Alchemy: Intellect in Transition

The modern shift from a traditional religious view to an increasingly scientific one drew Jung to alchemy. He saw the psychological aspects of metaphysical symbols as vital counterweights to the literal truths of science in confronting the dangerous challenges of nuclear technology. Why it’s important is rooted in the historical nature of our mental functioning.

His studies led him back to a time when science and religion were not mutually exclusive. Natural philosophy was the unconscious gradient for development in an inquiring medieval mind driven to new ways of thinking about itself and the world.

As many alchemists were invested in the religious and philosophical side of their work, psychic processes were projected into physical analogies. Jung’s in-depth studies of medieval symbolism were an important advance in how we conceive the creativity of the religious factor, its symbolic forms, and their projection onto concrete reality.

For Jung, alchemical philosophy formed a natural continuity in the shift from religion to science. Intuitive ideas pushed it outside Church dogma; less collectively developed and more expressive of natural tendencies. New forms of centuries-old conflicts took shape in a new transitional phase. Modern science now find us at the crossroads of two opposed realities: the causal, material world of the senses and the unconscious psychic energy specific to inner development. Natural law tells us consciousness is relative to both.

Transition means conflict, and the unconscious psyche is ceaselessly engaged in presenting traditional problems in new guise. But, as natural philosophy showed, the depth of relation to an unconscious nature lies far below a dualistic Christian philosophy. It’s not surprising that the medieval search for subjective truth reflects modern conflicts; the new scientific world-view is as collective as the religious one. This psychological translation by Jung of an obscure alchemical allegory expresses it:

“The more you cling to that which all the world desires… you are Everyman, who has not yet discovered himself and stumbles through the world… For desire only burns in you in order to burn itself out, and in and from this fire arises the true living spirit which generates life according to its own laws, and is not blinded by the shortsightedness of our intentions or the crude presumption of our superstitious belief in the will.”

Jung added: “The unconscious demands your interest for its own sake and wants to be accepted for what it is. Once the existence of this opposite is accepted, the ego can and should come to terms with its demands. Unless the content given you by the unconscious is acknowledged, its compensatory effect is not only nullified but actually changes into its opposite, as it then tries to realize itself literally and concretely.”

The mystery of the psyche isn’t a convenient subject (or object) in a scientific age overwhelmed by the vast accrual of technical knowledge. Nature’s wisdom speaks through broad analogies, whether in religious parables or dreams. Its dark uncertainties mean development. Jung examined the thief, a shadow-figure of unconscious individuality:

“The thief… personifies a kind of self-robbery. He is not easily shaken off, as it comes from the habit of thinking supported by tradition and milieu alike: anything that cannot be exploited in some way is uninteresting — hence the devaluation of the psyche. A further reason is the habitual depreciation of everything which one cannot touch with the hands or does not understand.”

The modern techno-commercial market mentality would steal for itself the very foundations of individuality, negating centuries of spiritual effort. Subjective experience is sold back to us through projected emotions which consume more and more of the energy reserved for inner development. Mass ideological conflicts mask a lack of introspection:

“Anyone… who thinks in terms of men minus the individual, in huge numbers, atomizes himself and becomes a thief and a robber to himself… infected with the leprosy of collective thinking…”

Alchemy described the symbolic function of relations between a “masculine” consciousness and a “feminine” unconscious as the “arcane substance”: a mysterious psychic design which mediates the opposites on ever higher levels. The earthly human form was “hermaphroditic and even feminine.” It wasn’t the transsexual image of today but a single body with two heads, male and female, a symbol of spiritual consciousness:

“Because the arcane substance always points to the principal unconscious content… its nature shows in what relation that content stands to consciousness. If the conscious mind has accepted it, it has a positive form, if not, a negative one. If on the other hand the arcane substance is split into two figures, this means that the content has been partly accepted and partly rejected; it is seen under two different and incompatible aspects and is therefore taken to be two different things.”

Alchemical philosophy was an unconscious response to a one-sided Christian philosophy — too collective, otherworldy, and inflated to accept a natural reality: the hidden opposite of earth’s little god. Jung wrote:

“It is the age-old drama of opposites, no matter what they are called, which is fought out in every human life. In our text it is obviously the struggle between the good and the evil spirit, expressed in alchemical language just as today we express it in conflicting ideologies.” The opposite, through concentration: “becomes “fixed” through the mystery… in which the extreme opposites unite, night is wedded with day, and “the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female.” This apocryphal saying of Jesus from the beginning of the second century is indeed a paradigm for the alchemical union of opposites.”

Continue reading for an example of the living process of coming to terms with the opposite.

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