Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-1956)
Presented on: Thursday, September 24, 1987
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 13 of 13
Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-1956), Part Two: Quintessence and Art
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, September 24, 1987
Transcript:
The date of September 24th 1987. This is the last lecture in the series of lectures at The Philosophical Research Society by Roger Weir on a general subject of the alchemical core of Jung's work. Tonight's lecture is the second part of Mysterium Coniunctionis: The Quintessence and Art
There are some sheets there on the table if you are interested. If you have become somewhat accustomed to my circa me Lucia, circumlocution why this may be of interest to you. I'll be giving a series on Tuesday nights about the archetype of the mysterious person. And all the information is on the sheets there. You can **inaudible word** look at it and try it out and see how it works.
Here next week we'll be investigating a very needed element which has been missing from Western assessments for a long time. In some very arcane way the tremendous explosion of consciousness in the West in 1st century A.D. influenced India. And we are generally under the impression that somehow all the yogis are in India and they come to us or we go to them. But the truth of the matter is is that in the 1st century of our common era in the West the consciousness of the West was the highest there is, there was at that time in the world. And we've been struggling ever since to assimilate and digest the incredible insights which our distant ancestors at that time were capable of. And the way in which India received this Western wave of insight produced Mahayana Buddhism. And so the series here on Tuesdays will explore the way in which the Indian mind in its Buddhist receptivity received the impress of the Western arcane consciousness at that time. And then we'll follow it in a readout. And what is interesting is that because of the transformation of the Indian consciousness by the Hellenistic hermetic insight.
There was a development in China which has become of course ethical for our concern. And that is to say that alchemy in China changed its nature around the 4th century A.D. And it's actually Chinese Daoist alchemy that becomes the operative transformative center in Arabic alchemy. The Arabic word elixir which becomes very much current in 12th century alchemy was never there in Western alchemy until the Chinese through the Arabic consciousness brought it in. And we'll, we'll try and trace the origins and beginnings of that.
Tonight I would like to try and close up and remind you that there are many elements in Jung's writings which are very difficult to address. and because of the lack of certain materials I was not able to take the Aon and the resulting developments in Answer to Job and in Synchronicity to their full completion. So at some time next year I'll do that. I'll take four texts. I'll take the Aon, The Answer to Job, Synchronicity and The Mysterium Coniunctionis and go over and tighten up in a series, maybe four or five or six lectures. That particular development.
But as I say the feminine contribution there by Marie-Louise von France and by Jungs's own wife Emma Jung is indispensable. And without all the materials that simply can't be done. Jung was extraordinarily sensitive to the indispensability of women's intelligence all his life. But after 1944 he almost never moved without opening himself up to the revising grace of having exposed his ideas to feminine intelligence. It's one of the really great high-water marks of Jung's personality that he was able to understand that this is a very necessary sharing process. Man alone often is very bright and meteor light causes mysterious waves but doesn't do much illuminating of the landscape.
In Emma Jung's short book called Anima Animus, which were two lectures. One given in 1931 and one right at the end of her life in the early 1950's. She mentions only a few precursors to her writing. Her husband of course among them. The great French anthropologist paleontologist Lucien levy brew. And she mentions a third individual C.G. Carus. C-a-r-u-s. Carl Gustav Carus. And mentions that he was definitely a precursor of hers.
Jung also mentions Carus. In fact in the epilogue of Mysterium Coniunctionis he writes, "Just as alchemy tapping its way in the dark groped through the endless mazes of its theoretical assumptions and practical experiments over a course of many centuries, so the psychology of the unconscious that began with C.G. Carus took up the trail that had been lost by the alchemists. This happened remarkably enough at a moment in history when the aspirations of the alchemists had found their highest poetic expression in Goethe's Faust."
He also mentioned C.G. Carus specifically again in the volume in The Collected Works volume nine part one, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. There he wrote, "Although various philosophers among them Leibniz, Konte and Schelling had already pointed out very clearly to the problem of the dark side of the psyche. It was a physician who felt impelled from his scientific and medical experience to point to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche. This was C.G. Carus. The authority whom Edward von Hartman followed. And in recent times it was again medical psychology that approached the problem of the unconscious without philosophical preconceptions." And so on.
It's interesting that in all of the pointed authoritative designations to C.G. Carus that he never once is mentioned by Jung or by his wife or any of the Jungians for the fact that he was not famous for what the Jung's point out. He was famous as an esoteric romantic painter who was a physician by trade. In fact he was a lecturer on anatomy and physiology in Dresden. But he was the member of a very esoteric circle of friends. When we wish to understand Carus and we go back and check on him, we realize that his mentor. And always when you're looking to understand someone you look to see who did they study with. Who, who have they heard? Because very often and the development of the self as opposed to the development of the ego it's who you come in contact with. that uh develops you. In India this power of darshan is always very consciously expressed in the society. In the West it's true also.
Carus. C.G. Carus, not C.G. Jung but C.G. Carus was a member of a group and the mentor of that group was a painter named Caspar David Friedrich. And Caspar David Friedrich was an extraordinary painter who was completely forgotten until about the 1950's. And suddenly Caspar David Friedrich is extremely interesting. He oh..he was the prime German Romantic painter. He was the compliment in painting art to those individuals like Schiller or Goethe. And it's a very interesting combination there. His landscapes or seascapes almost always feature the isolated individual in face of an enormous vast unknown.
And if you have been coming here to the lecture series you realize that the basic opposition that comes into view increasingly as one individuates, is that as you come into focus everything else, everything else, increasingly seems like it has no relation whatsoever. That individuation up to a certain transitive point becomes an isolating experience more and more so. So that one of the basic fallouts of the path of individuation is that one increasingly realizes that you are cut off. The dissociation of personality is standard fair. It always happens. So that if one has a predisposition to think that a disassociative state is a permanent illness one is convinced that one is going crazy. You're doing just the worst thing you can possibly do. And so one tries everything you can do to anesthetize yourself and halt the process. Pills, money, process, whatever. Parachuting, whatever, and all of it is illusory.
Caspar David Friedrich paintings always pointed out the symbolical power of landscape. And that landscape somehow was a vehicle for a religious expression for men. There's a kind of a pantheistic quality to this. But the portraits always included the individual who is trying somehow to manifest his soul in accordance with a universal soul. That behind this seemingly infinite vast distant landscape is an affine soul, a universal soul. Which has a direct link to one's own soul within. And so the great romantic cry, Chalet of Beethoven. Any of the individuals of the great romantic era is always that man must be a hero to find God. One must be able to step out individually away from every classical symmetry that offered security and sustenance. Because the symmetry in every case is only a decoration in a landscape which truly is not man's home. It's only a symbolic home. It's only an allegorical home. That his real home is somehow beyond that. And so something must be evoked from the individual.
This whole circle was interested in folklore and fairy tales. And out of this group C.G. Carus wrote a number of books. The most famous one that Jung refers to is called psyche published in 1846. And at this time Carus was a lecturer in anatomy and physiology. And soon after writing Psyche he wrote a series of books. Here are their titles translated into English. Nature and Idea, Symbols of Human Gestalts, Comparative Psychology. All of this done in the 1860's. As well as writings on anatomy, physiology and psychology. He is a clear forerunner of a small group of individuals who directly influenced Jung,
The link between C.G. Jung and C.G. Carus is the ideas of Edward von Hartman. And you won't find many English translations. But another member of this group along with Caspar David Friedrich and C.G. Carus, was a young poet who took the name Novals. Novalis is a symbolic name. It means literally esoterically in German writings from the clearing. From someone who has not only felled the trees and an overgrowth but has ploughed the land. And from this renewed clearing where growth is possible, this is no Novalis.
And Novalis
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is most famous work is a short romantic
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epic poem called Hymns to the Night. And I'll give you a few quotations and you can see the kind of quality of vivifying imagery which is there at the beginning of the 19th century and which you is the Jung who picks it up at the end of the 19th century.
This is Novalis. "What living man and sense endowed loves not above all the wonders of space spread around him. The universally gladdening light with its colors, its rays and waves. It's gentle omnipresence as awakening day. As in most soul of life it is breathed by the giant realm of the restless stars. And floats dancing in its azure flood. It is breathed by the glittering and everlasting reposeful stone." And he goes on in this light.
And it's just a short ship to see that he's writing here about this, azure vehicle for a light is very much the kielime(?) in alchemy. And the stone is the lapis in alchemy.
And he goes on and writes, "How in complement to the light there is the night. Aside I turned to the holy ineffable mysterious night. Far below lies the world sunken in a profound pit waste and solitary in its place. Through the strings of the heart laughs deep sadness." It's the melancholia, you see. The alchemists. "I seek his dots of drops of dew to subside and to blend with ashes." And you recognize the alchemical formulaic process here. "Distances of memory. Desires of youth. Dreams of childhood. The brief joys and futile hopes of the whole of long life come and gray arrainment. Like evening mists after the Sun setting. In other realms the light has pitched its joyous tents. Might it never return to its own children who with a faith of innocence abide its coming. What is it that wells thus suddenly full of premonition beneath my heart and swallows down the soft air of sadness."
These are the kinds of writings. These are the kinds of activities of the spirit that were current in the late 1790's, early 1800's. In this group that has a direct link with Carl Jung. And if you look at Jung's works you will see, for instance in some of the illustrated books on Jung. When he's a young man he paints these very eerie ethereal landscapes. And you'll see if you look at Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes that Jung's landscapes are very much in the same school. And if you look at his own writings in relationship to C.G. Carus you'll, you'll see that. and the tone of Novalis and so forth penetrating through.
But the philosophic genius that was a major part of the group and who gave a system to this romantic impetus was a man named Schilling. And I don't have time to go into it here. But some of Schilling has been translated, not very much. But I'll just give you a title and it's enough. From Yale University Press this book came out a couple of years ago, 1983. It's A Study of Schilling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom. And one can easily see just reading a few pages the system of freedom, the way of individuation is already prefigured here in Schilling.
So one has this cue that there are fore runners. There are seeds that Jung develops. Not only in his thought and in his practice but in himself as well.
He writes in the epilogue to Mysterium Coniunctionis that alchemy is very much a religious process. He calls it an Opus divinum, a a divine work. But that what is distinctive about alchemy is it is not practiced by a group of people. There is no congregation. Or rather the congregation in this religious rite consists of a single questing individual. It is the questing individual who is the congregation in the religious rituals of alchemy. And that as he writes here, "An individual undertaking on which the Adept staked his whole soul for the transcendental purpose of producing a unity." And the unity of course is the unio mentalis. and as we have seen and Jung writes it was a work of reconciliation between apparently incompatible opposites. Which characteristically were understood not merely as the natural hostility of the physical elements but at the same time as a moral conflict.
And when it was placed in its original form of me against the cosmos, what is conspicuous there is that the only possible bridge is the gulf between us. It is the only possible bridge. How do you work with the Gulf? And finally the reformulation of that polarity came down to an element in me which is vital to me which is my soul. And an element in the cosmos which is equally vital to the cosmos. Which is its spirit. So that the bridge finally came to be seen is not as this unbridgeable gulf between me and the cosmos. Between my finiteness and its infinitness. But between the very peculiar quality of my soul as its vitalizing spark and that vitalizing sparke the spirit. And so the unio mentalis was a meeting of the soul and the spirit. and when the soul and spirit were able to be bridged by a very arcane method of interchange. So that the essential nature of the soul became spiritual. And the essential nature of the spirit became informed of one soulness. Then a unio mentalis was not only possible but had been affected.
Is this so? Is this in fact what is there at the core of the alchemical labyrinth? Where can we find this? Jung as we have seen show that the late Alchemist Gerhart Dorn came closest to it. But if you remember the alchemical language was carrying on an original pattern of expression which appeared in the Gnostics. And so if one would turn to the Gnostics one would, should be able to find that original pattern. And yet when one turns to the Gnostic material up until the present day it's been almost impossible. it is as garbled as the alchemical language. And one only suppose that garbledness was characteristic of the whole process in its expression.
Except for the discovery of the Nag Hammadi material. And in the Nag Hammadi material, out of the 13 books that were found in Egypt one of the books only one of them made its way outside of Egypt. And made its way into the hands of none other than C.G. Jung. In fact was given the title Codex Jung. And in the Jung Codex the most important of the writings is given the title of Gospel of Truth. And from all investigations Gospel of Truth was written by none other than the first really great Gnostic writer Valentinus. Somewhere around 120-130 A.D. in Alexandria. And if we look at just a couple of quotations from the Gospel of Truth, which is in a copy any copy of Nag Hammadi library in English. How does Valentinus express it? He says this, "The father, this is the knowledge of the Living Book which he revealed to the Aons to the last of its letters. Revealing how they are not vowels nor are they consonants. So that one might read them and think of something foolish." That is to say they're not vowels. They're not consonants. Are they then just garbled sounds. "But they are letters of the truth which they alone speak who know them." That is to say the letters are in between what would be construed as vowels or what would be construed as consonants. Not that there is a third form of speech but that there is an essential nature to speech. An essential basis to speech which is not yet differentiate into vowels and consonants. For structurally vowels and consonants are parts of speech. They're syntactical structural parts of speech. But speech itself not as a phenomenon but as a nemunan. Speech as a unified quality. Speech where none of the letters is a part technically but each expresses only the whole. This is the divine language. This is what Valentinus is talking about.
And so he writes, "But they are letters of the truth which they alone speak who know them. Each letter is a complete thought like a complete book since there are letters written by the unity. The Father having written them for the Aons. In order that by means of his letters they should know the father." When you can hear that language which is undeferrentiable. Which is undifferentiated. One then is hearing the father in Valentinus' gnostic vision in the Gospel of Truth.
He writes, just a few more quotations here. He writes, "his wisdom. the father's wisdom contemplates the word. His teaching utters it. his knowledge has revealed it. His forbearance is a crown upon it. His gladness is in harmony with it. His glory has exalted it his image has revealed it. His repose has received it into itself. His love has made a body over it. His vitality has embraced it." In this way that is because of all of the junctures of these processes coming to the very same focus. What does that focus? The focus of all these processes is the word. "In this way the word of the father goes forth in the all. As the fruit of his heart and an impression of his will but it supports the all. It chooses it. And also receives the impression of the all. Purifying it. Bringing it back into the father, into the mother. Jesus of the infiniteness of gentleness."
And so Valentinus reveals here in the Gospel of Truth that there is a transformative medium in a particular kind of language. That language like nature is not at all really objective in the sense of being only phenomenal. But that language like nature is a transformational medium. That any element in language can essentially be transformed into its universal allness. Its unity. Any consonant, any vowel, can be taken back to that state of letterness which the father letters. So to then nature, any element in nature, can be taken back to that state. But like nature and language being transformative mediums there is an another medium which is transformative and that is energy.
So that the very basis of these three transformative mediums, there is a sharing of one reality. Energy essentially, language essentially, nature essentially come into a single fabric of reality. And this is given the name unus mundus, the one world.
When the spirit and the soul have been bridged. And that the bridging of the two of them is by that esoteric third. The esoteric third not being so much the a element with them but the exchange of the essences between the two. Creates by that exchange a third quality. It's like in Chinese Daoist thought the symbol of the Tai Chi is a third. the yin and the yang are two and by their exchange together they create the unity of the Tai Chi. The Tai Chi as a unity is a third. It is the spirit. So in a way the third is not so much an element of either end of the polarity but is the spirit of reconciliation between the two. It's a holy spirit. By virtue of the soul being able to enter into an exchange relationship with the father. A spirit of reconciliation is created between the individual and the divine. This spirit then enters into the individual and one soul is able to enter into the very essential quality of the spirit. Thus the unio mentalis is not just a mental operation at all. But is the first stage of the alchemical coniunctio.
The second phase of the coniunctio is the bringing together of the unio mentalis with the body. The unio mentalis comes back into conjunction with the body. And the second stage of the coniunctio is an extremely delicate process. There is a transformative medium for the unio mentalis to come back into conjunction with the body. And that transformative medium was called in alchemy the aqua permanence. And the visual symbol of the aqua permanence was quicksilver. Permanent water. Mercury. The Spiritistus Mercurius in the form of the aqua permanence accepts the body and accepts the unio mentalis together. Accepts them as a transformative medium. So that very much the way in which the spirit and the soul came together was through the transformative medium of a arcane language. And the way in which the unio mentalis, which is the resultant of that, comes into conjunction with the body is through the transformative medium of energy in the form of the spiritist mercurius acting and the aqua permanence. So that the unio mentalis and the body come together, dissolve together. And there is a quality in the aqua permanence which receives them this juncture.
That quality was a distillation of mercury. Which eventually became a clear liquid. but before the liquid became clear it had a red color, rosy red color like bright rose. Very close and incidentally to the color of blood after blood has oxidized for a while. You know when blood comes out it's sort of very dark blue red and then after a while when it's oxidized a little bit it becomes redder. If you dissolve oxidized blood in water you get that kind of red tincture. It was very much like that. So this red tincture had to be purified into the clearness. So that if one held the clear water up to the sky one would see only sky-blue in the water. Hence that water in alchemy was called the kyla. So that there is a highly vidiated state of the aqua permanence, which was the kyla. Which meant then not only that the body and the unio mentalis had been brought together but that they were able then to be given into a third stage of the coniunctionio. And the third stage was the joining together of the unis mundus.
Now this is a an outline as best you, you will find out of Jung for this this process. I was going to give you some more from Valentinus but I think I'll hold that back.
Jung writes here at the beginning of the conjunction. He quotes Herbert Silver who rightly called the coniunctio the central idea of the alchemical procedure. That it's a misdirection to be preoccupied with the various stages. To think well there are twelve stages or there are seven stages. What are these stages? because in every instance if one is keeping track in that way, one is keeping track of a model against one measures one's position. Where am I in this? But in fact the transformation never happens in a series sequence. It always occurs in what is called in mathematics a, a matrix. Because the processes that are leading to the transformation are actually vectors which have relationships between them and only occur effectively in a matrix. And this is why constantly in alchemy you run across the term matrix. This is why the impure feminine, which is called incidentally a meratrux, that is the the whorish nature the infidelity of the feminine is meratrix. But the fidelity of the feminine is a matrix. Which has a kind of a mother like quality of accepting all of the elements together and forming them into a family together. Making, making it possible for them to come together. Creates this matrix situation where the transformation can take place.
So that the coniunctio is very peculiar. If we think of it in terms of stages we're going to be led astray all the time. Yes there are stages but for each individual the stages occur in a somewhat individualized, personally stylized sequence. You have to find your own sequence. There may be many occasions for a distillation. And maybe only one for a separation. There may be a condition where there are many extractions necessary before there can be any kind of a distillation. Who knows. So that it's fools gold to try to follow the process in a kind of a rote formulaic way. Which is why when you see even very sophisticated writings on alchemy from a Jungian standpoint. I won't mention names but you'll see them quite often. Oh well this is this process and this is this process. And there's a scholarly proliferation of associations and illustrations. And it looks very very good. And it's actually extraneous. It is actually extraneous.
The central idea is the coniunctio and the realization that there is a three-stage process going on here. And that each of the transformations there is a complete giving up of what you had achieved previously. So if you're keeping score and being very possessive and proud about the position that you have achieved that's about as far as your gonna go. It's the old song. As soon as you say boy I've gotten this far that's as far as you will go. That's like putting the, the dot. And because nothing stands still there's usually a regression after that. Pride comes before the fall. It usually ends up worse.
Jung writes, "It is therefore not surprising that the adepts as we have seen in the previous chapters always piled up vast numbers of synonyms to express the mysterious nature of the substances." Not in order to impress anybody about their scholarship. But in order to say it's not this, it's not that. Yes it's like this. It's like this. It's like this. But you have to find out what it is yourself. Here are all these hints and clues but they're presented not with exactness but in a matrix. And that this matrix requires you to put yourself in the mode of active imagination, into playing in that process. And only by doing that will one of those elements seem right to you. And one of those elements is right for you to develop. The other ones are right for other people, not for you.
So that, he writes, "It is apparent from this explanation that the desperately evasive and universal mercurius, that proteus twinkling in a myriad shapes and colors, is none other than the unus mundis itself."
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"It is apparent from this explanation that the desperately evasive in universal mercurius that Proteus twinkling in the myriad shapes and colors is none other than the unus mundus itself." Proteus comes from The Odyssey. Proteus is an individual who could change into many different shapes. And always eluded people who would ask him questions. And Odysseus held on to him even though he evolved into many terrifying shapes and earned the right than to ask him questions because Proteus as the old man of the sea knows many things.
"But desperately evasive and universal mercurius is none other than the unus Mundus." The original not differentiated unity of the world or a being. That the reality of the spirit mercurius is that it already is the unus mundus. So that there is no differentiation there possible at all in any real way. that any discrimination, any kind of a differentiation in provisional of it. And only in terms of one's individuality can you pursue that provisionality back to its true root in the unbroken unity. I don't know if that's coming through or not.
Which is why the alchemical idea of the spark of truth, the scintilli is so extremely important. That the key always is that the spirit within you is going to respond in some way to some little tab sticking out from this labyrinth of associative situations. And that is the tab which you can follow back to its source in the unus mundus. And in fact the whole alchemical process is one of coming back to the origin. Starting off from one's individuality. extracting one soul first. Going through the process to the **inaudbile 2 words**. Coming back here to the uniting together the body and finally coming back to the unus mundus but the fourth stage is always here. **inaudible word** materials already there. So whatever it is that you're working with is the goal as well as the key.
So the alchemical symbol of expressing this with the ourobors, the serpent swallowing its tail. Where you're going to finally get to is right here. It's just that what is here is going to be in its true form. Instead of being this rock, this piece of junk you're going to be able to see as the laws of the civil of Kumai said I but I will show you the world in the grain of sand. And almost nobody can hear that. That she is telling absolute truth. Not provisional truth. She is telling absolute truth. That one has to have this kind of tenacity the belief that once individuality is somehow a truthful necessity. You may be a throwaway speck in the face of the cosmos as far as everyone else is concerned. But as far as you're concerned this little scrap of dust has a veracity which must be followed up. Which has in fact an affinity somewhere in this cosmos. With a little tab hanging out from the process which will lead one back to the wholeness.
And the fact that the very first process that one comes into it dissociation, is dissembling, is encouraging in a very paradoxical way. Because it shows the first thing that goes is the false self. The false egotistical frame of reference. The first thing that happens.
The real spirit is incapable being dissociated. His unity ever dissociated from unity is impossible. So that one can experience a kind of a vertigo, an immediate sign that one is getting better. Now I can experience uneasyness and anxiety in this condition it's a sign of health. Sign of getting loose and fed up from a situaiton which the Gnostics called a delusional prison. A junkie made by some Demiurge. So that this, this stage the alchemists the stages of the negrito is what transpired somewhere around in here.
In writing on this Jung says that a pattern is almost always there and will express itself as a mandala. he writes, "The mandala symbolizes by its central point the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as the multiplicity of the phenomenal world." That is to say there's a double process here. The mandala which has a centered point indicates that all the archetypal patterns come together in a single focus. Better than thinking of a point one thinks of them vanishing in upon themselves. Into an invisible beyond. Rather like a black hole. But at the same time there is a feeding out from the center that all the phenomenal expressions also come from this. Mandala is immediately a symbol of the fact that the unus mundus is the only going concern there is. And that you are can we say necessarily that. For one cannot just be a part of the unity. Every letter expresses the whole.
There's an interesting discourse on this in David Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order. It's a phenomenon well understood in some levels of nuclear physics for instance. And in the Dao and so forth.
He writes, "The Arcanum of alchemy is one of these our archetypal idea that fills a gap left in a view of the world." What view of the world? The Christian view of the world. that alchemy is very intimately related to Christianity. But not just to Christianity since there was also a Daoist alchemy. There's an alchemy in India. There's an alchemy that appealed to the Arabic civilizations. That is to say there's something universal in Christianity which alchemy relates to and carries on. And Jung several times talks about this. And he writes this is on page 318 of Mysterium Coniunctionis, "In the face of all this one is driven to the conjecture the medieval alchemy, which evolved out of the Arabic tradition sometime in the 13th century and whose most eloquent witnesses the Aurora Consurgeons, was in the last resort a continuation of the doctrine of the holy ghost." Or if you will of the Holy Spirit. Which never came to very much in the church but formed an extremely powerful synthesizing thread of understanding in alchemy. And incidentally also in its counterpart. The counterpart to alchemy was the Arthurian mythological cycle centered around the Grail as a synthesizing symbol. And at some time in the future we'll, we'll go into some of that.
Why does alchemy carry this on? Why does the church not carry this on? Why does Christianity as an entity, as an ism, not have this process of the transformative spirit within it? Because the process is one of true transformation. And anything that comes into real contact with it undergoes the transformation. It is impossible to have the dry land of doctrine with this oceanic transformative highly energized medium. You can't work the Holy Spirit into the doctrines. You can't put it in buildings. You can't put it into formulaic rituals. That every time you introduce this particular element it tends to first of all dissolve the coherence of any structure that you build up. What's the saying that Nicodemus is told, the spirit comes from who knows where and goes where it will go. It's wild. it's the Joker in the deck. It's the fool in the deck. It makes possible everything. It's a zero. It doesn't go into the computations that every time you compute it's essential to take it into consideration.
So that this is a very peculiar situation. That there is a lot of Christian symbolism which comes up in alchemy. But the symbolism that comes up in alchemy always is a transformative symbolism. It always is disconcerting to anyone who would like to have the doctrine. Or who would like to have the institution. Because in a sense the only way that one can have a doctrine in an institution is to have a kind of statistical agreement among a number of people. To have some kind of an enormous everyone agrees upon is the criteria and this is the conclusion and so forth. And these are the doctrines and so forth. And alchemy is outlawed specifically always by those institutions and doctrines because it is always the corrosive element that they cannot contain. that the only crucible which can hold the alchemical process is the individual. Which means that the individual is not in any real way physically there as a static container. Otherwise the individual would not be able to host the transformative processes of the spirit. It means then by implication that the individual is very mysterious. very mysterious. Has incredible powers of transformation. That instead of being some kind of designated shape and function in name that the individual is mysteriously very, very much open to the unity of the all. Not only hopes this transformation but is that unus mundus when the transformations are fulfilled.
So the archetype of the self which becomes apparent in alchemy is that of the mysterious person. It becomes a very peculiar situation. And you can see from this that one can go very deeply into this material. And if you get interested in following this up I'll be going into it on Tuesday nights for the next six months.
Thank you.
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