Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1948-1954)
Presented on: Thursday, September 10, 1987
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 11 of 13
Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1948-1954)
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, September 10, 1987
Transcript:
The date of September the 10th 1987. This is the 11th lecture in a series of lectures on the alchemical core of Jung's work at The Philosophical Research Society by Roger Weir. Tonight's lecture is entitled Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1948 to 1954.
I'll try and cut this at about 45 minutes instead of an hour. And someone would just, if you note when it's 8:30. If someone would just give me the high sign my good friend Dr. Heller is flying off to New Zealand. 21 hour flight at 8:30. And if you just give me a little high sign I'll save quiet prayer for him as the plane takes off. I won't interrupt the lecture. He'll be alright.
As most of you know when you begin dealing with the psyche and you become charged. And the more that you deal with it the more that you need to give a kind of structure to your life. And the more structure there is the more energy it can accept. And so one situation becomes highly charged. And individuals like Dr. Heller lead very highly charged lives.
After tonight there are just two more lectures in this series. And the last lecture I believe falls in Rosh Hashannah. So I'll have an interesting and culmination to this.
Our interest is in fact not primarily alchemy. But our interest to C.G. Jung. And our interest particularly is in the development of C.G. Jung. But tonight we have to talk a little bit about alchemy. One can find any number of books on alchemy now. And outlines abound. But the material, if you have read Jung at all and I imagine all of you have. The material is not amenable to lists. And someone else's list doesn't do you any particular good. Except to give you a kind of a convincing edge in your self-confidence. One can run across material like this recent collection of articles by Dr. Edward Ettinger, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. And this was a series of seven articles written for a union magazine called Quadrant. And they're collected here together with an introduction. And there are seven alchemical processes that are listed here. Calcination, solution, coagulation subliminalation, mortification, separation and conjunction in their latin.
But we're trying to understand for Jung's alchemy from the early Greek architype. That is to say the Latin is a translation in medieval Latin alchemy is very much a, a relearned process. Whereas in the classical Greek it was very much alive and first level, first order.
Probably one of the more interesting short little diagrams I've put on the board is from one of Marie-Louise von France's more recent publications on dreams and death. And the left hand diagram is part of the diagram on page 28. Using the Greek terms of melanosis, lukosis, xanthosis and iosis. The black, the white, the yellow and the red. If one goes to Jung's writings because he essentially learned from the medieval Latin alchemists. The third-stage, the yellowing stage, the xanthosis is almost invariably left out. That is to say by the 15th century by the 1400's, the stage of xanthosis was no longer emphasized. So that in the archetypal Greek process which had a fullness in the four was reduced to a three. And one would think that xanthosis was then eliminated or left out. But I would like to encourage you to consider in your reading. And I suppose most of you will go back to the material. That what occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries is that this whole stage was transferred to this position. It was left open. This, this here.
The melanosis stage corresponds to a condition which I have been developing for quite some time called the mask. That is to say in melonosis, in the blackening, in the oxidization, in the negredo, what occurs is that the sense of projection in the illusory capacity of world-making becomes the most paramount condition. So that this rising of the blackness, this condition of the melononsis, this engaging of the shadow occur specifically in a situation which in its real nature is illusory. It is in no way substantial. It is in every way an initial stage of an ongoing process. It has no place to stay. So that the kind of the, the condition of a mask is very good appellation for this.
The development to the purification. The lukosis of making of the white stone, the white powder, the moon-like stage in quality. it's very much akin to having come to a symbolic integration. It is not the permanent achievement but is rather a first indication. It's like a a very good sketch of things to come. It is in every instance very much a symbol.
The third stage is the stage of the individual. And in the classical Greek this was the yellow. This was the xanthosis. This was the, the gold. And the achievement of the gold was considered at that time to be the, the apex. But there was a mystery involved in individuality at this time. We're talking now about 2,000 years ago. First century A.D. the mystery of the individual was that the individual in their archetypal nature was not what we would colloquially understand as an individual. It was not someone who is here individually as an identity. But there was a mystery in the achievement of individuality at that time. Which is the meaning of which is locked up in the archetype of the self. the nature of the self. Part of the further extension of the individual at that time was the mystery of selflessness. Which was the essential spiritual quality of the individual.
And so there was a further stage from the yellow from the xanthosis and that was the red. That was the giving out of the self to others identified as the blood of sacrifice. The red stage, the revio, this iosys. And I'll show you a slide later tonight is actually the extension through sacrifice of oneself. Which is very close to the process of projection.
So that by the 15th or 16th century when alchemists were dealing with, very closely, the whole numinous area of withdrawing projections. A beginning to realize that these processes were the interior and had been cast out, thrown out, projected out. And that this was becoming conscious. It was about that time that the fourth stage, the projected stage was lost track of. And the third stage became the fourth stage. But the classic understanding of the, of the red, the blood of sacrifice, the Christian archetype of the self was so thoroughly placed that what was left out was the xanthosis. The yellow.
I don't know if you can follow this but this is an overview. And I'm cramming a lot of things together.
We come tonight to try to understand some of the reasons, some of the assessments, of how all this happened. And how all of this affects us. And the volume that we're looking at tonight is entitled Aon: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. It's volume nine, part two of The Collected Works. And as you look at the title page you can see that the illustration facing the title page is of a God image from Mithras, the god Aon. Roman second-third century A.D. When we begin to look at Aon: Researches in the Phenomenology of the Self right away we're faced with the problem of what does Mithras have to do with our investigations. And the best little volume still available is Franz Cumont The Mysteries of Mithras. And in here Cumont, who was quite a complete scholar in his time, shows that the Mithras of the Vedas and the Mithras of the Vestas has a single common shared root. That in very ancient times, times which we should more properly designate as archaic, the ancestors of the arias in India and of the Persians were the same people. And in fact there is a very good indication that by about 16 or 1700 B.C. there were common an, ancestors for Greece and for Persia and for Northern India. There's a great study by John Donahoe on Shiva and Dionysius for instance. The common symbolism of Indra and Zeus and so forth.
What concerned Cumont and what concerns us because here we have a Mithraic god Aon that Jung puts is the frontispiece to his book on Researches in the Phenomenology of the Self. And when we look at the argument in Cumont's book we realize again something that perhaps we were told when we were very young but haven't paid much attention to it the last 20 or 25 years. That the real competition of early Christianity was Mithraism not Gnosticism. Not the pagan religion of Greco-Roman Zeus or Jupiter or so forth. But it was Mithraism. And when we look at the map that Cumont has in the back we see that the spread of Mithraism went from northern Scotland all the way over to India. That the whole span of the Roman world was influenced and affected by Mithraism. And that the basic population who carried this religious practice were the Roman legionnaires.
We don't have a great deal of time to go into it but one of the qualities of Mithra shows up right away in some of the archetypal illustrations of Mithra he's shown slaying a bull. And in slaying the bull, holding the bulls neck back and applying a blade to it, he is flanked by two attendants holding torches. Holding, that is to say, man held fire. One holds a torch up and the other holds the torch down. So that you have the symbolism of fire in its, as Jung would call it, its syzygy. In its dynamic patterned complementarity. So that essentially Mithra is slaying the bull in an implied ring of fire that goes the complete cycle of day and night, up and down, completely encircling it. The archetypal image of Mithra slaying the bull in india appears as shiva dancing in the ring of fire.
This quality of Mithra is an ancient mythological throwback. that the Mithraic religion that suddenly seemed to inundate the Roman world of the 1st but especially the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., was a pastiche having many different levels and layers. But that the originating image base was not from any contemporary century. That in fact old as Zoroastrianism was, Zoroastrianism was a radical reform of the decaying Mithraism of about 8 or 900 BC.
What's important for us to understand are not all these details about Mithr. And you can go to it for yourself. but to cognise for yourselves that at a time when there was a great transition in the way in which the psyche constellated itself. About 2,000 years ago, about 2100 years ago. And we've talked about this. that the basic symbol by which the organizing, synthesizing self could be recognized changed at that time. The old synthesizing symbol was the king. The new synthesizing symbol was the mysterious individual. And of course in the sense of the self, this new expression of the archetype of the self at that time, in a very mysterious way Jesus came to symbolize that new mysterious self. Much more effective than the old King symbol. But...thank you. But just as there was a change about 2000, 2100 years ago, we can understand that there have been changes before in the constitution of men's symbolic understanding. That the self symbol for man had changed many times previously in further histories. Deeper histories going back into the past. And that Mithraism was a leftover, a holdover, from some more deeper archaic level. The question and the interest for us is why does it come up at that time? The 2nd and 3rd century especially. Why did it have such an effect? And the general intelligence about this would be that in a time of great transition, where there's a dissolution of the synthesizing symbols of the self there is an opened interface between the mythological levels and the magical levels.
This is a little difficult to follow, I think. The mythological levels are within the psyche. And the magical levels are projections out from the psyche characterized by energy. Whereas the mythological levels are characterized by language. And language is a transformational interface just as energy or magic is a transformational interface. And generally when the symbolic capacity, especially pinned down or held or integrated by a sense of self. Not of ego but of self. the mythological and magical elements are separated. They're held apart. So that the mythological material is integrated by the symbol. And the magical capacity is controlled by the symbolical structuring. So that in a mythic way language is used....thank you...it magic, language is used in myth to tell the story but language is used in magic to control nature. With the dissolution of the effectiveness of the symbol the mythic and the magic transforming fields tend to merge together to become indistinguishable. Indistinct. Causing then a regression back to the last stage which was effective in organizing, in integrating. When the symbol becomes ineffective temporarily one goes back to the mask. And the mask is essentially a ritualistic implement. It's an objective way of handling ritual comportment. And the ritual comportment seeks to express itself in a mythologically afine way. And so Mithraism came to the focus at this time simply because it was a massive cultural regression on the part of the Greco-Roman world. The new synthesizing symbol the mysterious self won out. it was an inevitable victory incidentally.
When we look at Mithraic illustrations in the later centuries the third/fourth century when Mithraism is dying out, the bull being slayed by Mithras is always circumscribed by the signs of the zodiac. There's always instead then of the primordial fire circle there is now the zodiacal circle. The fire circle was from a quality of nature, primordial nature. Not only one of the four elements but in its own time many thousands of years ago was in its own way a sim, a synthesizing symbol for the self. symbolized at on time as the as the Sun. But also just fire itself.
If you wish to look at this still the best investigation of this for thinking purposes is Sir James George Frazer. His little book on the origins of fire before the King as a synthesizing symbol of the Sun. Shamash was a synthesizing symbol. One finds on the earliest Stella and so forth you always see on the, the rising pyramid of power the leader at the top is giving homage to a sun. Usually a doubled sun at the very top. Before the Sun the Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Earth Mother, Ishtar, the primordial Ishtar was a synthesizing symbol. So they have changed. But they change in great slow periodic revolutions taking. Some 2,000-2,200 years for this to change. Each time there's a change. and you can understand now that we are also living in a time when the change is beginning. That is to say the basic synthesizing symbol of the self, which has been the individual for several thousand years, now is beginning to lose its tenacity. To lose its power. To hold together, to synthesize. And a new quality is emerging. And the new quality that is coming is that quality which was hidden within. It was the underside of the individual as the symbol for the self originally. And that is the the openness. The infinite openness of the selflessness of the person. Which begins to be a paradox as long as one thinks in the old way. And as you begin to experience it one recognizes that already we've had many sages and harbingers of this. The person who is of service to others. Whose essential nature is to be of service to others. And this is the this is the quality one recognized in harbingers like Schweitzer or Gandhi. Or, or even Jung himself. That the whole power of the individual is to be of help and of service to others. It's the selfless quality of the person which becomes the synthesizing center rather than the individual possessiveness of an identity.
But at the time that alchemy was being formulated it was the achievement of the substantive identity that was all inspiring. And thus alchemy comes to be a process by which we actually make a stone. A lapis. A lapis philosophorum. A philosopher's stone. A stone which has the quality of having a complement in being related in its very nature to the soul of the world. So that the quality of the individual self as a symbol in alchemy is related and balanced by the soul of the world. so the individual is related to the world in a very basic way.
Marcee....Mircea Eliade in interviewing Jung in 1952 got him to talk about this this aspect of alchemy. And it was published in the French of journal Combat. And here's a little quotation. Jung speaking to Eliade. "The one great problem in psychology is the integration of opposites. One finds us everywhere and at every level. In Psychology and Alchemy," 1944 "I had occasion to interest myself in the integration of Satan. For as long as Satan is not integrated the world is not healed and man is not saved. But Satan represents evil and how can evil be integrated. There is only one possibility, to assimilate it."
That is to say raise it to the level of consciousness. And this first phase of alchemy the melonosis, the blackening, is the acceptance of corruption. But not of corruption per se but of corruption as a part of an initial process of integration. So a very masterful way, in a kind of a grand strategic way, evil is being co-opted by wholeness. and in the melonosis the procedure is to accept it, to accept the blackening until it is absorbed into the process and one comes out with the white stage, the lukosis. That is to say in the refining fire, the first thing that happens to your your materials is they blacken.
There are some materials though whose blackening is very peculiar. For instance there was a quality of lime where lime could be heated and all of its watery complement to be driven out. And lime in this kind of a condition after a while is called quick lime. And it has very peculiar quality that when it is remixed with water it generates a heat from itself. Its very very peculiar. And it seemed to the early alchemists that this was an indication that the invisible forces, like heat and light and attraction and so forth, were somehow hidden in matter. And by going through this refining process one could extract. But the extraction was very precarious and eventually it came to be understood that the extraction is a quality involving the alchemist himself. There's an internal quality in the alchemist. He shares with the hidden structure of matter that same quality hidden in his own structure. And that finally the shift came in the lukosis. The shift came to recognize that the fulcrum of the transformation of the change is not in the material. It's not in the process being applied to the material. But it's in applying the process to oneself. So that from the white stage, which is as far as the material could go in terms of its transformative qualities, you could heat it and this process was called calcination. You could heat it and distill it and and work on it just so much and it would go just so far. But one could go farther when one got into the, not only the hidden structure but the invisible energy which was in the inner structure. So that the next stages of how to me involve the individual working on himself.
And I mentioned and I have some slides that in almost all of the classical alchemical illustrations by 1600 at least. One finds that in the alchemists process that prayer is an essential part of the whole process. And you'll see slides about this.
So that there was a second development in alchemy. The first is to take material as far as it can be taken in terms of appealing to its inner structure. And then to deal with that inner structure in terms of a hidden essential quality. Which was in oneself. Which if liberated in oneself could affect the material that one was working on. The individual that Jung sites as being the first to really understand this was a man who lived in the second half of the 16th century named Gerard Doran. And we've mentioned him before. And I'm going to skip over a great deal of material and come right to Jung's discussion. This is page 161 in Aon.
He's been talking about the development of certain ideas in alchemy by using magnets. And how a compliment to the magnet which has an invisible energy of attract..attraction. A compliment to the magnet was the alchemical magnesia. And the magnesia is not that a kind of a magnesium oxide but was a very arcane substance. Sometimes alluded to as if it were in fact the, the very workable aspect of the prima materia. So that the magnet and the magnesia were a polarity. That is to say the magnet could exert the force of pulling out. And if the magnesia level in a substance could be attained through various processes the magnet would work on that basic process and pull it out. So Jung is writing in this way then. He's saying, "A similar state of affairs can be found in Doran's writings. In his case it is not a question of the self of the anti(?). Not a question of the salt of wisdom. But of the veritas. Which for him is hidden in natural things and at the same time is obviously a moral concept. This truth is the medicine improving and transforming that which is no longer into that which it was before it's corruption." It's difficult in reading this to to hear. He's using the phrase, there is that which is no longer. And that a phrase is italicized. That is to say there is a the physical presentation of the material which is no longer exed out because it's been changed. One has transformed that which is no longer into that it was before its corruption. Not into what seemingly it would change but into what it was before its corruption. And that which is not into that which it ought to be. He's quoting Doran and Doran is collapsing a lot into this this phrasing.
Jung's comment on this. And we'll try and draw this out. Tease this out. "It is a metaphysical substance hidden not only in things but in the human body. In the human body is concealed this metaphysical substance known to very few. Which needs no medicament being itself an incorrupt medicament. Therefore it is the study of the chemists to liberate that unsensible truth from its fetters in things of sense. He that would acquire the chemical art must study the true philosophy not the Aristotelian." The true philosophy being not a philosophical structuring of the mind but a philosophical structuring of this arcane essence in oneself.
So that the magnet becomes a paradigm for the center of truth in oneself. not the truth that logic would arrived at with the truth which is the fulcrum of transformation. "So that the center of truth then liberated from bodies and whereby the bodies are transformed. The Philosopher's through a kind of divine inspiration knew that this virtue in heavenly vigor can be freed from its fetters not by contrary but by like." So that one has an interesting strategy. One has to deal with polarities all the time. One has to deal with contraries. And in fact at various stages it's the raising up of consciousness to a higher level that allows for the integration of these contraries. These are incidentally, for those have been coming, these are the Parmenidian, the mutually exclusive contraries. When they are raised to a higher level they become those Heraclitian contraries. That instead of the polarities being there, then they are complementarities. And that's when the like comes into play. So that at certain levels, certain stages of alchemy, one has to shift one's tact. One is no longer dealing with polarities but one is dealing with even stronger than similarities. And the Hermetic like is not a similarity but it's however the paradigm goes then, that's the way the process goes. The paradigm at this level though is the essential nature of one's arcane self. The alchemist sets the paradigm for the matter. And as he changes, the matter changes. He elicits this transformation out from himself. If he can't do it in himself it will not happen.
So that Jung then writes. And you can see that there's a correlation here. There's a correlation between physical and psychic. But in the 16th century was the last time that this correlation was believed to be balanced. And in the 17th century this is severing of this. And the physical develops into chemistry and the internal develops into a kind of a mystical Christian yoga. Which becomes eventually through many vicissitudes become psychotherapy, analytical psychology. Jung writes that for him for his understanding, "Gerard Doran was the first thinker to recognize with the utmost clarity, that is with consciousness, the extraordinary dilemma of alchemy. The arcane substance is one and the same whether it is found within men or outside. It's the very same substance. The alchemical procedure takes place within and without. He who does not understand how to free the truth in his own soul from its fetters will never make a success of the physical opus. And he who knows how to make the stone can only do so on the basis of right doctrine. Through which he himself is transformed. Or which he creates through his own transformation."
We've talked about this before and I think we went into this last week. About the about the quality in self transformation. It is a quality of interchanging cells as it were. So that they the archetypal quality of the individual in early alchemy is based upon a model. I hate to use the term model but I have to use it here. Is based upon a model of early mystical Christianity. Literally that one exchanges selves with Jesus. I can't go into that here and in a great deal. I've gone into this in over 40 or 50 lectures. But that was the arcane transformation. In alchemy and the alchemical expression of this by the 17th century this was the very aspect which was, which came to be doubted. It came to be doubted from the side of physical, what became physical chemistry. And its necessity of being linked to the material world became doubted in a corresponding way from those who worked inside.
Please turn your cassette now Mr. Weir continues on the other side without a break in the continuity.
END OF SIDE 1
In the 17th century and it came around by the time of the 1630's. This flood was already there. And by the late 1660's it was in an intractable position. So that alchemists, would be alchemists like Sir Isaac Newton were never able to resolve the dilemma. And intuitively, I use Newton because he's a classic case of the genius faced with a problem that he, he intuited the solution but he couldn't find any way to work it out and express it. When Newton finished with his alchemical studies he went back to studying the mythological prototypes of apocalyptic prophetic utterances in the Old Testament, Ezekiel and Daniel. Because he was convinced that somehow. And he was quite right incidentally. That somehow in that mythic vase was the key to understanding how the the new symbol of the synthesizing capacity of the self had precipitated. had come to be. And that was the basic working matrix. And it is in fact the way that it happened. It's just that at that time there was no biblical or archaeological scholarship that would allow a Newton to to have the understanding. The basic background.
But for Jung then, by the time he is able to write Aon, he realizes that the whole career of alchemy has gone through several stages and vicissitudes. And that by this time, by the early 17th century, the alchemical procedure was coming into its classic phase where it would never again be experienced in its fullness. Gerard Dorn's writings for Jung were the epitome, the apex, of the fullness of alchemical expression. And after that is when you began to have the split. Where you began to have those who were only interested in the spiritual development or those who were just interested in the physical chemical development.
I'm going to show you in the slides some contemporary images of how this is still expressed in terms of the 20th century psyche. And I think I'd better just end here with a quotation from this interview from Jung with Eliade. "In the language of the alchemists matters suffers and tilton the Greedo the melonosis disappears. And when the dawn, the aurora, is about to come it will be announced by the cauda provonus, the Peacocks tail." The **inaudible work** made of colors in the karatokis. "And a new day will break." That new day is the lukosis. or in Latin the albedo, the white. "But in this state of whiteness one does not live in the true sense of the word. It is sort of abstract in ideal state. In order to make it come alive it must have quote blood. It must have what the alchemists call the robedo, the redness of life. Only the total experience of being can transform the ideal state of the albedo to a fully human mode of existence."
In terms of the left diagram, at the center of the alchemical process is a symbolic impasse. and the only way that that impasse can be broached is to introduce oneself into the process. And only the effect of introducing of oneself into the process allows for the further development. That is to say one can in a manipulative way use models or exterior processes to develop a sense of symbolic wholeness. But without bringing one's own life into play that's as far as you can go. And the constellation of the individual, a living person, requires your own participation. Your own sacrifice. So that in a way that second phase, that second half of alchemy, is literally the making of the altar itself. The giving of yourself to that process. The giving of it by sacrifice of your own lifeblood. And this is the stage of the reddening. So that when the alchemists them talk about the the tincture, the red tincture, the talking religiously about their own participation.
I won't take it much further than this week. But we'll come back to it. We have two more weeks and we'll go into it. And I got some slides to illustrate this. Let's take a break.
Some questions or observations. I must tell you that I have been lecturing on this a long time. This material. We have a catalog here of over 700 cassettes available and that's just this latest thing. And it's impossible to mention everything at once. No questions. Well let's just wait silently for this extension. I can use the break.
There's a series of slides and I put together to to treat you. To entertain you. I figured this would be confusing enough the opening hour that you needed some dessert.
Question from the room: Can you tell us a little bit more about **inaudible few words** and what it is. **inaudible several words*
It had a very complex liturgy and ritual. And basically there's a polarity between heaven and earth, light and dark, good and evil. And Mithra occupied the contact point in between. And when Zoroaster came in and introduced, around the time of oh I imagine it must have been about probably around the time of Solomon. Around that time. About 900 B.C. He used Mithra and five or six other ancient figures as aspects of witnesses to truth and truthfulness. Because they were not prejudiced for either world, heaven or earth. And so Mithra became relegated for quite some time about 800 years into this sense of being an image of truth telling. Our verification for rightness. And became symbolic not so much of good but of the balance between good and evil. And so that there's that kind of an element going in there.
Cumont's studies have never been eclipsed because he had tremendous intelligence. Individuals around that time, this is 1903. Extremely fine individual.
Let me get to the slides and then we'll see what can we do. What can we do? Turn the light out and then lets sit it on a chair. Sit on this chair and **inaudible word**
These first slides are of Carl Jung.
Let's go back to the **inaudible few words** for a moment. Go back.
They're in backwards as you might know. Let's see on the first one. Let's stay there all right even backwards you can see.
Now here's Jung with his family. I went to get an image of him. He's mature. He's in his forties. He has his position.he has his degrees. He has his family. His responsibilities. This is before any other of the mandala work. Any of the alchemical work. Before any of that occurred.
Now let's see the next slide. The next slide it was about twenty years later. This is in the 1930's. This is in the Eranos conferences in Ascona. And you can see him here with his expanded family. Those fellow lectures, those fellow explorers. You can see Tony Wolf against the fall wall there. I believe **inaudible name** is in there. And Jung is here on our right. There has been in those 20 years a tremendous change in personality of Carl Jung.
Now let's look at the next slide. The third slide. This is Jung with his family now. This is 1949. His family now are his books and his thoughts. His scintillating observations. His qualities.
And now let's go to one 10 years later. This is Jung in 1959. And I think in these four images you can see a trajectory of a man coming into a charismatic living vitality.
This is him by his lake in Bollingen. This is the last addition to the house at Bollingen. Remember he added every four years to the house over a long period of time. He added finally until it had two towers and a large bedroom connecting them. And then there was something missing. It finally came to him that it wasn't another room but that it was a space which was defined. This little courtyard. That the fourth part of an eternal quatinary very often isn't enclosed. And in just that way the spirit is different from the individual. In that it is an openness. It is paradoxically defined openness. Where the individual is the capstone to the mask and symbol. The individual I think is the substantiation of oneself. It is still that quatinary, that fourth part that openness which one consciously has. As the courtyard here at Bollingen.
I think I have one more slide of Jung. A slide before he died. He was 86 years old. Three weeks before he died he was seated with the Japanese kimono and Miguel Serrano was interviewing him. And Jung was surrounded by **inaudible few words** and a few other things. And a strange kind of a light surrounds them. And you can see the defined character in Jung here. **few inaudible words**
And I have some other slides. This is American mystic. This is a musician name Ella Hivanus(?). And I think that if you would like to get some musical sense of the mysteries of transformation the musical works of Ella Hivanus(?). He wrote two or three hundred works. Most of them are recorded. born in Boston and I think died a few years ago. And see the next slide is a symbol which is on all of his records. Of this ruined old archaic Christian castle. He was of Armenian Scottish descent. And this was a old little chapel. The symbol of an old ancient chapel. A picture of it. And then the next slide.
The archetype of expression is characteristic. The world round for all time. Here is an ancient ceremonial mountain from Ohio. From the Hautwell(?) Indian culture. Here again you can see that the quatinary is extremely well developed. So that at the cardinal points you have access. You have the ramps going up. And at the intermediate points one has the development of the square. So that essential even though one has a quatinary in a psychic structure in the spiritual wholeness of it there's a double quantinary. Which the classical **inaudible** for the phase for this with the octave, the eight.
Jung's gnostic ring had a serpent on it. And over the serpent was the smiling face of a woman. And underneath was the number eight.
And let's go to the next slide. Here again, this is a Navajo sand painting. This is from the first volume published in the Bollingen series, 1945. Here is the, the quaternary in Navajo ceremony for infusing courage in heart. It's about the individual. Individuals who are going off the back. In this case it was during the second war.
And let's see the next slide which is detailed in the center. Here again you see the double quatinary. And you see that the access to the center is by virtue of the structure, not for anything else. And that the center is not a thing in itself but is it focus by virtue of the structure. So that the approach, the initial approach and the goal both are there courtesy of the way in which the structure occurs. This makes it arcane.
This is an image from primordial man. And I think I just wanted to include that here to show you that this is from the center of the Sahara Desert. The Tibesti and Atlas mountains. This is from about 9,000 B.C. This is when man was using a completely different orientation for symbolic self-organization. And you can see here that there is a great affinity between man and animals. And at one time there was a tremendous emphasis in the archetypal civilization of the self in terms of domestic animals. And before that particular phase there was an affinity with the wild animals that one lived with. In this case running with the the gazelle and so forth. He's not herdsman. But he's not a hunter either. and at this particular phase, some 11,000 years ago this is a very good expression of the fullness of man. Incidentally these images and these feelings are recoverable from ourselves. They're still there.
Next slide. This is a great American sage Black Elk. And usually we see very odd photographs of Black Elk when he exists being very much the humble old man. This was taken in 1945. This is a copy from photograph that Mr. Hall had of Black Elk. That he is standing up holding up the talisman(?) and the hands of peace there. I tried to show you images of the integrated self and the way in which it has different expressions.
Next one please. This is a sketch of the biology of the **inaudible 2 words** sperm. And what is peculiar about this is this is not from the 20th century textbook of biology. This is something that was done 700 years ago by the great alchemist Roger Bacon. This was made about 1267. And Roger Bacon is like most great alchemists is a very great figures for internal division. All great alchemists were capable of the division between truth and reality. Right down to the structural level.
Let's see the next slide which is very similar to this. This is the egg and the sperm. The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio. Which is from incidentally about the same time that Roger Bacon made his document. They also did not have microscopes and so forth. But understood they see the basic, the basic complementarities that make life possible.
This is from classical Alexandria. Almost all of the images of the Alexandria and presentation of divinity so often were destroyed. But this one is, was on a **inaudible word** ring. And here Serapis and he's holding in one arm, crooked is the cornucopia. And in the other hand is the open crown. Not the laurel leaf crown or the Roman crown but the crown by which the butterfly of the soul may be free. And so here's an Alexandrian presentation from about 200-100 or 200 A.D. of the God of life. Or the image of the, the way in which life is freed by man's action.
Next one. I thought you might like to see what an Alexandrian woman looks like about 100 A.D. We tend to think of them as very ancient people and perhaps primitive and so forth. And you can see that there's, everything is sophisticated about them. Extremely alert intelligence and penetrative(?).
Next one. Here's a series of slides I tried to take now a series of four images to show the way in which the alchemical development has become a structural integral part of the language artistic expression in the late 20th century happened. That is to say we have internalized the alchemical process to the extent now that we can use it. Even one is tempted to say unconsciously but in this case it's being used artistically. So here's Andrea Wyeth in the series. The first one she's in her own room. The next one is entitled her room but she is not here. Just the room. And here she is outside. You recognize it it's Christina's world. Outside able to look at the house.
This move now, this is the stage of the individual. First of the stage of mask-like existence. And these three of engendering existence. One is only in one room **inaudible word** as it were. **inaudible few words** then comes the symbol. Where what is a alert enough is able to synthesize. Able to to integrate enough so that one doesn't dominate the scene. One can be into the scene as an integral part of it. And here the individual is able to step outside of the scene. The scene is fairly complete. And then fourth stage, the spiritual stage why it presents it in this form.
I think I have another series here from another artist. Let's go. This is Boris Graves, American artist. And I'm going to show the same alchemical sequence in four slides in four of his paintings. Graves I think may still be alive. I'm not sure. Here's the first one. And very often this is, this is characteristic. The ocean internal. The world of illusion. then it's refinement. Here to being is almost lost in the collection of the energy around the central figure. This is symbolic stage. Here's the individual, the internalization of the light. The glowing. It's almost halfway between a bird and an inverted challis. and then fourth stage is the spiritual stage. The freedom, the penetration through to, to the other realms. Out of one's self.
Here is a similar expression of that spiritual penetration. Instead of where it's grey. And this is from Hildegard of Bingen. Who was a companion for Bernard of Clairvaux during some of the time. Great correspondence with him. This is one of her visions from about the 11th century.
If we get struck in the symbol making capacity. If we don't develop the individuality out from that, then there comes this kind of a regressive capacity where when become neurotic. Anxious in that condition. And the negative aspect of the integration begin to work.
And here are two versions. Graves called the blind bird. Multiple. This one and the next one also. Being stuck in the integration. The material is integrated but one hasn't grown with it. **inaudible two words**
Next one please. But in individuation and growth and development one finally comes out of the symbolic integration beyond the abstract understanding of it. Through the individual to the helper. This is again my Graves symbolizing the spirit as a powerful wise bird. There's another version. I think these paintings just have the title Guardian. The individiual spiritual capacity of **inaudible few words** is a very powerful development. Open. Arcane open.
Here's Mock Ernst and I've chosen four of his works to show this same process. This is Ernst when he was about 75. These are in two year intervals. And these began in Sedona Arizona. And here you see the landscape and the inscape, the internal quality of integration mixed together. There is a spectrum but the spectrum is heavily influenced by undifferentiated mixture. It's not a unit even it's a mixture.
The next one shows a development. There is some differentiation. The bird like shape being the sky itself. The structure of the geologic layers of the landscape are the same for The Bird in Light. And then the differentiation springs into a new quality. The development at the stage of the individual. Not just the symbolic differentiation but an individual **inaudible word**. And the spiritual identity. These were done in two year intervals from the late 50's through like mid-1960's.
Here are a couple of images from The Book of Kells, 9th century. the late 800's. Started up in the Midlands of England and carried over to County Meath Ireland. This is the quatinary of the four Gospels arranged around the center. And in this particular development of this mandala there is only the decoration. But later on in The Book of Kells. The next slide. There you find that the center has developed and personifies the individual. Here is Jesus at the center holding the red book. This is the individual. And then there's a development beyond this.
The next one. standing outside of the expression of teaching, of using the book. Not occupying the center but giving the center over to the perception of the student. To those who will read this. Who are reading for their development, for their edification. And so in this way the highest development is not so much the attainment of individuality but the attainment of selfishlessness of the helper.
These are alchemical manuscripts. This is from our vault downstairs. This is the title page of the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, The Ampitheatre of Eternal Wisdom done by Heinrich Khunrath. And one of the great alchemical computation compilations, about 1509.
And next slide. This is the author. And Jung refers to Khunrath quite a number of times. The reason why alchemists from the early 1600's are referred to so often is because this was the classic apex of the development.
Here is an illustration from Khunrath and you can see the alchemists tray here. And his prayer rug. And his **inaudible word**. Here are all his instruments and **inaudible word** and so forth.
I thought you might like to see we have Salomon Trismosin's degree for **inaudible a sentence or so**. This was his alchemical degree. That is to say he had a, he had a degree from Trismosin in physical alchemy. And his spiritual teacher was Johann Trithemius. The abbot **inaudible word or two** that worked with Paracelsus together. And Paracelsus is the last great figure who had both elements, both traditions, given to the same person. I think we have a slide here of Paracelsus. In backwards as usual.
Do we not have a slide of Trismosin?
There doesn't appear to be.
No? That's alright. Let's go beyond. Let's go one, one slide further. There he is. That's the alchemical teacher of Paracelsus. This is a sketch done around 1539. This is legitimate classical very great alchemist. And I think you can see in the features. He do what he was doing.
This is from the title page where all of those documents occurs. It's not a book that's published. It's a manuscript copy. There's only one in the world. And you can see here the necessary presentation of the the iosys, the red stage, the tincture. And it presented here symbolically the words in the negrito would not show up without the tincture.
I thought you might like to see some humility from me. And so here are some sketches that are from my alchemical past. And and some peculiar sketches that got ahold of me at some time. And who knows what it means. But I think it's a mask or something.
And then the next one is a symbolic illustration that came out to me one time. And fortunately I was able to resist going to the galleries in New York.
The next slide shows a more integrated expression of oneself. This is the desk I teach at at the **inaudible 2 or 3 words** Tuesdays and Saturdays. And I was hard pressed to try. And by the fourth stage, the spiritual stage, I thought to show you the chair. And then to complete it I thought I'd show you the man.
We'll see you next week.
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