Alchemy’s attitude towards Christianity

Author: Christopher Chayban

Alchemy was a response to the dominant in consciousness of Christianity. A new dominant was set to emerge as the tension of the opposites between spirit and matter had split wide open. The feminine fell into the well of the unconscious and the masculine rose to the mountain tops of consciousness (Jung on Alchemy pg.25). Jung tells us that in formation of a new dominant, we get symbols like a king’s son, hermaphrodite or a rotundum (Jung on Alchemy pg.182). But unlike a king son with the masculine father-son dichotomy present in Christianity, through alchemy, the unconscious compensated with the feminine to choose another son. It reached back to a Matriarchal time and selected the Cybelle-Attis myth which came in the form of the prima materia and the filius macrocosmi (Jung on Alchemy pg.25). The prima materia or prime matter is a fundamental concept in alchemy that is related to the primal chaos which the central image of the Cybelle-Attis myth (Jung on Alchemy pg.29). Matter as we know it in the West is related to the feminine principle, which highly important for the alchemists and was seen as a chthonic spirit that lived in the depths of the body (Jung on Alchemy pg.27).

But of course, “Original Sin Is depicted in an early alchemical myth as being the result of the castration of the originally bisexual Great Goddess Cybelle (Jung, 1963, para.27 and n.185), and this humankind’s Original Sin, results in a wound that is felt as a torment within union. (Jung on Alchemy pg.38). “

In Christianity, the feminine became suppressed under the rule of the Patriarchy which needed to develop its rational consciousness (Jung on Alchemy pg.38). The mother archetype was rejected and the feminine lost its spiritual libido as it concretized into a material presence of the Mother Church and resurfaced as a compensatory materialism and scientific rationalism (Psyche and Matter, pg. 154). The Cybelle-Attis myth was projected outward and out of fear, the masculine oriented culture wanted to dominant and control the feminine Cybelle features in a woman which conversely had a projection onto weak Attis type men (Jung on Alchemy pg.31).

Never the less, Schwartz-Salant tells us alchemy holds the solution through compensation to the patriarchal suppression (Jung on Alchemy pg.26) and Kristeva describes the emergence of Luna out of the captivity of the despair and depression of the nigredo (Jung on Alchemy pg.28). The Moon or Luna, is the feminine principle and the Sun or Sol, the masculine principle. Through suffering madness in the darkness of the nigredo, a healing substance called the “balsam” developed via successful union states of Sol and Luna (Jung on Alchemy pg.39). Thus, when creating a container or space for the Sol-Luna coniunctio to hold the tension of two opposites, masculine and feminine, we can harmonize the polarities where neither has to dominate (Jung on Alchemy pg.33), but instead allow for a new hermaphroditic consciousness to emerge (Jung on Alchemy pg.33) that embraces both.

Resources:

Schwartz-Slant, N. (1995). Jung on Alchemy, part of Encountering Jung series. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

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