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object:6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter


VI - THE CONJUNCTION

1. THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES
[654] Herbert Silberer rightly called the coniunctio the central idea of the alchemical procedure.1 This author correctly recognized that alchemy was, in the main, symbolical, whereas the historian of alchemy, Eduard von Lippmann, a chemist, did not mention the term coniunctio even in his index.2 Anyone who has but a slight acquaintance with the literature knows that the adepts were ultimately concerned with a union of the substancesby whatever names these may have been called. By means of this union they hoped to attain the goal of the work: the production of the gold or a symbolical equivalent of it. Although the coniunctio is unquestionably the primordial image of what we today would call chemical combination, it is hardly possible to prove beyond a doubt that the adept thought as concretely as the modern chemist. Even when he spoke of a union of the natures, or of an amalgam of iron and copper, or of a compound of sulphur and mercury, he meant it at the same time as a symbol: iron was Mars and copper was Venus, and their fusion was at the same time a love-affair. The union of the natures which embrace one another was not physical and concrete, for they were celestial natures which multiplied by the comm and of God.3 When red lead was roasted with gold it produced a spirit, that is, the compound became spiritual,4 and from the red spirit proceeded the principle of the world.5 The combination of sulphur and mercury was followed by the bath and death.6 By the combination of copper and the aqua permanens, which was usually quicksilver, we think only of an amalgam. But for the alchemists it meant a secret, philosophical sea, since for them the aqua permanens was primarily a symbol or a philosophical postulate which they hoped to discoveror believed they had discoveredin the various fluids. The substances they sought to combine in reality always hadon account of their unknown naturea numinous quality which tended towards phantasmal personification. They were substances which, like living organisms, fertilized one another and thereby produced the living being [

] sought by the Philosophers.7 The substances seemed to them hermaphroditic, and the conjunction they strove for was a philosophical operation, namely the union of form and matter.8 This inherent duality explains the duplications that so often occur, e.g., two sulphurs, two quicksilvers,9 Venus alba et rubea,10 aurum nostrum and aurum vulgi.
[655] It is therefore not surprising that the adepts, as we have seen in the previous chapters, piled up vast numbers of synonyms to express the mysterious nature of the substancesan occupation which, though it must seem utterly futile to the chemist, affords the psychologist a welcome explanation concerning the nature of the projected contents. Like all numinous contents, they have a tendency to self-amplification, that is to say they form the nuclei for an aggregation of synonyms. These synonyms represent the elements to be united as a pair of opposites;11 for instance as man and woman, god and goddess, son and mother,12 red and white,13 active and passive, body and spirit,14 and so on. The opposites are usually derived from the quaternio of elements,15 as we can see very clearly from the anonymous treatise De sulphure, which says:
Thus the fire began to work upon the air and brought forth Sulphur. Then the air began to work upon the water and brought forth Mercurius. The water began to work upon the earth and brought forth Salt. But the earth, having nothing to work upon, brought forth nothing, so the product remained within it. Therefore only three principles were produced, and the earth became the nurse and matrix of the others.
From these three principles were produced male and female, the male obviously from Sulphur and Mercurius, and the female from Mercurius and Salt.16 Together they bring forth the incorruptible One, the quinta essentia, and thus quadrangle will answer to quadrangle.17
[656] The synthesis of the incorruptible One or quintessence follows the Axiom of Maria, the earth representing the fourth. The separation of the hostile elements corresponds to the initial state of chaos and darkness. From the successive unions arise an active principle (sulphur) and a passive (salt), as well as a mediating, ambivalent principle, Mercurius. This classical alchemical trinity then produces the relationship of male to female as the supreme and essential opposition. Fire comes at the beginning and is acted on by nothing, and earth at the end acts on nothing. Between fire and earth there is no interaction; hence the four elements do not constitute a circle, i.e., a totality. This is produced only by the synthesis of male and female. Thus the square at the beginning corresponds to the quaternio of elements united in the quinta essentia at the endquadrangle will answer to quadrangle.
[657] The alchemical description of the beginning corresponds psychologically to a primitive consciousness which is constantly liable to break up into individual affective processesto fall apart, as it were, in four directions. As the four elements represent the whole physical world, their falling apart means dissolution into the constituents of the world, that is, into a purely inorganic and hence unconscious state. Conversely, the combination of the elements and the final synthesis of male and female is an achievement of the art and a product of conscious endeavour. The result of the synthesis was consequently conceived by the adept as self-knowledge,18 which, like the knowledge of God, is needed for the preparation of the Philosophers Stone.19 Piety is needed for the work, and this is nothing but knowledge of oneself.20 This thought occurs not only in late alchemy but also in Greek tradition, as in the Alexandrian treatise of Krates (transmitted by the Arabs), where it is said that a perfect knowledge of the soul enables the adept to understand the many different names which the Philosophers have given to the arcane substance.21 The Liber quartorum emphasizes that there must be self-observation in the work as well as of events in due time.22 It is evident from this that the chemical process of the coniunctio was at the same time a psychic synthesis. Sometimes it seems as if self-knowledge brought about the union, sometimes as if the chemical process were the efficient cause. The latter alternative is decidedly the more frequent: the coniunctio takes place in the retort23 or, more indefinitely, in the natural vessel or matrix.24 The vessel is also called the grave, and the union a shared death.25 This state is named the eclipse of the sun.26
[658] The coniunctio does not always take the form of a direct union, since it needsor occurs ina medium: Only through a medium can the transition take place,27 and, Mercurius is the medium of conjunction.28 Mercurius is the soul (anima), which is the mediator between body and spirit.29 The same is true of the synonyms for Mercurius, the green lion30 and the aqua permanens or spiritual water,31 which are likewise media of conjunction. The Consilium coniugii mentions as a connective agent the sweet smell or smoky vapour,32 recalling Basilides idea of the sweet smell of the Holy Ghost.33 Obviously this refers to the spiritual nature of Mercurius, just as the spiritual water, also called aqua aris (aerial water or air-water), is a life principle and the marriage maker between man and woman.34 A common synonym for the water is the sea, as the place where the chymical marriage is celebrated. The Tractatus Micreris mentions as further synonyms the Nile of Egypt, the Sea of the Indians, and the Meridian Sea. The marvels of this sea are that it mitigates and unites the opposites.35 An essential feature of the royal marriage is therefore the sea-journey, as described by Christian Rosencreutz.36 This alchemical motif was taken up by Goe the in Faust II, where it underlies the meaning of the Aegean Festival. The archetypal content of this festival has been elaborated by Kernyi in a brilliant amplificatory interpretation. The bands of nereids on Roman sarcophagi reveal the epithalamic and the sepulchral element, for basic to the antique mysteries . . . is the identity of marriage and death on the one hand, and of birth and the eternal resurgence of life from death on the other.37
[659] Mercurius, however, is not just the medium of conjunction but also that which is to be united, since he is the essence or seminal matter of both man and woman. Mercurius masculinus and Mercurius foemineus are united in and through Mercurius menstrualis, which is the aqua.38 Dorn gives the philosophical explanation of this in his Physica Trismegisti: In the beginning God created one world (unus mundus).39 This he divided into twoheaven and earth. Beneath this spiritual and corporeal binarius lieth hid a third thing, which is the bond of holy matrimony. This same is the medium enduring until now in all things, partaking of both their extremes, without which it cannot be at all, nor they without this medium be what they are, one thing out of three.40 The division into two was necessary in order to bring the one world out of the state of potentiality into reality. Reality consists of a multiplicity of things. But one is not a number; the first number is two, and with it multiplicity and reality begin.
[660] It is apparent from this explanation that the desperately evasive and universal Mercurius that Proteus twinkling in a myriad shapes and coloursis none other than the unus mundus, the original, non-differentiated unity of the world or of Being; the

of the Gnostics, the primordial unconsciousness.41 The Mercurius of the alchemists is a personification and concretization of what we today would call the collective unconscious. While the concept of the unus mundus is a metaphysical speculation, the unconscious can be indirectly experienced via its manifestations. Though in itself an hypothesis, it has at least as great a probability as the hypothesis of the atom. It is clear from the empirical material at our disposal today that the contents of the unconscious, unlike conscious contents, are mutually contaminated to such a degree that they cannot be distinguished from one another and can therefore easily take one anothers place, as can be seen most clearly in dreams. The indistinguish ableness of its contents gives one the impression that everything is connected with everything else and therefore, despite their multifarious modes of manifestation, that they are at bottom a unity. The only comparatively clear contents consist of motifs or types round which the individual associations congregate. As the history of the human mind shows, these archetypes are of great stability and so distinct that they allow themselves to be personified and named, even though their boundaries are blurred or cut across those of other archetypes, so that certain of their qualities can be interchanged. In particular, mandala symbolism shows a marked tendency to concentrate all the archetypes on a common centre, comparable to the relationship of all conscious contents to the ego. The analogy is so striking that a layman unfamiliar with this symbolism is easily misled into thinking that the mandala is an artificial product of the conscious mind. Naturally mandalas can be imitated, but this does not prove that all mandalas are imitations. They are produced spontaneously, without external influence, even by children and adults who have never come into contact with any such ideas.42 One might perhaps regard the mandala as a reflection of the egocentric nature of consciousness, though this view would be justified only if it could be proved that the unconscious is a secondary phenomenon. But the unconscious is undoubtedly older and more original than consciousness, and for this reason one could just as well call the egocentrism of consciousness a reflection or imitation of the self-centrism of the unconscious.
[661] The mandala symbolizes, by its central point, the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as of the multiplicity of the phenomenal world, and is therefore the empirical equivalent of the metaphysical concept of a unus mundus. The alchemical equivalent is the lapis and its synonyms, in particular the Microcosm.43
[662] Dorns explanation is illuminating in that it affords us a deep insight into the alchemical mysterium coniunctionis. If this is nothing less than a restoration of the original state of the cosmos and the divine unconsciousness of the world, we can understand the extraordinary fascination emanating from this mystery. It is the Western equivalent of the fundamental principle of classical Chinese philosophy, namely the union of yang and yin in tao, and at the same time a premonition of that tertium quid which, on the basis of psychological experience on the one hand and of Rhines experiments on the other, I have called synchronicity.44 If mandala symbolism is the psychological equivalent of the unus mundus, then synchronicity is its para-psychological equivalent. Though synchronistic phenomena occur in time and space they manifest a remarkable independence of both these indispensable determinants of physical existence and hence do not conform to the law of causality. The causalism that underlies our scientific view of the world breaks everything down into individual processes which it punctiliously tries to isolate from all other parallel processes. This tendency is absolutely necessary if we are to gain reliable knowledge of the world, but philosophically it has the disadvantage of breaking up, or obscuring, the universal interrelationship of events so that a recognition of the greater relationship, i.e., of the unity of the world, becomes more and more difficult. Everything that happens, however, happens in the same one world and is a part of it. For this reason events must possess an a priori aspect of unity, though it is difficult to establish this by the statistical method. So far as we can see at present, Rhine seems to have successfully demonstrated this unity by his extrasensory-perception experiments (ESP).45 Independence of time and space brings about a concurrence or meaningful coincidence of events not causally connected with one anotherphenomena which till now were summed under the purely descriptive concepts of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. These concepts naturally have no explanatory value as each of them represents an X which cannot be distinguished from the X of the other. The characteristic feature of all these phenomena, including Rhines psychokinetic effect and other synchronistic occurrences, is meaningful coincidence, and as such I have defined the synchronistic principle. This principle suggests that there is an inter-connection or unity of causally unrelated events, and thus postulates a unitary aspect of being which can very well be described as the unus mundus.
[663] Mercurius usually stands for the arcane substance, whose synonyms are the panacea and the spagyric medicine. Dorn identifies the latter with the balsam46 of Paracelsus, which is a close analogy of the

of the Basilidians. In the De vita longa of Paracelsus, balsam as an elixir vitae is associated with the term gamonymus, which might be rendered having the name of matrimony.47 Dorn thinks that the balsam, which stands higher than nature, is to be found in the human body and is a kind of aetheric substance.48 He says it is the best medicament not only for the body but also for the mind (mens). Though it is a corporeal substance, as a combination of the spirit and soul of the spagyric medicine it is essentially spiritual.49
We conclude that meditative philosophy consists in the overcoming of the body by mental union [unio mentalis]. This first union does not as yet make the wise man, but only the mental disciple of wisdom. The second union of the mind with the body shows forth the wise man, hoping for and expecting that blessed third union with the first unity [i.e., the unus mundus, the latent unity of the world]. May Almighty God grant that all men be made such, and may He be one in All.50
* * *
[664] It is significant for the whole of alchemy that in Dorns view a mental union was not the culminating point but merely the first stage of the procedure. The second stage is reached when the mental union, that is, the unity of spirit and soul, is conjoined with the body. But a consummation of the mysterium coniunctionis can be expected only when the unity of spirit, soul, and body is made one with the original unus mundus. This third stage of the coniunctio was depicted51 after the manner of an Assumption and Coronation of Mary, in which the Mother of God represents the body. The Assumption is really a wedding feast, the Christian version of the hierosgamos, whose originally incestuous nature played a great role in alchemy. The traditional incest always indicated that the supreme union of opposites expressed a combination of things which are related but of unlike nature.52 This may begin with a purely intra-psychic unio mentalis of intellect or reason with Eros, representing feeling. Such an interior operation means a great deal, since it brings a considerable increase of self-knowledge as well as of personal maturity, but its reality is merely potential and is validated only by a union with the physical world of the body. The alchemists therefore pictured the unio mentalis as Father and Son and their union as the dove (the spiration common to both), but the world of the body they represented by the feminine or passive principle, namely Mary. Thus, for more than a thousand years, they prepared the ground for the dogma of the Assumption. It is true that the far-reaching implications of a marriage of the fatherly spiritual principle with the principle of matter, or maternal corporeality, are not to be seen from the dogma at first glance. Nevertheless, it does bridge over a gulf that seems unfathomable: the apparently irremediable separation of spirit from nature and the body. Alchemy throws a bright light on the background of the dogma, for the new article of faith expresses in symbolical form exactly what the adepts recognized as being the secret of their coniunctio. The correspondence is indeed so great that the old Masters could legitimately have declared that the new dogma has written the Hermetic secret in the skies. As against this it will be said that the alchemists smuggled the mystic or theological marriage into their obscure procedures. This is contradicted by the fact that the alchymical marriage is not only older than the corresponding formulation in the liturgy and of the Church Fathers but is based on classical and pre-Christian tradition.53 The alchemical tradition cannot be brought into relationship with the Apocalyptic marriage of the Lamb. The highly differentiated symbolism of the latter (lamb and city) is itself an offshoot of the archetypal hierosgamos, just as this is the source for the alchemical idea of the coniunctio.
[665] The adepts strove to realize their speculative ideas in the form of a chemical substance which they thought was endowed with all kinds of magical powers. This is the literal meaning of their uniting the unio mentalis with the body. For us it is certainly not easy to include moral and philosophical reflections in this amalgamation, as the alchemists obviously did. For one thing we know too much about the real nature of chemical combination, and for another we have a much too abstract conception of the mind to be able to understand how a truth can be hidden in matter or what an effective balsam must be like. Owing to medieval ignorance both of chemistry and of psychology, and the lack of any epistemological criticism, the two concepts could easily mix, so that things that for us have no recognizable connection with one another could enter into mutual relationship.
[666] The dogma of the Assumption and the alchemical mysterium coniunctionis express the same fundamental thought even though in very different symbolism. Just as the Church insists on the literal taking up of the physical body into heaven, so the alchemists believed in the possibility, or even in the actual existence, of their stone or of the philosophical gold. In both cases belief was a substitute for the missing empirical reality. Even though alchemy was essentially more materialistic in its procedures than the dogma, both of them remain at the second, anticipatory stage of the coniunctio, the union of the unio mentalis with the body. Even Dorn did not venture to assert that he or any other adept had perfected the third stage in his lifetime. Naturally there were as many swindlers and dupes as ever who claimed to possess the lapis or golden tincture, or to be able to make it. But the more honest alchemists readily admitted that they had not yet plumbed the final secret.
[667] One should not be put off by the physical impossibilities of dogma or of the coniunctio, for they are symbols in regard to which the allurements of rationalism are entirely out of place and miss the mark. If symbols mean anything at all, they are tendencies which pursue a definite but not yet recognizable goal and consequently can express themselves only in analogies. In this uncertain situation one must be content to leave things as they are, and give up trying to know anything beyond the symbol. In the case of dogma such a renunciation is reinforced by the fear of possibly violating the sanctity of a religious idea, and in the case of alchemy it was until very recently considered not worth while to rack ones brains over medieval absurdities. Today, armed with psychological understanding, we are in a position to penetrate into the meaning of even the most abstruse alchemical symbols, and there is no justifiable reason why we should not apply the same method to dogma. Nobody, after all, can deny that it consists of ideas which are born of mans imagining and thinking. The question of how far this thinking may be inspired by the Holy Ghost is not affected at all, let alone decided, by psychological investigation, nor is the possibility of a metaphysical background denied. Psychology cannot advance any argument either for or against the objective validity of any metaphysical view. I have repeated this statement in various places in order to give the lie to the obstinate and grotesque notion that a psychological explanation must necessarily be either psychologism or its opposite, namely a metaphysical assertion. The psychic is a phenomenal world in itself, which can be reduced neither to the brain nor to metaphysics.
[668] I have just said that symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown.54 We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psycho therapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendencies betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic actions. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. The series I discussed in Psychology and Alchemy offers a good example.55 Ideas develop from seeds, and we do not know what ideas will develop from what seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in Scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a pious opinion and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable.56 The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images.




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