Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts Part 17

In olden times there was a man of n.o.ble parentage in Peelyn named Tegid Voel. His ancestral country was in the center of the lake of Tegid. His wife was called Ceridwen. Of her he had a son, Morvram ap Tegid, and a daughter, Creirwy, the fairest maiden in the world. These two had another brother, the ugliest of all beings, named Avagddu. Ceridwen, the mother of this ill favored son, well knew that he would have little success in society, although he was endowed with many fine qualities. She determined to prepare a kettle [introversion] for her son, so that on account of his skill in looking into the future [Siddhi] he should find entrance into society. The kettle of water began to boil [cooking of the child in the uterus vessel] and the cooking had to be continued without interruption till one could get three blessed drops from the gifts of the Spirit [treasure]. She set Gwyon, the son of Gwreang of Llanveir, to watch the preparation of the kettle, and appointed a blind man [mutilation or castration] named Morda to keep alight the fire under the kettle, with the command that he should not permit the interruption of the boiling for a year and a day. [Cf. the activity of the wanderer in the parable, Sec. 14 ff.] Meanwhile Ceridwen occupied herself with the stars, watched daily the movement of the planets, and gathered herbs of all varieties that possessed peculiar powers [Siddhis]. Towards the end of the year, while she was still looking for herbs, it happened that three drops of the powerful water flew out of the kettle and fell on Gwyon's finger. They scalded him and he stuck his finger in his mouth. As the precious drops touched his lips all the events of the future were opened to his eyes, and he saw that he must be on his guard against Ceridwen [dreaded mother]. He rushed home. The kettle split into two parts [motive of the tearing apart of the uterus], for all the water in it except the three powerful drops were poisonous [danger of introversion], so that it poisoned the chargers of Gwyddno Garantur, which were drinking out of the gutter into which the kettle had emptied itself [the flood]. Now Ceridwen came in and saw that her whole year's work was lost. She took a pestle and struck the blind man so hard on the head that one of his eyes fell out on his cheeks. "You have unjustly deformed me," cried Morda; "you see that I am guiltless. Your loss is not caused by my blunder." "Verily," said Ceridwen, "Gwyon the Small it was that robbed me." Immediately she pursued him, but Gwyon saw her from a distance and turned into a hare and redoubled his speed, but she at once became a hound, forced him to turn around and chased him towards a river. He jumped in and became a fish, but his enemy pursued him quickly in the shape of an otter, so that he had to a.s.sume the form of a bird and fly up into the air. But the element gave him no place of refuge, for the woman became a falcon, came after him and would have caught him [forms of anxiety]. Trembling for fear of death, he saw a heap of smooth wheat on a thres.h.i.+ng floor, fell into the middle of it and turned into a grain of wheat. But Ceridwen took the shape of a black hen, flew to the wheat, scratched it asunder, recognized the grain and swallowed it [impregnation, incest]. She became pregnant from it and after being confined for nine months [regeneration] she found so lovely a child [improvement] that she could no longer think of its death [immortality].

She put it in a boat, covered it with a skin [skin = lanugo of the ftus, belongs to the birth motive], and at the instigation of her husband cast the skiff into the sea on the 29th of April. At this time the fish weir of Gwyddno stood between Dyvi and Aberystwyth, near his own stronghold. It was usual in this weir every year on the 1st of May to catch fish worth 100 pounds. Gwyddno had an only son, Elphin. He was very unfortunate in his undertakings, and so his father thought him born in an evil hour. His counselors persuaded the father, however, to let his son draw the weir basket this time, to try whether good luck would ever be his, and so that he might yet gain something with which to go forth into the world. On the next day, the 1st of May, Elphin examined the weir basket and found nothing, yet as he went away, he saw the boat covered with the skin rest on the post of the weir. One of the fishermen said to him, "You have never been so unlucky as you were to-night, but now you have destroyed the virtue of the weir basket," in which they always found a hundred pounds'

worth on the first of May. "How so?" asked Elphin. "The boat may easily contain the worth of the hundred." The skin was lifted and he that opened it saw the forehead of a child and said to Elphin, "See the beaming forehead." "Beaming forehead, Taliesin, be his name," replied the prince, who took the child in his arms and because of his own misfortune, pitied it. He put it behind him on his charger. Immediately the child composed a song for the consolation and praise of Elphin, and at the same time prophesied to him his future fame. Elphin took the child into the stronghold and showed him to his father, who asked the child whether he was a human being or a spirit. Whereupon he answered in the following song: "I am Elphin's first bard; my native country is the land of the cherubim. The heavenly John called me Merddin [Merlin] and finally, every one, King: Taliesin. I was nine months in the womb of my mother Ceridwen, before which I was the little Gwyon, now I am Taliesin. With my Lord I was in the world above, and fell as Lucifer into the depths of h.e.l.l. I carried the banner before Alexander. I know the names of the stars from north to south. I was in the circle of Gwdion [Gwydi on] in the Tetragrammaton. I accompanied the Hean into the valley of Hebron. I was in Canaan when Abraham was killed. I was in the court of Dve before Gwdion was born, a companion of Eli and Enoch. I was at the judgment that condemned the Son of G.o.d to the cross. I was an overseer at Nimrod's tower building. I was in the ark with Noah. I saw the destruction of Sodom. I was in Africa before Rome was built. I came hither to the remains of Troy (i.e., to Britain, for the mystical progenitor of the Britons boasted a Trojan parentage). I was with my Lord in the a.s.ses' manger. I comforted Moses in the Jordan. I was in the firmament with Mary Magdalene. I was endowed with spirit by the kettle of Ceridwen. I was a harper at Lleon in Lochlyn. I suffered hunger for the son of the maiden. I was in the white mountains in the court of Cynvelyn in chains and bondage, a year and a day. I dwelt in the kingdom of the Trinity [Tri-unity]. It is not known whether my body is flesh or fish. I was a teacher of the whole world and remain till the day of judgment on the face of the earth. [Briefly, Taliesin has the ubiquity of [Symbol: Mercury].] I sat on the shaken chair at Caer Seden [Caer Seden is probably the unceasingly recurrent cycle of animal life in the center of the universe.], which continually rotates between the three elements.

Is it not a marvel that it does reflect a single beam?" Gwyddnaw, astonished at the evolution of the boy, requested another song and received the answer: "Water has the property of bringing grace; it is profitable to devote one's thoughts aright to G.o.d; it is good warmly to pray to G.o.d, because the grace which goes out from him cannot be thwarted.

Thrice have I been born; I know how one has to meditate. It is sad that men do not come to seek all the knowledge of the world, which is collected in my breast, for I know everything that has been and everything that will be." (Nork. Myth. d. Volkss., pp. 662 ff.)

The story of Taliesin closely harmonizes with that of Hermes in the Smaragdine tablet. Nork makes some interesting observations, which besides the nature myth interpretation, contains also an allusion to the idea of spiritual regeneration.

I have already mentioned that the uterus symbol is frequently the body cavity of a monster. Just as in the previous myth the hero by introversion gets three marvelous drops, so in the Finnish epic Kalevala, Wainamoinen learns three magic words in the belly of a monster, his dead ancestor Antero Wipunen. The gigantic size of the body of the being that here and in other myths represents the mother, has an infantile root. The introverting person, as we know, becomes a child. To the child the adults, and of course, the mother, are very large. For the adult, who becomes a child and revives the corresponding images, the mother image may easily become a giant.

Stekel tells (Spr. d. Tr., p. 429) of a patient whose dreams show uterus and regeneration phantasies in concealed form, that he, advised of it by Stekel, mused upon it some minutes and then said, "I must openly confess to you these conscious phantasies. I was 13 years old when I wished to become acquainted with an enormously large giantess, in whose body I might take a walk, and where I could inspect everything. I would then make myself quite comfortable and easy in the red cavern. I also phantasied a swing that was hung 10 m. high in the body of this giantess. There I wanted to swing up and down joyfully." This patient had carried over the original proportion of ftus and mother to his present size. Now that he was grown up, the body in which he could move had to be the body of a giantess.

We shall now not be surprised at the flesh mountain Krun of the mandaean Hibil-Ziwa saga or similar giant personalities. Hibil-Ziwa descended into the world of darkness in order to get the answer to a question (i.e., once more the treasure in the form of a marvelous word). He applied in vain to different persons, but always had to go deeper and finally came to Krun, from whom he forced the magic word.

The treasure or wonder working name comes from the depths according to the hermetic cabbalistic conception also. David is supposed to have found at the digging of the foundation of the temple, the Eben stijjah, Stone of the Deeps, that unlocked the fountain of the great deep (I Mos., VII, 11, and VIII, 12) and on which the Sem ha-mephoras, the outspoken name (of G.o.d) was inscribed. This stone he brought into the holy of holies, and on it the ark of the covenant was set. Fearless disciples of wisdom entered at times into the sanctuary and had learned from the stone the name with its combinations of letters in order to work wonders therewith.

In cases where the uterus is represented by the body cavity of a monster the rebirth occurs most frequently by a spitting forth. Also the breaking forth by means of tearing apart the uterus occurs, and in every case it has the significance of a "powerfully tearing of oneself away," the burning of bridges behind one, the final victory over the mother. To the descent into the underworld (introversion) corresponds, as characteristic of the subsequent rebirth, the rising to the light with the released treasure (magic word as above, water of life, as in Ishtar's h.e.l.l journey, etc.).

A frequently used symbol for the released libido is the light, the sun.

Reborn sun figures, in connection with a daily and yearly up and down, are also quite general. That the released libido appears thus may have several reasons. External ones, like the life-imparting properties of the sun, invite comparison. Then the parallel light = consciousness. [Also that higher or other consciousness that is mediated by the mystic religious work; for which expressions like illuminate, etc., are sufficiently significant. On this topic see my essay, Phant. u. Myth. (Jb., II, p.

597).] and also inner reasons, i.e., such as rest upon the actual light and warmth sensations, which occur, as literature and observations show, in persons who are devoted to spiritual training. Here the occasion may be offered to the mystic to utilize for conscious life and action, functions that hitherto had been unconscious. Of the appearance of light in the state of introversion, the histories of saints and ecstatics, and the autobiographies of this kind of men are full. An enormous number of instances might be given. I shall rest content with recalling that Mechthildis von Magdeburg has ent.i.tled her revelations: "A flowing Light of my G.o.dhead" ("Ein vliessend Lieht miner Gotheit"), and with adding Jane Leade's words: "If any one asks what is the magic power [sought by the reborn] I answer, 'It is to be compared to a wonderfully powerful inspiration to the soul, to a blood, coloring and penetrating and trans.m.u.ting the inner life, a concentrating and essentially creative light and fire flame.' "

The Omphalopsychites or Hesychiasts, those monks who dwelt in the Middle Ages on Mount Athos, were given the following instructions by their Abbot Simeon: "Sitting alone in private, note and do what I say. Close thy doors and raise thy spirit from vain and temporal things. Then rest thy beard on the breast and direct the gaze with all thy soul on the middle of the body at the navel. [See Note G.] Contract the air pa.s.sages so as not to breathe too easily. Endeavor inwardly to find the location of the heart, where all psychic powers reside. At first thou wilt find darkness and inflexible density. When, however, thou perseverest day and night, thou wilt, wonderful to relate, enjoy inexpressible rapture. For then the spirit sees what it never has recognized; it sees the air between the heart and itself radiantly beaming." This light, the hermits declare, is the light of G.o.d that was visible to the young men on Tabor.

Yoga-Sutra (Patanyali, I, 36) says: "Or that sorrowless condition of mind, full of light (would conduce to samadhi)." And the commentator Manilal Nabubhai Dvivedi remarks upon this: "The light here referred to is the light of pure sattva. When the mind is deeply absorbed in that quality, then, indeed, does this condition of light which is free from all pain follow. Vachaspatimisra remarks that in the heart there is a lotus-like form having eight petals and with its face turned downward. One should raise this up by rechaka (exhalation of the breath) and then meditate upon it, locating therein the four parts of the pranava, viz., a, u, m, and the point in their several meanings. When the mind thus meditating falls in the way of the susumna, it sees a perfect calm light like that of the moor of the sun, resembling the calm ocean of milk. This is the jyotis, light, which is the sure sign of complete sattva. Some such practice is here meant...." The similarity to the instruction of the Abbot Simeon is evident.

The light and sun symbolism in alchemistic writings is everywhere used; yet gold also = sun, indeed the same sign [Symbol: Gold] serves for both.

I should like to call attention incidentally to a beautiful use of the sun symbol in "Amor Proximi," which differs slightly from the more restricted gold symbolism. On p. 32 ff. we read: "See Christ is not outside of us, but he is intimately within us all, but locked up, and in order that he may unlock that which is locked up in us, did he once become outwardly visible, as a man such as we are, the hard sin enclosure excepted, and of this the [Symbol: Gold] in this world is the true copy, which quickly convinced the heathens from the beginning of the world that G.o.d must become man even as the light of nature has become a body in the [Symbol: Gold]. Now the [Symbol: Gold] is not alone in the firmament outside of all other creatures, but it is much more in the center of all creatures but shut up, but the external [Symbol: Gold] is as a figure of Christ, in that it unlocks in us the enclosed [Symbol: Gold], as its image and substance, just as Christ does, through his becoming man, also unlock in us the image of G.o.d. For were this not so, then the sphere of the earth would approach in vain to the [Symbol: Gold] in order to derive its power from it, and nothing at all would grow from the accursed [Symbol: earth]. [The symbol [Symbol: earth] means earth.] So the [Symbol: earth] shows us that inasmuch as it approaches near to the [Symbol: Gold] it is unlocked, so we, too, approaching Christ, shall attain again the image of G.o.d; then at the end of time this [Symbol: earth] will be translated into the point of the sun [in Solis punctum] [Cf. what has been said about the point in the [Symbol: Gold].];" and still farther on: "Ye see that the [Symbol: earth]

turns to the sun, but the reason ye know not; if the earth had not in the creation gone out of the Solis punctum, it could not have turned and yearned according to its magnetic manner, so this turning around shows us that the world was once renewed, and in its beginning, as [Symbol: Gold]

is punctum; it desires to return, and its rest will be alone in that; therefore the soul of man is also similarly gone out of the eternally divine sun, towards which it also yearns...."

Our parable, to which I should like now to revert, appears in a new light.

It would be a waste of time to lead the reader once more through all the adventures of the wanderer. He again, without difficulty, will find all the aforesaid elements in the parable, and will readily recognize the introversion and rebirth. I therefore pick out for further consideration only a few particular motives of the parable or alchemy which seem to me to require special elucidation.

We should not forget the singular fact that after the introversion, at the beginning of the work of rebirth, a deluge occurs. This flood takes place not merely in the alchemistic process (when the bodies undergo putrefaction in the vessel and become black), but we see the mythic deluges coming with unmistakable regularity at the same time, i.e., after the killing of the original being (separation of the primal parents, etc.), and before the new creation of the world by the son of G.o.d. Stucken (SAM., p. 123): "We see corroborated ... what I have already emphasized, that on the appearance of the flood catastrophe the creation of the world is not yet finished. Even before the catastrophe there was indeed an earth and life on it, but only after the flood, begins the forming of the present Cosmos. Thus it is in the germanic Ymir-saga, and in the Babylonian Tiamat-saga, in the Egyptian and likewise in the Iranian." What may the flood be in the psychological sense. Dreams and poetry tell us, in that they figure the pa.s.sions in the image of a storm-tossed sea. After the introversion, whose perils have already been mentioned, there is always an outbreak of the pa.s.sions. Not without consequences is the Stone of the Deeps elevated, which locks the prison of the subterranean powers.

(Cf. Book of Enoch, X, 5, and pa.s.sim.) The point is to seize the wildly rus.h.i.+ng spirits and to get possession of their powers without injury. The entire inundation must, in the philosophical vessel, be absorbed by the bodies that have turned black, and then it works on them for the purpose of new creation, fructifying them like the floods of water upon the earth.

It does no damage to the materia only then, when it is actually black (stage of victory). If this happens, it (the materia) is in contrast to the waters raging over it, like an ocean which suffers no alteration by the influx of waters. "Like an ocean that continually fills itself and yet does not overflow its boundaries, even with the inflowing waters, so the man acquires calm, into whom all desires flow in similar wise, and not he who wantonly indulges his desire." (Bhag. Gita, II, 70. Latin: translated by Schlegel: German [Schroeder].)

"Wer wie das Meer in das die Wa.s.ser stromen Das sich anfullet und doch ruhig dasteht Wer so in sich die Wunsche la.s.st verschwinden, Der findet Ruhe-nicht wer ihnen nachgibt."

Above I have compared the lion of the parable to the Sphinx of dipus, and on the other hand, it appears from later deliberation that it (the lion) must be the retrogressive element in men, which is to be sacrificed in the work of purification. Now I find several remarks of Jung (Psychology of the Unconscious) that mediate very well between both ideas. Even if I do not care to go so far as to see in the animal only the s.e.xual impelling powers, but prefer to regard it rather as the t.i.tanic part of our impulses, I find the conception of the author very fortunate. The Sphinx, that double being, symbolizes the double natured man, to whom his b.e.s.t.i.a.lity still clings. Indeed it is to be taken exactly as a functional representation of the development of reason out of the impulses (human head and shoulders growing out of an animal body).

The homunculus motive would likewise have to be regarded in a new light. I have said that the mystic was his own father; he creates a new man (himself) out of himself with a merely symbolic mother, therefore with peculiar self-mastery, without the cooperation of any parents. That means the same thing as the artificial creation of a man. We recognize therefore the anagogic significance of the homunculus, the idea of which we found closely interwoven with alchemy in general. This connection also has not escaped Jung, though he takes it one-sidedly and draws a too far-reaching conclusion. He points to the vision of Zosimos, where, in the hollow of the altar he finds boiling water and men in it, and remarks that this vision reveals the original sense of alchemy, an original impregnation magic, i.e., a way in which children could be made without a mother. I must observe that the hermetic attempt to get back to Adam's condition has some of the homunculus phantasy in it. Adam was regarded as androgyne, a being at once man and woman, but sufficient in himself alone for impregnation and procreation. Welling says in his Opus mago-cabbalistic.u.m, "This man Adam was created, as the scripture says, i.e., of the male and female s.e.x, not two different bodies but one in its essence and two in its potentiality, for he was the earth Adamah, the red and white [Symbol: Sulfur] the spiritual [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver], the male and female seed, the dust of the Adamah from Schamajim, and therefore had the power to multiply himself magically (just as he was celestial) which could not indeed have been otherwise, unless the essential masculinity and femininity were dissociated." I am reminded in this connection that Mercury is also bis.e.xual; the "materia" must be brought into the androgynic state "rebis." The idea of hermaphroditism plays a well known, important part in mythology also.

We have explained why phantasy creations carry two meanings, the psychoa.n.a.lytic and the anagogic, apparently fundamentally different, even contradictory, and yet, on account of their completeness, undeniable. We have found that the two meanings correspond to two aspects or two evolutionary phases of a psychic inventory of powers, which are attached as a unity to symbolic types, because an intro-determination can take place in connection with the sublimation of the impulses. When we formulated the problem of the multiple interpretation, we were struck with the fact that besides the two meanings that were nominally antipodal in ethical relations, there was a third ethically indifferent, namely, the natural scientific. Apart from the fact that I have not yet exhausted the anagogic contents of our material and so must add a number of things in the following sections, I am confronted with the task of elucidating the position of the nature myth portion. That will necessarily be done briefly.

In the case of alchemy the natural scientific content is chemistry (in some degree connected with physics and cosmology), a fact hardly requiring proof. The alchemistic chemistry was not, to be sure, scientific in the strict modern sense. In comparison with our modern att.i.tudes it had so much mythical blood in it that I could call it a mythologically apperceiving science, wherein I go a little beyond the very clearly developed conception of Wilhelm Wundt (Volkerps. Myth. u. Rel.) regarding mythological apperception, from a desire for a more rigid formulation, but without losing the peculiar concept of the mythical or giving it the extension it has acquired with G. F. Lipps. Alchemy's myth-like point of view and manner of thinking is paralleled by the fact that it was dominated by symbolic representation and the peculiarities that go with it. [The concept of the symbol is here to be taken, of course, in the wider sense, as in my papers on Symbolbildung (Jb. ps. F., II-IV).]

The choice of a symbol is strongly influenced by what strongly impresses the mind, what moves the soul, whether joyful or painful, what is of vital interest, in short, whatever touches us nearly, whether consciously or unconsciously. This influence is shown even in the commonplace instances, where the professional or the amateur is betrayed by the manner of apperceiving one and the same object. Thus the landscape painter sees in a lake a fine subject, the angler an opportunity to fish, the business man a chance to establish a sanitarium or a steamboat line, the yachtsman a place for his pleasure trips, the heat tormented person a chance for a bath, and the suicide, death. In the symbolic conception of an object, moreover (which is much more dependent on the unconscious or uncontrolled stimulation of the phantasy that shapes the symbol), the choice from among the many possibilities can surely not fall upon such images as are unsympathetic or uninteresting to the mind. Even if we consciously make comparisons we think of an example mostly from a favorite and familiar sphere; when something "occurs" to us there is already evidenced some part of an unconscious complex. This will become elaborated in the degree that the phantasy is given free play.

The raw product then, of the symbol-choosing phantasy of the individual ("raw," i.e., not covered for publicity with a premeditated varnish) bears traces of the things that closely concern the person in question. ("Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh"-even without premeditation.) If we now start from a spiritual product which is expressed in symbols (mythologically apperceived), and whose author we must take to be not an individual man but many generations or simply mankind, then this product will, in the peculiarities of the selection of the symbol, conceivably signify not individual propensities but rather those things that affect identically the generality of mankind. In alchemy, which as a mythologically apperceiving science is completely penetrated by symbols, we regard as remarkable in the selection of symbols, the juxtaposition of such images as reflect what we have, through psychoa.n.a.lysis, become acquainted with, as the "t.i.tanic" impulses (dipus complex). No wonder!

These very impulses are the ones that we know from psychoa.n.a.lytic investigations as those which stand above all individual idiosyncracies.

And if we had not known it, the very circ.u.mstances of alchemy would have taught us.

The familiar scheme of impulses with its "t.i.tanic" substratum, which is necessarily existent in all men (although it may have been in any particular case extraordinarily sublimated) comes clearly to view in individual creations of fancy. It must be found quite typically developed, however, where a mult.i.tude of men (fable making mankind) were interested in the founding, forming, polis.h.i.+ng and elaborating of the symbolic structure. Such creations have transcended the merely personal. An example of this kind is the "mythological" science of alchemy. That we are repelled by the retrograde perspective of the types residing in its symbols (and which often appear quite nakedly) comes from the fact that in the critic these primal impulse forms have experienced a strong repression, and that their re-emergence meets a strong resistance (morality, taste, etc.).

The much discussed elementary types have therefore insinuated themselves into the body of the alchemistic hieroglyphics, as mankind, confronted with the riddles of physico-chemical facts, struggled to express a mastery of them by means of thought. The typical inventory of powers, as an apperception ma.s.s, so to speak, helped to determine the selection of symbols. A procedure of determination has taken place here similar to that we might have noticed in the coincidence of material and functional symbolism in dreams. Here again appears the heuristic value which the introduction of the concept of the functional categories had for our problem.

The possibility of deriving the "t.i.tanic" and the "anagogic" from the alchemistic (often by their authors merely chemically intended) allegories is now easily explained. We can work it out, because it was already put in there, even if neither in the extreme form of the "t.i.tanic" (i.e., the retrograde aspect), nor in that of the "anagogic" (the progressive aspect), but in an indeterminate middle stage of the intro-determination.

What gave opportunity for this play of symbolism was an effort of intelligence directed toward chemistry. The chemical content in alchemy is, so to speak, what has been purposely striven for, while the rest came by accident, yet none the less inevitably. So then natural philosophy appears to be the carrier, or the stalk on which the t.i.tanic and the anagogic symbolism blossoms. Thus it becomes intelligible how the alchemistic hieroglyphic aiming chiefly at chemistry, adapted itself through and through to the hermetic anagogic educational goal, so that at times and by whole groups, alchemy was used merely as a mystical guide without any reference to chemistry.

What we have found in alchemy we shall now apply to mythology where a.n.a.logous relations have been indicated. [The apperception theory here used should not be confused with the intellectual theory (of Steinthal) which Wundt (V. Ps., IV2, pp. 50 ff.) criticised as the illusion theory. I should be more inclined to follow closely the Wundtian conception of the "mythological apperception" (ibid., pp. 64 ff.) with particular emphasis on the affective elements that are to work there. With Wundt, the affects are really the "actual impulse mainsprings" and the most powerful stimuli of the phantasy (ib., p. 60). "The affects of fear and hope, wish and desire, love and hate, are the widely disseminated sources of the myth.

They are, of course, continually linked with images. But they are the ones that first breathe life into these images." I differ from Wundt in that I have more definite ideas of the origin of these affects, by which they are brought into close connection with the frequently mentioned elementary motives.] Modern investigation of myths has, in my opinion, sufficiently shown that we are here concerned with a nucleus of natural philosophy (comprehension of astral and even of meteorological processes, etc.) around which legendary and historical material can grow. As has been shown by two fairy tales and as I could have abundantly shown from countless others, the psychoa.n.a.lytic and the anagogic interpretations are possible alongside of the scientific. [We can criticise Hitchc.o.c.k for having in his explanations of fairy tales considered them only in their most developed form, and not bothered about their origin and archaic forms. And as a matter of fact the more developed forms permit a very much richer anagogic interpretation than the archaic. But that is no proof against the interpretation, but only establishes their orientation in the development of the human spirit. The anagogic interpretation is indeed a prospective explanation in the sense of an ethical advance. Now the evolution even of fairy tales shows quite clearly a progression towards the ethical; and inasmuch as the ethical content of the tale grows by virtue of this evolution, the anagogic explanation is in the nature of things able to place itself in higher developed tales in correspondingly closer connection with mythical material.] I adduce here only one example, namely the schema that Frobenius has derived from the comparison of numerous sun myths. The hero is swallowed by a water monster in the west [the sun sets in the sea]. The animal journeys with him to the east (night path of the sun apparently under the sea). He lights a fire in the belly of the animal and cuts off a piece of the pendant heart when he feels hungry. Soon after he notices that the fish is running aground. (The reillumined sun comes up to the horizon from below.) He begins immediately to cut his way out of the animal, and then slips out (sunrise). In the belly of the fish it has become so hot that all his hair has fallen out. (Hair probably signifies rays.) Quite as clear as the nature myth purport, is the fact that we have a representation of regeneration, which is quite as conceivable in psychoa.n.a.lytic as in anagogic explanation.

Now I cannot approve of the attempt of many psychoa.n.a.lysts to treat as a negligible quant.i.ty or to ignore altogether the scientific content (nature nucleus) of the myths which has been so well substantiated by the newer research, even though it is not so well established in the details. [I have uttered a similar warning in Jb. ps. F., IV (Princip. Anreg.) and previously, in Jb. ps. F., II (Phant. u. Myth), have advocated the equality of the natural philosophical and the psychological content. Now I observe with pleasure that very recently an author of the psychoa.n.a.lytic school is engaged on the very subject that I have recommended as so desirable. Dr. Emil F. Lorenz, in the February number of _Imago_, 1913, treats the "t.i.tan Motiv in der allgemeinen Mythologie" in a manner that approaches my conception of it. In the consideration of human primal motives as apperception ma.s.s, there is particularly revealed a common thought in the primitive interpretation of natural phenomenon.

Unfortunately the article appeared after this book was finished. So even if I am not in a position to enter into this question, I will none the less refer to it and at the same time express the hope that Lorenz will further elaborate the interesting preliminary contribution, communicated in the form of aphorisms, as he terms it.] The inadmissibility of these omissions arises from the vital importance and gripping effect of the objects thus (i.e., mythologically) regarded by humanity (e.g., of the course of the sun, so infinitely important for them in their dependence upon the moods of nature). If then, on the one hand, it will not be possible for the psychoa.n.a.lyst to force the nature mythologist out of his position and somehow to prove that any symbol means not the sun but the father, so on the other hand the nature mythologist who may understand his own interpretations so admirably, must not attack the specifically psychological question: why in the apperception of an object, this and not that symbolic image offers itself to consciousness. So, for instance, why the sunset and sunrise is so readily conceived as a swallowing and eructation, or as a process of regeneration. Yet Frobenius (Zeitalt. d.

Sonneng., I, p. 30) finds the symbolism "negligible."

It is also conceivable that the obtrusive occurrence of incest, castration of the father, etc., should make the mythologists ponder. It was bias on the part of many of them to be unwilling to see the psychological value of these things. I must therefore acknowledge the justice of Rank's view when he (Inz-Mot., p. 278) says in reference to the dipus myth (rightly, in all probability, interpreted by Goldziher as a sun myth): "Yet it is indubitable that these ideas of incest with the mother and the murder of the father are derived from human life, and that the myth in this human disguise could never be brought down from heaven without a corresponding psychic idea, which may really have been an unconscious one even at the time of the formation of the myth, just as it is with the mythologists of today."

And in another pa.s.sage (pp. 318 ff.): "While these investigators (astral and moon mythologists) would consider incest and castration operative in an equal or even greater degree than we do, as the chief motives in the formation of myths in the celestial examples only, we are forced by psychoa.n.a.lytical considerations to find in them universal primitive human purposes which later, as a result of the need of psychological justification, have been projected into the heavens from which our myth interpreters wish in turn to derive them. [Whether such a need of justification has had a share in the formation of myths appears to me doubtful or at any rate not demonstrable. At all events in so strongly emphasizing these unnecessary a.s.sumptions and conceiving the projection upon heaven of the mundane psychological primal motives as an act of release, we hide the more important cause for concerning ourselves with heaven, namely the already mentioned vital importance of the things that are accomplished there. Now the fact that the primal motives cooperate in the symbolical realization of these things, implies no defense directed against them. A better defense would be to repress them in symbolism than, as really happens, to utilize them in it.] These interpreters, for example, have believed that they recognized in the motive of dismemberment (castration) a symbolic suggestion of the gradual waning of the moon, while the reverse is for us undoubted, namely, that the offensive castration has found a later symbolization in the moon phases. Yet it argues either against all logic and psychology, or for our conception of the s.e.xualization of the universe, that man should have symbolized so harmless a phenomenon as the changes of the moon, by so offensive a one as the dismemberment or castration of the nearest relative. So the nature mythologists also, and Siecke in particular, have thought that primitive man has 'immediately regarded' the (to him) incomprehensible waning of the moon as a dismemberment, while this is psychologically quite unthinkable unless this image, which is taken from earthly life, should have likewise originated in human life and thought (phantasy)."

It is indeed never conceivable that men would have chosen for the natural phenomenon exactly these t.i.tanic symbols, if these had not had for them a special psychic value, and therefore touched them closely. If any one should object that they would not have "chosen" them (because they did not purposely invent allegories, as was formerly thought), I should raise the contrary question: Who has chosen them? I will stick to the word "choose"

for a choice has taken place. But the powers that arranged this choice lived and still live in the soul of man.

The conception advocated by me gives their due to the nature mythologists just as much as to the psychologists that oppose them. It reinstates, moreover, a third apparently out-worn tendency [the so-called degeneration theory] that sees in the myth the veiling of ancient priestly wisdom. This obsolete view had the distinction that it placed some value, which the modern interpreters did not, on the anagogic content of the myths (even if in a wrong perspective). The necessity of reckoning with an anagogic content of myths results from the fact that religions with their ethical valuations, have developed from mythical beginnings. And account must be taken of these relations. In the way in which the older interpretations of myths regarded the connection, they pursued a phantom, but their point of view becomes serviceable as soon as it reverses the order of evolution. It is not true that the religious content in myths was the priestly wisdom of antiquity, but rather that it became such at the end of the development.

My conception shows further that the utmost significance for the recognition and comparison of the motives (corresponding to the psychological types) attaches to the material so brilliantly reconstructed by Stucken and other modern investigators, but not the convincing evidence which some think they find there for the migration theory, as against the theory of elementary thoughts.

With regard to the possibly repellent impression derived from the notion of an unconscious thought activity of the myth forming phantasy, I should like to close with these words of Karl Otfried Muller: "It is possible that the concept of unconsciousness in the formation of myths will appear obscure to many, even mysterious ... but is history not to acknowledge the strange also, when unprejudiced investigation leads to it?"

Section II.

The Goal Of The Work.

In the preceding section the symbolism and the psychology of the progress of the mystic work has been developed more or less, but certainly not to the end. Regeneration is evidently the beginning of a new development, the nature of which we have not yet closely examined. Nothing has yet been said definitely about the later phases of the work and about its goal. I am afraid that this section, although it is devoted chiefly to the goal of the work, cannot elucidate it with anything like the clearness that would be desirable. To be sure the final outcome of the work can be summed up in the three words: Union with G.o.d. Yet we cannot possibly rest satisfied with a statement that is for our psychological needs so vague; we must endeavor to comprehend the intimate nature of the spiritual experiences that we have on the journey into the unsearchable; although I must at the outset point out that at every step by which the symbolism of the mystics leads us towards regeneration, we run the risk of wandering away from psychology, and that in the following we shall all too soon experience these deviations. We shall have to transplant ourselves uncritically at times, into the perceptual world of the hermetics, which is, of course, a mere fiction, for in order to do it rightly we should have to have a mystical development behind us [whatever this may be]; one would have to be himself a "twice born." One thing can be accepted as true, that a series of symbols that occur with striking agreement among all mystics of all times and nations is related to a variety of experiences which evidently are common to all mystics in different degrees of their development, but are foreign to the non-mystics (or more exactly to all men, even mystics, who have not attained the given level).

With this premise I will take up the question of the goal of alchemy (mysticism). In this I follow in general the train of thought of Hitchc.o.c.k, without adhering closely to his exposition. (I cite H. A. = Hitchc.o.c.k, Remarks upon Alchemy.)

The alchemistic process is, as the hermetics themselves say, a cyclical work, and the end resides to a certain degree in the beginning. Here lies one of the greatest mysteries of the whole of alchemy, although the meaning of the language is to be understood more or less as follows. If, for example, it is said that whoever wishes to make gold must have gold, we must suppose that the seeker of truth must _be_ true (H. A., p. 67); that whoever desires to live in harmony with the conscience must be in harmony with it, and that whoever will go the way to G.o.d, must already have G.o.d in himself. Now when the conscience, wherein the sense of right and justice has existence, becomes active under the idea of G.o.d, it is endowed with supernatural force and is then, as I understand it, the alchemists' philosophical mercury and his valued salt of mercury. It is no less his sovereign treacle, etc. (H. A., p. 53). The progress of the work points to some kind of unity as the goal which, however, very few men attain except in words (H. A., p. 157). The hermetic writers set up the claim to a complete agreement in their teachings, but this agreement is restricted to some principles of vital significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to G.o.d; and this I am disposed to call the Way."