Carl Jung and Alchemy

 In his 2002 book, Jung, Alchemy and History A Critical Exposition of Jung’s Theory of Alchemy, author Jon Marshall has done a remarquable study of Carl Jung's relation to alchemy. Marshall's critical point of view is refreshing because this goes much further than the usual platitudes of Jungian commentators who are unable to exercise any form of judgment when talking about Carl Jung.

In his conclusion, Marshall ask: what did Jung most obviously gain from alchemy? The last part of his response is as follows:

 "It is clear that Jung gets much from the alchemists, that they deepen tendencies within his own works, but it is extremely doubtful that he clears up the mysteries of the texts themselves. It might be possible to suggest that if the alchemist projected the secrets of their psyche onto the Work, Jung projected the secrets of his Analytic Psychology onto Alchemy."

Although, Marshall is not wrong about Jung's relation to alchemy as a way to deepen his Analytical psychology, there is a lot more to understand from alchemy and Jung's teachings about alchemy. When writing about Gnosticism or alchemy, Jung never spoke to his reader on a first-degree basis. He chose a second-degree approach to protect himself from being tagged as a mystic. Yet, he was sometimes clear about his research. In Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote

“Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as ‘mystical,’ provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unauthentic.” (CW 14, ¶ 515)

 And a few pages later, 

“For thirty years I have studied these psychic processes under all possible conditions and have assured myself that the alchemists as well as the great philosophies of the East are referring to just such experiences, and that it is chiefly our ignorance of the psyche if these experiences appear ‘mystic.’” (CW 14, ¶ 762)

 This is the quantum leap Jung asked us to do in order to understand his use of alchemy. Conjunctions of opposites are psychological phenomena that are usually called mystical or transcendent experiences. This is the key to understand his alchemical studies.

Mystical or transcendent experiences are always lived as a symbol of conjunction of opposites that Jung also called the uniting symbol. This extremely numinous symbol entirely fills consciousness for a short moment. Let's see an example. Claire Myers Owens (1896 – 1983) was a novelist, lecturer, and author of non-fiction works. In 1949, Owens experienced a uniting symbol while she was working at her writing desk on a quiet morning:

“Suddenly the entire room was filled with a great golden light, the whole world was filled with nothing but light. There was nothing anywhere except this effulgent light and my own small kernel of the self. The ordinary ‘I’ ceased to exist. Nothing of me remained but a mere nugget of consciousness. It felt as if some vast transcendent force was invading me without my volition, as if all the immanent good lying latent within me began to pour forth in a stream, to form a moving circle with the universal principle. My self began to dissolve into the light that was like a great golden all-pervasive fog. It was a mystical moment of union with the mysterious infinite, with all things, all people.”¹

What we see here is a conjunction of the opposites me-the Light or me-God which is a regular occurrence in a first transcendent experience. This is the first conjunction of opposites the alchemists described and what Gerhard Dorn called unio mentalis. The symbol of the first transcendent experience is always a conjunction of the opposites particle v. whole and may adopt multiple forms such as child-parent, pupil-sage, me-universe, me-God, etc.

Alchemists' goal was to reach those mystical experiences they thought had not a divine origin but could be consciously induced. Their grimoires contained their personal recipes to reach those states. Most of the processes they taught aimed to broaden consciousness in order to reach those conjunction of opposites. Consciousness was the prima materia as well as the end product of alchemy. That explains why they were so preoccupied with the number four, the four elements and the four temperaments which Jung renamed as the four cognitive functions.

The alchemists were the finest intellectuals of their time. They usually mastered greek, latin and sometimes arabic. For most people, they are now regarded as strange and mysterious but it is far from the truth. Those men knew exactly the ins and outs of their field of expertise. They were aware of the danger and the consequences to reveal publicly what they were after.

In his book, Marshall underlines two important facts about alchemy:

1. They were not persecuted by the Church.
2. They were doing chemical experiments.

I have a different opinion.  First, although alchemists were not persecuted by the Church, they used an insane amount of symbols to specifically protect themselves from the Inquisition and from the adyton and the deisidaimonia (the secret knowledge protected by the wrath of God). They have succeeded to such a degree that very few people have managed, up until now, to understand what they were writing about.

Second, in their process to protect themselves, they certainly did set up a laboratory and done a few experiments. It would have been a basic safety precaution to hide their real research. That does not mean that their laboratories were their main tool. When you possess the key to alchemy, which is the developement of consciousness to reach mystical experiences, you don't need laboratories. 

 

Carl Jung was successful in deciphering the main symbols of alchemy. He recognized the conjunction of opposites, the philosopher's stone, the rebis, the uroboros, the homonculus, the hermaphrodite, the conjunction of the sun and the moon, the hieros gamos of the king and the queen as symbols of mystical experiences. His error was to bend alchemy to fit the premisses of his psychology. As such,  it is important to state that alchemists never did active imagination in front of chemical experiments. Nor did they project their unconscious on those experiments. Basically, Jung found in alchemy his two mystical experiences of 1913 and 1917.

For more, see

Jung's understanding of the philosopher's stone

Carl Jung's Second Mystical Experience

¹ From IMERE website.