object:5.07 - ROTUNDUM, HEAD, AND BRAIN
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
7. ROTUNDUM, HEAD, AND BRAIN
[626] Although the above passage from the Song of Songs is chiefly responsible for the golden head, it should be emphasized that this motif also occurs in alchemy without direct reference to the Song of Songs. His head was of fine gold, says the Splendor solis of the dismembered man whose body was white like salt.243 In Greek alchemy the adepts were called children of the golden head.244 The simple (i.e., arcane) substance was called the Golden Head, after the god-sent Daniel, Gods mouthpiece.245 According to legend, Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003), famed as the transmitter of Arabian science, possessed a golden head that imparted oracles.246 This legend may perhaps date back to the Harranite ceremony of the oracular head.247 The head has also the subsidiary meaning of the corpus rotundum, signifying the arcane substance.248 This is particularly relevant to our text, as the inwards of the head turned to gold and/or white earth. The latter is the terra alba foliata (foliated white earth), which in this case would be the brain. This conjecture is corroborated by the fact that the inwards of the head is, as it were, a literal translation of
(marrow in the head). Besides this the brain is a synonym for the arcane substance, as is clear from a Hermes quotation in the Rosarium: Take his brain, powder it with very strong vinegar . . . until it turns dark.249 The brain was of interest to the alchemists because it was the seat of the spirit of the supracelestial waters,250 the waters that are above the firmament (Genesis 1 : 7). In the Visio Arislei the brain of the King of the Sea is the birthplace of the brother-sister pair.251 The Liber quartorum calls the brain the abode of the divine part.252 For the brain has a proximity to the rational soul, which in turn possesses simplicitas, a feature it shares with God.253 Because the brain seemed secretly to participate in the alchemical process,254 Wei Po-yang states that when the brain is properly tended for the required length of time, one will certainly attain the miracle.255 References to the brain are also found in Greek alchemy, an especially large role being played by the
(brain-stone), which was equated with the
(stone that is no stone).256 The latter is one of the terms Zosimos uses for the brain; he also calls it not given and given by God, and the Mithraic secret.257 The treatise on the Stone of Philosophy says that alabaster is whitest brain stone.258 In the Table of Symbols in Penotus the brain is correlated with the moon, the mystery of baptism, and the infernal gods.259 The new moon signifies the albedo and the white stone;260 baptism has its parallel in the children of the King of the Sea, who were imprisoned in the glass-house at the bottom of the sea and transformed;261 the infernal gods can be correlated with the brain as the seat of consciousness and intelligence, for consciousness leads an ungodly existence, having fallen away from the divine totality.262
[627] Zosimos is the connecting link between alchemy and Gnosticism, where we find similar ideas. There the brain (or cerebellum) is in shape like the head of a dragon.263 The wicked Korybas, having affinities on the one hand with Adam and on the other with the Kyllenic Hermes,264 comes from the head on high and from the uncharacterized brain,265 and penetrates all things; we know not how and in what fashion he comes. Here Hippolytus paraphrases John 5 : 37: We have heard his voice, but we have not seen his shape, an allusion to a partially unconscious factor. To emphasize this aspect, Hippolytus goes on to say that Korybas dwells in the image of clay (
), i.e., in man.266 This, he continues, is the God who dwells in the flood, of whom the Psalter says that he calls aloud and cries out from many waters.267 We can take this as the longing of the unconscious for consciousness. When one considers that this passage dates from an age (ca. 2nd cent.) that had not the remotest conception of psychology in the modern sense, one must admit that Hippolytus, with the scanty means at his disposal, has managed to give a fairly decent account of the psychological facts. The Adam of whom the Naassenes speak is a rock.
This, they say, is Adamas, the chief corner-stone [
], who has become the head [
] of the corner. For in the head is the characterized [
] brain, the substance from which the whole family is named [
], the Adam whom I place in the foundations of Zion.268 Allegorically, they mean the image [
] of Man. But he who is so placed is Adam [the inner man, the foundation of Zion] . . . who has fallen from Adam the archman [
] on high.269
[628] These extracts are sufficient to show how original are the bases of alchemical ideas. If no continuity of tradition can be proven, we would be forced to assume that the same ideas can arise spontaneously, again and again, from an archetypal foundation.
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