Quantum Drummer

Introduction

In the Foreword to Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung describes how neurosis can be caused by dissociation of personality resulting from “the conflict of incompatible tendencies” or the problem of opposites, after repressing one of these opposites that generates only an extension of the conflict. Jung says that the therapist’s role is to have the opposites confront each other in an attempt to unite them permanently. This is a direct comparison of the process with the methods described by the alchemists. The psychological phenomenon of transference is the equivalent of the “alchemical wedding” found in the works of the alchemists. In the world of psychology, transference works to unite the opposites and eliminate neurosis, in the alchemical works the “alchemical wedding” unites the opposites of silver, feminine, the moon, with the gold, masculine and the sun, in the creation of the lapis Philosophorum or the representation of wholeness.

Since early times, humanity has seen nature with a dualistic lens, always attaching opposing labels to phenomena and human activities. We try to immediately identify if somebody is good or evil, the weather is hot or cold, etc. and we even forget sometimes that there is an infinite number of conditions between these opposite extremes. The psyche seems to be continually judging and assessing the conditions of the opposites in order to determine conditions of behavior, relationships and actions, and it is common to get to a level of conflict between the opposites that will affect the person’s psychological condition, and may result in chronic mental illnesses. Through history, there have been many philosophical, mythological and literature related works that tackle the issue of the conflict of opposites. One of these works is, the text called Aurora Consurgens, which was probably written by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, tries to combine the alchemical view with the Christian view in regards to the problem of opposites, Jung performed extensive studies of alchemy and tried to connect the parallels of alchemy and the human psyche behavior, and as part of his studies, he included the study of Aurora Consurgens. It is even considered that Jung discovered this work in modern times.

This paper will analyze the alchemical processes of the prima materia and the alchemical wedding, and will try to identify philosophical and psychological parallels that could help in further explaining these phenomena.

The Prima Materia

Jung describes the Prima Materia as the mother of the lapis, or filius philosophorum, as being the “matter of all things”. In its feminine aspect, the prima materia is “the moon, the mother of all things, the vessel, it consists of opposites, has a thousand names, is an old woman and a whore, as Mater Alchimia it is wisdom and teaches wisdom, it contains the elixir of life in potentia and is the mother of the Saviour and of the filius Macrocosmi, it is the earth and the serpent hidden in the earth, the blackness and the dew and the miraculous water which brings together all that is divided.” In a later paragraph Jung also describes how Luna (the moon) “is on the one hand the brilliant whiteness of the full moon, on the other hand she is the blackness of the new moon, and especially the blackness of the eclipse, when the sun is darkened.” (Jung, 1963).

Marie Luis Von Franz, in her translation of Aurora Consurgens, provides the explanation that the description of wisdom is an archetypal image that plays an important role in alchemical and patristic literature. She also indicates that the tree “is primarily an image for the prima materia which gradually unfolds during the transformation process and is sufficient unto itself.” The tree is the symbol of the individuation process “in the sense of living one’s own life and thereby becoming conscious of the self.” (Von Franz, 2000).

If we focus in the concept of wisdom being represented here in metaphorical terms, we could understand how wisdom can be considered both as a provider of light to achieve positive things, but also having the potential to provide darkness when is used to achieve evil things. The fact that the prima materia here is represented as a feminine entity parallels with many other mythological stories found in almost all cultures, where there always seems to be a character represented by a woman figure or a goddess, which is represented as capable of the utmost good but also of the most terrible evil actions. This figure of the goddess is one of the main representations of the union of opposites.

In his book, Psychology of the Transference, Jung references the Rosarium, in which there is a description called the death of the royal pair as follows:
“… let the residual body, which is called earth, be reduced to ashes, from which the tincture is extracted by means of water… After this is completed, you will know that you have the substance which penetrates all substances, and the nature which contains nature, and the nature which rejoices in nature. It is named the Tyriac of the Philosophers, and it is also called the poisonous serpent, because, like this, it bites off the head of the male in the lustful heat of conception, and giving birth it dies and is divided through the midst. So also the moisture of the moon, when she receives his light, slays the sun, and at the birth of the child of the Philosophers she dies likewise, and the death of the two parents yield up their souls to their son, and die and pass away. And the parents are the food of the son…” (Jung, 1969)

An important aspect described here is the appearance of the “substance which penetrates all substances” which brings resemblance to the concept of soul. Von Franz describes the idea presented by Thomas Aquinas of the soul “not only as the ‘form’ of the body but as a form which possesses its own substantiality and also imparts it. It can act creatively on its own account and is thus an ‘ens in actu’ (actual being). Matter, in itself formless, becomes invested with its actual properties only in so far as it receives form from the soul.” (Von Franz, 2000)

This concept of a “formless matter” which takes its properties from the soul has a close resemblance to the quantum physics concept in which matter achieves a physical state only through the observation process of a conscious being, and the wave-particle duality where the initial condition is a waveform and it becomes particle only after a measurement or observation is made. Also, the concept of a “substance which penetrates all substances” seems to resemble the concept of “ether”, which in classical pre-relativistic physics was supposed to fill all the empty space, including the space between the particles that formed matter. Even though the element of “ether” was abandoned after Einstein’s theories in the early 1900’s it seems to re-appear recently as the concept of “dark matter” which is supposed to form a vast percentage of the universe.

The Paradoxes in the Conflict of Opposites

The alchemists used many paradoxes in their work with the opposites and their union. Jung describes how these paradoxes appear mostly around the “arcane substance, which was believed to contain the opposites in uncombined form as the prima material and to amalgamate them as the lapis Philosophorum.” (Jung, 1963). Jung describes more paradoxes, such as “I am the black of the white and the red of the white and the yellow of the red”, or “Burn in water and wash in fire”, or Socrates’ quotation: “Seek the coldness of the moon and ye shall find the heat of the sun, as described in Tractatus Aristotelis, the opus is said to be “a running without running, moving without motion.” And as described in The Chymical Wedding: over the main portal of the castle two words are written: “Congratulor, Condoleo.” (Jung, 1963).

In several alchemical works, the opposites appear arranged in a quaternity such as the one formed by masculine/feminine and good/evil, and the union of these opposites was the most important work of alchemy. The element that unites the opposites is Mercurius, or “the mediator making peace between the enemies or elements, that they may love one another in a meet embrace”. Mercurius is an ambivalent element, as Jung describes by quoting Dorn: “Mercurius correspond to the Holy Ghost as well as to the Anthropos; he is as Gerard Dorn says: “The true hermaphroditic Adam and microcosm”: Our Mercurius is therefore the same (Microcosm), who contains within him the perfections, virtues, and powers of Sol (in the dual sense of sun and gold), and who goes through the streets (vicos) and houses of all the planets, and in his regeneration has obtained the power of Above and Below..” (Jung, 1963). In the Manichaean doctrine of the Anthropos, the dual form of alchemy is compared with the dual form of the figure of Christ. In his dual form, there is a Christ as savior of man (Microcosm) and the form of the lapis Philosophorum as savior of the Macrocosm. One of Christ’s forms incapable of suffering (impatibilis) and takes care of souls, and the other form of Christ is capable of suffering (patibilis) having a similar role to the concept of Mercurius. The element of Sol is considered the masculine and active half of Mercurius, and while Mercurius seem to exist only as an unconscious projection, it has a “duplex” nature, having an ascending or active part called the Sol, and a passive part called the Luna, which borrows the light from the sun. Jung assumes that the human psyche is a derivative of this representation, having the diurnal life of the psyche, or consciousness, and its necessary counterpart, which is a dark, latent and non-manifested side, or the unconscious. Therefore, Jung concludes that “the duality of our psychic life is the prototype and archetype of the Sol-Luna symbolism”(Jung, 1963).

It is very interesting to analyze the way in which the human mind structures the observation of the universe and natural phenomena with a dualistic lens, which is also used when observing psychological or moral aspects of human behavior. This condition has puzzled me for a long time, and I have been trying to understand the reason why humans, at least in western cultures, tend to see nature within a dualistic paradigm. For a long time I believed that all this way of looking at the universe in current times had its origins in the Newtonian theories, and that this view was forged by the influence of the works of Descartes, Leibinitz, and others that influenced Newton with his explanation of physical phenomena. Even if these theories have been around for 300 years, It puzzled me to think that all humans in the western cultures seem to work within this paradigm, even if they have or have not studied the concepts of Newtonian Physics. It is after reading the works of Jung, and much clearly after reading the Mysterium Conunctionis and other alchemical related works, that I understand that this human approach or dualistic lens to observing nature is a clear example of an archetype. The dualistic lens that is shared universally in humans seems to be an archetype that has been the result of the influence of old traditions and mythologies in the different western cultures including the Greek and Roman traditions, that made the basis for western knowledge. In reality, the scientific works of Newton just came to bring some structure to the paradigm, and fitted well within it.

The Conjunction

The element of conjunction or “coniunctio” is the main part of the alchemical process. The alchemists were mainly concerned with the union of substances, regardless of the names used for these substances, they hoped to achieve the union and obtain the goal of the work, which was to result in gold or any other symbolic equivalent. Jung describes how these substances always had by their own nature, a numinous quality to them, “which tended towards phantasmal personification.” He indicates that these substances were like living organisms that “fertilized one another and thereby produced the living being sought by the philosophers.” The alchemists observed these substances to have hermaphroditic characteristics, and the conjunction that they were looking for was the philosophical union of “form and matter”. (Jung, 1963).

Jung reminds us that the conjunction occurs in a medium, which is represented by Mercurius, “Only through a medium can the transition take place, and Mercurius is the medium of conjunction. Mercurius is the soul (anima), which is the mediator between body and spirit.” Also, Jung indicates that Mercurius is not just the medium of conjunction but is also “that which is to be united”, being “the essence of the seminal matter of both man and woman. Mercurius masculinus and Mercurius foemineus are united in and through Mercurius menstrualis.” Jung implies that this union is also represented in the concept of the unus mundus, and psychologically in the mandala, which he indicates that “symbolizes, by its central point, the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as of the multiplicity of the phenomenal world, and is therefore the empirical equivalent of the metaphysical concept of a unus mundus.” (Jung, 1963).

Later in Mysterium Conunctionis, Jung determines that synchronicity is the parapsychological equivalent of the concept of the unus mundus and the mandala. He indicates that “Though synchronistic phenomena occur in time and space they manifest a remarkable independence of both these indispensable determinants of physical existence and hence do not conform to the law of causality. The causalism that underlies our scientific view of the world breaks everything down into individual processes which it punctiliously tries to isolate from all other parallel processes. This tendency is absolutely necessary if we are to gain reliable knowledge of the world, but philosophically it has the advantage of breaking up, or obscuring, the universal interrelationship of events so that a recognition of the greater relationship, i.e. of the unity of the world, becomes more and more difficult.” (Jung, 1963).

Here, Jung provides us with a fascinating reflection, in which he gives the scientific method its right importance as a tool to understand the universe, but also recognizes the existence of non-causal phenomena, which do not fit inside the scientific method, and are therefore non observable by it, as well as indicating the difficulty of the observation of the “greater relationship” and unity of the world through traditional science. It is impressive to find this type of reflection, giving both views of the universe their right place and value, in a mind that is the result of the rigid and strict knowledge structure of western science.

The Opposites of Male and Female

Jung describes that the relationship of male and female is the “supreme and essential opposition”, which results from the classical alchemical trinity that comes from the male resulting from Sulphur and Mercurius and the female resulting from Mercurius and Salt, which together bring forth the “incorruptible One” or the quinta essentia. (Jung, 1963). This quinta essentia is the nature of the anima, the aqua permanens, the lapis philosophorum. It is the one and indivisible (incorruptible, ethereal, eternal).

In his book, The Psychology of the Transference, Jung writes that the link between body and spirit is hermaphroditic, i.e. a coniunctio Solis et Lunae. Jung indicates that “Mercurius is the hermaphrodite pair par excellence. From all this it may be gathered that the queen stands for the body and the king for the spirit, but that both are unrelated without the soul, since this is the vinculum which holds them together. If no bond of love exists, they have no soul. In our pictures the bond is effected by the dove from above and by the water from below. These constitute the link – in other words, they are the soul. Thus the underlying idea of the psychic proves it to be a half bodily, half spiritual substance, an anima media natura, as the alchemists call it, an hermaphroditic being capable of uniting the opposites, but who is never complete in the individual unless related to another individual. The unrelated human being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness only through the soul, and the soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a “You”. Wholeness is a combination of I and You, and these show themselves to be parts of a transcendent unity whose nature can only be grasped symbolically, as in the symbols of the rotundum, the rose, the wheel, or the coniunctio Solis et Lunae.” (Jung, 1969).

In the Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross, the concept of the inversely proportional polarization of man and woman is discussed. It is said that “the vehicles of the male personality are differently polarized from those of the female: the mental body of the man is negatively polarized while that of the female is positively polarized: the astral body of the man is positively polarized, while that of the female is negative; the etheric body of the man is negatively polarized, while that of the woman is positive; and the physical body of the man is positively polarized, while that of the woman is negative. Given these conditions, it is clear that the two sexes need each other “absolutely, and must develop an extremely intelligent cooperation, so that their two areas of activity may merge harmoniously. This cooperation must unfold the norms of love and virtue….”. Also, this work points out that one of the meanings of the short stories and riddles in The Alchemical Wedding, is that many unbreakable karmic threads are woven in the course of human life through which people are drawn to each other and by which they are obliged to take certain decisions and courses of action. In all these cases the worthy candidate of the gnostic mysteries will decide on that standpoint and that course of action in which the self is always made subservient, in whatever way, to the highest interests of the other person involved, in accordance with the norms of the mysterious virtue. If you keep this law, you will transform all the sorrow you may experience on account of any limited material sacrifice to a high, serene joy. For all suffering is but temporary, while the victory of the soul is eternal.” (Van Rijckenborgh, 1991).

If we look at the relationship between male and female in the way Jung describes it as the supreme conflict of opposites, and their union can represent the ultimate level of achievement, we could relate this somewhat to Freud’s thought that humans motivation is basically sexual. In Jung’s theory, however, sex is only one part of the whole and the union needs to include the mind, spirit and soul, which means it is a union of a much higher level but at the same time is much more complicated to achieve. On the other hand, Jung separates the male and female opposites and describes in a simple way the union of these ‘pure’ opposites, but now we understand that each individual has both a male and female element, which makes the union of two individuals much more difficult, given that these opposites are not pure, but are a combination of both, and also are possibly changing within the individual as well. The condition of both male and female elements being present in the individual could very possibly account for some psychotic conditions, but most importantly, the conflict between the male and female opposites is much more complicated given the ever changing combination of male/female or right brain/left brain elements in the individual.

It seems that the conflict begins within each individual before it is transferred to external conflicts. The unus mundus condition is to be achieved individually and then with the external partner. The complementarity achieved by maintaining the internal balance and then achieving the external balance with the partner seems to be the way to find the wholeness expressed as the communion of “I” and “YOU”.

Conclusion

In Jung’s study of the alchemical works we can see several powerful ideas, both for therapy use as well as for a philosophical understanding of nature. While Jung uses a traditional dualistic lens, he brings into the picture the importance of everything in relationship to each other, as a whole. The union of the opposites and the description of how the male and female opposite union is the ultimate goal to achieve the equivalent of the alchemical goal, seems to represent the center of the psychological process of humans and of nature itself. There are many parallels from the concepts presented by Jung and the authors of alchemical works with the ideas of modern physics. Particularly the union of opposites and its relationship to concepts in quantum physics such as Bohr’s complementarity are worth to analyze more, and are excellent dissertation materials.

References

Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Volume 14 of The Collected Works, Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Jung, C. G. (1969). The Psychology of Transference. New York, NY: Routledge

Thomas, Aquinas, Saint (1225?) AURORA CONSURGENS, a document attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy. Edited by Marie-Louise Von Franz. Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books

Van Rijckenborgh, J. (1991) The Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross. Esoteric Analysis of the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz Anno 1459. Haarlem, The Netherlands: Rosekruis Pers