Spirit and Nature (1945-1946)
Presented on: Thursday, August 27, 1987
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 9 of 13
Spirit and Nature (1945-1946)
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, August 27, 1987
Transcript:
The date is August 27 1987. This is the ninth 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 spirit and nature 1945-1946.
Material is getting difficult. And we'll need some background in just reading Jung. It's difficult at this stage to, to understand and to piece together the overriding shapes of intelligence without considerable background.
In Psychology and Alchemy, which had come out in 1944, which he'd finished writing by at least by 1942, Jung stresses a very peculiar correlation. That the deeper one goes into the psyche the further back one goes into the historical past. And that apparently there is some threshold very deep in the psyche where we pass out of history into cosmos. By the time that we're dealing with, 1945-1946 Jung had only broached this initially as a peculiar indication. I'll try and give you the language which he works with. This is from The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. And then we'll try and work our way tonight back to this statement. It's a very peculiar statement. He writes, "Although I have been led by truly psychological considerations. No doubt the exclusively psychic nature of, to doubt the exclusively psychic nature of the archetypes." That is to say he had concerned himself by this time for almost twenty years with these very powerful shapes in the psyche. And yet by 1945-1946 he was able to say that he was able to doubt the exclusively psychic nature of the archetypes. The one would like to ask immediately then what else could there be. And if there are not only elements but structures in man's psyche, which are not psychic, what could they be? And the corollary to that is what then must we think of men? Jung offers this. And we'll see that this becomes a seed which is later on developed at the end of his life in his magnum opus. It becomes one of the most eerie aspects of Jung's work. And is is the culmination as you will soon see of the alchemical core of his development.
"Psychology sees itself obliged to revise its psychic only assumptions in the light of the physical findings." Meaning physics. "Physics is demonstrated as plainly as could be wished. That in the realm of atomic magnitudes an observer is postulated in objective reality. And that only on this condition is a satisfactory scheme of explanation possible." This means the subjective element attaches to the physicists world picture. And this of course is the the issue that was raised and made famous by Werner Heisenberg. Also raised by Schrodinger and several other physicists. Wolfgang Pauli among them. observing that in every experiment in physics, at an atomic level, the character of the observer changes the experiment. colours what we find. And particularly colours it to the extent that one can either have a temporal certainty or a spatial certainty but not both. And Jung here then drawing attention to that.
And then also saying secondly that a connection necessarily exists between the psyche to be explained and the objective space-time continuum. That is to say at the very deepest levels of the human psyche, the objective universe of the space-time continuum seems to be indicated. We put it in blunt language. If you go deep enough into man's psyche you pass out of the psyche proper and enter into the cosmological universe. He writes, "Since the physical continuum is inconceivable it follows that we can form no picture of its psychic aspect either. Which also necessarily exists. Nevertheless the relative or partial identity of the psychic and physical continuum is of the greatest importance theoretically. Because it brings with it a tremendous simplification by bridging over the seemingly intimate durability between the physical world and the psychic world." What he's indicating here, and we'll have to come back to this, because this is this is a lot to contend with. It's one of those massive ideas that it takes a long time to let settle in and get used to some of the implications that are there.
One of the implications is that the psyche of man as it is, is then routed in the universe in such a way that the structural principles of the universe still function in a recognizable process way in the formation of man's interior life. Trying to find some middle ground for this. Some way to to cope with this. Jung around this time turns to the history of alchemy as indicated some possible steps backwards in history where one could gain a perspective. Gain some place from which to have a view of this enormous realization that's coming upon him in the early 1940's. In tracing back he says that alchemy carried on in physical processes the same symbols which were there in the doctrines of the Gnostics. The Gnostics of the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. And that somehow these doctrines, these symbols of the Gnostics, seem to be related to the Christ. Now he doesn't make the differentiation in the writings that we're going into here. So I have to draw it out for you. As a corollary.
It's like this, the tradition known as the Hermetic tradition can be traced back to at least 3,000 years B.C. in Egypt. The earliest writings that we have in Egyptian history come from pyramid texts. One of the oldest is the Pyramid of Eunuss. And these Pyramid Texts were incised on the inside of the pyramids. And these texts when translated show us a very sophisticated understanding of the process by which a living person contacts that eternal element of themselves. Which then with the right language is able to carry themselves on the journey through the underworld and come back to life. And we saw last week that in archaic Greece and the Orphic theology it was expressed in the formula life, death, life, truth. Remember that little chip of skull bone with the incised material that was found in northern Greece just about 20 years ago. They have that kind of inscriptions on them. That tradition always indicated for at least 3,000 years before Christ, that there was a process by which man could be saved physically so that when he came back spiritually his body would be ready for him. That the body, that the physical world was not to be thrown away. But that the physical world for all intents and purposes once made stayed made. but that the spirit of man has a cycle of day and night. Like life and death.
The only way to explain it is, is to try and get the idea of the of the eternity of that which is made. that matter once made is made. It cannot be destroyed. It can be transformed but it cannot be destroyed. But that within that eternal shell, man's spirit has a cycle of life and death just like day and night. And that death as a part of the larger cycle of the psyche is a necessary and natural occurrence. But that in this occurrence only those who have been instructed in the right way, who have the right words, can make this journey and come back to life. This tradition is known as the Hermetic tradition.
And the elements, the working elements that are there are that there was a sacred language. Which has a formulaic understanding of what a particular stages to say. And that by use of these spells, as it were, one can proceed along the journey of death and come back into life. So the purpose of learning the sacred language in life is to use it after death. So that one can come back to life. So that language, sacred language, and transformative process are archetypal structures in the Hermetic tradition. And this tradition can be traced all the way up to present day as a matter of fact. Five thousand years. The gnostic imagery is a cousin to the hermetic imagery. It's if, an offshoot of the Hermetic imagery in that before the 18th centuries there are only skimpy prototypes of what would become the central symbols in Gnosticism. There are only sketches towards what would become the doctrines of Gnosticism. And that when Gnosticism comes into being, when it flares up in the early 2nd century A.D. it comes full-blown. The very first Gnostic systems that we have those of Valentinus of Alexandria about 120-130 A.D. are already complete cosmologies. Exquisitely developed and we know now from the translations of the Gnodhymadi(sp?) material that apparently they never went through any kind of sketchiness for the Gnostics. That the sketchiness was all subconscious for those generations before the 2nd century A.D. And then when it came into consciousness that came fully structured. An indication for this if you like to look into it for yourself in the Gnodhymadi material of The Gospel of Truth. It is an early 2nd century A.D. Valentinian presentation of all the major Gnostic symbols and the doctrine. And even though there is some change, some modification, through the centuries all of the basic elements are already there. And integrated in such a way that the integration never really changes.
So that the Gnostic imagery, which is carried on in the Hermetic tradition in alchemy is act...has actually quite a different flavor from the basic hermetic material. The hermetic matrix which deals with sacred language which one could say. And deals with processes which one could do which would lead to coming back to life. The difference is in respect to eternity. The Hermetic tradition seeks to come back to this world. The gnostic tradition seeks to leave this world permanently. The gnostic tradition sees that the ability to come back to this world is yet another snare. And should be rejected just like all the other snares. So in a way the Gnostic understanding is transcends the cosmological. Whereas the Hermetic tradition is very much a timeless cosmology. So that alchemy as Jung will find out. And by this time he's beginning to realize that there are two parallel traditions which are very closely related but which have antithetical purposes. The Gnostic purpose is literally not to be born again. Whereas the hermetic purpose is to come back again in better shape. And the confusion of these two purposes makes a lot of the chaos in alchemy.
Now Jung goes back then to Christ to try to find out about Christ as a self symbol. He's interested psychologically not theologically. He's not interested religiously. He's interested psychologically. How does Christ function as the self symbol? And he writes this. This is Psychology and Alchemy page 19, "The Christ symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology. Insofar as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self apart from the figure of the Buddha." And towards the end of the series we'll get into the issue of the relationship of the Buddha as a self symbol and the Christ is a self symbol. They are related in a very peculiar way. Extraordinarily peculiar way.
"We can see from this 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." And this will be one of the central themes of Jung at this time. That Christ psychologically as a self symbol necessarily is incomplete. In the basis of making that statement Jung will say that his empirical discoveries show that the unconscious is not a complementation to consciousness but a compensation to consciousness. That just as we have a higher self, a conscious self, and a lower self, an unconscious. The relationship psychologically is not a complementarity but as a compensation. Is a polarity. So that no matter what happens in terms of perfecting a conscious self there is always necessarily by design, by structure, a built-in compensation in the unconscious. and if one would have a perfect good in consciousness one would have a perfect evil in unconsciousness. And that the relationship of Christ and Satan then psychologically is a very interesting kind of relationship.
He writes, "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 concession the church has made to the problem of opposites. The opposition between light and good on the one hand and darkness and evil and the other is left in a state of open conflict. Since Christ simply represents good its counterpart the devil is evil. This opposition is the real world problem. Which at present is still unsolved. The self however is absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis and at the same time synthesis."
So that Jung is working here with a very peculiar strategy. And in order to get the the full impact of this we have to go back to an example I gave you two weeks ago. The self is an integrating focus of both conscious and unconscious extent. But because of the extended nature of the deeper unconscious to include the physical universe. And the physical universe is still an open-ended evolving expanding occurrence, not an entity so much but an occurrence. That the true purpose of the self is not yet disclosed and will never be completely disclosable. But that focus is constantly changing in terms of the scope of its capacity. You might, you might think of here if you're having trouble following this, that for Jung at this time the self would be like a god image. Not a Christ image but a God image. God the Father. If you are trying to think of this in terms. So that essentially the self is inscrutable and unknowable. The only thing that can be known is the projection of the self in terms of what consciousness is able to offer. If I can use this analogy, as a stream. And the more refined consciousness is the more developed it is the better is the the image. but that in no way is the image the reality. And in this Jung is very Gnostic.
Now here's a peculiarity which Jung doesn't go into but we need to just for a moment in history. This whole understanding was eclipsed in antiquity. Because of the, of the Gnostic insistence on this incomplete quality of the universe. That is they turned on its head the issue that the the self will be incomplete. And they simply said well the universe is incomplete and therefore must be illusory. Because anything that would have any kind of quality of perfection would have a finished quality to it. and since it doesn't it must then be an illusion. The classical mind could not entertain the notion that we are entertaining about an infinite universe. There was not in any way a realization that consciousness at that time could entertain. The basic notion that the universe was described by a series of spheres. And that outside those spheres there was nothing. So that the Gnostic contention then was that this must be, this universe must be an illusion. And that man must be trapped here by ignorance of that realization. And that his salvation consists in being able to understand that all this is an illusion and does not pertain to our real nature. That our real nature is outside of this cosmos. And since what is outside of it is unknowable and unimaginable man's real nature is of an unimaginable, unknowable spiritual quality.
Now contrast to that the hermetic idea, which we went into somewhat last week. That the bridge between man and universe was the mind. That the mind was the the mixing bowl. The classical mystery initiation vehicle which had been the mixing bowl or the crater for who knows how many millennia finally came to be understand, understood symbolically. not metaphorically but symbolically around the 1st century A.D. that the mind was this mixing bowl. That by man's mind we have a bridge to the universe. And that if the mind is clear it will see all of the shapes as they are. And we will have a truthful place in this universe. That the truthfulness of the universe is dependent upon us establishing that relationship. That is to say any illusion there might be will cleared up if man establishes the right relationship to it. This gives a very peculiar power to man. That through man's understanding he confirms the validity of the universe. And the prototype of this in the old testament would be the fact that whatever names in genesis, whatever names Adam gives to things that's what they are. It's only a descriptive label but that's what they are. So the hermetic idea is that man through his understanding and through his acceptance confirms and gives validity and substance to the creation. That it's man's acceptance that's important. And that the use of his mind, the learning of of what to do and how to do and everything is to prepare him to make this acceptance on as broad a basis as he can. So he can accept eventually the entire universe. That mans loving acceptance of it gives it the reality which it might not have had. But that this is a double process. That as, as a meaning is offered by the cosmos. Or I should say by, by the universe and meaning is offered by it. And man's acceptance of that meaning gives it a truthfulness.
One of the classic examples of this was the hermetic understanding of astrology. There are no strings from the planets or the constellations to any human being. But the planets and the constellations and their relationships always generate a meaningfulness. And that if someone understands this meaningfulness and then lives according to that, then they become intelligent in terms of this universe. The reciprocation in the Hermetic tradition was that man also generates a meaning by his life. And he offers this meaning up expecting that the quintessence of the universe, that God will accept what he offers. And by accepting it give him a substance. Give him a validity. So that man and God validate each other in the process of confirming each other's meaning. So the B.C. hermetic tradition was always this double action. This double play.
But the Gnostic understanding was somewhat different from this. Because that double play is like complementarity. It's basic dynamic, the pivots of its dynamic, are on the interpenetration of God and man. If there were if there were no points of contact. If there were not within man a divine point. and not within God and human point there would be no way for that complementation to work. But for the Gnostics all of this whole scenario is an illusion. That the cosmos that is made by this is always suspect. And that what man needs to do is recognize that it's not a complementation but a polarity. And all that it generates instead of unity is the anxieties which come from a constant tug o'war. A constant conflict.
The one view says that there is an archetypal conflict which is not resolvable as long as the conflict is going on. Whereas the other, the Hermetic, says if there is a harmony in the universe and the conflict is only due to an ignorance of participating in that particular harmony. Jesus himself apparently was in the Hermetic tradition. But the followers of Jesus in the next century were of the Gnostic mode. And one can carry the Gnostic mode and Christianity back to Saint Paul.
When that hermetic Christianity was threatened by the over reaction against the Gnosticizing elements in the Christian Church in the 4th century, the Gnostics were all declared heretics. The hermetic Christians were also incidentally declared heretics. In this move in the 4th century A.D. the hermetic and the Gnostic currents went underground. The Gnostic current went underground in the sense that the tradition of extracating the spirit from this universe in freeing it became a secret doctrine. Just as the Hermetic tradition of the sacred formulas, the sacred processes by which one could bring the spirit from death back to life. So both these traditions went underground. Both were no longer amenable to a critical culture. In becoming secret traditions they were usually passed on one individual to another in such arcane ways that there was no chance to discuss these things. And so the two processes became, because they were both underground, they were both passed on the same way. They became parallel to each other and often were passed on by the 7th century A.D. as a single tradition. That the, that the archetypal discrepancies between them was not seen. Was not understood.
But even this underground tradition died out in the West. In the 600's, at the end of the 600's the last of the Christian alchemists out in the Egyptian deserts. Or outside in hermitage is outside of Jerusalem. Passed on these processes to the new civilization that was coming into power at that time, which was Islam. And the classic trance transference of alchemy from a Christian context to an Arabic context is given in an alchemical treatise. Which was has been finally translated into English known as The Testament of Alchemy. It talks about a monk named Marianus(sp?) who lives in a hermitage in the wilderness outside of Jerusalem. And a young Islamic Prince named Khalid becomes curious about the ancient wisdom of Egypt, which has been kept in this Christian context all this while, goes and has an interview with Marianus. Who passes on to him, after a while, after establishing a teacher-student relationship, passes on the quintessence of the alchemical process.
And in the document we can see in English translation we can see for ourselves what tremendous complexities and condensations have been made. So that in the Arabic language, in the Islamic culture, this alchemical matrix with all of its mixtures was passed enmass. But the Islamic cultures spread not only across Africa and the Middle East but also spread to India and had contact with Central Asia. So that in Islamic culture over the centuries the alchemical imagery, it's symbolic repertoire, became worldwide. There were Chinese elements. There were Indian elements. There were Greek elements. There were Egyptian elements. There were Christian elements. There Islamic elements that came in. So that alchemy between about 700 A.D. and about 1150 A.D. became the first worldwide mixture of cultures. And the process that had accretions from every kind of humanity.
So that when alchemical books were first translated back into primitive Europe. And the Europe of about 1150 extraordinarily primitive. They were translated with all of this mixture intact. Robert of Chester did the first translations and the first real great alchemists was a man named Michael the Scot. Michael the Scot is the archetypal Magician Magus. That is to say even in our, even in children when you have an image of a Magus the, the costume of Michael Scot comes in to play. That is to say he wore it but it's an image deep in the psyche by now. He wore a conical hat with stars and moons and Saturn on it. And long flowing robe with sleeves. And he was always surrounded by bubbling elixirs. And he was the court magician to Frederick Hohenstaufen.
This quality entered into the Western and alchemical texts. And again as soon as the church began to realize what tremendous jeopardy there was for their doctrinal position because of this material. This happened in the 1200's in the 13th century. Two of the greatest of the Church Fathers, Dominicans they were, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, began to examine alchemy and to begin to separate and differentiated it enough to be able to understand that this was indeed, if passed into the intellectual culture of the West, would take away any kind of hegemony that the church with its doctrinal doctrinal history had engendered. And so alchemists were persecuted and they were driven underground again.
This underground though from the 13th century in the West spread not just one by one but often there were dozens of people who would study under many different masters. So that alchemy after the 13th century has a different character from what it had before. Before from the 3rd century on to about the 7th century it was very aesthetic and it was often just one to one. You might have to go a whole lifetime to find a master and that master might take a whole lifetime before he would accept you. But from the 13th century to the 17th century increasingly there was a growing population of students and adepts throughout Western Europe. But because by this time there were so many different elements woven into it. Elements which they had no way to understand. There were Chinese elements. There Arabic elements. There were ancient Egyptian elements. And there wasn't anyone who could untangle these or understand these. So that increasingly there became a standard kind of a metaphor for the whole process. And this metaphor by the 17th century had bubbled to the top and had become the basic realization of the old Christian self-image. And that's why in 17th century alchemical texts you see at the very beginning of the century there are cosmological features that are always stressed. And by the end of the century there are always Christian aspects. So that alchemy after the 1600's is almost always a mystical Christianity. Whereas alchemy before that is very much a worldwide cosmological culture.
Now Jung now in reading alchemical materials at this time. And we've seen that he didn't really begin seriously until about 1934. When he seriously began reading the alchemical materials there were only huge compendium. Large tomes that might have 20 or 30 or sometimes 40 or 50 what we would call articles or essays in them. Because there was no one great work of alchemy. So one had to read dozens and scores of different processes. And the vocabulary was different in every one of them. But in reading them over and over again Jung began to sensitize himself. And by the early 1940's he too had come to understand the basic strategic career of alchemical symbolism.
And so he finally found a writer in the 17th century. His name is Gerard Dorn, D-o-r-n. He found Gerard Dorn had understood the basic alchemical process. That there may be variants on it but that Dorn's writing was for him basic. And that from tracing back from Dorn he could then understand that the most important alchemists in this whole phase of Western history. From the time of translating it back into the Arabic. The most important alchemists was a person who was never, never thought of as an alchemist. And that person was Saint Thomas Aquinas. And Jung in searching around found that well the conscious Thomas Aquinas had been the champion of the exposition of the logical doctrinaire structure of the church. That when he was on his deathbed he had a very numinous alchemical dream, vision. Not just a dream but a world vision. And that he had written this and that it had actually survived all this time. And it was Jung and his researcher. The woman who was known alchemically as his Soror Mystica, his mystical sister Marie-Louise von France.
They found this visionary document that had been hidden all those centuries by Thomas Aquinas. And it was published at the end of Jung's life as part three of Mysterium Coniunctionis. And because of all kinds of complaints of people around Jung, people who who didn't want anymore mysticism in Jungianism, they published it in the English edition in a totally different color. The Jung volumes are black and this was published in red. They wouldn't put Jungs's name on it they put Marie Lousie von France's name on it. And they tried to disassociate it from Jung's Collected Works. But the fact is get that it as they seed, the core of his whole magnum opus. The basic theme in Aurora Consurgens is the perception, the mystical direct perception, that at the very operative core of the alchemical process is a quality in man. That the elements cannot transmute of themselves. That the working fulcrum is in man. There's a mysterious quality in man which enters into the process. And when that enters into it the process of transformation then goes in the classic cycle of man's own self transformation. So that the physical alchemical process is actually a mirror of the internal spiritual process of man. And that the gnostic and hermetic processes are actually two sides of a single reality. And that in this paradox it was extremely taxing to Jung.
Throughout the 40's and throughout the early nineteen, through the 30's in the early 1940's to deal with this material. And when he published Psychology and Alchemy and had a number of sections of Mysterium Coniunctionis finished. He had the Marie-Louise von France translation of the document called Aurora Consurgens. He thought his life's work was done. And in fact a very odd occurrence happened. He, he slipped on some ice in February of 1944. He ended up in the hospital for just this seemingly simple fracture of the tibia. And within ten days in the hospital he had massive heart complications. and he lost energy and he lost his will to live and Jung died. And just as he was leaving the body and was rising above the earth and about to enter a very large granite black dark granite like temple with an open door. The psyche of the doctor attending him came up beseeching him to come back. And Jung did. And came back for about 17 more years.
What's peculiar about this as one can see that the the tussle with this symbolism was not just an intellectual tussle but involved his life energies. And that when he got to understand what really was the purpose he left. And it was only under the odd condition of being entreated that others did not have enough to understand the purpose that he came back.
We have...and we'll take a break after this. We have this. "All these experiences were glorious. Night after night I floated in a state of purest bliss. Thronged round with images of all creation. Gradually the motifs mingled and paled. Usually the visions lasted for an hour then I would fall asleep again. By the time morning drew near I would feel now gray morning is coming again. Now comes the gray world with its boxes. What idiocy. What hideous nonsense. Those interstates were so fantastically beautiful that by comparison this world appeared downright ridiculous. As I approached closer to life again they grew fainter. Scarcly three weeks after the first vision they ceased altogether."
This was in early 1944. And even after he came back it was over a year before Jung could give a lecture again. Before he could even begin to work again. One of the curious occurrences at this time he went to his beloved image of his own self. His Bollingen place that he'd built with his own hands in those four year peer cycles. And he went to Bollingen and couldn't stand to be there. It was just completely unpalatable. The image of his own self built with his own hands was tasteless to him after he'd experienced this larger true universal self. And it took him a long time to be able to adapt to it enough to just work with it.
Well we'll take a break we'll come back.
It's hard to give as it is here. I am trying to modulate it so it doesn't seem so fantastic that you dismissed it. And I'm trying to keep it as accurately revelatory as it actually is. So that you, when you pick it up it stays there. There's an odd equality to it.
If you get interested in the end the self archetype of Jesus I've been going into that for the whole year on Tuesday nights. It's extremely complicated but it can be gone into. And if you get interested in that every Tuesday night at eight o'clock I lecture on that. And it's we're dealing now with Saint John's apocalypse and Ezekiel's vision as a sort of parentheses around that figure. And it takes a it takes a while to, to hear that and get used to it. But after a while if you're, if you're dealing with really deep levels of yourself this kind of consideration is indispensable.
The overall strategy of Jung's work was to find the full dimension a wholeness. And he found alchemy, a model of the process by which wholeness is disclosed. But he wasn't prepared for the full dimension of what wholeness is. And that alchemy as a process leading to wholeness led to the establishment of a fertile center. Which could multiply its divine effects thousands of fold. The process in alchemy is not just to achieve that Philosopher's Stone, which can make that transformation to change into gold, those baser metals. But the test is how powerful is that. and the transformation projections were sometimes in the tens of thousands. It's difficult for us to try and imagine and sort this out because the very processes of imagination are already co-opted by this kind of a process. And that what we call imagination is a very superficial juggling of cardboard images. And doesn't really go into the deep imagination which is there that alchemy brings out. It isn't just the function that here are these esoteric men and women are staring at this equipment and this fire. And these elements for years and sometimes for decades in secret. And they're daydreaming. It isn't that at all. None of them were naive on that score. But it's like Jung used to say when he didn't understand something he said I guess I have not stared at the lake long enough. That when the interior quality of meditation really opens up, that quality of meditation then penetrates. One can see into the structure, the very nature, with one spirit. The spirit and nature are not just correlates but that their interpenetrate.
This mandala which I've placed on the board appears in Psychology and Alchemy on page 233. And it is in its form here from an alchemical document dated about 1650, Philosophia Naturalis. Natural philosophy. Natural level of wisdom. But the elements of the mandala that are in here are all from the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus. And Jung in his description of this plate in psychology alchemy labels it, anthropose as anima mundi. The anthropose, the inner image of the divine person.
Please turn your cassette now and I'll commence playing again on the other side after a brief pause.
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...anthropose as anima Mundi. the anthropose. The inner image of the divine person. One's divine self as the soul of the world. So that in this mandala you find projected out at the four corners, instruments for measuring. You have a scale. You have a caliper. You have a masons square. All of these are symbols, symbolic tools. They're projections of the minds capacity to calibrate destruction. And the fourth one is the crater again. The mixing bowl. So that they are symbolic projections of the minds capacity to calibrate. And to measure. to create. To draw into designs. And to bring those together. That all of these are capacities of the mind. But that person in the universal dimension. That person who has that mind also has an inner self. And that inner self has a quaternary just like the quaternary which is outside of the wheel of that person's existence. But that quaternary inside is coextensive with the elements of the physical universe. Fire, water, earth and air in their classic symbolization. But it means to say that the inner man has the physicee and the outer man has the the practical amplification of that. So that the divine man the anthropos is not just his egotistical self. Not just that person that he thought he was. But he is an interface between the physical reality that is the material world and that spiritual capacity to redesign and rearrange, recreate, transform that physical world. So that there's a very peculiar kind of a paradox. But the real self is a universal functional interface between everything and its possibilities.
So that if the goal of a psychology is wholeness you can see what startled consciousness Jung had by the early 1940's. That the psychological goal of wholeness is to engender this kind of a capacity in human beings. and that the paradox is that the more one develops this kind of a universal self, the more individual the person becomes. Instead of becoming more vague. Instead of fading off into the cosmos. The personality of that individual becomes more and more focused. Becomes individuated. Becomes capable of individuating in terms of the life processes and life procedures. And like a philosopher's stone, like a lodestone, is able to pass this on to others. And the more that one has this capacity in oneself the more you can engender it in others. That kind of magnetism evokes it in others.
And Jung by this time has a very peculiar quality. He has a very odd charismatic quality. But when he comes back from his death encounter everyone commented on a very peculiar tone. He was charismatic but it was like he didn't really connect. Yes he was there. And yes he was caring. But it was like some essential astareal element had entered into the mix. He was never quite grounded again. It was as if in all of his life development up to that point there had always been some kind of a tug, as he said between personalities one and two. Between Carl Jung the physician and that inner self that didn't want to be named Carl Jung or anything else that was his spirit. And that after the death encounter the balance shifted the other way. He was more spirit than that man. And consequently had a deeper resonance with nature. That where before there were odd mystical experiences that he had.
Like the experience of being in Africa. When he was near Mount Elgon and the elders of the village told him that he had to see the sunrise. But that's what they all did. And it was important to start the day. And so he got up and he went to see the sunrise and he was startled by the quality that just before the Sun came up this kind of dawned light made everything seem crystalline. That the whole world seemed to be transparent to the actual eyes of man. And the Africans were showing Jung that, that the world is a mystical reality. It's not an opaque dead end. It's not a dead thing but it is alive. And at certain times in the early morning just before sunrise and just after sunrise one could see this. And he felt, he says in his memoirs, he felt a timeless affinity with those Africans. Like he knew that that's what he had always wanted to see. Was that this was so. this was true. And that he could always then see in that way in a very special way. But the emphasis was always that these were unusual events. Unusual circumstances.
The time he was with the Pueblo Indians and the Old Pueblo man said that somebody has to pray to make the sunrise. That the Sun doesn't just rise. It rises because someone together has prayed that it will rise and it responds to man. And that without this heart-centered participation the Sun would not rise eventually. And that is up to man to understand that. And Jung said that he began to to have that affinity. He could understand it.
Before the death experience these were unusual mystical events. Afterwards his constant tone of life was this way. There was no particular effort to be this way. To see this way and think this way. So that his works from here on have a different kind of a quality. Instead of being well thought out from Karl Jung they are just free and open expressions. Increasingly throwing out the structures of us, of his self. Instead of being designed by the egotistical personality of Karl Jung, they are expressions almost like artistic expressions of an inner spirit, spiritual being.
He writes...and the chapter title here Conceptions and Symbols of the Goal. Psychology and Alchemy, right at the very end he's still dealing in an ideational way. He writes, "The arrangement of the stages in individual authors, alchemical authors, depends primarily on their conception of the goal. Whether there are four stages or six stages or twelve stages. There are all these variations in characterizing the alchemical process." Jung says that apparently originally there were four stages. There was a black stage. There was a white stage. There was a yellow stage. And there was a red stage. And that those four stages were there in a primordial way. And that when alchemy had to go underground it truncated the four, the quaternary, the four quality and made a three quality. As if taking away one of the essential elements so that nobody profane could put it together. That somebody who was really dealing with this would see that there was a fourth stage that was necessary even though it was unspoken. And the stage that was hidden was the the yellow stage, the iosys(?). And that after a while there came to be many different stages. sometimes as many as 12.
But he says, "The arrangements of the stages in individual authors depends primarily on their conception of the goal. Sometimes this is the white or red tincture. Sometimes the Philosopher's Stone. Or sometimes it's a panacea. Or sometimes it's philosophical gold or golden glass. Or malleable glass." And he doesn't go into it here but another variant is is the elixir. In early alchemy there's no elixirs. A Chinese alchemical understanding and it only comes into Western alchemy around the 13th century. It comes in with Michael Scott. It's the Chinese who develop the elixir. and the the very word is Arabic.
"The conceptions of the goals are as vague and various as the individual processes." He's saying that the alchemical process has no rote way, formulaic way, by which it happens. That for every individual alchemist it happens in accordance with their individuality. And that part of the arcane quality here is that however they conceive of the end goal that conception affects the structural way by which the processes actually work. It's as if man has a very odd kind of a freedom. Whatever he really wants conditions the ways by which he can work to get there. To put it graphically, the goal seems to reach back through the processes and only allow those processes that would actually get there to work. The other ones don't really work. So that the working through of the process is actually a very odd kind of situation of trying to find the goal which is trying to find you. So that all of the alchemical processes have a kind of a double edged quality. They have an ultimate ambiguity that resolves only in terms of polarity. And that the knack, the art, of alchemy is to be able to see through the ambiguity to the polarities. And to understand that the polarities are working both ways. And one of the temptations that would short-circuit this process is to try and rush the integration. To try to say oh well I'm getting really close I can wing it from here. None of those stages can be crimped in that way. Whatever stages you need to go through that alchemical process you need them. Each and every one. So that the very articulation, your willingness to articulate and go through these processes is is the individuation process itself. So it would do no good to put a chart up. Or to categorize it. Or to give some statistical norm. Because all of that is irrelevant.
But what seems to be relevant here...he says, "The philosophical stone for instance is often the Prima Materia or the means of producing the gold. There again sometimes it's an altogether mystical being that is sometimes called the salvatore or the filius macrocosme. They figure we can only compare with the Gnostic anthropos. The divine original man. Besides the idea of the Prima Materia. Or that of the sacred water, the aqua permeance. Were that of the fire, the Ignace Noster. All of these play an important part. Although these two elements fire and water are antagonistic and even constitute a typical pair of opposites. They are yet one and the same. According to the testimony of all the authors." And it's very difficult without some background to see how the the action of fire and water on ultimate scales. Like permanent water and like our fire, work in an interchangeable way within a polarized structure. and yet this seems to happen.
"Important in alchemy," writes Jung, "is also the vessel." And that the emphasis on the vessel being important goes all the way back to one of the earliest Alexandrian alchemists. A woman named Maria Professa...Prophetissa. Mary the Jewess she's sometimes known as. She says that the whole secret lies in knowing about the hermetic vessel. The phrase in Latin unum es vas, the vessel is one. "She emphasizes this again and again. It must be completely round so the influence of the stars may contribute to the success of the operation. It's a kind of matrix or uterus from which the philosophical Sun, the miraculous stone is to be born. Hence it is required that the vessel be not only round but probably egg-shaped." And he goes on in this way.
It's very difficult for the form bound mind to project out some two-dimensional imagination image that can even metaphorically correlate with what is being said. We go back to about three weeks ago and go into this arcane quaternary. So that you can you can get a little bit of appreciation for how subtle this is. We showed the image of a hermetic figured that was the frontispiece to alchemical studies. And there were three serpentine heads coming off this figure. And one of the heads had a Sun symbol on it. And one of the heads had a moon symbol on it. And the third head had a conjunction of the Sun and the moon on it. The idea there is that the Sun and Moon are a polarity in this quaternary. And that the third element in this quaternary is not another object but is the conjunction of the Sun and the moon together. That three elements in that quaternary are like one and two and the one and two together. And that triad calls forth the need for a fourth, a balancing. but that the fourth element that's there is the unity of the first three together as a unity. So that you have a quaternary but if you use the discriminating mind to see into this quaternary, you can see that two elements in this quaternary are actually processes and not what we would call objects. One is an integration. And the other is a transcendental unity which includes the integration and that which is integrated.
But if you go deeper back into the symbolism of the Sun and the moon the moon is a reflection of the Sun. The only way that the that the moon is an object at all is because of the sunlight. It has no light of its own. So that in an odd way this quaternary really resolves itself to a one. And that on this level the alchemist has to see into the essential unity that the process is not so much transforming a thing to some other thing but bringing out aspects of the unity which are different. And what one is bringing out to make the gold is its inner self. That everything, if I can use this term, every metal and it's real interior reality is gold. You're not changing the superficial lead into gold but you're bringing the quintessential gold out of the lead. And the reason that it can then project itself on other metals is because it has this transformative quality there. It not only is gold itself can but can make other metals it comes in contact with gold.
So that the alchemical process is always at its conclusion calibrated in terms of its projective power. And if you read too sophisticated alchemists like Paracelsus very light you can always see that the, the alchemist then proves the veracity of his process. And he says it has a projective power of maybe twenty thousand to one. It's clearly not making this ounce of lead into this ounce of gold. That's a misunderstanding completely. But the process is one of bringing the transformative capacity, the inner capacity out. And it's like priming the pump. Once you bring that capacity out it can project and amplify and do much more.
So to the spirit in man when it comes out doesn't just transform that individual but that individual is a fount for many thousands or perhaps even millions of individuals. But what is evoked from that individual it's not charismatic in the sense that it's psychic only but that it comes from the very depths which are the cosmological universe in all of its physicality. So that what one has then is a very peculiar kind of symbolic transformation.
Jung in trying to express this in 1945-1946 after he came back from the hospital. Again went to his old habit of using the Eranos lectures in Ascona Switzerland. And the lectures for 1945 and 1946 are very much powerful expressions of his newfound capacity to say what he wants to say in a broad self way. Both those essays are published in the Eranos yearbook which is collected as Spirit in Nature. It's in paperback from Princeton University Press. And this particular volume, the first lecture the one delivered in 1945 is entitled The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales.
Just a note on this because this may not be apparent to you. before his death experience young was extremely interested in mythology. After the experience his interest went more over towards fairy tales. The woman who worked with him all this time on the alchemy, Marie-Louise von France, if you look at the books that she's published you'll see four or five an alchemy. But you'll also see about a half a dozen on fairy tales. The function of the shadow in fairy tales etc etc etc. Why is this? Because the mythic horizon is largely a unconscious function in the psyche of man. But the fairy tale is a magical function which is conscious in man. A fairy tale always has a conscious goal within the story. A myth generally has some symbolic goal within the story which is never explicitly stated. So that fairy tales are very much conscious. And very much from the origins of the magical consciousness which is there in every human child. The fairy tales are essentially for the very young and for the very old. Those who again can appreciate this, this childlike open quality. that as one can understand what the purposes are what the goals are the story it isn't so much a myth but it's like a fairy tale. and one of the greatest writers on fairy tales in the 20th century J.R.R. Tolkien.
So that one of the qualities that's there in the iconography of the fairy tale in its ideological structuring is that a fairy tale always has a situation where it becomes very precarious and very perilous. And only suddenly at the end does it resolve. And of course this is very much like an outline of the alchemical process. One gets into a situation and the alchemical process, the first thing is the is the melonoisis. The oxidization where everything begins to turn very black and loses it's a character. And seems to be disappearing. But this is the beginnings of the transformative process. It must be this way. So The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales is the first lecture here.
And the second one is called The Spirit of Psychology. now this lecture The Spirit of Psychology is translated in a different way and appears in The Collected Works of Jung in volume 8 on page 159. And there it's given the title On the Nature of the Psyche. So if you're going to read this the best way is to read The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales first. And then follow it up with The Spirit of Psychology. Because there there are one two, 1945 and 1946. They're the first indications when he comes back from his death experience of what the new Carl Jung is like.
But in The Collected Works they're not interested in Carl Jung like we are. They're not interested in the man like we are. We're trying to understand a human being. We're just we're trying to understand how does a human being who's grappling with this kind of dimension of understanding, how does he do it? How does he live while he's doing it? What happens to him actually? But in The Collected Works they're interested in giving you the intellectual scope of the man. They're interested in translating the ideas of the man. And that's alright it has its place. But one has to be very circumspect. And if you notice this is a pattern in these lectures, I always show you where the works are before I show you where they are in The Collected Works. Because the same thing is happening to Jung that happened with Aquinas. That happened with Plato or any of the individuals who really explored new dimensions of human life and human capacity. After a generation or two though those very individuals that valued them, prized them, turned them into nice little uniform volumes on the shelf somewhere. And eventually people lose interest and go for something new. That's alive.
But for us we have to understand that what Jung tussled with is very much the story of our time. And he's very much a twentieth-century figure.
He writes in here in The spirit of Psychology, The Beginning The Unconscious and Historical Perspective. He writes..this is 1946 "More clearly perhaps than any other science psychology demonstrates the spiritual transition from the classical age to the modern. That is in the psyche of modern men one can see classical roots. Even though they're not there consciously. They are there unconsciously. They're there on the level of the dreams. And if one goes into the dreams enough to get sensitive to how to interpret dreams, one gets a visionary quality. And one eventually will have not just a dream but a very great dream. that will have elements in it that don't have to do with you as a person but have to do with your deeper levels, your deeper psyche. And this visionary capacity then gets evoked. And if one gets into understanding that there are even deeper levels that come out from that.
So that psychology he says shows a spiritual transition from the classical age to the modern. the history of psychology up to the 17th century, up to the 1600's, consists essentially in the numeration of doctrines concerning the soul. Without the souls being able to get a word in edgewise as the object investigated." So he's saying since the 1600's a very different kind of a quality has come into play. That the mind no longer is able just to characterize the inner self. But the inner self now is restructuring the mind. The way that the mind can operate and see. What does this mean? It means since the 17th century the development of science in the Western world is actually a function of the deeper self trying to educate the human beings. To show them that the cosmos is an understandable place. And not a place to be afraid of and huddle inside doctrinaire understandings that are paper-thin. Whether one wants to understand this as Western men becoming alienated from the universe by false doctrines. Or whether to understand that the world out there is trying to wake man up so that he participates in life again fully. Either way it works.
In this essay towards the end Jung brings out a very peculiar psychic happening. A very peculiar image that comes up. He uses the word, the Latin word for it called scintilla. Scintilla or scintilli as the plural. These are sparks of light. That at the very deepest levels of the psyche, when it's evoked in alchemy, the very deepest levels there is this phenomenon of the sparks of light coming out and off. And he writes in here, a quotation from Thomas Aquinas' alchemical death doctrine or death vision. The Aurora Consurgens part two says, and he translates it here. "Know that the foul earth quickly receives white sparks." That is to say the the material that has gone into this mellononis, gone into this darkening, accepts and receives these white sparks. And this is what begins that leukosis, that whitening process, in the alchemical.
Jung writes, and this is an alchemist from the 17th century he's quoting. "These sparks Heinrich Kudarat explains as the world soul which is identical with the Spirit of God. From this interpretation it is clear that certain of the alchemists had already understood the psychic nature of these luminosities. These were seeds of light broadcast into the chaos. Of the seeds, seeds of worlds to come or aspects to come. One such spark is the human mind. The arcane substance, the watery earth or the earthy water of the world essence, is animated by this fiery spark." And he goes on then to say that very often these were seen by alchemists to correspond with the Platonic ideas. And that they the scintilli with the archetypes and the assumption of the forms were stored up in some heavenly place. And so on.
It's very difficult to read this and understand what Jung is saying if you've not had any kind of experience at this level at all. it does, it seems to be fantasy talk. And it doesn't seem at all to having any traction unless you've had experiences like this. I'll give you a report of an experience like this. About 20 years ago the United States sent an expedition to the then unclimbed west face of Mount Everest. And the leader of that expedition was a man named Thomas Hornbein. And they never made it to the top of Everest. They got trapped in very bad weather, snowstorms. But they were up very near the top. about a thousand feet down from the top. and they were trapped for days and days and days in this little tent. And he another man who were there kept having dreams over and over again. That in their inside of themselves they could see Everest is a dark shadowy peak. And instead of snow blowing off the top there were sparks of light. Like sparklers and fourth of July. Constantly. That kind of a thing. and I was talking to Hornbein one time in Berkeley, up in the hills after in the evening time. And he told me that and I thought its very curious image. And later that night I had a dream. And in the dream that very same image came through. It was very peculiar because I've never been anywhere near Everest. Never done any kind of mountain climbing or anything like that. Did not know the man very well. But the description of it was given in just the right way at night around the campfire in the Berkeley Hills and set in. And I was reading a lot of Jung at that time. And get in just the right way. These images have this kind of incredible charismatic indelibly and once they're delivered in just the right way they have the capacity to evoke from someone else that, that exactness. It's there.
So Jung is writing now after his death experience. He has that capacity. and he sees these things and he begins to choose these esoteric aspects of alchemical thought. He never went into this level of alchemy before. Now he's starting to go into it. But he also begins then in this essay to notice another very peculiar aspect that's here about about the Christ which he had never understood before. And he brings it out. It's like those sparks of light are like the stars in the universe. And that one of those sparks of light then becomes much more apparent than all the other ones. And this is like a special star. and that that special star has a complementary relationship to that person who is born under that star. And it's not just that they're born under the influence of that star but that the seed of their self, of their universal self, the seed of that self is that star. Is that basic compliment to that star. So that if they were to try to get down to and unravel and discover and find that inner star, the process by which they would find that would evolve them and enlighten them as to the whole cosmos. It's that kind of a thing.
And this image of the inner star becomes in the 17th century one of the basic qualities of alchemy that have not been there before. In all the alchemical writings from the beginnings up to this 17th century you very rarely see any reference to the star. And then suddenly towards the end of the 17th century you run across the the phrase again again, the star regulus. That the Philosopher's Stone is not in an egg shade but is in a star shape. And Parcells is he's the first one to begin talking this way. He calls this shape an asterisk, star shape.
And the person who resolves this in the late 17th century in their alchemy is Sir Isaac Newton. And I'll try and bring some illustration of that next time. And in fact from the Newton's no we can duplicate in laboratories now and make that star regulus. It's a crystalline pattern that comes in a transformative chemical process by using some elements like antinomy. Which were not used in medieval times but came into use in the 17th century. Because these, this element in particular has the quality of making the alchemical transformation look like a star at the stage where it should make the Philosopher's Stone.
What does that mean? It means that at the very origins of what we call modern science comes this ability to make that spiritual shape happen in the chemical process. Man introduces the spiritual symbol of his divine self and finds a way to make it happen in the process. Very, very peculiar situation. and one that Jung will pay attention to.
Well we'll look some more at this next week. Thank you for your patience.
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