The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy - Hardcover

Jung, C. G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691097666 ISBN 13: 9780691097664

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1970

Synopsis

Jung's last major work, completed in his 81st year, on the synthesis of the opposites in alchemy and psychology.

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'What Jung has to convey is so truly original and so far-ranging in its implications that I suspect that this book will be a real challenge even to those most psychologically sophisticated. What he here presents in rich and documented detail can perhaps best be described as an anatomy of the objective psyche... Broadly speaking it is a treasury of images pertaining to the individual's discovery of the self... Mysterium Coniunctionis is a splendid capstone to the life work of a master spirit.' - Edward F. Edinger, Journal of Analytical Psychology.

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MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS

AN INQUIRY INTO THE SEPARATION AND SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITES IN ALCHEMY

By C. G. JUNG, GERHARD ADLER, R. F. C. HULL

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1970 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-09766-4

Contents

EDITORIAL NOTE, v, 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE, viii, 
LIST OF PLATES, xii, 
FOREWORD xiii, 
I. The Components of the Coniunctio, 
II. The Paradoxa, 
III. The Personification of the Opposites, 
IV. Rex and Regina, 
V. Adam and Eve, 
VI. The Conjunction, 
Epilogue, 554, 
APPENDIX: LATIN AND GREEK TEXTS, 557, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 601, 
INDEX, 649, 
TABLE OF PARAGRAPH CORRELATIONS, 697, 

CHAPTER 1

THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO

1. THE OPPOSITES

The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love. To begin with they form a dualism; for instance the opposites are humidum (moist) / siccum (dry), frigidum (cold) / calidum (warm), superiora (upper, higher) / inferiora (lower), spiritus-anima (spirit-soul) / corpus (body), coelum (heaven) / terra (earth), ignis (fire) / aqua (water), bright / dark, agens (active) / patiens (passive), volatile (volatile, gaseous) / fixum (solid), pretiosum (precious, costly; also carum, dear) / vile (cheap, common), bonum (good) / malum (evil), manifestum (open) / occultum (occult; also celatum, hidden), oriens (East) / occidens (West), vivum (living) / mortuum (dead, inert), masculus (masculine) / foemina (feminine), Sol / Luna. Often the polarity is arranged as a quaternio (quaternity), with the two opposites crossing one another, as for instance the four elements or the four qualities (moist, dry, cold, warm), or the four directions and seasons, thus producing the cross as an emblem of the four elements and symbol of the sublunary physical world. This fourfold Physis, the cross, also appears in the signs for earth [??], Venus [??], Mercury [??], Saturn [??], and Jupiter [??].

2 The opposites and their symbols are so common in the texts that it is superfluous to cite evidence from the sources. On the other hand, in view of the ambiguity of the alchemists' language, which is "tam ethice quam physice" (as much ethical as physical), it is worth while to go rather more closely into the manner in which the texts treat of the opposites. Very often the masculine-feminine opposition is personified as King and Queen (in the Rosarium philosophorum also as Emperor and Empress), or as servus (slave) or vir rubeus (red man) and mulier Candida (white woman); in the "Visio Arislei" they appear as Gabricus (or Thabritius) and Beya, the King's son and daughter. Theriomorphic symbols are equally common and are often found in the illustrations. I would mention the eagle and toad ("the eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground"), which are the "emblem" of Avicenna in Michael Maier, the eagle representing Luna "or Juno, Venus, Beya, who is fugitive and winged like the eagle, which flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes." The toad "is the opposite of air, it is a contrary element, namely earth, whereon alone it moves by slow steps, and does not trust itself to another element. Its head is very heavy and gazes at the earth. For this reason it denotes the philosophic earth, which cannot fly [i.e., cannot be sublimated], as it is firm and solid. Upon it as a foundation the golden house is to be built. Were it not for the earth in our work the air would fly away, neither would the fire have its nourishment, nor the water its vessel."

3 Another favourite theriomorphic image is that of the two birds or two dragons, one of them winged, the other wingless. This allegory comes from an ancient text, De Chemia Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus. The wingless bird or dragon prevents the other from flying. They stand for Sol and Luna, brother and sister, who are united by means of the art. In Lambspringk's "Symbols" they appear as the astrological Fishes which, swimming in opposite directions, symbolize the spirit / soul polarity. The water they swim in is mare nostrum (our sea) and is interpreted as the body. The fishes are "without bones and cortex." 15 From them is produced a mare immensum, which is the aqua permanens (permanent water). Another symbol is the stag and unicorn meeting in the "forest." The stag signifies the soul, the unicorn spirit, and the forest the body. The next two pictures in Lambspringk's "Symbols" show the lion and lioness, or the wolf and dog, the latter two fighting; they too symbolize soul and spirit. In Figure VII the opposites are symbolized by two birds in a wood, one fledged, the other unfledged. Whereas in the earlier pictures the conflict seems to be between spirit and soul, the two birds signify the conflict between spirit and body, and in Figure VIII the two birds fighting do in fact represent that conflict, as the caption shows. The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the "hylical" body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit.

4 The elevation of the human figure to a king or a divinity, and on the other hand its representation in subhuman, theriomorphic form, are indications of the transconscious character of the pairs of opposites. They do not belong to the ego-personality but are supraordinate to it. The ego-personality occupies an intermediate position, like the "anima inter bona et mala sita" (soul placed between good and evil). The pairs of opposites constitute the phenomenology of the paradoxical self, man's totality. That is why their symbolism makes use of cosmic expressions like coelum / terra. The intensity of the conflict is expressed in symbols like fire and water, height and depth, life and death.

2. THE QUATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCURIUS

5 The arrangement of the opposites in a quaternity is shown in an interesting illustration in Stolcenberg's Viridarium chymicum (Fig. XLII), which can also be found in the Philosophia reformata of Mylius (1622, p. 117). The goddesses represent the four seasons of the sun in the circle of the Zodiac (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) and at the same time the four degrees of heating, as well as the four elements "combined" around the circular table. The synthesis of the elements is effected by means of the circular movement in time (circulatio, rota) of the sun through the houses of the Zodiac. As I have shown elsewhere, the aim of the circulatio is the production (or rather, reproduction) of the Original Man, who was a sphere. Perhaps I may mention in this connection a remarkable quotation from Ostanes in Abu'l-Qasim, describing the intermediate position between two pairs of opposites constituting a quaternio:

Ostanes said, Save me, O my God, for I stand between two exalted brilliancies known for their wickedness, and between two dim lights; each of them has reached me and I know not how to save myself from them. And it was said to me, Go up to Agathodaimon the Great and ask aid of him, and know that there is in thee somewhat of his nature, which will never be corrupted.... And when I ascended into the air he said to me, Take the child of the bird which is mixed with redness and spread for the gold its bed which comes forth from the glass, and place it in its vessel whence it has no power to come out except when thou desirest, and leave it until its moistness has departed.

6 The quaternio in this case evidently consists of the two malefici, Mars and Saturn (Mars is the ruler of Aries, Saturn of Capricorn); the two "dim lights" would then be feminine ones, the moon (ruler of Cancer) and Venus (ruler of Libra). The opposites between which Ostanes stands are thus masculine / feminine on the one hand and good / evil on the other. The way he speaks of the four luminaries—he does not know how to save himself from them—suggests that he is subject to Heimarmene, the compulsion of the stars; that is, to a transconscious factor beyond the reach of the human will. Apart from this compulsion, the injurious effect of the four planets is due to the fact that each of them exerts its specific influence on man and makes him a diversity of persons, whereas he should be one. It is presumably Hermes who points out to Ostanes that something incorruptible is in his nature which he shares with the Agathodaimon, something divine, obviously the germ of unity. This germ is the gold, the aurum philosophorum, the bird of Hermes or the son of the bird, who is the same as the filius philosophorum. He must be enclosed in the vas Hermeticum and heated until the "moistness" that still clings to him has departed, i.e., the humidum radicale (radical moisture), the prima materia, which is the original chaos and the sea (the unconscious). Some kind of coming to consciousness seems indicated. We know that the synthesis of the four was one of the main preoccupations of alchemy, as was, though to a lesser degree, the synthesis of the seven (metals, for instance). Thus in the same text Hermes says to the Sun:

... I cause to come out to thee the spirits of thy brethren [the planets], O Sun, and I make them for thee a crown the like of which was never seen; and I cause thee and them to be within me, and I will make thy kingdom vigorous.

This refers to the synthesis of the planets or metals with the sun, to form a crown which will be "within" Hermes. The crown signifies the kingly totality; it stands for unity and is not subject to Heimarmene. This reminds us of the seven- or twelve-rayed crown of light which the Agathodaimon serpent wears on Gnostic gems, and also of the crown of Wisdom in the Aurora Consurgens.

7 In the "Consilium coniugii" there is a similar quaternio with the four qualities arranged as "combinations of two contraries, cold and moist, which are not friendly to heat and dryness." Other quaternions are: "The stone is first an old man, in the end a youth, because the albedo comes at the beginning and the rubedo at the end." Similarly the elements are arranged as two "manifesta" (water and earth), and two "occulta" (air and fire). A further quaternio is suggested by the saying of Bernardus Trevisanus: "The upper has the nature of the lower, and the ascending has the nature of the descending." The following combination is from the "Tractatus Micreris": "In it [the Indian Ocean] are images of heaven and earth, of summer, autumn, winter, and spring, male and female. If thou callest this spiritual, what thou doest is probable; if corporeal, thou sayest the truth; if heavenly, thou liest not; if earthly, thou hast well spoken." Here we are dealing with a double quaternio having the structure shown in the diagram on page 10.

8 The double quaternio or ogdoad stands for a totality, for something that is at once heavenly and earthly, spiritual or corporeal, and is found in the "Indian Ocean," that is to say in the unconscious. It is without doubt the Microcosm, the mystical Adam and bisexual Original Man in his prenatal state, as it were, when he is identical with the unconscious. Hence in Gnosticism the "Father of All" is described not only as masculine and feminine (or neither), but as Bythos, the abyss. In the scholia to the "Tractatus aureus Hermetis" there is a quaternio consisting of superius / inferius, exterius / interius. They are united into one thing by means of the circular distillation, named the Pelican: "Let all be one in one circle or vessel." "For this vessel is the true philosophical Pelican, nor is any other to be sought after in all the world." The text gives the following diagram:

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

9 B C D E represent the outside, A is the inside, "as it were the origin and source from which the other letters flow, and likewise the final goal to which they flow back," F G stands for Above and Below. "Together the letters A B C D E F G clearly signify the hidden magical Septenary." The central point A, the origin and goal, the "Ocean or great sea," is also called a circulus exiguus, very small circle, and a "mediator making peace between the enemies or elements, that they may love one another in a meet embrace." This little inner circle corresponds to the Mercurial Fountain in the Rosarium, which I have described in my "Psychology of the Transference." The text calls it "the more spiritual, perfect, and nobler Mercurius," the true arcane substance, a "spirit," and goes on:

For the spirit alone penetrates all things, even the most solid bodies. Thus the catholicity of religion, or of the true Church, consists not in a visible and bodily gathering together of men, but in the invisible, spiritual concord and harmony of those who believe devoutly and truly in the one Jesus Christ. Whoever attaches himself to a particular church outside this King of Kings, who alone is the shepherd of the true spiritual church, is a sectarian, a schismatic, and a heretic. For the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, but is within us, as our Saviour himself says in the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke.

That the Ecclesia spiritualis is meant is clear from the text: "But you will ask, where then are those true Christians, who are free from all sectarian contagion?" They are "neither in Samaria, nor in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Geneva, nor in Leipzig," but are scattered everywhere through the world, "in Turkey, in Persia, Italy, Gaul, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England, America, and even in farthest India." The author continues: "God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in the spirit and in truth. After these examinations and avowals I leave it to each man to judge who is of the true Church, and who not."

10 From this remarkable excursus we learn, first of all, that the "centre" unites the four and the seven into one. The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit then causes the author to confess himself a member of the Ecclesia spiritualis, for the spirit is God. This religious background is already apparent in the choice of the term "Pelican" for the circular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ. The idea of Mercurius as a peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to Ephesians 2 : 13ff.:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [RSV]

In elucidating the alchemical parallel we should note that the author of the scholia to the "Tractatus aureus Hermetis" prefaces his account of the union of opposites with the following remark:

Finally, there will appear in the work that ardently desired blue or cerulean colour, which does not darken or dull the eyes of the beholder by the healing power of its brilliance, as when we see the splendour of the outward sun. Rather does it sharpen and strengthen them, nor does he [Mercurius] slay a man with his glance like the basilisk, but by the shedding of his own blood he calls back those who are near to death, and restores to them unimpaired their former life, like the pelican.

Mercurius is conceived as "spiritual blood," on the analogy of the blood of Christ. In Ephesians those who are separated "are brought near in the blood of Christ." He makes the two one and has broken down the dividing wall "in his flesh." Caro (flesh) is a synonym for the prima materia and hence for Mercurius. The "one" is a "new man." He reconciles the two "in one body," an idea which is figuratively represented in alchemy as the two-headed hermaphrodite. The two have one spirit, in alchemy they have one soul. Further, the lapis is frequently compared to Christ as the lapis angularis (cornerstone). As we know, the temple built upon the foundation of the saints inspired in the Shepherd of Hermas a vision of the great building into which human beings, streaming from the four quarters, inserted themselves as living stones, melting into it "without seam." The Church is built upon the rock that gave Peter his name (Matthew 16 : 18).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS by C. G. JUNG, GERHARD ADLER, R. F. C. HULL. Copyright © 1970 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1970
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691097666
• ISBN 13: 9780691097664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 438