Wolfgang Giegerich, Alchemy and the Lamentable State of Jungian Psychology

In his 2020 book, The Soul's Logical Life, author Wolfgang Giegerich demonstrates both his incompetence in reading Jung properly and his inability to interpret symbols. This book is one of the most impressive examples of the lamentable state of Jungian psychology today. 

It is not difficult to find multiple quotes in his book that support this evaluation. He writes

All the substances used in alchemy were not seen as merely chemical, positive-factual ones in our sense. They were at once physical and imaginal, even fantastic. Imagination was the basis of alchemy, its natural “element,” not a distant goal to be produced through a long process of laborious work. The prima materia the alchemists worked with came as imaginally perceived to begin with. (P. 139)

Here, Giegerich makes several mistakes. First, he implies that alchemy was about chemical experiments which is a naive interpretation of the symbolism of alchemy. One has to consider a few facts about alchemy to separate truth from fiction:

• Rightfully underlined by Jung, it was the continuation of Gnosticism during a period of extreme power from the Church and, later, Inquisition.
• The authors of the grimoires were the finest intellectuals of their times.
• The recipes they taught had nothing to do with real chemical experiments.
• If the production of gold was really hidden under layers of symbols, the method would have leaked somewhere and it never happened.
• A lot of money was invested in the production of the grimoires which is a proof of their value.
• Immortality, as the goal of alchemy, only exists in the mind of ingenuous people.
• The production of gold from base metals is a symbol of a psychological process, not a factual outcome.

Giegerich, the master of logic, was not able to reach those simple logical conclusions and continued to promote the erroneous assumption that alchemists were doing chemical experiments.

In the same quote, Giegerich also wrongfully state that imagination was the basis of alchemy. Although Jung and the first generation of analysts also supported that dubious claim, there is no proof that it was the case. This is a bending of alchemy to justify analytical psychology’s active imagination technique. It is surprising that a scientist choose to rely on such an unproven data. Two reasons could be invoked to support the assertion that alchemists never did active imagination. First, as we have already said, the real alchemists never did in a laboratory the experiments that were depicted in their grimoires and, as such, could not be the stratum for projections. Second, the words meditatio and imaginatio used by the alchemists have nothing to do with the fantastic imagination at work in active imagination. Alchemy demands true imagination, not fantastic imagination. Jung quotes the Rosarium in Psychology and Alchemy (CW 12): 

« And take care that thy door be well and firmly closed, so that he who is within cannot escape, and—God willing—thou wilt reach the goal. Nature performeth her operations gradually; and indeed, I would have thee do the same: let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature. And observe according to nature, through whom the substances regenerate 

themselves in the bowels of the earth. And imagine this with true and not with fantastic imagination. » (par. 218) 

The problem, here, is that active imagination is fantastic imagination. It is the wandering of imagination into the realm of fantastic images. In contrast, true imagination is the meticulous exploration of all possibilities regarding a situation. It is what we would call, in today’s words, brainstorming. This is the kind of imagination alchemy required.

On page 143, Girgerich adds

The point of alchemy is that, as “opus contra naturam” (!), it had precisely overcome the dimension of the physis as its horizon (the physis that used to be the horizon of mythical existence). As I have shown, even though it worked out its active imagination in the medium of literal natural substances, alchemy had superseded the natural because of and with its focus on “matter,” and thus advanced to a fundamentally more abstract (and in this sense “higher”) level, the level of logic.

(Why was it so difficult for JUNG, who had seen through alchemy’s sexual imagery, to also see through its image of “matter”? I believe it was because JUNG would then have had to open himself to the logical level, which would have radically upset quite a few of his tenets. Not taking the incest motif and other sexual images literally was harmless by comparison.)

The amount of circumvolutions that Giegerich uses here is the direct outcome of his incapacity to achieve simple logical observations about alchemy. First, there is no matter nor active imagination in alchemy. Those who promote that view, project their own ignorance on a romantic picture of the lonely alchemist doing chemical experiments in his laboratory. That view does not hold a serious scrutiny.

The object of alchemy was the development of consciousness and we will explain why. This is the opus contra naturam, the work against nature that Giegerich does not seem to understand as it is shown with his exclamation mark. From the ancient Greeks, the alchemists took the four elements as the components of both matter and consciousness. To them, if matter was composed of the four elements water, fire, earth and air, consciousness was also composed of four directions. This observation also happened in astrology. This is the origin of Jung's four cognitive functions which are a reformulation of alchemy and astrology. The alchemists and the Gnostics (and probably the Egyptians) knew that humans had a defective or incomplete consciousness. They were, and still are, using only one and a half element of consciousness. The recurrence of the symbols three and one in the alchemical lore aims to show that state. The picture below from the Rosarium Philosophorum states the goal of the alchemical opus. The four stars represents the four side of consciousness or the four elements. True imagination or brainstorming was necessary to find the nature and characteristics of those four elements of consciousness at the beginning of the process. The mercurial fountain represents consciousness. Mercury is always a symbol of consciousness and not of the unconscious or of imagination in alchemy. The goal of the alchemical process is to make consciousness flows from the three faucets that are unused or undifferentiated. This is depicted in the center of the illustration and it is the work against nature.

With those few statements, one can easily reach the logical conclusion that alchemy was a secret knowledge that was passed from generation to generation to those who were able to read its symbols. It was not the precursor of alchemy nor was it the goal of some foolish alchemists to produce gold or reach immortality. The philosopher's stone or the precious stone of alchemy is the  optimal consciousness, the fifth element, the quintessence coming from the development of the four elements of consciousness. In Gnosticism and alchemy, the undifferentiated cognitive functions, as we now calls the elements, represented the wisdom lost in matter. The alchemists were not stupid or ignorant, they were very bright people that, out of necessity, had to hide their method to reach the optimal consciousness under such a well designed layer of symbol that even the master of logic, Giegerich himself, has been unable to comprehend.

Giegerich's criticism of Jung's interpretation of alchemy in the quote above ressemble a statement of a ten years old about quantum physic. When he writes: alchemy had superseded the natural because of and with its focus on “matter,” and thus advanced to a fundamentally more abstract (and in this sense “higher”) level, the level of logic, he shows an extremely limited understanding and interpretation of alchemy. There was no matter involved in the knowledge of the alchemists. Their symbols were always mind related and consciousness related. One has to be ingenuous to believe otherwise. The fact that they put so much importance on the fact that they were philosophers should lead to the logical conclusion that they were not chemists. 

On page 144, Giegerich rants

JUNG falls concretistically for the imagery (“medium”) instead of asking what its “message” might be. Thus he sets up an existing Third between the opposites and imagines in terms of an ontic, static realm what actually would have to be thought as nothing else but a living movement playing between the opposites themselves, with nothing “in between.” The invention of such a Third is “bad mythology,” a mystification. 

Here, Giegerich demonstrates his complete misunderstanding of Jung's concept of the third.  In Analytical psychology, the third is a conjunction of opposites which Jung's also repeatedly called a conjunctio oppositorum. Conjunction of opposites do not happen in real life because of their nature. However, there are extremely numinous symbols of conjunction of opposites that appears in consciousness during what is usually known as mystical experiences. The sense of union in those experiences such as I am one with God, with the universe or nature is the core symbol of numerous transcendent experience. 

The third is not a mystification, Doktor Giegerich, it is a psychological phenomenon that is worth being studied. To critic a concept that we do not understand is unscientific and it is surprising that editors and peer-reviewers  have let that happen. Obviously, this is another aspect of the lamentable state of Analytical psychology.

In Mysterium Conjunctionis (1956), 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) 

From his 1916 essay The Transcendent Function (only published in 1958), Jung was preoccupied with transcendent experiences. His concept of the  transcendent function has been defined prior to most of his other concepts such as the collective unconscious, or the Self. From that period,  he never stopped studying the phenomenon which he found was part of the symbolism of alchemy. In the same book, he adds

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”. (Jung, 1956/1963, ¶ 762) 

The alchemical symbolism of the hieros gamos, the sexual union of the king and the queen, the hermaphrodite, the homunculus, the rebis, etc. are all depictions of the symbol of conjunction of opposites that appear in transcendent experiences. Obviously, those are not litteral illustrations of the experience but their symbolism show the union of opposites phenomenon. Gnostics also used a symbol to express the conjunction of opposites phenomenon. The magnet, as a piece of metal with two opposite magnetic poles, was their way to illustrate the conjunction of opposites and the third.

Jung found in alchemy those symbols of transcendent experiences where the particle or the experiencer is merged with the whole such as God, the universe, nature, etc. This is the ultimate conjunction of opposites where the particle becomes the whole. It was this recognition that was the game changer in his career. To him, transcendent experiences were symbols of conjunction of opposites, the third deriving from a consciously performed individuation process.

In the illustration above from the Rosarium. The opposites king and queen are merged in a character with wings representing the spiritual transcendent experience. That state gives access to the tree of knowledge on the left. The four serpents representing the four elements of consciousness, one in the left hand and three in the right hand are elevated to light and dignified with a crown. This picture represents the philosopher's stone, the development of optimal consciousness.

From these observations, we can infer that the alchemists knew that the expansion of consciousness provoked transcendent experiences which did not originate from divine intervention. That is why they needed to protect themselves from the Church and the Inquisition. Jung's corpus of writings teaches that very fact on multiple occasions.

Although the reader must begin to realize that Giegerich is more a show off than a real scientist,  one last quote from his book seems necessary,

Instead of realizing that alchemy was an implicit and naive, indeed to a large extent helplessly groping form of thought, JUNG most of the time mistook it as an implicit psychology (in the personalistic sense of “people’s psychology,” having to do with one’s self-development), thereby depriving himself of the possibility to realize that the object of psychology proper (the life of the soul) is logical life and that the redemption of the seemingly miscarried alchemical undertaking had taken place, more than a century prior to JUNG, in HEGEL’s dialectical logic (which in some ways can be considered to be nothing else than “sublated and re-deemed alchemy”). ( P. 150)

Now, who is naive here? Who did not understand the core of Jung's writings? Who criticized Jung based on his own incapacity to read and understand Jung properly? Dear doktor Giegerich, alchemy was really an implicit psychology and Jung understood it, you did not. Your deficient logic has prevented you to grasp both the symbolism of alchemy and the core of Jung's writings.

With those few examples, the conclusion is that Giegerich is not a reliable source of information in the field of Analytical psychology. Anyone can decode Jung's most difficult pages with the indications given above and from the information on the blog GnosisJung.org. Giegerich is both the product and the figurehead of the lamentable state of Jungian psychology today. If he had stayed in the therapeutic domain which is probably his expertise, he could have been inspiring. The problem occurs when the analyst dive into Jung's teachings on the meaning of life and the individuation process. Giegerich and so many others like him always show their inability to read Jung on a second-degree level which is absolutely essential to understand his teachings.

The problem lies in part, a very small part indeed, on the fact that Jung thought that the knowledge of the Gnostics and the alchemists was an adyton protected by the desidaimonia¹ which means in English, a secret protected by the wrath of the gods. Therefore, he always used a nuanced second-degree writing approach, a technique the PhDs should have been able to decode long ago but who surprisingly did not. In his books, Jung talked to those who could understand him and Jungians have not been up to the job.

In a private letter to Eugene Rolfe in 1960, a few months before his death, Jung wrote: 

“I had to understand that I was unable to make the people see what I am after. I am practically alone. There are a few who understand this and that, but almost nobody sees the whole. (…) I have failed in my foremost task, to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has a soul and there is a buried treasure in the field, and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state.” 

B. R.

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¹ From his letter to Dr Baur-Cello