In his books, Carl Jung stated that mystical experiences are part of a process which contains three successive experiences. Those experiences are short apparitions in the mind of an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites. Jung’s study of Gnosticism and Alchemy was directly related to these experiences that he thought were part of the individuation process. The goal of Gnosticism was to attain these mystical experiences they called gnosis. The teaching of the Alchemists, in the shade of the Inquisition, was that mystical experiences were not divine interventions but events that could be consciously induced. They used symbolic depictions of the transformation of lead into gold or the production of a precious stone to explain the process leading to those mystical phenomena. It is Gerhard Dorn, an alchemist of the 16th century, that has proposed a model containing three successive experiences, the alchemical twin of the Gnostic system. This paper shows that Carl Jung succeeded in reaching the second mystical experience.
Keywords: mystical experience, Carl G. Jung, Gnosticism, Alchemy, Gerhard Dorn, The Red Book, philosopher’s stone, Uroboros, Bollingen tower.
Click on the link for the pdf