Jung on the Alchemists
Author: Christopher Chayban
The alchemical texts were confusing to Jung because they had just resurfaced around his time and because he wasn’t a practicing alchemist. They are not so confusing any more and by that, I don’t mean Jung doesn’t deserve any credit, because he is a great philosophical alchemist and contributed a great deal to the modern understanding of Alchemy. But also thanks must be given to practicing alchemists in modern times who have cleared up some of this “projection into matter” business that Jung that they were doing, of which he was wrong (Sorry to say, I know we don’t like to think of Jung as ever wrong).
Newton was fascinated with light because he thought it embodied the Word of God, as suggested by the Emerald Tablet
“It is true without lying, certain and most true. That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing. And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.
Isaac Newton wrote fellow alchemist Robert Boyle a letter urging him to keep “high silence” in publicly discussing the principles of alchemy. “Because the way by the Mercurial principle may be impregnated has been thought fit to be concealed by others that have know it,” Newton wrote, “and therefore may possibly be an inlet to something more noble that is not to be communicated without immense damage to the world if there be any verity in [the warning of the] Hermetic writers. There are other things besides the transmutation of metals which none but they understand.” According to B.J.T. Dobbs in The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (Cambridge University Press, 1984), “The fact that Newton never published a work on alchemy cannot be taken to mean that he knew he had failed [at the Great Work]. On the contrary, it probably means that he had enough success to think that he might be on the track of something of fundamental importance and so had good reason for keeping his ‘high silence,’ even though there is nothing to indicate that he himself was searching for that mysterious “inlet to something more noble.”
Although it is true (psychologically) that people can project their inner contents into matter, and alchemical themes show up in dreams, it is quite different than what the alchemists were talking about. Because it also happens the other way, matter projects into you or is coming at you, meeting you in the world. By that, I mean that they (the alchemists) were studying the spiritual phenomenology of matter and it’s principles and how it projects it’s spiritual or inner contents into the world. Sulfur isn’t just some inert dirt, it really is the soul of matter, and as an essential oil, it changes one’s consciousness. Like the real “stuff” and substance of let’s say the oil of Mars/Iron (since we are exploring the reunion of the psyche with the body) has a particular consciousness about it, that can change your consciousness if you happen to engage with it.
That’s one of my problems with Jung, (which now seems like a projection of his) is the insistence on being the “empirical” scientist is not even being fulfilled. One learns alchemy by studying alchemists and practicing alchemy. Not by learning about alchemy by a non-alchemist (Jung,) and commenting on what you think about it without experience. I don’t see these folks who split the psyche and matter writing about “how the shamans” do it, as actually doing what the shamans did or take an under-study. I see them more of as a quote “back seat driver,” commenting and describing the driver’s driving. This is actually a good image of the split between psyche and body. When that happens, the body is driving and psyche is just commenting, as if it is the driver, but has never driven before at all.
So with that said (finally), what I want to get at here, is that since matter also projects into you, that could be the reason why one needs faith in the doctor. Because the doctor has his own sulfur (quite literally in his body) and consciousness, that can change the sulfur of the patient. It’s a chemical transformation in body and mind! He is a psychosomatician whether he claims to be or not!
My intention for this post is that it doesn’t matter if it’s alchemy or shamanism, there is a split between psyche and matter and perhaps this will be the story of “our time,” when they write about us, in the computer chip books of the future.
Resources:
(https://www.alchemylab.com/
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