From the University of Glasgow: “Rosarium Philosophorum” From Collected Works 16: The Mercurial Fountain This picture goes straight to the heart of alchemical symbolism, for it is an attempt to depict the mysterious basis of the opus. It is a quadratic quaternity characterized by the four stars in the four corners. These are the four…
Carl Jung talks about the alchemical Mercurius Many treatises define Mercurius simply as fire. He is ignis elementaris noster naturalis ignis certissimus, which again indicates his “philosophic” nature. The aqua mercurialis is even a divine fire. This fire is “highly vaporous” (vaporosus). Indeed, Mercurius is really the only fire in the whole procedure. He is…
The Anima Arises from the Unconscious…. The anima belongs to those borderline phenomena which chiefly occur in special psychic situations. They are characterized by the more or less sudden collapse of a form or style of life which till then seemed the indispensable foundation of the individual’s whole career. When such a catastrophe occurs, not…
Correcting the Guiding Function of the Unconscious Thus the unconscious has a symbol-creating function only when we are willing to recognize in it a symbolic element. The products of the unconscious are pure nature. Naturam si sequemur ducem, nunquam aberrabimus, said the ancients. But nature is not, in herself, a guide, for…
We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide. If we cannot deny the archetypes or otherwise neutralize them, we are confronted, at every new stage…
Archetypes, Emotions, and Primordial Images Archetypes are systems of readiness for action, and at the same time images and emotions. They are inherited with the brain structure-indeed they are its psychic aspect. They represent, on the one hand, a very strong instinctive conservatism, while on the other hand they are the most…
— “The prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.”– “Absorption into the instinctual sphere, therefore, does not and cannot lead to conscious realization and assimilation of instinct, because consciousness struggles in a regular panic against being swallowed up in the primitivity and unconsciousness of sheer instinctuality. This fear is…
If you contemplate your lack of fantasy, of inspiration and inner aliveness which you feel as sheer stagnation and a barren wilderness, and impregnate with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just a great a fullness if only you…
Not only is it a mystery to me of why the Stone Sanctuary needs to be built, but it is also it is also a mystery as to how my hands find the stones that fit. There is no conscious process of choosing to look for a stone with certain dimensions and angles —…