Carl Jung : The Alchemical Opus

Extracts from :

Jung Speaking

Eliade's article, "Rencontre avec Jung," was published in Combat: de la Resistance a la Revolution (Paris), Oct. 9, 1952.

"(...)

The great problem in psychology is the integration of opposites. One finds this everywhere and at every level. In Psychology and Alchemy I had occasion to interest myself in the integration of Satan. For, as long as Satan is not integrated, the world is not healed and man is not saved. But Satan represents evil, and how can evil be integrated ? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness. This is done by means of a very complicated symbolic process which is more or less identical with the psychological process of individuation. In alchemy this is called the conjunction of the two principles.

As a matter of fact, alchemy actually takes up and carries on the work of Christianity. In the alchemical view, Christianity has saved man but not nature. The alchemist's dream was to save the world in its totality: the philosophers' stone was conceived as the filius macrocosmi, which saves the world, whereas Christ was the filius microcosmi, the savior of man alone. The ultimate aim of the alchemical opus is the apo\atastasis, cosmic salvation.

For fifteen years I studied alchemy, but I never spoke to anyone about it; I did not wish to influence my patients or my fellow workers by suggestion. But after fifteen years of research and observation, ineluctable conclusions were forced upon me. The alchemical operations were real, only this reality was not physical but psychological.

Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation of the cosmos. What the alchemists called "matter" was in reality the [unconscious] self. The "soul of the world," the anima mundi, which was identified with the spiritus mercurius, was imprisoned in matter. It is for this reason that the alchemists believed in the truth of "matter," because "matter" was actually their own psychic life. But it was a question of freeing this "matter," of saving it — in a word, of finding the philosophers' stone, the corpus glorificationis.

This work is difficult and strewn with obstacles; the alchemical opus is dangerous. Right at the beginning you meet the "dragon," the chthonic spirit, the "devil" or, as the alchemists called it, the "blackness," the nigredo, and this encounter produces suffering. "Matter" suffers right up to the final disappearance of the blackness; in psychological terms, the soul finds itself in the throes of melancholy, locked in a struggle with the "shadow." The mystery of the coniunctio, the central mystery of alchemy, aims precisely at the synthesis of opposites, the assimilation of the blackness, the integration of the devil. For the "awakened" Christian this is a very serious psychic experience, for it is a confrontation with his own "shadow," with the blackness, the nigredo, which remains separate and can never be completely integrated into the human personality.

In interpreting the Christian's confrontation with his shadow in psychological terms, one discovers the hidden fear that the devil may be stronger, that Christ did not completely succeed in conquering him. Otherwise, why did one believe and still believes in the Antichrist ? Why did one wait and continue to wait for the coming of Antichrist ? Because only after the reign of Antichrist and after the second coming of Christ will evil finally be conquered in the world and in the human soul. On the psychological level, all these symbols and beliefs are interdependent: it is always a question of struggling with evil, with Satan, and conquering it, that is to say assimilating it, integrating it into consciousness.

In the language of the alchemists, matter suffers until the nigredo disappears, when the "dawn" {aurora) will be announced by the "peacock's tail" (cauda pavonis) and a new day will break, the leucosis or albedo. But in this state of "whiteness" one does not live in the true sense of the word, it is a sort of abstract, ideal state. In order to make it come alive it must have "blood," it must have what the alchemists call the rubedo, the "redness" of life. Only the total experience of being can transform this ideal state of the albedo into a fully human mode of existence. Blood alone can reanimate a glorious state of consciousness in which the last trace of blackness is dissolved, in which the devil no longer has an autonomous existence but rejoins the profound unity of the psyche. Then the opus magnum is finished: the human soul is completed integrated.

I am and remain a psychologist. I am not interested in anything that transcends the psychological content of human experience. I do not even ask myself whether such transcendence is possible, because in any case the transpsychological is no longer the concern of the psychologist. But on the psychological level I have to do with religious experiences which have a structure and a symbolism that can be interpreted. For me, religious experience is real, is true. I have found that through such religious experiences the soul may be "saved," its integration hastened, and spiritual equilibrium established. For me, as a psychologist, the state of grace exists: it is the perfect serenity of the soul, a creative equilibrium, the source of spiritual energy.

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