The Downfall of Alchemy and the Rise of Scientific Chemistry
Author: Christopher Chayban
There are three overarching themes that contributed to the downfall of alchemy and the ascent of modern scientific chemistry. The first is concerned with the divisions present within the different alchemical traditions, the second, our own Western weltanschauung, and finally, one group of alchemists became stuck at the third stage of psychological projection, while the other stayed at the fourth.
The split nature of alchemy is apparent from the beginning. Its tendency to divide was not only present within the metallurgic disciplines, but also within the group identity itself. Principe lets us know that the alchemists became their own group around the third century CE. (The Secrets of Alchemy pg.13) After the alchemists distinguished themselves, Schwartz-Salant tell us that the tradition itself went two different directions. The exoteric or extraverted tradition became the practical alchemists, and the introverted and esoteric traditions became the philosophical alchemists (Jung on Alchemy pg.12-13). This split was the final blow, alchemy as “the one” became “the two.”
The second theme is deduced from the Western weltanschauung, which can be characterized by a goal-striving attitude concerned with acquisition and conquest. While seeking my yoga certification, I noticed my peers were interested in how they could obtain material possessions, like more yoga books, mala beads and head adornments. Pursuing knowledge seemed to come secondary to the collection of physical belongings. This is a good example of the object-oriented, extraverted framework that trusts the tangible over the abstract. As the sensation function surfaced and paired with an inflated thinking function, alchemists moved further away from the last part of Ostane’s original axiom, “a nature dominates another nature” and substituted “human reason dominates nature” (Jung on Alchemy pg.8).
The last contribution to the shift from alchemy to chemistry is the five stages of psychological projection. In his book, Murray Stein expands on Jung’s five stages on the development of consciousness (Jung’s Map of the Soul pg.179-189). The first stage as Participation Mystique, the subject and object are one, there is no differentiation. The second stage is the localization of projections, where the alchemists projected the unconscious into matter. The third stage is abstraction, where the value of material and human objects decreases and the focus becomes centered around God, who is still “out there” somewhere in the sky. The fourth stage is the removal of all projections, where the highest value becomes finding the truth. At this stage, secularization and humanization increase. Humans keep to an agnostic attitude and feel a superiority over both God and matter as neither is of great concern anymore. The practical alchemists who eventually became our modern-day scientists progressed to this stage, but philosophical alchemists remained in the third stage. As the rise of chemistry solidified its place in the world, alchemy lay dead until Jung resurrected it to put us at the fifth stage, where we can attempt to put everything back inside and take our unconscious content, like archetypes, dreams and fantasies, seriously.
Resources:
Principe, L. (2013). The Secrets of Alchemy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schwartz-Slant, N. (1995). Jung on Alchemy, part of Encountering Jung series. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Stein, M. (2006). Jung’s map of the soul: An introduction. Chicago, Ill. Open Court.
Leave a Reply