Carl Jung found in alchemy both the individuation process and his two mystical experiences. He was the first to notice, in the psychology field, that alchemy was about the process to consciously produce mystical or transcendent experiences. That is the alchemical secret he only revealed to those who could read him. Finding that teaching in the obscure grimoires was not an easy task since the alchemists had to bury their secret under multiple layers of symbols to protect themselves from the Church and the Inquisition. They believed mystical experiences were not divine interventions but phenomena related to the increase in consciousness. This article is an interpretation of Carl Jung’s book The Psychology of Transference. We use Jung's same ten illustrations from the Rosarium Philosophorum (1550) to show each step of the alchemical process leading to the first two mystical experiences. The demonstration shows that alchemy was about the development of the four cognitive functions of consciousness instead of the integration of the unconscious as proposed by Carl Jung.
Keywords: mystical experiences, alchemy, conjunction of opposites, philosopher’s stone, cognitive function, active imagination, unconscious.
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