as a mystery text with thisa then we plunged straight into the ancient world so that I would not think anyone mistaken who interpreted the rejection of the gold in dream 18 x affu as an attempt to escape this regrettable and unseemly regression to Antiquity certain vital doctrines of alchemical philosophy go back textually To late GRE Roman syncretism as rusa for instance

has sufficiently established in the case of the turba hence any illusion to Alchemy wafts one back to the ancient world and makes one suspect regression to Pagan levels it may not be Superfluous to point out here with due emphasis that consciously the dreamer had no inkling of all this but in his unconscious he is immersed in this sea of historical associations so that he behaves in his Dreams as if he were fully cogniz of these curious excursions into the history of the human mind he is in fact an unconscious exponent of an autonomous psychic development

just like the medieval Alchemist or the classical neop platinus hence one could say Kum granos Solis that history could be constructed just as easily from one's own unconscious as from the actual texts 21 visual impression the dreamer is surrounded by nymphs a voice says we Were always there only you did not notice us here the regression goes back even further to an image that is unmistakably classical at the same time the situation of dream 4 is taken up again and also the situation of dream 18 where the rejection led to the compensatory enantiodromia in Vision

19 but here the image is Amplified by the hallucinatory recognition that the drama has always existed although Unnoticed until now the realization of this fact joins the unconscious psyche to Consciousness as a coexistent entity the phenomenon of the voice in dreams always has for the dreamer the final and indisputable character of the IE The Voice expresses some truth or condition that is beyond all doubt the fact that a sense of the remote past has been established that contact has been made with the deeper layers of the psyche is accepted by the Unconscious personality of the

dreamer and communicates itself to his conscious mind as a feeling of comparative security Vision 20 represents presents the Ana as a sun worshipper she has as it were stepped out of the globe or spherical form but the first spherical form was the skull according to tradition the head or brain is the seat of the Ana intellectualist for this reason to the alchemical vessel must be round like the head so that what comes Out of the vessel shall be equally round I.E simple and perfect like the anima Mundi the work is crowned by the production of

the rotundum which as the materal globosa stands at the beginning and also at the end in the form of gold possibly the nymphs who were always there are an illusion to this the regressive character of the vision is also Apparent from the fact that there is a multiplicity of female forms as in dream 4 but this time they are of a classical nature which like the sun Worship in Vision 20 points to an historical regression the splitting of Thea into many figures is equivalent to dissolution into an indefinite State I.E into the unconscious from which

we may conjecture that a relative dissolution of the conscious mind is running parallel with the historical regression a process to be observed in its extreme form in Schizophrenia the dissolution of Consciousness or as Janet calls it abasement duno mental comes very close to the Primitive State of Mind a parallel to this scene with the nymphs is to be found in the Paras celson Regio nyoda mentioned in the Trea deal longa as the initial stage of the individuation process 22 visual impression in a primeval Forest an elephant looms up menacingly then a large apeman bear or

caveman threatens To attack the dreamer with a club suddenly the man with the pointed beard appears and stares at the aggressor so that he is Spellbound but the dreamer is terrified the voice says everything must be ruled by the Light the multiplicity of nymphs has broken down into still more primitive components that is to say the animation of the psychic atmosphere has very considerably increased and from this we must conclude that the dreamer's Isolation from his contemporaries has increased in proportion this intensified isolation can be traced back to Vision 21 where the union with the

unconscious was realized and accepted as a fact from the point of view of the conscious mind this is highly irrational it constitutes a secret which must be anxiously guarded since the justification for its existence could not possibly be explained to any so-called reasonable Person anyone who tried to do so would be branded as a lunatic the discharge of energy into the environment is therefore considerably impeded the result being a surplus of energy on the side of the unconscious hence the abnormal increase in the autonomy of the unconscious figures culminating in aggression and real terror the

earlier entertaining variety performance is beginning to become uncomfortable we find it easy enough to accept the classical figures Of nymphs thanks to their aesthetic embellishments but we have no idea that Behind These gracious figures there lurks the dionan mystery of antiquity the Seder play with its tragic implications the bloody dismemberment of The God Who has become an animal it needed a nche to expose in all its feebleness Europe's school boy attitude to the ancient world but what did dianis mean to nche what he says about it must be taken seriously What it did to him

still more so there can be no doubt that he knew in the preliminary stages of his fatal illness that the Dismal fate of zagas was reserved for him dionisis 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 when this happens and blame High Finance the armaments industry the Jews or the Freemasons at

the last moment friend pointed beard appears on the scene as an obliging deox Machina and exercises the annihilation threatened by the formidable ape man who knows how much fa owed his imperturbable curiosity as he gazed on the Spooks and Bogies of the classical wal perus kned to The Helpful Presence of misto and his matter of fact point of view would that more people could remember the scientific or philosophical reflections of the much abused intellect at the right moment those who abuse it lay themselves open to the suspicion of never having experienced anything that might have

taught them its value and shown them why mankind has forged this weapon with such unprecedented effort one has to be singularly out of Touch with life not to notice such things 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 dionan experience will give this devil plenty to do should he be looking for work since the resultant settlement with the unconscious far outweighs the labors 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 so often goes off for 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 that these mutterings really mean something The Voice finally declares everything must be ruled by the Light which presumably means the light of the Discerning conscious mind a genuine illuminatio honestly acquired the

dark depths of the unconscious are no longer to be denied by ignorance and sophistry at best a poor disguise for common fear nor are they to be explained away with pseudoscientific rationalizations on the contrary it must now be admitted that things exist in the psyche about which we know little or nothing at all but which nevertheless Affect our bodies in the most obstinate way and that that they possess at least as much reality as the things of the physical world which ultimately we do not understand either no line of research which asserted that its subject

was Unreal or a nothing but has ever made any contribution to knowledge with the active intervention of the intellect a new phase of the unconscious process begins the conscious mind must now come to terms with the Figures of the unknown woman Ana the unknown man the Shadow the wise old man mon personality and the symbols of the self the last named are dealt with in the following section three the symbolism of the mandala concerning the mandala as I have already said I have put together out of a continuous series of some 400 dreams and Visions

all those that I regard as mandala dreams the term mandala was chosen because this word denotes the ritual or magic circle used In lamaism and also in tantric yoga as a yantra or Aid to contemplation the Eastern mandalas used in ceremonial are figures fixed by tradition they may be drawn or painted or in certain special ceremonies even represented plastically in 1938 I had the opportunity in the monastery of Bou austi near darjiling of talking with a lamic roshi lingam Gamin by name about the kilor or mandala he explained it as a mspa pronounced Miga a

mental image Which can be built up only by a fully instructed llama through the power of imagination he said that no mandala is like any other they are all individually different also he said the mandalas to be found in monasteries and temples were of no particular significance because they were external representations only the true mandala is always an inner image which is gradually built up through active imagination at such times When psychic equilibrium is Disturbed or when a thought cannot be found and must be sought for because it is not contained in holy Doctrine the

aptness of this explanation will become apparent in the course of my Exposition the alleged free and individual formation of the mandala however should be taken with a considerable grain of salt since in all lamic mandalas there predominates not only a certain unmistakable style but also a traditional structure for Instance they are all based on a quaternary system a quadratura circuli and their contents are invariably derived from lmic Dogma there are texts such as the Shri chakra sambara Tantra which contain directions for the construction of these mental images the kilor is strictly distinguished from the so-called

sidp corlo or World wheel which represents the course of human existence in its various forms as conceived by the Buddhists in contrast to the Kil core the world wheel is based on a tary system in that the three World principles are to be found in its Center the equaling concupiscence the the serpent hatred or envy and the pig ignorance or unconsciousness Avidia here we come upon the Dilemma of three and four which also crops up in Buddhism we shall meet this problem again in the further course of our Dream series it seems to me Beyond

question that these Eastern symbols originated in dreams and visions and were not invented by some Mahayana Church Father on the contrary they are among the oldest religious symbols of humanity and may even have existed in Paleolithic times CF the Rhian Rock paintings moreover they are distributed all over the world a point I need not insist on here in this section I merely wish to show from the material at hand how mandalas come into existence the mandalas used in ceremonial are of Great significance because their centers usually contain one of the highest religious figures either Shiva

himself often in the Embrace of Shakti or the Buddha amitaba avalokitesvara or one of the great Mahayana teachers or simply the dor symbol of all the Divine forces together whether creative or destructive the text of the Golden Flower a product of Tais syncretism specifies in addition certain alchemical properties of this center after the Manner of the lapis and The Elixir V so that it is in effect a pharmacon aanas it is not without importance for us to appreciate the high value set upon the mandala for it Accords very well with the Paramount significance of individual

mandala symbols which are characterized by the same qualities of a so to speak metaphysical nature unless everything deceives us they signify nothing less than a psychic center of the personality not to be Identified with the ego I have observed these processes and their products for close on 30 years on the basis of very extensive material drawn from my own experience for 14 years I neither wrote nor lectured about them so as not to Prejudice my observations but when in 1929 Richard Wilhelm laid the text of the Golden Flower before me I decided to publish at

least a foretaste of the results one cannot be too cautious in These matters for what with the imitative urge and a positively morbid avidity to possess themselves of outlandish feathers and deck themselves out in this exotic plumage far too many people are misled into snatching it such magical ideas and applying them externally like an ointment people will do anything no matter how absurd in order to avoid facing their own Souls they will practice Indian yoga and all its Exercises observe a strict regimen of diet learn theosophy by heart or mechanically repeat Mystic texts from the

literature of the whole world all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own Souls thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come therefore let us fetch it from the four Corners of the Earth the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better I have no wish to disturb such people at their pet Pursuits but when anybody who expects to be taken seriously is diluted enough to think that I use yoga methods and yoga

doctrines or that I get my patience whenever possible to draw mandalas for the purpose of bringing them to the right point then I really must protest and tax these people with having read my right writings with the Most horrible inattention the doctrine that all evil thoughts come from the heart and that the human soul is a SN of iniquity must lie deep in the marrow of their bones were that so then God had made a sorry job of creation and it were high time for us to go over to marcian 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 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 I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in

the human soul that I would be afraid of Disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference that was why I even refrained from observing this particular case myself and entrusted the task to a beginner who was not handicapped by my knowledge anything rather than disturb the process the results which I now lay before you are the unadulterated conscientious and exact self-observations of a man of uniring Intellect who had nothing suggested to him from outside and who would in any case not have been open to suggestion anyone at all familiar with psychic material

will have no difficulty in recognizing the authentic character of the results two the mandalas in the dreams for the sake of completeness I will recapitulate the mandala symbols which occur in the initial dreams and Visions already discussed one the snake that Described a circle around the dreamer two the blue flower three the man with the gold coins in his hand and the enclosed space for a variety performance four the red ball five the globe the next mandala symbol occurs in the first Dream of the new series six dream an unknown woman is pursuing the dreamer

he keeps running round in a circle the snake in the first mandala dream was anticipatory as is often the case when a figure personifying a Certain aspect of the unconscious does or experiences something that the subject himself will experience later the snake anticipates a circular movement in which the subject is going to be involved I.E something is taking place in the unconscious which is perceived as a circular movement and this occurrence now presses into Consciousness so forcefully that the subject himself is gripped by it the unknown woman or anima representing the Unconscious continues to harass

the dreamer until he starts running round in circles this clearly indicates a potential Center which is not identical with the ego and round which the ego revolves seven dream the anima accuses the dreamer of paying too little attention to her there is a clock that says 5 minutes to the hour the situation is much the same the unconscious pesters him like an exacting woman the situation also explains the clock for a clock's Hands go around in a circle 5 minutes to the hour implies a state of tension for anybody who lives by the clock when

the 5 minutes are up he must do something or other he might even be pressed for time the symbol of circular movement is always connected with a feeling of tension as we shall see later eight dream onboard ship the dreamer is occupied with a new method of taking his bearings sometimes he is too far away and sometimes too near the right spot is In the middle there is a chart on which is drawn a circle with its Center obviously the task set here is to find the center the right spot and this is the center

of a circle while the dreamer was writing down this dream he remembered remembered that he had dreamed shortly before of shooting at a Target sometimes he shot too high sometimes too low the right aim lay in the middle both dreams struck him as highly significant the target is a Circle with a center bearings at C are taken by the apparent rotation of the Stars round the Earth accordingly the dream describes an activity whose aim is to construct or locate an objective Center a center outside the subject nine dream a pendulum clock that goes forever without

the weights running down this is a species of clock whose hands move unceasingly and since there is obviously no loss due to friction it is a perpetuum mobile and everlasting Movement in a circle here we meet with a metaphysical attribute as I have already said I use this word in a psychological sense hence figuratively I mean by this that eternity is a quality predicated by the unconscious and not a hypostasis the statement made by The Dream will obviously offend the dreamer scientific judgment but this is just what gives the mandala its peculiar significance highly significant

things are often rejected because they seem to contradict reason And thus set it too arduous a test the movement without friction shows that the clock is Cosmic even transcendental at any rate it raises the question of equality which leaves us in some doubt whether the psychic phenomenon expressing itself in the mandala is under the laws of space and time and this points to something so entirely different from the empirical ego that the gap between them is difficult to bridge I.E the other Center Of Personality lies on a different plane from the ego since unlike this

it has the quality of Eternity or relative timelessness 10 dream the dreamer is in the Peter hoffstot in Zurich with the doctor the man with the pointed beard and the doll woman the last is an unknown woman who neither speaks nor is spoken to question to which of the three does the woman belong the Tower of St Peter's in Zurich has a clock with a strikingly large face the peterhot is an Enclosed space a temos in the truest sense of the word a Precinct of the church the four of them find themselves in this enclosure

the circular dial of the clock is divided into four quarters like the Horizon in the dream the dreamer represents his own ego the man with the pointed beard the employed intellect Mesto and the dll woman the Ana since the doll is a childish object it is an excellent image for the non-ego nature of the anima who is further Characterized as an object by not being spoken to this negative element also present in dreams 6 and 7 above indicates an inadequate relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious as also does the question of whom the

unknown woman belongs to the doctor too belongs to the non-ego he probably contains a faint illusion to myself although at that time I had no connections with the dreamer the man with the pointed beard On the other hand belongs to the ego this whole situation is reminiscent of the relations depicted in the diagram of functions if we think of the psychological functions as arranged in a circle then the most differentiated function is usually the carrier of the ego and equally regularly has an auxiliary function attached to it the inferior function on the other hand is

unconscious and for that reason is Projected into a non-ego it too has an auxiliary function hence it would not be impossible for the four persons in the dream to represent the four functions as components of the total personality I.E if we include the unconscious but this totality is ego plus non-ego therefore the center of the circle which expresses such a totality would correspond not to the ego but to the self as the summation of the total Personality the center with a circle is a very well known allegory of the nature of God in the philosophy

of the upanishads the self is in one aspect the personal atmin but at the same time it has a cosmic and metaphysical quality as the super personal atmin we meet with similar ideas in gnosticism I would mention the idea of the anthropos the ploma the monad and the spark of light spinther in A Treatise of the Codex Brucius this same is he monogenes who dwelleth in the monad which is in the seus and which came from the place of which none can say where it is from him it is the monad came in the manner

of a ship Laden with all good things and in the manner of a field filled or planted with every kind of tree and in the manner of a city filled with all Races of man kind this is the fashion of the monad all these being in it there are 12 monads as a crown upon Its head and to its Veil which surrounde it in the manner of a defense pipot tower there are 12 gates this same is the mother City Metropolis of the only begotten image by way of explanation I should add that sethius is

a name for God meaning Creator the monogenes is the Son of God the comparison of the monad with a field and a city corresponds to the idea of the temos also the monad is crowned the hat which appears in dream 1 of the first Series in dream 35 of this series as Metropolis the monad is feminine like the Padma or Lotus the basic form of the lmic Mandela the Golden Flower in China and the rose or Golden Flower in the west the Son of God God made manifest dwells in the flower in the Book of

Revelation we find the lamb in the center of the Heavenly Jerusalem and in our Coptic text we are told that seus dwells in the innermost and holiest recesses of the ploma a city with four Gates equivalent to the Hindu city of Brahma on the world mountain meu in each gate there is a monad the the limbs of the anthropos born of the autogenes W monogenes correspond to the four Gates of the city the monad is a spark of light spinther and an image of the father identical with the monogenes an invocation runs Thou Art the

house and the dweller in the house the monogenes stands on a tetr peza a table or platform with four pillars corresponding To the querian of the four evangelists the idea of the lapis has several points of contact with all this in the rosar the lapis says quoting Hermes I beget the light but the darkness too is of my nature therefore nothing better or more worthy of veneration can come to pass in the world than the conjunction of myself and my son similarly the monogenes is called the dark light a reminder of the Soul Niger the

black son of alchemy the Following passage from chapter 4 of the tractatus orius provides an interesting parallel to the monogenes who dwells in the bosom of the mother City and is identical with the crowned and veiled monad but the king Reigns as is witnessed by his brothers and says I am crowned and I am adorned with the diadem I am clothed with the Royal garment and I bring joy to the heart for being chained to the arms and breast of my mother and to her substance I cause my Substance to hold together and rest and

I compose the invisible from the visible making the occult to appear and everything that the philosophers have concealed will be be generated from us hear then these words and understand them keep them and meditate upon them and seek for nothing more man is generated from the principle of nature whose inward parts are fleshy and from no other substance the king refers to the lapis that the lapis is the master Is evident from the following Hermes quotation in the rosarium ETC philosophus nonest Magister Lapidus said podius Minister and thus the philosopher is not the master of

the Stone but rather its Minister similarly the final production of the lapis in the form of the crowned hermaphrodite is called the Enigma ragis a German verse refers to the Enigma as follows here now is Born the Emperor of all honor than whom there cannot be born Any higher neither by Art nor by the work of nature out of the womb of any living creature philosophers speak of him as their son and everything they do by him is done the last two lines might easily be direct reference to the above quotation from Hermes it looks

as if the idea had dawned on the Alchemists that the son who according to classical and Christian tradition dwells eternally in the father and reveals himself as God's gift to mankind was something that man Could produce out of his own nature with God's help of course Deo concedente the heresy of this idea is obvious the feminine nature of the inferior function derives from its contamination with the unconscious because of its feminine characteristics the unconscious is personified by the anima that is to say in Men in women it is masculine if we assume that this dream

and its predecessors really do mean something that justly arouses a feeling of Significance in the dreamer and if we further assume that this significance is more or less in keeping with the views put forward in the commentary then we would have reached here a high point of introspective intuition whose boldness leaves nothing to be desired but even the Everlasting pendulum clock is an indigestible morsel for a Consciousness unprepared for it and likely to hamper any too lofty flight of thought 11 dream the dreamer The doctor a pilot and the unknown woman are traveling by airplane

a croquet ball suddenly smashes the mirror an indispensable instrument of navigation and the airplane crashes to the ground here again there is the same doubt to whom does the unknown woman belong doctor pilot and unknown woman are characterized as belonging to the non-ego by the fact that all three of them are strangers therefore the dreamer has Retained possession only of the differentiated function which carries the ego that is the unconscious has gained ground considerably the croquet ball is part of a game where the ball is driven under a hoop Vision 8 of the first series

said that people should not go over the rainbow fly but must go under it those who go over it fall to the ground it looks as though the flight had been too lofty after all croad is played on the Ground and not in the air 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 we can never reach the level of our intuitions and should therefore not identify ourselves with them only the gods can pass Over the

Rainbow Bridge mortal men must stick to the Earth and are subject to its laws 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 that shout after him you did it and that's what you are man may have lost his ancient soran's Tale But in its stead

he has a chain hanging onto his psyche which binds him to the Earth and anything but homeric chain of given conditions which weighs 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 sin quanan of growth no Noble well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots for it grows not only

upward but downward as well the question of where we are going is of course extremely important but equally important it seems to me is the question of who is going where the who always implies a w it takes a certain greatness to gain lasting possession of the heights but anybody can overreach himself the difficulty lies in Striking The dead center 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 the mirror as an indispensable instrument of

navigation doubtless refers to the intellect which is able to think and is constantly persuading us to identify ourselves with its insights Reflections the mirror is one of schopenhauer's favorite similes for the Intellect the term instrument of navigation is an apt expression for this since it is indeed man's indispensable guide on pathless Seas but when the ground slips from under his feet and he begins to speculate in the void seduced by The Soaring flights of intuition the situation becomes dangerous here again the dreamer and the three dream figures form a quaternity the unknown woman or Ana

always represents the inferior I.E The undifferentiated function which in the case of our dreamer is feeling the croquet ball is connected with the round Motif and is therefore a symbol of wholeness that is of the self here shown to be hostile to the intellect the mirror evidently the dreamer navigates too much by the intellect and thus upsets the process of individuation in Deval longa paracelsus describes the four as skola but the self as adic from Adam the first man both as Paracelsus emphasizes cause so many difficulties in the work that one can almost speak of

adch as hostile 12 dream the dreamer finds himself with his father mother and sister in a very dangerous situation on the platform of a tram car once more the dreamer forms a quaternity with the other dream figures he has fallen right back into childhood a time when we are still a long way from wholeness wholeness is represented by the family and its components are still Projected upon the members of the family and personified by them but this state is dangerous for the adult because regressive it denotes a splitting of Personality which primitive man experiences as

the perilous loss of soul in the breakup the personal components that have been integrated with such pains are once more sucked into the outside world the individual loses his guilt and exchanges it for infantile innocence once more he can Blame the wicked father for this and the unloving mother for that and all the time time he is caught in this inescapable causal Nexus like a fly in a spider's web without noticing that he has lost his moral freedom 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 only a fool is interested in other People's guilt since he cannot alter it the wise man learns only from his own guilt he will ask himself who am I that all this should happen to me to find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart as in the previous dream the vehicle was an airplane so in this it is a tram the type of vehicle in a dream illustrates the kind of movement or the manner

in which the dreamer moves forward in time in other words how he Lives his psychic life whether individually or collectively whether on his own or on borrowed means whether spontaneously or mechanically in the airplane he has flown by an unknown pilot I.E he is borne Along on intuitions emanating from the unconscious the mistake is that the mirror is used too much to steer by but in this dream he is in a collective vehicle a tram which anybody can ride in I.E he moves or behaves just like Everybody else all the same he is again one

of four which means that he is in both vehicles on account of his unconscious striving for wholeness 13 dream in the sea there lies a treasure to reach it he has to dive through a narrow opening this is dangerous but down below he will find a companion the dreamer takes the plunge into the dark and discovers a beautiful garden in the depths symmetrically laid out with a fountain in the center the Treasure hard to attain lies hidden in the ocean of the unconscious and only the brave can reach it 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 maate in the self for at first the self is the strange non-ego this is the theme of the magical traveling companion of whom I will give three famous examples the disciples on the road to Emmas Krishna and Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita Moses and eler in Surah 18 of the Quran I conjecture further that the treasure in the sea the companion and the garden with the fountain are all one and the

same thing the self for the garden is another temos and the fountain is the source of Living Water mentioned in John 7:38 which the Moses of the Quran also sought and found and beside it eler one of our servants whom we had endowed with Our Grace and wisdom Surah 18 and the legend has it that the ground round about eler blossomed with spring flowers although it was desert in Islam the plan of the temos with the fountain developed under the influence of early Christian architecture into the the court of the mosque with the ritual Wash

House in the center EG Ahmed ibben Tulin in Cairo we see much the same thing in our Western Cloister with the fountain in the garden this is also the Rose Garden Of the philosophers which we know from the treatises on Alchemy and from many beautiful Engravings the dweller in the house is the companion the center and the circle here represented by Fountain and garden are analogues of the lapis which is among other things a living being in the rosarium the lapis says prot prot L [Music] mius protect me and I will protect you give me

my do that I may help you here The lapis is nothing less than a good friend and helper who helps those that help him and this points to a compensatory relationship I would call to mind what was said in the commentary to dream 10 more particularly the monogenes lapis self parallel the crash to Earth thus leads into the depths of the sea into the unconscious and the dreamer reaches the shelter of the temos as a protection Against the splintering of Personality caused by his regression to Childhood the situation is rather like that of dream 4

and vision 5 in the first series where the magic circle warted off The Lure of the unconscious and its plurality of female forms the dangers of Temptation approached PFO in much the same way at the beginning of his nekia the source of life is like eler a good companion though it is not without its Dangers as Moses of old found to his cost according to the Quran it is the symbol of the life force that eternally renews itself and of the clock that never runs down an uncanonical saying of Our Lord runs he who is

near unto me is near unto the fire just as this esoteric Christ is a source of fire probably not without reference to the image of heraclitus so the alchemical philosophers conceive their aquaa to be ignis fire The Source means not only the Flow of life but its warmth indeed its heat the secret of passion whose synonyms are always fiery the all dissolving Aquin is an essential ingredient in the production of the lapis but the source is underground and therefore the way leads underneath only down below can we find the fiery source of life these depths

constitute the natural history of man his causal link with the world of Instinct unless this link be rediscovered no lapis and no Self can come into being 14 dream the dreamer goes into a chemist's shop with his father valuable things can be got there quite cheap above all a special water his father tells him about the country the water comes from afterwards he crosses the Rubicon by train the traditional apothecary's shop with its car booys and gallipots its Waters its lapis deenus and infernalis and its majestes is the last visible remnant of the kitchen paraphernalia

of those Alchemists who saw in the donam spiritus sancti the precious gift nothing beyond the Chimera of gold making the special water is literally the aqua Nostra non vuli it is easy to understand why it is his father who leads the dreamer to the source of life since he is the natural source of the latter's life we could say that the father represents the country or soil from which that life sprang but figuratively speaking he is the the Informing Spirit who initiates the dreamer into the meaning of life and explains its Secrets according to the

teachings of old he's a transmitter of the traditional wisdom but nowadays the fatherly pedagogue fulfills this function only in the dreams of his son where he appears as the archetypal father figure the wise old man the Water of Life is easily had everybody possesses it though without knowing its value spern to aalis it is despised by The stupid because they assume that every good thing is always outside and somewhere else and that the source in their own Souls is a nothing but like the lapis it is preto quo villis of little price and therefore like

the jewel in spittler Prometheus it is rejected by everyone from the high priest and the academicians down to the very peasants and inam Aus flung out into the street where a hurus picks it up and puts it into his pocket the Treasure has sunk down again into the unconscious but the dreamer has noticed something and with vigorous determination crosses the Rubicon he has realized that the flux and fire of Life are not to be underrated and are absolutely necessary for the achievement of wholeness but there is no recrossing the Rubicon 15 dream four people are

going down a river the dreamer his father a certain friend and the unknown woman in So far as the friend is a definite person well known to the dreamer he belongs like the father to the conscious world of the ego hence something very important has happened in dream 11 the unconscious was three against one but now the situation is reversed and it is the dreamer who is three against one the latter being the unknown woman the unconscious has been depotentiated the reason for this is that by taking the plunge the dreamer Has connected the upper

and the lower regions that is to say he has decided not to live only as a bodus abstract being but to accept the body and the world of instinct the reality of the problems posed by love in life and to act accordingly this was the Rubicon that was crossed individuation becoming a self is not only a spiritual problem it is the problem of all life 16 dream many people are present they are all walking To the left around a square the dreamer is not in the center but to one side they say that a gibbon

is to be reconstructed here the square appears for the first time presumably it arises from the circle with the help of the four people this will be confirmed later like the lapis the tincture ruia and the Orum philosophum the squaring of the circle was a problem that greatly exercised medieval Minds it is a symbol Of the Opus alchemic since it breaks down the original chaotic Unity into the four elements and then combines them again in a higher Unity Unity is represented by a circle and the four elements by a square the production of one from

four is the result of a process of distillation and sublimation which takes the so-called circular form the distillate is subjected to sundry distillation so that the soul or Spirit shall be extracted in Its purest State 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 kunrath has this to say about the circular distillation through circum rotation or a circular philosophical revolving of the quadarius it is

brought back to the highest and purest Simplicity of the Plus quam perfect Catholic monad out of the gross and impure one there cometh an exceeding pure and subtile one and so forth therefore my dear philosopher must thou catch the spirit and soul of the magnesia the spirit or spirit and soul is the tarius or number three which must first be separated from its body and after the purification of the latter infused back into it evidently the body is the fourth hence kunrath refers to a passage from pseudo Aristotle where the Circle reemerges 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 the eastern and more particularly the lamic mandala usually contains a Square Ground plan of the stupa we can see from the mandalas constructed in solid form that it is really the plan of a building the square also conveys the idea of a house or Temple or of an inner walled in space According to the ritual stupas must always be circumambulated to the right because a leftward movement is evil the left the Sinister side

is the unconscious side therefore a leftward movement is equivalent to a movement in the direction of the unconscious whereas the movement to the right is correct and aims at Consciousness in the East these unconscious contents have gradually through long practice come to assume Definite forms which have to be accepted as such and retained by the conscious mind yoga so far as we know it as an established practice proceeds in much the same way it impresses fixed forms on Consciousness its most important Western parallel is the exoria spiritual Alia of ignacius lyola which likewise impress fix

Concepts about salvation on the psyche this procedure is right so long as the symbol is still a valid expression of the unconscious situation The psychological rightness of both eastern and western yoga ceases only when the unconscious process which anticipates future modifications of Consciousness has developed so far that it produces shades of meaning which are no longer adequately expressed by or are at variance with the traditional symbol then and only then can one say that the symbol has lost its rightness such a process signifies a gradual shift in man's unconscious view Of the world over the

centuries and has nothing whatever to do with intellectual criticisms of this view 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 19th century she can always appeal to the psychological truth that for millons ions of people the sun did revolve around the earth and that it was only in The 19th century that any major portion of mankind became sufficiently sure of the intellectual function to grasp the proofs of the

Earth's planetary nature unfortunately there is no truth unless there are people to understand it presumably the leftward circumambulation of the square indicates that the squaring of the circle is a stage on the way to the unconscious a point of transition leading to a goal lying as yet unformulated Beyond it it Is one of those paths to the center of the non-ego which were also trotten by the medieval investigators when producing the lapis the rosarium says out of man and woman make a round circle and extract the quadrangle from this and from the quadrangle the triangle

make a round circle and you will have the philosopher stone the modern intellect naturally regards all this as poppycock but this estimate fails to get Rid of the fact that such concatenations of ideas do exist and that they even played an important part for many centuries it is up to psychology to understand these things leaving the Layman to rant about poppycock and obscurantism many of my critics who call themselves scientific behave exactly like the bishop who excommunicated the cockchafers for their unseemly proliferation just as The stupas Preserve relics of the Buddha in their Innermost sanctuary

so in the interior of the lmic quadrangle and again in the Chinese Earth Square there is a holy of holies with its magical agent the cosmic source of energy be it the god Shiva the Buddha a bodhisatwa or a great teacher in China it is Chien heaven with the four Cosmic effluences radiating from it and equally in the western mandalas of medieval Christendom the deity is enthroned at the center often in the form of the triumphant Redeemer together With the four symbolical figures of the evangelists the symbol in our Dream presents the most violent contrast

to these highly metaphysical ideas for it is a gibbon unquestionably an ape that is to be reconstructed in the center here we meet again the ape who first turned up in Vision 22 of the first series in that dream he caused a panic but he also brought about the helpful intervention of the intellect now he is To be reconstructed and this can only mean that the anthropoid man as an archaic fact is to be put together again clearly the left-and path does not lead upwards to the kingdom of the Gods and eternal ideas but down

into Natural History into the bestial instinctive foundations of human existence we are therefore dealing to put it in classical language with a dionan mystery the square corresponds to the temos where a drama is taking place in this case a Play of Apes instead of Saturns the inside of the Golden Flower is a seeding place where the diamond body is produced the synonymous term the ancestral land may actually be a hint that this product is the result of integrating The ancestral stages The ancestral Spirits play an important part in primitive rights of renewal the Aborigines of

central Australia even identify themselves with their mythical Ancestors of the alinga period a sort of homeric age similarly the Pueblo Indians of ta in preparation for their ritual dances identify 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 dionan orgy and the ritual death in initiation naturally the proceedings always take place in

some hallowed spot we can easily translate these ideas into the concretism of Freudian Theory the temos would then be the womb of the mother and the right a regression to incest but these are the neurotic misunder understandings of people who have remained partly infantile and who do not realize that such things have Been practiced since Time immemorial by adults whose activities cannot possibly be explained as a mere regression to infantalism 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 dat since the philosophical side of alchemy was concerned with problems that are very closely related to those which Interest the most modern psychology it might perhaps be worthwhile to probe a little deeper into the dream motif of the ape that is to be reconstructed in the square in the overwhelming majority of cases Alchemy identifies its transforming substance with the argentum vivum or mercurious chem i al this term denotes Quicksilver but philosophically it means the spiritus V or even the world Soul so That mercurious also takes on the significance of Hermes God of Revelation

this question has been discussed in detail elsewhere Hermes is associated with the idea of roundness and also of squareness as can be seen particularly in Papyrus F line 401 of the papyri GRE mag where he is named image round and square he is also called image quadrangular he is in general connected with the number four hence there is a Image image a four-headed Hermes these attributes were known also in the Middle Ages as the work of cartari for instance shows he says again the square figures of Mercury Hermes made up of nothing but a head

and a viral member signify that the sun is the head of the world and scatters the seed of all things while the four sides of the square figure have the same significance as the four stringed which was likewise attributed to Mercury namely the four Quarters of the world or the four seasons of the year or again that the two equinoxes and the two solstices make up between them the four parts of the whole zodiac it is easy to see why such qualities made mercurious an eminently suitable symbol for the mysterious transforming substance of alchemy for

this is round and square I.E a totality consisting of four parts four elements consequently L the Gnostic quadripartite original man as well as Christ penter is An Imago lapidis Western Alchemy is mainly of Egyptian origin so let us first of all turn our attention into the helenistic figure of Hermes Tris magistus who while standing sponsored to the medieval mercurious derives ultimately from the ancient Egyptian tho 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 tho Hermes and the ape has disappeared but it still existed at the time of the Roman Empire mercurious 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 Mercurious as the simia day it is of the essence of the transforming substance to be on the one hand extremely common even

contempt 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 bisul archaic and infantile to the mystical homo Maximus The symbolism of the rights 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 rights 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 makeup had these rights of renewal not yielded definite results they would not only have died out in prehistoric times but would never have Arisen in the first place the case before us proves that even if the conscious mind is miles away from the ancient conceptions of the rights of renewal the unconscious still strives to bring them

closer in dreams it is true that without the qualities of autonomy and autarchy there would be no Consciousness at all yet these qualities also spell the danger of isolation and stagnation 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 finally the fact that the dreamer is not in the center but to one side is a striking indication of what will happen to his ego it will no longer be able to claim the central place but Must presumably be satisfied with

the position of a satellite or at least of a planet revolving around the Sun clearly the important place in the center is reserved for the Gibbon about to be reconstructed the Gibbon belongs to the anthropoids and on account of its kinship with man is an appropriate symbol for that part of the psyche which goes down into the subhuman further we have seen from the Cilus or dog-headed baboon associated with Thoth Hermes the highest among the Apes known to the Egyptians that its Godlike affinities make it an equally appropriate symbol for that part of the unconscious

which transcends the conscious level the assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below Consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition but that there could just as well be layers lying above Consciousness Seems to be a surmise which borders on a crime and lesi majestatis Humane in my experience the conscious mind can claim only a relatively Central position and must accept the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as were surrounds it on all sides unconscious contents connect it backwards with physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other but

it is extended forwards by intuitions which are determined partly By archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious I must leave it to the reader after thorough consideration of this dream series and the problems it opens up to form his own judgment as to the possibility of such an hypothesis the following dream is given unabridged in its original text 17 dream all the houses have something theatrical about them with Stage scenery And decorations the name of Bernard Shaw is mentioned the play is supposed to take place

in the distant future there is a notice in English and German on one of the sets this is the universal Catholic Church it is the Church of the Lord all those who feel that they are the instruments of the Lord may enter under this is printed in smaller letters the church was founded by Jesus and Paul like a firm advertising its long Standing I say to my friend come on let's have a look at this he replies I do not see why a lot of people have to get together when they're feeling religious I answer

as a Protestant you will never understand a woman nods emphatic approval then I see a sort of proclamation on the wall of the church it runs soldiers when you feel you are under the power of the Lord do not address him directly the Lord cannot be reached by Words we also strongly advise you not to indulge in any discussions among yourselves concerning the attributes of the Lord it is feudal for everything valuable and important is ineffable say a pope now we go in the interior resembles a mosque more particularly the hajia sopia no seats wonderful

effect of space no images only framed texts decorating the walls like the Quran texts in the ha Sophia one of the texts reads do not Flatter your benefactor the woman who had agreed with me before bursts into tears and cries then there's nothing left I reply I find it quite right but she vanishes at first I stand with a pillar in front of me and can see nothing then I change my position and see a crowd of people I do not belong to them and stand alone but they are quite distinct so that I can

see their faces they all say in unison we can confess that we are under the power of the Lord The Kingdom of Heaven is within us they repeat this three times with great solemnity then the organ starts to play and they sing a Bak fug with coral but the original text is omitted sometimes there is only a sort of coloratura singing then the words are repealed everything else is paper meaning that it does not make a living impression on me when the Corral has faded away the jamish part of the ceremony begins it is is

almost like a students party the People are all cheerful and equable we move about Converse and greet one another and whine from an Episcopal Seminary is served with other Refreshments the health of the church is drunk and as if to express everybody's pleasure at the increase in membership a loudspeaker blares out a Ragtime Melody with the refrain Charles is also with us now a priest explains to me these somewhat trivial amusements are officially approved and permitted We must adapt a little to American methods with a large crowd such as we have here this is inevitable

but we differ in principle from the American churches by our decidedly anti- athetic tendency thereupon I awake with a feeling of great relief unfortunately I must refrain from commenting on this dream as a whole and confine myself to our theme the temos has become a sacred building in accordance with the hint given earlier the proceedings are thus Char cized as religious the grotesque humorous side of the dionan mystery comes out in the so-called jimish part of the ceremony where wine is served and a toast drunk to the health of the church an inscription on the

floor of an orphic dionan Shrine puts it very aptly Monon meor only no water the dionan relics in the church such as the fish and wine symbolism the Damascus chalice the seal cylinder with the crucifix and the Inscription op Oak Baki Coke and much else besides can be mentioned only in passing the anti- athetic tendency clearly marks the point of difference from the Christian church here defined as American CF commentary to dream 14 of the first series America is the ideal home of the reasonable ideas of the Practical intellect which would like to put the

world to rights by means of a Brain Trust this view is in keeping with the Modern formula intellect equals Spirit but it completely forgets the fact fact that Spirit was never a human activity much less a function the movement to the left is thus confirmed as a withdrawal from the modern world of ideas and a regression to pre-christian dionos worship where asceticism in the Christian sense is unknown at the same time the movement does not lead right out of the Sacred spot but remains within it in other words it does not Lose its sacramental character

it does not simply fall into chaos and Anarchy it relates the church directly to the dionan sanctuary just as the historical process did though from the opposite direction we could say that this regressive development Faithfully retreads the path of history in order to reach the pre-christian level hence it is not a relapse but a kind of systematic descent at inferos a psychological nekia I encountered Something very similar in the dream of a clergyman who had a rather problematical attitude to his faith coming into his church at night he found that the whole wall of the

choir had collapsed The Altar and ruins were overgrown with vines hanging full of grapes and the moon was shining in through the Gap again a man who was much occupied with religious problems had the following dream an immense Gothic Cathedral almost completely dark high Masses being celebrated suddenly the whole wall of the aisle collapses blinding sunlight bursts into the interior together with a large herd of of bulls and cows this setting is evidently more mithraic but mithis is associated with the early Church in much the same way dianis is interestingly enough the church in our

dream is a syncretistic building for the Hagia Sophia is a very ancient Christian Church which however served as a mosque Until quite recently it therefore fits in very well with the purpose of the dream to attempt a combination of Christian and dionan religious ideas evidently this is to come about without the one excluding the other without any values being destroyed this is extremely important since the Reconstruction of the jibbon is to take place in the sacred precincts such a sacrilege might easily Lead to the dangerous supposition that the leftward movement is a diabolic ofra and

the Gibbon the devil for the Devil is in fact regarded as the ape of God the leftward movement would then be a perversion of divine Truth for the purpose of setting up his black Majesty in place of God but the unconscious has no such Blasphemous intentions it is only trying to restore the Lost dionos who is somehow lacking in Modern Man Pace nche to the world of religion at The end of vision 22 where the ape first appears it was said that everything must be ruled by the light and everything we might add includes the

Lord of Darkness with his horns and clo and hoof actually a dionan corent who has rather unexpected expectedly risen to the rank of Prince the dionan element has to do with emotions and effects which have found no suitable religious outlets in the predominantly apollonian cult and Ethos of Christianity the medieval carnivals and Judo in the church were abolished relatively early consequently the carnival became secularized and with it Divine intoxication vanished from the sacred precincts mourning earnestness severity and well-tempered spiritual Joy remained but intoxication that most direct and dangerous form of possession turned away from the

gods and enveloped the human world with its exuberance and pathos 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 dianus in whose honor they go mad and keep the Feast of the wine vat for this very reason orgies were granted religious license so as to exercise the danger that threatened from Hades our solution however has served to throw the Gates of Hell wide open 18 dream a square space with complicated ceremonies going

on in It the purpose of which is to transform animals into men two snakes moving in opposite directions have to be got rid of at once some animals are there EG foxes and dogs the people walk around the square and must let themselves be bitten in the calf by these animals at each of the four corners if they run away All Is Lost now the higher animals come on the scene bulls and ibexes four snakes glide into the Four Corners then the congregation files out two Sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this

they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life Mass out of it there instantly Rises a human head transfigured a voice proclaims these are attempts at being one might almost say that the dream goes on with the explanation of what is happening 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 cisus orius coluber in Deiter kratus at eximer rsus AB inferior Abus parbus ATK imis a golden snake is let down into the lap of the initiated and taken away again from the lower parts among the aites 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 N zarathustra would accordingly be a fatal Omen and not the only one of its kind CF the prophecy at the death of the Rope dancer the shapeless life Mass immediately recalls the ideas of the alchemical chaos the Masa or Materia inis 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 but if the life mass is to be transformed a circum ultio is necessary I.E exclusive concentration on the center 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 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 be experienced only in the innermost soul and cannot touch the visible surface of life at any point the Principle of conscious life is Neil EST in intellectu quadan Prius fuerit in sensu 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 the sensory datam however is not the causa efficiens of this rather it is autonomously selected and exploited by The psyche with the result that the rationality of the cosmos is constantly being violated in the most distressing manner but the sensible world has an equally devastating effect on the deeper psychic processes when it breaks into them as a causa efficience if reason is not to be outraged on the one hand and the creative play of images not violently suppressed on the other a circumspect and farsighted

synthetic procedure is Required in order to accomplish the paradoxical Union of irreconcilables hence the alchemical parallels in our dreams the focusing of attention on the center demanded in this dream and the warning about running away have clear parallels in the Opus alchemic the need to concentrate on the work and to meditate upon it is stressed again and again the tendency to run away however is attributed not to the operator but to the transforming Substance mercurious is evasive and is labeled service servant or service fugitivus fugitive sta The Vessel must be well sealed so that what

is within may not Escape irenaeus filthy says of this service you must be very wary how you lead him for if he can find an opportunity he will give you the slip and leave you to a world of Misfortune 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 from the difference between the material in this dream and its medieval predecessors we can measure the psychological Advance the running away is now

clearly apparent as a characteristic of the dreamer I.E it is no longer projected into the unknown substance running away thus becomes a Moral question this aspect was recognized by the Alchemists in so far as they emphasized the need for a special religious devotion at their work though one cannot altogether clear them of the susp ition of having used their prayers and Pious exercises for the purpose of forcing a miracle there are even some who aspired to have the Holy Ghost as their familiar but to do them Justice one Should not Overlook the fact that there

is more than a little evidence in the literature that they realized it was a matter of their own transformation for instance ghard Dorne exclaims transmute many in Vios lapid's philosophicus transform yourselves into living philosophical stones hardly have conscious and unconscious touched when they fly asunder on account of their Mutual antagonism hence right at the beginning Of the dream the snakes that are making off in opposite directions have to be removed I.E the conflict between conscious and unconscious is at once resolutely stopped and the conscious mind is forced to stand the tension by means of the

circum ambul the magic circle thus traced will also prevent the unconscious from breaking out again for such an eruption would be equivalent to psychosis nuli perun in Opera nostro not a few have perished in our work we can Say with the author of the rosarium The Dream shows that the difficult operation of thinking in paradoxes a feat Possible only to the superior intellect has succeeded the snakes no longer run away but settle themselves in the four corners and the process of transformation or integration sets to work the Transfiguration and illumination the conscious recognition of the

center has been attained or at least anticipated in the Dream this potential achievement if it can be maintained I.E if the conscious mind does not lose touch with the center again means a renewal of Personality since it is a subjective state whose reality cannot be validated by any external Criterion any further attempt to describe and explain it is doomed to failure for only those who have had this experience are in a position to understand and attest its reality Happiness for example is such a noteworthy reality that there is nobody who does not long for it

and yet there is not a single objective Criterion which would prove beyond all doubt that this condition necessarily exists as so often with the most important things we have to make do with a subjective judgment he 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 tetrace 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 exercise the danger of falling into unconsciousness this may well be the Empirical basis of the Cross as that which vanquishes the powers of darkness in this dream the unconscious has managed to Stage a powerful Advance by thrusting its contents dangerously near to the conscious sphere the dreamer appears to be deeply entangled in the mysterious synthetic ceremony and will unfailingly carry a lasting memory of the dream into his conscious life experience shows that this results in a

serious conflict for The conscious mind because it is not always either willing or able to put forth the extraordinary intellectual and moral effort needed to take a paradox seriously nothing is so jealous as a truth as a glance at the history of the medieval mind will show our whole modern mentality has been molded by Christianity this has nothing to do with whether we believe the truths of Christianity or not consequently the Reconstruction of the ape in the sacred Precincts as proposed by The Dream comes as such a shock that the majority of people will seek

refuge in blank incomprehension others will heedlessly ignore the abysmal depths of the dionan mystery and will welcome the rational darwinian core of the dream as a safeguard against Mystic exaltation only a very few will feel the Collision Of The Two Worlds and realize what it is all about yet the dream says plainly enough that in the place where According to tradition the deity dwells the ape is to appear this substitution is almost as bad as a black mass in eastern symbolism the square signifying the Earth in China the adma or lotus in India has the

character of the Yoni femininity 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 which is of an essentially ambivalent nature the Christian deity is one in three persons the 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 a man's sin a function belonging to him and presumably masculine the feminine 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 feminine 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 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 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 as great as that between the differentiated and the inferior

function it is possible for the third function that is is the unconscious auxiliary one to be raised to Consciousness and thus made masculine it will however bring with it traces of its contamination with the inferior function thus acting as a Kind of link with the darkness of the unconscious 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 Ila Vergo nondum pluus irata that virgin Earth not yet Watered by The Rains as tertullian called her the fourth function is contaminated with 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 in Revolt and he would defend himself desperately against what looked to him like murderous nonsense this situation explains the following dreams 19 dream ferocious war between two peoples this dream depicts the conflict the conscious mind is defending its position and trying to suppress the unconscious the first result of this is the expulsion of the fourth function but since it is contaminated with the third there is a Danger of the latter disappearing as well things would then return to the state that preceded the present one when only two

functions were conscious and the other two unconscious 20 dream there are two boys in a cave a third Falls in as if through a pipe 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 three greatly in favor of the unconscious we may therefore expect a new Advance on its part and a return to its former position the boys are

an illusion to the dwarf motif of which more later 21 dream a large transparent sphere containing many little spheres a green plant is growing out of the top the Sphere is a hole that Embraces all its contents life which has been brought to a standstill by useless struggle becomes possible again in Kundalini Yoga the green womb is a name for ishvara Shiva emerging from his latent condition 22 dream the dreamer is in an American Hotel he goes up in the lift to about the third or fourth floor he has to wait there with a lot

of other people a friend an actual person is also there and says that the dreamer should not Have kept the dark unknown woman waiting so long below since he had put her in his the dreamer's charge the friend now gives him an unsealed note for the dark woman on which is written salvation does not come from refusing to take part or from running away nor does it come from just drifting salvation comes from complete surrender with one's eyes always turned to the center on the margin of the note there is a drawing A wheel or

wreath with eight spokes then a lift boy appears and says that the dreamer's room is on the eighth floor he goes on up in the lift this time to the seventh or eighth floor an unknown red-haired man standing there greets him in a friendly way then the scene changes there is said to be a revolution in Switzerland the military party is making propaganda for completely throttling the left the objection that the left is weak enough anyway is met by The answer that this is just Why it ought to be throttled completely soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms

now appear who all resemble the red-haired man they load their guns with ram rods stand in a circle and prepare to shoot at the center but in the end they do not shoot and seem to March away the dreamer wakes up in Terror the tendency to reestablish a state of wholeness already indicated in the foregoing dream Once More comes up Against a Consciousness with a totally different orientation it is therefore appropriate that the dream should have an American background the lift is going up as is right and proper when something is coming up from the

subconscious what is coming up is the unconscious content namely the mandala characterized by the number four therefore the lift should rise to the fourth floor but as the fourth function Is taboo it only Rises to about the third or fourth this happens not to the dreamer alone but to many others as well who must all wait like him until the fourth function can be accepted a good friend then calls his attention to the fact that he should not have kept the dark woman I.E the Ana who stands for the tabooed function waiting below I.E in

the unconscious which was just the reason why the dreamer himself had to wait upstairs with the others it Is in fact not merely an individual but a collective problem for the animation of the unconscious which has become so noticeable in recent times has as Schiller foresaw raised questions which the 19th century never even dreamed of N and his zarathustra decided to reject the snake and the ugliest man thus exposing himself to an heroic cramp of Consciousness which led logically enough to the collapse foretold in the same book the advice given in the note is as

Profound as it is to the point so that there is really nothing to add after it has been more or less accepted by the dreamer the ascent can be resumed we must take it that the problem of the fourth function was accepted at least broadly for the dreamer now reaches the seventh or eighth floor which means that the fourth function is no longer represented by a quarter but by an eighth and is apparently reduced by a half curiously enough this hesitation Before the last step to wholeness seems also to play a part in f 2

where in the kabiri scene resplendant mermaids come from Over the Water nads and tritons bear we on the waters riding that which brings you all glad Tiding in shalom's giant Shield gleams of form severe revealed these are gods that we are bringing hail them you high anthems singing Sirin little in length Mighty in strength time-honored gods of shipwreck and floods nids and tritons great cabin Do we bear that our Feast be friendly Fair where their sacred Powers preside Neptune's rage is pacified a form severe is brought by mermaids feminine figures who represent as it were

the Sea and the waves of the unconscious the word severe reminds us of severe architectural or geometrical forms which illustrate a definite idea without any romantic feeling toned trimmings it gleams from the shell of a tortoise which primitive and coldblooded Like the snake symbolizes the instinctual side of the unconscious the image is somehow identical with the Unseen creative dwarf Gods hooded and cloaked mannequins who are kept hidden in the dark cista but who also appear on the seashore as little figures about a foot high where as Kinsmen of the unconscious they protect navigation I.E The

Venture Into Darkness and uncertainty in the form of the dactal They are also the gods of invention small and apparently insignificant like the impulses of the unconscious but endowed with the same Mighty power El gabber is the great the mighty one nareds and tritons three have followed where we LED but the fourth refused to call he the rightful sear he said his to think for one and all Sirens a god May count its sport to set a god at knot honor the grace they bring and fear their threatening it is Characteristic of Go's feeling toned

nature that the fourth should be the Thinker if the Supreme principle is feeling is all then thinking has to play an unfavorable role and be submerged faai portrays this development since gotha acted as his own model thinking became the fourth taboo function because of its contamination with the unconscious it takes on the grotesque form of the kabiri for the kabiri as dwarfs are thonic gods and Misshapen accordingly I call them pop bellied freaks of common clay they thus stand in grotesque contrast to the Heavenly gods and poke fun at them C IFI the ape of

God the nids and Triton sing seven there should really be Sirens where then stay the the other three nids and tritons that we know not you had best on Olympus make your quest there an eighth May yet be sought though none other gave him thought well inclined to us in Grace not all perfect yet their Race beings there Beyond Compare yearning unexplainable pressed with hunger's Pang to share in the unattainable we learn that there are really seven of them but again there is some difficulty with the eighth as there was before with the fourth similarly

in contrad to the previous emphasis placed on their lowly origin in the dark it now appears that the kabiri are actually to be found on Olympus for they are eternally striving From the depths to the Heights and are therefore always to be found both below and above the severe image is obviously an unconscious content that struggles towards the light it seeks and itself is what I have elsewhere called the treasure hard to attain this hypothesis is immediately confirmed Sirens Fame is dimmed of ancient time honor droops in men of old though they have the fleece

of gold ye have the cabiri the Golden Fleece is the coveted goal of the Argy the perilous Quest that is one of the numerous synonyms for attaining the unattainable thees makes this wise remark about it that is indeed what men most seek on Earth is rust alone that gives the coin its worth 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 earthliness that clings to our human nature and sadly Clouds the crystal Clarity we long for in the alchemical view

rust like vergis is the Metal's sickness but at the same time this leprosy is the Vera Prima Materia the basis for the preparation of the philosophical gold the rosarium says our gold is not the common gold but thou Hast inquired concerning the greenness veriditas Pres presumably vertiges deeming the bronze to be a leprous body on account of the greenness it hath upon it therefore I say unto thee that Whatever is perfect in the bronze is that greenness only because that greenness is straightway changed by our majestry into our most true gold the paradoxical remark of

Thal that the rust alone gives the coin its true value is a kind of alchemical Quip which at bottom only says that there is no light without Shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection 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 the problem of three and four 7 and 8 which gotha has tackled here was a great puzzle to Alchemy and goes back historically to the texts ascribed to christianos

in the tretis on the production of the mythical water it is said therefore the Hebrew prophetes CED Pride without restraint one becomes two two becomes three and out of the third Comes the one as the fourth in alchemical literature this propheus is taken to be Maria propesa also called the Jewish sister of Moses or the copt and it is not unlikely that she is connected with the Maria of Gnostic tradition epiphanius testifies to the existence of writings by this Maria namely the interrogation is magne and interrogation is parve said to describe a vision of how

Christ on a mountain caused a woman to come forth from his Side and how he mingled himself with her it is probably no accident that the Treatise of Maria deals with the theme of the matrimonium alchemik in a dialogue with the philosopher Aeros from which comes the saying often repeated later marry gum with gum in true marriage originally it was gum arabic and it is used here as a secret name for the transforming substance on account of its adhesive quality thus kunrath declares that the Red gum is the resin of the wise a synonym for

the transforming substance this substance as the life force visz anamon is likened by another commentator to the glue of the world gluten Mundi which is the medium between mind and body and the union of both the old Treatise consilium kugi explains that the philosophical man consists of the four Natures of the stone of these three are earthy or in the Earth but the fourth nature is the water of the stone Namely the viscous gold which is called red gum and with which the three earthy Natures are tinted we learn here that gum is the critical

fourth nature it is duplex I.E masculine and feminine and at the same time the one and only Aqua mercurialis so the union of the two is a kind of self- fertilization a characteristic always ascribed to the Mercurial dragon from these hints it can easily be Seen who the philosophical man is he is the and ogous original man or anthropos of gnosticism whose parallel in India is perusia of him the brihadaranyaka upanishad says he was as large as a man and woman embracing he divided his self Atman in two and then arose husband and wife he

United himself with her and men were born Etc the common origin of these ideas lies in the Primitive notion of the bisexual original man the fourth nature to return to the text of the Consilium kugi leads straight to the an idea that stands for man's wholeness that is the conception of a unitary being who existed before man and at the same time represents man's goal the one joins the three as the fourth and thus produces the synthesis of the four in a Unity we seem to be dealing with much the same thing in the case

of seven and 8 though this Motif occurs much less frequently in the literature it is however to be found in Paracelsus anderung Deen astronomy to which gotha had access one is powerful six are subjects the eighth is also powerful and somewhat more so than the first one is the king the six are his servants and his son so here we have King Saul and the six planets or metallic homunculi as depicted in the preciosa margarita Nolla of petus bonus linius edition 1546 as a matter of fact the eth does not appear in this text paracelsus

seems To have invented it himself but since the eth is even more power powerful than the first the crown is presumably bestowed on him in F Teek The eth Who dwells on Olympus is a direct reference to the parason text in so far as this describes the astrology of Olympus that is the structure of the Corpus asry returning now to our dream we find at the critical point the seventh or eighth floor the red-haired man a synonym for the man with the pointed Beard and hence for the shrewd Mesto who magically changes the scene because

he is concerned with something that faou himself never saw the severe image symbolizing the Supreme treasure the immortal self he changes himself into the soldiers representatives of uniformity of collective opinion which is naturally dead against tolerating anything unsuitable for Collective opinion the numbers three and seven are on the Highest Authority sacred but four and eight are the very devil something inferior common clay that in the stern Judgment of bondes of every Q has no right to exist the left is to be completely throttled meaning the unconscious and all the Sinister things that come from it

an Antiquated view no doubt and one that uses Antiquated methods but even muzzle loaders can hit the mark for reasons unknown I.E not stated in the Dream the destructive attack on the center to which according to the advice in the note one's eyes must always be turned Peter's out in the drawing on the margin of the note this Center is portrayed as a wheel with eight spokes 23 in the square space the dreamer is sitting opposite the unknown woman whose portrait he is supposed to be drawing what he draws however is not a face but

three- Lea clovers or distorted crosses in four different colors red yellow Green and blue in connection with this dream the dreamer spontaneously drew a circle with quarters tinted in the above colors it was a wheel with eight spokes in the middle there was a four petal blue flower a great many drawings now followed at Short intervals all dealing with the Curious structure of the center and arising from the dreamer's need to discover a configuration that adequately expresses the nature of this Center the drawings were based partly on visual Impressions partly on intuitive perceptions and partly

on dreams it is to be noted that the wheel is a favorite symbol in Alchemy for the circulating process the circulatio by this is meant firstly the ascensus and descensus for instance the ascending and descending Birds symbolizing the precipitation of vapors 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 the Contemporary moral allegories of the wheel emphasized that the ensus and descensus are among

other things God's descent to man and man's Ascent to God on the authority of one of St Bernard's sermons by his descent he established for us a joyful and wholesome Ascent further the wheel expresses virtues that are important for the work Constantia obediencia modero equal and humilitas the mystical associations of the wheel Play No small part in jaab BMA like the Alchemists he too operates with the wheels of Ezekiel saying thus we see that the spiritual life stands turned in upon itself and that the natural life stands turned out of and facing itself we can

then liken it to a round spherical wheel that goes on all its sides as the wheel in Ezekiel shows he goes on to explain the wheel of Nature turns in upon itself from without for God dwells within himself and has such a figure not that it can be painted it being only a natural likeness the same as when God paints himself in the figure of this world for God is everywhere entire and so dwells in himself Mark the outer wheel is the Zodiac with the Stars and after it come the seven planets Etc albeit this

figure is not fashioned sufficiently it is nevertheless a Meditation and we could make a fine drawing of it on a great circle for the meditation of those of less understanding Mark therefore desire goes in upon itself to the heart which is God Etc but bom's wheel is also the impression in alchemical terms the inform of the Eternal will it is Mother Nature or the mind gouth of the mother from whence she continually creates and works and these are the stars with the planetary orb after the model of the Eternal astrum which is only a spirit

and the Eternal mind in the wisdom of God the Eternal nature from when the Eternal Spirits proceeded and entered into a creaturely being the property of the wheel is life in the form of four BFFs who manage the Dominion in the life-giving mother these BFFs are the four elements to which the wheel of the Mind viz the astrum affords will and desire so that this whole Essence is but one thing only like the mind of a man Even as he is in Soul and body so also is this whole Essence for he is created in

the likeness of this whole Essence but nature in her four elements is also a whole Essence with a soul this suluan wheel is the origin of good and evil or rather it leads into them and out of them B's mysticism is influenced by Alchemy in the highest degree thus he says the form of the birth is as a turning wheel which mercurious causes in the sulfur the birth is The Golden Child Felius philosophorum equals archetype of the Divine Child whose Master Workman is mercurious mercurious himself is the fiery wheel of the essence in the form

of a serpent similarly the unenlightened soul is just such a fiery mercurious 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 larvae and a Monster the interpretation of the wheel in Bulma reveals something of the mystical secret of alchemy and is thus 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 represents

the essence of mandala symbolism and therefore includes the mysterious iniquus the idea of the center which the unconscious has been repeatedly Thrusting upon the conscious mind of the dreamer is beginning to gain foothold there and to exercise A peculiar Fascination the next drawing is again of the blue flower but this time subdivided into eight then follow pictures of four mountains round a lake in a crater also of a red ring lying on the ground with a withered tree standing in it round which a green snake creeps up with a leftward movement the Layman may be

rather puzzled by the serious attention devoted To this problem but a little knowledge of yoga and of the medieval philosophy of the lapis would help him to understand as we have already said the squaring of the circle was one of the methods for producing the lpis another was the use of imagino as the following text unmistakably proves and take care that thy door be well and firmly closed so that he who is within cannot escape and God willing thou Wilt reach the goal nature performeth her operations Gradually and indeed I would have thee do the

same let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature and observe according to Nature through whom the substances regenerate themselves in the bowels of the earth and imagine this with true and not with fantastic imagination the vas Beni clausm well-sealed vessel is a precautionary measure very frequently mentioned in alchemy and is the equival of the magic circle in both cases the idea is to Protect what is within from the intrusion and admixture of what is without as well as to prevent it from escaping the imagino is to be understood here as the real and literal power

to create images Ein building's craft KS imagination the classical use of the word in contrast to Fantasia which means a mere conceit in the sense of insubstantial thought in the sacon this connotation is more pointed still Fantasia means something ridiculous Imagino is the active evocation of inner images secundum naturum an authentic feat of thought or ideation which does not spin aimless and groundless fantasies Into the Blue does not that is to say just play with its objects but tries to grasp the inner facts and portray them in images true to their nature this activity is

an opus a work and we cannot call the manner in which the dreamer handles the objects of his inner experience anything but true work Considering how conscientiously accurately and carefully he records and elaborates the content now pushing its way into Consciousness the resemblance to the Opus is obvious enough to anyone familiar with Alchemy moreover the analogy is borne out by the dreams themselves as dream 24 will show the present Dream from which the ab mentioned drawings originated shows no signs of the left having been In any way throttled on the contrary the dreamer finds himself

once more in the temos facing the unknown woman who personifies the fourth or inferior function his drawing of the wheel with a four-petal blue flower in the middle was anticipated by The Dream what the dream represents in personified form the dreamer reproduces as an abstract ideogram this might well be a hint that the meaning of the personification could Also be represented in quite another form this other form three- Lea Clover distorted cross refers back to the Ace of clubs in dream 16 of the first series where we pointed out its analogy with the irregular cross

the analogy is confirmed here in this dream however the symbol of the Christian Trinity has been overshadowed or colored by the alchemical quaternity the colors appear as a concretization of the tetrace the Rosarium quotes a similar statement from the tractatus orius volor clamat voce Magna inin osum Al ner at rubius catris the vulture exclaims in a loud voice I am the white black and the red yellow on the other hand it is stressed that the lapis unites omn colors in itself we can thus take it that the quaternity represented by the colors is a kind

of preliminary stage of the lapis this is confirmed by the rosarium our stone is from the four elements the same applies To the Orum philosophum in the gold the four elements are contained in equal proportions the fact is that the four colors in the dream represent the transition from Trinity to quaternity and thus to the squared Circle which according to the Alchemists comes nearest to the lapis on account of its roundness or perfect Simplicity for this reason a recipe for the preparation of the lapis attributed to rundis says take of the body that is Most

simple and round and do not take of the triangle or quadrangle but of the round for the round is nearer to Simplicity than the triangle hence it is to be noted that a simple body has no corners for it is the first and last among the planets like the sun Among the Stars 24 dream two people are talking about crystals particularly about a diamond here one can hardly avoid thinking of the lapis in fact this dream discloses The historical background and indicates that we really are dealing with the coveted lapis the treasure hard to attain

the dreamer's Opus amounts to an unconscious recapitulation of the efforts of hermetic philosophy more about the diamond and dreams 37 39 50 below 25 dream it is a question of constructing a central point and making the figure symmetrical by reflection at this point the word constructing points to the synthetic character of the Opus And also to the laborious building process that taxes the dreamer's energy the Symmetry is an answer to the conflict in dream 22 completely throttling the left each side must perfectly balance the other as its mirror image and this image is to fall

at the central point which evidently possesses the property of reflection it is a vitum a crystal or sheet of water this power of reflection seems to be another illusion to the Underlying idea of the lapis the Orum philosophum The Elixir the Aquin Etc just as the right denotes the world of Consciousness and its principles so by reflection the picture of the world is to be be turned round to the left thus producing a corresponding World in Reverse we could equally well say through reflection the right appears as the reverse of the left therefore the left

seems to have as much validity as the right in other words the unconscious And its for the most part unintelligible order becomes the symmetrical counterpart of the conscious mind and its contents although it is still not clear which of them is reflected and which reflecting to carry our reasoning a step further we could regard the center as the point of intersection of two worlds that correspond but are inverted by reflection the idea of creating a symmetry would thus indicate some kind Of climax in the task of accepting the unconscious and incorporating it in a general

picture of the world the unconscious here displays a cosmic character 26 dream it is night with stars in the sky a voice says now it will begin the dreamer asks what will begin whereupon the voice answers the circulation can begin then a shooting star falls in a curious leftward curve the scene changes and the dreamer is in a rather squalled nightclub the Proprietor who appears to be an unscrupulous crook is there with some bedraggled looking girls a qural starts about left and right the dreamer then leaves and drives round the perimeter of a square in

a taxi then he is in the bar again the proprietor says what they said about left and right did not satisfy my feelings is there really such a thing as a left and a right side of human society the dreamer answers the existence of the left does not Contradict that of the right they both exist in everyone the left is the mirror image of the right whenever I feel it like that as a mirror image I am at one with myself there is no right and no left side to Human Society but there are symmetrical

and lopsided people the lopsided are those who can fulfill only one side of the themselves either left or right they are still in the childhood State the proprietor says meditatively now that's much better and goes about His business I have given this dream in full because it is an excellent illustration of how the ideas hinted at in the last dream have been taken up by the dreamer the idea of symmetrical proportion has been stripped of its Cosmic character and translated into psychological terms expressed in Social symbols write and left are used almost like political slogans

the beginning of the dream however is still under the Cosmic aspect the dreamer noted that the Curious curve of the shooting star corresponded exactly to the line he drew when sketching the picture of the eight-fold flower the curve formed the edge of the petals thus the shooting star traces the outline so to speak of a flower that spreads over the whole star Heaven what is now beginning is the circulation of the light this Cosmic flower corresponds roughly to the Rose In Dante's Paradiso the cosmic nature of an experience as an aspect of some inner occurrence

that can only be understood psychologically is offensive and at once provokes a reaction from below evidently the cosmic aspect was too high and is compensated downward so that the Symmetry is no longer that of two world pictures but merely of human society in fact of the dreamer himself when the proprietor remarks that the latter's Psychologic iCal understanding is much better he is making an estimate whose conclusion should run but still not good enough the quarrel about right and left that starts in the bar is the conflict which breaks out in the dreamer himself when he

is called upon to recognize the Symmetry he cannot do this because the other side looks so suspicious that he would rather not investigate it too closely that is the reason for the magical circum ulaa driving around the Square he has to stay inside and learn to face his Mirror Image without running away he does this as best he can though not quite as the other side would wish hence the somewhat chill recognition of his merits 27 visual impression a circle with a green tree in the middle in the circle a fierce battle is Raging between

Savages they do not see the tree evidently the conflict between right and left has not yet ended it continues because the Savages are still in the Child childhood State and therefore being lopsided only know either the left or the right but not a third that stands above the conflict 28 visual impression a circle within it steps lead up to a basin with a fountain inside when a condition is unsatisfactory because some essential aspect of the unconscious content is lacking the unconscious process reverts to earlier symbols as is the case here the symbolism goes back to

dream 13 Where we met the mandala Garden of the philosophers with its Fountain of Aqua Nostra Circle and Basin emphasize the mandala the rose of medieval symbolism the Rose Garden of the philosophers is one of alchemy's favorite symbols 29 visual impression a bunch of roses then the sign image but it should be image a rose bouquet is like a fountain Fanning out the meaning of the first sign possibly a tree is not clear whereas the correction represents The eight-fold flower evidently a mistake is being corrected which somehow impaired the wholeness of the Rose the aim

of the Reconstruction is to bring the problem of the Mandela the correct valuation and interpretation of the center once more into the field of Consciousness 30 dream the dreamer is sitting at a round table with the dark unknown woman whenever a process has reached a culmination as regards either its Clarity or the wealth of inferences that can be drawn from it a regression is likely to ensue from the dreams that come in between the ones we have quoted here it is evident that the dreamer is finding the insistent demands of holess somewhat disagreeable for their

realization will have far-reaching practical consequences whose personal nature however lies outside the scope of our study the round table again points to The circle of wholeness and the Ana comes in as representative of the fourth function especially in her dark aspect which always makes itself felt when something is becoming concrete I.E when it has to be translated or threatens to translate itself into reality dark means thonic I.E concrete and earthy this is also the source of the fear that causes the regression 31 dream the dreamer is sitting with a certain man of unpleasant aspect at

a Round table on it stands a glass filled with a gelatinous mass this dream is an advance on the last in that the dreamer has accepted the dark as his own Darkness to the ENT of producing a real Shadow belonging to him personally the anima is thus relieved of the moral inferiority projected upon her and can take up the living and creative function which is properly her own this is represented by the glass with its peculiar contents which we like The dreamer May compare with the in differentiated life mass in dream 18 it was then

a question of the gradual transformation of primitive animality into something human so we may expect something of the sort here for it seems as if the spiral of inner development had come round to the same Point again though higher up the glass corresponds to the Unum vas of alchemy and its contents to the living semi-organic mixture from which the body of the lapis Endowed with spirit and life will emerge or possibly that strange fian figure who bursts into flame three times the boy charioteer the homunculus who has dashed against the Throne of galatea and euphorion

all symbolizing a dissolution of the center into its unconscious elements we know that the lapis is not just a stone since it is expressly stated to be composed D animali vegetab at minerali and to consist of Body Soul and Spirit moreover it grows from flesh And blood for which reason the philosopher Hermes in the tabula smagina says the wind hath carried it in his belly therefore wind is air air is life and life is soul the stone is that thing midway between perfect and imperfect bodies and that which nature herself begins is brought to Perfection

through the art the stone is named the stone of invisibility lapis invisibilised Mass has its parallel in the alchemical idea of the Prima Materia As a chaotic Massa and formis impregnated by the seeds of life as we have seen the qualities of gum arabic and glue are attributed to it or again it is called viscosa and uosa in paracelsus the nosto is the Arcane substance although modern conceptions of nutrient soil jelly-like growths Etc underly the dreamers gelatinous Mass the atavistic associations with far older alchemical ideas still persist and these although not consciously present Nevertheless exert

a powerful unconscious influence on the choice of symbols 32 dream the dreamer receives a letter from an unknown woman she writes that she has pains in the uterus a drawing is attached to the letter looking roughly like this in the Primeval Forest there are swarms of monkeys then a panorama of white glaciers opens out the anima reports that there are painful processes going on in the Life creating Center Which in this case is no longer the glass containing the life Mass but a point designated as a uterus to be reached so the spiral suggests by

means of a circum ambula at all events the spiral emphasizes the center and hence the uterus which is a synonym frequently employed for the alchemical vessel just as it is one of the basic meanings of the Eastern Mandela the serpentine line leading to the vessel is analogous to The healing Serpent of esculapius and also to the tantric symbol of Shiva Bindu the creative latent god without extension in space who in the form of a point or lingum is encircled three and a half times by the calini serpent with the Primeval Forest we meet the animal

or ape Motif again which appeared before in Vision 22 of the first series par and in dreams 16 and 18 of this inv Vision 22 it led to the announcement that everything must be Ruled by the light and in dream 18 to the transfigured Head similarly the present dream M ends with a panorama of white glaciers reminding the dreamer of an earlier dream not included here in which he beheld the Milky Way and was having a conversation about immortality thus the glacier symbol is a bridge leading back again to the cosmic aspect that caused the

regression but as is nearly always the case the earlier content does not return in its first Simple guise it brings a new complication with it which though it might have been expected logically is no less repugnant to the intellectual Consciousness than the cosmic aspect was the complication is the memory of the conversation about immortality this theme was already hinted at in dream 9 with its pendulum clock a perpetuum mobile immortality is a clock that never runs down a mandala that revolves Eternally like the heavens thus the cosmic aspect returns with interest and compound interest this

might easily prove too much for the dreamer for the scientific stomach has very limited powers of digestion the unconscious does indeed put forth a bewildering profusion of semblances for that obscure thing we call the mandala or self it almost seems as if we were ready to go on dreaming in the unconscious the age-old dream of alchemy And to continue to pile new synonyms on top of the old only to know as much or as little about it in the end as the Ancients themselves I will not enlarge upon what the lapis meant to our forefathers

and what the mandala still means to the list and tant Aztec and Pueblo Indian the golden pill to the taist and the golden seed to the Hindu we know the texts that give us a vivid idea of all this but what does it mean when the unconscious stubbornly persists In presenting such abstruse symbolisms to a cultured European the only point of view I can apply here is a psychological one there may be others with which I'm not familiar from this point of view as it seems to me everything that can be grouped together under the

general concept mandala expresses the essence of a certain kind of attitude the known attitudes of the conscious mind have definable aims and purposes but a man's Attitude towards the self is the only one that has no definable aim and no visible purpose it is easy enough to say self but exactly what have we said that remains shrouded in metaphysical Darkness I may Define self as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche but this totality transcends our vision it is a veritable lapis 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 the totality can only be experienced in its parts and then only in so far as these are contents of Consciousness but quad totality it necessarily transcends Consciousness consequently the self is a pure borderline concept similar to kant's Ding and sit true true it is a concept that grows steadily clearer with experience as our dreams show without However losing anything of its Transcendence since we cannot possibly know the boundaries of something unknown to us it follows that we are not in

a position to set any bounds to the self it would be wildly arbitrary and therefore unscientific to restrict the self to the limits of the individual psyche quite apart from the fundamental fact that we have not the least knowledge of these limits seeing that they also lie in the Unconscious we may be able to indicate the limits of Consciousness but the unconscious is simply the unknown psyche and for that very reason illimitable because indeterminable such being the case we should not be in the least surprised if the empirical manifestations of unconscious contents Bear all the

marks of something illimitable something not determined by space and time this quality is numinous and therefore Alarming above all to a cautious mind that knows the value of precisely delimited Concepts one is glad not to be a philosopher or Theologian and so under no obligation to meet such Numa professionally it is all the worse when it becomes increasingly clear that Numa are psychic entia that Force themselves upon Consciousness since night after night our dreams practice philosophy on their own account what is more when we attempt to give these Numa the slip and Angrily reject the

alchemical gold which the unconscious offers things do in fact go badly with us we may even develop symptoms in defiance of all reason but the moment we face up to the stumbling block and make it if only hypothetically the Cornerstone the symptoms vanish and we feel unaccountably well in this dilemma we can at least Comfort ourselves with the reflection that the unconscious is a necessary evil Which must be reckoned with and that it would therefore be wiser to accompany it on some of its strange symbolic wanderings even though their meaning be exceedingly questionable it might

perhaps be conducive to Good Health to relearn nich's lesson of earlier Humanity the only objection I could make to such rationalistic explanations is that very often they do not stand the test of events we can observe in these and similar cases how over the years the Entel of the self becomes so insistent that Consciousness has to rise to still greater Feats if it is to keep Pace with the unconscious all that can be ascertained at present about the symbolism of the mandala is that it portrays an autonomous psychic fact characterized by a phenomenology which is

always repeating itself and is everywhere the same it seems to be a sort of atomic nucleus about whose innermost structure and ultimate meaning We know nothing we can also regard it as the actual I.E effective reflection of a conscious attitude that can State neither its aim nor its purpose and because of this failure projects its activity entirely upon the virtual center of the mandala the compelling Force necessary for this projection always lies in some situation where the individual no longer knows how to help himself in any other Way that the Mandela is merely a psychological

reflex is however contradicted firstly by the autonomous nature of this symbol which sometimes manifests itself with overwhelming spontaneity in dreams and visions and secondly by the autonomous nature of the unconscious as such which is not only the original form of everything psychic but also the condition we pass through in early childhood and to which we return every night there is no evidence For the assertion that the activity of the psyche is merely reactive or reflex this is at best a biological working hypothesis of limited validity when raised to a universal truth it is nothing but

a materialistic myth for it overlooks the creative capacity of the psyche which whether we like it or not exists and in face of which all so-called causes become mere occasions 33 dream a battle among Savages in which beastial cruelties are perpetrated as Was to be foreseen the new complication immortality has started a furious conflict which makes use of the same symbols as the analogous situation in dream 27 34 dream a conversation with a friend the dreamer says I must carry on with the figure of the bleeding Christ before me and persevere in the work of

self-redemption this like the previous dream points to an extraordinary subtle kind of suffering caused by the breaking through Of an alien spiritual World which we find very hard to accept hence the analogy with the tragedy of Christ my kingdom is not of this world but it also shows that the dreamer is now continuing his task in deadly Earnest the reference to Christ May well have a deeper mean meaning than that of a mere moral reminder we are concerned here with the process of individuation a process which has constantly been held up to Western man In

the dogmatic and religious model of the Life of Christ the accent has always fallen on the historicity of the savior's life and because of this its symbolical Nature has remained in the dark although the Incarnation formed a very essential part of the symolon Creed the efficacy of Dogma however by no means rests on Christ's unique historical reality but on its own symbolic Nature by virtue of which it expresses a more or less ubiquitous Psychological assumption quite independent of the existence of any Dogma there is thus a pre-christian as well as a non-Christian Christ in so

far as he is an autonomous psychological fact at any rate the doctrine of prefiguration is founded on this idea in the case of the modern man who has no religious assumptions at all it is therefore only logical that the anthropos or poyan figure should emerge since it is present in his own Psyche 35 dream an actor smashes his hat against the wall where it looks like this as certain material not included here shows the actor refers to a definite fact in the dreamer's personal life up to now he had maintained a certain fiction about himself

which prevented him from taking himself seriously this fiction has become incompatible with the serious attitude he has now attained he must give up the actor for it was the actor in him who Rejected the self the Hat refers to the first Dream of all where he put on a stranger's hat the actor throws the Hat against the wall and the hat proves to be a mandala so the strange hat was the self which at that time while he was still playing a fictitious role seemed like a stranger to him 36 dream the dreamer drives in

a taxi to the Wrath house plots but it is called the marienhof I mention this dream only in passing because it shows the feminine Nature of the temos just as hordis conclusus enclosed Garden is often used as an image for the Virgin Mary in medieval hymns and Rosa mystica is one of her attributes in the Litany of Loro 37 dream there are curves outlined in light around a dark Center then the dreamer is wandering about in a dark cave where a battle is going on between good and evil but there is also a prince who

knows everything everything he gives the dreamer a ring set with a diamond And places it on the fourth finger of his left hand the circulation of light that started in dream 26 reappears more clearly light always refers to Consciousness which at present runs only along the periphery the center is still dark it is the dark cave and to enter it is obviously to set the conflict going again at the same time it is like the prince who stands aloof who knows everything and is the possessor of the Precious Stone the gift means nothing less than

the dreamer's vow to the self for as a rule the wedding ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand true the left is the unconscious from which it is to be inferred that the situation is still largely shrouded in unconsciousness the prince seems to be the representative of the Enigma Regis the dark cave corresponds to the vessel containing the Waring opposites The self is made manifest in the Opposites and in the conflict between them it is a coincidentia oppositorum hence the way to the self begins with conflict 38 dream a circular table

with four chairs around it table and chairs are empty this dream confirms the above conjecture the mandala is not yet in use 39 visual impression the dreamer is falling into the abyss at the bottom there is a bear whose eyes gleam alternately in four colors red yellow Green and blue actually it has four eyes that change into four lights the bear disappears and the dreamer goes through a long dark tunnel light is shimmering at the far end a treasure is there and on top of it the ring with the diamond it is said that this

ring will lead him on a long journey to the east this waking dream shows that the dreamer is still preoccupied with the dark Center the bear stands for the thonic element that might seize him but then it becomes Clear that the animal is only leading up to the four colors 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 whence comes the colorful C pavonis 40 dream under the guidance of The unknown woman the dreamer has to discover the pole at the risk of his life life the pole is the point round which everything turns hence another symbol of the self Alchemy also took up this analogy in the pole is the heart of mercurious who is the true fire wherein his master rests when navigating over this great sea he sets his course by the aspect of the North Star mercurious is the

world's soul and the pole is its heart the idea of the animamundi Coincides with that of the collective unconscious whose Center is the self the symbol of the the C is another synonym for the unconscious 41 visual impression yellow balls rolling round to the left in a circle rotation about a center recalling dream 21 42 dream an old Master points to a spot on the ground illuminated in red the philosophist shows him the center the redness May mean the dawn like the rubo in alchemy which as a rule immediately preceded the Completion of the work

43 dream a yellow light like the sun looms through the fog but it is murky eight Rays go out from the center this is the point of penetration the light ought to pierce through but has not quite succeeded the dreamer himself observed that the point of penetration was identical with the pole in dream 40 so it is as we surmised a question of the sun's appearing which now turns yellow but the light is still murky which probably means insufficient Understanding the penetration alludes to the need for effort in coming to a decision in alchemy yellow

citras often coincides with the rubo the gold is yellow or reddish yellow 44 dream the dreamer is in a square enclosure where he must keep still it is a prison for liliputians or children a wicked woman is in charge of them the children start moving and begin to circulate around the periphery the dreamer would like to run away but may Not do so one of the children turns into an animal and bites him in the calf the lack of clarity demands further efforts of concentration hence the dreamer finds himself still in the childhood State hence

lopsided and imprisoned in the temos in the charge of a wicked mother anima the animal appears as in dream 18 and he is bitten I.E he must expose himself and pay the price the circumambulation means as always concentration on the center he finds This state of tension almost unendurable but he wakes up with an intense and pleasant feeling of having solved something as if he held the diamond in his hand the children point to the dwarf Motif which may Express Kabir elements I.E it may represent unconscious formative powers or it may at the same time

allude to his still childish condition 45 dream a parade ground with troops they are not equipping themselves for war but form an eight- raid star Rotating to the left the essential Point here is that the conflict seems to be overcome the star is not in the sky guy and not a diamond but a configuration on the Earth formed by human beings 46 dream the dreamer is imprisoned in the Square enclosure lions and a wicked sorceress appear he cannot get out of the shic prison because he is not yet ready to do something that he should

this is an important personal matter a duty even and the cause of much Misgiving lions like all wild animals indicate latent effects the lion plays an important part in alchemy and has much the same meaning it is a fiery animal an emblem of the devil and stands for the danger of being swallowed by the unconscious 47 dream the Wise Old Man shows the dreamer a place on the ground marked in a peculiar way this is probably the place on Earth where the dreamer belongs if he is to realize the self similar to dream 42 48

dream and acquaintance wins a prize for digging up a potter's wheel The Potter's Wheel rotates on the ground and produces Earth and Earthly vessels which may figuratively be called human bodies being round the wheel refers to the self and the creative activity in which it is Manifest The Potter's Wheel also symbolizes the recurrent theme of circulation 49 dream a starry figure rotating at the cardinal points of the Circle there are pictures representing the seasons just as the place was defined before so now the time place and time are the most General and necessary elements in

any definition the determination of time and place was stressed right at the beginning a definite location in place and time is part of a man's reality the seasons refer to the quartering of the circle which corresponds to the cycle of the year the year is a symbol of the Original man the rotation Motif indicates that the symbol of the circle is to be thought of not as static but as Dynamic 50 dream an unknown man gives the dreamer a precious stone but he is attacked by a gang of Apaches he runs away Nightmare and is

able to escape the unknown woman tells him afterwards that it will not always be so sometime he will have to stand his ground and not run away when a definite time is added to a definite Place one is rapidly Approaching reality that is the reason for the gift of the jewel but also for the fear of decision which robs the dreamer of the power to make up his mind 51 dream there is a feeling of great tension many people are circulating around a large Central oblong with four smaller Oblongs on its sides the circulation in

the large oblong goes to the left and in the smaller Oblongs IO the right in the middle there is the eight raid star a Bowl is placed in the center of each of the smaller Oblongs containing red yellow green and colorless water the water rotates to the left the disquieting question arises is there enough water the colors Point once more to the preliminary stage the disquieting question is whether there is enough Water of Life Aquin nastra energy libido to reach the Central Star IE the core or kernel CF next dream the circulation in the central

oblong is still going to the Left I.E Consciousness is moving towards the unconscious the center is therefore not yet sufficiently illuminated the rightward circulation in the smaller Oblongs which represent the quaternity seems to suggest that the four functions are becoming the four are generally characterized by the four colors of the rainbow the Striking fact here is that the blue is missing and also that the Square Ground plan has suddenly been abandoned the Horizontal has extended itself at the cost of the vertical so we are dealing with a disturbed Mandela we might add by way of

criticism that the antithetical arrangement of the functions has not yet become sufficiently conscious for their characteristic polarity to be recognized the predominance of the horizontal over the vertical indicates that the ego Consciousness is uppermost thus entailing a loss of height and depth 52 dream a rectangular dance hall everybody Is going round the periphery to the left suddenly the order is heard to the colonels but the dreamer has first to go into the adjoining room to crack some nuts then the people climb down rope ladders to the water the time has come to press on to

the kernel or core of of the matter but the dreamer still has a few more hard nuts to crack in the little rectangle the adjoining room I.E in one of the four functions meanwhile the process goes on and descends to the Water the vertical is thus lengthened and from the incorrect oblong we again get the square which expresses the complete symmetry of conscious and unconscious with all its psychological implications 53 dream the dreamer finds himself in an empty Square Room which is rotating a voice cries don't let him out he won't pay the tax this

refers to the dreamer's inadequate self-realization in the personal matter already alluded to which in this case was one of the Essential conditions of individuation and therefore could not be circumvented as was to be expected after the Preparatory emphasis on the vertical in the preceding dream the square is now reestablished the cause of the disturbance was an underestimation of the demands of the unconscious the vertical which led to a flattening of the personality recumbent oblong after this dream the dreamer worked out six mandalas in which he tried to determine The right length of the vertical the

form of circulation and the distribution of color at the end of this work came the following dream given unabridged 54 dream I come to a strange solemn house the house of the Gathering many candles are burning in the background arranged ranged in a peculiar pattern with four points running upward outside at the door of the house an old man is posted people are going in they say nothing and stand Motionless In order to Collect themselves inwardly the man at the door says of the visitors to the house when they come out again they are cleansed

I go into the house myself and find I can concentrate perfectly then a voice says what you are doing is dangerous religion is not a tax to be paid so that you can rid yourself of the woman's image for this image cannot be got rid of woe unto them who use religion as a substitute for another side of the Soul's life they are in Error and will be accursed religion is no substitute it is to be added to the other activities of the Soul as the ultimate completion out of the fullness of Life shall you

bring forth your religion only then shall you be blessed while the last sentence is being spoken in ringing tones I hear distant music simple chords on on an organ something about it reminds me of Wagner's fire music as I leave the house I see a burning mountain and I feel the fire That is not put out is a holy fire Shaw St Joan the dreamer notes that this dream was a powerful experience indeed it has a numinous quality and we shall therefore not be far wrong if we assume that it represents a new climax of

insight and understanding The Voice has as a rule an absolutely authoritative character and generally comes at decisive moments the house probably corresponds to the square which is a Gathering Place the four Shining points in the background again indicate the quaternity the remark about cleansing refers to the transformative function of the taboo area the production of wholeness which is prevented by the tax evasion naturally requires the image of the woman since as anima she represents the fourth inferior function feminine because contaminated with the unconscious in what sense the tax is to be paid depends on the

nature of the inferior Function and its auxiliary and also on the attitude type the payment can be either concrete or symbolic but the conscious mind is not qualified to decide which form is valid the dreams view that religion may not be a substitute for another side of the Soul's life will certainly strike many people as a radical Innovation according to it religion is equated with wholeness it even appears as the expression of the integration of the self in the fullness Of Life The Faint echo of the fire music the Loki Motif is not out of

key for what does fullness of life mean 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 who so 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 the theme of

The Fire Mountain is to be met with in The Book of Enoch Enoch sees the Seven Stars chained like great mountains and burning with fire at the Angel's place of punishment originally the Seven Stars were the seven Great Babylonian Gods but at the time of Enoch's Revelation they Had become the seven archons rulers of this world Fallen Angels condemned to punishment in contrast to this menacing theme there is an illusion to the Miracles of Jehovah on Mount Si while according to other sources the number seven is by no means Sinister since it is on the

seventh mountain of the western land that the tree with the life-giving fruit is to be found I.E the arbor sapena 55 dream a silver bowl with four cracked nuts at the cardinal points This dream shows that some of the problems in dream 52 have been settled though the settlement is not complete the dreamer pictured the goal that has now been attained as a circle divided into four with the quadrants painted in the four colors the circulation is to the left though this satisfies the demands of symmetry the polarity of the functions is still unrecognized despite

the last very Illuminating dream because in the Painting red and blue green and yellow are side by side instead of opposite one another from this we must conclude that the realization is meeting with strong inner resistances partly of a philosophical and partly of an ethical nature the justification for which cannot lightly be set aside that the dreamer has an inadequate understanding of the polarity is shown by the fact that the nuts have still to be cracked in reality and also that they are all Alike I.E not yet differentiated 56 dream four children are carrying a

large dark ring they move in a circle the dark unknown woman appears and says she will come again for it is the Festival of the solstice in this dream the elements of dream 44 come together again the children and the dark woman who was a wicked witch before the solstice indicates the turning point in alchemy the work is completed in the Autumn vindemia hermus children dwarf Gods bring the ring I.E the symbol of wholeness is still under the sway of child like creative Powers note that children also play a part in the Opus alchemic a

certain portion of the work is called ludus puerorum save for the remark that the work is as easy as Child's Play I have found no explanation for this seeing that the work is in the unanimous testimony of all the adepts exceedingly difficult it must be a euphemistic and Probably also a symbolical definition it would thus point to a cooperation on the part of infantile or conscious forces represented as kabiri and hobgoblins 57 visual impression the dark ring with an egg in the middle 58 visual impression a Black Eagle comes out of the egg and seizes

in its beak the ring now turned to Gold then the dreamer is on a ship and the bird flies ahead the eagle signifies height previously the stress was on depth people descending to the Water it seizes the whole Mandela and with it control of the dreamer who carried Along on a ship SA after the bird birds are thoughts and the flight of thought generally it is fantasies and intuitive ideas that are represented thus the winged mercurious Morpheus genii Angels the ship is the vehicle that bears the dreamer Over the Sea and the depths of the

unconscious as a man-made thing it has The significance of a system or method or a way CF hinayana and Mahayana looks the Lesser and greater vehicle the two schools of Buddhism the flight of thought goes ahead in methodical elaboration follows after man cannot walk the Rainbow Bridge like a god but must go underneath with whatever reflective afterthoughts he may have the eagle synonymous with Phoenix vulture Raven is a well-known alchemical symbol even the lapis the Rebus compounded of Two parts and therefore frequently hermaphroditic as an amalgam of Saul and Luna is often represented with wings

denoting Intuition or spiritual winged potentiality in The Last Resort all these 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 in alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifacts 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 physes third the vision

of the world clock 59 the great vision there is a vertical and a horizontal Circle having a Common Center this is the world clock it is supported by the black bird the vertical circle is a blue disc with a White border divided into 4 time 8 32 partitions a pointer rotates upon it the horizontal Circle consists of four colors on it stand four little men with pendulums and round about it is laid the ring that was once dark and is now golden formerly carried by the children the clock has three rhythms or pulses one the

small pulse the pointer on the blue vertical disc advances by 130 thff two the middle pulse one complete revolution of the pointer at the same Time the horizontal Circle advances by 130 Tiff three the great pulse 32 middle pulses are equal to one revolution of the golden ring this remarkable Vision made a deep and Lasting Impression on the dreamer and 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 I.E 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 Bec comes 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 it is difficult to feel our way into the matter because the meaning of the image is exceedingly

obscure if the meaning is impenetrable and the form and color take no account of aesthetic requirements then neither our understanding nor our sense of beauty is satisfied and we are at a loss to see why it should give rise to the impression of the most Sublime Harmony we can only Venture the hypothesis that Disperate and incongruous elements have combined here in the most fortunate way simultaneously producing an image which realizes the intentions of the unconscious in the highest degree 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 the impression is indeed extremely abstract one of the underlying Ideas seems to be the intersection of two heterogeneous systems by the sharing of a common Center hence if we start as before from the assumption that the center and its periphery represent the totality of the psyche and consequently the self then the figure tells us that two heterogeneous systems intersect in the self standing to one another in a functional relationship that is governed by law and regulated by three Rhythms the self

is by definition the center and the circumference of the conscious and unconscious systems but the regulation of their functions by three rhythms is something that I cannot substantiate I do not know what the three rhythms allude to but I do not doubt for a moment that the illusion is amply Justified the only analogy I could uce would be the three Regina mentioned in the introduction by which the four elements are converted into one another Or synthesized in the quintessence first second third regimen Earth to water water to air air to fire 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 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 SpaceTime or at any rate an embodiment of it and therefore mathematically speaking four-dimensional in nature although only visible in a three-dimensional projection I do not wish to labor this argument for such an interpretation lies beyond my powers of

proof the 32 pulses May conceivably derive from the multiplication of 48 as we know from experience that the quaternity found at the center 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 sephr yser 1 Jehovah the Lord of hosts the god of Israel the Living God and king of the world has Graven his name in 32 mysterious Paths of wisdom these consist of 10 self-contain numbers sephiroth and 22 basic letters 1 2 the meaning of

the 10 numbers is as follows one the spirit of the Living God Two spirit from Spirit three water from Spirit four fire from water 5 to 10 height depth east west south north Cornelius Agrippa mentions that the Learned Jews attribute the number 32 to wisdom for so many are the ways of wisdom described by Abram Frank establishes a connection between 32 and The cabalistic Trinity kether baa and hokma these three persons contain and unite in themselves elves everything that exists and they in turn are united In the white head the Ancient of Days for he

is everything and everything is he sometimes he is represented with three heads which make but a single head and sometimes he is likened to the brain which without impairing its Unity divides into three parts and spreads through the whole body by means of 32 pairs of nerves just as God spreads through the universe along 32 miraculous paths these 3 two Canal as a culti are Also mentioned by noron Rosen Roth who calls hokma the Supreme path of all embracing all on the authority of job 28:7 AV there is a path which no foul knoweth and

which the vulture's eye hath not seen allendy in his very valuable account of number symbolism writes 32 is the differentiation which appears in the organic world not creative generation but rather the plan and arrangement of the various forms of created things which the creator has modeled as the Product of 8 * 4 whether the cabalistic number 32 can be equated with the 32 fortunate signs mahavan of the Buddha child is doubtful as to the interpretation based on comparative historical material we are in a more favorable position at least as regards the general aspects of the

figure we have at our disposal firstly the whole mandala symbolism of three continents and secondly the specific Time symbolism of the mandala as this developed under the influence of astrology particularly in the west the horoscope is itself a mandala a clock with a dark Center and a leftward circumambulation with houses and planetary phases the mandalas of ecclesiastical art particularly those on the floor before the high altar or beneath the transcept make frequent use of the zodiacal beasts or the yearly Seasons a related idea is the identity Of Christ with the church calendar of which he

is the fixed pole and the life the son of man is an anticipation of the idea of the self hence the Gnostic adulteration of Christ with the other synonyms for the self among the nines recorded by hippitus there is also a connection with the symbolism of Horus on the one hand Christ enthroned with the four emblems of the evangelists three animals and an angel on the other father Horus with his four Sons or Osiris with the four sons of Horus Horus is also the alos anat Rising Sun and Christ was still worshiped as such by

the early Christians we find a remarkable parallel in the writings of guom De dialville prior of the cian monastery at shalis a Norman poet who independently of Dante composed three pelerinage between 1330 and 1355 Le pelerinage Dei Dam and Jesus Christ the last Kanto of the pelerinage dam contains a vision of paradise which Consists of seven large spheres each containing seven smaller spheres all the Spheres rotate and this movement is called a CLE seculum the Heavenly seal are the prototypes of the Earthly centuries the angel who guides the poet explains when holy church ends her

prayers with in secula seculum forever and ever she has in mind not Earthly time but eternity at the same time the sees are spherical spaces in which the Blessed dwell sees and Shu are ident tical in the highest Heaven of pure gold the king sits on a round Throne which shines more brightly than the Sun a coron of precious stones surrounds him beside him on a circular Throne that is made of brown Crystal sits the queen who intercedes for the Sinners raising his eyes to the golden Heaven the pilgrim perceived a marvelous Circle which appeared

to be 3 ft across it came out of the golden Heaven at one Point and re-entered it at another and it made the whole tour of the golden Heaven this circle is sapphire colored it is a small circle 3T in diameter and evidently it moves over a great horizontal circle like a rolling disc this great circle intersects the Golden Circle of Heaven while Gom is absorbed in this sight three Spirits suddenly appear clad in purple with golden crowns and girdles and enter the golden Heaven this moment so the angel tells him is Unett like a

church Festival on on [Music] Earth Yak this circle is the calendar which spinning around the course entire shows the feast day of each Saint and when it should be celebrate each Saint goes once round all the way each star you see stands for a day and every Sun denotes a spell of 30 days zodiacal the three figures are Saints whose feast day is even now being celebrated the small circle that enters The golden Heaven is 3et in width and likewise there are three figures who make their sudden entry they signify the moment of time in

eternity as does the circle of the calendar but why this should be exactly 3 ft in diameter and why there are three figures remains a mystery we naturally think of the three rhythms in our vision which are started off by the pointer moving over the blue dis and which enter the system just as inexplicably as the Calendar Circle enters the golden Heaven the guide continues to instruct Gom on the significance of the signs of the zodiac with particular reference to Sacred history and ends with the remark that the Feast of the 12 fishermen will be

celebrated in the sign of Pisces when the 12 will appear before the Trinity then it suddenly occurs to Gom that he has never really understood the nature of the Trinity and he begs the angel for an Explanation the angel answers now there are three principal colors namely green red and gold these three colors are seen United in diverse works of watered silk and in the feathers of many birds such as the peacock the almighty King who puts three colors in one cannot he also make one substance to be three gold the Royal color is attributed

to God the Father read to God the son because he shed his blood and to the Holy Ghost green L thereupon the angel warns Gom not to ask any more questions and disappears The Poet wakes up to find himself safely in his bed and so ends the Pelin Dam there is however one thing more to be asked three there are but where is the fourth why is blue missing this color was also missing in the Disturbed 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 character istics and blue is the traditional color of the virgin's Celestial Cloak Gom was so absorbed in the Trinity and in the three-fold aspect of the Roy that he quite forgot the rain fa praised to

her in these words Supreme Mistress of the world let me Behold thy secret in the outstretched Azure canopy of Heaven it was inevitable that blue should be missing for Gom in the tetrad of rainbow colors because of its feminine nature but like woman herself self Thea means the height and depth of a man without the blue vertical Circle the golden Mandala remains bodess and twood dimensional a mere abstraction it is only the intervention of time and space here and now that makes reality wholeness is realized for a moment only the moment that fa was seeking

all his life the poet in Guam must have had an inkling of the heretical truth when he gave the king a queen sitting on a throne made of Earth Brown Crystal for what is heaven without Mother Earth and how can man reach fulfillment if the Queen does not intercede for his black soul she understands the darkness for she has taken her throne the Earth itself to heaven with her if only by the subtlest of suggestions she adds the missing blue to the gold red and green and thus completes the harmonious whole H the symbols of

the self the vision of the world clock is neither the last nor the highest point point in the development of the symbols of the objective psyche but it brings to An end the first third of the material consisting in all of some 400 dreams and Visions this series is noteworthy because it gives an unusually complete description of a psychic fact that I had observed long before in many individual cases we have to thank not only the completeness of the objective material but the care and discernment of the dreamer for having placed us in a position

to follow step by step the synthetic work of the Unconscious the troubled course of this synthesis would doubtless have been depicted in even greater completeness had I taken account of the 340 dreams interspersed among the 59 examined here unfortunately this was impossible because the dreams touch to some extent on the intimacies of personal life and must therefore remain unpublished so I had to confine myself to the impersonal material I hope I may have succeeded Eded in throwing some light upon the development of the symbols of the self and in overcoming partially at least the serious

difficulties inherent in all material drawn from actual experience at the same time I am fully aware that the comparative material so necessary for a complete elucidation could have been greatly increased but so as not to burden the exposition unduly I have exercised the greatest Reserve in this Respect consequently there is much that is only hinted at though this should not be taken as a sign of superficiality I believe myself to be in a position to offer ample evidence for My Views but I do not wish to give the impression that I imagine I have said

anything Final on this highly complicated subject it is true that this is not the first time I have dealt with a series a series of spontaneous manifestations of The unconscious I did so once before in my book psychology of the unconscious but there it was more a problem of neurosis and puberty whereas this is the broader problem of individuation moreover there is a very considerable difference between the two personalities in question the earlier case which I never saw at firsthand ended in psychic catastrophe a psychosis but the present case shows a normal development such as

I have often Observed in highly intelligent persons what is particularly noteworthy here is the consistent development of the central symbol we can hardly escape the feeling that the unconscious process moves spiral wise around a center gradually getting closer while the characteristics of the center grow more and more distinct or perhaps we could put it the other way around and say that the center itself virtually unknowable acts like a magnet on the disparate Materials and processes of the unconscious and gradually captures them as in a crystal lattice for this reason the center is in other cases

often pictured as a spider in its web especially when the conscious attitude is still dominated by fear of unconscious processes but if the process is allowed to take its course as it was in our case then the central symbol constantly renewing itself will steadily and consistently Force its way through The apparent chaos of the personal psyche and its dramatic entanglements just as the great Bern's Epitaph says of the Spiral edem mutata resurgo accordingly we often find Spiral representations of the center as for instance the serpent coiled around the creative point the egg indeed 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 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 I trust I have given no cause for the misunderstanding that I know anything about the nature of the center for it is simply

unknowable And can only be expressed symbolically through its own phenomenology as is the case incidentally with every object of experience among the various characteristics of the center the one that struck me from the beginning was the phenomenon of the quaternity that it is is not simply a question of shall we say the four points of the compass or something of that kind is proved by the fact that there is often a competition Between four and three there is also but more rarely a competition between four and five though five raid mandalas must be characterized as

abnormal on account of their lack of symmetry it would seem therefore that there is normally a clear insistence on four or as if there were a greater statistical probability of four now it is as I can hardly refrain from remarking a curious sport of nature that the chief chemical constituent of the Physical organism is carbon which is characterized by four valencies also it is well known that the diamond is a carbon Crystal carbon is black coal graphite but the diamond is purest water to draw such an analogy would be a lamentable piece of intellectual bad

taste where the phenomenon of four merely a poetic conceit on the part of the conscious mind and not a spont anous product of the objective psyche even if we suppose that dreams could be Influenced to any appreciable extent by Autos suggestion in which case it would naturally be more a matter of their meaning than of their form it would still have to be proved that the conscious mind of the dreamer had made a serious effort to impress the idea of the quaternity on the unconscious but in this case as in many other cases I have

observed such a possibility is absolutely out of the Question quite aart apart from the numerous historical and ethnological parallels surveying these facts as a whole we come at least in my opinion to the inescapable conclusion that there is some psychic element present which expresses itself through the quaternity no daring speculation or extravagant fancy is needed for this if I have called the center the self I did so after mature consideration and a careful appraisal of the empirical and Historical data a materialistic interpretation could easily maintain that the center is nothing but the point at which

the psyche ceases to be knowable because it there coalesces with the body and a spiritualistic interpretation might retort that this self is nothing but Spirit which animates both soul and body and erupts into time and space at that creative point I purposely refrain from all such physical and metaphysical speculations And content myself with establishing the empirical facts and this seems to me infinitely more important for the advance of human knowledge than running after fashionable intellectual craze or jumped up religious Creeds to the best of my experience we are dealing here with very important nuclear processes

in the objective psyche images of the goal as it were which the psychic process being goal directed apparently sets up of its own Accord without any external stimulus externally of course there is always a certain condition of psychic need a sort of hunger but it seeks for familiar and favorite dishes and never imagines as its goal some outlandish food unknown to Consciousness the goal which beckons to this psychic need the image which promises to heal to make whole is at first strange beyond all measure to the conscious mind so that it can find entry Only

with the very greatest difficulty of course it is quite different for people who live in a time and environment when such images of the goal have dogmatic validity these images are then EO ipso held up to Consciousness and the unconscious is thus shown its own secret reflection in which it recognizes itself and so joins forces with the conscious mind as to the question of the origin of the mandala Motif from a superficial Point of view it looks as if it had gradually come into being in the course of the dream series the fact is however

that it only appeared more and more distinctly and in increasingly different differentiated form in reality it was always present and even occurred in the first Dream as the nymphs say later we were always there only you did not notice us it is therefore more probable that we are dealing with an a priori type an archetype which is inherent in The collective unconscious and thus Beyond individual birth and death the archetype is so to speak an eternal presence and the only question is whether it is perceived by the conscious mind or not I think we are

forming a more probable hypothesis and one that better explains the observed facts if we assume that the increase in the clarity and frequency of the mandala Motif is due to a more accurate perception of an already existing type rather than that It is generated in the course of the dream series the latter assumption is contradicted by the fact for instance that such fundamental ideas as the hat which epitomizes the personality the encircling Serpent and the perpetuum mobile appear right at the beginning if the motif of the mandala is an archetype it ought to be a

collective phenomenon I.E theoretically it should appear in everyone in practice however it is to be Met with in distinct form in relatively few cases though this does not prevent it from functioning as a concealed pole round which everything ultimately revolves in the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole that is of a self for which reason this realiz ation can also be called individuation all life is bound to individual carriers who realize it and it is simply inconceivable without them but every carrier is charged with an Individual Destiny and destination and the

realization of these alone makes sense of Life 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 sense and nonsense are merely man-made labels which serve to give us a reasonably valid sense of direction as the historical parallels show the symbolism of the mandala is not Just a unique curiosity we can well say that it is a regular occurrence were it not so there would be no comparative material and it is precisely the possibility of comparing the mental

products of all times from every quarter of the globe that shows us most clearly what immense importance the consensus gentium has always attached to the processes of the objective psyche this is reason enough not to make light of them and my medical experience Has only confirmed this estimate there are people of course who think it unscientific to take anything seriously they do not want their intellectual playground disturbed by Graver considerations but the doctor who fails to take account of man's feelings for values commits a serious blunder and if he tries to correct the mysterious and

well nigh inscrutable workings of nature with his so-called scientific attitude He is merely putting his shallow sophistry in place of Nature's healing processes let us take the wisdom of the old Alchemists to Heart naturalis at perfectum Opus EST generar talal ipsum EST religious ideas in alchemy and historical survey of alchemical ideas habus symbolum facilis EST transitus for those who have the symbol the passage is easy an alchemical verbum magistri from melus Phil philosophia reformata one basic concepts of Alchemy introduction slowly in the course of the 18th century Alchemy perished in its own obscurity its method

of explanation obscurum per obscurius ignotum per osus the Obscure by the more obscure The Unknown by the more unknown was incompatible with the spirit of Enlightenment and particularly with the dawning science of chemistry towards the end of the century but these two new intellectual forces only gave the cud grust to Alchemy its inner Decay had Begun at least a century earlier at the time of jackob BMA when many Alchemists deserted their olymics 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 kept alive Only by memories of a better time this was a time when the mind of The Alchemist was still 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 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 when empirical science and mystical philosophy were more or less undifferentiated the process of Fion which separated the fina from from the minsa set in at the end of the 16th century and produced a quite fantastic species of

literature whose authors were at least to some extent conscious of the psychic nature of their alchemistic transmutations on this aspect of alchemy especially as regards its psychological significance Herbert silber's book problems of mysticism and its symbolism gives us abundant information the Fantastic symbolism Bound up with it is graphically described in a paper by AR bernui and a detailed account of hermetic philosophy is to be found in a study by Jay Evola but a comprehensive study of the ideas contained in the texts and of their history is still lacking although we are indebted to reitzenstein for

important Preparatory work in this field aik the alchemical process and its stages 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 have been so from the earliest times I.E since the beginning of the Christian era four stages are distinguished characterized by the original colors mentioned in heracleitus melanosis Blackening lucos whitening xanthosis yellowing and iosis rening

this division of the process into to four was called the the quartering of the philosophy later about the 15th or 16th century the colors were reduced to three and the xanthosis otherwise called the cittis gradually fell into disuse or was but seldom mentioned instead the veridus sometimes appears after the melanosis or negredo in exceptional cases though it was never generally Recognized whereas the original tetramera corresponded exactly 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 colors 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 has more to do with the symbolical significance of the quaternity and the trinity in other words it is due to Inner psychological reasons the negredo or Blackness 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 putao of the elements if the separated condition is assumed at The start as sometimes happens then a union of opposites is performed under the likeness of a union of male and female called the conium matrimonium yo coidus followed by the death of the product of the Union mortification calcino putao and a corresponding nego from this the washing AO baptisma either leads direct to the whitening albo or else the soul anima released at the death is reunited with the dead body and brings about its Resurrection or Again The Many Colors ominous

calores or peacock's tail CAU up panis lead to the one white color that contains all colors at the this point the first main goal of the process is reached namely the albo 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 albo is so to speak the Daybreak but not till the rubo is its Sunrise the transition to the rubo is formed by the citrinus though this as we

have said was omitted later the rubido then follows follows direct from the albo 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 chemical wedding at this stage third conceptions and symbols of the goal the arrangement of the stages in individual authors depends primarily On their conception of the goal sometimes this is the white or red tincture Aqua permanence sometimes the philosopher stone which as hermaphrodite contains both or again it is the Panacea AR imp poble Elixir V

philosophical gold golden glass vitum orium malleable glass vitum malabal 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 deos terrestris salvator or filus macrocosm a figure we can only compare with the Gnostic anthropos the Divine original man besides the idea of the Prima Materia that of water Aqua permanence 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 Ana this perplexity comes out very clearly in the following passage from the eight ceto in turbon many dispute in Long controversies whether the stone under different names consists

of several substances or of two or only of one but this philosopher sites and bonellis say that the whole work and the substance of the whole work are nothing but the water and that the treatment regimen of the same also takes place in nothing but the water and there is in fact one substance in which everything is contained and that is the sulfur philosophorum which is water and soul Oil mercurious and soul the fire of nature the eagle the laca the first H high of the wise the Materia Prima of the perfect body and by

whatever names the philosophers have called their Stone they always mean and refer to this one substance I.E to the water from which everything originates and in which everything is contained which rules everything in which errors are made and in which the error is itself corrected I call it philosophical water not ordinary Vge water but Aqua mercurialis whether it be simple or composite for both are the philosophical water although the vulgar Mercury is different from the philosophical that water is simple and unmixed this water is composed of two substances namely of our mineral and of simple

water these composite Waters form the philosophical mercurious from which it must be assumed that the substance or the 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 but they also call the simple water poison Quicksilver argentum vivum cambar Aqua perence gum vinegar urine seawater dragon and serpent 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 as is proved by

the prescription immediately Following grind the stone to a very fine powder and put it into the sharpest Celestial cotino vinegar and it will at once be dissolved into the philosophical water it can also be shown that fire played the same roll as water another no less important idea is that of the Hermetic vessel vast hermit typified by the retorts or melting furnaces that contained the substances to be transformed although an instrument it nevertheless has peculiar connections With the Prima Materia as well as with the lapis so it is no mere piece of apparatus for the

Alchemists the vessel is something truly marvelous a vast morab Maria propesa says that the whole secret lies in knowing about the Hermetic vessel unest 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 filus philosophorum the miraculous stone is to be born hence it is required that the vessel be not only round but egg-shaped 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 central ideas of alchemy thus we hear that the vas is the water or Aqua permanence which is none Other than the mercurious of the philosophers but not only is it the water it is also its opposite fire I will not enter further into all the innumerable synonyms for the vessel the few I have mentioned will suffice to demonstrate its undoubted symbolical significance as to the course

of the process as a whole the authors are vague and contr ictory many content themselves with a few summary hints others make an elaborate list of the various operations Thus in 1576 Josephus catanus Alchemist physician and Diplomat who in France and French Switzerland played a somewhat similar role to that of paracelis established a sequence of 12 operations as follows one calcino 2 soluo three elementum separatio four kiuno five putao six coagulo ceto 8 sublimo 9 fermento 10 exalt 11 augment 12 proo 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 the alchemical procedure in the present context 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 and the hundreds and hundreds of 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 endeavor 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 to do them 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 Excitement of the adventure of the quera seeking and the inv veneer finding this always lasts as long as the methods employed seem sensible there was nothing at that time to convince The Alchemist of the senseless 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 Marvelous result fin finally the matter was not entirely without promise since a number Of useful discoveries did occasionally emerge as byproducts of his labors in the laboratory as the Forerunner of chemistry Alchemy had a sufficient raison date 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 Endeavors of medieval medicine and pharmacology the psychic nature of the alchemical work are the projection of Psychic contents the alchemical Opus deals in the main not just with

chemical experiments as such but with something resembling psychic processes expressed in pseudochrysanthum and soon afterwards a wealth of evidence accumulates to show that in alchemy there are two in our eyes heterogeneous currents flowing side by side which we simply cannot conceive as being compatible alchemy's Tam eth quam physic As much ethical I.E psychological as physical is impenetrable to our logic if the Alchemist is admittedly using the chemical process only symbolically then why does he work in a laboratory with Crucible and almic and if as he constantly asserts he is describing chemical processes why distort them

past recognition with his mythological symbolisms 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 and the same author will assure us that the gold he is seeking is not as the stupid suppose the ordinary gold Orum vuli it is the philosophical gold or even The Marvelous Stone the lapis Invisibilised Rebus and

he will end up by saying that all recipes whatsoever are to be despised 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 gold making mystification can be pure Bluff for the obvious purpose of of exploiting the credulous but any attempt to explain Alchemy as a whole from this

angle is in my opinion contradicted by the fact that a fair number of detailed scholarly and conscientious treatises were written and published anonymously and therefore could not be of unlawful advantage to anyone at the same time there are Undoubtedly a great many fraudulent Productions written by charlatans but mystification can also arise from another source the real mystery does not behave mysteriously or secretively it speaks a secret language it adumbrates itself by a variety of images which all indicate its true nature I am not speaking of a secret personally guarded by someone with a Content known

to its possessor but of a mystery a matter or circumstance which is secret I.E known Only through vague hints but essentially unknown the real nature of matter was unknown to The Alchemist he knew it only in hints in seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it in order to explain the mystery of matter he projected yet another another mystery his own unknown psychic background into what was to be explained obscurum per obscurius ignotum per Ignotius this procedure was not of course intentional it was an involuntary

occurrence strictly speaking projection is never made it happens it is simply there in the darkness of anything external to me I find without recognizing it as such an interior or psychic life that is my own it would therefore be a mistake in in my opinion to explain the formula tthy quam physis by the theory of correspondences and to say that this is its cause on the Contrary this theory is more likely to be a rationalization of the experience of projection The Alchemist did not practice his art because he believed on theoretical grounds in correspondence the

point is that he had a theory of Correspondence because he experienced the presence of pre-existing ideas in physical matter I am therefore inclined to assume that the real root of alchemy is to be sought Less in philosophical doctrines Than in the projections of individual investigators I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared to him as the particular behavior 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 day 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 whole history of man's knowledge of nature as we all know science began with the Stars and Mankind discovered in them the dominance 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 whenever man tries to explore an empty

darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form 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 work I had no reason to hope for a very rich find since they would be 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 the most recent account comes from a tretis 5 alleged to have

been translated from Ethiopian into Latin and from Latin into German of Which chapter th the creation reads take of common rainwater a good quantity at least 10 quarts preserve it well sealed in glass vessels for at least 10 days then it will deposit Matter and faes on the bottom pour off the clear liquid and place in a wooden vessel that is fashioned round like a ball cut it through the middle and fill the vessel a third full and set it in the sun about midday in a secret or secluded spot when this has been done

take a drop of the consecrated red wine and let it fall into the water and you will instantly perceive a fog and thick Darkness on top of the water such as Also was at the first creation then put in two drops and you will see the light coming forth from the darkness whereupon little by little put in every half of each quarter hour first three then four then five then six drops and then no more and you will see with your own eyes one thing after another appearing by and by on top of the water

how God created all things in six days and how it all came to pass and such Secrets as are not to be spoken Aloud and I also have not the power to reveal Fall on Your Knees before you undertake this operation let your eyes judge of it for thus was the World created let all stand as it is and in half an hour after it began it will disappear by this you will see clearly the secrets of God that are at present hidden from you as from a child you will understand what Moses has written

concerning the creation you will see what manner of body Adam and Eve had Before and after the fall what the serpent was what the tree and what manner of fruits they ate where and what Paradise is and in what bodies the righteous shall be resurrected not in this body that we have received from Adam but in that which we attain through the Holy Ghost namely in such a body as our savior brought from heaven in chapter 9 the heavens we read you shall take seven pieces of metal of each and every metal As they are

named after the planets and shall stamp on each the character of the planet in the house of the same planet and every piece shall be as large and thick as a rose Noble but of mercury only the fourth part of an ounce by weight and nothing stamped upon it then put them after the order in which they stand in the heavens into a crucible and make all windows fast in the chamber that it may be quite dark within then melt them all together in the midst of The chamber and drop in seven drops of the

Blessed Stone and forth with a flame of fire will come out of The Crucible and spread itself over the whole chamber fear no harm and will light up the whole chamber more brightly than sun and moon and over your heads You Shall Behold the whole firmament as it is in the ster heavens above and the planets shall hold to their appointed courses as in the sky let it cease of itself in a quarter of an hour everything will be in its own Place let us take another example from A Treatise by Theobald de hogeland 16th

century they say also that different names are given to the stone on account of the wonderful variety of figures that appear in the course of the work in as much as colors often come forth at the same time just as we sometimes imagine in the clouds or in the fire strange shapes of animals reptiles or trees I found similar things in a fragment of a book ascribed to Moses When the body is dissolved it is there written then will appear sometimes two branches sometimes three or more sometimes also the shapes of reptiles on occasion it

also seems as if a man with a head and all his limbs were seated Upon A cathedra like the two preceding texts hogeland's remarks prove that during the Practical work certain events of an hallucinatory or Visionary nature were perceived which cannot be anything but projections of unconscious contents Hogeland quotes senior as saying that the vision of the Hermetic vessel is more to be sought than the scripture the authors speak of seeing with the eyes of the spirit but it is not always clear whether they mean Vision in a real or a figurative sense thus the

novam Lumen says to cause things hidden in the shadow to appear and to take away the Shadow from them this is permitted to the intelligent philosopher by God through Nature all these things happen and the eyes of the common men do not see them but the eyes of the understanding intellectus and of the imagination perceive them percipient with true and truest Vision V Raymond Lully writes you should know dear son that the course of nature is turned about so that without invocation EG of the familiar is and without spiritual exaltation you can see certain fugitive

Spirits condensed in the air in The shape of divers monsters beasts and Men which move like the clouds hither and thither Dorne says much the same thus he will come to see with his mental eyes Oculus mental Abus an indefinite number of Sparks shining through day by day and more and more and growing into a great light the psychologist will find nothing strange in a figure of speech becoming concretized and turning into an hallucination thus in his biographical notes 1594 hogeland describes how on the Third day of the decock show he saw the surface of

the substance cover itself with colors chiefly green red gray and for the rest iridescent whenever he remembered that day a verse of virgils came into his mind UT viid UT Perry UTM males abullet error when I saw how utterly I perished an evil delusion took me off this error or optical illusion ludibrium Oculus oblitum he said was the cause of much subsequent trouble and expense for he Had believed that he was on the point of attaining the negredo but a few days later his fire went out in the night which led to an irrep damnum

in other words he never succeeded in repeating the phenomenon not that the iridescent skin on molten metal is necessarily in hallucination but the text shows a remarkable willingness on the part of the author to suspect something of the sort the tractatus aristotelis contains A passage that is noteworthy from the point of view of The Alchemist psychology the serpent is more cunning than all the beasts of the earth under the beauty of her skin she shows a harmless face and she forms herself in the manner of a Materia hypostatic through illusion when immersed in water there

she gathers together the virtues from the earth which is her body because she is very thirsty she drinks immoderately and becomes drunken and she Causes the nature wherewith she is United to vanish the serpent is mercurious who is the fundamental substance hypostatic forms himself in the water and swallows the nature to which he is joined see if Sun drowning in the fountain of mercurious lion devouring the sun Bea dissolving gabrius in her own body m is thus formed through illusion which is necessarily that of The Alchemist this illusion might well be the Vera imagin Possessed

of informing power the fact that Visions Allied themselves to the alchemical work may also explain why dreams and dream Visions are often mentioned as important interesi or as sources of Revelation thus nazari for instance puts his doctrine of transmutation in the form of three dreams a fairly plain analogy to PFO the classical viio Aris has a similar dream form aan is likewise communicates his Doctrine dressed up as A revelation in a dream while the dreams and Visions in these texts as also in senior and crates are mainly a literary convention the dream vision of zosimos

has a much more authentic character it is repeatedly stressed in the literature that the much sought-after Aqua permanence would be revealed in a dream generally speaking the Prima Materia indeed the stone itself or the secret of its production is revealed to the operator by God thus laurentius Ventura Says but one cannot know the procedure unless it be a gift of God or through the instruction of a most experienced master and the source of it all is the Divine will kunrath is of the opinion that one could perfectly prepare our chaos natur's Prima Materia in the

highest Simplicity and Perfection from a special secret Divine vision and Revelation without further probing and pondering of the causes hogeland explains the necessity For divine illumination by saying that the production of the stone transcends reason and that only a supernatural and divine knowledge knows the exact time for the birth of the stone this means that God Alone knows the Primal Materia after the time of paracelsus the source of Enlightenment was the Lumen natur this light is the true light of nature which illuminates all the god-loving philosophers who come into this world It is in the

world and the whole edifice of the world is beautifully adorned and will be naturally preserved by it until the last and great day of the Lord but the world knows it not above all it is the subject of the Catholic and great Stone of the philosophers which the whole world has before its eyes yet knows not the mental attitude towards the Opus a somewhat different aspect of the psyche's relations to the chemical work Is apparent in the following quotation from the text of an anonymous author I pray you look with the eyes of the mind

at this little tree of the grain of wheat regarding all its circumstances that you may be able to plant the tree of the philosophers this seems to point to active imagination as the thing that sets the process really going Dorne says in his philosophia meditati thou wil never make from others The one that thou seekest except there first be made one thing of thyself whatever he may have meant by the one it must refer to the artifacts whose Unity is postulated as the absolute condition for the completion of the work we can hardly doubt that

the psychological condition for the Opus is meant and that this is of fundamental importance the rosarium says who therefore knows the salt and its solution knows the hidden secret of the Wise men of old therefore turn your mind upon the salt and think not of other things for in it alone I.E the mind is the science concealed and the most excellent and most hidden SE secret of all the ancient philosophers the Latin text has inpa Sola referring therefore to men's one would have to assume a double misprint were the secret after all concealed in the

salt but as a matter of fact mind and salt are close cousins Kum granos Solis hence according To kunrath the Salt is not only the physical center of the Earth but at the same time the Sal sapienti of which he says therefore direct your feelings senses reason and thoughts upon this salt alone the anonymous author of The rosarium says in another place that the work must be performed with the true and not with the Fantastic imagination and again that the stone will be found when the search lies heavy on the Searcher this remark can only

be Understood as meaning that a certain psychological condition is indispensable for the discovery of the miraculous Stone both these remarks therefore make it seem very possible that the author was in fact of the opinion that the essential secret of the art lies hidden in the human mind or to put it in modern terms in the unconscious if it really did Dawn on the Alchemists that their work was somehow connected with the human psyche and its Functions then it seems to me probable that the passage from the rosarium is no mere misprint it agrees too well

with the statements of other authors they insist throughout upon careful study and meditation of the books thus richardis anglicus says in his so-called corrector alimi therefore all those who desire to attain the blessing of this art should apply themselves to study should gather the truth from the books and not from invented fables and untruthful works There is no way by which this art can truly be found although men meet with many deceptions except by completing their studies and understanding The Words of the philosophers Bernard of traviso tells us how he strug struggled in vain for

many years till at last he was directed into the straight path through a sermo of Parmenides in the turba hug Alanda says he should collect the books of different authors because otherwise it is Impossible to understand them and he should not throw aside a book which he has read once twice or even three times although he has not understood it but should read it again 10 20 50 times or even more at last he will see wherein the authors are mainly greed there the truth lies hidden quoting Raymond Lully as his authority the same author

says that owing to their ignorance men are not able to accomplish the work until they have studied Universal philosophy Which will show them things that are unknown and hidden from others therefore our Stone belongs not to the vulgar but to the very heart of our philosophy dianus zakarius relates that a certain religiosus doctor excellen tmus advised him to refrain from useless expense in sophistication Abus diabolis and to devote himself rather to the study of the books of the Old philosophers after a fit of Despair he revived with the help of the Holy Spirit And applying

himself to a serious study of the literature read diligently and meditated day and night until his finances were exhausted then he worked in his laboratory saw the three colors appear and on Easter day of the following year the Wonder happened VD Perfection m I saw the perfect fulfillment the Quicksilver was conversome in purum arum Pre Oculus this happened so it was said in 1550 there is an unmistakable hint here that the work And its goal depended very largely on a mental condition richardis anglicus rejects all the assorted filth the Alchemists worked with such as eggshells

hair the blood of a red-haired man basilisks worms herbs and human faes whatsoever a man Seth that also shall he reap therefore if he Seth filth he shall find filth turn back Brethren to the way of truth of which you are ignorant I counsel you for your own sake to study and to labor with steadfast meditation On the words of the philosophers whence the truth can be summoned forth the importance or necessity of understanding and intelligence is insisted upon all through the literature not only because intelligence above the ordinary is needed in the performance of

so difficult a work but because it is assumed that a species of magical power capable of transforming even brute matter dwells in the human mind Dorne who devoted a series of Interesting treatises to the problem of the relationship between the work and the man says in truth the form which is the intellect of man is the beginning middle and end of the procedure and this form is made clear by the saffron color which indicates that man is the greater and principal form in the spyic Opus Dorn draw a complete parallel between the alchemical work and

the moral intellectual transformation of man his thought however is often anticipated In the Heron Treatise of platonic tetralogies the Latin title of which is Liber platonis Quorum its author establishes four series of correspondences each containing four books for the help of the investigator Alchemists at work various stages of the process Saul appears below bringing the Golden Flower mutus Libra 7 1902 I W de Opera naturalium concerning the work of Natural Things two exalt divisionus natur emphasis on or exaltation of the Division of nature three exalt anima emphasis on or exaltation of the Soul four exalt

intellectus emphasis on or exaltation of the intellect 2 one elementum Aqua 2 elementum ter three elementum ays four elementum ignis through one natur composite composite Natures two natur discre discriminated natures three simpa simple things four Eis simpli orus things pertaining to yet simpler ether four one census senses two discre intellectualist intellectual Discrimination three ratio reason four res quam concluded High affectus precedentes the thing included in the foregoing effects the four series show four aspects of the Opus the first horizontal series begins with natural things the primma Materia is represented by water these things are composite

I.E mixed their correspondence in column 4 is sense perception the second horizontal series represents a higher stage in the process In column one the composite Natures are decomposed or changed back into their initial elements in column two the Earth is separated from the Primal water as in the Book of Genesis a favorite theme in alchemy in column 3 there is a separation into categories and column four is concerned with the psychological Act of discrimination the third horizontal series shows the upward Advance still more clearly in column one the soul emerges from nature in column 2

There is an elevation into the realm of air in column 3 the process reaches the simple things which because of their unalloyed quality are Incorruptible Eternal and Akin to plotus ideas and in column four there is the final Ascent from Men's to ratio to the anima rationalis I.E the highest form of the soul the fourth horizontal series illustrates the Perfection or completion of each of the vertical columns first vertical Series this column has a Phenomenological character if such a modern term is permissible here the psychic element emerges from the sum of natural phenomena and culminates

in the exal intellectus the phenomenon of clear insight and understanding we can without doing violence to the text take this intellectus as the highest Lucidity of which Consciousness is capable second vertical series the Earth emerges from the chaotic Waters of the beginning from the Masa canusa in accordance with the Ancient alchemical view above it lies air the volatile element rising from the earth highest of all comes fire as the finest substance I.E the fiery Numa which reaches up to the seed of the Gods third vertical Series this column has a categorical or ideal character hence

it contains intellectual judgments all composits are dissolved into their discriminated components which in their turn are reduced to the simple substance from this there finally emerge The quintessences the simple primordial ideas ether is the quintessence fourth vertical Series this column is exclusively psychological the senses mediate perception while the discreet intellectualist corresponds to app perception this activity is subject to the ratio or animar rationalis the highest faculty bestowed by God on man above the anima rationalis there is only the re which is the product of all the Preceding effects the Libra platonis Quorum interprets this re

as the invisible and immovable God whose will created the intelligence from the will and intelligence to be understood here as intellectus is produced the simple soul but the soul gives rise to the discriminated Natures from which the composite Natures are produced and these show that a thing cannot be comprehended save by something Superior to it the soul is above nature and through through It nature is comprehended but the intelligence is above the soul and through it the soul is comprehended and the intelligence is comprehended by that which is above itself and is surrounded by the

one God whose nature is not to be comprehended the original text runs invisib imil volun intell volun comp indog post the author adds a quotation whose origin I have not been able to Trace it runs the philosopher said in the book of dialogues I went about the three Heavens namely the heaven of composite nature the heaven of discriminated nature and the heaven of the soul but when I sought to go about the heaven of intelligence the soul said to me that way is not for thee then nature attracted me and I was attracted this saying

of the philosopher was not intended by him to specify this science but because he wished that his Words should not fail to make clear the power which liberates the creature and that by their means the lower process in this kind of work should be made known through the higher in this very ancient text which in its Arabic form cannot be much later than the 10th Century many of its components being still older we find a systematic classification of the correspondences between the Opus alchemic and the philosophical and Psychological processes running parallel with it the text

makes it abundantly clear just how much the chemical processes coincided with spiritual or psychic factors for these thinkers indeed the connection went so far that the product to be extracted from matter was known as the coito this strange idea is explicable only on the assumption that the old philosophers did have a faint suspicion that psychic contents were being Projected into matter because of the intimate connection between man and the secret of matter both Dorne and the much earlier Liber platonus quorum demand that the operator should rise to the height of his task he must accomplish

in his own self the same process that he attributes to matter for things are perfected by their like therefore the operator must himself participate in the work oportet operatum in oper for if the investigator Does not remotely possess the likeness I.E to the work he will not climb the height I have described nor reach the road that leads to the goal as a result of the projection there is an unconscious identity between the psyche of The Alchemist and the Arcane substance I.E the spirit imprisoned in matter the Liber platonis Quorum accordingly recommends the use of

the oxop put as the vessel of transformation because it is the container of thought And intellect for we need the brain as the seat of the Divine part the text continues through time and exact definition things are converted into intellect in as much as the parts are assimilated to one another in composition and in form but on account of its proximity to the animar rationalis the brain had to be assimilated to the amalgam and the anima rationalis is simple as we have said the Assumption underlying this train of Thought is the causitive effect of analogy

in other words just as in the psyche the multiplicity of sense perceptions produces the unity and simplicity of an idea so the Primal water finally produces fire I.E the Ethereal substance not and this is the decisive Point as a mere analogy but as the result of the mind's working on matter consequently Dorne says within the human body is concealed a certain metaphysical substance known to very few Which needs no medicament being itself an incorrupt medicament this medicine is of three-fold nature metaphysical physical and Moral Moral is what we would call psychological from this Dorne goes

on the attentive reader will conclude that one must pass from the metaphysical to the physical by a philosophic procedure this medicine is clearly the Arcane substance which he defines elsewhere as Veritas there is in Natural Things a Certain truth which cannot be seen with the outward eye but is perceived by the Mind alone solam and of this the philosophers have had experience and have ascertained that its virtue is such as to work miracles in this truth lies the whole art of freeing the spirit spirius from its feds in the same way that we have said

the Mind men's can be freed I.E morally from the body as Faith works miracles in man so this power the Veritas fashia brings Them about in matter this truth is the highest power and an impregnable Fortress wherein the stone of the philosophers lies hid by studying the philosophers man acquires the skill to attain this Stone but again the stone is man thus Dorne exclaims transform yourselves from dead stones into living philosophical Stones here he is expressing in the clearest possible way the identity of something in man with something Concealed in matter in his re steganog

graphi berwald de verville says if any man wish at times to change the drop of mastic and by pressing it to cause a clear tear to issue from it let him take care and he will see in a fixed time under the gentle pressure of the fire a like substance issue from the philosophic matter for as soon as its VI darkness is excited for the second time it will stir up from it as it were a drop or flower or Flame or Pearl or Other likeness of a precious stone which will be Diversified until it

runs out in very clear whiteness which thereafter will be capable of clothing itself with the honor ofous rubies or ethereal Stones which are the true fire of the soul and light of the philosophers it should now be sufficiently clear that from its earliest days Alchemy had a double face on the one hand the Practical chemical work in the laboratory on the other a Psychological process in part consciously psychic in part unconsciously projected and seen in the various transformations of matter not much effort is needed at the beginning of the work it is sufficient to approach

it with a free and empty mind as one text says but one important rule must be observed the Mind men's must be in harmony with the work and the work must be above all else another text says that in order to Acquire the golden understanding or apprehen one must keep the eyes of the mind and soul well open observing and contemplating by means of that inner light which God has lit in nature and in our hearts from the beginning since the investigator's psyche was so closely bound up with the work not only as its necessary

medium but also as its cause and Point of Departure it is easy to understand why so much emphasis was laid on the psychic Condition mental attitude of the laboratory worker alfius says know that thou canst not have this science unless Thou shalt purify thy mind before God that is wipe away all corruption from thy heart according to Aurora the Treasure House of hermetic wisdom rests on a firm foundation of 14 principal virtues Health humility Holiness Chastity virtue Victory faith hope charity goodness benignus patience Temperance a spiritual Discipline or understanding in obedience the pseudo Thomas who

is author of this same Treatise quotes the saying Purge the horrible darknesses of our mind and gives as a parallel seniors he maketh all that is black white here the darknesses of our mind coincide unmistakably with the negredo I.E the author feels or experiences the initial stage of the alchemical process as identical with his own psychic condition another old Authority is gber the Rosarium says that in his Libra per FY magisteri gber requires the following psychological and characterological qualities of the artifacts he must have a most subtle mind and an adequate knowledge of metals and

minerals but he must not have a coarse or rigid mind nor should he be greedy and avaricious nor irresolute and vacillating further he must not be Hasty or vain on the contrary he must be firm in purpose persevering patient mild Long-suffering and good-tempered the author of The rosarium goes on to say that he who wishes to be initiated into this art and wisdom must not be arrogant but devout upright of profound understanding Humane of a cheerful countenance and a happy nature he continues my son above all I admonish thee to fear God who knoweth what

manner of man Thou Art and in whom is help for the solitary whosoever he may be particularly instructive is the Introduction to the art given by morenus to khid this thing for which you have sought so long is not not to be acquired or accomplished by force or passion it is to be won only by patience and humility and by a determined and most perfect love for God bestows this Divine and Immaculate science on his Faithful Servants namely those on whom he resolved to bestow it from the original nature of things some remarks follow concerning

the handing down of the art To pupils nor were they the elect able to hold anything back save through the strength granted to them by God and they themselves could no longer direct their minds save towards the goal appointed for them by God for God charges those of his servants whom he has purposely chosen that they seek this Divine Science which is hidden from men and that they keep it to themselves this is the science that draws its Master Away from the suffering of this world and leads to the knowledge of future good when morenus

was asked by the king why he lived in mountains and deserts rather than in hermitages he answered I do not doubt that in hermitages and brotherhoods I would find greater Repose and fatiguing work in the deserts and in the mountains but no one reaps who does not sow exceeding narrow is the gateway to peace and none may enter save through Affliction of the Soul we must not Forget in considering this last sentence that morenus is not speaking for the general edification but is referring to the divine art and its work Michael Meyer expresses himself in

similar vein when he says there is in our chemistry a certain Noble substance in the beginning whereof is wretchedness with vinegar but in its ending Joy with gladness therefore I have supposed that the same will happen to me namely that I shall suffer Difficulty grief and weariness at first but in the end shall come to Glimpse pleasanter and easier things the same author also affirms that our chemistry stir up the artifacts to a meditation of the Heavenly good and that who so is in initiated by God into these Mysteries casts aside all insignificant cares like

food and clothing and feels himself as it were newborn the difficulty and grief to be encountered at the beginning of the work once more Coincide with the negredo like the horrible darknesses of our mind of which Aurora speaks and these in their turn are surely the same as the Affliction of Soul mentioned by morenus the term he uses for the attitude of the Adept a more perfec ismus expresses an extraordinary Devotion to the work if this serious meditation Is Not Mere bragging and we have no reason to assume any such thing then we must imagine

the old adepts Carrying out their work with an unusual concentration indeed with religious fervor such devotion would naturally serve to project values and meanings into the object of all this passionate research and to fill it with forms and figures that have their origin primarily in the unconscious of the investigator thir meditation and Imagination the point of view described above is supported by the alchemist's remarkable use of the terms medito and Imagino ruland's lexicon alchemia defines medito as follows the word medito is used when a man has an inner dialogue with someone unseen it may be

with God when he is invoked or with himself or with his good Angel the psychologist is familiar with this inner dialogue it is an essential part of the technique for coming to terms with the unconscious ruland's definition proves beyond all doubt that when the Alchemists speak of meditar they do not Mean mere cogitation but explicitly an inner dialogue and hence a living relationship to the answering voice of the other in ourselves I.E of the unconscious the use of the term meditation in the Hermetic dictum and as all things proceed from the one through the meditation

of the one must therefore be understood in this alchemical sense as a creative dialogue by means of which things pass from an unconscious potential state to a manifest one thus We read in A Treatise of philalethes above all it is marvelous that our Stone although already perfect and able to impart a perfect tincture does voluntarily humble itself again and will meditate a new volatility apart from all manipulation what is meant by a meditated volatility we discover a few lines lower down where it says of its own accord it will liquefy and by God's command become

endowed with Spirit which will fly up and take the stone with it Again therefore to meditate means that through a dialogue with God yet more spirit will be infused into the stone I.E it will become still more spiritualized volatilized or sublimated kunrath says much the same thing 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 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 aquavite likewise the meditation of the Heavenly good mentioned earlier must be taken in the sense of a living dialectical relationship to certain dominance of the unconscious we have excellent confirmation of this in A Treatise by a French Alchemist living in the 17th and 18th centuries he says how often did I see them the sacerdotes egyp overcome with Joy at my understanding how affectionately they kissed me for the true grasp of the ambiguities of their paradoxical teaching came easily to my mind how often did their pleasure in the wonderful discoveries I made concerning the abstruse

doctrines of the Ancients move them to reveal unto my eyes and fingers the Hermetic vessel the salamander the full moon and the Rising Sun this Treatise although it is not so much a personal confession as a Description of the golden age of Al nevertheless tells us how The Alchemist imagined the psychological structure of his Opus its association with the invisible forces of the psyche was the real secret of the magisterium in order to express this secret the Old Masters readily resorted to allegory one of the oldest records of this kind which had a considerable influence

on the later literature is the Vigio Aris and its whole character relates it very closely to those Visions known to us from the psychology of the unconscious I as I have already said the term imagino like medeso is of particular importance in the alchemical Opus earlier on we came across that remarkable passage in the rosarium telling us that the work must be done with the true imagination and we saw elsewhere how the Philosophical tree can be made to grow through contemplation ruland's lexicon once more helps us to understand what the Alchemist meant by imaginatio Ruland

says imagination is the star in man the celestial or super Celestial body this astounding definition throws a quite special light on the fantasy processes connected with the Opus we have to conceive of these processes not as the immaterial Phantoms We readily take fantasy pictures to be but as something corporeal a subtle body semi- spiritual in nature in an age when there was as yet no empirical psychology such a concretization was bound to be made because everything unconscious once it was activated was projected into matter that is to say it approached people from outside it was

a hybrid phenomenon as it were half spiritual half physical a concretization such as we frequently Encounter in the psychology of Primitives the imagino or the act of imagining was thus a physical activity that could be fitted into the cycle of material changes that brought these about and was brought about by them in turn in this way The Alchemist related him himself not only to the unconscious but directly to the very substance which he hoped to transform through the power of imagination the singular expression Astrum star is a parason term which in this context means something

like quintessence imagination is therefore a concentrated extract of the life forces both physical and psychic so the demand that the artifacts must have a sound physical Constitution is quite intelligible since he works with and through his own quintessence and is himself the indispensable condition of his own experiment but just because of this Intermingling of the physical and the psychic it always remains an obscure Point whether the Ultimate Transformations in the alchemical process are to be sought more in the material or more in the spiritual realm actually however the question is wrongly put there was no

either or for that age but there did exist an intermediate realm between mind and matter I.E a psychic realm of subtle bodies whose characteristic it is to Manifest themselves in a mental as well as a material form this is the only view that makes sense of alchemical ways of thought which must otherwise appear nonsensical obviously the existence of this intermediate realm comes to a sudden stop the moment we try to investigate matter in and for itself apart from all projection and it remains non-existent so long as we believe we know anything conclusive about matter or

the Psyche but the moment when physics touches on the untrodden unreadable regions and when psychology has at the same time to admit that there are other forms of psychic life besides the Acquisitions of personal Consciousness in other words when psychology too touches on an impenetrable Darkness then the intermediate realm of subtle bodies comes to life again and the physical and the psychic are once more Blended in an Indisoluble Unity we have come very near to this turning point today such Reflections are unavoidable if we want to gain any understanding of alchemy's peculiar terminology the earlier

Talk of the aberration of alchemy sounds rather old-fashioned today when the psychological aspects of it have faced science with new tasks there are very modern problems in alchemy though they lie outside the province of Chemistry the concept of imagino is perhaps the most important key to the understanding of the opus the author of The tretis dulur speaks of the imaginative faculty of the soul in that passage where he is trying to do just what the Ancients had failed to do that is give a clear indication of the secret of the art the soul he says

is the vice Regent of God suum tenin so Rex EST and dwells in the Life Spirit of the pure blood it rules the Mind ilig Gubernat mum and this rules the body the soul functions Opera in in the body but has the greater part of its function upper outside the body or we might add by way of explanation in projection this peculiarity is divine since Divine wisdom is only partly enclosed in the body of the world the greater part of it is outside and it imagines far higher things than the body of the world can

conceive conip and these things are outside nature God's Own Secrets the soul is an example of this it too imagines many things of the utmost profundity fisa outside the body just as God does true what the soul imagines happens only in the mind non-ex and Mente but what God imagines happens in reality the soul however has absolute and independent power absolutum ET seum poest atam to do other things aliia fer than those the body can grasp but when it so desires it has the greatest power Over the body poesta him in Corpus for otherwise our

philosophy would be in vain thou can conceive the greater for we have opened the gates unto thee V soul and body the passage just quoted affords us valuable insight into the alchemical way of thinking the soul in this text is evidently an anima corporales that dwells in the blood it would therefore correspond to the unconscious if this is understood as the psychic phenomenon That mediates between Consciousness and the physiological functions of the body in the tantric chakra system this anima would be located below the the diaphragm on the other hand it is God's lieutenant or

Viceroy the analog of the deos Creator there are people who can never understand the unconscious as anything but a subconscious and who therefore feel impelled to put a superconscious alongside or possibly above it such hypotheses do not trouble Our philosophers for according to their teaching every form of life however Elementary contains its own inner antithesis thus anticipating the problem of opposites in modern psychology what our author has to say about the element of air is significant in this respect the air is a Pure uncorrupted Element in its kind the most worthy being uncommonly light and

invisible but inside heavy visible and solid enclosed within it incluses is the spirit of the Highest that moved over the waters before the creation according to the testimony of the Holy Scripture and he did fly upon the wings of the wind all things are integrated Integra in this element by the imagination of the fire in order to understand such a statement we must obviously empty our minds of all modern ideas about the nature of gases and take it as purely psychological in this sense it deals with the projection of pairs of Opposites such as light

heavy visible invisible and so on now identity of opposites is a characteristic feature of every psychic event in the unconscious State thus the animac corporales is at the same time spiritualist and and the air is heavy solid kernel is at the same time the spirus Creator which moves over the waters and just as the images of all creatures are contained in the creative spirit so all things are imagined or pictured in air through the power of Fire firstly because fire surrounds the Throne of God and is the source from which the angels and descending in

rank and quality all other living beings are created or imagined through infusion of the fiery anima into the breath of Life secondly because fire destroys all composite things and infuses their images back into the air in the form of smoke the soul says our author is only partly confined to the body just as God is only partly enclosed in the body of The world if we strip this statement of its metaphysics it asserts that the psyche is only partly identical with our empirical conscious being for the rest it is projected and in this state it

imagines or realizes those greater things which the the body cannot grasp I.E cannot bring into reality the greater things Majora correspond to the higher Alora referring to the world creating imagination of God but because these higher things are Imagined by God they at once become substantial instead of lingering in a state of potential reality like the contents of the unconscious that this activity of the Soul outside the body refers to the alchemical Opus is evident from the remark that the soul has the greatest power over the body otherwise the Royal art or philosophy would be

in vain thou can't conceive the greater says our author Therefore your body can Bring it into reality with the help of the art and with God's permission Dio concedente this being a fixed formula in alchemy the imagination as the Alchemists understand it is in truth a key that opens the door to the secret of the Opus we now know that it was a question of representing and realizing those greater things which the soul on God's behalf imagines creatively and extatum or to put it in modern language a Question of actualizing those contents of the unconscious

which are outside nature I.E not a datum of our empirical world and therefore an a priori of archetypal character the place or the medium of realization is neither mind nor matter but that intermediate realm of subtle reality which can be adequately expressed only by the symbol the symbol is neither abstract nor concrete neither rational nor irrational neither real nor unreal it is always Both it is non vuli the aristocratic preoccupation of one who is set apart qit sequestra Chosen and predestined by God from the very beginning in an explication locorum signatum libavius gives the following

explanation of this picture fig 142 a pedestal or Bas equals Earth BB two Giants or atlases kneeling on the base and supporting a sphere with their hands see four-headed dragon from whose breath the sphere takes shape the four grades of fire the first mouth Emits a kind of air the second a subtle smoke the third smoke and fire and the fourth pure fire D mercurious with a silver chain to which two recumbent animals are attached e the green lion F one-headed Dragon E and F both mean the same thing the Mercurial fluid which is the

Materia Prima of the stone g a three-headed Silver Eagle two of whose heads droop while the third spits white water or the Mercurial fluid into the sea which is marked h i picture of the Wind sending forth the breath of the spirit spiritus into the sea below K picture of the red lion with red blood flowing from his breast into the sea below because the sea must be colored as if it were a mixture of silver and gold or white and red the picture is applied to Body Soul and Spirit by those who have sought

three principles from the beginning or to the blood of the Lion and the lme of the eagle for because they accept three they have a double Mercurious those who accept two have one only which comes from a crystal or from the unripe metal of the philosophers La stream of black water as in the chaos representing the putria from it there Rises a mountain which is black at the bottom and white at the top so that a silver stream flows down from the summit for it is the picture of the first dissolution and coagulation and of

the result resultant second Dissolution the above mentioned Mountain NN the heads of black Ravens that are looking out of the sea oh silver rain falling from the clouds onto the summit of the mountain sometimes this represents the nourishment and cleansing of the latto bazak sometimes the second dissolution whereby the element of air is extracted from the earth and water the Earth is a form of the mountain and the water is the liquid of the sea aforementioned PP the CL CLS from which Come the de or rain and the nourishing moisture CU a vision of heaven

where a dragon lies on his back and devours his own tail he is an image of the second coagulation R an Ethiopian man and woman supporting two higher spheres they sit on the big sphere and accordingly represent the negredo of the second operation in the second putri faction SS a sea of pure silver which represents the Mercurial fluid whereby the tinctures are united ta swan swimming on The sea spitting out a Milky liquid from his beak this Swan is the white Elixir the white chalk the Arsenic of the philosophers the thing common to both ferments

he has to support the upper sphere with his back and wings V eclipse of the sun X the sun diving into the sea I.E into the Mercurial water into which The Elixir also must flow this leads to the true eclipse of the Sun and one should put a rainbow on either side to suggest the peacock's tail that then Appears in the coagulation why why eclipse of the moon which likewise has a rainbow on either side and also in the lowest part of the sea into which the moon must dive this is the picture of the

white fermentation but both Seas should be fairly dark ZZ the moon gliding into the sea the king clad in purple with a Golden Crown has a Golden Lion beside him he has a red Lily in his hand whereas the queen has a white lily be the queen crowned with a Silver crown Strokes a white or Silver Eagle standing beside her it's the Phoenix on the sphere cremating itself many gold and silver birds fly out of the ashes it is the sign of multiplication and increase three the work the method the basis of alchemy is the

work Opus part of this work is practical the operatio itself which is to be thought of as a series of experiments with chemical substances in my opinion it is quite Hopeless to try to establish any kind of order in the infinite chaos of substances and procedures seldom do we get even an approximate idea of how the work was done what materials were used and what results were achieved the reader usually finds himself in the most impenetrable darkness when it comes to the names of the substances they could mean almost anything and it is precisely the

most commonly used substances like Quicksilver salt and sulfur whose Alchemical meaning is one of the secrets of the art moreover one must not imagine for a moment that the Alchemists always understood one another they themselves complain about the obscurity of the texts and occasionally betray their inability to understand even their own symbols and symbolic figures for instance the learned Michael Meer accuses the classical authority giber of being the obscurest of all saying that it would Require an Odus to solve the riddle of the Gina Sphinx Bernard of traviso another famous Alchemist goes so far as

to call G an obscurantist and a proteus who promises kernels and gives husks The Alchemist is quite aware that he writes obscurely he admits that he veils his meaning on purpose but nowhere so far as I know does he say that he cannot write in any other way he makes a virtue of necessity by Maintaining either that mystification is forced on him for one reason or another or that he really wants to make the truth as plain as possible but cannot Proclaim aloud just what the prim IIA or the lapis is the profound darkness that

shrouds the alchemical procedure comes from the fact that although The Alchemist was interested in the chemical part of the work he also used it to devise a nomenclature for the psychic Transformations that really fascinated Him every original Alchemist built himself as it were a more or less individual edifice of ideas consisting of the dicta of the philosophers and of miscellaneous analogies to the fundamental concepts of Al alemy generally these analogies are taken from all over the place treatises were even written for the purpose of supplying the artist with analogy making material the method of alchemy

psychologically speaking is one of boundless Amplification the amplification is always appropriate when dealing with some obscure 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 this amplification forms the second part of the Opus and is

understood by The Alchemist as theoria originally the theory was the so-called hermetic philosophy but quite early on it was broadened by the assimilation of ideas taken over from Christian dogma in the oldest Alchemy known to the West the Hermetic fragments were handed Down mostly through Arabic Originals direct contact with the Corpus hermeticum was only established in the second half of the 15th century when the Greek manuscript reached Italy from Macedonia and was translated into Latin by marcelio ficino the vignette that is on the title page to the tripus orius 1618 is a graphic illustration of

the double face of alchemy 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 the dragon symbolizes the Visionary experience of The Alchemist as he works in his laboratory and theorizes the dragon in itself is a monstrum a symbol combining the thonic principle of The Serpent

and the aerial principle of the Bird it is as Ruland says a variant of mercurious but mercurious is the Divine winged Hermes manifest in matter the god of Revelation Lord of thought and Sovereign psychop pump the liquid metal argentum vivum living Silver Quick Silver was the wonderful substance that perfectly expressed the nature of the steel vone that which glistens and animates within when The Alchemist speaks of mercurious on the face of it he means Quicksilver but inwardly he Means the world creating Spirit concealed or imprisoned in matter the dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol

in alchemy of which we have documentary evidence it appears as the uro voros the tail eater in the Codex marcianus which dates from the 10th or 11th century together with the legend not Pan 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 for this reason the Opus was often called circular circular or else Roda the wheel mercurious stands at the beginning and end of the work he is the

Prima Materia the caput corvi the negredo as Dragon he devours himself and as Dragon he dies to rise again as the lapis he is the play of colors in the codap pavonis and the division into four elements he is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning that splits into The classical brother sister Duality and is reunited in the conun show to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the Lumin Noam the stone he is metallic yet liquid matter yet Spirit Cold Yet fiery poison and yet healing drought a symbol uniting all

opposites the spirit in matter all these ideas were the common property of alchemy from earliest times zosimos writing in the 3r century ad quotes one of the very old authorities on Alchemy In his Treatise concerning the art and its interpretation namely Aon Who belongs to the dawn of history and was known even to plenty his connection with democratus another of the earliest alchemical writers probably dates from the 1 Century BC this Alanis is reported to have said go to the Waters of the Nile and there you will find a stone that has a spirit Pama

take this divide it thrust in your hand and draw out its heart heart for its soul is in its heart An interpolator adds there he says you will find this stone that has a spirit which refers to the expulsion of the quicksilver in theosis nich's metaphor in zaratustra an image Slumbers for me in the stone says much the same thing but the other way round in Antiquity the material world was filled with the projection of a psychic secret which from then on appeared as the secret of matter and remained so until the decay of alchemy

in the 18th Century n with his ecstatic intuition tried to rest the secret of the Superman from the stone in which it had long been slumbering it was in the likeness of this slumbering image that he wished to create the Superman whom in the language of antiquity we may well call the Divine man but it is the other way about with the Alchemists they were looking for The Marvelous stone that harbored a Pneumatic Essence in order to win from it the substance that penetrates all Substances since it is itself the stone penetrating spirit and transforms

all base Metals into Noble ones by a process of coloration this Spirit substance is like Quicksilver which lurks unseen in the ore and must first be expelled if it is to be recovered in substantia the possessor of this penetrating mercurious can project it into other substances and transform them from the imperfect into the perfect State the imperfect state is like the sleep sleeping State substances Lie in it like the sleepers chained in Hades and are awakened as from death to a new and More Beautiful Life by the Divine tincture extracted from the inspired Stone it

is quite clear that we have here a tendency not only to locate the mystery of psychic transformation in matter but at the same time to use it as a theoria for affecting chemical changes just as n made absolutely sure that nobody could mistake the Superman For a sort of spiritual or moral ideal so it is emphasized that the tincture or Divine water is far from being merely Curative and ennobling in its effects but that it may also act as a deadly poison which penetrates other bodies as pervasively as the Numa penetrates its Stone zosimos was

a gnostic who was influenced by Hermes in his missive to theoa he recommends the crater as a vessel of transformation she should he says hasten to the poimandres in order To be baptized in the crater this crater refers to the Divine vessel of which Hermes tells thought in the Treatise entitled CER after the creation of The World God filled this vessel with naous vs Numa 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 aoya or

as we should say insufficient Consciousness an opportunity to dip himself in the nouse and thus partake of The higher state of Voya I.E Enlightenment or higher Consciousness The Noose is thus a kind of Von diu or tincture that en Nobles base substances its function is the exact equivalent of the tincturing stone extract which is also a numa and as mercurious possesses the Hermetic dual significance of redeeming psychopomp and Quicksilver clearly enough then zasos had a Mystic or Gnostic philosophy of sorts whose basic ideas he projected Into matter when we speak of psychological projection we must

as I have already pointed out always remember that it is an unconscious process that works only so long as it stays unconscious since zosimos like all the other Alchemists is convinced not only that his philosophy can be applied to matter but that processes also take place in it which corroborate his philosophical assumptions it follows That he must have experienced in matter itself at the very least an identity between the behavior of matter and the events in his own psyche but as this identity is unconscious zosimos is no more able than the rest of them to

make any pronouncement about it for him it is simply there and it not only serves as a bridge it actually is the bridge that unites psychic and material events in one so that what is within is also Without nevertheless an unconscious event which eludes the conscious mind will portray itself somehow and somewhere it may be in dreams Visions or F fantasies the idea of the Numa 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 out side world the psychic autonomy of the Numa is attested by the neop pythagoreans in their view the soul was swallowed by matter and only mind noose was left but the nose is outside man it is his demon one could hardly formulate its autonomy more aply new seems to be identical with The God

anthropos he appears alongside the demiurge and is the adversary of the planetary spheres he renss the circle of the Spheres and leans down to earth and water I.E he is a 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 but scarcely has he set foot upon the earth when physic locks him in a passionate embrace

from this Embrace are born the seven first hermaphroditic beings the seven are an obvious illusion to the seven planets and hence to the metals which in The alchemical View Spring from the hermaphrodite mercurious 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 the Contemporary evidence shows was naous the Divine Damon the God man Numa 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 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 as a matter of fact we are dealing here with a Content that up to the present has only very rarely been attributed to any human personality the one great exception is Christ as Von thop the son of man and as The Vos 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 Vos 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 dissensus 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 neop Pythagorean are Ruled by evil evil and matter together form the diad The Duality this is feminine in nature and animamundi The Feminine physis who Longs for the Embrace of the one the monad the good and perfect the Justinian nosis depicts her as Edom virgin above serpent below vengefully she strives against the Numa because in the shape of the demier the

second form of God he faithlessly abandoned her she is the Divine Soul imprisoned in the element Els whom it is The task of alchemy to redeem third the work of redemption now all these myth pictures represent a drama of the human psyche on the further side of Consciousness showing man as both the one to be redeemed and the Redeemer the first formulation is Christian the second alchemical in the first case man attributes the need of redemption to himself and leaves the work of redemption the actual Athlon or Opus to the autonomous Divine figure 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 animamundi imprisoned in matter in both cases Redemption is a work in Christianity it is the life and death of the god man which by 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 by a certain synchronicity of events man the bearer of a soul submerged in the world and the flesh is potentially related to God at the moment when he as Mary's son enters into to her the Virgo Teri 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 the ideology of this mysterium is anticipated in the myths of Osiris orus dionis 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 Addis and mithis 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 in the figure of the Divine hero God himself wrestles with his own imperfect suffering living creation he even takes its suffering condition upon himself and by this sacrificial act accomplishes the Opus Magnum the ethon of Salvation and victory over death as regards the actual performance of this entirely metaphysical work man is powerless to do anything really decisive he looks to his Redeemer full of faith And confidence and does what he can in the way of imitation but this never

reaches the the point where man himself becomes the Redeemer or at least his own Redeemer yet a complete imitation and reestablishment of Christ in The Believer would necessarily lead to such a conclusion but this is out of the question were such an approximation to occur then Christ would have reestablished himself in The Believer And replaced the latter's personality we should have to be satisfied with this statement were it not for the existence of the church the institution of the church means nothing less than the Everlasting continuation of the Life of Christ and its sacrificial function

in the officium deinum OR in Benedict and parlance the Opus deinum Christ's sacrifice the redeeming act constantly repeats itself a new while still remaining the unique sacrifice That was accomplished and is accomplished ever again by Christ himself inside time and outside all time this Opus Supernatural is represented in the sacrifice of the mass in the ritual act the priest as it were shows forth the mystical event but the real agent is Christ who sacrifices himself everywhere always though his sacrificial death occurred in time it is an essentially Timeless occurrence in the toist view the mass

is Not a real imalo sacrifice of the body of Christ but a representation of his sacrificial death such an interpretation would be sufficient and consistent were it not for the transubstantiation of the offered substances The Bread and Wine this offering is meant as a sacrificium literally a making sacred the atmology of the German word for sacrifice oper is obscure it being a moot point whether it comes from offer to offer or from opari to effect to be Active in its ancient usage operar Deo meant to serve the god or to sacrifice to him but if

the oper is an opus then it is far more than an oblio the offering of such a modest gift as Bread and Wine it must be an effectual act giving the ritual words spoken by the priest a causal significance the words of the consecration quii quamer Etc are therefore to be taken not merely as representative but as the causa efficiens of the Transubstantiation that is why the Jesuit leius d623 called the words of the consecration the sword with which the sacrificial lamb is slaughtered the socalled theory of mation slaughtering occupies an important place in the

literature of the mass though it has not been generally accepted in its more objectionable outgrowths perhaps the clearest of all is the Greek ritual as described by the Archbishop Nicholas cabasilas of thessalonica D Circa 1363 in the first Preparatory part of the mass the Bread and Wine are placed not on the main altar but on the prothesis a sort of sideboard there the priest cuts a piece off the loaf and repeats the text he is Led as a lamb to the slaughter then he lay lays it on the table and repeats the Lamb of God

is sacrificed the sign of the cross is then imprinted on the bread and a small Lance Stabbed into its side to the text but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side and forth with came there out blood and water at these words water and wine are mixed in the Chalice then comes the oblio in solemn procession with the priest carrying the offering here the images the gift represents the giver Christ the sacrificio the sacrificed thus the priest reenacts the traditional event and in so far as Christ in the Sacramental state possesses a

Vita corpor actuales an actual bodily life one could say that a physical slaying mortification of his body has taken place this happens as a result of the consecrating words spoken by the priest and the destruction of the offering the oblo oxis ad cultum day the offering up of the slain to the service of God brings about the transubstantiation the latter is a transmutation of the elements which pass from a natural Soiled imperfect material State into a subtle body the bread which must be Wheaten signifies the body and the wine representing blood the soul after the

transubstantiation a piece of the host is mingled with the wine thus producing the conu of the Soul with the body and establishing the living body of Christ namely the unity of the church St Ambrose called the transformed bread medicina it is the pharmacon aanas the drug of Immortality which in the act of communion displays its characteristic effect in and on the believer the effect of uniting the body with the soul this takes the form of a healing of the soul and a Reformation of the body the text of the missile shows us how this is

meant Denis peruas aqu Vini mysterium a divinitatus consort humanus nostre fer dignus parps Jesus Christus grant that through the mystery of this Water and wine we may have Fellowship in the divine nature of him who vouchsafe to become partaker of our Humanity perhaps I may be allowed to introduce a personal remark here it was a real Revelation for me as a Protestant to read the words of the offertory for the first time deuman substan dignitatum mirabilis oh God who did marvelously create the Dignity of human nature andq humanitas aier dnat parps who vouch safed to

become partaker of our Humanity what respect for the Dignity of human nature de at homo there is no sign of that unworthy sinful man whom protestantism has so often slandered in the past and is only too ready to slander again moreover there seems to be still something else hidden in this almost transcendental estimate of man for if God dignus es to become partaker of our human nature then man may also also deem himself worthy to become partaker of the divine nature in a Certain sense this is just what the priest does in the performance of

the sacrificial mystery when he offers himself as the victim in place of Christ and the congregation does likewise when it eats the consecrated body and thus shares in the substance of deity by pronouncing the consecrating words that bring about the transformation the priest redeems the bread and wine from their Elemental imperfection as created things this idea Is quite unchristian it is alchemical whereas Catholicism emphasizes the effectual presence of Christ Alchemy is interested in the fate and manifest Redemption of the substances for in them the Divine Soul lies captive and awaits the Redemption that is granted

to it at the moment of release the captive Soul then appears in the form of the Son of God for The Alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man but the deity who is lost in sleeping in matter Only as a secondary consideration does he hope that some benefit May acre to himself self from the transformed substance as the panasia the medicin catholica just as it may to the imperfect bodies the base or sick Metals Etc his attention is not directed to his own salvation through God's grace but to the liberation of

God from the darkness of matter by applying himself to this miraculous work he benefits from its salutary effect but only incidentally he May approach the work as one in need of salvation but he knows that his salvation depends on the success of the work on whether he can free the Divine soul to this end he needs meditation fasting and prayer more he needs the help of the Holy Ghost as his puppet post 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 kunrath very properly puts it the filus macroc Cosmi therefore what comes out of the trans is not Christ but an ineffable material being named The Stone which displays the most paradoxical qualities apart from possessing Corpus anima spirius and Supernatural Powers one might be tempted to explain the symbolism of alchemical transformation as a parody of the mass were it not Pagan in origin and much older than the latter the substance that Harbors the Divine secret is everywhere Including the human body it can be had for the asking and can be found anywhere even

in the most loathsome filth in these circumstances the Opus is no longer a ritualistic officium but the same work of redemption which God himself accomplished upon Mankind through the example of Christ and which is now recognized by the philosopher who has received the donum spiritus sancti the divine art as his own individual Opus the Alchemists emphasize this point He who works through the spirit of another and by a Hired Hand will behold results that that are far from the truth and conversely he who gives his services to another as assistant in the laboratory will never

be admitted to the Queen's Mysteries one might quote the words of cabasilas as kings when they bring a gift to God bear it themselves and do not permit it to be born by others Alchemists are in fact decided Solitaries each has his say in his own way they 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 each worked in the laboratory for himself and suffered from loneliness on the other hand quarrels were rare their writings are relatively free of

polemic and the way they quote each other shows a remarkable agreement on first principles even if one cannot Understand what they are really agreeing about there is little of that disputatiousness and splitting of hairs that so often Mar Theology and philosophy the reason for this is probably the fact that true Alchemy was never a business or a career but a genuine Opus to be achieved by quiet self-sacrificing work one has the impression that each individual tried to express his own particular Experiences quoting the dicta of the Masters only when they seem to offer analogies all

from the very earliest times are agreed that their art is sacred and divine and likewise that their work can be completed only with the help of God this science of theirs is given only to the few and none understands it unless God or a master has opened his understanding the knowledge acquired may not be passed on to others unless they are worthy of it Since all the essentials are expressed in metaphors they can be communicated only to the intelligent who possess the gift of comprehension the foolish allow themselves to be infatuated by literal interpretations and

recipes and fall into error when reading the literature one must not be content with just one book but must possess many books for one book opens another moreover one must read carefully paragraph by paragraph Then one will make discoveries the terminology is admitted to be quite unreliable sometimes the nature of the coveted substance will be revealed in a dream the material aitis may be found by divine inspiration the practice of the art is a hard Road and the longest road the art has no enemies except the ignorant it goes without saying that there are good

and bad authors in alchemical literature as elsewhere there are Productions by Charlatans simpletons and swindlers such inferior writings are easily recognized by their endless recipes their careless and uneducated composition their studied mystification their excruciating dullness and their Shameless insistence on the making of gold good books can always be recognized by the industry care and visible mental struggles of the author four the Prima Materia or synonyms for the Materia the basis of the Opus the Prima Materia is One of the most famous secrets of alchemy this is hardly surprising since it represents the unknown substance that

carries the projection of the autonomous psychic content it was of course impossible to specify such a substance because the projection emanates from the individual and is consequently different in each case for this reason it is incorrect to maintain that the Alchemists never said what the primma Materia was on the Contrary they gave all too many definitions and so were everlastingly contradicting themselves for one Alchemist the Primal Materia was Quicksilver for others it was ore iron gold lead salt sulfur vinegar water fire earth blood Water of Life lapis poison Spirit Cloud Sky Dew Shadow sea mother

moon dragon Venus chaos microcosm ruland's lexicon gives no less than 50 synonyms and a great many more could be added Besides these half chemical half mythological definitions there are also some philosophical ones which have a deeper meaning thus in the tretis of karios we find the definition Hades in olympiodorus the Black Earth contains the accursed of God Theus the consilium kugi says that the father of gold and silver I.E their primma Materia is the animal of Earth and sea or man or a part of man EG his hair blood Etc Dorne calls the prim of

Materia Adica and basing himself on paracelsus limbus microcosmic the material of the stone is no other than the fiery and perfect mercurious and the true hermaphroditic Adam and microcosm equals man Hermes Tris magistus is said to have called The Stone the orphan since Dorne was a pupil of paracelsus his views are probably connected with the anthropos doctrine of his master for this I must refer the reader To my essay paracelis as a spiritual phenomenon further connections between man and the prim of Materia are mentioned in other authors but I cannot quote them all here the

Mercurial Dragon of Greek Alchemy surnamed Nalan gave rise to descriptions of the Prima Materia as Unum unar resz and monad and to the statement in Liber platonis Quorum that man is well qualified to complete the work because he possesses that which is simple I.E The soul milus describes the Prima Materia as the elementum primordial it is the pure subject and the unity of forms and in it any form whatsoever may be assumed in quo retinor quet Forum possibilit in the second version of the turba exam mindus says I make known to you ye sons of

the doctrine that the beginning of All Creatures is a certain primary Everlasting and infinite nature which cooks and rules everything and Whose active and passive aspects are known and recognized only by those on whom the knowledge of the Sacred art has been bestowed bestowed in sermo 9th of the turba ainus puts forward a theory of creation that corresponds to the biblical One Creation through the word but stands in flagrant contradiction to the above According to which the beginning is a Natura perpetua at infinita in the rosarium the primma Materia is called radic ipsus root of

Itself because it roots in itself it is autonomous and dependent on nothing two the incum being a r exsus the Prima Materia is the true principium and from this it is but a step to the parason view that it is something in creatum uncreated in his philosophia atenienses paracelsus says that this unique Materia is a great secret having nothing in common with the elements it fills the entire Regio atheria and is the mother Of the elements and of all created things nothing can express this mystery nor has it been created NEC Adam creatum Fu this

uncreated mystery was prepared Pray parum 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 gives the sense of the original text the autonomy and everlastingness of the Primma Materia in paracelsus suggest a principle equal to the deity corresponding to a diamater just how paracelsus managed to reconcile such a view with his professions of Christianity ity is his own private concern nor is it

by any means an isolated instance the interpretations contained in aquarium sapientum interesting on account of their truly Preposterous character and hardly to be outdone even by Aurora carry perelson Speculation still further though without mentioning the author the following texts for example are applied to the primma Materia and his going forth is from the beginning from the days of Eternity Micah 52 DV and before Abraham was made I am John 858 DV this is supposed to show that the stone is without beginning and has its primum ends from all eternity and that it too is Without

End and will exist in all eternity to understand this properly One must open wide the eyes of the soul and the spirit and observe and discern accurately by means of the Inner Light God has lit this light in nature and in our hearts from the beginning and in the same way continue the author that the stone together with its material has a thousand names and is therefore called miraculous all these names can in eminent degree be predicated of God and the author thereupon proceeds to this Application a Christian can hardly believe his ears but this

conclusion only repeats what has already been said quite plainly in the Liber platonis Quorum resex Quant res es deos invisibilised immobilis that from which things arise is the invisible and immovable God the first re is the subject matter of the divine art it is true that very few of the philosophers pressed forward to this conclusion expresses verbus but It is an aspect that makes their hints and veiled Illusions decidedly more transparent moreover such a conclusion was inevitable psychologically because the unconscious being unknown is bound to coincide with itself everywhere lacking all recognizable qualities no unconscious

content can be distinguished from any other this is not a logical sophistry but a very real phenomenon of great practical importance for it affects the problems Of identity and identification in social life which are based on the collective and indiscriminable nature of unconscious contents these once they have taken possession of certain individuals irresistibly draw them together by mutual attraction and knit them into smaller or larger groups which may easily swell into an avalanche the above quotations 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 ensue when the picture of the world is shifted 180° 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 ubiquity and Perfection the Primal Materia has the quality of ubiquity it can be found always and everywhere which is to

say that projection can take place always and everywhere the English Alchemist Sir George Ripley 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 the Figura from it there Springs our Eternal water Aqua permanence according to Ripley the primma Materia is water it is the material principle of all bodies including Mercury it is the H which the Divine Act of Creation brought forth from the chaos as a

dark sphere spheric Opus the chaos is a Massa confusa that gives birth to the stone the hilal water contains a hidden Elemental fire in the tretis disulfur Hellfire ignis Ganelis is attributed to the element according to hyanis the stone arises from a Massa confusa containing in itself all the elements just as the world came forth from a chaos confusum so does the stone the idea of the rotating aquasphere reminds us of the neop pythagoreans in aritas the world soul is a circle or sphere in Fila it draws the world round with it in its rotation

the original idea is to be found in anex aoras where the Noose Gives rise to a whirlpool in chaos the cosmogony of empid is also relevant here the swos spherical being Springs from the union of dissimilar owing to the influence of velia the definition of this spherical being as the 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 Primal Materia is often called lapis 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 negredo it is then the Black Earth in which the gold or the lapis is sewn like the grain of wheat it is the black magically feed earth that Adam took with him from Paradise also called antimony and described as a black blacker than black negr negus Negro before the king And the King Sun as the grain of fire lies concealed in the high so the King's son lies in the

dark depths of the sea as though dead but yet lives and calls from the deep whosoever will free me from the waters and lead me to dry land him will I Prosper with Everlasting riches the connection with the Rex marinus of the viio Aris is obvious aisus tells of his adventure with the Rex marinus in whose kingdom nothing prospers and nothing is begotten Moreover there are no philosophers there only like mates with like consequently there is no procreation the king must seek the counsel of the philosophers and mate TheBus with Bea his two children whom

he has hatched in his brain when we are told that the king is eximus inanimate or that his land is unfruitful it is equivalent to saying that the hidden state is one of latency and potentiality the Darkness and depths of The sea symbolize the unconscious state of an invisible content that is projected in as much as such a Content belongs to the total personality and is only apparently severed from its context by projection there is always an attraction between conscious mind and projected content generally it takes the form of a Fascination this in the alchemical

allegory is expressed by the king's Cry for Help from the depths of his Unconscious dissociated State the conscious mind should respond to this call one should upper AR REI render service to the king for this would be not only wisdom but Salvation as well yet this brings with it the necessity of a descent into the Dark World of the unconscious the ritual katabasis is andron the perilous adventure of the night sea Journey whose end and aim is the restoration of Life resurrection and the triumph over death Aris leus and his Companions Brave the quest which

ends in catastrophe the death of Theus his death is a punishment for the incestuous kyuno oppositorum the brother sister pair stands allegorically for the whole conception of opposites these have a wide range of variation dry moist hot cold male female Sun Moon Gold Silver Mercury sulfur round Square water fire volatile solid physical spiritual and so on the Regis philus is a rejuvenated form of the father King the youth is Frequently shown with a sword and represents the spirit while the father represents the body in the rosarium version of the vision the death of the sun

is the result of his complete disappearance into the body of Bea during Kus in another version he is eaten by his father or the son is drowned in mercurious or swallowed by the lion the brius is the masculine spiritual principle of light and logos which like the Gnostic noose sinks into The Embrace of physical nature fsus death therefore represents the completion of the spirit's descent into matter The Alchemist depicted the sinful nature of this occur in various ways but because they do not appear to have quite understood it they rationalize or minimize the incest in

itself so repellent five the myth of the hero resulting as it did from the advice of the philosophers the death of the King's son Is naturally a delicate and dangerous matter by descending into the unconscious the conscious mind puts itself in a perilous position for it is apparently extinguishing itself it is in the situation of the primitive hero who is devoured by the dragon since all this means a diminution or Extinction of Consciousness an abasement dual equivalent to that Peril of the Soul which is primitive man's greatest dread I.E the fear of ghosts The deliberate

and indeed wanting provocation of this state is a sacrilege or breach of taboo attended by the severest punishments accordingly the king imprisons Aris leus and his companions in a triple glass house together with the corpse of theing King's son the heroes are held captive in the Underworld at the bottom of the sea where exposed to every kind of Terror they languish for 80 Days in an intense Heat at the request of Aris leus Bea is imprisoned with them the rosarian version of the viio interprets the prison as Bea's womb clearly they have been overpowered by

the unconscious and are helplessly abandoned which means that they have volunteered to die in order to beget a new and fruitful life in in that region of the psyche which has hitherto Lain fallow in darkest unconsciousness and under the shadow of death although the possibility of life Is hinted at by the brother sister Paar these unconscious opposites must be activated by the intervention of the conscious mind otherwise they will merely remain dormant but this is a dangerous undertaking we can understand the anxious plea in Aurora consurgens horidas Nostra menus perga tenias accende Lumin sensus we

can also understand why Michael Meyer found few that were willing to plunge into the sea aisus is in danger of Succumbing to the fate of Theus and paraos who descended into Hades and grew fast to the rocks of the underworld which is to say that the conscious mind advancing into the unknown regions of the psyche is overpowered by the archaic forces of the unconscious a repetition of the cosmic Embrace of new and physes the purpose of The Descent as universally exemplified in the myth of the hero is to show that only in the region of

danger watery Abyss Cavern Forest Island Castle Etc can one find the treasure hard to attain Jewel virgin life potion victory over death The Dread and resistance which every natural human being experiences when it comes to delving too deeply into himself is at bottom the fear of the journey to Hades 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 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 units Etc disintegration which may be functional or occasionally a real schizophrenia is the Fate which overtakes Gab Rus in the rosarium version he is dissolved into atoms in The body of Bea this being equivalent to a form of mortifica here again we have a repetition of the kyuno of no and fsus but the latter is a cosmogonic event whereas this is a catastrophe brought about by the intervention of the philosophers so long as Consciousness refrains from

acting the Opposites will remain dormant in the unconscious once they have been activated the Reis philus Spirit logos noose is swallowed up by feus that is to say the body and the Psychic representatives of the organs gain Mastery over the conscious mind in the hero myth this state is known as being swallowed up in the belly of the whale or Dragon 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 gelus the hell into which Christ descended in order to

conquer death as part of his Opus the philosopher makes theour journey to hell as a redeemer the hidden fire forms the Inner antithesis to the cold wetness of the sea in the viio this heat is undoubtedly the warmth of incubation equivalent to the self- incubating or brooding state of meditation in Indian yoga we find the Kindred idea of tapus self- incubation the aim of tapus is the same as in the viio transformation and Resurrection six the hidden treasure the treasure hard to attain whose presence was suspected in the dark Prima Materia is symbolized by the

Alchemists in Various ways Christopher of Paris for instance says that the chaos as Prima Materia is the work of all wise nature our understanding intellectus aided by the celestial and glowing Spirit must transform this natural work of art chaos into the celestial nature of the quintessence and into the life-giving vegetais essence of Heaven the precious substance is potentially contained in this chaos as a Massa confuso all the elements rolled into one and man must Diligently apply his mind to it so that our Heaven may come into reality at actum Johannes graus quotes The View that

the Prima Materia is the lead plumbum of the philosophers also called the lead of the air an illusion to the inner opposite this lead contains the radiant White Dove called the salt of the metals the dove is the chaste wise and Rich Queen of Sheba veiled in white who was willing to give herself to none but King Solomon according to basilius valentinus the Earth as Prima Materia is not a dead body but is inhabited by a spirit that is its life and soul all created things minerals included draw their strength from the Earth Spirit this

spirit is life it is nourished by the stars and it gives nourishment to all the living things it shelters in its womb through the spirit received from on high the Earth Hatches the minerals in her womb as the mother her unborn child This invisible spirit is like the reflection in a mirror intangible yet it is at the same time the root of all the substances necessary to the alchemical process or arising there from radic nostrum Corum a similar idea is to be found in Michael Mayer the Sun by its many millions of revolutions spins the

gold into the Earth little by little the sun has imprinted its image on the earth and that image is the gold the sun is the image of God the heart is the sun's Image in man just as gold is the sun's image in the earth also called do tanus and God is known in the gold this golden image of God is the Ana Ora which when breathed into common quick silver changes it into gold Ripley is of the opinion that the fire must be extracted from the chaos and made visible this fire is the Holy

Ghost who unites father and son he is often represented as a winged old man I.E mercurious in the form of the god of Revelation who is identical with Hermes Tris magistus and together with the king and the King's son forms the alchemical Trinity God wrought this fire in the bowels of the earth just as he rought the purging flames of hell and in this fire God himself glows with Divine love five the lepus Christ parallel worth the renewal of Life the examples given in the last chapter show that there is a spirit hidden in the

prim of Materia just as there was in the Nile Stone of Aenis this Spirit was eventually inter interpreted as the Holy Ghost In accordance with the ancient tradition of the Noose swallowed up by the darkness while in the Embrace of fsus with this difference however that it is not the Supreme feminine principle Earth who is the Devourer but no in the form of mercurious or the tail eating uroboros in other words the devour is a sort of material Earth Spirit and hermaphodite possessing a masculine Spiritual and feminine corporeal aspect the original Gnostic myth has undergone

on a strange transformation no and fezes are indistinguishably one in the primma Materia and have become a natural abscond 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 transform tincture in so far as the art still busied itself in the laboratory 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 a grasp of contents 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 earlier on we left Aris Leus and his companions together with Bea and the dead TheBus in the triple glass house where they had been imprisoned by the Rex marinus they suffer from the intense heat like the three whom Nebuchadnezzar cast into the fiery furnace 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 at unas it 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 fire Agony of the furnace and symbolizes the divine presence sour and the completion of the work and in their hour of need aisus and his companions see their Master Pythagoras in a dream and beg him for help he sends them his disciple har Forus the author of nourishment so the work is completed and Theus comes to life again we may suppose that har forus brought them the miraculous food though this only

becomes clear through a discovery of ruskus who gave us access to the text of the Codex barel andensis there in an introduction that is missing from the printed versions of the vi we read Pythagoras says ye write and have written down for posterity how this most precious tree is planted and how he that Eats of its fruits shall hunger no more since the viio was written for the express purpose of leaving an example of the alchemical process to posterity it naturally deals with the planting of trees and the end of The Legend is designed to

show the miraculous regenerating effects of the fruit while Aris leus was in such Dire Straits and Theus lay in the sleep of death the tree six was evidently growing and bearing fruit the part played by Aris leus in The glass house is entirely passive the decisive action comes from the master who sends his messenger with the food of life we are told that a man can receive the secret knowledge only through divine inspiration or from the lips of a master and also that no one can complete the work except with the help of God in

the viio it is the legendary Master the Divine Pythagoras who takes the place of God and completes the work of regeneration this divine intervention as We may venture to call it occurs in a dream when Aris leus sees the master and implores his help if the union of the Opposites mind and body portrayed by fabricius and Bea the putting to death and The Cremation in the furnace are according to to one Alchemist the equivalent of the offeror in the mass we find an analogy to the petition for help in the momento vorum the intercession for

the living and in the commemoration of Martyrs both of which precede the Transubstantiation in the Ordo misi the invocation is made pro Redemption Anar Pro for the Redemption of their souls for the hope of their Health and Welfare and the Saints are remembered in order that God for the sake of their merits and prayers May grant that we be defended in all things with the help of thy protection the petition ends with the epiclesis which ushers in the transubstantiation UT nois Corpus at Sanguis Fiat that it may become for us the body and the blood

I.E the miraculous food The pharmacon Zo in the viio it is the fruit of the immortal tree that brings salvation but when the church speaks of the fructus sacrific Missi the fruits of the sacrifice of the mass it is not quite the same thing since moral and other effects are meant not the consecrated substances themselves which are likewise produced ex oper operado from the Performed work here we come to a parting of the ways 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 self 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 perfeo 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 moral qualities he takes for granted and considers them only in so far as they help or hinder the Opus we could say that

he lays the whole emphasis on the effect exop operantis of the work of the operator naturally to a much higher degree than the church since he takes the place of the Christ who Sacrifices himself in the mass one should not for a moment suppose that he presumes to the role of Redeemer from religious megalomania he does so even less than the officiating priest who figuratively sacrifices Christ 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 he Likens to Christ it is not really a question of identification at all but of the hermeneutic cute as or like which characterizes the analogy 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 right of hallowing the fire fire on the Saturday before Easter the fire is like unto Christ and Imo 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 the analogy with the extraction of the Numa from the stone and the saying of aanes forces itself upon us we are already familiar with the idea of Numa as fire and with Christ as Fire and Fire as the Earth's inner counter element but the fire 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 feds of death during the three days of his descent into hell when he

went down to the ignis ginalis from which he rises again as the new fire without knowing it The Alchemist carries the idea of the imito 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 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 noose or logos lost in the world's materiality for the benefit of mankind the artifacts himself Bears no no correspondence to Christ rather he Sees this correspondence to the Redeemer in his wonderful Stone from this point of view Alchemy seems like a continuation of Christian mysticism carried on in the Subterranean darkness of the unconscious 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 evidence for the religious interpretation of the lapis a Raymond Lilly it is not surprising that the lapis Christ parallel came to the for among the medieval Latin authors at a comparatively early date since alchemical

symbolism is steeped in ecclesiastical allegory although there is no doubt that the allegories of the church fathers enriched the language of alchemy it remains in my opinion Exceedingly doubtful just how far the Opus alchemic in its various forms can be regarded as a transmogrification of ecclesiastical rights baptism mass and dogmas Christ's conception birth passion death and Resurrection undeniably borrowings were made over and over again from the church but when we come to the original basic ideas of alchemy we find elements that derive from Pagan and more particularly from Gnostic sources the roots of Gnosticism do

not lie in Christianity at all it is far truer to say that Christianity was assimilated through gnosticism apart from this we have a Chinese text dating from the middle of the 2 century which displays fundamental similarities with Western Alchemy whatever the connection between China and the West may have been there is absolutely no doubt that parallel ideas exist outside the sphere of Christianity in places where Christian influence is simply out of the question AE weight has expressed the opinion that the first author to identify the stone with Christ was the paracelis Heinrich kunrath 15665 whose

amphitheatrum appeared in 1598 in the writings of the somewhat later jackob bom who frequently uses alchemical terms the stone has already become a metaphor for Christ weight's assumption is undoubtedly erroneous for We have much earlier testimonies to the connection between Christ and the lapis the oldest that I have so far been able to discover being contained in the cilus 9 of Raymond Lily 1235 to 13:15 even if many of the treatises ascribed to him were written by his Spanish and provinal disciples that does not alter the approximate date of his main Works to which the

cillus belongs at any rate I know of no authoritative opinion that puts this Treatise later than the 14th century there it is said and as Jesus Christ of the House of David took on human nature for the deliverance and Redemption of mankind who were in the bonds of sin on account of Adam's Disobedience so likewise in our art that which has been wrongfully defiled by one thing is absolved by its opposite cleansed and delivered from that stain tractatus orius a still older Source would assuredly be the tractatus orius Ascribed to Hermes and regarded as of

Arabic origin even in the Middle Ages where Christ mentioned directly by name the reason why I nevertheless quote it is that it describes things which bear a remarkable resemblance to the mysterious happenings at Easter tide and yet are clothed in quite another language the passage runs as follows our precious stone that was cast upon the dung Heap is altogether vile but when we marry the crowned King with the red daughter she Will conceive a son in the gentle fire and shall nourish him through our fire then is he transformed and his tincture remains red as

flesh our son of Royal birth takes his tincture from the fire and death darkness and the waters flee away the dragon shuns the light of the Sun and our dead Sun shall live the king shall come forth from the fire and rejoice in the marriage the hidden things shall be disclosed and the virgin's milk be whitened the sun has Become a warrior fire and surpasses the tincture for he himself is the treasure and himself is attired in the philosophic matter come hither ye sons of wisdom and rejoice for the Dominion of death is over and

the sun Reigns he wears the red garment and the purple is put on we can take this text as a variant of the mythical god man and his triumph over death and thus as an analogy of the Christian drama since the age and origin of this Hermetic text are still unknown we cannot decide with any certainty whether Christian influence is at work here probably not there is no reason to suspect Christian influence in the very early texts such as that of karios the Christian prefaces Etc to these manuscripts are interpolations by Byzantine monastic copyists and

yet it is just just the karios text that has all the characteristics of a regeneration Mystery although here the resurrection of the Dead is affected not by a redeemer but by the udor Theon the aqua perens of the latinists to which the Christian water symbolism Aqua equals spirus veritus baptism and Eucharist forms an unmistakable parallel C zosimos and the doctrine of the anthropos in the later texts however which are ascribed to zosimos we find the Son of God in mistakable association With the Priestly artti techi I give the relevant passages in a literal translation for

if you have meditated and have dwelt in human Community you will see that the Son of God has become all things for the sake of devout souls in order to draw the soul forth from the Dominion of him armini into the realm of the incorporeal behold how he has become all God angel and man capable of suffering for having power in all he can be become all as he wills and he obeys The father in as much as he penetrates all bodies and illuminates the mind of each Soul spurring it on to follow him up

to the Blessed region where it was before the beginning of corporeal things yearning and led by him into the light five and consider the tablet which beos also wrote and the Thrice great Plato and the infinitely great Hermes saying that the first man is designated with the first hieratic word th who is The Interpreter of all things that are and The Giver of names to all corporeal things the calans parthians mes and Hebrews call him Adam which is being interpreted virgin Earth blood red or bloody Earth fiery or carnal Earth this is to be found

in the libraries of the tmes they put it in every sanctuary and especially in the serapium at the time when Asus went to the high priest of Jerusalem who sent Hermes who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian six so the first man is called By us thth and by them Adam which is a name in the language of the Angels but with reference to his body they named him symbolically after the four elements of the whole Heavenly Sphere for his letter A stands for Ascent Anatoli the east or the air D

for descent thesis the West because the Earth is heavy a for Arctic the North and M for Meridian meguma the South the midmost of these bodies the fire that burns in the midst of the fourth region Thus the fleshly Adam according to his outward and visible form is called thth but the spiritual man in him has a proper name as well as the name by which he is called his proper name as yet I know not for nus alone knows this and he is not to be found but his common name is man which is

light wherefore it came that men are called fotus s now when the man of light Abode in Paradise pervaded by the breath of himar mean they the elements persuaded him who was without Evil and free from their activity to put on the atom that was with him namely the Adam rot of the four elements of him armini and he in his innocence did not turn aside but they boasted that he was their slave wherefore heod called the outer man the bond with which Zeus bound Prometheus but after this Fetter Zeus sent him yet another Pandora

whom the Hebrews call Eve for in the allegorical language Prometheus and Epimetheus are but one man namely soul and body and Sometimes he 50 Bears the likeness of the Soul sometimes that of the spirit and sometimes the likeness of the flesh because of the Disobedience of Epimetheus who heeded not the counsil of Prometheus his own mind for our mind says the Son of God having power in all things and becoming all things when he Wills appears as he Wills to each Jesus Christ made himself one with Adam and bore him up to that place where

the men of light dwelt before eight but he Appeared to the very feeble as a man capable of suffering and like one scourged and after he had privily stolen away the men of light that were his own he made known that in truth he did not suffer and that death was trampled down and cast out and to this day and to the end of the world he is present in many places both secretly and openly consorting with his own counseling them secretly yay through their own minds ye to suffer confusion with the Adam who Was

with them that he might be beaten away from them and slain this blind chatterer who is envious of the spiritual man of light thus they kill their atom nine and these things are so until the coming of the Damon antimos the jealous one who seeks to lead them astray as before declaring that he is the Son of God although he is formless in both body and soul but they having become wiser since the true Son of God has taken possession of them deliver up To him their own atom to be put to death and bring

their shining Spirits safely back to the place where they were before the beginning of the world yet before animos the jealous one does this he sends his Forerunner from Persia who circulates false fables and leads men astray through the power of haarmony the letters of his name are nine if you keep the div thong corresponding to himon later at the end of about seven Periods he will appear in his own shape 10 and only the Hebrews and the sacred books of Hermes tell of these things concerning the man of light and his guide the Son

of God and concerning the Earthly Adam and his guide antimos who blasphemously calls himself the Son of God to lead men astray but the Greeks called the Earthly Adam Epimetheus who was counsel by his own mind his brother not to accept the gifts of Zeus yet in as much as he aired And afterwards repented seeking the Abode of bliss he makes everything plain and fully advised es them that have spiritual hearing but those that have only bodily hearing are slaves of high Maron for they neither understand nor admit anything else 11 and all who meet

with success in the matter of colorings at the propitious moment consider nothing but the great book about furnaces for they do not esteem the art nor do they understand the poet when he Says but the gods have not given to men equally neither do they observe and see the manner of men's lives how even in the same art men may reach the goal in different ways and practice the same art in different ways according to their different characters and the constellations of the stars in the exercise of the same art how one worker is inactive

another alone one blasphemously Desiring too much another too timid and therefore without progress This is so in all the Arts and how those who practice the same art use different implements and procedures having also different attitudes to the spiritual conception of it and its practical realization 12 and this is more to be considered in the sacred art than in all the other Arts to all appearances zosimos Son of God is agnostic Christ who has more Affinity with the Iranian conception of gomart than with the Jesus of the Gospels the author's connections with Christianity are by

no means clear since he undoubtedly belonged to the Hermetic pandra sect as is evident from the passage about the crat as in later Christian Alchemy the Son of God is a sort of Paradigm of sublimation I.E of the freeing of the soul from the grip of himar mini in both cases he is identical with Adam who is a quaternity compounded of four different Earths he is the anthropos the first man Symbolized by the four elements just like the lapis which has the same structure he is also symbolized by the cross whose ends correspond to the

four cardinal points this motif is often replaced by corresponding Journeys such as those of Osiris the labors of Heracles the travels of Enoch and the symbolic Parago to the four quarters in Michael Mayor 1568 to 1622 Journeys are also related of Hermes trism magistus and this may have Inspired Meyer's perago although it is more probable that Meyer imagined the Opus as a Wandering or Odyssey rather like The Voyage of the Argonauts in quest of the oriam velis Golden Fleece so beloved of the Alchemists a theme that figures in the title of more than one Treatise

Alexander's campaign is mentioned in A Treatise ascribed to albertus Magnus the journey ending in the discovery of hermes's grave where a stor is perched on the tree instead of a Phoenix Adam corresponds to tho thos the Egyptian Hermes Adam's inner spiritual man is named fos light nus who knows the man of light's secret name occurs twice in zosimos as a mysterious personage and he is also mentioned in a cop agnostic text as one who has beheld the monogenes unog genitus poery in his life of plotus speaks of him as the author of an apocalypse the

manes reckon him among the prophets along with Shem Sam enosh and Enoch Prometheus and Epimetheus Represent the inner and outer man like Christ and Adam the ability to become all attributed to the Son of God is an attribute not only of the Numa but of the alchemical mercurious whose boundless powers of transformation are praised in accordance with the versatility of the astrological Mercury he is the material Lapidus the transforming substance par excellence and is said to penetrate all bodies like a Poison antimos the imitator and evil principle appears as the antagonist of the Son of

God he too considers himself to be God's son here the Opposites inherent in the deity are clearly divided we meet this Damon in many other places as the image he is the spirit of darkness in a man's body compelling his soul to fulfill all his sinful Tendencies the alchemical parallel to this polarity is the double nature of mercurious which shows itself most Clearly in the uroboros the dragon that devours fertilizes begets slays and brings itself to life again being hermaphroditic it is compounded of opposites and is at the same time their uniting symbol at once

deadly poison basilisk scorpion pan messia and savior zosimos discloses practically the whole of the recondite and highly peculiar Theology of alchemy by drawing a parallel between the esoteric meaning of the Opus and the Gnostic mystery of Redemption this is only one indication that the lapis Christ parallel of the Scholastic Alchemists had a pagan Gnostic precursor and was by no means a mere speculation of the Middle Ages D petris bonis the oldest source to treat specifically of the stones connection with Christ would appear to be a text pretiosa Margarita Nolla written by Petrus bonis of Ferrara

between 1330 and 1339 from which I give the following Extract this art is partly natural and partly Divine or Supernatural at the end of the sublimation there germinates through the mediation of the spirit a shining white Soul animac candida Which flies up to heaven with the spirit this is clearly and manifestly the stone so far the procedure is indeed somewhat marvelous yet still within the framework of nature but as regards the fixation and permanence of the Soul and Spirit at the end of the Sublimation this takes place when the secret stone is added which cannot

be grasped by the senses but only by the intellect through inspiration or divine revelation or through the teaching of an initiate Alexander says that there are two categories seeing through the eye and understanding through the heart this Secret secet stone is a gift of God there could be no Alchemy without this Stone it is the heart and tincture of the gold regarding which Hermes says it Is needful that at the end of the world Heaven and Earth be United which is the philosophic word Pythagoras also said in the turba god concealed this from Apollo so

that the world should not be destroyed thus Alchemy stands above nature and is divine the whole difficulty of the art lies in this Stone the int cannot comprehend it so must believe it like the Divine Miracles and the foundation of the Christian Creed therefore God Alone is the operator While nature remains passive it was through their knowledge of the art that the old philosophers knew of the coming of the end of the world and the resurrection of the dead then the Soul will be United with its original body forever and ever the body will become

wholly transfigured glorifica him Incorruptible and almost unbelievable subil and it will penetrate all solids its nature will be as much spiritual as corporeal when the stone Decomposes to a powder like a man in his grave God restores to it Soul and Spirit and takes away all imperfection then is that substance ill aress strengthened and improved as after the resurrection a man becomes stronger and younger than he was before the old philosophers discerned the last judgment in this art namely in the germination and birth of this stone for in it the soul to to be beatified

beifa unites with its original body to eternal glory so also the Ancients knew that a virgin must conceive and bring forth for in their artart the stone begets conceives and brings itself forth such a thing can happen only by the grace of God therefore alfius says of the stone that its mother was a virgin and that its father had never known woman they knew besides that God would become man on the last day of this art in novisad dius artist when the work is perfected and that begetter and begotten old man and Boy Father and

Son all become one now since no creature except man can Unite with God on account of their dissimilarity God must needs become one with man and this came to pass in Christ Jesus and his virgin mother therefore balgus says in the turba oh What miracles of nature that have changed the soul of the old man into a youthful body and the father has become the son in like manner PL writing of alchemical matters wrote a gospel which was Completed long after by John the Evangelist Plato wrote the opening verses from in the beginning was the

word to there was a man sent from God God has shown the philosopher this wonderful example that he might perform Supernatural Works morenus says that God has entrusted this magisterium to his philosophers or prophets for whose souls he has prepared a dwelling in his paradise this text which is at least a Century older than kunrath 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 e Aurora consurgens and the doctrine of sapientia the next source is Aurora consurgens of which a manuscript copy of the 15th century the Codex renovi enus From the monastery at rhyo is to be found in Zurich unfortunately the manuscript is mutilated and begins only at the fourth Parable I was made aware of it through the fact that the printer of Artis aifer 1593 published only part two of Aurora he prefix to it a short notice to the reader in which he says that he has purposely omitted the entire Treatise consisting of Parables or allegories

because the author in the ancient manner Of obscurantists antiquo more tenbon treated almost the whole Bible particularly Proverbs Psalms but above all the song of songs in such a way as to suggest that the holy scriptures had been written solely in honor of alchemy the author he says has even profaned the most holy mystery of the Incarnation and death of Christ by turning it into the mystery of the lapis not of course with any evil intent as he the typographer Conrad waldkirch readily admits but as was only to be expected in that bited epoch seculum

UD tenum by this Walch meant the pre-reformation epoch whose conception of man and the world and experience of the divine presence in the mystery of matter had entirely vanished from the purview of the Protestants of his own day the Treatise is preserved entire in the Codex parasinus latinus 14006 there is also a printing of it in The compilation edited by Johannes ranis harmonia incist chemico philosophic decades du Frankfurt 1625 the age of the text which is attributed to St Thomas aquinus D1 1274 may be gauged more or less from the fact that the most recent

author quoted in it is albertus Magnus 1193 to 1280 the other authors who are everywhere quoted in the 15th century Arnold of Villanova d313 and Raymond Lully D1315 are not mentioned since Thomas was canonized in 1323 and was thus at the height of his Fame it was worthwhile ascribing texts to him from that time on we shall probably not be far out if we put the date in the first half of the 14th century the author is evidently a cleric who knows his Vulgate by heart his whole idiom is steeped in biblical quotation just as

his mind is full of alchemical philosophy Alchemy is for him absolutely Identical with the sapena day he begins his Treatise with words taken from the wisdom of Solomon 7 11 and Proverbs 1221 venant Mii Omni Bona paror kumpen austri in PL inum clamat in prefer verb accell all good things come to me together with her that wisdom of the South who preacheth abroad who utth her voice in the streets crith out at the head of the Multitudes and in the entrance of the gates of the city utth her words saying Come Ye to me and

be enlightened and your operations shall not be confounded all ye that desire me shall be filled with my riches come children hearken to me I will teach you the science of God who is wise and understandeth this of which alfius saith that men and children pass her by daily in the streets and public places and she is trotten into the Meer by beasts of burden and by Cattle the sapientia austri is in patristic usage the wisdom of the Holy Ghost for our author sapientia is the Regina austri qu abente dis ven UD Aurora consurgens Queen

of the South who is said to have come from the East like unto the morning rising without mentioning our text the rosarium quotes it as follows this sapientia is my daughter for whose sake men say that the queen of the South came out of the East like the rising Dawn in order to hear Understand and behold the wisdom of Solomon power honor strength and Dominion are given into her hand she wears the Royal Crown of seven glittering stars like a bride adorned for her husband and on her robe is written in Golden lettering in Greek

Arabic and Latin I am the only daughter of the wise utterly unknown to the foolish this is without doubt a citation from Aurora the original text has 12 instead of seven stars the latter Evidently referring to the Seven Stars in the hand of the apocalyptic one like unto the son of man rever 11321 these represent the seven angels of the seven churches and the seven spirits of God the historical susant tondu of the seven is the antique company of seven gods who later took up their Abode in the seven Medals of alchemy they were deposed

by science only during the last 150 years for paracelsus the gods were still enthroned As archons in the mysterium Magnum of the Prima Materia to their own undoing in ours the TW stars of the original text refer to the 12 disciples and the 12 signs of the zodiac the agathon serpent on Gnostic gems also had has seven or 12 Rays about its head in Clement's second homy it is observed that the number of Apostles corresponds to the 12 months in the manakan system the Savior constructs a cosmic wheel with 12 buckets the Zodiac For the

raising of souls this wheel has a significant connection with the Roda or Opus circulator of alchemy which serves the same purpose of sublimation as Dorne says the wheel of creation takes its rise from the Prima Materia when it passes to the simple elements enlarging on the idea of the Roa philosophica Ripley says that the wheel must be turned by the Four Seasons and the four quarters thus connecting this symbol with the paraga and the Quaternity the wheel turns into the wheel of the sun rolling round the heavens and so becomes identical with the sun god

or hero who submits to arduous labors and to the passion of self- cremation like Heracles or to captivity and dismemberment at the hands of the evil Prin principle like Osiris a well-known parallel to the Chariot of the sun is the fiery Chariot in which Elijah ascended to Heaven accordingly pseudo Aristotle says take The serpent and place it on the Chariot with four wheels and let it be turned about on the earth until it is immersed in the depths of the sea and nothing more is visible but the blackest Dead Sea the image used here is

surely that of the sun sinking into the sea save that the sun has been replaced by the the Mercurial serpent I.E the substance to be transformed Michael Meer actually takes the Opus circulator as an image of the Sun's course for while the hero like a joyful giant rises in the East and hastens to his sinking in the west that he may forever return out of the East he sets in motion these circulations depositing in The Shining substance of the Quicksilver as in a mirror forms wherein by human diligence the gold may be sought cleansed from

impurities tested by fire and water and put to a use pleasing to God the Creator the circle described by the sun is the line That runs back on itself like the snake that with its head bites its own tail wherein God may be discerned Meyer calls it The Shining clay molded by the wheel Roda and hand of the most high and Almighty Potter into that Earthly substance wherein the sun's rays are collected and caught this substance is the gold in Inus aerus philalethes elaborates Meers views there is in our Mercury he says a fiery sulfur

or sufuria fire this fire is the spiritual Seed which our virgin has gathered in herself because unspotted virginity can admit of spiritual love according to the author of the Hermetic mystery and as experience itself shows it is to be noted that this virgin who being unspotted into marada is obviously analogous to the Virgin Mary is made pregnant by a seed deriving not from any Holy Ghost but from a sulur Furious fire I.E an ignis Galis the Virgin is mercurious who owing to the presence of Sulfur the active masculine principle is hermaphroditic sulfur is the Orum

volatile a spiritual gold the Orum non vuli of the rosarium and at the same time the primam moven quadrum vertit axm K vertit in gyum prime mover that turns wheel and axle in a circle laurentius Ventura cannot resist connecting the wheel with the vision of Ezekiel thus speaking of the lapis he says that Ezekiel Saw in its shape the wheel within the wheel and the spirit of the Living creature that was in the midst of the wheels wherefore he says this mysterium has been called by some the deos terrestris it appears that this last thought

is not a conceit of Venturas but as he says a quotation from lilium a source I have been unable to trace though it must go back to the 14th century or even earlier the idea of the C caty Opus or rotating Arcane substance finds Expression as early as Camaros who speaks of the mystery of the Whirlwind in the manner of a wheel in compare Zach 9:14 and the Lord God will sound the trumpet and go in the Whirlwind of the South the Mystic Logan of zosimos probably has some bearing here and what meth this the

nature that conquers the natures and it is perfected and becometh like a whirl Kaya the transforming substance is an Analogy of the revolving universe of the macrocosm or a reflection of it imprinted in the heart of matter psychologically it is a question of the revolving Heavens being reflected in the unconscious an Imago Mundi that was projected by The Alchemist into his own primma Materia but such an interpretation is somewhat one-sided since the idea of the Arcane substance is itself an archetype expressed most simply in the idea of the Soul Soul Spark cintilla spinther and the

monad the personification of sapena in the wisdom of Solomon evidently caused the author of Aurora to identify her with the queen of the south in alchemy she always appears as sapena day 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 the Holy Ghost too is fiery and causes an exaltation his equivalent so to speak is the

hidden fire the spirus Ignus dwelling in mercurious whose opposite poles are an agents I.E fire and a patience I.E Quicksilver when therefore Abul kasim speaks of the fire as the Great South Wind he is in agreement with the ancient Greek View that Hermes was a wind God I have dwelt at some length on The opening passages of Aurora because they are an excellent illustration of the composition as a whole as regards both language and subject matter here I will mention only a few of the lapis Christ parallels in C2 the author calls the science I.E

Alchemy a gift and a sacrement of God a Divine matter that the wise have veiled in images from this it appears that the Opus alchemic is deemed the equal of the Opus deinum or mass in CV 6 the stone is Described in the words of the song of songs 5:116 such is my beloved and PS 443 DV behold ye him beautiful above the sons of men at whose Beauty the Sun and Moon wonder the philus philosophorum is here identified with the bridegroom who as we know is interpreted as Christ in the second parable of the

flood of waters and of death we read then the fullness of the time shall come when God shall send his son as he hath said whom he hath appointed heir of All Things by Whom also he made the world to whom he said of old time Thou Art my son today have I begotten thee to whom the wise men from the East brought three precious gifts here again Christ is a parallel of the lapis in the fourth parable of the philosophic faith a parallel is drawn with the Holy Trinity like as the father is so

is the Son and so also is the Holy Spirit and these three are one body spirit and soul for all perfection Consisteth in the number three that is in measure number and weight the sixth parable of Heaven and Earth and the arrangement of the elements says in the turba philosophum it is written the Earth since it is heavy beareth all things for it is the foundation of the whole Heaven because it appeared dry at the separation of the elements therefore in the Red Sea there was a way without hindrance since this great and wide sea

smote The Rock and The metallic Waters flowed forth then the rivers disappeared in dry land which make the city of God joyful when this Mortal shall put on immortality and the corruption of the living shall put on incorruption then indeed shall that word come to pass which is written death is swallowed up in Victory oh death where is thy Victory where thy sin abounded there now Grace doth more abound for as in Adam all die so also in Christ all shall be made alive for by a man indeed Came Death and by himself the resurrection

of the Dead for the first Adam and his sons took their beginning from the corruptible elements and therefore it was needful that the composed should be corrupted but the second Adam who is called the philosophic man from pure elements entered into eternity therefore what is composed of simple and pure Essence remaineth forever as Senor saith there Is one thing that never dieth for it continueth by Perpetual increase when the body shall be glorified in the final resurrection of the Dead wherefore for the Creed beareth witness to the resurrection of the Flesh and eternal life after

death then saith the second Adam to the first and to his sons Come Ye blessed of my father possess you the Eternal Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the work and eat my bread and drink the wine which I have Mingled for you for all things are made ready for you he that hath ears to hear Let Him hear what the spirit of the doctrine saith to the sons of the discipline concerning the Earthly and the Heavenly atom which the philosophers treat of in these words when thou Hast water from earth air from

water fire from Air Earth from fire then shalt thou fully and perfectly possess our art what is particularly interesting In this passage is the parallel between the Lapis or the aqua sapientum and the second atom which connects Christ through the quotation in senior with the alchemical doctrine of the anthropos Christ is identified with the homo philosophicus the microcosm the one that dieth not and bringeth Alive anything dead the homo philosophicus appears to have two meanings he is the one I.E the tincture or elixir of life but he is also the Everlasting Inner Man identical or

at least connected with the anthropos This Doctrine is elaborated by paracelsus Aurora continues in the same vein and gives us in the seventh and last Parable a confabulation of the lover with the Beloved which Luther's Bible interprets as the mutual love of Christ and his church closing with the words Behold how good and pleasant it is for two to dwell together in unity let us make therefore three Tabernacles one for thee a second for me and a third for our sons for a three-fold chord is not Easily broken these three Tabernacles the author connects with

the Liber trium verum of khed the three words wherein is hidden all the science are to be given to the pious that is to the poor from the first man even unto the last the three words are for three months water preserveth the fotus in the womb air nourisheth it for the second three fire guardeth it for the third three and this word adds Khed and this teaching and the dark goal stand open so that all may see the truth although the three Tabernacles according to the preceding text are intended for the sponsus Christus and

we may suppose for sapientia as the sponsa yet in the end sapientia herself speaks and offers two of the Tabernacles to the Adept and the philosophers the sons of wisdom the three-fold chord refers primarily to the bond between sapientia and her adepts but as the reference to ked's three Words shows it also means the three-fold process which holds the Body Soul and Spirit of the transforming substance together in imperishable Union the chemical compound thus produced is the end result of the Opus I.E the philus philosophorum or lapis in a sense comparable with the mystical body

of the church Christ the vine the whole the disciples the branches the parts one does indeed have the impression that the anonymous author of this Treatise has Hitched the holy scriptures to the triumphal car of alchemy as was not unjustly alleged against him it is astonishing to see how with a perfectly clear conscience he launches forth into the most hair raising interpretations without the least awareness of what he is doing as I have shown in paracelsus as a spiritual phenomenon we find a similar attitude in paracelsus some 200 years later and also in the author

of aquarium Sapientum our author betrays such a ready acquaintance with the Vulgate that we might suspect him of being in holy orders moreover we have the testimony of the humanist patrii 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 V 14 requesting him to let Hermes take the place of Aristotle the text of Aurora is of historical importance in that it must be more than

200 years older than kunrath 1598 and Bulma 1610 curiously enough bulma's first work Bears the title Aurora OD de Morgan R alang Aurora or the rising Dawn can it be that Bowman new Aurora consurgens at least by name f melier census and the alchemical paraphrase of the mass the next source for the lapus Christ identity is an interesting Document from the beginning of the 16th century addressed as its title shows to lisl King of Hungary and Bohemia the author's name was Nicholas melier of hermanstad he expounded the alchemical process in the form of a mass

which he arranged as follows fundamentum Vero Artis EST Corum soluo the basis of the art is the dissolution of the bodies kir fans bontis inspirator Sacra artist Aon fidelus predent Elison our Lord found of goodness Inspire of the Sacred art from Whom all good things come to your faithful have mercy Chrisi lapis Benedict arst prund salute inspiras Lum at extra pandum turkum Elison Christ Holy One blessed Stone of the art of the science who for the Salvation of the world has inspired the light of the science for the extrap of the Turk have mercy cir

ignis deine pector Nostra juva perer Sacrament Artis expander pimus Elison our Lord Divine fire help Our hearts that we may be able to your praise to expand the sacraments of the art have mercy glory and invocation collecta prayer before the epistle is read the main idea is that thy servant enn may practice the sacred art of alchemy to the glory of God and the propagation of the Christian faith epistola merely an invocation gradual usually a coral consisting of verses from the Psalms in the old days it was sung on the steps gradous of the Ambo

Serge aquilo at vener perah hortum mum at fluent aramat ilas arise o North Wind and come oh south wind blow through my garden and let the aromatic spices thereof flow verses descended s Pia and superum Allelujah oix Condor Alor fragr inundo vasus inar balsami o salutaris Med hamuras omn corporis langum sublimis exqu ver Vera aquavi in praum torum fidelium he descends like rain upon the fleece and as showers falling gently upon the Earth Allelujah Oh blessed creator of the earth whiter than snow sweeter than sweetness fragrant at the bottom of the vessel like Balsam oh

salutary medicine for men that curest every weakness of the body oh Sublime Fountain when gushes forth truly the true Water of Life into the garden of thy faithful and a pre Clara follows the gospel here I will stress only a few of the most important points after the reading of gospel and Creed melor Introduces an a not an AV Maria but an a pre Clara of which he mentions only these two words without the continuation a pre Clara is the opening of a hymn to the Virgin Mary which has been attributed to various authors including

albertus Magnus whose putative authorship must have been particularly interesting to an alchemist Remy de goral in his La Latin Mystique quotes the following Legend taken from the so-called ook register of Santa Maria a Virgin in Royal reignment appeared to albertis in a dream and reproached him for not having shown himself sufficiently grateful to the Virgin Mary for the blessing she had bestowed it was on account of this dream that albertus composed the Ava prara an alchemist would find it full of alluring Illusions a prara Maristella inum jum Maria divinus orta Virgo deas Mundi Regina coai

prun Rees Mari Ang spec Sano patri verbo tasti Vergo mattera p p distinct P mundis lais cqu propin hail clear Shining Star of the Sea Mary divinely born for the enlightenment of the Nations virgin ornament of the world Queen of Heaven elect above all like the sun lovely as the light of the Moon let us drink in steadfast faith of the sweet stream that flowed from The Rock in the desert and giring our loins that the sea has bathed Gaze on the crucified prisen serpent oh virgin who Hast been made Mother by the sacred fire

and the father's word which thou did bear like the burning bush let us as cattle ringstr speckled and spotted draw near with our feet with pure lips and heart while melchor's text leaves it an open question whether pre Clara means the aquavite he leaves us in no doubt that it refers not only to the Virgin but to A Hymn in her praise for he goes on to say the a pre Clara Must Be Sung it shall be called The Testament of the art since the whole chemical art is figuratively concealed therein and blessed is he

that understands this sequence by this sequence he means a hymn to Mary in all probability the one we have quoted above as is clear from melk's next words in any case the Virgin is identified with the Arcanum of the art possibly on the authority then at its height of Raymond Lully we come across a similar idea in The Treatise of Kamar iOS ostanes and his companions said to Cleopatra the whole awful and marvelous secret is hidden in thee melier now gives his alchemical paraphrase of the hymn to Mary hail beautiful lamp of Heaven Shining Light

of the World here art thou United with the moon here is made the band of Mars capula martialis and the conjunction of Mercury from these three is born through the majestry of the art in the riverbed the Strong giant whom a thousand times a thousand seek when these three shall have dissolved not into rainwater but into Mercurial water into this our blessed gum which dissolves of itself and is named the sperm of the philosophers now he makes haste to bind and betroth himself to the Virgin bride and to get her with child in the bath

over a moderate fire but the Virgin will not become pregnant at once unless she be kissed in repeated Embraces then she conceives in her body and thus is begotten the child of good woman in accordance with the order of nature then will appear in the bottom of the vessel the mighty Ethiopian burned caled discolored altogether dead and lifeless he asks to be buried to be sprinkled with his own moisture and slowly calcined till he shall arise in glowing form from the fierce fire Behold a wondrous restoration and renewal of the Ethiopian because of the bath

of Rebirth he takes a new name which the philosophers call the natural sulfur and their son this being the stone of the philosophers and behold it is one thing one root one Essence with nothing extraneous added and from which much that was Superfluous is taken away by the majestry of the art it is The Treasure of treasures the Supreme philosophical potion the Divine secret of the Ancients blessed is he that finds such a thing one that has seen this Thing writes and speaks openly and I know that his testimony is true praise be to God

forever more the lit proper ends here what now follows is a sort of recapitulation of the main parts melor Associates the offertory with the stone that the builders rejected and that became the head of the corner this is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes then comes the secret leading over to the alchemical oblation the offering is the Opus I.E our work of the Blessed art of alchemy which shall ever be dedicated to the Glorious name of God and to the saving Reformation of the church through our Lord Jesus Christ amen the

Regeneration of the Ethiopian is actually the equivalent of the transubstantiation but the consecration is missing melier takes the Ava proclara sequence to include the transubstantiation as a mystery in grem overis this view is supported by Tradition as is shown by the following passage from senior the full moon is the philosophical water and the root of the science for she is the Mistress of moisture the perfect round Stone and the Sea wherefore I know that the Moon is the root of this hidden science being the Mistress of moisture the moon like Isis is the Prima Materia

in the form of water and thus the mother of the hydrath the water stone another Name for the lapis and hence for Christ since the terms centia and Prima Materia are often used as though they were identical centia or sapientia is here identical with the moon the feminine principle hence the Gnostic doctrine of Sophia as the mother or bride of Christ last of all comes the post communion glory be to our King who comes out of the fire who is illumined and crowned with the diadem forever and ever amen in conclusion there is a form

of Compline for the strengthening of the Christian faith and the extermination of the Turk apart from its bad taste the text is highly Illuminating for our theme melor obviously recognized the analogy between the two Opera and naively substituted the individual Opus in all its poverty for the time-honored words of the mass he lived at the time of the reformation and not so long afterwards the mass was replaced over a wide area Of Europe by the far from sacrosanct words of various preachers all declaring the word of God in their own way melor was doing something

of this kind if we Grant him the right to a subjective Credo he becomes more acceptable it is clear enough from the text that he felt the alchemical process to be the equivalent of the transubstantiation in the mass and that he had the need to express his experience in precisely that form it is To be noted however that he puts the alchemical transmutation not in the place of the transubstantiation but somewhere in the vicinity of The Credo so that the action breaks off before the consecration in the second version of the recapitulation the climax of

the right is again missing and the sequence quence jumps straight from the secret at the offertory to the post communion this peculiarity may be explained by the holy Awe of the most solemn and moving part of the mass namely the consecration one could therefore take it as at least an indirect sign of a conflict of conscience a conscience Torn Between the experience of a right acting from without and an individual experience acting from within although Christ is nowhere mentioned as the lapis or medicina their identity is over empowering evident from the whole drift of the

Text G Sir George Ripley additional evidence which ought to have been known to wait is furnished by his countryman Sir George Ripley 1415 and 90 Canon of Bridlington whose main work liberis in porum is prefaced by a table of philosophical correspondences compiled by B A Portu aquanis the table sets forth the correspondences between the seven metals and chemical substances and what are Called types by which are meant the alchemical symbols EG tinctures the ages of man signs of the zodiac and so forth these correspondences include seven Mysteries the mysterium altaris I.E the mass being attributed

to Gold whereas the alchemical equivalent is the transmutation the kind of grain that belongs to this mystery is triticum wheat B aoru is probably to be identified with bernardis georgius penus the paracelsus who was born between 1520 And 1530 at Port starie in guen part of the old aquatan and who died in 1620 in the poor house at ion VOD Switzerland Hy with age and disillusioned with the parason optimism that had fired his student days in basil he shared the inevitable fate of those who lacked sufficient humor to understand the testy old master and who

found that the secret teaching about the Orum non vuli remained all too secret but his table shows that the Analogy between the Opus and the mass was also valid in paracelsus circles paracelsus was a contemporary of melor but may well have reached similar conclusions independently for such ideas were then in the air Michael Meer was sufficiently impressed by melkor's analogy to use it as symbol theft in his symbola or Mena 1617 with the motto lapis Udin lacti nutrius EST virgin Al the stone like to an infant is to be fed with virgin's milk We find

the following legend in the calena riplay there was once a noble King the capit Corum who had no descendants he lamented his sterility and concluded that a defect thus originalis must have Arisen in him although he was nurtured under the wings of the sun without any natural bodily defects he says in his own words alas I fear and know for a certainty that unless I can obtain the help of the Species at once I shall never beget a child but I have heard with astonishment by the mouth of Christ above that I shall be born

a new he then wished to return to his mother's womb and to dissolve himself in the Prima Materia his mother encouraged him in this Venture and forth with concealed him under her robe until she had incarnated him again in herself she then became pregnant during her pregnancy she ate peacock's flesh and drank the blood Of the green lion at length she brought forth the child who resembled the moon and then changed into the Splendor of the sun the sun once more became king the text says God gave Thee the Glorious glittering Armory of the four

elements and the crowned maid Virgo rimita was in their midst a wonderful balsom flowed from her and she Shawn with a radiant face adorned with the precious stone but in her lap lay the green lion with blood flowing from his side she was crowned With a diadem and was set as a star in the highest Heaven the king became a supreme Victor triumphant a great healer of the sick and a redeemer reformator of all sins so far the calina elsewhere Ripley writes Christ said I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me

from that time forward when both parts having been crucified and exanimated are betrothed to one another man and wife shall be buried together and afterward quickened Again by the Spirit of life then must they be raised to heaven so that body and soul may be there transfigured and enthroned on the clouds then they will draw all bodies to their own highest state if we realize that the author was no Layman but a learned Canon we can hardly suppose him to have been unaware of the parallels with certain fundamental ideas of Christian dogma it is never

said outright that the stone is Christ but the sacred figures Can easily be recognized in the guise of the king and the virgin mother Ripley must have made a deliberate choice of these parallels without being conscious of any blasphemy the Basel typographer Conrad waldir would have reigned fire and brimstone on his head Ripley belonged to an age when God and His Mysteries still dwelt in nature when the mystery of redemption was at work on every level of existence because unconscious happenings still lived in Untroubled paradisal participation with matter and could be experienced there I came

across a last outcropping of this medieval view of the world in my youth in the form of the following tale we had at that time a cook from the smas swabian part of the Black Forest on whom fell the duty of executing the victims from the poultry yard destined for the kitchen we kept bantams and Bantam Coxs are renowned for their singular quarrelsomeness and Malice one Of these exceeded all others in savagery and my mother commissioned the cook to dispatch the male factor for the Sunday roast I happened to come in just as she was

bringing back the decapitated and saying to my mother he died like a Christian although he was so wicked he cried out forgive me forgive me before I cut off his head so now he'll go to heaven my mother answered indignantly what nonsense only human beings go to heaven the cook retorted in astonishment But of course there's a chicken heaven for chickens just as there's a human heaven for humans but only people have an immortal soul and a religion said my mother equally astonished no that's not so replied the cook animals have souls too and they

all have their special Heaven dogs cats and horses because when the savior of men came down to earth the chicken savior also came to the chickens and that's why They must repent of their sins before they die if they want to go to heaven the Theology of our cook is a remnant of that folklore mentality which saw the drama of redemption going on at all levels and could therefore Discover it even in the mysterious and incomprehensive tensible transformations of matter as to the details of the calina the sick King who was nevertheless born perfect is

the man who suffers from Spiritual sterility in the vision of Aris leus the land is unfruitful because only like mates with like instead of the Opposites being united the philosophers advise the king to join his son and daughter together and make the land fruitful Again by means of a brother sister incest with Ripley it is a motherson incest both forms are familiar to Alchemy and constitute the Prototype of the royal Marriage this endogamous mating is simply a variant of the uroboros which because it is by nature hermaphroditic completes the circle in itself the king in

arys leus remarks that he is King because he has a son and a daughter while his subjects have none on account of their sterility the gestation in the Brain Points to a psychic content or more accurately to a psychic pair of opposites that can become creative of Their own accord but evidently the King has so far not allowed his children to propagate by repressing or ignoring the manifestations of their Vitality it looks as though he had been unconscious of their existence and had only become aware of their significance on the advice of the philosophers the

blame for his sterility is to be sought in the projection of unconscious contents which can neither Develop nor find Redemption until they are integrated with cons ious the brother sister pair stands for the unconscious or for some essential content a modern psychologist would therefore have advised the king to remember the existence of his unconscious and so put an end to his stagnation as generally happens in such cases an opposition a painful conflict thereupon comes to the surface and it is easy to understand why the king Preferred to remain unconscious of it since the conflict is

never lacking in moral complication ations it is from this point of view appropriately expressed in the morally obnoxious form of incest in Ripley the mother incest is disguised under the classical right of adoption but the mother becomes pregnant all the same The Vanishing of the king under his mother's robes corresponds to the total dissolution of gabrius in the Body of Bea in the second version of the viio Aris the king represents the domineering conscious mind which in the course of coming to terms with the unconscious is swallowed up by it this brings about the negredo

a state of Darkness that eventually leads to the renewal and Rebirth of the king the strange idea of the king nurtured under the wings of the Sun May refer to the passage in Malachi dv42 which helped to put the early Worship of Christ as Helios or Saul on a rational basis a tendency that St Augustine still had to combat but unto you that fear my name the son of Justice shall arise and health in his wings and you shall go forth and shall leap like Calves of the herd the passage has always been understood as

a Messianic prophecy and was obviously known to Ripley the wings of the sun is a very ancient image and one which must have touched the Hebrew Malachi very closely for it is the Egyptian sun symbol he who is nourished by this son is the Son of God I.E the king just as in the vision of arys leus the King's dead son is brought back to life by the the fruit of the philosophical tree so in Ripley the sick King is to be healed by the species obviously a pharmakon zois or Elixir Vite the mother's food

during her pregnancy is blood in peacock's flesh The peacock is an early Christian symbol for the Redeemer though it is doubtful whether Ripley knew this but the peacock is second cousin to the Phoenix a Christ symbol he must surely have known see the figures in the Ripley scroll the blood comes from the Greek green lion that lies in the lap of the Virgin bleeding from a wound in his side these are clearly communion and Pata symbols the green lion is also one of the forms of mercurious as The Giver of New Birth the mother is

identical with the tree in the 1588 edition of Pandora the tree is shown as a naked virgin wearing a crown the arbor philosophica is a favorite symbol for the alchemical process and when Ripley speaks of the crowned made Virgo Rima we at once recogniz the animamundi the feminine half of mercurious the calena ends with the apotheosis of the virgin mother this the ab mentioned Pandora depicts as a Glorification of Mary the assumtio beti Mary virginis after her death by a Divine Miracle her body was again United with her soul and both together were taken up

to heaven this has long been the view of the church although it has only recently been promulgated as a Dogma in fig 232 she is marked with the words Tera and Corpus leeb body and dwand der Jun fren wart who became the joy of virgins the Dove descends upon her and God the Father touches her with his right hand in benison she is crowned the figure of God holding the orb is inscribed anima seal and Jesse patter philus at M matter refers to the Queen of Heaven enthroned beside him the king for in her the

Earth substance becoming transfigured in her resurrected body is absorbed in to the godhead on the left is a bearded figure equal in rank to God the Father inscribed sapientia Wihite in the shield below there is a picture of the reibus being freed from the Prima Materia the hole has the form of a Mandela framed by the emblems of the evangelists the inscription at the bottom of the picture reads figura specula San trinis stalt toles their high and dry height figure of the mirror of the Holy Trinity Ripley portrays his King as Victor healer of the

sick and Redeemer from sin at the end of the rosarium there is a picture of the Risen Christ with the inscription after my many sufferings and great martyy I Rise Again transfigured of all blemish free the epigoni by epigoni I mean the authors of the 17th century an age which saw the full flowering of alchemy but which also inaugurated its Downfall by separating the mystica more and more clearly from the physica the Mystic iCal and philosophical Trend became ever more pronounced while on the other hand chemistry proper began to Mark itself Off more distinctly the

age of Science and Technology was Dawning and the introspective attitude of the Middle Ages was fast approaching its decline religious and metaphysical values became less and less able to give adequate expression to the psychic experiences brought to light by the Opus alchemic 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 in the literature written at the close of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries mystical speculation no doubt encouraged by humanism and the Schism of the church began

to emerge from behind the veil of the earlier esotericism in so far as it was possible for the authors to express the inexpressible at all in words and images but the pictorial symbolism they produced much of it quite grotesque not Only made no contribution towards elucidating the Arcanum but was largely responsible for devaluing it in the eyes of the profane thus accelerating the decay of hermetic wisdom how much was lost to the spiritual Heritage of Europe in this way we with our sharpened psychological understanding are just beginning to realize as we contemplate the unparalleled disorganization

of our continent happily the loss is not Irreparable natur and US recur it in what follows I should like to mention a few more lapis Christ parallels drawn from this literature in the Treatise entitled Liber arim by an anonymous author there is a mercurious Lapis parallel which I cannot pass over without mention since it is an aquip partio of mercurious with the Virgin Mary give ear to this profound Parable the Ethereal heaven was closed to all men so that they descended into hell and Remained imprisoned there forever but Christ Jesus unlocked the gate of the

Ethereal Olympus and threw open the realm of Pluto that the souls might be freed when the Virgin Mary with the cooperation of the Holy Ghost in an unutterable mystery and most profound Sacrament conceived in her virginal womb that which was most Sublime in heaven and on Earth and finally bore for us the savior of the whole world who by his overflowing goodness shall save all Those who are lost in their sins If Only The Sinner will often turn to him but the Virgin remained incorrupt and inviolate wherefore it is not without good reason that mercurious

is made equal non Amero Equip parator to the most glorious and worshipful Virgin Mary for mercurious is virginal because he has never increased any kind of metallic body in the bowels of the earth and yet has generated the stone for us by means Of the solution of Heaven that is to say he opens the gold and leads out the soul which you must understand as a div Divinity divinum and for a little while he carries it in his belly and in his own time he changes it into a purified body whence there shall come to

us the boy poor the lapis by whose blood the lower bodies are tinctured Tina and taken back hold to the golden Heaven as the animamundi mercurious can in fact be compared with the Gnostic parthenos stos Virgin of light and with the Christian Virgin Mary or even as the text asserts made her equal though note that I'm only giving the opinion of our Anonymous author the poor would then be the philus macrocosm and as such an analogy of Christ the author too draws this conclusion for he compares the corporeal nature of Christ with the effects of

the stone in Christ's body because he committed no sin and on account also of the miraculous Union of the Divine Essence there was such a great Affinity affinitas of the elements and such an alliance thereof cation that he would never have died had he not sought death of his own free will in order to redeem mankind for whose sake he was born in the stone as we know the chaotic antagonism of the elements is replaced by the most intense Mutual Alliance which is what makes the stone Incorruptible this being the reason why in our author's

opinion it has the same Effect as the blood of the Savior sanus Aqua in felicit propter quam prip lapis nost EST pendis health and long life and Felicity on account of which our stone is chiefly to be sought to the doubtful authors also belongs the much quoted basilius valentinus a pseudonymous writer who is supposed to have lived at the beginning of the 15th century Yohan thelda c600 of frankenhausen in thuringia is sometimes considered as the possible author of the So-called valentinus texts which began to appear in 16002 one of the earliest references to them is

to be found in Michael Myer's symbola Ora Mena 1617 Meyer is exceedingly uncertain as to the authorship of these writings obscurus Omnibus man quam inotes Mal rather than become notorious he preferred to remain unknown to everyone stylistically the writings undoubtedly belong to the end of the 16th century at the earliest the author is strongly influenced by paracelsus and has taken over his idea of the archus as well as his doctrines about astral and Elemental spirits in the complete edition of 1700 now lying before me there is an allegoria sanctis trinus at lepidus Philosophy from which

I extract the following therefore mercurious philosophorum is to be considered a spiritual body as the philosophers call him from God the Father Was Born his own Son Jesus Christ who is God and man and is without sin and who also had no need to die but he died of his own free will and rose again for the sake of his brothers and sisters that they might live with him without sin forever so too is the Gold without flaw and is fixed potent to withstand all examinations and glorious yet for the sake of its imperfect and

sick brothers and sisters it dies and rises again glorious and redeemed and tinctures them To eternal life making them perfect like to pure gold the third person of the Trinity is God the Holy Ghost a comforter s by our Lord Jesus Christ to his faithful Christians to strengthen and console them in the faith until eternal life therefore the spirit of Solus is likewise materialist or mercurious corporis when they come together he is called mercurious duplicatus that is the two Spirits God the father and God the Holy Ghost but God the son is the homog glorificus

like our glorified in fixed gold the lapis philosophorum wherefore this lapis is also called trinus namely ex duus Aquis Vel spirus minerali and vegetab and from the animal sulfur Solus in the year 1619 there appeared an alchemical book of devotions entitled waserstein deren on page 67 the anonymous author says that he will now set forth how the rejected Cornerstone lapis angularis Equals Christ Accords in his in exceeding subtle and Artful agreement with the terrestrial and corporeal philosophical Stone from which it will be seen how that the terrestrial philosophical iCal stone is a veritable harmonia contrafact

and prototype of the true spiritual and Heavenly Stone jizu Christ the demonstration occupies close on 50 pages the book made a great stir and even jaob Bome is to be counted among its admirers cop who mentions the Book is scandalized by the Blasphemous mixture of alchemical ideas which make use of Highly obnoxious symbols and religion we should not however judge medieval naive too severely but must try to understand what such an unwieldy language was intended to convey the lapis Christ parallel plays an important role in jaob bom 1575 to 1624 but I do not want

to go into this here A characteristic passage is to be found in Des signatura rum it is clear Enough from this material what the ultimate aim of alchemy really was it 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 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 the diamond Is an excellent

symbol because it is hard fiery and translucent orelus 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 rubious Hue this same orelus also wrote at length on the Theology of the lapis since he is later than bom I mention him here only because of his Preoccupation with the spirit embedded in matter there are said to be two Treasures one is the written word and the other is the word become fact verbum factum in the

verbum scriptum Christ is still in swaddling clothes in his cradle in Kunis suis involutus but in the verbum dict factum the word is Incarnate in God's creatures and there in a manner of speaking we may touch it with our hands from them we must raise up our treasure for the word is nothing other Than the fire the life and the spirit which the Holy Trinity did scatter abroad from the beginning of creation and which brooded incub ofit on the face of the waters and which was breathed into inspiritus all things by the word of God

and embodied in them as it is written the spirit of God filled the whole world some have expressed the opinion that this world's Spirit spirus Mundi was the third person of the godhead but They have not considered the word Elohim which being plural extends to all persons of the Trinity they say this Spirit proceeded from then and was by it created that it became corporeal and is the chief constituent of the Savior salvatoris or philosophical Stone and is the true medium whereby Body and Soul are held United during our lives life the spirus Mundy that

lay upon the waters of old impregnated them and hatched a seed within them like a hen Upon the egg it is the virtue that dwells in the inward parts of the earth and especially in the metals and it is the task of the art to separate the archus the spirus Mundi from matter and to produce a quintessence whose action may be compared with that of Christ upon mankind once more the Gnostic vision of new entangled in the Embrace of fsus flat es forth in the work of this late Comer to Alchemy but the philosopher who

once Descended like a Hercules into the darkness of acaron to fulfill a Divine Opus has become a laboratory worker with a taste for speculation having lost sight of the lofty goal of hermetic mysticism he now labors to discover a tonic potion that will keep Body and Soul together as our grandfathers used to say of a good wine this change of Direction in alchemy was due to the all powerful influence of paracelsus the father of modern medicine orelus is Already tending towards Natural Science leaving mystical experience to the church paracelsus and BMA between them split Alchemy

into Natural Science and Protestant mysticism the stone returned to its former condition vus vamus the viest of the vile in Via ictus thrown out into the street like spitler's Jewel morenus could say again today take that which is trotten underfoot in the dung Hill for if thou dust 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 the lapis Christ parallel recurs all through the last days of alchemy in

the 17th century but only in epigonic form this was the age that saw the rise of the secret societies above all the rosac crucians the best proof that the secret of alchemy had worn itself out For the whole ronet 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 Meyer allows us a glimpse into this tragedy at the end of his Chef Dove he confesses that in the course of his Grand perago he found neither mercurious nor the Phoenix but only

a feather his pen 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 quidam substantia in mer nunquam Mortor a Fascination that never entirely disappeared even when wrapped in the Fool's Garb of gold making sixth Alchemical symbolism in the history of religion the unconscious as the

Matrix of symbols after chemistry in the real sense had broken away from the groping experiments and speculations of the royal art only the symbolism was left as a sort of fantasmal mist seemingly devoid of all substance yet it never lost a certain fascinating quality and there was always somebody who felt its enchantment in greater or lesser degree a symbolism as Rich as that of alchemy invariably owes its existence to some adequate cause never to Mere whim or play of fancy at the very least it is the expression of an essential part of the psyche this

psyche however was unknown for it is rightly called the unconscious although there is materialistically speaking no primma Materia at the root of everything that exists yet nothing that exists could be discerned were there no Discerning Psyche only by virtue of psychic existence do we have any being at all Consciousness grasps only a fraction of own nature because it is the product of a preconscious psychic life which made the development of Consciousness possible in the first place Consciousness always succumbs to the delusion that it developed out of itself but scientific knowledge is well aware that all

Consciousness rests on unconscious premises in other words on a Sort of unknown Prima Materia and of this The Alchemist said everything that we could possibly say about the unconscious for instance the Prima Materia comes from the mountain in which there are no differences or as Abu kasim says it is derived from one thing and not from separate things nor from things distinguishing or distinguished and in the mysterium Magnum of paracelsus which is the same as the Prima Materia there is no kind of Gender or the Prima Materia is found in the mountain where as Abu

kasim also says everything is upside down and the top of this rock is confused with its base and its nearest part reaches to its farthest and its head is in the place of its back and vice versa such statements are intuitions about the paradoxical nature of the unconscious and the only place where intuitions of this kind could be lodged was in the unknown aspect of things be it of matter or of Man there was a feeling often expressed in the literature that the secret was to be found either in some strange creature or in man's

brain the Prima Materia was thought of as an ever changing substance or else as the essence or soul of that substance it was designated with the name mercurious and was conceived as a paradoxical double being called monstrum hermaphroditism substance in Christ in the Middle Ages doubtless under the Influence of the doctrine of transubstantiation though in earlier times the Gnostic tradition of older Pagan ideas was the dominant Factor mercurious is likened to the serpent hung on the cross John 3:14 to mention only one of the numerous parallels the Paradigm of the Unicorn a the unicorn in

alchemy or have chosen the example of the unicorn in order to show how the symbolism of mercurious is intermingled with the traditions of Pagan gnosticism and of the church the Unicorn is not a single clearly defined entity but a fabulous being with a great many variations there are for instance one-horned horses asses fish dragons scarabs Etc therefore strictly speaking we are more concerned with the theme of the single horn the Alicorn in the chemical wedding of Rosen CS a snow white unicorn appears and makes his obeisance before the lion lion and unicorn are both symbols

of mercurious a Little further on in the book The Unicorn gives place to a white dove another symbol of mercurious who in his volatile form of spirus is a parallel of the Holy Ghost at least 10 out of the 15 figures in Lamb spring symbols are representations of the Dual nature of mercurious figure three shows the Unicorn facing a stag the latter as service fugitivus is also a symbol of mercurious milus illustrates the Opus by a series of seven symbols of which the Sixth is the Unicorn couched under a tree symbolizing the spirit of life

that leads the way to Resurrection pinus gives a table of symbols where the Unicorn together with the lion the eagle and the dragon is the the coordinate of gold the Orum non vuli like the lion eagle and dragon is a synonym for mercurious the poem entitled V materion praic dein says I am the right True Unicorn what man can cleave me hoof from horn and join my body up Again so that it no more Falls in Twain here I must refer once again to Ripley where we meet the green lion lying in the Queen's lap

with blood flowing from his side this image is an illusion on the one hand to the pi on the other to the Unicorn wounded by the Hunter and caught in the lap of a virgin a frequent theme in medieval pictures true the green lion has replaced the Unicorn here but that did Not present any difficulty to The Alchemist since the lion is likewise a symbol of mercurious the Virgin represents his passive feminine aspect while the Unicorn or the lion illustrates the wild rampant masculine penetrating force of the spirus mercurialis since the symbol of the Unicorn

as an allegory of Christ and of the Holy Ghost was current all through the Middle Ages the connection between them was Certainly known to the Alchemists so that there can be no question that Ripley had in his mind when he used this symbol the Affinity indeed the identity of mercurious with Christ B the unicorn and ecclesiastical allegory the language of the church borrows its unicorn allegories from the Psalms where the Unicorn stands in the first place for the might of the Lord as in Psalm 29:6 he maketh them also to skip like a Calf Lebanon

and serrion like a young unicorn and in the second place for the Vitality of man as in Psalm 92:10 but my horn shalt thou exalt like the Horn of an unicorn 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 illusion to Christ his glory Is that of a bull his horn is that of a unicorn this refers to the blessing of Moses blessed of the Lord

be his land for the precious things of Heaven for the Dew and for the deep that couth beneath and for the precious fruits brought forth by the Sun and for the precious things put forth by the moon his glory is like the firstling of his bulock and his horns are like the horns of unicorns with them he shall push the People together to the ends of the Earth 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 Ferris wild Untamed as a judge the other gentle Manus tame as a savior his horns are the ends of the Cross Justin Martyr interprets the same passage in a similar way cornua unicornus coru 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 prisciliano one horned is God Christ a rock to us Jesus a Cornerstone Christ the man

of men just as the Unicorn symbolizes the uniqueness of the Unitus so St NIS uses it to express the Fearless Independence of the kogos the Monk MOS estos zonon he is a unicorn a creature on his own St basil takes the filus unicorni to be Christ the origin of the Unicorn is a mystery says St Ambrose like Christ's procreation Nicholas csen from whom I have called 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 ecclesiast astical 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 panelli 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 St Bonaventure said Christ was tamed and Pacified by the most kindly Mary so that he should not punish The Sinner with

eternal death Death In His speculum de mysterious Ecclesia anius of Aon says the very Fierce animal with only one horn is called unicorn in order to catch it a virgin is put in a field the animal then comes to her and is caught because it lies down in her lap Christ is represented by this animal and his insuperable strength by its horn he who lay down in the womb of the Virgin has been caught by the hunters that is to say he was found in human shape by those who loved him St Rupert Compares Christ

to the rhinoceros and Bruno of birdsburg Simply calls him coru horn Cen writes that albertus Magnus in his hypotyposis mentions the virgin in connection with the monocerus albertus was an expert on Alchemy and Drew his quotations from the Hermetic treatises in the tabula smaga there is a son of immense strength who Comes down to earth and penetrates everything solid it is not only in astrology that Virgo is an earth sign in tertullian and Augustine the Virgin actually signifies Earth Isidor of sevil emphasizes the Perforating effects of the unicorn in the tabula the motherson incest is

very thinly disguised a fact of which The Alchemist albertis was possibly aware as I said before the unicorn has more than one meaning it can also mean evil the physiologist graus For instance says of the Unicorn that is a swift running animal having one horn and evily disposed towards man they anthrop and St basil says and take heed unto thyself oh man and Beware of the Unicorn who is the demon for he plotthe these examples should suffice to show how close is the connection between alchemical symbolism and the language of the church it is to

be noted in the Ecclesiastical quotations that the Unicorn also contains the element of evil originally a monstrous and fabulous Beast it Harbors in itself an inner contradiction a complexo oppositorum which makes it a singularly appropriate symbol for the monstrum hermaphroditum of alchemy C the unicorn in gnosticism there is also a connection between the language of the church and Pagan Gnostic symbolism hippitus giving an account of the doctrine of the nasin Says that the serpent dwells in all things and creatures and that all temples were named after her Naas a play on the words serpent nal's

Temple every Shrine he says every initiation El and every mystery is dedicated to the serpent this immediately recalls the passage in the tabula smaragdina pter omnis tesus Mundi EST hick this is the father of the Perfection of the whole world Telos Teti and tmos all mean the same Perfection and maturation of the Corpora imperfecta and of The Alchemist himself these nist say that the serpent is the the moist element as thales of madus also said and that nothing which exists whether Immortal or Mortal animate or inanimate could exist without it this definition of the serpent

agrees with the alchemical mercurious who is likewise a kind of water the Divine water aoron the wet the humid radical radical moisture and the spirit of life not only indwelling in all living things But imminent in everything that exists as the world's Soul hippitus continues they say too that all things are subject to her the serpent that she is good and has something of everything in herself as in the Horn of the one horned Bull and monos she imparts Beauty and ripeness to all things like the Alicorn therefore the serpent is an alexop Armic and

the principle that brings all things to maturity and Perfection we are already familiar with The Unicorn as a symbol of mercurious the transforming substance par excellance which also ripens and perfects unripe or imperfect bodies and is consequently acclaimed in alchemy as the salvator and servator the serpent says hippitus penetrates everything as if coming forth from Edom and dividing herself into the four first principles that everything proceeds from the one is a fundamental tenant of Alchemy as all things proceed from the one so all things are born of this one thing says the tabula smaragdina and

also that the one divides into into the four elements and then recombines into Unity the Prima Materia is called among other things the paradisal Earth which Adam took with him on his expulsion from Paradise mercurious philosophum consists of the four elements in one of the mystery hymns quoted by hippitus Osiris is named The Heavenly Horn of the Moon Uranium mosus and the same Primal being is also called Sophia and Adam these analogies we already know in their alchemical aspect another one mentioned by hippitus is the many formed Addus the changeability and multiformity of mercurious is

a key idea in alchemy it is hardly necessary to enter into the ideas which this Pagan system took over from Christianity comparison with the Christian quotations should Suffice D the one-horn scarabus an important source of information concerning the Unicorn symbolism of mercurious is the hieroglyphica of horapollo this author says that the Third genus of the Scarab is unicorn monoceros and on account of this peculiarity sacred to mercurious like the Ibis moreover the Scarab is a mono yenes only begotten yena in so far as it isn't a creature born of itself in paracelis the Prima Materia

is an incum And throughout Alchemy as mercurious serpens or Draco it is bisexual capable of self- fertilization and self- parition the unicus filus is the filus philosophum I.E the stone the the Scarab under goes the same dismemberment as the dragon the separation of the elements in a Papyrus text the sun Beetle the winged ruler standing at Heaven's Meridian was beheaded and dismembered I would also mention the sixth Parable in splendor Solis where the separo is portrayed as a Dismembered corpse accompanied by the text Rosena says that he would like to make plain a vision that

he has seene of a man who was dead whose body was yet all white like a salt and whose limbs were divided and his head was of fine gold but separated from the body the golden head referred originally to the head of Osiris who is described in a Greek Papyrus as headless the Greek Alchemists styled themselves Children of the golden head the Scarab is seldom Mentioned in alchemical literature but among the old texts it can be found in the consilium kyuji nula aquafit quells Nila fit to Scarab aqure no water will become the Elixir save

that which comes from the scarabs of our water the aquan notra is nothing other than the aqua Divina I.E mercurious e the unicorn in the vadas the track of the unicorn in pre-christian days leads us to the east we meet it as early as The hymns of the AAR Veda 37 in a charm against ketria hereditary disease one upon the head of the Nimble Antelope a remedy grows he has driven the chria in all directions by means of the horn two the antelope has gone gone after thee with his four feet oh horn loosen the

chria that is knitted into his heart three the horn that glistens yonder like a roof with four wings sides with that do we drive out every chria from thy limbs the fish of Manu seems to have Been unicorn although this is not specifically stated but always its horn is mentioned never its horns according to the legend recounted in the shatha Brahman Manu hooked a fish which grew larger and larger and eventually towed him over the flood to dry land Manu tied his ship to its horn the fish is an incarnation of Vishnu and Manu means

man in many respects he corresponds to the Greek anthropos he is the father of humanity and is descended direct from God here called sambu the self I.E Brahma he is a God man identified with prajapati Lord of created things and even with Brahman itself the highest soul in the rigveda he is named father Manu and is said to have begotten man kind on his daughter he is the founder of the social and moral order the first sacrifican and priest he transmitted the upanishadic doctrine to mankind it is of particular interest that he is also derived

from the androgynous virage the Shadap paatha brah Associates him with a bull who was entrusted with the task of annihilating the asuras and rakas demons hostile to the gods lastly Manu is the father of medicine and in Buddhist tradition lord of the Golden Age the horn then is connected with a figure which in both name and character has close affinities with the anthropos the Virgin and unicorn Motif is to be found in the ramayana and in the mahabarata 310 to 113 a Hermit by name of rishia shringa gazelle's horn son of vianda or EAS ringa

one horn is fetched out of his solitary retreat by the King's Daughter Shanta who marries him or in another version he is seduced by a curtisan only by this means can the terrible drought that is scourging the land be broken the unicorn in Persia there is an impressive account of the unicorn in the bundahishn ocean and its feet are three eyes six mouths nine ears two and Horn one body White food spiritual and it is righteous and two of its six eyes are in the position of eyes two on the top of the head and

two in the position of the hump with the sharpness of those six eyes it overcomes and destroys of the nine mouths three are in the head three in the hump and three in the inner part of the flanks and each mouth is about the size of a cottage and it is itself as large as Mount alend each one of the three feet when it Is placed on the ground is as much as a flock of a thousand sheep comes under when they Repose together and each pter is so great in its circuit that a thousand

men with a thousand horses may pass inside as for the two ears it is mazeron which they will Encompass the one horn is as it were of gold and Hollow and a thousand Branch horns have grown upon it some befitting a camel some befitting a horse some befitting an ox some Befitting an ass both great and small with that horn it will Vanquish and dissipate all the vile corruption due to the efforts of noxious creatures when that ass shall hold its neck in the ocean its ears will terrify and all the water of the wide

formed ocean will shake with agitation and the side of ganad will tremble when it utters a cry all the female water creatures of the creatures of alarmas will become pregnant and all Pregnant noxious water creatures when they hear that cry will cast their young when it stales in the ocean all the sea water will become purified which is in the seven regions of the earth it is even on that account when all asses which come into water stale in the water as it says thus if oh three-legged ass you were not created for the water

all the water in the sea would have perished from the contamination which the poison of the Evil spirit has brought into its water through the death of the creatures of alarmas tetar seizes the water more completely from the ocean with the assistance of the three-legged ass of amberr also ambar e it is declared that it is the dung of the three-legged ass for if it has much Spirit food then also the moisture of the liquid nourishment goes through the veins pertaining to the body into the urine and the dung is Cast Away the monster is

evidently based on the number three its ass aspect is reminiscent of the Indian wild onager in teius but as a cosmological being it recalls the Monstrous personifications of the Prima Materia in Arabic Alchemy in the book of aonis for instance one such monster with the wings of a vulture the head of an elephant and the the tale of a dragon gives the Adept the key to the Treasure House the ass stands in the ocean like the tree goard That grows from the deep mud of the sea the bundahishn of the universe for they prepare its

immortality there from some say it is the proper curing some the energetic curing some the all curing the ass and the tree are evidently related because they both represent the power of Life procreation and healing this is a truly primitive equation both are or have Mana the Arabic Alchemists Likewise obtain their Prima Materia from the tree in the western land we read in the book of Abu kasim this Prime matter which is proper for the form of The Elixir is taken from a single tree which grows in the lands of the West and this tree

grows on the surface of the ocean as plants grow on the surface of the Earth this is the tree of which whosoever eats man and Jin obey him it is also the tree of which Adam peace be upon him was forbidden to eat And when he ate thereof he was transformed from his Angelic form to human form and this tree may be changed into every animal shape the monster and the tree both stand for the image image The Elixir the alexop Armic and the Panacea the tree's peculiar power to change into any animal shape is

also attributed to mercurious versipellis the ass is a Damon triun aonic Trinity which is portrayed in Latin Alchemy as a three-headed monster and identified with Mercurious salt and sulfur the classical rumor 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 AAL Deo as demiurges which brings these figures into conjunction with the equally saturnine primma Materia G the unicorn in Jewish tradition the Talma tells the story of How the Unicorn Ram escaped

the flood it was tied to the outside of the Ark because owing to its gigantic size it could not go inside OG the king of Bashan survived the flood in the same way the passage runs the preservation of the Unicorn is easily explained by those who say that the flood did not descend on the land of Israel but how was it preserved in the opinion of those who say that the flood did descend AR jeni answered they took young Unicorns into the ark but rabab B barana reported that he had seen a young unicorn as

large as Mount tabore which measures 40 parasangs and that the girth of its neck was three parasangs and its head one and a half parasangs and that the Jordan was choked with the dirt it voided AR johannan answered they took only its head into the ark but the master said that its head measured one and a half parasangs per Adventure they took the tip of its Nose into the ark but when the ark rose on the water rakish answered they tied its horns to the ark but Arista said that they had sinned with heat and

were punished with hot water how was the ark preserved in your opinion and moreover where was OG the king of Bashan peradventure a miracle happened to them and the water remained cold at the sides of the Ark there is a corresponding version of this story in the midrash collection entitled p r elezar According To which ug sat down on a piece of wood under the gutter of the the ark the tarum pseudo Jonathan commenting on genesis3 says that OG stayed on the roof of the Ark according to one talmud Legend a was descended from one

of the Fallen Angels mentioned in Genesis 6 who came in unto the daughters of men take note seon and OG were brothers for the master said seon and OG were the sons of aijah the son of samai the commentary of Rashi says that Sihon and OG were the sons of aijah who was descended from shemai and AEL the two angels who came down to earth in the days of Enoch OG's gigantic size is described in several passages of the talmud probably at its most gigantic in tractate Nida abasol according to others AR johanan said I

was a digger of graves one day I was chasing a deer and I found myself inside the thigh bone of a dead man I chased the deer for three parasangs yet I did not catch up with Him nor had the thigh bone come to an end when I turned back they told me it belonged to OG the king of Bashan it is conceivable that there is an in connection between OG and the Unicorn both escaped the flood by being somehow attached to the outside of the Ark and both are gigantic moreover we saw that the

Unicorn was compared to mount tabore and OG also is connected with a mountain he uprooted a mountain and hurled it on The camp of the Israelites the parallel is carried still further in one midrash the unicorn is a mountain and is threatened by a lion and in the continuation of the story OG is killed by Moses the servant of Yahweh who is so often compared to a lion in the Old Testament the midrash runs Aruna baridi said at the time when David was still tending the Sheep he went and found the Unicorn asleep in the

desert and thinking it was a mountain he climbed to The top and pastured his flock there then the Unicorn shook himself and stood up and David wrote on his back and reached up to heaven and in that hour David spoke to God if thou Wilt take me down from this unicorn I will build thee a temple 100 cubits in size like the Horn of this unicorn what did the Holy One Blessed Be he do for him he ordained that a lion should come and when the Unicorn saw the lion he was afraid and crouched down

Before him because the lion is his King and David descended onto the Earth but when David saw the lion he was afraid therefore is said save me from the lion's mouth for thou Hast heard freed me from the horns of the unicorns another midrash shows the Unicorn fighting with the lion here it is explicitly called the unicorn hunic corus and not Ram the passage runs and in our land there is also the Unicorn which has a great horn on his Forehead and there are also many lions and when the Unicorn sees a lion he drives

him against a tree and the Unicorn wants to slay the lion lion but the lion moves from his place and the Unicorn butts his horn against the tree and the horn pierces so deep into the tree that he cannot pull it out again and then the lion comes and kills the unicorn but sometimes the matter is reversed in the chemical wedding as in the Royal Arms of England lion and Unicorn are combined both are symbols of mercurious in alchemy just as they are allegories of Christ in the church lion and unicorn stand for the inner

tension of opposites in mercurious ious 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 the Unicorn too Must Be Tamed as a monster he has a higher symbolical significance and is of a more spiritual nature than the lion but as Ripley shows the lion Can sometimes take the place of the Unicorn the two gigantic beings OG and the Unicorn are reminiscent of Behemoth and Leviathan the two manifestations of Jehovah all four of them as also the Unicorn ass of

the bundahishn of nature both within man and outside him God is ambivalent so long as man remains Bound To Nature the uncompromising Christian interpretation of God as the suum bonum obviously goes against nature hence the secret paganism Of alchemy comes out in the ambivalent figure of mercurious 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 an adversary the prince of this world betrays the polarity of God as shown in the androgynous nature of the Sun in whom he

is Manifest H the unicorn in China the Unicorn also appears in China according To the lii or book of writs there are four beneficent or spiritual animals the Unicorn chilin the Phoenix The Tortoise and the dragon the chilin is Chief among four-footed beasts it resembles the Stag but is larger with the tail of an ox and the hoofs of a horse it has a single Horn of Flesh there are five colors in the hair of its back and the hair of its belly is yellow or brown it does not tread any living grass underf foot

nor eat any living creature it shows itself When perfect rulers chenhan appear and the TOA of the king is accomplished if it is wounded this is an evil Omen its first appearance was in the garden of the yellow Emperor 26 and 97 BC later two unicorns sojourned in pingyang Emperor Yao's capital a unicorn appeared to the mother of Confucius when she was pregnant and as an omen before the death of the sage it chanced that a charioteer wounded a unicorn it is worth noting that the male Unicorn is called Chi and the female Lyn so

that the generic term is formed by the union of both characters chilin the Unicorn is thus endowed with an androgynous quality its connection with the Phoenix and the dragon also occurs in alchemy where the dragon stands for the lowest form of mercurious and the Phoenix for the highest as mentioned before the Horn of the rhinoceros is an alexop Armic and for this reason is even today a favorite Article of commerce between the African east coast and China where it is made into poison proof drinking cups the physiologist graus tells us that when a snake has

poisoned their drinking water the animals noticing the poison will wait for the Unicorn to come down to the water for his horn is a symbol of the cross image image and by drinking he dissipates the virulence of the poison the Unicorn cup the healing cup is not unconnected with the cup of Salvation the Eucharistic chalice and with the vessel used in divination Min says that Cardinal Tata always kept a unicorn cup at table Lorn de Lorn preserved aortal AES hippitus in his summing up of the teachings of the nines says that the Greeks called gerion

of the three-fold body the Heavenly Horn of the moon but gerion was the Jordan the masculo feminine man in all things by whom all things were made in this connection hippitus mentions the cup of Joseph and anacreon the words without him was not anything made refer to the world of forms because this was created without his help through the third and fourth members of the quaternity for this is the cup from which the King when he drinks draws his Omens the Greeks likewise alluded to this secret in the anacreontic verses my tankered tells me speaking

in mute silence what I must become this alone sufficed for it to be Known among men namely the cup of anacreon which mutely declares the ineffable secret for they say anacreon cup is dumb yet an neon affirms that it tells him in mute language what he must become that is spiritual and not carnal if he will hear the secret hidden in silence and this secret is the water which Jesus at that fair marriage changed into wine that was the great and true beginning of the Miracles which Jesus wrought in canaa in Galilee and Thus he

showed forth the Kingdom of Heaven this beginning is the Kingdom of Heaven that lies within us as a treasure like the leaven hidden in three measures of meal we have seen that the Heavenly Horn of the moon is closely connected with the Unicorn here it means not only gerion of the three-fold body and the Jordan but the hermaphroditic man as well who is identical with the Johan logos the third and fourth are water and Earth these two elements are thought of As forming the lower half of the world in the alchemical retort and hippitus Likens

them to a cup K this is the divining vessel of Joseph and anacreon the water stands for the content and the Earth for the container I.E the Cup itself 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 its content gives life and Healing like the cup in four Ezra 1439 to4 then I opened my mouth and IO there was reached unto me a full cup which was full as it were with water but the

color of it was like fire and I took it and drank and when I had drunk my heart poured forth understanding wisdom grew in my breast and my spirit retained its memory 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 the Alchemists attribute the same qualities to their Stone calling it The carbuncle according to Legend This Stone may be found under the Horn of the Unicorn as wolf from Von ebach says we caught the beast called

unicorn that knows and loves a maiden best and falls asleep upon her breast we took from underneath his horn The Splendid male carbuncle Stone sparkling against the white skull bone the horn as an emblem of vigor 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 these assorted unicorn symbolis aim at giving no more than a sample of the extremely intricate and Tangled connections between Pagan and natural philosophy gnosticism

Alchemy and ecclesiastical 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 Go's religious welan shaung as this is presented to us in FA epilogue what the old philosophers meant by the lapis has never become quite clear this question can be answered satisfactorily only when we know exactly what the unconscious content was that They were projecting the psychology of the

unconscious alone is in a position to solve this riddle it teaches us that so long as a Content remains in the projected state it is inaccessible which is the reason why the labors of those authors have revealed so little to us of the alchemical secret but the yield in symbolic material is all the greater and this material is closely related to the Process of individuation in dealing with Alchemy we must always consider what an important part this philosophy played in the Middle Ages what a vast literature it left behind and what a far-reaching effect it

had on the spiritual life of the time how far the claims of alchemy itself went in this direction is best shown by the lapis Christ parallel a fact which may explain or excuse my excursions into fields that seem to have Nothing to do with Alchemy for the moment we Embark upon the psychology of alchemical thought we must take account of connections that seem on the face of it very remote from the historical material but if we try to understand the phenomenon from inside I.E from the standpoint of the psyche we can start from a central

position where many lines converge however far apart they may be in the the external world we are then confronted with the Underlying human psyche which unlike Consciousness hardly changes at all in the course of many centuries here a truth that is 2,000 years old is still the truth today in other words it is still alive and active here too we find those fundamental psychic facts that remain unchanged for thousands of years and will still be unchanged thousands of years hence from this point of view the recent past and the present seem like episodes in a

drama that began in the Gray Mists of antiquity and continues through the centuries into a remote future this drama is an aurora consurgens the dawning of Consciousness in mankind the Alchemy of the classical Epoch from Antiquity to about the middle of the 17th century was in essence chemical research work into which they're entered by way of projection an ad mixture of unconscious psychic material for this reason the psych ological conditions necessary for the Work are frequently stressed in the texts the contents under consideration were those that lent themselves to projection upon the unknown chemical substance

owing to the impersonal purely objective nature of matter it was the impersonal Collective archetypes that were projected first and foremost as a parallel to the collective spiritual life of the times the image of the spirit imprisoned in the darkness of the world in in other words the state of Relative unconsciousness in which man found himself and which he felt to be painful and in need of redemption was reflected in matter and accordingly dealt with in matter since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality characterized by the Polar Opposites being and

not being it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process the result is something in the Nature of a uniting symbol and this usually has a numinous character the projection of the Redeemer image I.E the correspondence between Christ and the lapis is therefore almost a psychological necessity as is the parallelism between the redeeming Opus or officium deinum and the maistry with the essential difference that the Christian Opus is an operar in honor of God the Redeemer undertaken by man who stands in need of redemption while the Alchemical Opus

is the labor of man the Redeemer in the cause of the Divine world slumbering and awaiting redemption in matter the Christian earns the fruits of Grace exop operado but The Alchemist creates for himself exop operantis in the most literal sense a Panacea of Life which he regards either as a substitute for the church's means of Grace or as the complement and parallel of the Divine work of redemption that is Continued in man the two opposed points of view meet in the ecclesiastical formula of the Opus operatum and the Opus operantis but in the last analysis

they are irreconcilable fundamentally it is a question of Polar Opposites the collective or the individual Society or personality this is a modern problem in so far as it needed the hypertrophy of collective life and the hurting together of incredible masses of people in our Own day to make the individual aware that he was being suffocated in the toils of the organized mob the collective ISM of the medieval Church seldom or never exerted sufficient pressure on the individual to turn his relations with Society into a general problem so this question too remained on the level of

projection and it was reserved for our own day to tackle it with at least an embryonic degree of Consciousness under the mask of neurotic Individualism sometime previous to this latest development however Alchemy had reached its final Summit and with it the historical Turning Point in goeta FA which is steeped in alchemical forms of thought from beginning to end the essential fian drama is expressed most graphically in the scene between Paris and Helen to the medieval Alchemist this episode would have represented the mysterious conun show of soul and Luna in the retort but Modern Man disguised

in the figure of fa recognizes the projection and putting himself in the place of Paris or Soul takes possession of Helen or luna his own inner feminine and counterpart the objective process of the Union thus becomes the subjective experience of the artifacts instead of watching the drama he has become one of the actors fa's personal intervention has the disadvantage that the real goal of the entire process the production of The Incorruptible substance is missed instead euphorion who is supposed to be the philus philosophorum imperishable and incombustible goes up in flames and disappears a calamity for

The Alchemist and an occasion for the psychologist to criticize faou although the phenomenon is by no means uncommon for every archetype at its first appearance and so long as it remains unconscious takes possession of the whole man and impels him to play a corresponding role Consequently faou cannot resist supplanting Paris in Helen's affections and the other births and rejuvenations such as the boy charioteer and the homunculus are destroyed by the same greed this is probably the deeper reason why fa's final Rejuvenation takes place only in the postmortal state I.E is projected into the future is

it a mere coincidence that the perfected figure of faou bears the name which we have already met of one of the Most famous of the early Alchemists marianus or in its more usual spelling Moranis by identifying with Paris fa brings the kyuno back from its projected State into the sphere of personal psychological experience and and thus into Consciousness this crucial step means nothing less than the solution of the alchemical riddle and at the same time the Redemption of a previously unconscious part of the personality but every increase in Consciousness Harbors the danger of inflation as

is shown very clearly in fa's superhuman Powers his death although necessary in his day and generation is hardly a satisfactory answer the rebirth and transformation that follow the conun show take place place in the Hereafter I.E in the unconscious which leaves the problem hanging in the air we all know that n took it up again in zaratustra as the transformation into The superman but he brought the Superman into dangerously close proximity with the man in the street by so doing he inevitably called up all the latter's reserves of anti-christian resentment for his Superman is the

overweening pride the hybris of individual Consciousness which must necessarily coll with the collective power of Christianity and lead to the catastrophic destruction of the Individual we know just how and in what an exceedingly characteristic form this fate overtook n Tami kwam fizi and what kind of an answer did the Next Generation give to the individualism of n's Superman it answered with a collectivism a mass organization a herding together of the mob tamquam physes that made everything that went before look like like a bad joke Suffocation of the personality and an impotent Christianity That may well

have received its death wound such as the unadorned balance sheet of our time F's sin was that he identified with the thing to be transformed and that had been transformed n overreached himself by identifying his ego with the Superman zarathustra the part of the personality that was struggling into Consciousness but can we speak of zarathustra as a part of the personality was he not rather something superhuman Something which man is not though he has his share in it is God really dead because n declared that he had not been heard of for a long time

may he not have come back in the guise of the Superman in his blind urge for superhuman power fa brought about the murder of fiman and bossus who are these two humble old people when the world had become Godless and no longer offered a hospitable Retreat to the Divine strangers Jupiter and Mercury it was fiman and bousis who Received the Superhuman guests and when bousis was about to sacrifice her last Goose for them the metamorphosis came to pass the gods made themselves known The Humble Cottage was changed into a temple and the old couple became

Immortal servitors at The Shrine in a sense the old Alchemists were nearer to the central truth of the psyche than faou when they strove to deliver the fiery Spirit from the chemical element 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 that which 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 projections 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 fantasms of the ego Consciousness the fire chilled to Air and the air became the great wind

of arthra 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 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 paradoxically enough inflation is a regression of Consciousness into

unconsciousness this always happens when Consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the Faculty of discrimination the sin quanan of all Consciousness when fate for four whole years played out a war of monumental frightfulness on the stage of Europe a war that no no body wanted nobody dreamed of asking exactly who or what had caused the War and its continuation nobody realized that European man was possessed by something that robbed him of all free will and this state of unconscious possession Will continue undeterred until we Europeans become scared of our God almightiness such

a change can begin only with individuals for the masses are blind brutes as we know to our cost it seems to me of some importance therefore that a few individuals or people individually should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego personality but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego this mental operation has to be Undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation to help us we have the useful and edifying models held up to us by Poets and philosophers models or archetyp by that we may well call

remedies for both men and the times of course what we disc discover there is nothing that can be held up to the masses only some hidden thing that we can hold up to ourselves in solitude and in silence very few people care to know Anything about this it is so much easier to preach the universal Panacea to everybody else than 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 what we may learn from the models of the past is above all this that the psyche Harbors contents or is exposed to influences the assimilation Of which is attended by the greatest dangers if the old Alchemists ascribe their secret to matter and if neither fa nor zarra is a very encouraging example of what happens when we embody this Secret in ourselves then the only course left to us is to repudiate the Arrogant claim of the conscious mind to be the whole of the psyche and to admit that the psyche is a

reality which we cannot grasp with our present means of understanding 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 for him to be aware of his ignorance I hold the view that the alchemist's hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical gold or the Panacea or the wonderful Stone was only in part an illusion an effect of projection for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of The unconscious as is

shown by the texts and their symbolism The Alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation into the phenomena of chemical change a scientific term like individuation does not mean that we are dealing with something known and finally cleared up on which there is no more to be said it merely indicates an as yet very obscure field of research much in need of exploration the centralizing Processes in the unconscious that go to form the personality we are dealing with life processes which on account of their numinous character have from time immemorial provided the strongest

incentive for the formation of symbol symbols these processes are steeped in mystery they pose riddles with which the human mind will long wrestle for a solution and perhaps in vain for in the last analysis it is exceedingly doubtful Whether human reason is a suitable instrument for this purpose 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 the Alchemists themselves warned us Rite libros Nord vestra Ranter Ren the books lest your

hearts be rent aunder and this despite their insistence on study experience not books is what leads To understanding understanding in the foregoing study of dream symbols I have shown how such an experience looks in reality from this we can see more or less what happens when an Earnest inquiry is turned upon the unknown regions of the soul the forms which The Experience takes in each individual may be infinite in their variations but like the alchemical symbols they are all variants of certain Central types and these occur universally they are the Primordial images from which the

religions each draw their absolute truth