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object:6.04 - THE MEANING OF THE ALCHEMICAL PROCEDURE
book class:Mysterium Coniunctionis
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter



4. THE MEANING OF THE ALCHEMICAL PROCEDURE
[686] Thus Dorn describes the secret of the second stage of conjunction. To the modern mind such contrivances of thought will seem like nebulous products of a dreaming fancy. So, in a sense, they are, and for this reason they lend themselves to decipherment by the method of complex psychology. In his attempt to make the obviously confused situation clearer, Dorn involved himself in a discussion of the ways and means for producing the quintessence, which was evidently needed for uniting the unio mentalis with the body. One naturally asks oneself how this alchemical procedure enters into it at all. The unio mentalis is so patently a spiritual and moral attitude that one cannot doubt its psychological nature. To our way of thinking, this immediately sets up a dividing wall between the psychic and the chemical process. For us the two things are incommensurable, but they were not so for the medieval mind. It knew nothing of the nature of chemical substances and their combination. It saw only enigmatic substances which, united with one another, inexplicably brought forth equally mysterious new substances. In this profound darkness the alchemists fantasy had free play and could playfully combine the most inconceivable things. It could act without restraint and, in so doing, portray itself without being aware of what was happening.
[687] The free-ranging psyche of the adept used chemical substances and processes as a painter uses colours to shape out the images of his fancy. If Dorn, in order to describe the union of the unio mentalis with the body, reaches out for his chemical substances and implements, this only means that he was illustrating his fantasies by chemical procedures. For this purpose he chose the most suitable substances, just as the painter chooses the right colours. Honey, for instance, had to go into the mixture because of its purifying quality. As a Paracelsist, Dorn knew from the writings of the Master what high praises he had heaped upon it, calling it the sweetness of the earths, the resin of the earth which permeates all growing things, the Indian spirit which is turned by the influence of summer into a corporeal spirit.94 Thereby the mixture acquired the property not only of eliminating impurities but of changing spirit into body, and in view of the proposed conjunction of the spirit and the body this seemed a particularly promising sign. To be sure, the sweetness of the earths was not without its dangers, for as we have seen (n. 81) the honey could change into a deadly poison. According to Paracelsus it contains Tartarum, which as its name implies has to do with Hades. Further, Tartarum is a calcined Saturn and consequently has affinities with this malefic planet. For another ingredient Dorn takes Chelidonia (Chelidonium maius, celandine), which cures eye diseases and is particularly good for night-blindness, and even heals the spiritual benightedness (affliction of the soul, melancholy-madness) so much feared by the adepts. It protects against thunderstorms, i.e., outbursts of affect. It is a precious ingredient, because its yellow flowers symbolize the philosophical gold, the highest treasure. What is more important here, it draws the humidity, the soul,95 out of Mercurius. It therefore assists the spiritualization of the body and makes visible the essence of Mercurius, the supreme chthonic spirit. But Mercurius is also the devil.96 Perhaps that is why the section in which Lagneus defines the nature of Mercurius is entitled Dominus vobiscum.97
[688] In addition, the plant Mercurialis (dogs mercury) is indicated. Like the Homeric magic herb Moly, it was found by Hermes himself and must therefore have magical effects. It is particularly favourable to the coniunctio because it occurs in male and female form and thus can determine the sex of a child about to be conceived. Mercurius himself was said to be generated from an extract of it that spirit which acts as a mediator (because he is utriusque capax, capable of either) and saviour of the Macrocosm, and is therefore best able to unite the above with the below. In his ithyphallic form as Hermes Kyllenios, he contri butes the attractive power of sexuality, which plays a great role in the coniunctio symbolism.98 Like honey, he is dangerous because of his possibly poisonous effect, for which reason it naturally seemed advisable to our author to add rosemary to the mixture as an alexipharmic (antidote) and a synonym for Mercurius (aqua permanens), perhaps on the principle that like cures like. Dorn could hardly resist the temptation to exploit the alchemical allusion to ros marinus, sea-dew. In agreement with ecclesiastical symbolism there was in alchemy, too, a dew of grace, the aqua vitae, the perpetual, permanent, and two-meaninged

, divine water or sulphur water. The water was also called aqua pontica (sea-water) or simply sea. This was the great sea over which the alchemist sailed in his mystic peregrination, guided by the heart of Mercurius in the heavenly North Pole, to which nature herself points with the magnetic compass.99 It was also the bath of regeneration, the spring rain which brings forth the vegetation, and the aqua doctrinae.
[689] Another alexipharmic is the lily. But it is much more than that: its juice is mercurial and even incombustible, a sure sign of its incorruptible and eternal nature. This is confirmed by the fact that the lily was conceived to be Mercurius and the quintessence itself the noblest thing that human meditation can reach (see n. 85). The red lily stands for the male and the white for the female in the coniunctio, the divine pair that unite in the hierosgamos. The lily is therefore a true gamonymus in the Paracelsan sense.
[690] Finally, the mixture must not lack the thing that really keeps body and soul together: human blood, which was regarded as the seat of the soul.100 It was a synonym for the red tincture, a preliminary stage of the lapis; moreover, it was an old-established magic charm, a ligament for binding the soul either to God or the devil, and hence a powerful medicine for uniting the unio mentalis with the body. The admixture of human blood seems to me unusual if one assumes that the recipe was meant literally. We move here on uncertain ground. Although the vegetable ingredients are obviously indicated because of their symbolic value, we still do not know exactly how far the symbolism had a magical quality. If it had, then the recipe must be taken literally. In the case of blood, increased doubts arise because either it was simply a synonym for the aqua permanens and could then be practically any liquid, or else real blood was meant, and then we must ask where this blood came from. Could it have been the adepts? This problem seems to me not entirely irrelevant, since Dorn, in his Philosophia meditativa, was greatly influenced, as we shall see, by the Sabaean Liber quartorum, which he obviously knew although he did not mention it. The Sabaeans were reputed to have sacrificed human victims for magical purposes,101 and even today human blood is used for signing pacts with the devil. It is also not so long since tramps were made drunk and quickly immured on a building site in order to make the foundations safe. A magical recipe of the sixteenth century, therefore, might easily have used human blood as a pars pro toto.
[691] This whole mixture was then joined with the heaven of the red or white wine or of Tartarus. The caelum, as we have seen, was the product of the alchemical procedure, which in this case consisted in first distilling the philosophic wine. Thereby the soul and spirit were separated from the body and repeatedly sublimated until they were free from all phlegm, i.e., from all liquid that contained no more spirit.102 The residue, called the corpus (body), was reduced to ashes in the most vehement fire and, hot water being added, was changed into a lixivium asperrimum, very sharp lye, which was then carefully poured off the ashes by tilting the vessel. The residue was treated in the same way again, until in the end no asperitas remained in the ashes. The lye was filtered and then evaporated in a glass vessel. What was left over was tartarum nostrum (our winestone, calculus vini), the natural salt of all things. This salt can be dissolved into tartaric water, in a damp and cool place on a slab of marble.103 The tartaric water was the quintessence of the philosophic and even of ordinary wine, and was then subjected to the above-mentioned rotation. As in a centrifuge, the pure was separated from the impure, and a liquid of the colour of the air floated to the top. This was the caelum.
[692] I have detailed this process in order to give the reader a direct impression of the alchemical procedure. One can hardly suppose that all this is mere poppycock, for Dorn was a man who obviously took things seriously. So far as one can judge he meant what he said, and he himself worked in the laboratory. Of course we do not know what success he had chemically, but we are sufficiently informed about the results of his meditative exertions.
[693] The caelum, for Dorn, was the celestial substance hidden in man, the secret truth, the sum of virtue, the treasure which is not eaten into by moths nor dug out by thieves. In the worlds eyes it is the cheapest thing, but to the wise more worthy of love than precious stones and gold, a good that passeth not away, and is taken hence after death.104 The reader will gather from this that the adept was describing nothing less than the kingdom of heaven on earth. I think that Dorn was not exaggerating, but that he wanted to communicate to his public something very important to him. He believed in the necessity of the alchemical operation as well as in its success; he was convinced that the quintessence was needed for the preparation of the body,105 and that the body was so much improved by this universal medicine that the coniunctio with spirit and soul could be consummated. If the production of the caelum from wine is a hair-raising chemical fantasy, our understanding ceases altogether when the adept mixes this heaven with his gamonymous and other magical herbs. But if the one consists mainly of fantasies so does the other. This makes it interesting. Fantasies always mean something when they are spontaneous. The question then arises: what is the psychological meaning of the procedure?



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