object:4.03 - THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE KING
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
3. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE KING
[356] As the Egyptian mystique of kingship shows, the king, like every archetype, is not just a static image; he signifies a dynamic process whereby the human carrier of the mystery is included in the mysterious drama of Gods incarnation. This happened at the birth of Pharaoh, at his coronation,30 at the Heb-Sed festival, during his reign, and at his death. The texts and illustrations of the birth-chamber in the temple depict the divine procreation and birth of Pharaoh in the form of the mystic marriage of the Queen Mother and the Father-God. The Heb-Sed festival served to associate his ka with the cultivation of the soil and, presumeably, to preserve or streng then his powers.31 The identity of his ha with the Father-God was finally confirmed at his death and sealed for all time. The transformation of the king from an imperfect state into a perfect, whole, and incorruptible essence is portrayed in a similar manner in alchemy. It describes either his procreation and birth, in the form of a hierosgamos, or else his imperfect initial state and his subsequent rebirth in perfect form. In what follows I shall give a few examples of this transformation.
[357] Among the older medieval treatises there is the so-called Allegoria Merlini.32 So far as the name Merlinus is concerned, I must leave it an open question whether it refers to the magician Merlin33 or is a corruption of Merculinus.34 The allegory tells us of a certain king who made ready for battle. As he was about to mount his horse he wished for a drink of water. A servant asked him what water he would like, and the king answered: I demand the water which is closest to my heart, and which likes me above all things. When the servant brought it the king drank so much that all his limbs Avere filled and all his veins inflated, and he himself became discoloured. His soldiers urged him to mount his horse, but he said he could not: I am heavy and my head hurts me, and it seems to me as though all my limbs were falling apart. He demanded to be placed in a heated chamber where he could sweat the water out. But when, after a while, they opened the chamber he lay there as if dead. They summoned the Egyptian and the Alexandrian physicians, who at once accused one another of incompetence. Finally the Alexandrian physicians gave way to the Egyptian physicians, who tore the king into little pieces, ground them to powder, mixed them with their moistening medicines, and put the king back in his heated chamber as before. After some time they fetched him out again half-dead. When those present saw this, they broke out into lamentation, crying: Alas, the king is dead. The physicians said soothingly that he was only sleeping. They then washed him with sweet water until the juice of the medicines departed from him, and mixed him with new substances. Then they put him back in the chamber as before. When they took him out this time he was really dead. But the physicians said: We have killed him that he may become better and stronger in this world after his resurrection on the day of judgment. The kings relatives, however, considered them mountebanks, took their medicines away from them, and drove them out of the kingdom. They now wanted to bury the corpse, but the Alexandrian physicians, who had heard of these happenings, counselled them against it and said they would revive the king. Though the relatives were very mistrustful they let them have a try. The Alexandrian physicians took the body, ground it to powder a second time, washed it well until nothing of the previous medicines remained, and dried it. Then they took one part of sal ammoniac and two parts of Alexandrian nitre, mixed them with the pulverized corpse, made it into a paste with a little linseed oil, and placed it in a crucible-shaped chamber with holes bored in the bottom; beneath it they placed a clean crucible and let the corpse stand so for an hour. Then they heaped fire upon it and melted it, so that the liquid ran into the vessel below. Whereupon the king rose up from death and cried in a loud voice: Where are my enemies? I shall kill them all if they do not submit to me! All the kings and princes of other countries honoured and feared him. And when they wished to see something of his wonders, they put an ounce of well-purified mercury in a crucible, and scattered over it as much as a millet-seed of finger-nails or hair or of their blood, blew up a light charcoal fire, let the mercury cool down with these, and found the stone, as I do know.
[358] This parable contains the primitive motif of the murder or sacrifice of the king for the purpose of renewing his kingly power and increasing the fertility of the land. Originally it took the form of killing the old and impotent king. In this tale the king was afflicted with a dropsy both real and metaphorical: he suffered from a general plethora and a total oedema because he drank too much of the special water. One would be inclined to think that the water closest to his heart which liked him above all things was eau de vie and that he suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, were it not that the extraction of the moist psyche from the elements was a preoccupation of alchemy long before the distillation of alcohol.35 The idea was to extract the pneuma or psyche or virtue from matter (e.g., from gold) in the form of a volatile or liquid substance, and thereby to mortify the body. This aqua permanens36 was then used to revive or reanimate the dead body and, paradoxically, to extract the soul again.37 The old body had to die; it was either sacrificed or simply killed, just as the old king had either to die or to offer sacrifice to the gods (much as Pharaoh offered libations to his own statue). Something of this kind was celebrated at the Sed festival. Moret thinks the Sed ceremony was a kind of humanized regicide.38
[359] Water has always played a role at sacrifices as the animating principle. A text from Edfu says: I bring thee the vessels with the limbs of the gods [i.e., the Nile], that thou mayest drink of them; I refresh my heart that thou mayest rejoice. The water of the Nile was the real consolamentum of Egypt. In the Egyptian fairytale, Anubis found that the heart of his dead brother Bata, which Bata had placed on a cedar-flower, had turned into a cedar-cone. He put it in a vessel of cold water, and the heart soaked it up and Bata began to live again.39 Here the water is life-giving. But of the aqua permanens it was said: It kills and vivifies.
[360] The king has numerous connections with water. In the parable of Sulphur cited earlier, the king drowns in it with Diana.40 The hierosgamos was often celebrated in water. The motif of drowning also takes the form of an inward drowning, namely dropsy. Mater Alchimia is dropsical in the lower limbs.41 Or the king is dropsical and conceals himself in the belly of the horse in order to sweat out the water.42 The water appears also as a bath, as in the Dicta Alani, where the old man sits in the bath.43 Here I would recall the kings bath in Bernardus Trevisanus, which I have discussed earlier.44 Water is used for baptism, immersion, and cleansing. The cleansing of Naaman (II Kings 5 : 10ff.) is often cited as an allegory of this.45
[361] In our parable the wonderful water already has that decomposing and dissolving property which anticipates the kings dismemberment.46 The dissolution of the initial material plays a great role in alchemy as an integral part of the process. Here I will mention only the unique interpretation of the solutio given by Dorn. In his Speculativa philosophia he discusses the seven stages of the work. The first stage begins with the study of the philosophers, which is the way to the investigation of truth.
But the truth is that from which nothing can be missing, to which nothing can be added, nay more, to which nothing can be opposed. . . . The truth therefore is a great strength and an impregnable fortress . . ., an unconquerable pledge to them that possess it. In this citadel is contained the true and undoubted stone and treasure of the philosophers, which is not eaten into by moths, nor dug out by thieves, but remaineth for ever when all things else are dissolved, and is appointed for the ruin of many, but for the salvation of others. This is a thing most worthless to the vulgar, spurned above all things and hated exceedingly, yet it is not hateful but lovable, and to philosophers precious above gems.47
[362] In his Recapitulation of the First Stage Dorn says:
It is the study of the Chemists to liberate that unsensual truth48 from its fetters in things of sense, for through it the heavenly powers are pursued with subtle understanding. . . . 49 Knowledge is the sure and undoubted resolution [resolutio] by experiment of all opinions concerning the truth. . . . Experiment is manifest demonstration of the truth, and resolution the putting away of doubt. We cannot be resolved of any doubt save by experiment, and there is no better way to make it than on ourselves. Let us therefore verify what we have said above concerning the truth, beginning with ourselves. We have said above that piety consists in knowledge of ourselves,50 and hence it is that we make philosophical knowledge begin from this also. But no man can know himself unless he know what and not who he is,51 on whom he depends and whose he is (for by the law of truth no one belongs to himself), and to what end he was made. With this knowledge piety begins, which is concerned with two things, namely, with the Creator and the creature that is made like unto him. For it is impossible for the creature to know himself of himself, unless he first know his Creator. . . . 52 No one can better know the Creator, than the workman is known by his work.53
[363] Later Dorn says:
The chemical putrefaction is compared to the study of the philosophers, because as the philosophers are disposed to knowledge by study, so natural things are disposed by putrefaction to solution [ad solutionem]. To this is compared philosophical knowledge, for as by solution bodies are dissolved [solvuntur], so by knowledge are the doubts of the philosophers resolved [resolvuntur].54
He says in his Physica Trithemii:
The first step in the ascent to higher things is the study of faith, for by this is the heart of man disposed to solution in water [ad solutionem in aquam].55
Finally, in his Philosophia chemica, Dorn asserts:
Dissolution is knowledge, or the spagyric56 union of the male with the female, the latter receiving from him all that ought to be received. This is the beginning of the special generation whereby the effect of our spagyric marriage is sensually apprehended, namely, the union of the twofold seed to form the embryo.57
[364] It is evident from these statements that Dorn understood the alchemical solutio primarily as a spiritual and moral phenomenon and only secondarily as a physical one. The first part of the work is a psychic solution of doubts and conflicts, achieved by self-knowledge, and this is not possible without knowledge of God. The spiritual and moral solutio is conceived as a spagyric marriage, an inner, psychic union which by analogy and magic correspondence unites the hostile elements into one stone. By inquiring into the quid, and by spiritual understanding, the selfish hardness of the heartcaused by original sinis dissolved: the heart turns to water. The ascent to the higher stages can then begin. Egocentricity is a necessary attri bute of consciousness and is also its specific sin.58 But consciousness is confronted by the objective fact of the unconscious, often enough an avenging deluge. Water in all its formssea, lake, river, springis one of the commonest typifications of the unconscious, as is also the lunar femininity that is closely associated with water. The dissolution of the heart in water would therefore correspond to the union of the male with the female, and this in turn to the union of conscious and unconscious, which is precisely the meaning of the spagyric marriage.59 Similarly, the citadel or fortress is a feminine symbol, containing within it the treasure of the truth, also personified as Wisdom.60 This wisdom corresponds to salt, which is co-ordinated with the moon. The spagyric union produces an embryo whose equivalents are the homunculus and the lapis. The lapis, of course, is a symbol of the self.61
[365] If after this glimpse into the psychology of the solutio we turn back to the Allegoria Merlini, several things will become clear: the king personifies a hypertrophy of the ego which calls for compensation. He is about to commit an act of violencea sure sign of his morally defective state. His thirst is due to his boundless concupiscence and egotism. But when he drinks he is overwhelmed by the water, i.e., by the unconscious, and medical help becomes necessary. The two groups of doctors further assist his dissolution by dismemberment and pulverization.62 The original of this may be the dismemberment of Osiris and Dionysus.63 The king is subjected to various forms of dissolution: dismemberment, trituration, dissolution in water.64 His transfer to the heated chamber is the prototype of the laconicum (sweat-bath) of the king, often shown in later illustrations; it is a therapeutic method which we meet again in the American Indian sweat-lodge. The chamber also signifies the grave. The difference between the Egyptian and the Alexandrian physicians seems to be that the former moistened the corpse but the latter dried it (or embalmed or pickled it). The technical error of the Egyptians, therefore, was that they did not separate the conscious from the unconscious sufficiently, whereas the Alexandrians avoided this mistake.65 At any rate they succeeded in reviving the king and evidently brought about his rejuvenation.
[366] If we examine this medical controversy from the standpoint of alchemical hermeneutics many of the allusions can be understood in a deeper sense. For instance the Alexandrians, though making just as thorough use of the Typhonian technique of dismemberment, avoided the (Typhonian) sea-water and dried the pulverized corpse, using instead the other constituent of the aqua pontica, namely salt in the form of sal ammoniac (mineral salt or rock-salt, also called sal de Arabia) and sal nitri (saltpetre).66 Primarily the preservative quality of both salts is meant, but secondarily, in the mind of the adepts, marination meant the in-forming penetration of sapientia (Dorns veritas) into the ignoble mass, whereby the corruptible form was changed into an incorruptible and immutable one.
[367] Certainly there is little trace of this in our somewhat crude parable. Also, the transformation of the king seems to betoken only the primitive renewal of his life-force, for the kings first remark after his resuscitation shows that his bellicosity is undiminished. In the later texts, however, the end-product is never just a streng thening, rejuvenation or renewal of the initial state but a transformation into a higher nature. So we are probably not wrong in attri buting a fairly considerable age to this parable. One ground for this assumption is the conflict between the Alexandrian and Egyptian physicians, which may hark back to pre-Islamic times when the old-fashioned, magical remedies of the Egyptians still led to skirmishes with the progressive, more scientific medicine of the Greeks. Evidence for this is the technical blunder of the Egyptian methodcontamination of conscious and unconsciouswhich the more highly differentiated consciousness of the Greeks was able to avoid.
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