| In much of the same way that Alchemy was an undercurrent of Christianity, Science was the undercurrent of Alchemy, which has now become the new dominant in consciousness. Metals, chemicals, machinery and other methods of application to control nature are now, whether done to the betterment or destruction of the Earth and humanity have evolved faster than our being can even process or understand.
Of course, this is science as the culture knows it today but science is something that one does as an art to order and make sense of life in a certain way, and in that regard, there has always been science or “sciences.” Jung says that science began with the Astrology and stars, when the human projected his unconscious “out there” and that this process has a tendency to repeat itself whenever the human needs to fill that dark and empty void within (Jung on Alchemy pg.81). So, what I mean by science, is the myth we are living to fill that empty void and as the culture knows it. The void needed to fill is done by projecting that “everything unknown can be known and can be explained” and by means the empirical, rational, step by step, I don’t believe it until I see it approach.
Taking a gaze into the etymology of the word “science,” it comes from the Latin “scientia” meaning knowledge, from “scire,” which means to know one thing from another, and from “scindere,” which means to cut or divide (https://www.etymonline.com/word/science). So, when one reflects on these perspectives, the origin of the word of science, can directly relate to alchemical operation of “separatio,” which taken psychologically, inherently implies opposition and conflict. If I were a therapist and the West was my patient, the issue of separation would climb to the forefront. Separation from its own unconscious polytheistic roots in favor of a new monotheism which adaptation has been less than optimal to say the least, given that the natural development of the West has been impeded. The term “Hurt people, hurt people” comes to mind or the fact that the history tends to repeat itself, in the sense that “one does what one has been done to.” The West is feels hurt without knowing it (suppression of the feminine in Patriarchy) because it underwent a separatio from its roots and now applies separatio to everything in the form of the buzz saw that is science, that sometimes quite literally cutting things down (as in trees) or psychologically taking things apart via classifying and thus leaving no mystery. It’s not that our cultural complex is that we are myth-less anymore because we are surely living the myth of science (which began with alchemy), but that we are mystery-less.
Singer and Kimbles posit that Jungian tradition has actually magnified the schism between the individual and the group by way of focus on individuation (The Cultural Complex pg.4). As stated earlier, the West has already undergone a severe split from its original group in the unconscious and now splitting on the conscious level on the cultural complexes are emotionally erupting on multiple levels from political parties, to race, sex and gender. Where is all this going? Well it seems to want to head towards back to a coniunctio outwardly, a global network of love and harmony but much like how science and technology have evolved faster than our understanding, it seems that we are unwilling to suffer the opposites in the nigredo and doing the individual work needed to achieve the coniunctio. Taking these cultural complexes back into our inner sociology (The Cultural Complex pg.4) from the outside to the coniuctio inside.
Perhaps re-opening an investigation into each person’s individual cultural roots. The Science myth can help now by way of the double helix seen in DNA, is where the Alchemcial Mercurius now lives, carrying his technological caduceus into the realms of DNA ancestry testing or the infinite literature about cultural histories available online.
If fire symbolizes our active passions and emotions, then the world is on fire, culturally and is quite literally in a Calicinatio with the California wild fires. To douse this heat, a glance into our primordial waters just may do the trick. But on the contrary, like Narcissus, if we finally see our own reflection and to see what we or who really are, we just might perish instead.
Resources:
Science (n.). (n.d.). Retrieved December 19, 2017, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/science
Schwartz-Slant, N. (1995). Jung on Alchemy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Singer, T., & Kimbles, S. L. (2004). The cultural complex: contemporary Jungian perspectives on psyche and society. Hove, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge.
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