Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts Part 16

In Philo and the related philosophers there appears quite clearly the thought that gained such wide acceptance later among the Christian ascetics, that the highest development of moral strength was attainable only through a long continued and gradually increasing exercise, an ethical gymnastics. Philo, moreover, uses the word Askesis to describe what elsewhere had been described as bodily exercise. The occidental spiritual exercise corresponds to the Hindu yoga.

In the domestication of man through countless generations, social instincts must have been established, which appear as moral dispositions.

I recall the moral feeling in Shaftesbury. The social life of man, for instance, plays with Adam Smith a significant role, and yet even with him the moral law is not something ready from the very beginning, not an innate imperative, but the peculiar product of each individual. The development of conscience receives an interesting treatment by Smith.

There takes place in us a natural transposition of feelings, mediated through sympathy, which arouse in each of us the qualities of the other, and we can say "that morality in Smith's sense, just as Feuerbach taught later, is only reflected self-interest, although Smith himself was quite unwilling to look at sympathy as an egotistic principle. By means of a process that we can almost call a kind of self-deception of the imagination, we must look at ourselves with the eyes of others, a very sensible precaution of nature, which thus has created a balance for impulses that otherwise must have operated detrimentally. [Bear in mind what I have said above about intro-determination.] This transposition which sympathy effects we cannot escape; it itself appears when we know that we are protected from the criticism of another by the complete privacy of our own doings. It alone can keep us upright when all about us misunderstand us and judge us falsely. For the actual judgments of another about us form, so to speak, a first court whose findings are continually being corrected by that completely unpartisan and well informed witness who grows up with us and reacts on all our doings." (Jodl., l. c., I, pp.

372 ff.)

The derivation of the moral from selfish impulses by transposition does not resolve ethics into egoism, as Helvetius would have us believe. It is "a caricature of the true state of things to speak of self-interest, when we have in mind magnanimity and beneficence, and to maintain that beneficence is nothing but disguised selfishness, because it produces joy or brings honor to the person that practices it." (L. c., p. 444.)

The ethical evolution which takes place as an extension of personality demands, the more actively it is practiced, the removal of resistances which operate against the expansion of the ego. It cannot be denied that hostile tendencies, which are linked with pusillanimous views, are always on hand and create conflicts. If they were not, the moral task would be an easy one. Now as man cannot serve two masters, so in the personal psychical household, the points of view which have been dethroned, as far as they will not unite with the newly acquired ones, must be killed, and ousted from their power. Most of all must this process be made effective if the development is taken up intensively in the shape of introversion.

It must appear also in the symbolism.

Already in the lecanomantic experiments we are struck by the dying of the figure (old man) that represents the old form of conscience that has been overcome. It is that part of Lea's psyche that resists the new, after the manner of old people (father type). In order that the new may be suppressed, it must be immolated; at every step in his evolution man must give up something; not without sacrifice, not without renunciation, is the better attained. The sacrifice must come, of course, before the new reformed life begins. The hermetic representations do not indeed always follow chronological order, yet the sacrifice is usually placed at the beginning, as introversion. In the parable the wanderer kills the lion, well at the beginning. He sacrifices something in so doing. He kills himself, i.e., a part of himself, in order to be able to rise renewed (regenerated). This process is the first mystical death, also called by the alchemists, putrefaction or the blacks. This death is often fused with the symbol of introversion, because both can appear under the symbol of the entrance into the mother or earth. Only by closer examination can it sometimes be seen which process is chiefly intended.

"And that shalt thou know my son, whoso does not know how to kill, and to bring about a rebirth, to make the spirits revive, to purify, to make bright and clear ... he as yet knows nothing and will accomplish nothing."

(Siebengestirn, p. 21.)

"These are the two serpents sent by Juno (which is the metallic nature) which the strong Hercules (i.e., the wise man in his cradle) has to strangle, i.e., to overpower and kill, in order in the beginning of his work to have them rot, be destroyed and to bear." (Flamel, p. 54.)

Again and again the masters declare that one cannot attain to true progress except by means of the blacks, death and putrefaction.

In the "Clavis philosophiae et alchymiae Fluddanae," of the year 1633, we read: "Know then that it is the duty of spiritual alchemy to mortify and to refine all obscuring prejudice as corruptible and vain, and so break down the tents of darkness and ignorance, so that that imperishable but still beclouded spirit may be free and grow and multiply in us through the help of the fiery spirit, full of grace, which G.o.d so kindly moistened, so as to increase it from a grain to a mountain. That is the true alchemy of which I am speaking, that which can multiply in me that rectangular stone, which is the cornerstone of my life and my soul, so that the dead in me shall be awakened anew, and arise from the old nature that had become corrupted in Adam, as a new man who is new and living in Christ, and therefore in that rectangular stone...."

To the "sacrifice" of the person introverting, Jung devotes an entire chapter in his Psychology of the Unconscious, Chapt. IV. A brief resume of it would show that by the sacrifice is meant the giving up of the mother, i.e., the disclaiming of all bonds and limitations that the soul has carried over from childhood into adulthood. The victory over the dragon is equivalent to the sacrificing of the regressive (incestuous) tendency.

After we have sought the mother through introversion we must escape from her, enriched by the treasure which we have gotten.

The sacrifice of a part of ourself (killing of the dragon, the father, etc.) is, as Jung points out, represented also in mythology by the shooting with sharp arrows at the symbol of the libido. The symbol of the libido is generally a sun symbol. Now it is particularly noteworthy that the VIII key of the alchemist Basilius Valentinus (see figure 3, p. 199) shows arrows being shot, which are aimed at the [Symbol: sun] (this libido symbol par excellence) that is aptly used as a "target." Death is clearly enough accentuated and correlated with the sinking of the corns of wheat into the earth. [John XII, 24, 25, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.] As this rises, so also will the dying mystic rise. The grave crosses have the form [Symbol: Fire] ([Symbol: Sulphur]); they show that the interred one is a certain sulphur, the impure sulphur, willfulness.

The birds, from which we are to protect the grain, may in the end be the Siddhi; they are, in the introversion form of the religious work, what would otherwise be merely "diversions" or "dissipations."

The mystical death is the death of egoism (in Hindu terminology ahamkara).

Jacob Boehme writes in his book of the true atonement, I, 19: "...

Although I am not worthy, [Jesus] take me yet in thy death and let me only in thy death die my death; still strike thou me in my acknowledged selfishness to the ground and kill my selfishness by thy death...." In the Mysterium Magnum, x.x.xVI, 74, 75: "... We exalt not the outspoken word of the wisdom of G.o.d, but only the animal will to selfishness and egoism which is departed from G.o.d, which honors itself as a false G.o.d of its own and may not believe or trust G.o.d (as the Antichrist who has placed himself in G.o.d's stead); and we teach on the contrary that the man of the Antichrist's image shall wholly die so that he may be born in Christ of a new life and will, which new will has power in the perfect word of nature with divine eyes to see all the miracles of G.o.d, both in nature and creature, in the perfect wisdom. For as dies the Antichrist in the soul, so rises Christ from the dead."

In the hermetic book, "Gloria Mundi," it is related of Adam that he would have been able, if he had not acted contrary to G.o.d, to live 2000 years in paradise and would then have been taken up into heaven; but he had drawn on himself death, sickness and calamity. Only through the grace of G.o.d was he given a partial knowledge of the powers of things, of herbs and remedies against manifold infirmities. "When, however, he could no longer maintain himself by the medicinal art [in paradise] he sent his son Seth forth to paradise for the tree of life, which he received, not physically, but spiritually. Finally he desired the oil of compa.s.sion, whereupon by the angels, at G.o.d's command to give the oil, the promise was given and thereupon the seed of the oil tree sent, which seed Seth planted on his return, after his father's death and on his father's grave, from which grew the wood of the holy cross, on which our Lord Jesus Christ, through his pa.s.sion and death, freed us from death and all sins; which Lord Christ in his holiest humanity has become the tree and the wood of life and has brought to us the fruit of the oil of compa.s.sion...." Adam is the undomesticated man; this ideal must die to the moral aspirant.

The painful duty of killing a part of self is beautifully expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita, where the hero, Aryuna, hesitates to fight against his "kindred," to shoot at them-the bow falls from his hand.

Dying relates to the old realms. The old laws expire to make room for the new. The new life cancels the old deeds. (Cf. Paul, Rom. VII-VII.)

Vedanta doctrine: But as to the duty of the scripture canon and perception, both last as long as Samsara, i.e., until the awakening. If this is attained, perception is annulled, and if you derive thence the objection that thereby the veda is annulled, it must be noted that according to our own doctrine father is not father and the Veda is not the veda. (Deussen, Syst. d. Ved., p. 449.)

Bhagavad-Gita, IV, 37:

"Like fire when it flames and turns all the firewood to ashes."

So the fire of knowledge burns for you all deeds to ashes.

For several reasons the father image is peculiarly suited to represent what has to be resolved. By the father, the old Adam (totality of inherited instincts) and the strongest imperatives are implanted in the child. The father is also the type of tenacious adherence to the ancestors. Again we meet the ant.i.thesis, old generation, new generation, in ourselves after the intro-determination.

The mystical death (sacrifice) is not to be accomplished by mere asceticism, as it were, mechanically; the alchemists warn us carefully against severe remedies. The work is to take a natural course; the work is also, although indeed a consummation of nature, yet not above nature.

"Nature rejoices in nature Nature overcomes nature Nature rules nature."

Thus the magician Osthanes is said to have taught. And the Bhagavad-Gita (VI, 5-7) says:

"Let one raise himself by means of self, and not abase self, Self is his own friend, is also his own enemy.

To him is his self his own friend, who through self conquers self, Yet if it battle with the external world, then self becomes enemy to self."

In the "Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae" (p. 57) we read: "So it is impossible to rise to the supramundane life, in so far as it does not happen by means of nature. From the steps of nature Jacob's ladder is reached and the chain to Jupiter's throne begins on earth."

The idea of self-sacrifice (with dismemberment) appears very prettily in an allegorical vision of the old hermetic philosopher Zosimos, who seems to have copied it, as Reitzenstein notes, from an Egyptian Nekyia. I quote from Hoefer (Hist. Chim., I, pp. 256-259):

"I slept and saw a priest standing before an altar shaped like a cup and with several steps by which to climb to it. [First 15, later 7 steps are mentioned.] And I heard a voice crying aloud, 'I have finished climbing and descending these 15 steps, resplendent with light.' After listening to the priest officiating at the altar I asked him what this resounding voice was whose sound had struck my ear. The priest answered me, saying: 'I am he who is (e?? ? ??), the priest of the sanctuary, and I am under the weight of the power that overwhelms me. For at the break of day came a deputy who seized me, killed me with a sword, cut me in pieces; and after flaying the skin from my head, he mixed the bones with the flesh and burned me in the fire to teach me that the spirit is born with the body.

That is the power that overwhelms me.' While the priest was saying that, his eyes became as blood, and he vomited all his flesh. I saw him mutilate himself, rend himself with his teeth and fall on the ground. Seized with terror I awoke, and I began to ponder and ask myself if this indeed was the nature and the composition of the water. And I congratulated myself upon having reasoned well [namely in a train of thought preceding the vision]. Soon I slept again and perceived the same altar, and on this altar I saw water boiling with a noise and many men in it. Not finding any one in the neighborhood to explain this phenomenon, I advanced to enjoy the spectacle at the altar. Then I noticed a man with gray hair and thin, who said to me, 'What are you looking at?' 'I am looking,' I answered with surprise, 'at the boiling of the water and the men who are boiling there still alive.' 'The sight you see,' replied he, 'is the beginning, the end and the trans.m.u.tation (eta???).' I asked him what the trans.m.u.tation was.

'It is,' he said, 'the place of the operation which is called purification [in the original, topos askeseos], for the people who wish to become virtuous come there and become spirits shunning the body.' And I asked him, 'Are you also a spirit [pneuma]?' 'I am,' said he, 'a spirit and the guardian of spirits.' During this conversation and amid the noise of the boiling water and the cries of the people, I perceived a man of bra.s.s, holding in his hand a book of lead, and I heard him tell me in a loud voice: 'See, I command all those who are subjected to punishments to learn from this book. I command every one to take the book of lead and to write in it with his hand until his pharynx is developed, the mouth is opened, and the eyes have taken their place again.' The act followed the word, and the master of the house, present at this ceremony, said to me, 'Stretch your neck and see what is done.' 'I see,' said I. 'The brazen man that you see,' said he, 'and who has left his own flesh, is the priest before the altar. It is he who has been given the privilege of disposing of this water.' In going over all this in my imagination I awoke and said to myself, 'What is the cause of this occurrence? What indeed is it? Is it not the water white, yellow, boiling, divine?' I found that I had reasoned well.... Finally, to be brief, build, my friend a temple of a single stone [monolith] ... a temple that has neither beginning nor end, and in the interior of which there is found a spring of purest water, and bright as the sun. It is with the sword in hand that one must search and penetrate into it, for the entrance is narrow. It is guarded by a dragon, which has to be killed and flayed. By putting the flesh and the bones together you make a pedestal up which you will climb to reach the temple, where you will find what you are looking for. For the priest, who is the brazen man whom you saw sitting near the spring, changes his nature and is transformed into a man of silver, who can, if you wish, change himself into a man of gold.... Do not reveal anything of this to any one else and keep these things for yourself, for silence teaches virtue. It is very fine to understand the trans.m.u.tation of the four metals, lead, copper, tin, silver, and to know how they change into perfect gold...."

Psychoa.n.a.lysis, like comparative mythology, makes it probable that the killing or dismemberment of the father figure is equivalent to castration.

That has, according to intro-determination, an anagogic, a wider sense, if we compare the organ of generation to the creative power, and a narrower, if we compare it to s.e.xuality. The wider conception does not require immediate interpretation. With regard to the narrower, I observe that the mystical manuals show that the most active power for spiritual education is the s.e.xual libido, which for that reason is partially or entirely withdrawn from its original use. (Rules of chast.i.ty.) "Vigor is obtained on the confirmation of continence." (Patanjali, Yoga-Sutra, II, 38.) These instruction books have recognized the great trans.m.u.tability of the s.e.xual libido. (Cf. ability of sublimation in the alchemistic, as well as in the Freudian terminology.) Naturally the reduction of s.e.xuality had to occur at the beginning of the work in order to furnish that power; hence the castration at the commencement of the process. The killing of the phallic snake amounts, of course, to the same thing. The snake with its tail in its mouth is the cycle of the libido, the always rolling wheel of life, of procreation, which always procreates itself, and of the creation of the world. The same cycle is represented by a G.o.d who holds his phallus in his mouth, and so (in accordance with infantile and primitive theory) constantly impregnates himself. The serpent is good and also evil. Whoever breaks through the ring frees himself from the wheel of compulsion, raises himself above good and evil, in order to put in its place later a mystical union [Hieros Gamos].

Regarded from the point of view of knowledge, the formation of types reveals itself as a symbolic presentiment of an anagogic idea, not at first clearly conceivable. For the spirit, what cannot yet be clearly seen (mythological level of knowledge) or can no longer be seen (going to sleep, etc.) is pictured in symbolic form. [More details will be found in my essays, "Phantasie und Mythos," "Ueber die Symbolbildung," and "Zur Symbolbildung" (Jb. ps. F., II, III, IV).] This symbol form is the form of knowledge adapted to the spirit's capacity as it then existed. Not that any mysterious presentiment or prophetic gift of vision must be a.s.sumed.

The circ.u.mstance that man can get ever deeper meaning from his symbols gives them the appearance of being celestial harbingers sent forth by the latest ideas that they express. In a certain sense, however, the last meaning is implicated in the first appearance of the typical symbol. It has already been explained by intro-determination how that was possible.

The psyche, whose inventory of powers is copied symbolically in the elementary types, knows, even if only darkly at first, the possible unfolding of the powers. These unfoldings are originally not actual but potential. [See Note F.]

The more then that the psyche is so developed, that what was originally only a possible presentiment of actuality and that hence tends to come nearer the merely potential, begins to become actual, the more symbolism has the value of a "program." According to Jung, Riklin, etc., the phantasy (dream, myth-making) can be conceived not only as with Freud, "as a wish fulfillment, wherein older and infantile material expresses the wish for something unsettled, unattained or suppressed, but also as a mythological first step in the direction of conscious and adapted thinking and acting, as a program.... Maeder has discussed the teleological functions of the dream and the unconscious. In the course of an a.n.a.lytic treatment we discover the continuous transformations of the libido symbol in the dream current, till a form is reached which serves as an attempt to adapt oneself to actuality. There are epochs in the history of civilization which are particularly characterized by a storing of the libido in the sense that from the reservoir of mythological and religious thought forms, new adaptations to the real processes and data are made. A significant example is the Renaissance, which a study of renaissance literature and a visit to the renaissance cities, e.g., Florence, make evident in a high degree. The a.n.a.lysis of romanticism ... confirms these processes of development." (Zentralblatt f. Psa., III, p. 114.)

We have here the thought that the "program" is expressed in art, which therefore has prescience in a certain degree of the coming event. Jung (Jb. ps. F., III, pp. 171 ff.) writes: "It is a daily experience in my professional work (an experience whose certainty I must express with all the caution that is required by the complexity of the material) that in certain cases of chronic neuroses, a dream occurs at the time of the onset of the malady or a long time before, frequently of visionary significance, which is indelibly imprinted on the memory and holds a meaning, concealed from the patient, which antic.i.p.ates the succeeding experiences, i.e., the psychological significance. Dreams appear to stay spontaneously in memory so long as they suitably outline the psychological situation of the individual."

The more the program is worked out the more the value of the symbolism (whose types can always remain the same in spite of changes in their appearance) changes into that of the functional symbolism in the narrower sense; for the functional symbolism in the restricted sense is that which copies the actual play of forces in the psyche.

To the functional symbolism of actual forces belong, e.g., in large part the faces in my lecanomantic experiments, although they also contain program material; further, in purest form, the previously related autosymbolic vision of the mountains. The progress of a psychoa.n.a.lytic treatment is, apart from the program connections, generally copied in the dream in correspondence to the momentary psychic status, and therefore actually and functionally. It is quite probable that the progress of the mystical work is represented to the mystic in his phantasying (dreams, visions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. But when one happens upon written phantasy products of the mystics, of course only he who has mystical experiences of his own can venture to say whether a program symbolism or an actually functional symbolism is exhibited. For example, I make no judgment on the degree of actuality in the anagogic symbolism of the parable.

C. Regeneration.

In the favorable issue of introversion, i.e., when we conquer the dragon, we liberate a valuable treasure, namely, an enormous psychic energy, or, according to the psychoa.n.a.lytic view, libido, which is applicable to the much desired new creation (as the t.i.tanic aspect of which we recognize the "reforming"). The symbolic type, either openly or hiddenly expressed, of the setting free of an active libido, is birth. A libido symbol with the characteristic of active life comes out of a mother symbol. (The former is either explicitly a child or even a food, or it is phallic or animal. Zbl.

Psa., III, p. 115.) As the mystic is author of this, his birth, he has become his own father.

Introversion (seeking for the uterus or the grave) is a necessary presupposition of regeneration or resurrection, and this is a necessary presupposition of the mystical creation of the new man. (John III, 1-6): "There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

The same came to Jesus by night [introversion] and said unto him, 'Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from G.o.d; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except G.o.d be with him.' Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of G.o.d. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of G.o.d. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

Water is one of the most general religious mother symbols (baptism). With the earliest alchemists the brazen man becomes silver, the silver man, gold, by being dipped in the holy fountain.

A mythological representation of introversion with its danger and with regeneration was given previously [see Vishnu's adventure]. Detailed examples follow; first the Celtic myth of the birth of Taliesin.