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object:3.10 - The New Birth
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter


10
THE NEW BIRTH
Here is born the Empress of all honour/
The philosophers name her their daughter.
She multiplies/bears children ever again/
They are incorruptibly pure and without stain.
[Figure 10]
[525]
Our last picture is the tenth in the series, and this is certainly no
accident, for the denarius is supposed to be the perfect number. We have
shown that the axiom of Maria consists of 4, 3, 2, 1; the sum of these
numbers is 10, which stands for unity on a higher level. The unarius
represents unity in the form of the res simplex, i.e., God as auctor rerum,
while the denarius is the result of the completed work. Hence the real
meaning of the denarius is the Son of God. Although the alchemists call it
the filius philosophorum, they use it as a Christ-symbol and at the same
time employ the symbolic qualities of the ecclesiastical Christ-figure to
characterize their Rebis. It is probably correct to say that the medieval
Rebis had these Christian characteristics, but for the Hermaphroditus of
Arabic and Greek sources we must conjecture a partly pagan tradition. The
Church symbolism of sponsus and sponsa leads to the mystic union of the
two, i.e., to the anima Christi which lives in the corpus mysticum of the
Church. This unity underlies the idea of Christs androgyny, which
medieval alchemy exploited for its own ends. The much older figure of the
Hermaphroditus, whose outward aspect probably derives from a Cyprian
Venus barbata, encountered in the Eastern Church the already extant idea
of an androgynous Christ, which is no doubt connected with the Platonic
conception of the bisexual First Man, for Christ is ultimately the
Anthropos.
1
2
3
4
5Figure 10
[526]
The denarius forms the totius operis summa, the culminating point of
the work beyond which it is impossible to go except by means of the
multiplicatio. For, although the denarius represents a higher stage of unity,
it is also a multiple of 1 and can therefore be multiplied to infinity in the
ratio of 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, etc., just as the mystical body of the Church
is composed of an indefinitely large number of believers and is capable of
multiplying that number without limit. Hence the Rebis is described as the
cibus sempiternus (everlasting food), lumen indeficiens, and so forth;
hence also the assumption that the tincture replenishes itself and that the
work need only be completed once and for all time. But, since the
multiplicatio is only an attri bute of the denarius, 100 is no different from
6and no better than 10.
7
[527]
The lapis, understood as the cosmogonic First Man, is the radix ipsius,
according to the Rosarium: everything has grown from this One and
through this One. It is the Uroboros, the serpent that fertilizes and gives
birth to itself, by definition an increatum, despite a quotation from
Rosarius to the effect that Mercurius noster nobilissimus was created by
God as a res nobilis. This creatum increatum can only be listed as
another paradox. It is useless to rack our brains over this extraordinary
attitude of mind. Indeed we shall continue to do so only while we assume
that the alchemists were not being consciously and intentionally
paradoxical. It seems to me that theirs was a perfectly natural view:
anything unknowable could best be described in terms of opposites. A
longish poem in German, evidently written at about the time it was printed
in the 1550 Rosarium, explains the nature of the Hermaphroditus as
follows:
8
9
[528]
Here is born the Empress of all honour/
The philosophers name her their daughter.
She multiplies/bears children ever again/
They are incorruptibly pure and without stain.
The Queen hates death and poverty
She surpasses gold silver and jewellery/
All medicaments great and small.
Nothing upon earth is her equal/
Wherefore we say thanks to God in heaven.
O force constrains me naked woman that I am/
For unblest was my body when I first began.
And never did I become a mother/
Until the time when I was born another.
Then the power of roots and herbs did I possess/
And I triumphed over all sickness.
Then it was that I first knew my son/
And we two came together as one.
There I was made pregnant by him and gave birth
Upon a barren stretch of earth.
I became a mother yet remained a maid/
And in my nature was establishd.
Therefore my son was also my father/
As God ordained in accordance with nature.
I bore the mother who gave me birth/Through me she was born again upon earth.
To view as one what nature hath wed/
Is in our mountain most masterfully hid.
Four come together in one/
In this our magisterial Stone.
And six when seen as a trinity/
Is brought to essential unity.
To him who thinks on these things aright/
God giveth the power to put to flight
All such sicknesses as pertain
To metals and the bodies of men.
None can do that without Gods help/
And then only if he see through himself.
Out of my earth a fountain flows/
And into two streams it branching goes.
One of them runs to the Orient/
The other towards the Occident.
Two eagles fly up with feathers aflame/
Naked they fall to earth again.
Yet in full feather they rise up soon/
That fountain is Lord of sun and moon.
O Lord Jesu Christ who bestowst
The gift through the grace of thy Holy Ghost:
He unto whom it is given truly/
Understands the masters sayings entirely.
That his thoughts on the future life may dwell/
Body and soul are joined so well.
And to raise them up to their fathers kingdom/
Such is the way of art among men.
[529]
This poem is of considerable psychological interest. I have already
stressed the anima nature of the androgyne. The unblessedness of the
first body has its equivalent in the disagreeable, daemonic,
unconscious anima which we considered in the last chapter. At its
second birth, that is, as a result of the opus, this anima becomes fruitful
and is born together with her son, in the shape of the Hermaphroditus, the
product of mother-son incest. Neither fecundation nor birth impairs her
virginity. This essentially Christian paradox is connected with the
extraordinary timeless quality of the unconscious: everything has already
happened and is yet unhappened, is already dead and yet unborn. Such
paradoxical statements illustrate the potentiality of unconscious contents.
In so far as comparisons are possible at all, they are objects of memory and
10
11knowledge, and in this sense belong to the remote past; we therefore speak
of vestiges of primordial mythological ideas. But, in so far as the
unconscious manifests itself in a sudden incomprehensible invasion, it is
something that was never there before, something altogether strange, new,
and belonging to the future. The unconscious is thus the mother as well as
the daughter, and the mother has given birth to her own mother
(increatum), and her son was her father. It seems to have dawned on the
alchemists that this most monstrous of paradoxes was somehow connected
with the self, for no man can practise such an art unless it be with Gods
help, and unless he see through himself. The old masters were aware of
this, as we can see from the dialogue between Morienus and King Kalid.
Morienus relates how Hercules (the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius) told his
pupils: O sons of wisdom, know that God, the supreme and glorious
Creator, has made the world out of four unequal elements and set man as
an ornament between them. When the King begged for further
explanation, Morienus answered: Why should I tell you many things? For
this substance [i.e., the arcanum] is extracted from you, and you are its ore;
in you the philosophers find it, and, that I may speak more plainly, from
you they take it. And when you have experienced this, the love and desire
for it will be increased in you. And you shall know that this thing subsists
truly and beyond all doubt.... For in this stone the four elements are bound
together, and men liken it to the world and the composition of the world.
12
13
[530]
One gathers from this discourse that, owing to his position between
the four world-principles, man contains within himself a replica of the
world in which the unequal elements are united. This is the microcosm in
man, corresponding to the firmament or Olympus of Paracelsus: that
unknown quantity in man which is as universal and wide as the world
itself, which is in him by nature and cannot be acquired. Psychologically,
this corresponds to the collective unconscious, whose projections are to be
found everywhere in alchemy. I must refrain from adducing more proofs
of the psychological insight of the alchemists, since this has already been
done elsewhere.
14
[531]
The end of the poem hints at immortalityat the great hope of the
alchemists, the elixir vitae. As a transcendental idea, immortality cannot be
the object of experience, hence there is no argument either for or against.
But immortality as an experience of feeling is rather different. A feeling isas indisputable a reality as the existence of an idea, and can be experienced
to exactly the same degree. On many occasions I have observed that the
spontaneous manifestations of the self, i.e., the appearance of certain
symbols relating thereto, bring with them something of the timelessness of
the unconscious which expresses itself in a feeling of eternity or
immortality. Such experiences can be extraordinarily impressive. The idea
of the aqua permanens, the incorruptibilitas lapidis, the elixir vitae, the
cibus immortalis, etc., is not so very strange, since it fits in with the
phenomenology of the collective unconscious. It might seem a monstrous
presumption on the part of the alchemist to imagine himself capable, even
with Gods help, of producing an everlasting substance. This claim gives
many treatises an air of boastfulness and humbug on account of which they
have deservedly fallen into disrepute and oblivion. All the same, we should
beware of emptying out the baby with the bath water. There are treatises
that look deep into the nature of the opus and put another complexion on
alchemy. Thus the anonymous author of the Rosarium says: It is manifest,
therefore, that the stone is the master of the philosophers, as if he [the
philosopher] were to say that he does of his own nature that which he is
compelled to do; and so the philosopher is not the master, but rather the
minister, of the stone. Consequently, he who attempts through the art and
apart from nature to introduce into the matter anything which is not in it
naturally, errs, and will bewail his error. This tells us plainly enough that
the artist does not act from his own creative whim, but is driven to act by
the stone. This almighty taskmaster is none other than the self. The self
wants to be made manifest in the work, and for this reason the opus is a
process of individuation, a becoming of the self. The self is the total,
timeless man and as such corresponds to the original, spherical, bisexual
being who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious.
15
16
17
[532]
From the foregoing we can see how the opus ends with the idea of a
highly paradoxical being that defies rational analysis. The work could
hardly end in any other way, since the complexio oppositorum cannot
possibly lead to anything but a baffling paradox. Psychologically, this
means that human wholeness can only be described in antinomies, which
is always the case when dealing with a transcendental idea. By way of
comparison, we might mention the equally paradoxical corpuscular theory
and wave theory of light, although these do at least hold out the possibility
of a mathematical synthesis, which the psychological idea naturally lacks.Our paradox, however, offers the possibility of an intuitive and emotional
experience, because the unity of the self, unknowable and
incomprehensible, irradiates even the sphere of our discriminating, and
hence divided, consciousness, and, like all unconscious contents, does so
with very powerful effects. This inner unity, or experience of unity, is
expressed most forcibly by the mystics in the idea of the unio mystica, and
above all in the philosophies and religions of India, in Chinese Taoism,
and in the Zen Buddhism of Japan. From the point of view of psychology,
the names we give to the self are quite irrelevant, and so is the question of
whether or not it is real. Its psychological reality is enough for all
practical purposes. The intellect is incapable of knowing anything beyond
that anyway, and therefore its Pilate-like questionings are devoid of
meaning.
[533]
To come back to our picture: it shows an apotheosis of the Rebis, the
right side of the body being male, the left female. The figure stands on the
moon, which in this case corresponds to the feminine lunar vessel, the vas
hermeticum. Its wings betoken volatility, i.e., spirituality. In one hand it
holds a chalice with three snakes in it, or possibly one snake with three
heads; in the other, a single snake. This is an obvious allusion to the axiom
of Maria and the old dilemma of 3 and 4, and also to the mystery of the
Trinity. The three snakes in the chalice are the chthonic equivalent of the
Trinity, and the single snake represents, firstly, the unity of the three as
expressed by Maria and, secondly, the sinister serpens Mercurialis with
all its subsidiary meanings. Whether pictures of this kind are in any way
related to the Baphomet of the Templars is an open question, but the
snake symbolism certainly points to the evil principle, which, although
excluded from the Trinity, is yet somehow connected with the work of
redemption. Moreover to the left of the Rebis we also find the raven, a
synonym for the devil. The unfledged bird has disappeared: its place is
taken by the winged Rebis. To the right, there stands the sun and moon
tree, the arbor philosophica, which is the conscious equivalent of the
unconscious process of development suggested on the opposite side. The
corresponding picture of the Rebis in the second version has, instead of
the raven, a pelican plucking its breast for its young, a well-known
allegory of Christ. In the same picture a lion is prowling about behind the
Rebis and, at the bottom of the hill on which the Rebis stands, there is the
three-headed snake. The alchemical hermaphrodite is a problem in itself
18
19
20
21
22
23and really needs special elucidation. Here I will say only a few words
about the remarkable fact that the fervently desired goal of the alchemists
endeavours should be conceived under so monstrous and horrific an image.
We have proved to our satisfaction that the antithetical nature of the goal
largely accounts for the monstrosity of the corresponding symbol. But this
rational explanation does not alter the fact that the monster is a hideous
abortion and a perversion of nature. Nor is this a mere accident
undeserving of further scrutiny; it is on the contrary highly significant and
the outcome of certain psychological facts fundamental to alchemy. The
symbol of the hermaphrodite, it must be remembered, is one of the many
synonyms for the goal of the art. In order to avoid unnecessary repetition I
would refer the reader to the material collected in Psychology and
Alchemy, and particularly to the lapis-Christ parallel, to which we must
add the rarer and, for obvious reasons, generally avoided comparison of
the prima materia with God. Despite the closeness of the analogy, the
lapis is not to be understood simply as the risen Christ and the prima
materia as God; the Tabula smaragdina hints, rather, that the alchemical
mystery is a lower equivalent of the higher mysteries, a sacrament not of
the paternal mind but of maternal matter. The disappearance of
theriomorphic symbols in Christianity is here compensated by a wealth of
allegorical animal forms which tally quite well with mater natura.
Whereas the Christian figures are the product of spirit, light, and good, the
alchemical figures are creatures of night, darkness, poison, and evil. These
dark origins do much to explain the misshapen hermaphrodite, but they do
not explain everything. The crude, embryonic features of this symbol
express the immaturity of the alchemists mind, which was not sufficiently
developed to equip him for the difficulties of his task. He was
underdeveloped in two senses: firstly he did not understand the real nature
of chemical combinations, and secondly he knew nothing about the
psychological problem of projection and the unconscious. All this lay as
yet hidden in the womb of the future. The growth of natural science has
filled the first gap, and the psychology of the unconscious is endeavouring
to fill the second. Had the alchemists understood the psychological aspects
of their work, they would have been in a position to free their uniting
symbol from the grip of instinctive sexuality where, for better or worse,
mere nature, unsupported by the critical intellect, was bound to leave it.
Nature could say no more than that the combination of supreme opposites
24was a hybrid thing. And there the statement stuck, in sexuality, as always
when the potentialities of consciousness do not come to the assistance of
naturewhich could hardly have been otherwise in the Middle Ages
owing to the complete absence of psychology. So things remained until,
at the end of the nineteenth century, Freud dug up this problem again.
There now ensued what usually happens when the conscious mind collides
with the unconscious: the former is influenced and prejudiced in the
highest degree by the latter, if not actually overpowered by it. The problem
of the union of opposites had been lying there for centuries in its sexual
form, yet it had to wait until scientific enlightenment and objectivity had
advanced far enough for people to mention sexuality in scientific
conversation. The sexuality of the unconscious was instantly taken with
great seriousness and elevated to a sort of religious dogma, which has been
fanatically defended right down to the present time: such was the
fascination emanating from those contents which had last been nurtured by
the alchemists. The natural archetypes that underlie the mythologems of
incest, the hierosgamos, the divine child, etc., blossomed forthin the age
of scienceinto the theory of infantile sexuality, perversions, and incest,
while the coniunctio was rediscovered in the transference neurosis.
25
26
[534]
The sexualism of the hermaphrodite symbol completely overpowered
consciousness and gave rise to an attitude of mind which is just as
unsavoury as the old hybrid symbolism. The task that defeated the
alchemists presented itself anew: how is the profound cleavage in man and
the world to be understood, how are we to respond to it and, if possible,
abolish it? So runs the question when stripped of its natural sexual
symbolism, in which it had got stuck only because the problem could not
push its way over the threshold of the unconscious. The sexualism of these
contents always denotes an unconscious identity of the ego with some
unconscious figure (either anima or animus), and because of this the ego is
obliged, willing and reluctant at once, to be a party to the hierosgamos, or
at least to believe that it is simply and solely a matter of an erotic
consummation. And sure enough it increasingly becomes so the more one
believes it the more exclusively, that is to say, one concentrates on the
sexual aspect and the less attention one pays to the archetypal patterns. As
we have seen, the whole question invites fanaticism because it is so
painfully obvious that we are in the wrong. If, on the other hand, we
decline to accept the argument that because a thing is fascinating it is theabsolute truth, then we give ourselves a chance to see that the alluring
sexual aspect is but one among many the very one that deludes our
judgment. This aspect is always trying to deliver us into the power of a
partner who seems compounded of all the qualities we have failed to
realize in ourselves. Hence, unless we prefer to be made fools of by our
illusions, we shall, by carefully analysing every fascination, extract from it
a portion of our own personality, like a quintessence, and slowly come to
recognize that we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises
on the path of life. This, however, is a truth which only profits the man
who is temperamentally convinced of the individual and irreducible reality
of his fellow men.
[535]
We know that in the course of the dialectical process the unconscious
produces certain images of the goal. In Psychology and Alchemy I have
described a long series of dreams which contain such images (including
even a shooting target). They are mostly concerned with ideas of the
mandala type, that is, the circle and the quaternity. The latter are the
plainest and most characteristic representations of the goal. Such images
unite the opposites under the sign of the quaternio, i.e., by combining them
in the form of a cross, or else they express the idea of wholeness through
the circle or sphere. The superior type of personality may also figure as a
goal-image, though more rarely. Occasionally special stress is laid on the
luminous character of the centre. I have never come across the
hermaphrodite as a personification of the goal, but more as a symbol of the
initial state, expressing an identity with anima or animus.
[536]
These images are naturally only anticipations of a wholeness which is,
in principle, always just beyond our reach. Also, they do not invariably
indicate a subliminal readiness on the part of the patient to realize that
wholeness consciously, at a later stage; often they mean no more than a
temporary compensation of chaotic confusion and lack of orientation.
Fundamentally, of course, they always point to the self, the container and
organizer of all opposites. But at the moment of their appearance they
merely indicate the possibility of order in wholeness.
[537]
What the alchemist tried to express with his Rebis and his squaring of
the circle, and what the modern man also tries to express when he draws
patterns of circles and quaternities, is wholenessa wholeness that
resolves all opposition and puts an end to conflict, or at least draws itssting. The symbol of this is a coincidentia oppositorum which, as we
know, Nicholas of Cusa identified with God. It is far from my intention to
cross swords with this great man. My business is merely the natural
science of the psyche, and my main concern to establish the facts. How
these facts are named and what further interpretation is then placed upon
them is of secondary importance. Natural science is not a science of words
and ideas, but of facts. I am no terminological rigoristcall the existing
symbols wholeness, self, consciousness, higher ego, or what you
will, it makes little difference. I for my part only try not to give any false
or misleading names. All these terms are simply names for the facts that
alone carry weight. The names I give do not imply a philosophy, although
I cannot prevent people from barking at these terminological phantoms as
if they were metaphysical hypostases. The facts are sufficient in
themselves, and it is well to know about them. But their interpretation
should be left to the individuals discretion. The maximum is that to
which nothing is opposed, and in which the minimum is also the
maximum, says Nicholas of Cusa. Yet God is also above the opposites:
Beyond this coincidence of creating and being created art thou God.
Man is an analogy of God: Man is God, but not in an absolute sense,
since he is man. He is therefore God in a human way. Man is also a world,
but he is not all things at once in contracted form, since he is man. He is
therefore a microcosm. Hence the complexio oppositorum proves to be
not only a possibility but an ethical duty: In these most profound matters
every endeavour of our human intelligence should be bent to the achieving
of that simplicity where contradictories are reconciled. The alchemists
are as it were the empiricists of the great problem of the union of
opposites, whereas Nicholas of Cusa is its philosopher.




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