On Carl Jung’s 75th Birthday Stone: “I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere.”
On the Stone at Bollingen
“I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons.”
from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 227
The Orphan as the Philosopher’s Stone
The Stone was called “orphan” because of its uniqueness “it was never seen elsewhere” and it was said to be in the Emperor’s crown. It was “wine-coloured” and sometimes shone in the night, “but nowadays it does not shine [any more] in the darkness.” As Albertus Magnus was an authority on alchemy, he may have been the direct source both for Dorn and for Petrus Bonus.“Orphan” as the name of a gem may therefore mean something like the modern “solitaire” a very apt name for the unique lapis philosophorum. Apart from Dorn and Petrus Bonus, it seems that this name is found only in the Carmina Heliodori. There it refers to the(homeless orphan) who is slain at the beginning of the work for purposes of transformation.
Collected Works, Paragraph 13