Jung and the Rosarium

Author: Christopher Chayban

For Jung, the pictures in the Rosarium Philosophorum were an apt analogy to portray his understanding of the complications that he encountered with the transference relationships (Jung on Alchemy pg.194). Of course, the transference is an unconscious phenomenon that happens naturally and Jung informs us that the sequence of images depicted in the Rosarium are not conscious representations (Jung on Alchemy pg.189) but contents of the unconscious. These contents are something we don’t identify with (i.e the opposite gender) and do not belong to the ego (Jung on Alchemy pg.186). When we interact in relationships, psychic representations are produced but are further away from consciousness. They may pop up as the contrasexual “other” (Jung on Alchemy pg.193) and show up as masculine or feminine figures in the psyche.

In the second picture labeled “King and Queen,” it’s easy to identify (consciously) with the same gender figure.  But this left-handed handshake present in the image tells us otherwise. The left often (but not always) alludes to the sinister or the dark side, which in contemporary psychological language we may refer to as the unconscious or the unknown. This shifts our perspective dramatically as we shed light into the invisible realms of the unconscious because Jung tells us that the King, in the picture represents the masculine other (Animus) for the woman and the Queen, the feminine other (Anima) for man (Jung on Alchemy pg.191). This uncanny observation is fleshed out into a comprehensive model where the dynamics of the conscious and unconscious are interacting in the transference (Jung on Alchemy pg.193). He says that this series served as a helpful model” for both men and the times” (Jung on Alchemy pg.186).

Not only did Jung understand the images a psychic parallel to the transference but also to process of individuation. Differentiation happens naturally without much intervention of an outside force. A plant will come to flower on its own but given the right container, the right soil and right amount of sun light, the process of flowering or reaching its highest potential can be achieved quicker than it if it were to struggle on its own. This is what the alchemists and Jung (in different ways) were attempting to do. For the alchemist the right recipe and flask to transform nature and for Jung, the right image to transform the psyche. Jung says that the unconscious will produce “images of the goal” and images that “anticipate wholeness” or at least the possibility of “order” (Jung on Alchemy pg.211) that will contain the opposites. As the idea of wholeness is a paradox which can be only described in “antimonies” (Jung on Alchemy pg.209). The image of the coniunctio is one such image that corresponds to these antimonies in both the transference and human relationships (Jung on Alchemy pg.214). Jung understands the coniunctio as a symbol of wholeness in the individuation process that is freeing instinctive energy that would otherwise overload it in it’s absence (Jung on Alchemy pg.200).

 Resources:

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

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