classes ::: Mysterium Coniunctionis, Carl Jung, Psychology, Occultism, chapter,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:4.09 - REGINA
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter


9. REGINA
[532] We have met the figure of the Queen so often in the course of our exposition that we need say only a few words about her here. We have seen that as Luna she is the archetypal companion of Sol. Together they form the classic alchemical syzygy, signifying on the one hand gold and silver, or something of the kind,416 and on the other the heavenly pair described in Aurora Consurgens:
Therefore I will rise and go into the city, seeking in the streets and the broad ways a chaste virgin to espouse, comely in face, more comely in body, most comely in her garments, that she may roll back the stone from the door of my sepulchre and give me wings like a dove, and I will fly with her into heaven and then say: I live for ever, and will rest in her, for the Queen stood on my right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety. . . . O Queen of the heights, arise, make haste, my love, my spouse, speak, beloved, to thy lover, who and of what kind and how great thou art. . . . My beloved, who is ruddy, hath spoken to me, he hath sought and besought: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys, I am the mother of fair love and of fear and of knowledge and of holy hope. As the fruitful vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour, and my flowers are the fruit and honour and riches. I am the bed of my beloved, . . . wounding his heart with one of my eyes and with one hair of my neck. I am the sweet smell of ointments giving an odour above all aromatical spices, and like unto cinnamon and balsam and chosen myrrh.417
[533] The prototype of this spiritual Minne is the relationship of King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba. Johannes Grasseus says of the white dove that is hidden in the lead: This is the chaste, wise, and rich Queen of Sheba, veiled in white, who was willing to give herself to none but King Solomon. No human heart can sufficiently investigate all this. 418 Penotus says:
You have the virgin earth, give her a husb and who is fitting for her! She is the Queen of Sheba, hence there is need of a king crowned with a diademwhere shall we find him? We see how the heavenly sun gives of his splendour to all other bodies, and the earthly or mineral sun will do likewise, when he is set in his own heaven, which is named the Queen of Sheba, who came from the ends of the earth to behold the glory of Solomon. So, too, our Mercury has left his own lands and clothed himself with the fairest garment of white, and has given himself to Solomon, and not to any other who is a stranger [extraneo] and impure.419
[534] Here Mercurius in feminine form is the queen, and she is the heaven wherein the sun shines. She is thus thought of as a medium surrounding the suna man encompassed by a woman, as was said of Christ420or as Shiva in the embrace of Shakti. This medium has the nature of Mercurius, that paradoxical being, whose one definable meaning is the unconscious.421 The queen appears in the texts as the maternal vessel of Sol and as the aureole of the king, i.e., as a crown.422 In the Tractatus aureus de Lapide423 the queen, at her apotheosis,424 holds a discourse in which she says:
After death is life restored to me. To me, poor as I am, were entrusted the treasures of the wise and mighty. Therefore I, too, can make the poor rich, give grace to the humble, and restore health to the sick. But I am not yet equal to my most beloved brother, the mighty king, who has yet to be raised from the dead. But when he comes, he will verily show that my words are the truth.
[535] In this soror et sponsa we can easily discern the analogy with the Church, which, as the corpus mysticum, is the vessel for the anima Christi. This vessel is called by Penotus the Queen of Sheba, referring to the passage in Matthew 12 :42 (also Luke 11 : 31): For she [the queen of the south] came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In this connection I would like to mention a passage in the Speculum de Mysteriis of Honorius of Autun, which likewise refers to the queen of the south. He says:425
John abandoned his bride and, himself a virgin, followed the son of a virgin. And because for love of her he despised the bond of the flesh, Christ loved him before all the disciples. For while the Queen of the South gave her body and her blood to the disciples, John lay in the bosom of Jesus and drank from that fount of wisdom; which secret of the Word he afterward committed to the world; the Word, namely, which is hidden in the Father, because in the bosom of Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.426
[536] In the passage from the Tractatus aureus it is the Queen of the South who is entrusted with the treasures of the wise and mighty, and in Honorius she gives her body and blood to the disciples. In both cases she seems to be identified with Jesus. We can see from this how close was the thought of Christs androgyny, and how very much the queen and the king are one, in the sense that body and soul or spirit and soul are one.427 As a matter of fact the queen corresponds to the soul (anima) and the king to spirit, the dominant of consciousness.428 In view of this interpretation of the queen we can understand why the secret of the work was sometimes called the Reginae Mysteria.429
[537] The close connection between king and queen is due to the fact that occasionally they both suffer the same fate: she is dissolved with him in the bath (in another version she is the bath itself). Thus Eleazar says of the kings bath: For in this fiery sea the king cannot endure; it robs the old Albaon430 of all his strength and consumes his body and turns it to blood-red blood. Nor is the queen freed; she must perish in this fiery bath.431
[538] Further, it is not surprising that king and queen form as it were a unity, since they are in effect its forerunners. The situation becomes worthy of note only because of the interpretation we have given it: that in the mythologem the king, as the dominant of consciousness, is almost identical with the archetypal figure that personifies the unconscious, namely the anima. The two figures are in some respects diametrically opposed to one another, as are conscious and unconscious; but, just as male and female are united in the human organism, so the psychic material remains the same whether in the conscious or in the unconscious state. Only, sometimes it is associated with the ego, sometimes not.
[539] The anima in her negative aspect that is, when she remains unconscious and hiddenexerts a possessive influence on the subject. The chief symptoms of this possession are blind moods and compulsive entanglements on one side, and on the other cold, unrelated absorption in principles and abstract ideas. The negative aspect of the anima indicates therefore a special form of psychological maladjustment. This is either compensated from the conscious side or else it compensates a consciousness already marked by a contrary (and equally incorrect) attitude. For the negative aspect of the conscious dominant is far from being a God-given idea; it is the most egoistic intention of all, which seeks to play an important role and, by wearing some kind of mask, to appear as something favourable (identification with the persona!). The anima corresponding to this attitude is an intriguer who continually aids and abets the ego in its role, while digging in the background the very pits into which the infatuated ego is destined to fall.
[540] But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentionsnot in imagination only, but in truth and submits to the suprapersonal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp.432 The transformation of the kingly substance from a lion into a king has its counterpart in the transformation of the feminine element from a serpent into a queen. The coronation, apotheosis, and marriage signalize the equal status of conscious and unconscious that becomes possible at the highest levela coincidentia oppositorum with redeeming effects.
[541] It would certainly be desirable if a psychological explanation and clarification could be given of what seems to be indicated by the mythologem of the marriage. But the psychologist does not feel responsible for the existence of what cannot be known; as the handmaid of truth he must be satisfied with establishing the existence of these phenomena, mysterious as they are. The union of conscious and unconscious symbolized by the royal marriage is a mythological idea which on a higher level assumes the character of a psychological concept. I must expressly emphasize that the psychological concept is definitely not derived from the mythologem, but solely from practical investigation of both the historical and the case material. What this empirical material looks like has been shown in the dream-series given in Psychology and Alchemy. It serves as a paradigm in place of hundreds of examples, and it may therefore be regarded as more than an individual curiosity.
[542] The psychological union of opposites is an intuitive idea which covers the phenomenology of this process. It is not an explanatory hypothesis for something that, by definition, transcends our powers of conception. For, when we say that conscious and unconscious unite, we are saying in effect that this process is inconceivable. The unconscious is unconscious and therefore can neither be grasped nor conceived. The union of opposites is a transconscious process and, in principle, not amenable to scientific explanation. The marriage must remain the mystery of the queen, the secret of the art, of which the Rosarium reports King Solomon as saying:
This is my daughter, for whose sake men say that the Queen of the South came out of the east, like the rising dawn, in order to hear, understand, and behold the wisdom of Solomon. Power, honour, strength, and dominion are given into her hand; she wears the royal crown of seven glittering stars, like a bride adorned for her husband, and on her robe is written in golden lettering, in Greek, Arabic, and Latin: I am the only daughter of the wise, utterly unknown to the foolish.433
[543] The Queen of Sheba, Wisdom, the royal art, and the daughter of the philosophers are all so interfused that the underlying psychologem clearly emerges: the art is queen of the alchemists heart, she is at once his mother, his daughter, and his beloved, and in his art and its allegories the drama of his own soul, his individuation process, is played out.



questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or
join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
4.09_-_REGINA

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
4.09_-_REGINA

PRIMARY CLASS

chapter
SIMILAR TITLES

DEFINITIONS



QUOTES [0 / 0 - 0 / 0]


KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)


*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***


IN CHAPTERS [0/0]









WORDNET


































IN WEBGEN [10000/0]



change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding":
change "table font size":
last updated: 2022-02-04 18:43:40
105723 site hits