Visions of Zosimus (1937-1938)

Transcript (PDF)

The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 7 of 13

Visions of Zosimus (1937-1938)
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, August 13, 1987

Transcript:

The date is August 13 1987. This is the seventh lecture in a series of lectures at The Philosophical Research Society by Roger Weir on the Alchemical Core of Jung's work. Tonight's lecture is entitled Visions of Zosimus 1937 and 1938.

In antiquity one of the most powerful theological ideas is the idea of the guardian spirit. In the writings of a late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus writing in the 300's A.D. in a slight digression gave a list of a handful of individuals who had personal knowledge of their guardian spirit. When the list ran something like the Pythagoras, Socrates, Apollonius of Tyana, Augustus Caesar and a few other individuals. The idea of a guardian spirit was that this guardian spirit was given to you at birth. So that other than your own spirit there was inside of you a guardian spirit who had access to the cosmos. Now this idea was so prevalent in antiquity that it forms a basic presupposition almost to every religious ceremonial procedure in antiquity. And in fact we know from anthropological research that this notion also of a guardian spirit is prevalent worldwide. It would seem that the only people who are ignorant of this are people like ourselves in the last several centuries. And the rediscovery of the self empirically in the psyche by Carl Jung is not so much pioneering new territory but reaffirming what the whole world knew before. The curious quality of the guardian spirit is that by coming into contact with it, by establishing communication with it, one's personal nature develops. That by coming into contact with a messenger of the cosmos instead of being watered down, one grows up. One becomes exactly that person who you are. So that contact with the cosmos was essential to personal development.

We have tonight one of the most mysterious of all documents. we have The Visions of Zosimos. Now Zosimos is the first indication in Jung's work that he had been able to contact through his own development a recognition of something which had come from antiquity that had always been set aside. For about seventeen or eighteen hundred years. Set aside as nonsense. And was able to establish in his lecture on The Visions of Zosimos, which was given in 1937 in Ascona Switzerland at the Aranis Conferences. They're published the following year in 1938 in the Aranis yearbook of 1938. This was the first indication that Jung was able as an individual, if I can put it in these terms, to psychoanalyze an individual who was not alive in his time. Who in fact had lived some 1700 years previous to him. It meant that Jung had established for himself as a psychiatrist a definite mode, a method, a methodology, which would enable him with great surety to go back 1,700 years and understand the supposedly chaotic dreams of an esoteric sage from late Hellenistic times. In a very quiet way Jung for the very first time was revealing tremendous capacities which he had attained. It's one thing to be able to take the dreams of a living person. It's another thing to take the visions of a living person. But it's quite a different set of capacities to go back some 1,700 years and to make sense of someone who was one of the most complex writers of that age.

In order to understand a little bit about Zosimos we need a couple of details. His epithet was that he was Zosimos of Panopolis. Panopolis is in Egypt. Was in Egypt. And Pan is the god of nature. The city of Pan. But Pan also is the taproot of panic. That there is that quality of nature that when you come into contact with it unprepared there is a panic response. So that Zosimos of Panopolis is familiar with an arcane quality of nature. And is a master of it. Panopolis was on the Nile River south of where modern day Cairo would be by more than hundred miles. And Zosimos lived in the 3rd century A.D. His visions are roughly dated around 300 A.D. and when we look at the history of Western civilization we can see that this is the beginning of a sea of change. The beginning of the end of antiquity.

Now antiquity as a historical epoch was rooted into basic ritualistic natural comportment. We can, and they did, trace their roots completely back to tribal beginnings. There was absolutely no question that every religion, every city, every triumph of man was rooted in an agricultural past which traditions were still extant and intact. In the 4th century A.D. this entire realm of acquaintances was eclipsed. And the Roman Empire slipped into the Roman Christian Empire. And displacing nature came a transcendental super nature. So that by the time of the 5th century A.D. almost all human beings living had no acquaintance whatsoever with any kind of natural origins. Natural roots. Unless of course one had a very low acquaintanceship, low intelligence and just worked the land like surfs(?). So that there was a split between those who had a sophisticated background and those who just existed. The long, thousands of years long, era of understanding where the families came from, where the tribes came from, what the shapes of man coming from the earth were, were eclipsed. And by the 6th century A.D. they were almost completely gone from the record.

Zosimos lives then at the watershed. 300 A.D. there were still a great many people capable and wise and understanding society and civilization in history in a natural base. So that the psyche of these people had a full ecology. That is to say for them nature was accessible on one end. And on the other end the high art of human attainment. If I can put a little diagram up here. Alchemy began to occur about this time. So that the occurrence of alchemy as an endeavor. And it wasn't referred to as a science at that time. It was called an art. The art. The art. And what the art was able to do was to compensate for this massive loss. what was lost? The connection, the bridge of the art of nature. It was as if it was being eclipsed. Slowly sinking.

But what constitutes that bridge is in fact the quaternary psychic structure of human beings. And this psychic structure in this quaternary, all four of the elements, all four of the qualities of the psyche were knit together as the unity. And we can write it in this way rather than using the four elements. Ritual, myth, symbol and magic. That the psyche of man had a ceremonial base. It had a communicative image structure, language. It had an integrative mode, symbols. And it had an expressive energy, magic. And that the psyche of man in this balanced quaternary had emerged from nature. Had immersed as in fact a seed in nature which had grown and man had become a flower, as it were from nature. And through understanding, through his consciousness of this process, this massive process he had developed a complement to nature which was the art of alchemy of transforming nature.

So that alchemy when it began to emerge around 300 A.D. as the art. Consciously emerging. It took over many ritualistic and magical structures which had been there in the society in history for a very long time. For instance we know now that there was mining for metals as early as 6500 B.C. in northern, what is Northern Yugoslavia today. We know that there was the capacity by at least 2,000 B.C. for smelting and testing by cupellation. We know that by the time of Jesus that there was no doubt whatsoever that false gold could be tested by cupellation. And that the process of separating even gold and silver from the ally electrum was quite definitely there. And the first allusion to an inner allegorical quality of this metallurgical process is in the wisdom of Solomon. Where it says the, the good person is like the, after the cupellation the real gold is there in the cup.

But what occurs around 300 A.D., and The Visions of Zosimos are the first indications we have of this. It's the earliest presentation of this. Is that qualities from this psyche are coming up to the surface and presenting themselves extremely forceful in order to allow for the art and nature to have a connection, to have a bridge. The overwhelming realization is that this was becoming a struggle. That this was no longer something which was given. It was no longer a part of the nature of society. It was no longer a given in civilization. It was becoming problematical. So that The Visions of Zosimos are an indication to us of a sea change in the psyche of Western men at this time.

Now The Visions of Zosimos in The Collected works are in Alchemical Studies volume 13. And in the alchemical studies there is a beautiful illustration, color illustration, opposite of the title page. Which shows the Spiritistus Mercurius. There is in this figure a very esoteric quaternary. And we have to talk about it in view of the quaternary which is here on the blackboard. One element in this quaternary was symbolized as the moon. And a second element was symbolized as the Sun. But look what happens here. A third element is when the Sun and the moon come together. And the fourth element in the quaternary was not something new or something else, but was the unity of all three of these together. Now there is a peculiar quality of wholeness that we have just expressed. The Sun and the moon as elements of a psychic wholeness are already symbolic. The bringing together of the Sun and the moon as a third element in a wholeness is magical. But the conscious recognition that all three of these, these elements together as a unity that is an integration on the basis of the alchemical art. The Sun and Moon are very great mystery symbolically. To be able to understand that there are operative elements within ourselves at the deepest levels that can be symolized like this. The joining together of the sun and the moon is the second greatest. It's a further remove. It's like a an even more powerful kind of an integration. And the realization that these three form an invis...a unity which then is a thrice greatest or a third greatest.

This is a quality of Hermes Trismegistus. Of that communication of divine realization to man. And what has happened here is that man has realized an inner consciousness. Which is not only interpretive but is expotential. He is able to conceive of integration of coming together of a coniunctio. So that the two elements, the two great elements, which were polarities in their cognition become complementarities in their recognition. And that the recognition as a function factors into cognition as a capacity. And that makes yet a farther removed, or if you wish an even deeper kind of quality of realization. The realization that the sun and the moon can form in unity is a quality of consciousness. But the deeper vast strategic realization that then the Sun and the moon and their unity form a triad. And that that triad as a unity makes a fourth. That the unity makes the fourth. And that the quaternary is on that basis. That is beyond normal consciousness. Is what we would call the super consciousness.

This is the realm of the self. This is the realm of the guardian spirit. That the guardian spirit functions on that esoteric level. But in order to approach that level men needs to learn how to bring together an integration of polarities in such a way that he can recognize that something third has been made out of the two.

Now the traditional hermetic mode before Zosimos was in the hermetic teachings. One of the Corpus Hermeticum to survive from antiquity, probably from around the 1st century, early 2nd century A.D. in Alexandria. In the Corpus Hermeticum. It's the fourths treatise and it's called in this translation, A Discourse of Hermes to Traught. And it's subtitle is the title by which it was known in antiquity. They give the translation here, The Basin. The Basin. The Water
Basin. But actually the term in Greek we can just transpose it's really the crater. The crater. Which is like a, it's like a chalice. But the crater...and I'll have to give you this background because usually people don't write this out because they they don't participate in these things and don't understand anymore. There was a metallic dish in Hellenistic times which was called the kylix. And it was a very shallow bowl. And the places where you grabbed it, the handles on it were loops. So that if you were to see the loops abstracted from the crater and brought together you would see an infinity sign. So that where you were able to touch this vessel you were touching with your polarities. With your grasping polarities. you were touching the elements that when they're integrated are infinite. This kylix was the mixing bowl in The Eleusinian Mysteries. And what was mixed in there was barley meal and honey and milk. Because these were feminine mysteries. And this was given to initiate in the kylix. And one had it this way.

This activity is a ritual activity. And it was the basis of the mystery religions. So that the psyche of our ancestors antiquity had this kind of ritualistic mystery sensibility in their psyche. When that ritual capacity was brought to its symbolic integration in Alexandria in the 1st century A.D., this whole ritual was transposed out of its mythological expression into its symbolic integration. And instead of drinking with a vessel the mind became the crater. Or the kylix. And the place where you were able to grasp your mind was a quality of presence which was eternal. But which could only be established if you yourself were able to bring it to bear at that focus. So that the mystagogus, the one who takes one through the arcane rituals, no longer poured barley meal and honey and milk into a bowl. But brought various images and ideas together in your mind. And when you were able to, then you partook of it. And so this dramatic discourse, the crater, is the basis. The ritual turned into symbolic basis of The Visions of Zozimos

I'll just read you a couple of excerpts from the translation. And with this preamble you'll be able to hear with your own ears now what is being said. "Hermes, for the incorporeal is not the thing perceptible by touch or sight. It cannot be measured. It is not extended in space. It is like nothing else. God is not fire nor water nor air nor breath. But all these things have been made by him. You must understand then that God is pre-existent and ever existent."

And I need to put this here.

"And that he and he alone made all things." And the Greek term here for made is poesis from which we get poetry. Poesis. That is to say that the creative capacity is a very esoteric function which manifests itself not on the level of things but on a level of integration of things. Of bringing them together. But the Creator is not on the same level as creation. He is removed one step so it seems. but it isn't a remove its being a part of the unity of all of the processes, the things and the creation together. So that that quaternary, that fourth aspect, mystically was understood that God is not behind the scenes in any way but he is eminently here in the total ecology of creation and what is being created. That he is here.

So that you can see when this psyche, when this psyche that had this wonderful basis for it began to be eclipsed, a projected compensational imagery began occurring for many sensitive individuals. And someone like Zosimos began to have dream visions. Very powerful ones. And the images in there were a balance saying God is in the process. He's in the material. He's not so far removed that he's not even in the picture. So that alchemy in its rise at this time is a great compensation to the eclipsing of the natural psyche of man at this time.

The eclipsing I must say in you as a side to you was done because of a belief and doctrine. And had nothing to do with religious experience. For people who had religious experience still they were able to ignore their times. As most of us have learned to ignore at least half of what goes on in the 20th century if not more. Some of you more successful people 99 percent. so there have always been people like ourselves who who just simply do not buy the confusion of the time. Who see through it. Who use that faculty that the greats called phronesis, insight. And insight dissolves the structures of the illusion. They have nowhere to be.

Notice here now in the crater. Notice how the Hermetic presentation of it is. And then we'll go to The Visions of Zosimos and we'll see how this becomes transposed and amplified. What is being presented here in the Hermetic document, the crater, is a integrated psychic presentation of it in terms of conscious art. But what is being presented in The Visions of Zosimos are an eruption of collective unconscious contents which project themselves out into fantastic images in the dream sequence. What is important for us as it was for Jung, is to awakened to the quality that these elements in Zosimos are thrown out but the elements in the Hermetic treatise are still inside. And that the quality that comes up for us in our time in the late 20th century is that all of these elements have not been held in many minds for at least seventeen or eighteen hundred years. They have all been thrown out into the collective unconsciousness. So that when we contact them what our consciousness needs to do is to learn to bring them back in. And Jung says that this is the real travail of our time. That we live in a time when we have to bring back in the thrown out projections which were there at the beginning of the age. And it takes patience and courage and companionship and dedication.

Now this...let's go to the crater. This is when it was still. When the art, when the Hermetic art was still crystalline in its presentation. "And when the creator had made the ordered cosmos he willed to set in order the earth also. And so he sat down man, a mortal creature made in the image of an immortal being, to be an embellishment of the divine body. For it is man's function to contemplate the works of God. And for this purpose was he made." That is to say the creative process, man is the expression of a creative process which is made to return the creative process. Contemplation is always a returning back to the maker. But notice here the maker is not a removed figure. The maker is the wholeness, the unity of the process and the integration and the elements that are in it. So that the object of man's contemplation is not a man with white beard beyond the stars but it's a recognition that the wholeness, the unity is here eminent. In and that it's feasible for him to participate in this unity.

Here's how The Crator, the Hermetic treatise number four says it. "It was his will my son that mind should be placed in the midst as a prize that human souls may win. and then Taught says and where did he place it? And Hermes: he filled a great basin with mind and set it down in the midst of the earth. And he appointed a Herald and bait him made proclamation to the hearts of men. Hearken each human heart dip yourself in this Basin if you can. Recognizing for what purpose you have been made and believing that you shall ascend to him who sent the basin down."

That is very strong language. And I'll come back to this in a moment. but I want to show you how strong this language is. This Hermetic, this Hermetic treatise is written within 30 years of the Gospel of John. Now here's how John says, reports to us. And I would think that John would be quite accurate. This is how John reports Jesus talking to a man named Nicodemus. This is in John 3. He was a, a wise man among the Jews. "There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, rabbi we know that thou art a teacher come from God. For no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him verily I say unto thee except a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God." And then they go on and there's the statement about "The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof that cannot tell whence it came." And Nicodemus in reply says, "How can these things be?" And Jesus answered, and said to him, "Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things. Verily I said unto thee. We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen. And ye receive not our witness. And I have told you worldly things. How will you think of things when they are spiritual? You except a man be born of water and of the spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

Now at this point this is very powerful alchemical talk. Born of water and of the spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom. And this is one element out of many that can be cited, out of many that were cited. And Jung is the one who cited all of it. In his commentary to The Visions of Zosimos in 1937, Jung again and again brought up to his audience in Switzerland. And he was the first person in about seventeen years to bring these things up, that this is a remarkable universal quality of human experience. And that in fact the earliest indications of this are that Jesus is already talking this way. But that it takes a while for this kind of language to really filter through. But in a couple of generations, two or three four generations at the most, there are people talking with this kind of clarity.

So that at the very end of The Crater this is how it is said. "You see my son through how many bodily things in succession we have to make our way. And through how many troops of the demons and courses of stars that we may pass on to the one and only God. For we can never reach the farther boundary of the good. It is limitless and without end. And in itself it is without beginning. Though to us it seems to begin when we get knowledge of it." That's when it seems to begin. "For the thing to be known does not itself begin to be when we get knowledge of it. It is only for us that our knowledge makes it seem to begin. Let us then lay hold on this beginning. And make our way thither with all speed. For it is hard for us to forsake the familiar things around us and turn back to the ancient home from where we came."

We would have a home beyond the stars if we had come from beyond the stars. But where have we come from? We have come from a unity which is thrice greatest in its capacity. It's like an expotential of an integration of what is.

And in The Visions of Zosimos he's going to give us now the projected splayed out chaotic dream images of what we read condensed and clarified symbolically in The Crater. Here's how it begins. "And as I spoke thus I fell asleep and I saw a sacrificer standing before me. High up on an altar. And the altar was in the shape of a bowl. And there were 15 steps leading up to the altar. And the priest stood there and I heard a voice from above saying to me, I have performed the act of descending the fifteen steps into the darkness. And of ascending the steps into the light. And he who renews me is the sacrificer by casting away the grossness of the body. And by compelling necessity I am sanctified as a priest and now stand in perfection as a spirit."

And we need to come to our diagram for just a moment here. Nature is sematic(?). This is psyche. And this is spiritual or sematic(?).

"I am sanctified as a priest and now stand in perfection as a spirit." This is to say the sacrificer is one who has mastered this art and Zosimos is seeing him. And the one who has mastered this art is the priest before the bowl shaped altar. And he who would come to that altar must mount these steps. It's given here in the first part is 15. Later on it will be given as 7. We'll talk about that in a minute.
"I inquired of him," writes Zosimos, "who he was. And he answered me in a fine voice saying I am Ion." I-o-n. "I am Ion. The priests of the inner sanctuaries. And I submit myself to an unendurable punishment." Or if you like the translation an unendurable torment. He voluntarily submits himself to an unendurable torment. "From for there came one in haste at early morning who overpowered me and pierced me through with the sword and dismembered me in accordance with the rule of harmony." And what is the rule of harmony in dismemberment? It is to quartered. Drawn and quartered.

Please turn your cassette now. Mr. Weir will continue on the other side without a break in the continuity.

END OF SIDE 1

The dismemberment happens according to a method. The Greek word in here is very close to of the word for order. Method and order are very close. And an order which has a closed sequence where all of the elements in the order sound together one has a harmony. There is a condition where all of the procedures of a method occur simultaneously together. And that is a harmony in alchemical term.

"And he drew off the skin of my head with a sword which he wielded with strength. And then mingled the bones with pieces of flesh and caused them to be burnt upon the fire of the art. And I perceived by the transformation of the body that I had become spirit. And this is my unendurable torment." The fact that he has become spirit has not in any way quenched the unendurable torment. Why? Because the body is diced up, bones mixed with flesh and it's burning. That is to say, if one could become whole and perfect only in the spirit there would be no torment. But the body is a necessary quality of the unity. That the body is important to be included in the unity. That it is in fact the basis upon which the integration takes place. And that the unity is a recognition that the integrated and the elements that are integrated form a larger unity. Form a completeness. So that somehow here the experience of a spirit being liberated away from the body is psychologically incomplete and manifests itself as an unendurable torment.

We'll take a break here and we'll come back. We need a break.

Some of you were not here. There's a woman who lives in North Glendale and La Quinada who would like to come to the Thursday night lectures. And if anybody's coming from that area of LA. She's about 40 and a very presentable gal. And I have her number here.

Also if some of you get interested I can't stay on this particular aspect because we have to move on. And next week we go all the way to Psychology and Alchemy. The book that came out in the second world war. But if you get interested this is, the this is the most formative fulcrum for contemporary consciousness. This is the anvil where we make or break our capacity. And I've been devoting all of Tuesday nights this year to this particular problem area. And the general series is called Jesus in Alexandria. And from here on the archetypes of the self probably as good a subtitles for that series. So if you get interested. If this sounds to you like its, there's an intelligibility here someplace, the Tuesday evening series is recommended to you. It's at 2029 Hyperion which is only about eight blocks from here.

When you go to take a look at The Visions of Zosimos in Jung's Collected Works, when you go to Volume 13 Alchemical Studies. Which to me as always my most favorite volume in The Collected Works. It just, everything that's in here is problematical to the nth degree.

There's another version of his commentary which you would be interested in consulting. And its in the Eronos(?) Yearbooks. It's called, the volume called The Mysteries. I think this is in paperback. I think Alchemical Studies is in paperback too.

As usual with the Jung material the titles, the title of this long lecture printed here is Transformation Symbolism in the Mask. Well that's true the mask has a great deal to do with this. But in this lecture, part two is all about The Vision of Zosimos. Jung takes time out and he goes into it for quite some time, about 20 pages. And it's extra material. And he says here that Zosimos was clearly a non Christian Gnostic. And goes on to talk about how he was a follower of Hermes. That is to say he was Hermetic. And I have a great deal of difficulty with this particular characterization. Because from what I can understand, I've gone into this for a long time. The hermetic archetype which is integrated in the figure of Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian archetype. That is to say it was not, umm it was not made at this time. But was an archetype in the collective unconscious of people at this time. You have to understand here that there is a sense of cycles. That what is archetypal to us now was at what time current in historical consciousness. It may not have been absorbed completely and wasn't by everyone but for some it was there. But for people at that time their collective unconscious archetypal constellations were from about one great year or 2,100 years from before them. So that someone living in the 1st century A.D., Hermes Trismegistus was the figure of their collective unconscious. Was an archetypal figure.

That archetypal figure came from an Egyptian religious matrix. And it was an absolute horrendous problem to the Jewish consciousness of that time. Because the Jewish consciousness of that time, their collective affinities were with ancient Sumeria. Egypt to them was always a problem. The Pharaohs have always been a problem. They were a problem to Abraham. They were a problem to Moses. They were a problem in Jerimiah's time. And they are a problem now. Whoever runs Egypt is a problem. So that when the Hermes Trismegistus archetype came up at this time, especially for the super sensitized refined consciousness of a Jew like Saint John. Hermes is really a terrifying figure.

And in many ways when, when he writes the apocalypse, The Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation is the same kind of outpouring material that Zosimos has in his visions but for Saint John. And his way of dealing with that terrific figure that has so much numerous charisma is to aim his experience of Jesus at that, at that archetype. And when the Gospel of Saint John, which was composed somewhere around 90 A.D. When the Gospel of John hits Alexandria sometime in the next 10 or 15 years. I imagine around 100 A.D. it's like a laser beam of consciousness that hits an iridescent multifaceted jewel of an archetypal figure. And you get that kind of brilliant kaleidoscopic occurrence which happens when this rare occurrence comes about. And I think that the hermetic treatises, The Poimandres, The Crater, The Key, a number of them even up to the Asclepius, are records of those individuals in Alexandria trying to deal with this kaleidoscopicly illuminated archetype. Which they can experience very clearly around 100-110 A.D. but which as time goes on, as decades go on, as generations go on, the clarity begins to fade. And in its place is a kind of an increased speculation. And you can almost plot in the second century A.D. in Alexandria the rising desire and the part of intelligent people to try to compute rather than experience the wholeness of the universe. So that by the end of that time is when you begin to have individuals who are struggling to find some doctrinaire stability. Where they can rest their faith in. And are a little afraid of the fact that there are techniques of experience that can open all these issues up.

So that by the beginning of the third century A.D. there are very few people who are willing openly to go and have these experiences. And those who are willing to have these experiences go out away from the cities. Go out into what finally became monasteries. What eventually became monasteries. I'm talking not just about men but about men and women. We have a translation from Wallis Budge in two huge volumes, Biographies of the Desert Saints. Men and women about 300 I imagine, maybe 400 individuals. And you see over and over again in their stories that these are people who are successful in the world. They don't leave the world because they're not successful in it. But it's because they have seen through it in the sense that they know that they have this capacity for experience within. And they they have the calling for it. They can't ignore it, but they know that as soon as they open that door, this whole Pandora's box of images is going to come out.

So that a lot of the quote ascetic disciplines and so forth that rise about this time, the 3rd century A.D. are really self protective measures. There are no community rules which are imposed from without. Those kinds of things do not come for another hundred years. Petronius is seventy years down the line from Zosimos. But the discipline is because people need it. They need to have some some kind stability because everything is opening up.

This is what Jung writes about the origins of The Visions of Zosimos from this commentary. "Since alchemy is concerned with a mystery, both physical and spiritual." That is to say it concerned with nature and art. This is a peculiary and it takes getting used to. Because we're we're used to thinking in a very sloppy way about alchemy. We've heard about it. And we've read books on it and so forth. But the actual occurrence of alchemy is very much a mystery because nature and spirit are brought into juxtaposition. And the psychic bridge in between is so narrow sometimes that it's non-existent. So that the experience of the psyche being diminished to the point to where it's not there, that's the mystical experience of selflessness. And for someone who is absolutely dependent for their sense of identity on their psyche, this means non-existence. This is the abbess. This is the end. This is the last thing that one wishes to do. So that a lot of the imagery that's coming up has a peculiar double-edged quality. It's both charismatic in that it draws us because it has this tremendous revelatory quality. And yet it's terrifying because it's also dealing with us in non psychic ways. Dealing with us in mystery ways. And that what we thought was a polarity. We thought that spirit and body are polarity. That they, that the body, the material world is down there on the spiritual world is up here. But in alchemy the realization is that the spirit is in the stone. And you have to refine the stone. You can't leave it. You can't not only not leave it but you have to go into it. Into its inner structure.

And so there's both a joy terror kind of ambivalence in alchemy. Which is why a lot of the alchemical writing, as we'll see as we go on in this, has this odd kind of babbling tone. And what it is is someone who knows they've got to do something and is scared to death about it. And it's just human nature to babble. to try and talk to yourself and tell yourself but it can't be that bad. So a lot of the ossification is not because they have an esoteric doctrine but because they are human beings facing incredible juxtapositions of paradoxical energy. And anyone who's dealt with the experience on this level knows that it is eerie. It's just eerie. And one of the healing qualities, one of the mercurial qualities, is to be able to talk about it. Which is why in the therapy it's always to find a way to have the courage to communicate it. And that the, the therapists, the psychologists, the priests the efficient(?), the Hierophant, has a responsibility always in every case to say the person you really want to talk to is yourself. That's the person who really needs to hear what you have to say. Because it's your inner self, that your guardian spirit that can talk back to you then. And that the babble of the fearful consciousness is going to have that still voice within that says, do not be afraid. You belong here. You belong here in this mysterious wholeness which occurs in the very quintessence of integration. And you belong in the body that you are and in this realm that you are.

So that Jung says...writes, page 105 of volume 13. "Since alchemy is concerned with the mystery, both physical and spiritual, it need come as no surprise that the composition of the waters." This is the phrase that Zosimos is always coming up with. He's waking up from his dreams. And when he wakes up the first thing he does is reminds himself that he is looking at a designed pattern. And that this design pattern has a structure which he must remember. To keep, to keep present to himself. And the phrase that he uses is the composition of the waters. Plural.

This is also archetypal. Like the waters beneath the earth and the waters above the earth. It's like nature, the waters beneath the earth and the art is the waters above the earth. The earth floats in the midst of the waters just like the psyche is suspended in the midst of a spiritual nature. And when it doubts that it can exist suspended, it wants to say well it's got to either stand on solid nature or stand on solid spirit. One or the other has to be firm. I have to be okay because I'm going to heaven or have to be okay because I'm here. But in alchemy the realization is always that, I have to use a phrase from the i-ching, "heaven suspends its inwards". The celestial qualities of the psyche are free formed. they are not tacked down. There no page numbers on them. They have no footnotes. It's like riding bareback, there's no saddle. And horse is alive.

Jung writes, "So it comes as no surprise that the phrase composition of the waters was revealed to Zosimos in a dream. In fact in a series of dreams. his sleep was the sleep of incubation." This is the ancient healing process of going into the temple and the sacred grounds, going to sleep and having a dream. The temple is the inner sanctuaries. He's got to go into his inner self. That inner temple and have those incubation dreams there. Notice no this is the time, this is several hundred years after the officiating bowl is the mind. So one is moving very very quickly into this thrice greatest presence quality.

You know Joel Goldsmith had a wonderful little book. It has marvelous title, Practicing the Presence. If you ever get a chance. It's just, it's just right.

"The divine water was the alpha and the omega of the process. Desperately sought for by the alchemists as the goal of their desire. The dream therefore came as a dramatic explanation of the nature of this water. The dramatization sets forth in powerful imagery the violent and agonizing process of transformation. Which is itself both the producer and the product of the water and indeed constitutes its very essence." So that if we're just talking about it now we can say that the water is a symbol for the psyche. But we have to expand ourselves now. Because we not only just have this psychic psyche but we have a psyche which includes the conscious mind. So that we have to enlarge this. We have to include this. And include this. Because we can't include consciousness into the psyche without including nature also. So the alchemists are are working with an expanded wholeness now. Expanded psyche. A psyche which reaches and includes the things of this world, the material of this world in the wholeness of that larger psyche. This process, this process of enlarging is a transformation and it's agonizing. It's agonizing because there is this kind of torment of losing the stability that one thought one had.

"The drama shows," writes Jung "how the divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding. And how man experiences it as punishment or torment or death or transfiguration. The dreamer describes a man, how a man would act and what he would have to suffer if he were drawn into the cycle of death and rebirth of the gods. And what effect the deus abscondtus would have if a mortal man should succeed by his art in setting free the guardian spirits from his dark dwelling. The deus abscondtus is that the God is not up there away but he's here hidden in the material. He's hidden in the matter. He's hidden in the matter in such a ineffable way that you have to crack the matter to get to its structure. And then you have to crack the structure to get to that essence. So that there's a there's a kind of like a profound double process in a way, that's going on here.

That the vehicle in which this takes place is like the cranium of the head. It is the top cap of this alchemical vessel. And the reason that there's a cap on the alchemical vessel is to keep circulating again and again this whole destructive, corrosive ecology of dismemberment. The, the metals and the minerals are dissolving. They're corroding. They're going down into something else. And the first thing that happens in the vehicle, through heating, whatever you put in whether it's a metal or a mineral is the heavy oxidization. It turns black. Turns brown black. And this was called mortificatio. Mortification. Death. So at the very first image or indication that comes up our death images. Or if you want to put it in intellectual terms negative. Erased out nothings are the first senses that come up. And so right away if there's anything that you're clinging to this is the very worst thing to have. If there's anything. Any kind of an image. Any kind of a base. This is by the alchemists has to be an artist and also he has to learn by his technique. He is working with the material.

Jung writes, "The mystical side of alchemy as distinct from his historical aspect is essentially a psychological problem." This is somewhat misstated here because the mystical side is not a problem. The way in which it's formulated here it's a problem but in and of itself it's not a problem. It's an experience. but with that imitation. Jung, "To all appearances it is a concretization in projected and symbolic form of the process of individuation. Even today this process produces symbols that have the closest connections with alchemy. On this point I must refer to the reader to my earlier works where I have discussed the question from a psychological angle and illustrate it with practical examples." And we've gone into that in the previous five or six lectures.

For Zosimos and those of like mind, the divine water was a corpus mysticum. But a personalistic psychology will naturally ask how did Zosimos come to be looking for a corpus mysticum? The answer would point to the historical conditions. It was a problem of the times. But in so far as the corpus mysticum was conceived by the alchemists to be a gift of the holy spirit, it can be understood in a quite general sense as a visible gift of grace conferring redemption. And in fact all about this time, Jung in a book which was published in 1940 but written in the 30's, called The Integration of Personality. The formative section was chapter 5, the idea of redemption in alchemy. Which is to say that the elements of integration, which had been brought up, had been brought up in such a way that there were theologically interpretive spiritual patterns operating. Even in people who were not traditionally bound to those patterns. That is to say for someone like Zosimos, even though he is not a Christian he has a kind of indelible Christianized patterns operating in his integrative capacity. this is a very, very, very strange and paradoxical situation.

Jung late in his life took this situation to task. And the book that he wrote on it was Answered to Job. And in Answer to Job he says very bluntly that the integrative action, which was exemplified by Christ, was incomplete in its patterning. And so that this incompleteness called forth a deeper level. That what Christ presented was the integration level. But that the integration level was not the fullness of it. So that there was work left to be done by the Holy Spirit. Which had to come back because the Holy Spirit makes all things known. Not only the integration but the unity of everything. And in The Answer to Job the, the aged Jung took to task this very aspect. He broaches is it just tenuously in The Integration of Personality.

In The Visions of Zosimos he goes on and concludes, "Although chemistry has nothing to learn from the vision of Zosimos as it is a mind of discovery from modern psychology. Which would come to a sorry pass if it could not turn to these testimonies of psychic experience from the ancient times. His statements would then be without support. Like novelties that cannot be compared with anything and whose value it is almost impossible to assess. But such documents give the investigator an archimedean point outside his own narrow field of work. And therewith an invaluable opportunity to find his bearings in the seeming chaos of individual events."

And we'll see next week in Psychology and Alchemy that not only is the book important but the place that it occupies in Jung's development is important. Because he felt at that time that this was the last thing he would ever write. He felt that he was going to die. and in fact in Memories, Dreams and Reflections he says that he did die but was called back.

So Psychology and Alchemy is a very peculiar book. It is the book in Jung's development and the core use a alchemical development. It's the book which is the integration of his work. And everything that he will write after that he is no longer concerned with the integration level but is concerned with that mysterious wholesome fullness. That kind of third pneumatic level of how the integration then accepts back the elements into a larger unity. And we'll see that it takes young about 12 years to come to terms with this further assignment. And that the work which then follows Psychology and Alchemy is Mysterium Coniunctionis. Where he talks about the mystery of life. And not in terms of an integration so much as just the mystery that life in its fullness. Has integration as a part of it but is even more than that. But there's something else.

Well we'll, we'll get to these in next weeks.

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