Is Jung's Active Imagination Effective?

C. G. Jung promoted active imagination as the main technique of Analytical psychology to integrate the anima or the collective unconscious. His followers also did so. Nevertheless, there is little to no evidence, over the past century, that this technique might be effective in the individuation process. All we have is anecdotal evidence. When a scientific hypothesis is not proven effective during such a long time, one shall be aware of its questionable effectiveness.

Jung’s emphasis on the efficiency if his technique should be analyzed. He linked his two transcendent experiences to active imagination. This is the fundamental concept to his essay The Transcendent Function written in 1916 but only published in 1958. As is well known, active imagination is the process of identifying a feeling, letting it personify in imagination and interacting with it in an imaginary conversation. The Red Book, published in 2009, is primarily constituted with Jung’s active imaginations that he achieved from the late 1913. He wrote them down and he illuminated the text with his illustrations from 1915. 

To understand Jung's misconception, we need to state a few things. Carl Jung was an INTJ. His dominant function Introverted Intuition shows continually in his written work where extroverted Thinking has the second place. Feeling and Sensation cognitive functions almost never occur.

Therefore, Jung’s cognitive functions were: 

•  Dominant Introverted Intuition 
•  Auxiliary Extroverted Thinking 
•  Tertiary Introverted Feeling 
•  Inferior Extroverted Sensing

We also know from Jung himself and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), that humans generally develop only two functions: the dominant and the auxiliary functions. The latter being usually less developed than the dominant function.

Jung’s misinterpretation can be explained using cognitive functions. Although he thought that active imagination and the integration of the unconscious were the effective factors in his mystical experiences, what was really functioning was not the integration of the unconscious but the development of the cognitive functions that were undifferentiated. In doing active imagination, he was identifying, night after night, feelings and emotions in order to interact with them in imagination. By doing that, he was in fact working on his introverted Feeling function and bringing it to consciousness. We remember that Feeling was his tertiary function, a function that is usually undifferentiated. It is the development of his tertiary cognitive function that triggered his first transcendent experience.

His second mystical experience was not linked to the integration of the anima or the collective unconscious but to the elaboration of The Red Book. When in 1915, he started to write down his texts with gothic calligraphy and illuminate his Red Book with meticulous illustrations, he was, in fact, working on his inferior Sensation function. The manual task around that book is, without a doubt, a Sensation process. Without knowing it, Jung developed his undifferentiated cognitive functions. He seems to never have realized that it was the development of the four functions of orientation of consciousness that were the active and operational factors in his two mystical experiences. 

Transcendent experiences have been known for a very long time. Mystics of all origins generally link them to a divine intervention but atheists also have those experiences. According to Jungian psychology, mystical experiences are signposts of the integration of the personal and collective unconscious during individuation. This is the main reason of his alchemical studies. That hypothesis does not explain why Christian mystics have those experiences without integrating unconscious contents. What is most probable is that those mystics have developed their third and fourth cogntive functions to access transcendent experiences. 

The monastic rule ask for the sacrifice of all belongings both material and spiritual. When mystics follow scrupulously that rule, they sacrifice their cognitive identity or their ego cognitive functions. The sacrifice of the auxiliary function automatically trigger the development of its opposite. For example, if one sacrifice his Feeling auxiliary cognitive function, that provokes a deficiency in the judgment capacity. One will perceive with his Perception Intuition or Sensation dominant cognitive function but will refuse to use his judgment Feeling function. The natural process of consciousness of perceiving and judging will automatically cause the rise of the opposite judgment function: Thinking. When the tertiary cognitive function has reached the level if development of the auxiliary one, a numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites is produced by the psyche. This is what has been called a mystical experience.

As we have said ealier, the integration of the unconscious with active imagination has very little effect, if any, on individuation. Only ISTJs and INTJs could expect results because their tertiary function is introverted Feeling. Contrary to the general Jungian opinion, it is the development of cognitive functions that has the most effect on individuation. Integrating the unconscious has little effect on consciousness but adding cognitive functions is the most important step in the process to wholeness.

Jung and some of his interpreters promoted the idea that the alchemists were doing active imagination in front of their chemical experiments but this is a bending of alchemy to justify Analytical psychology’s main technique. Two reasons could be invoked to support the assertion that alchemist never did active imagination. First, the real alchemists never did the experiments that were in their grimoires. Their recipes were way too strange to be real chemical experiments. 

Second, the words meditatio and imaginatio used by the alchemists have nothing to do with the fantastic imagination at work in active imagination. Alchemy demands true imagination, not fantastic imagination. Jung quotes the Rosarium in Psychology and Alchemy (CW 12): 

«And take care that thy door be well and firmly closed, so that he who is within cannot escape, and—God willing—thou wilt reach the goal. Nature performeth her operations gradually; and indeed, I would have thee do the same: let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature. And observe according to nature, through whom the substances regenerate themselves in the bowels of the earth. And imagine this with true and not with fantastic imagination. » (par. 218)

The problem raised by this quote is that active imagination is fantastic imagination. It is the wandering of imagination in the realm of fantastic images. In contrast, true imagination is a meticulous exploration of all possibilities regarding a situation. It is what we would call, in today’s words, brainstorming. This is the kind of imagination that must be used in the alchemical process of developing cognitive functions.

For more,

https://jungianpsychologyexplained.blogspot.com/2025/02/mystical-experiences-in-alchemy.html

https://jungianpsychologyexplained.blogspot.com/2025/02/jungs-understanding-of-philosophers.html

https://www.academia.edu/119327280/Carl_Jungs_Second_Mystical_Experience_2024c_

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James Hillman and the Philosopher's Stone

Jungian interpreters are often seized by the magical world of the alchemical lore. They use its terminology to talk about psychology without knowing the reason Jung used them in the first place. James Hillman is one of them and he has influenced a generation of Jungian analysts.

In the book Alchemical Psychology, Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman. Volume 5, we find one of the source of the lamentable state of Jungian psychology. Although, Hillman has certainly studied alchemy in order to write his talks, he missed the essential goal of alchemy and the reason Jung used it so much.

In chapter 8, Hillman wrote

Our theme – the ideas and images of the alchemical goal – cannot be better introduced than by this statement from C. G. Jung: “The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a Iifetime.” “The goal is important only as an idea” de-literalizes goals right at the beginning. We may not take alchemy’s images of the hermaphrodite, the gold, or the red stone as actualized events. Nor may we even consider these images, and the many others, to be symbolic representations of psychological accomplishments. Not the goal; the idea of goal; goal as idea. (p. 139)

This quote shows Hillman's and his followers' (Stanton Marlan, among others) incapacity to find a simple logical explanation for alchemy. They seem unable to decipher the reason of Jung's interest in alchemy. To Hillman, the hermaphrodite, the gold and the stone are not actualized events nor psychological accomplishments. If so, one is authorized to ask: why did alchemists write so much about them? Were they really writing about the making of gold from lead? Hillman answers no. This seems to be an important contradiction unless you believe alchemy is just an imaginary outcome.

There is an easy way to find out if a Jungian interpreter is right about alchemy: the logical verification of their understanding of the goal of alchemy.

Let's see Hillman's understanding of the goal of alchemy. About the pearl of great price, he wrote:

The pearl as goal expresses the idea that the materia prima, the worthless gritty bit we call a symptom or problem, when worked on constantly, slowly becomes coated. An organic process turns the bit of grit into a coagulated jewel. The work goes on in the depths of the sea, where light does not reach, inside the hermetically closed oyster. (P. 140)

 To Hillman, the goal of alchemy is the process of taking a problem or a symptom and transforming it in something of great value. But there is a important problem with this interpretation that Hillman did not take into account. In alchemy, the prima materia is the origin and the end-product of the alchemical process. An information that Hillman ignored. In Hillman' s view, that would means that alchemy is about taking a problem and creating a bigger problem! He added:

And since these goals – diamond and pearl, rubedo and lapis, elixir of immortality – are imaginal and mythical, they are beyond time, dissolving the literalism of the laboratory and its measures of time into images, rather than temporal steps, images of drying and moistening, distilling and condensing, therewith moving the method of alchemy itself into myth. (P. 145)

We have here Hillman's core interpretation of alchemy as an imaginary construct composed of mythical works about solving problems and symptoms. Now, if that were to be true, we should ask ourselves important logical questions. Why would the finest intellectuals of their time invest time, money and efforts in writing books about such a stupid goal. Why did they not write directly and simply about their methods to solve problems? Why would they hide the meaning of their recipes to solve problems under multiple layers of symbols thus rendering their books almost undecipherable? It seems to Hillman and his followers that the alchemical authors were deficient intellectuals that needed to write mythical books about solving problems.  This is not logical.

There is a logical explanation to alchemy and it is not about the psychological process of solving problems or symptoms, nor about the therapeutic process. The alchemists wrote about something that needed to be hidden from the Church and the Inquisition. That information was something so important to them that they would write only to those who knew what they were talking about. That means that only those who knew what alchemy was all about were able to understand the grimoires. Those intellectuals, the finest of their time as we have already said, share their personal methods to reach mystical experiences, a subject that would have triggered a terrible anger and fury from the Church. To those intellectuals, mystical experiences were not divine interventions but psychological occurences that could be consciously induced.

That is exactly what Carl Jung found in alchemy. He knew that conjunctions of opposites are the symbols appearing in mystical experiences. He knew that the pearl, the rebis, the hermaphrodite, the union of the king and the queen, the magnet, the homonculus, the philosopher's stone were symbols of a mystical experience, an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites entering consciousness for a short moment. Jung's lifelong study was about mystical experiences that, he thought, were signposts of a consciously performed individuation process. He began with the study of Gnosticism and their mentions of the magnet (conjunction of opposites poles) and eventually found out that alchemy was also about those phenomena. The main goal of his investigations, from 1944 until the end of his life, was about the psychological processes leading to those experiences and how they were linked to the individuation process.

Hillman has produced an almost irreparable wrong to Jungian psychology by misleading a generation of analysts. We should recognize that Jung always sticked to the scientific analysis of psychological processes and events, even if some are extremely rare such as mystical experiences. In his talks about alchemy, Hillman has shown his incapacity to find the core meaning of Jung's analytical psychology.

To an outsider, Jungian psychology seems to have been hacked by the New Agers from the beginning. It is almost certain that Jung would not have approved that orientation. When the Jungian interpreters leave the psychotherapeutic process to enter into Jung's analysis of the goal of human life, they always show their incapacity to read Jung correctly. Then, they write about tarot, astrology, yi king, visions, alchemy, the occult, archetypes, the Magical Other, and all the sujects of the magical world of Jungian mystique. They invent meanings to Jung's writings that do not stand the test of logic.  And unfortunately, those are the same people who peer-review articles and books on Analytical psychology, thus maintaining Jung's psychology in a laughable condition.

We could only hope that one day, a few Jungians will have the courage to lead the way into a logical interpretation of Jung'a writing.

For more

https://www.academia.edu/124757302/Carl_Jungs_Answer_to_Job_the_Birth_of_the_Self_in_Transcendent_Experiences_2024e_

https://www.academia.edu/126270799/Carl_Jungs_Transcendent_Function_his_Insight_into_Mystical_Experiences_2024f_

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The Origin of Jung's Interest in Gnosticism

 

Carl Jung had his first mystical experience in December 1913. Those experiences are always symbols of conjunction of opposites that are extremely numinous. His experience was his becoming the god AION or leontocephalus as well as the crucified Christ. The conjunction of the symbols me-god is a regular occurence. In his book AION, Jung links those symbols to Jethro and Zipporah, the first being the father and the second, the daughter. As such, the symbols parent-child, wiseman-pupil, God-m dee always represents the opposites whole-particle. To Jung, that experience is an encounter with the Self.

Jung started his study of Gnosticism soon after his first mystical exprience but it was only in 1951 with his book AION, studies into the phenomenology of the Self that he shared his knowledge.

In The AION Lectures (1996), Edward Edinger quoted a letter from Jung to Margaret Ostrowski-Sachs: 

Before my illness [in 1944] I had often asked myself if I were permitted to publish or even speak of my secret knowledge. I later set it all down in AION. I realized it was my duty to communicate these thoughts, yet I doubted whether I was allowed to give expression to them. During my illness I received confirmation and I now knew that everything had meaning and that everything was perfect. (1996, p. 13) 

It was in AION that Jung explained thoroughly the experience of encounter with the Self and he proposed his model based on precise symbols. The first part of his book is devoted to prove his thesis, supported at length with numerous examples that the Self is a complexio oppositorum, e.g., a combination of opposites. 

Every chapter makes the demonstration of that hypothesis under a different angle. That is why, for example, the symbol of the fish is double in astrology and that the symbol of Christ is counterbalanced by the symbol of the Antichrist. Since the fish and Christ are symbols of the Self, they necessarily consisted of two opposites. In the same way, Jung uses the symbol of the magnet which, as we know, contains a positive and a negative pole that are opposites. Let’s dive in his explanations. 

In paragraph 243 of AION, Jung introduces the symbol of the magnet and gives an abundance of synonyms and Latin expressions that state its qualities. Then, in paragraph 250, he lets us know that the magnet is a symbol of the Self. Referring to the Elenchos of Hippolytus (Refutation of the Gnostics by the early Christians), Jung mentions that the magnet appears three times in Gnostic writings: 

(1) In the doctrine of the Naassenes, the four rivers of paradise correspond to the four openings of the head: the eye, the ear, the nose and the mouth. The mouth is the opening where the food enters and from which the prayer comes out. It is from the mouth that the water of teaching (aqua doctrinae) comes. The latter is an alchemical term that corresponds more or less to the Self and therefore to the magnet. 

(2) In the theory of the Perates, no one can be saved without the Son. And they say that this Son (Christ) is the serpent. For the Perates, the serpent attracts iron (it is therefore a magnet and the Self). 

(3) Finally, for the Sethian doctrine, the magnetic attraction (magnet) comes from the spark, the ray of light, that is to say from the Logos (reason, thought, word and discrimination). 

In paragraph 293, Jung concludes on the three forms of the magnet or magnetic agent: 

• It is a passive substance: water. It is drawn from the bottom of the source. 
• It is an animated being: the snake or the serpent. It arises spontaneously or is discovered by surprise. It represents Christ.
• It is the Logos, an abstraction of the son of God (from the prologue of the gospel of John) and the power of thought or of speech. 

It is in paragraph 295 that Jung explains what is probably the most important sentence of AION: 

“All three symbols are phenomena of assimilation that are in themselves of a numinous nature and therefore have a certain degree of autonomy.” 

Knowing that autonomous phenomena are irruptions of unconscious contents into consciousness and that the archetype of the Self (identified here as the three forms of the magnet) appears in consciousness with a numinous glow like every other archetype, Jung is telling us, in that paragraph, that the water, the serpent and the Logos are three experiences of the Self or mystical experiences in Gnosticism. 

Jung used the term phenomena (or phenomenon) of assimilation only eleven times in his Collected Works and he defines it as “the reaction of the psychic matrix, e.g., the unconscious, which becomes agitated and responds with archetypal images” (CW Addenda, § 1828). The study if those phenomena, according to him, began with Gnosticism and continued through the Middle Ages (alchemy) and are still observed in modern times (addenda, § 1830). Mystical experiences are phenomena of assimilation because, for Jung, mystical experiences are irruptions of the archetype of the Self in consciousness.

Later in the book, Jung is more precise (§ 303) and specifies that the image of God, the imago dei (the Self) is not a discovery, but a lived experience that occurs to man spontaneously. It is this spontaneous experience, the mystical experience, that is the core subject of AION as the phenomenology of the Self.

Jung's interest in Gnosticism was directly related to his mystical experience of December 1913. It was much later, in 1928, that he found out that alchemy was the direct descendent of Gnosticism. That fact would be life changing for Jung and it completely redirected his psychological research for the rest of his life.

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What Did Jung Find in the Book of Job?

 In his book Transformation of the God-Image (1992), Edward Edinger summarized the Book of Job as follows: 

“There’s a wager in heaven between Satan and Yahweh as to whether or not Job can be turned away from God—kind of a heavenly conspiracy. Job is then beset with multiple calamities. Job then questions his situation: “Why is this happening to me?” He calls out to God to explain to him why this is happening, to justify to him the reason for it. He says he’s not an evil man and his life, his behavior, does not, in justice, warrant this kind of treatment. Counselors arrive on the scene who tell him, in effect, to quit questioning what’s beyond him and just submit and admit that though he may not understand it, God is just. But Job refuses. He perseveres in his questioning and in maintaining his integrity, as he puts it. And then finally, Yahweh manifests. He shows himself in the whirlwind and in his great final speech says, in effect, “Who are you to question me? Look at all my grandeur.” And with that, Job is silenced and accepts the situation. And Yahweh then restores all his property better than before. That’s the bare bones of the Biblical account.”1 (Edinger 1992, p. 28) 

Jung was struck by the core drama of the Book of Job which could be summed up as follows: after passing through a period of extreme turbulence, Job has a transcendent experience of God. To anyone who knows the life of C. G. Jung, some links are easy to make. In the story of Job, Jung found his own story, his own personal experience. Remember that in 1912 and 1913, Jung was in a period of psychological turbulence and depression2. He searched for a way out using his psychological knowledge of the human psyche and the techniques of psychoanalysis. 

He analyzed his childhood memories, events of his life, played with small stones and, out of despair, he let himself fall into the realm of imagination in order to find an answer to his problems. Then, in December 1913, he lived a transcendent experience that he narrated in The Red Book and to which he gave the title MYSTERIUM. In Memories, Dreams and Reflections, the experience is described as follows:

“I caught sight of two figures, an old man with a white beard and a beautiful young girl. I summoned up my courage and approached them as though they were real people, and listened attentively to what they told me. The old man explained that he was Elijah, and that gave me a shock. But the girl staggered me even more, for she called herself Salome! She was blind. What a strange couple: Salome and Elijah. But Elijah assured me that he and Salome had belonged together from all eternity, which completely astounded me… They had a black serpent living with them which displayed an unmistakable fondness for me. I stuck close to Elijah because he seemed to be the most reasonable of the three, and to have a clear intelligence. Of Salome was distinctly suspicious. Elijah and I had a long conversation which, however, I did not understand.” (MDR, p. 222)

That experience was a conjunction of two pairs of opposites symbols: Elijah and Salome (father and daughter in his vision) and Jung and the serpent (hero and anima). Those are the same symbols Jung used to describe the Self later in his writings. They are of the utmost importance to understand the individuation process and it is necessary to dive into Jung’s theory about those. 

In his book AION, researches into the phenomenology of the Self, Jung used the Moses quaternio of Gnosticism to show the opposites that appear in the transcendent experience. Those symbols are:

Moses is the hero, the conscious ego, Miriam, the anima or the unconscious. Jethro is the father and the sage and finally, Zipporah is the child, the pupil. Each one of these opposites has many correspondences which have the same symbolic meaning. In Jung’s narration of the Mysterium, those symbols are Jung as the hero, the black serpent as the anima, Elijah as the father and Salome as the daughter. According to Jung, those two pairs of opposites constitute the blueprint of the Self because their multiple correspondences always show the opposition me v. the world (Zipporah-Jethro) and consciousness v. unconscious (Moses-Myriam). According to Jung, the symbols of the Moses quaternio constitute the structure of the Self because they represent all opposites. 

The Self was, firstly, Jung’s hypothesis to explain transcendent experiences. As it contains all opposites, it expresses itself in consciousness as a conjunction of opposites. Because of their nature, opposites never merge in reality, they only do in transcendent experiences. 

According to Jung, mystical experiences are always a conjunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites) because when we decode the symbols appearing in them, we always find the two pairs of opposites of the Moses quaternio.

In AION, Jung stated that transcendent experiences are part of a series of three experiences in which each one is a precondition to the next. That statement comes from his study of the Gnostic texts and alchemy (Gerhard Dorn). In his opinion, those three experiences are part © Benoit Rousseau October 15, 2024 of the later stages of the individuation process and he linked them to a successful and consciously performed individuation.

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Jung's Self explained - part 1

The psychoanalyst Fritz Perls objected that 'many psychologists like to write the self with a capital S, as if the self would be something precious, something extraordinarily valuable. They go at the discovery of the self like a treasure-digging. The self means nothing but this thing as it is defined by otherness'.

Well the Self is indeed a precious thing when we read Jung correctly.

In Wikipedia, under the Self we read

"Historically, the Self, according to Carl Jung, signifies the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person, and representing the psyche as a whole.[2] It is realized as the product of individuation, which in his view is the process of integrating various aspects of one's personality. For Jung, the Self is an encompassing whole which acts as a container. It could be symbolized by a circle, a square, or a mandala."

This is a correct definition probably done by a Jungian interpreter but it lacks important aspects of the Self such as the "lived experience".

Jung's Self is, first and formost, his hypothesis to explain mystical experiences. The Self contains all opposites and manifests it self as a conjunction of opposites. And, as it has been already mentioned multiple times in previous posts, conjunction of opposites are mystical experiences in Jung's teachings.

In AION, Jung specifies (paragraph 303) that the Self is not a discovery, but a lived experience that occurs to man spontaneously. In a letter to Father Victor White, Jung wrote: 

“The opposites are united by a neutral or ambivalent bridge, a symbol expressing either side in such a way that they can function together” (C. G. Jung letters, vol.II, p. 166); and in a footnote “The bridge is the ‘uniting symbol,’ which represents psychic totality, the self” (p. 166, fn 11) 

In AION, Jung shows that Gnosticism and Alchemy were primarily concerned with mystical experiences. In the book, Jung uses the Moses quaternio from the Gnostics to explain the combination of opposites (complexio oppositorum) that appears in the mystical experience. 

Each one of those characters represent a family of symbols and Jung arranged them in two pairs of opposites.

Moses is the hero, the conscious ego, Miriam, the anima or the unconscious. Jethro is the father and the sage and finally, Zipporah is the child, the pupil. According to Jung, each character is an archetype and represents a family of symbols. Jung’s hypothesis is that a mystical experience is always a conjunction of those four archetypes which are two pairs of opposites. As a family of symbols, each one of these four characters may be declined with their correspondences. The symbols of the horizontal axis have many correspondences and the major ones are stated here:

              Parent                      Child

 = Father or Mother      Son or daughter 

= Grandparent              Child or grandchild

= Wiseman or Great Mother Apprentice-pupil 

 = Master Student 

 = Senex (old) Puer (young) 

 = World (God) Me 

 = Universe or Macrocosm Part or microcosm

= Totality Particle

That first pair of opposites represents the opposition particle-totality or me-universe. 

Psychological experience of these symbols shows that even if four archetypes are in conjunction during the first mystical experience, it is the conjunction of the symbols of the horizontal axis that is predominant. For Jung, it was his becoming the god AION and Christ in his first mystical experience. It is often described as an encounter with God, the light, Nature, the Universe, the Sage, the Great-Mother. 

An example of that experience can be found in the writings of Thomas Merton (1915–1968) where he recounts several peak experiences. His first experience took place in Rome when he was 18 years old. He was alone in his room at nightfall and, suddenly, he felt the presence of his father, who had died more than a year earlier. This presence was as vivid and real as if he had touched his arm or spoken to him. This sensation lasted only an instant, according to him. We recognize here the characteristics of the first mystical experience where the encounter between parent and child or the sage and the pupil is predominant.

Genevieve W. Foster (1902–1992) was a member of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York. She wrote the following account of her mystical experience:

"That is, I saw nothing unusual with my outward eye, but I nevertheless knew that there was someone else in the room with me. A few feet in front of me and a little to the left stood a numinous [i.e., divine] figure, and between us was an interchange, a flood, flowing both ways, of love. There were no words, no sound. There was light everywhere … Indoors and out, the world was flooded with light, the supernal light that so many of the mystics describe and a few of the poets.”

That is the lived experience of the Self. An extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites that enters consciousness for a short moment.

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The Philosopher's stone mystical experience and the REBIS

 To Jung, mystical experiences are symbols of conjunction of opposites that enter consciousness for a short moment. The philosopher's stone (lapis) of alchemy is the second mystical experience of the process, the small stone or albedo being the first. Jung was fond of the alchemist Gerhard Dorn because his system contained three successive conjunction of opposites or mystical experiences.

In Mysterium Conjunctionis, he wrote: 

“The production of the lapis was the goal of alchemy in general. Dorn was a significant exception, because for him this denoted only the completion of the second stage of conjunction. In this, he agrees with psychological experience. For us the representation of the idea of the self in actual and visible form is a mere rite d’entrée, as it were a propaedeutic action and mere anticipation of its realization.” (CW 14, par. 759)

That second mystical experience is often lived as a conjunction of spirit and matter where the outside world is experienced momentarily as being inside the psyche. In alchemy, this is the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) or the union of the King and the Queen where the King represents the spirit and the Queen, matter. Other names such as filius sol et luna (son of the sun and the moon) or filius philosophorum (son of the philosopher) are also alchemical terms that Jung used to talk about that second mystical experience. But above all, it is the philosopher’s stone or the stone which is not a stone, the lapis philosophorum (the stone of the philosopher). That experience is particularly rare because one must have lived the first experience to access the second one. In Jungian psychology terms, we would say that the shadow and the anima must be integrated to access the second mystical experience. 

In the illustrations of the alchemists, we often see the marriage of the king and the queen or the double thing (the rebis) made up of the male and female. The figure below is a good example. It is a symbolic description of the second mystical experience, in other words, the conjunction of spirit and matter. 

In this figure, the rebis surmounts the dragon which is always a symbol of the unconscious. It has two heads, one of a man and one of a woman (male and female). 

The rebis is a particularly strong  symbol of the experience of the Philosopher’s Stone because male and female, king and queen, sun and moon are all symbols of the conjunction of spirit and matter.

Other observations can be made. The four astrological symbols (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mars) in the illustration are Jung’s four archetypes of the quaternio of Moses that appear in the mystical experience. The astrological sign of mercury is in a star that lies between the two heads of the rebis. Mercury is the god of revelation and represents the mystical experience itself. Finally, the sun (spirit) and the moon (matter), on either side of the head of the rebis, show the conjunction of spirit and matter. Note that the rebis is represented in the sky (spirit) and the round earth (matter) is under the dragon both sky and earth are in the oval shape that represents the experience. We should emphasize that the earth has wings and is therefore spiritualized, which means that matter is in spirit. This whole image symbolically illustrates the mystical experience of the philosopher’s stone using the conjunction of male and female, heaven and earth and sun and moon. These symbols and many others were alchemists’ way to illustrate the mystical experiences in the shade of the Inquisition. 

Accounts of the second mystical experience are difficult to find but two examples will follow. Thomas Merton’s second mystical experience happened in 1948, at the age of 33. He was in a commercial district at the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets in Louisville. He says of this experience: 

“I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that I loved all these people, that they were me and I was them. We were not strangers to each other even though we didn’t know each other. It was like coming out of the dream of duality or the false sense of being alone.” 

Here, the characteristics of the second mystical experience appear. The non-duality, the unity of the world where everything is felt as part of oneself somewhat emerge. Forrest Reid (1875–1947) was a Northern Irish novelist and critic. He described his mystical experience as follows: 

“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”

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Mystical Experiences in Alchemy

In Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote 

For thirty years I have studied these psychic processes under all possible conditions and have assured myself that the alchemists as well as the great philosophies of the East are referring to just such experiences, and that it is chiefly our ignorance of the psyche if these experiences appear “mystic.” (CW 14, § 762)

Carl Jung found in alchemy more than a prefiguration of his psychology. He found in it the means to write about mystical experiences almost freely. His numerous references to alchemy were his psychological explanations of the mystical experience phenomenon. Mystical experiences are extremely numinous symbols of conjunction of opposites that enter consciousness.

Jung writes: 

“The real subject of Hermetic philosophy is the coniunctio oppositorum. Alchemy characterizes its ‘child’ on the one hand as the stone (e.g., the carbuncle), and on the other hand as the homunculus, or the filius sapientiae or even the homo altus. This is precisely the figure we meet in the Apocalypse as the son of the sun-woman, whose birth story seems like a paraphrase of the birth of Christ—a paraphrase which was repeated in various forms by the alchemists. In fact, they posit their stone as a parallel to Christ.” (CW 11-I, par. 738) 

As we know, the Opus alchemicum normally consisted of four steps: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas and rubedo. Albedo corresponded to the first mystical experience also called the small stone and rubedo, to the second. The reason Jung was fond of Gerard Dorn is that the latter added a third conjunction in this process after the stone. Jung knew that the Stone was not the true final state of wholeness.

The goal of the rubedo phase is the Philosophical Stone. That mystical experience has a thousand names and Jung often used them. Whenever Jung used them, he was always talking about the conjunction of spirit and matter. Here are a few examples: lapis, rebis, filius philosophorum (son of the philosophers), filius solis et luna (son of the sun and the moon), the hermaphrodite, aurum non vulgi (non-vulgar gold), the green lion, aqua permanens, elixir, panacea, tincture, quintessence, living fount, the pearl, homo altus, pater mirabilis, salvator, filius macrocosmi, etc. 

Jung’s last major work Mysterium conjunctionis, the mystery of the conjunction, is devoted precisely to the study of mystical experiences in alchemy. Part VI is dedicated to Gerard Dorn’s model of the three conjunctions of opposites. The first conjunction is the unio mentalis, the union of the spirit and the soul. The second conjunction is known as the Philosopher’s Stone (lapis philosophorum) and consists of the conjunction of spirit and matter. From this second experience comes the integral man. The third conjunction is the rotundum and is a conjunction of the integral man with the unus mundus.

Jung considered that alchemists were projecting contents of the unconscious on their chemical experiences. The problem with that assertion is that every book on alchemy used different terms and different processes to achieve the supreme goal. Jung knew that fact. Therefore, the work of the alchemists could not have been real chemical experiences. It would be more appropriate to state that because those authors were the finest intellectuals of their time, they used the alchemical symbols to explain their mystical experiences and their personal processes in the achievement of the Philosopher’s stone. The alchemical lore was only a hermetic way to speak about mystical experiences in the shadow of the Church and the Inquisition. The gold, the precious stone and the treasure in the field are images of those experiences. 

We cannot be so far away from the truth when we read about the foreignness and obsoleteness of alchemy. Even though we are prone to think that the ancients were less intelligent than us, it was evidently not always the case. Unfortunately, Wolfgang Giegerich is one of those Jungian interpreters who have not shown any understanding of Jung 's use of alchemy in his psychology. Writing that being unsatisfied with clinical observation “Jung obviously needed to go away from immediate psychological experience, turn his back on psychology … in order to find something really other” (Giegerich, 2013, 372) is a flagrant misunderstanding of his psychology and alchemy. Carl Jung never stopped studying the human soul and psychological experiences were always at the center of his attention. Alchemy was the language he used as a physician to follow the rule « Primum non nocere », first do no harm to protect those who were not ready to understand him.

According to Jung, the lapis philosophorum or philosopher's stone is a signpost of the individuation process. As such,  it is the Self becoming conscious. In AION, Jung precised: 

“The “thousand names” of the lapis philosophorum correspond to the innumerable Gnostic designations for the Anthropos, which make it quite obvious what is meant: the greater, more comprehensive Man, that indescribable whole consisting of the sum of conscious and unconscious processes. This objective whole, the antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called the self, and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the Anthropos.” (CW 9ii, par. 296) 

To Jung, the lapis philosophorum as the precious stone of the philosopher is a mystical experience that changes one view of the world: 

“The alchemists sought for that effect which would heal not only the disharmonies of the physical world but the inner psychic conflict as well, the “affliction of the soul”; and they called this effect the lapis Philosophorum.” (CW 14, par. 674)

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Jung's understanding of the Philosopher's stone

In the introduction to Jung's Black books, Sonu Shamdasani refers to a letter written by Jung to his wife while he was serving in the army in 1917 near Château d'Oex. In this letter dated June 27, he states: 

"Last night I had a remarkable mystical experience. A feeling of connection of several millennia. It was like a transfiguration." 

It is very likely that this is the second mystical experience Carl Jung reached, the first being linked to his active imagination called MYSTERIUM in The Red Book. Of the precise content of his experience, nothing published has been written by Jung. But the signs that it occurred do exist and they are numerous, both in his personal life and in his written work. 

That mystical experience changed the course of Jung's life, and he never stopped, afterward, talking about it or describing the steps to achieve it. You will probably think: where could he have talked about it if we know nothing about that mystical experience? He did so by using the alchemical terminology and the teachings of the Gnostics, both systems concerned with the phenomenon of mystical experiences. By his study of alchemical and Gnostic writings, Jung spoke to those who could understand him about the mystical experiences that he believed were induced by the individuation process.

In order to fully understand Jung's second mystical experience of 1917, it will be necessary to go through a few steps. Carl Jung spoke of mystical experiences or the conjunction of opposites in almost every one of his books, beginning in 1921 with The Psychological Types, where he used the terms uniting symbol, Pandora’s jewel, treasure in the lotus, symbol of union, the Grail, the divine service, the precious pearl and the treasure in the field in reference to the mystical experiences phenomenon. It was in AION, researches into the phenomenology of the Self (1951) that he explained thoroughly what he thought were experiences of the encounter with the archetype of the Self.

In AION, Jung used the Moses quaternio to talk about the combination of opposites that appears in mystical experiences. Those characters represent four families of symbols that are two pairs of opposites.  The first pair is

• Moses: the consciousness and the hero 
• Miriam: the unconscious and the anima 

The second pair is

• Jethro: the parent and the sage 
• Zipporah: the child and the pupil (CW 9ii, § 329) 

 The first experience is centered on the opposition parent-child or sage-pupil. It is the opposition of Jethro and Zipporah. It is lived as a numinous encounter with either God, the light, Nature, the universe, the Great Mother, the Sage, etc. It is always the conjuncion of the opposites particle-totality. 

The second mystical experience is better described with the symbols of the axis Moses-Myriam or ego-anima. It is experienced as if the whole world is in the psyche. The symbols of the second mystical experience, which is our principal interest here, have numerous correspondences which the most important or the most popular are: 

           Hero               Anima 

 =        King               Queen 

 =        Conscious      Unconscious 

 =        Ego                 Anima 

 =       Sun                 Moon 

 =       Spirit              Matter 

 Those symbols must be used to grasp the second mystical experience. That experience is described as a conjunction of spirit and matter (king and queen in alchemy) which they called the stone or lapis philosophorum. 

The conjunction of spirit and matter, as a mystical experience, is not easy to describe. It is lived as if the exterior world is in the psyche. This is an extremely numinous symbol of the conjunction of opposites. The best description that I have yet found is from Forrest Reid (1875–1947). He described his mystical experience as follows: 

“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”

In 1956, Jung published his last major work Mysterium conjunctionis, the mystery of the conjunction. This title is not insignificant. It is important to note that this important book is devoted precisely to the study of mystical experiences. In it, he talks about the three conjunctions of opposites or mystical experiences in alchemy. In the second volume, he refers extensively to the writings of a 16th century physician-alchemist, Gerhard Dorn. 

We need to state here that alchemy was not about the production of a material stone to achieve immortality or the process to change lead into gold. Those were symbols used by the alchemists to expose their method to reach mystical experiences in the shade of the Inquisition. Only ingenuous and naïve chemists tried to transform metals or produce the red stone. The authors of the alchemical texts were among the finest intellectuals of their generation and it silly to think that they literally meant what they wrote. The images they used in their grimoires were symbols of psychological processes and methods to achieve consciously mystical experiences. 

As we have said, Dorn’s system is composed of three conjunctions of opposites or mystical experiences. The first conjunction is unio mentalis, the union of the spirit and the soul. The second conjunction is known as the Philosopher's Stone (lapis philosophorum) and consists in the conjunction of spirit and body (interior-exterior). From this experience comes the unified or integral man. The third conjunction is the rotundum and is a conjunction of the integral man with the unus mundus. 

 It is said that the Philosopher’s stone has a thousand names and here are some to help us understand Jung: lapis philosophorum (stone of the philosopher), filius sol et lunae (son of sun and moon where sun is a symbol of spirit and moon, of matter), hieros gamos (sacred or chymical marriage of mind and body or spirit and matter), conjunctio sol et lunae (conjunction of the sun and the moon), homunculus, hermaphrodite, filius regius (royal son), cauda pavonis (peacock’s tail). In AION, Jung precised: 

“The “thousand names” of the lapis philosophorum correspond to the innumerable Gnostic designations for the Anthropos, whic Moh make it quite obvious what is meant: the greater, more comprehensive Man, that indescribable whole consisting of the sum of conscious and unconscious processes. This objective whole, the antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called the self, and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the Anthropos.” (CW 9ii, par. 296) 

To Jung, the lapis philosophorum as the precious stone of the philosopher is a mystical experience that changes one view of the world: 

“The alchemists sought for that effect which would heal not only the disharmonies of the physical world but the inner psychic conflict as well, the “affliction of the soul”; and they called this effect the lapis Philosophorum.” (CW 14, par. 674) 

As we have said earlier, the hieros gamos as the mystical marriage of the mind and body or spirit and matter is experienced momentarily as if the whole world is inside the psyche or “everything is in me”. Jung linked that experience to the individuation process: 

“Already in the sixteenth century, however, Gerard Dorn had recognized the psychological aspect of the chymical marriage and clearly understood it as what we today would call the individuation process.” (CW 14, par. 669)

Jung's extensive use of alchemy was his way to speak about mystical experiences to those who were able to read the second degree meaning of hos books. He always feares being tagged as a mystic. In response to Dr. Baur-Celio's question as to whether in the background of his works there was a secret knowledge, Jung replied on January 30, 1934: 

"I have made experiences that are in some way "unspeakable", "secret" since it is really not possible to express them and no one can understand them (I don't know if I myself have understood them, even approximately), "dangerous", insofar as 99 % of the human beings would declare me mad if they heard me speak about them, "catastrophic" insofar as the prejudice created by expressing them would risk blocking to the others the access to a living and marvelous secret, "taboo" because it is an adyton protected by the deisidaimonia . (...) Who would dare to speak of a creed... where he knows how much belief is superfluous when one does more than "know", when the experience has even tackled you to the wall? It is no longer a mere creed, but the greatest and most incisive experience of my life, that this door - a side door and very discreet - opens first onto a narrow path, unsuspecting and easily escaping attention - narrow and inconspicuous because few feet have trodden it - and yet it leads to the secret of transformation and renewal."¹

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What is the Jungian Conjunction of Opposites (conjunctio oppositorum)?

Jung's transcendent function is exactly what its name implies: the psychological function that produces transcendent experiences. Those experiences are always symbols that express the conjunction of opposites. They appear for a short moment in consciousness with an extreme numinosity. As is well known and because of their nature, opposites never merge in the real world. When a symbol of conjunction of opposites appears in consciousness, it is always a very precise phenomenon that is called a mystical or transcendent experience. In Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote: 

“Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as ‘mystical,’ provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unauthentic.” (CW 14, par. 515)

Mystical or transcendent experiences have multiple names such as cosmic consciousness, enlightenment experience, oneness experience, samadhi, spiritual experience or unitive experience. Researchers in that field generally make no distinction between a spontaneous transcendent experience and a psychedelic experience but there is one important distinction: in the former one there is always a symbol of conjunction of opposites. Even if the feeling tone seems to be similar between the two types of experience, the symbol is the differentiation principle. For the purpose of our study, we will state a few qualities of the non-psychedelic transcendent experience: 

▪ the experience is extremely numinous; 

▪ the experience brings joy; 

▪ the experience is a lived symbol of conjunction of opposites; 

▪ the experience uses a symbol that is alive in the unconscious 

Carl Jung spoke of mystical experiences or conjunction of opposites in almost every one of his books because they were revised multiple times after their first publication. It was in AION, Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951) that he explained thoroughly those experiences he thought were irruptions of the archetype of the Self in consciousness. Jung’s Self is, first and foremost, his hypothesis to explain the mystical experience phenomenon. 

According to him, the Self contains all opposites and always manifest itself in consciousness as a conjunction of opposites. In AION, Jung specifies (paragraph 303) that the Self is not a discovery, but a lived experience that occurs to man spontaneously.

In a letter to Father Victor White, Jung wrote: 

“The opposites are united by a neutral or ambivalent bridge, a symbol expressing either side in such a way that they can function together” (C. G. Jung letters, vol.II, p. 166); 

and in a footnote “The bridge is the ‘uniting symbol,’ which represents psychic totality, the self” (p. 166, fn 11) 

In AION, Jung shows that Gnosticism and Alchemy were primarily concerned with mystical experiences. In the book, Jung uses the Moses quaternio from the Gnostics to explain the combination of opposites (complexio oppositorum) that appears in the mystical experience. 

Let’s see how the symbol of conjunction of those opposites appears in three examples of transcendent experiences. The first one comes from Nancy Clark (1941 –) who worked as a cancer researcher and cytology instructor at Ohio State University. She recalls her mystical experience: 

“I was addressing the audience with the eulogy, and I spoke perhaps three sentences when all of a sudden, I became aware of a brilliant white light coming from the left rear of the chapel at the ceiling. I did not see this light with my eyes, but, rather with some other unexplainable source. It was more of an “inner awareness.” I find it very difficult to describe. I could see but it was definitely not through my human eyes. 

Upon seeing this light, there was immediate recognition on my part that it was God. I felt I was in the presence of my creator, a very exhilarating, spiritual feeling. I can’t explain how I knew or how I recognized God’s presence. The best I can do is to say that there was a transference of knowledge placed directly into my consciousness. In other words, I was being fed the information that I was supposed to receive. 

The light completely surrounded me. I felt as if I had merged completely with the light and “belonged” to it. I felt a greater sense of reality and truth in this state. I felt as if I was “home.” The love that was emanating from the light is by far the most difficult aspect of my experience to relate to others. I feel so inadequate to speak of this love. Not because I am not a scholar, a theologian, a scientist, or someone who can dissect it and analyze it. I am limited simply by being human! It was not a human kind of love. It was not within the framework of our human experiences. Therefore, it defies human explanation. I can only say that it is because of this love that was channeled to me that I am able to remain strong and travel down life’s highway knowing that a great truth has occurred. 

I wanted to remain in the presence of this light forever! I felt as if I was in a state of grace. 

All my sins were forgiven, and I felt perfectly and totally FREE. If I had somehow been asked at that moment if I wanted to go with this light and leave my earthly life behind, I would not have hesitated and I would have chosen to go. Not because earthly life is so bad, but, rather, that’s how incredibly beautiful the light was.”¹

What appears in this description is the symbol of the conjunction of opposites me-light or me-God. It is a very numinous and somewhat indescribable experience. The spiritual light associated with God is a regular occurrence in transcendent experiences. In her description, the experiencer becomes surrounded with God and felt merged in his light. This is exactly the symbol of conjunction of opposites me-God of the transcendent experience. 

First mystical experiences always have at their core the symbol of conjunction of the opposites child-parent, me-God, me-universe or particle-totality. Thomas Merton’s first mystical experience bears the same symbols. It was the experience of the living presence of his, then deceased, father coming into his room near him and it carries the symbol of conjunction of opposites child-parent. 

John of the Cross had a similar first mystical experience, but the symbols were more religious because they were those that were alive in his psyche. He put his vision in a drawing that has reached us: 

The drawing shows Christ dying on the cross seen by his Father from above. The vision is the conjunction of opposites son-father, but it could also be interpreted as a symbol of John of the Cross taking the place of God watching his dying son. John of the Cross and God share the same view on the dying Christ as if John and God were one. It is a very powerful symbol that illustrate again the conjunction of opposites me-God.

Jung also had a similar mystical experience in December 1913. He recalls it in the 1925 Seminar on Analytical Psychology:

"Then I saw the snake approach me. She came close and began to encircle me and press me in her coils. The coils reached up to my heart. I realized as I struggled, that I had assumed the attitude of the Crucifixion. In the agony and the struggle, I sweated so profusely that the water flowed down on all sides of me. Then Salome rose, and she could see. While the snake was pressing me, I felt that my face had taken on the face of an animal of prey, a lion or a tiger. "(Introduction to Jungian Psychology P.104)

Here, we see the conjunction of the opposites me-God where the symbol of God take the form of the deus leonticephalus or the God Aion, the lion headed man with a snake coiled around him. But it is also the conjunction of the symbols me-Christ because he sees himself taking the posture of the crucifixion. Because Jung title this section of The Red Book MYSTERIUM, we can affirm that this experience was seen by him as mystical or transcendent.

In Mysterium Conjunctionis (1956), Jung wrote: 

“For thirty years I have studied these psychic processes under all possible conditions and have assured myself that the alchemists as well as the great philosophies of the East are referring to just such experiences, and that it is chiefly our ignorance of the psyche if these experiences appear ‘mystic.’” (CW 14, ¶ 762)

It was Jung's lifelong goal to research and explain transcendent experiences. His books become surprisingly clear when we assess this factor.

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The Key to Understand Jung's AION

 

It was in AION that Jung explained thoroughly the Self as the subtitle of the book is Researches into the phenomenology of the Self. The first part of his book is devoted to prove his thesis, supported at length with numerous examples that the Self is a complexio oppositorum, e.g., a combination of two pairs of opposites. 

Every chapter makes the demonstration of that hypothesis under a different angle. That is why, for example, the symbol of the fish is double in astrology and that the symbol of Christ is counterbalanced by the symbol of the Antichrist. Since the fish and Christ could be seen as symbols of the Self, they necessarily consisted of two opposites. In the same way, Jung uses the symbol of the magnet which, as we know, contains a positive and a negative pole that are opposites. Let’s dive in his explanations. 

In paragraph 243 of AION, Jung introduces the symbol of the magnet and gives an abundance of synonyms and Latin expressions that state its qualities. Then, in paragraph 250, he lets us know that the magnet is a symbol of the Self. Referring to the Elenchos of Hippolytus (Refutation of the Gnostics by the early Christians), Jung mentions that the magnet appears three times in Gnostic writings: 

(1) In the doctrine of the Naassenes, the four rivers of paradise correspond to the four openings of the head: the eye, the ear, the nose and the mouth. The mouth is the opening where the food enters and from which the prayer comes out. It is from the mouth that the water of teaching (aqua doctrinae) comes. The latter is an alchemical term that corresponds more or less to the Self and therefore to the magnet. 

(2) In the theory of the Perates, no one can be saved without the Son. And they say that this Son (Christ) is the serpent. For the Perates, the serpent attracts iron (it is therefore a magnet and the Self). 

(3) Finally, for the Sethian doctrine, the magnetic attraction (magnet) comes from the spark, the ray of light, that is to say from the Logos (reason, thought, word and discrimination). 

In paragraph 293, Jung concludes on the three forms of the magnet or magnetic agent: 

• It is a passive substance: water. It is drawn from the bottom of the source. 

• It is an animated being: the snake or the serpent. It arises spontaneously or is discovered by surprise. It represents Christ.

• It is the Logos, an abstraction of the son of God (from the prologue of the gospel of John) and the power of thought or of speech. 

It is in paragraph 295 that Jung explains what is probably the most important sentence of AION: 

“All three symbols are phenomena of assimilation that are in themselves of a numinous nature and therefore have a certain degree of autonomy.” Knowing that autonomous phenomena are irruptions of unconscious contents into consciousness and that the archetype of the Self (identified here as the three forms of the magnet) appears in consciousness with a numinous glow like every other archetype, Jung is telling us, in that paragraph, that the water, the serpent and the Logos are three experiences of the Self or mystical experiences. 

Opposites never merge because of their nature. When opposites merge as a numinous symbol in consciousness, it is always a phenomenon that is called a mystical or transcendent experience. We should understand here that Jung linked those experiences to the Self.

Jung used the term phenomena (or phenomenon) of assimilation only eleven times in his Collected Works and he defines it as “the reaction of the psychic matrix, e.g., the unconscious, which becomes agitated and responds with archetypal images” (CW Addenda, § 1828). These phenomena, according to him, began with Gnosticism and continued through the Middle Ages and are still observed in modern times (addenda, § 1830). To Jung, mystical experiences are phenomena of assimilation because, for him, mystical experiences are irruptions of the archetype of the Self in consciousness.

In the next paragraph (296) of AION, Jung mentions: “This process revolutionizes the ego-oriented psyche, for it places beside it, or better, opposite it, another goal and center that is characterized by a multiplicity of names and symbols.” To Jung, mystical experiences, as phenomena of assimilation of the Self, are proof that the psyche is not just a conscious ego. There is a center and a goal in front of the ego and this center can manifest itself in consciousness three times. The Self is therefore Jung’s hypothesis to explain mystical experiences and it manifest itself autonomously according to certain conditions that he explains further. 

Jung continues (§ 303) and specify that the image of God, the imago dei (the Self) is not a discovery, but a lived experience that occurs to man spontaneously. It is this spontaneous experience, the mystical experience, that is the core subject of AION.

For more information

Carl 's AION Decoded

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Was Jung wrong about the goal of alchemy?

 

The mercurial fountain is the heart of alchemy. This illustration is the depiction of the entire alchemical process. Let us begin by highlighting the most important components of this illustration. First, we notice four stars in the four corners of the image. Jung says that they represent the four elements: air, earth, fire and water. A basin is at the center of the scene. It is the vas hermeticum (hermetic vase), the place where the transformation is supposed to occur. 

The water pouring in the basin is known as the mare nostrum (our sea), the aqua permanens (permanent water) and the mare tenebrosum (dark sea) according to Jung. That water in the basin is identified as mercurius on the container which is the transformative substance of alchemy. Jung has often established a parallel between mercurius and the unconscious. 

The fountain has three faucets from which mercurius is identified as lac virginis, acetum fontis and aqua vitae which are all synonyms of the transformative substance mercurius. Above the fountain, we see the sun and the moon, representing the most hostile opposites, and a fifth star that represents the quintessence, the unity of the four elements. Finally, a dragon with two heads, the serpens bifidus, (mercurial serpent) represents the double nature of mercurius. 

In Psychology of Transference, Jung explains the alchemical process as follows:

« This structure reveals the tetrameria (fourfold nature) of the transforming process, already known to the Greeks. It begins with the four separate elements, the state of chaos, and ascends by degrees to the three manifestations of Mercurius in the inorganic, organic, and spiritual worlds; and, after attaining the form of Sol and Luna (i.e., the precious metals gold and silver, but also the radiance of the gods who can overcome the strife of the elements by love), it culminates in the one and indivisible (incorruptible, ethereal, eternal) nature of the anima, the quinta essentia, aqua permanens, tincture, or lapis philosophorum (philosopher’s stone)2. » (par. 404) So, according to Jung, alchemy starts from the psychological chaos and its fourfold nature. It is « the pluralistic state of the man who has not yet attained inner unity, hence the state of bondage and disunion, of disintegration, and of being torn in different directions » (par. 405). 

So, according to Jung, alchemy starts from the psychological chaos and its fourfold nature. It is « the pluralistic state of the man who has not yet attained inner unity, hence the state of bondage and disunion, of disintegration, and of being torn in different directions » (par. 405). From the chaos comes the state of the triad, the three manifestations of mercurius which are, in his opinion, the equivalent of desire, will and determination. The triad then transform itself in a dyad, sun (sol) and moon (luna) which « corresponds to the reaction of the psychic system as a whole to the impulse or decision of the conscious mind » (par. 406). The dyad is the representation of the complementary quality of the unconscious in relation to the conscious mind. Finally, the quintessence represents wholeness, the complete integration of the unconscious into consciousness. 

Jung’s interpretation of alchemy is based on an important fact that needs to be stated at the onset. He realized his two transcendent experiences while doing active imagination. This is the fundamental concept to his essay The Transcendent Function written in 1916 but only published in 1958. As you may know, active imagination is the process of identifying a feeling, letting it personify in imagination and interacting with it in a conversation. The Red Book, published in 2009, is primarily constituted with Jung’s active imaginations that he achieved from the late 1913. He wrote them down and he illuminated the text with his illustrations from 1915. 

So, when Jung speaks of the chaos being channeled into the three forms of mercurius, he is talking about the process of active imagination where the chaos is brought to order. Then, mercurius, the unconscious is canalized into a dyad, represented as sun and moon, the conscious and the unconscious. Following the complete integration of the shadow (personal unconscious) and the anima (collective unconscious), the quintessence appears as wholeness. 

With all due respect to Jungians who believe that Jung’s interpretations are the ultimate and indefectible reality, this explanation does not make sense and contains numerous errors. The most important are, first, the fact that mercurius, as the unconscious and its fourfold nature, cannot be explained by rational observations. Jung never explains why chaos is represented by the number four usually linked to totality and order. Second, Jung avoids to explain satisfactorily the threefold step of the alchemical process. What are the three faucets of the unconscious? Jung says that they are the inorganic, organic and spiritual worlds. We could understand that the unconscious coming from the spiritual world is its logic state, from the organic world probably means all the instincts but we are confronted with a problem: what is the inorganic world in humans and what is the unconscious that is canalized from the inorganic world? The response to that question does not exist. These two important mistakes, among others, indicates that Jung was wrong from the start in his interpretation of alchemy. 

So, what is the meaning of the mercurial foutain?

Let us begin by stating that the alchemists were not concerned about the unconscious but about consciousness. Mercurius, that is equivalent to the unconscious, in Jung’s interpretation is, in fact, a symbol of consciousness for the alchemists. The four elements appearing in the alchemical recipes are not symbols of chaos but of the four cognitive functions that Jung renamed after the four temperaments of the Greeks. We know from Jung and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, that humans develop only two functions: the dominant and the auxiliary functions. The latter being usually less developed than the dominant function.

As we have said above, the symbols appearing in the illustration state the process and the goal of alchemy. This goal was not about the integration of the unconscious but to identify and develop the four functions of consciousness. 

1. The first step of the process is to learn that consciousness has four directions (four elements or stars). 
2. The second step is to identify the function that is completely differentiated from the unconscious that we now call the dominant function but was identified mainly by mercurius by the alchemists. 
3. The third step is to determine the three functions that remain which are the three faucets of the mercurial fountain. Note that one of the faucets goes from right to left and represents the auxiliary function. The other two faucets flow from left to right and represent the two cognitive functions that need to be differentiated from the unconscious. The left side is usually related to the unconscious. 
4. The basin, as the vas hermeticum (hermetic vase), is the mind and the consciousness of the philosopher. 

Mercurius, as the transformative substance, is always consciousness. The ultimate goal of alchemy was to make consciousness flow from the three faucets and attain a state of complete consciousness. The sun and the moon as well as the dragon with two heads represent the two states of cognitive functions: part is completely developed and conscious (the dominant function = sun), part is undifferentiated or incompletely developed (the three other functions = moon). 

The double nature of mercurius, often stated in Jung’s writings, also shows those two states. 

Therefore, the illustration shows the alchemical process which was to retrieve wisdom (as consciousness) that was lost in matter or left unconscious (also the goal of the Gnostics). That wisdom or sofia is composed of the undifferentiated functions of consciousness. When the four cognitive functions are completely developed, the philosopher (alchemist) reaches the quintessence, the optimal consciousness with four operational functions of orientation of consciousness.

 Jung’s misinterpretation of alchemy can be explained. Although he thought that active imagination and the integration of the unconscious were the effective factors in his individuation, what was really functioning was not the integration of the unconscious but the development of the cognitive functions that were undifferentiated. In doing active imagination, he was identifying, night after night, feelings and emotions in order to interact with them in imagination. By doing that, he was in fact working on his introverted Feeling function and bringing it into consciousness. As an INTJ, Feeling was his tertiary function, a function that is usually undifferentiated. The next step into his individuation was not linked to the integration of the anima but to the elaboration of The Red Book. When in 1915, he started to write down his texts with gothic calligraphy and to illuminate his Red Book with meticulous illustrations, he was, in fact, working on his inferior Sensing function. The manual task around that book is, without a doubt, a Sensation process. Without knowing it, Jung did exactly what the alchemist taught in their grimoires: he developed his undifferentiated cognitive functions. He never realized that it was the development of the four functions of orientation of consciousness that were the active and operational factors in his individuation. Unfortunately, he based his whole psychology on the integration of the unconscious, misleading all his followers and disciples.

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The secret of alchemy in a riddle from the 17th century

 In his book Sorcerer'stone, a beginner's guide ot alchemy, Dennis William Hauck quote a 17th century riddle about alchemy that says

“The key to life and death is everywhere to be found, but if you do not find it in your own house, you will find it nowhere. Yet, it is before everyone's eyes; no one can live without it; everyone has used it. The poor usually possess more of it than the rich; children play with it in the streets. The meek and uneducated esteem it highly, but the privileged and learned often throw it away. It is the only thing from which the Philosopher's Stone can be prepared, and without it, no noble metal can ever be created."

Hauck even writes that "if you really understand the answer, there is no need for you to read the rest of this book, for you are already an alchemist who has drunk from the Holy Grail of alchemy. Go out into the world now and accumulate as much of this substance as you can find, for it is the key to all transformations."

The secret to that riddle is no so difficult to find. Some will answer love, light, thought time or God but when you take each one of these answers they do not quite fit with the riddle.

Jungians would probably say that it is the unconscious or the soul but this is not quite exact either. The answer to that riddle is CONSCIOUSNESS which is the prima materia or the prime matter to prepare the philosopher's stone.

We know from Jung's research on psychological types and from the MBTI that humans generally develop only two cognitive functions and the other two are left undifferentiated. We sometimes see the emergence of the tertiary function in old people  but it never is as developed as the auxiliary cognitive funcion. The tertiary and the inferior functions are the complete opposites of the cognitive personality and are normally rejected as undesirable. The state of half consciousness is, therefore, nowadays lived as normal. 

It should be stressed that Jung did not invent the cognitive functions, he used the four temperaments of the Ancient Greeks, the four elements of astrology, the four cherubs of the Bible and rename them. Those are all the same complexio oppositorum or combination of two pairs of opposites. What Jung has added to them are the two directions of psychic energy: introversion and extraversion. 

In his 1925 Seminar on Analytical psychology, Jung defines the psychological state that leads to transcendent experiences or the transcendent function as the following: when one lower drastically the use of his auxiliary function for a sufficient period of time, the development of the tertiary function is automatically engaged. For example, if the use of the Feeling cognitive function is rejected, the opposite Thinking function will emerge to fill the gap in the rational or judgment capacity. 

When that third cognitive function reaches the level of automatic functioning, the mind produces a symbol of the conjunction of opposites. That is exacty what happened to Jung in 1913.

From 1911, when he was writing Symbols of Transformation, Jung was preoccupied with the opposition Thinking-Feeling. After his break with Freud, he felt in a depressive state, and he did an extensive auto-analysis to get out of this condition. When those Thinking type techniques did not produce results, he abandoned them and started working on his Feeling function. He then played with pebbles, constructing little houses and started doing active imagination. That provoked the lowering of his auxiliary Thinking function and the development of his tertiary Feeling cognitive function. This process ultimately produced a transcendent experience. This is what Jung called the sacrifice:

"A sacrifice must be done in order to cut the hero away from the power of the unconscious and give him his individual autonomy. He has to pay himself off and contrive to fill the vacuum left in the unconscious." (Introduction to Jungian Psychology P. 31) 

The sacrifice was in Jung’s case his Thinking cognitive function. In the Seminar, he recalled this dream that is a clear indicator of what is happening:

"Six days later (December 18, 1913), I had the following dream. I was with an unknown, brown-skinned man, a savage, I in a lonely, rocky mountain landscape. It was before dawn; the eastern sky was already bright, and the stars fading. Then I heard Siegfried's horn sounding over the mountains, and I knew that we had to kill him. We were armed with rifles and lay in wait for him on a narrow path over the rocks. Then Siegfried appeared high up on the crest of the mountain, in the first ray of the rising sun. On a chariot made of the bones of the dead he drove at furious speed down the precipitous slope. When he turned a corner, we shot at him, and he plunged down, struck dead. Filled with disgust and remorse for having destroyed something so great and beautiful, I turned to flee, impelled by the fear that the murder might be discovered. But a tremendous downfall of rain began, and I knew that it would wipe out all traces of the dead. I had escaped the danger of discovery; life could go on, but an unbearable feeling of guilt remained."

In his Seminar, Jung said that 

"It was a case of destroying the hero ideal of my efficiency. This has to be sacrificed in order that a new adaptation can be made; in short, it is connected with the sacrifice of the superior function in order to get at the libido necessary to activate the inferior functions. (P. 53) 

But it was not the superior cognitive function that Jung killed but his Thinking auxiliary one and it activated the development of his Feeling tertiary function. Jung was an INTJ and as such he had Intuition as his dominant function and Thinking as the auxiliary one. Without knowing exactly what to do to exit his sickness, he triggered the right buttons to reach his transcendent function. 

Conciousness is the answer to the riddle and the key to understand alchemy. 

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