Carl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen

Carl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen
Author(s): Vaughan Hart

Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 25 (Spring, 1994), pp. 36-50
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Peabody Museum of
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36 RES 25 SPRING 1994
Figure 3. View showing Gothic character of tower?steeply pitched roofs, shutters, arched
windows, and rough stone wall. Photo: Vaughan Hart.
Carl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen
VAUGHAN HART
In 1950 I made a kind of monument out of stone to "fond of playing with bricks, and built towers which I
express what the Tower means to me. . . . The first thing then rapturously destroyed by an 'earthquake'" (p. 33).
that occurred to me was a Latin verse by the alchemist Later in life Jung recalled,
Arnaldus de Villanova (died 1313). I chiselled this into the
stone.1 These structures had fascinated me for a long time. To my
astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good
deal of emotion. "Aha," I said to myself, "there is still life
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung's
in these things. The small boy is still around" ... as a
autobiography that was published posthumously in grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be
1963, Jung describes a remarkable "dwelling tower" able to bridge the distance from the present back to my
that he constructed with his own hands on the edge of eleventh year.
upper Lake Zurich at Bollingen. Despite the popular p. 197
appreciation of Jung's work, the tower has remained
Jung started his project in 1923 by building a circular
neglected by commentators; in fact, it lay at the very
tower or "maternal hearth" (fig. 1), and added to this
center of Jung's private world as a datum for his own
studies.2 What does this tower represent and how is it over a period of time: a central structure in 1927; an
to be interpreted? annex or "spiritual" tower in 1931; a courtyard and
Jung's tower adheres to no architectural vogue of its loggia facing the lake in 1935; and a central upper
room identified by Jung as his "ego-personality," which
time, and thereby defies the normal categories used by
was undertaken in 1955 after his wife's death and his
architectural historians to assess architecture?a
subsequent increased awareness of "self" (figs. 2a-b).
possible reason for its neglect, despite the fame of its
In this way additions were made not for material need
author. Although there is no evidence that this private
tower had any direct influence on the architecture of but for what might be termed representational purpose,
dictated not by an overall plan but as a way of
Jung's day, its importance and interest lies in its status
representing Jung's own psychological development.
as a built experiment and key element in the
The following is an explanation of how this
development of Jung's theories on archetypes and the
representation of the house as "self" was achieved.
unconscious. The building of the tower is accorded one
Jung commences his description of the tower with
full chapter by Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
the intriguing notion that it represented a chance to
equal to case histories of psychoanalysis and his famous
"put my fantasies and the contents of the unconscious
relationship with Sigmund Freud, but many of the clues
to the meaning of the tower are, in fact, to be found
on a solid footing" and felt that, "I had to achieve a
kind of representation in stone of my innermost
throughout his autobiography.
The physical act of building the tower himself was
thoughts and of the knowledge I had acquired. Or, to
put it another way, I had to make a confession of faith
clearly of importance to Jung, as an attempt to
rediscover his childhood "self." As a child he had been in stone. That was the beginning of the Tower/ the
house which I built for myself at Bollingen" (p. 250). In
this, the tower's function is seen retrospectively, that is,
I should like to thank Dr. Alan Day, University of Bath, for his
to provide the philosopher with a place for meditation.
help in the preparation of this article.
Built on old church land,3 Jung's remote forest tower
1. Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (originally published
as Erinnerungen, Traume, Gedanken), trans. Richard Winston, became the setting for an archetypal way of life?a
Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy series (London: place where he could act out the role of the hermit
Flamingo, 1971), p. 253. All subsequent quotations with page away from what he termed the modern "cult of
references in the text are from this edition.
progress" (p. 272) and the "technological age" (p. 267).
2. For references to Jung's tower, see Aniela Jaffe, ed., C. C.
At school Jung had fantasized about such a life, living
Jung: Word and Image, Bollingen series (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1979), pp. 188-205; Barbara Hannah, Jung His Life "in a hut with a pile of books and a writing table, and
and Work, Community Development Series Press, vol. 6 (London: an open fire. ... As a holy hermit I wouldn't have to
Joseph Burnette, 1977); Clare Cooper, "The House as Symbol of the go to church any more, but would have my own
Self," in Charles Burnette, Jon Lang, Walter Moleski, eds., Designing
for Human Behavior, Architecture and the Behavioral Sciences
(Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 1974), pp. 130-146. 3. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 154.
?*-'.>?i:
'%. * *-,
ai .-*
Figure 1. Original tower built by Carl Jung in 1923. Photo: Courtesy of the Heirs of C. G. Jung.
private chapel instead" (p. 98). At Bollingen a flag was his house at Kusnacht, and if a tradition were to be
raised when visitors were unwelcome and unlike his suggested for Jung's tower then it might be the fantasy
main house at Kusnacht, no telephone or electricity garden dwellings of Renaissance courts or the
connected Jung with the outside world.4 Jung walked, architecture of fairy tales. There is yet another, older
fished, farmed, chopped wood, and observed the tradition in which the tower-house archetype can be
stars?"the great realm of Nature"?as he put it.5 found?that of medieval alchemical mythology. Jung
Indeed, he had used the tower for eight years before would have been perfectly familiar with this tradition,
employing a water diviner and discovering his own preserved as it was in the alchemical texts to which he
spring, the water from which had to be pumped by made frequent reference, providing what he came to
hand.6 On the walls of his retiring room, the addition of see as the very foundation and antecedence of his own
1931, Jung painted murals; these paintings "expressed work: "analytical psychology coincided in a most
all those things which have carried me out of time into curious way with alchemy. The experiences of the
seclusion, out of the present into timelessness. Thus the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences, and their
second tower became for me a place of spiritual world was my world. I had stumbled upon the
concentration" (p. 251). Here he would often spend historical counterpart of my psychology of the
most of the day painting or meditating.7 unconscious" (p. 231). Jung determined that the
In its primitive simplicity Jung's Bollingen tower was alchemists were using symbols, the "language" of
thus free of the normal functional constraints of more which he thought dreams were composed. As the title
standard domestic architecture, such as those found in Memories, Dreams, Reflections suggests, following
Freud's dream interpretation had become central to
Jung's analytical process, a practice that, in itself,
4. See ibid., p. 208. Jung also built this house at Kusnacht, in
followed alchemical tradition.8 Jung presented himself
1908, and it was also by a lake.
5. Quoted in Jaffe, op. cit., p. 144.
6. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 154. 8. See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
7. Ibid., p. 201. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 151-153, pp. 768-769.
Hart: Carl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen 39
Figure 2. Views from the woods and the lake of Jung's tower after his final addition in 1955.
Photo: Vaughan Hart.
as capable of interpreting both past and future events inauguration of sites for buildings.11 Indeed, although
through dreams as clues to the unconscious, with even making no reference to this, Jung repeated other
the First World War being predicted in a dream in his elements of traditional architectural practice; the
autobiography (p. 200). Curiously enough his primitive hut archetype, a recurring reference point in
connection between symbolism in alchemy and dreams post-Renaissance quests for architectural purity,12 can
had itself been suggested in an "architectural" dream be recognized in Jung's original intention to build "a
where, kind of primitive one-storey dwelling. It was to be a
round structure with a hearth in the centre and bunks
The unknown wing of the house was a part of my
personality, an aspect of myself; it represented something along the walls. I more or less had in mind an African
that belonged to me but of which I was not yet conscious. hut where the fire, ringed by a few stones, burns in the
It, and especially the library, referred to alchemy of which middle" (p. 250). This imaginary progression at
I was ignorant, but which I was soon to study. Some fifteen Bollingen from grave to primitive hut to stone tower
years later I had assembled a library very like the one in mirrors an earlier dream of Jung's in which,
the dream.
I was in a house I did not know, which had two storeys. It
p. 228
was "my house." I found myself in the upper storey. . . .
Here Jung makes the same link between "house" and Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There
"self" that he was later to experiment with at Bollingen everything was much older, and I realised that this part of
the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth
through a real building. Dreams evidently came to
century. The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of
foretell and influence Jung's actual decisions, including,
red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark ... I discovered a
as will be seen, the building of the tower.
stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending
As a form of religious philosophy, alchemy was again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room ... I
identified by Jung with the "fundamental strata of looked more closely at the floor. It was on stone slabs, and
European thought" (p. 304), and he notes in a letter of in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the
1945 that "I have put myself to the trouble of reading stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow
nearly the entire classical literature of alchemy."9 He stone steps leading down into the depths. These, too, I
evidently did many of these alchemical studies in the descended, and entered a low cave cut in the rock. Thick
tower itself, preparing his talk of 1941 titled "Paracelsus dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones
as a Spiritual Phenomenon," for example, by and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I
transporting the necessary alchemical texts to discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half
disintegrated. Then I awoke.
Bollingen.10 For Jung, alchemical symbolism mediated
pp. 182-183
between the world of dreams and of consciousness,
and as such the tower can be seen to have existed in Jung interprets the dream thus: "in the cave, I
both worlds for him when understood as an alchemical discovered remains of a primitive culture, that is, the
symbol, or m?ndala. world of the primitive man within myself" (p. 184).
Jung's rapport with nature at Bollingen was With the house once again a metaphor for the self, it is
conceived in alchemical terms: "Here I am, as it were, no doubt this impulse to explore the past inside himself
the 'age-old son of the mother.' That is how alchemy that leads Jung to do wall paintings in the tower. The
puts it, very wisely" (p. 252). The tower was a setting world of Jung's dreams and that created by him at
for actual psychic activity, for, "when we began to Bollingen are interrelated?indeed the whole tower can
build at Bollingen in 1923, my eldest daughter came to only be understood through Jung's description of his
see the spot, and exclaimed, 'What, you're building dreams in Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
here? There are corpses about!' . . . when we were In his dream Jung travels back in time, through a
constructing the annex four years later, we did come series of rooms furnished to characterize their periods.
upon a skeleton. . . . My daughter had sensed the Architecture here is stylized, the ground floor in what
presence of the dead body" (p. 258). This would seem he terms the "medieval style" (p. 185), as it would be
to echo antique magical foundation rituals, in which at Bollingen where the tower is almost a caricature of
the discovery of bones played an important role in the
11. See Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of the Town (London: M.I.T.
Press, 1976).
9. Quoted in Jaffe, op. cit., p. 97. 12. See Joseph Rykwert, On Adam's House in Paradise (London:
10. Ibid., p. 112. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 231. M.I.T. Press, 1972).
Figure 4. Gate entrance to inner court or keep. Photo: Vaughan Hart.
medieval architecture with its romantic Gothic towers, personality, he "felt himself in secret accord with the
steeply pitched roofs, shutters, arched gateways, and Middle Ages" (p. 107). Jung also regarded the medieval
inner court or keep (fig. 3); indeed the visitor knocked period as the time when alchemy was born, particularly
on a heavy wooden door set in a thick stone wall the twelfth century, which
(fig. 4), "which seemed literally to grow out of the
Was the period when alchemy was beginning and also the
earth. The wall, the door and the oddly shaped towers
quest for the Holy Grail. The stories of the Grail had been
rising beyond it all held hints of the medieval."13 Jung's of the greatest importance to me ever since I read them, at
tower resembles the castles illustrated in fairy tales, or the age of fifteen, for the first time. I had an inkling that a
the model castles used in Renaissance masques and great secret still lay hidden behind those stories. Therefore
tournaments.14 Such romantic elements of castle it seemed quite natural to me that the dream should
architecture also were frequently featured in Jung's conjure up the same world of the knights of the Grail and
dreams. In 1912, for example, he dreamed that he "sat, their quest?for that was, in the deepest sense, my own
world.
looking out into the distance, for the loggia was set
high up on the tower of a castle" (p. 195)?perhaps the p. 189
inception of his loggia at Bollingen. In Jung's dream In this way Jung's identification with the alchemical
each architectural style had represented different levels culture of the Middle Ages found physical expression
of the unconscious, or "image of the psyche" (p. 185), through the medieval "style" of the tower: a level of
from the rich salon representing consciousness itself to consciousness above the "primitive psyche of man"
the cave of a primitive ancestor. The medieval period discovered in the dream cellar or represented at
was identified by Jung as the most expressive, as the Bollingen by the unearthed bones. Indeed, Jung states
Bollingen tower would seem to indicate; Jung claimed that his original idea for a primitive hut at Bollingen
that in his twin personality, or his "number two" was "too primitive" (p. 250). Hence architecture here
has the capacity to embody various states of
13. Reported by Vincent Brome, Jung Man and Myth (London:
Macmillan, 1978), p. 13. consciousness for Jung.
14. See for example Inigo Jones's design for Oberon's Palace in Stories of magic and myth, such as those of the
Ben Jonson's masque, Oberon, The Fairy Prince, performed by the Grail, were identified by Jung as the realm of the
Stuart Court in 1611.
archetype, involving the timeless recurrence of specific
Figure 5. Alchemical tower and cave from Nicola d' Antonio Figure 6. The Mountain of the Adepts, a tower within a cave,
degli Agli's manuscript, Nozze (1480). Photo: Courtesy of the from Steffan Michelspacher's Cabala (Augsburg, 1654), as
Biblioteca Apost?lica Vaticana. illustrated by Jung in Psychology and Alchemy (London,
1952). Photo: Courtesy of the British Library.
symbolic roles and situations.15 Jung would seem to in the cave, as in Steffan Michelspacher's Cabala
have thought of the tower form as the archetype of (1654), which Jung himself illustrated in Psychology
house; on advising his friend Marie-Louise von Franz, and Alchemy of 1952 (fig. 6).17 Indeed, Jung's tower
who was building a dwelling for herself, he exclaimed, was built on a kind of cave represented by the grave
"you must not build an ordinary house ... it must be a and also was prefigured in dreams involving caves. As
Tower."16 Indeed the archetypal home of the hermit in vessels of light and dark these represented two
fairy tales and mythology was the cave or tower. archetypal architectural opposites. The reconciliation of
Alchemical manuscripts frequently represented the such opposites was one of Jung's constant themes; as
cave, the primitive dwelling, and the tomb as the part of his discussion on the tower itself he notes that
legendary repository for the secrets of nature, and as "a large part of my life work has revolved around the
such a "foundation" to a tower of knowledge, as in study of the problem of opposites, and especially their
Nicola d' Antonio degli Agli's Nozze of 1480, for alchemical symbolism" (p. 260). In traditional folk art
example (fig. 5). Sometimes the tower itself was buried the hermit was frequently a wise man or magician, as
pictured in a fifteenth-century manuscript version of
15. See Jaffe, op. cit., p. 227. For a detailed discussion of Jung's
theories, see Anthony Storr, Jung (London: Fontana, 1973); Eleanor
Bertine, Jung's Contribution to Our Time (New York: C. G. Jung 17. See Carl Jung, Collected Works, ed. Herbert Read, Michael
Foundation for Analytical Psychology, 1968). Fordham, Gerhard Adler (London: Routledge, Keegan Paul, 1953
16. Quoted in Hannah, op. cit., p. 332. 1979), vol. 12, p. 195.
reinforce this reading of Jung's tower as an attempt to

build an alchemical representation of his inner self. For
Jung, the very act of building in stone had "released a
stream of fantasies," adding that "everything that I have
written this year and last year . . . has grown out of the
stone sculptures I did after my wife's death . . . contact
with stone helped me" (pp. 198-199). This refers to his
"tattooing" of the tower with heraldry and his carving of
a "philosopher's stone," a Mercury face, a gate
inscription, and a snake. Jung noted that "only after we
have learned how to interpret [alchemical texts] can we
recognise what treasures they hide . . . the alchemists
were talking in symbols ... I simply must learn to
decipher all this" (p. 230); much like his own dream
analysis, one must do the same to understand the
architecture at Bollingen.
The epigraph to this article quotes Jung's description
of what he terms a "monument," a stone cube intended
for the fabric of the tower but which had caught his eye
and into which he carved a series of symbols for the
tower's meaning (fig. 8). This has a clear identity with
the "philosopher's stone" of the alchemical quest,
Figure 7. Hermit pictured as a wise man or magician from

Ramon Lull's Llibre qui es de l'orde de Cavalleria {ca. 1275?
1281), fifteenth-century manuscript version. Photo: Courtesy
of the British Library.
Ramon Lull's Llibre qui es de l'orde de Cavalleria (circa

1275-1281), for example (fig. 7)?and Jung also
identified with this role at Bollingen, where he had the
air of a Magus. On encountering Jung cooking in
Oriental robes, a visitor observed that he "looked like a
picture I had once seen of an old alchemist at work
among his retorts," a Prospero awaiting his guest in his
tower setting; indeed he had originally intended to
build his tower on an island.18 Another visitor reported
that at Bollingen "At one side there [was] a platform
like a miniature theatre with a roof supported by two
columns and on it a table set for two, a fireplace and a
sculptured ceiling newly painted in . . . traditional
style. Another door [opened] and there at the water's
edge [sat] a tall old man with snow-white hair."19 By
his own admission, Jung would even seem at one point
in his life to have enjoyed "fame as a wizard" (p. 140).
Beyond this tower-magician archetype there are
carved and painted symbols at Bollingen that clearly Figure 8. Stone cube carved by Jung with occult, or
Mercurian man, sun and moon, and Monas symbol.
18. Reported by Hannah, op. cit., p. 199; see also p. 147. H: 155 cm (including base), W: 103 cm, D: 103 cm.
19. Reported by Brome, op. cit., p. 264. Photo: Vaughan Hart.
Figure 9. Occult, or hermetic, microcosm from Saint

Hildegarde of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, twelfth Figure 10. Alchemical tower from the Mutus Liber by Altus
century manuscript, as illustrated by Jung in Psychology and (La Rochelle, 1677), as illustrated by Jung in Psychology and
Alchemy (London, 1952). Photo: Courtesy of the Biblioteca Alchemy (London, 1952). Photo: Courtesy of the British
Statale di Lucca. Library.
which had occupied Jung's mind for decades.20 The tower as a lighthouse, balanced on the other side by
cube itself was considered the source of all number and the moon. One of the alchemical texts Jung studied, the
form in Platonic cosmology, signifying the earth in the Mutus Liber (La Rochelle, 1677), illustrates these figures
Timaeus. On the front face of the cube Jung carved a as norms of alchemical symbolism.23 The alchemical
large circle and at the center a man, or microcosm. tower (a furnace of the elements), the sun, moon, and
This is not just the standard Vitruvian figure in a circle Mercury are included here (fig. 10). Alongside a further
but an occult version, akin to a twelfth century example "Monas" symbol, Jung had carved the face of Mercury,
illustrated by Jung in Psychology and Alchemy (fig. 9).21 or the "trickster" (fig. 11), in the tower wall itself and
This body is inscribed with the hieroglyphical "Monas," observes, "when the alchemist speaks of Mercurius, on
an occult or "Mercurian" symbol of the sixteenth the face of it he means quicksilver, but inwardly he
century uniting the sun, moon, and the elements and means the world?creating spirit concealed or
which Jung evidently studied closely.22 Further, this imprisoned in matter . . . Mercury is the symbol of the
"earth" stone carries symbols for the heavens, for the unconscious, as well as of a union of the unconscious
man points toward the sun, perhaps indicating the and the conscious."24 As the epigraph noted, Jung's
Latin inscription on the stone cube reinforced this
occult symbolism with alchemical quotations.25 In this
20. See Jaffe, op. cit., p. 7.
21. See op. cit., p. 364, and also the alchemical microcosm on
p. 233. 23. Jung uses illustrations from Mutus Liber (literally Mute Book,
22. For the "Monas," see Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural by Altus [La Rochelle, 1677]), once again for Psychology and
Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, Alchemy, see Jung (note 17), for example, p. 3, p. 261, p. 432.
1988). For a reproduction illustrating Jung's study of this symbol see 24. Quoted in Jaffe, op. cit., p. 103.
Jaffe, op. cit., pp. 100-101. 25. Ibid., p. 201.
medieval legend, for he notes "Do you know what I

wanted to chisel into the back face of the stone? 'Le cri
de Merlin!' For what the stone expressed reminded me
of Merlin's life in the forest, after he had vanished from
the world. ... It might be said that the secret of Merlin
was carried on by alchemy, primarily in the figure of
Mercurius" (p. 255). He even placed the tower itself
directly in a legend of magic within one of his dreams
(p. 257), part of a fantasy landscape with forests like
that at Bollingen representing a "heroic, primeval
landscape" (p. 344).
The ability of the stone tower to uncover and contact
the past is further explored by Jung through heraldry.
Jung describes painting his coat of arms on the ceiling
of one of the rooms of the tower; this heraldry
originally involved the device of a phoenix (the fire bird
of occult symbolism) but had been changed by his
grandfather to a blue cross, blue grapes, and a gold
star, all in a field of gold (fig. 12). Through this
decoration the distinction was blurred between Jung's
heraldic "house" and his real tower "house." Jung saw
coats of arms as an expression of "our true nature"
(p. 277) and proudly states that, "The symbolism of
Figure 11. Mercury face carved by Jung in the tower wall,

again accompanied by the Monas symbol. H: 31 cm,
W: 26.5 cm. Photo: Vaughan Hart.
stone, which Jung said expressed the tower's meaning,

there is clear proof of his intention to build in stone an
alchemical tower as a symbol of his own inner world or
microcosm. As an alchemical self image, or m?ndala,
this again echoed Jung's childhood, when he kept a
"stone which was also myself" (p. 42); it is also a
realization of early childhood dreams of such
alchemical towers recalled in Memories, Dreams,
Reflections:
Inside the tower, extending from the battlements to the

vaulted cellar, was a copper column or heavy wire cable
as thick as a man's arm. . . . From the air they drew a
certain inconceivable something which was conducted
down the copper column into the cellar. Here I had an
equally inconceivable apparatus, a kind of laboratory in
which I made gold out of the mysterious substance which
the copper roots drew from the air. This was really
arcanum.
p. 707
This is reminiscent of the Renaissance alchemical tower
illustrations, the tower of the alchemical laboratory. In Figure 12. Jung's bookplate illustrating his coat of arms.
Jung's mind his tower becomes intertwined with Photo: Courtesy of the Heirs of C. G. Jung.
these arms is Masonic, or Rosicrucian. Just as cross and Dorneus and Michael Maier (p. 260). Like a piece of
rose represent the Rosicrucian problem of opposites heraldry, the tower represented a private mythology or
... so the cross and grapes are symbols of the "personal myth" for Jung (p. 224), counter to his
heavenly and chthonic spirit. The uniting symbol is the contemporaries: "if they had lived in a period and in a
gold star, the aurum philosophorum" (p. 259). Jung's milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the
Kusnacht house also had coats of arms in the study world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly
windows as a further expression of self, no doubt experienced and not merely seen from outside, they
again acting as a kind of m?ndala. As a form of would have been spared this division within
hieroglyphics, medieval arms had been thought of as a themselves" (p. 166).
magic sign and Jung himself discusses heraldry as part In this spirit Jung's attempt at a timeless way of
of his alchemical studies.26 More striking, however, is building involved an explicit rejection of technology:
his reference here to the Rosicrucians, a seventeenth
In the Tower at Bollingen it is as if one lived in many
century group of alchemical initiates.27 Jung himself centuries simultaneously. The place will outlive me, and in
notes that "the Rosicrucians derived from Hermetic or
its location and style it points backwards to things of long
alchemical philosophy" (p. 259). Rosicrucianism ago. ... If a man of the sixteenth century were to move
centered around the legendary discovery in a cave into the house, only the kerosene lamp and the matches
of a prophet of occult knowledge named Christian would be new to him. . . . There is nothing to disturb the
Rosencrantz, who became the focus of a secret dead, neither electric light nor telephone.
brotherhood, so secret that many doubted its existence p. 264
at all.28 But the important point here is that Jung clearly Jung carved the inscription "Philemonis Sacrum?Fausti
identifies himself with this mythology, and links his Poenitentia" ("Philemon's shrine?Faust's Penitence")
tower to alchemical lore. Indeed, the Rosicrucians above the gate of the first tower entrance, and when
themselves were sometimes associated with towers?
this was walled up he again carved the motto over the
towers that were, not surprisingly, invisible (fig. 13). later entrance. This obviously refers to Faust, in which
Jung's masonry work and carving at Bollingen in
itself reflected his ancestors' interests. His grandfather
had been an ardent Freemason and the grand master of
the Swiss lodge (p. 259); indeed the occult tradition
was an active component in Freemasonry lore.29 Hence
one might identify in Jung's act of working with stone
an attempt to use architecture to go beyond his
childhood and communicate with his ancestors, thereby
uncovering what he termed "those historical layers in
ourselves which we just have overcome and left
behind, or which we think we have overcome"
(p. 271), and placing himself above the "primitive," as
a reincarnate alchemist. Indeed, in the course of his
tower description it would seem of importance that an
ancestor of his (also named Dr. Carl Jung) had been
familiar with the writings of the two alchemists Geradus
26. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, op. cit., p. 417, p. 440. See
Vaughan Hart, "'A Peece Rather of Good Heraldry, Than of
Architecture': Heraldry and the Orders of Architecture as joint
Emblems of Chivalry," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 23 (Spring
1993): 52-66.
27. See Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London,
1972).
28. See Brian Vickers, "Frances Yates and the Writing of History," Figure 13. The invisible College of the Rose Cross Fraternity,
Journal of Modern History 51 (1979): 287-316. from Theophilus Schweighardt, Speculum Sophicum Rhodo
29. See David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, Scotland's Stauroticum (printer unknown, 1618). Photo: Courtesy of the
Century, 1590-1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). British Library.
Hart: r~~arl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen 47
the pious old couple Philemon and Baucis are

murdered because their plot of land is to be absorbed
Iph
in Faust's ambitious project for technological progress.
The name of Philemon, however, can be found again
in Jung's dreams. Here, also, there was to be an
alchemical association: "Psychologically, Philemon
represented superior insight: He was a mysterious figure
to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he
were a living personality. I went walking up and down
the garden with him, and to me he was what the
Indians call a guru. ... In time I was able to integrate
[him] through the study of alchemy" (p. 208; p. 210).
As Jung's guru, Philemon acted as a kind of guide
through the "labyrinth of alchemical thought processes"
(p. 231), standing on the "gateway" to knowledge as he
"stood" on the real gateway at Bollingen, a tower of
knowledge with its alchemical symbols. Indeed, the
journey into the psyche was perceived metaphorically
by Jung as a series of such gateways, with dream
interpretation as their key: "Now you possess a key to |tlti.m?U* V?V** aW (Stnnkk* ?' ?u? ??r~ f-^tUrnir fy?ut~'WCt v'f?t**^
mythology and are free to unlock all the gates of the
unconscious psyche" (p. 194). Jung drew Philemon
standing on a tower as a m?ndala in his unpublished ItrntîU/fcâUi ?'immw (L.M. fervor o-VU?? v^rtm ûjy v*?k rt?e? 0017
Red Book of circa 1919 (fig. 14), whilst the name Â? (? Ûufe" m^Hrt? ju ??t nuxna ??U Aip (u y&\i?u**C? twj?A*Vv rt \?>Ar /
"Philemon R. C." had been a feature of the Renaissance

Rosicrucian texts.30 With Jung's Rosicrucian heraldry in
mind Philemon might be identified as Jung himself, his
Figure 14. Philemon standing on a tower, m?ndala design
second personality lived through fantasies and brought
from Jung's unpublished Red Book (ca. 1919). Photo:
to life at Bollingen.31
Courtesy of the Heirs of C. G. Jung.
Jung carved a further stone, this time with a serpent
(another popular symbol in alchemy), in forming
since Jung foresaw the establishment of the age of
Mercury's caduceus (fig. 15).32 Jung himself notes in
Aquarius and of natural rejuvenation.33
Memories, Dreams, Reflections: "in myths the snake is
The revelation of architectural visions through
a frequent counterpart of the hero. There are numerous
dreams had been a common subject of Renaissance art,
accounts of their affinity. For example, the hero has
as Jung himself illustrates in his work.34 The "palace of
eyes like a snake, or after his death he is changed into
dreams" was a feature of court festivals, such as the
a snake and revered as such, or the snake is his mother
neoplatonic masque, popular amongst European
etc." (p. 206). As Jung points out, the hero archetype is
monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in
frequently identified with the "wise old prophet," as which architectural visions of castles and towers formed
indeed he saw himself. This stone snake is, no doubt, a
part of a moving talisman.35 As has been seen, Jung's
further signification by Jung of the tower as self. Jung dreams often involved fantastic architectural visions:
continued to carve until his death. As late as 1958 he
carved on the outer west wall the figure of a woman A strange sight presented itself: a large hall which was the
extending her hands toward the udder of a mare exact replica of the divan-i-kaas (council hall) of Sultan
(fig. 16), over which he inscribed: "Pegasus, living Akbar at Fatehpur Sikri. It was a high, circular room with a
spring, the water poured out by the water carrier
(Aquarius)." This had clear astrological significance, 33. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 341.
34. See Man and His Symbols, (London: Pan, 1973), edited by
Jung before his death in 1961; p. 324 includes a seventeenth-century
30. See Yates, op. cit., p. 47. illustration of the Palace of Dreams.
31. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 154. 35. Inigo Jones's architectural designs for William Devenant's
32. See Jaffe, op. cit., pp. 104-105. Luminalia (1638), performed for Charles I, is an example of this.
"I knew that in finding the m?ndala as an expression of

the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate"
(p. 221); it was only after the additions to the original
tower of 1923 that Jung could see "how all the parts
fitted together and that a meaningful form had resulted:
a symbol of psychic wholeness" (p. 252). The
chronological sequence of additions to the Bollingen
tower in itself clearly appealed to Jung, who observed
that "a quaternity had arisen, four different parts of the
building, and, moreover, in the course of twelve years"
(p. 251); m?ndala design also involved the
"symmetrical arrangements of the number four and its
multiples" (p. 415). The first tower was already a
perfect, simple m?ndala in its circularity.36 Indeed, Jung
defines a m?ndala as a "magic circle, symbol of the
centre goal, or of the self as psychic totality" (p. 415),
while in The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious (1934-1955), the "formal elements of
m?ndala symbolism" were the "castle, city and
courtyard (t?menos) motifs, quadratic or circular."37
Jung clearly identified with the circular form, for while
he was stationed at Chateau-d'Oex, Switzerland, in
1918, he "sketched every morning in a notebook a
small circular drawing, a m?ndala, which seemed to
correspond to my inner situation at the time."38 Indeed,
he was to note that "whenever we wish to express
wholeness, we employ just such figures" (p. 356). The
circle and the "philosopher's stone" were linked in
Jung's mind, as, indeed, the front face of the cubic
stone shows.39 In m?ndala design the center forms the
most important point, and in the first round house at
Bollingen this point was identified with the hearth
(p. 222). Hence, in line with Jung's heraldry and cube
stone, the whole tower might be seen as a built
m?ndala, akin to those he designed for the Red Book, a
form of talismatic pattern of his unconscious?indeed,
his references to heaven as the "other Bollingen" speak
of the power of his tower to him.40 As a m?ndala,
Figure 15. Serpent stone carved by Jung. H: 57 cm, Jung's Bollingen tower is an attempt to build a "house
W: 28 cm, D: 30 cm. Photo: Vaughan Hart. of dreams" in which alchemical symbols have been
seen to represent clues to its meaning, following his
own analysis of such symbols in actual dreams
gallery running along the wall, from which four bridges led recorded alongside the tower in Memories, Dreams,
to a basin-shaped centre. The basin rested upon a huge Reflections. Indeed, Jung himself concludes: "I built it
column and formed the sultan's round seat. . . . The whole
in a kind of dream" (pp. 252-254).
was a gigantic m?ndala.
(p. 245) 36. See Hannah, op. cit., p. 153.
37. Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Such dreams speak of the ability of architecture to be a
(1934-1955), in Collected Works, op. cit., vol. 9 i, p. 361.
m?ndala for Jung, following the stage scenery within 38. Quoted in Jaffe, op. cit., p. 78.
masque, and as such a clue to how one should 39. Ibid., p. 106.
understand his "real" tower. On m?ndalas Jung noted: 40. Quoted in Hannah, op. cit., p. 344.
*:^.v
*V?>
&*M|F
.#iPW
'^w***;
Figure 16. Woman extending her hands toward the udder of a mare, carved by Jung in the tower wall. H: 24.5 cm, W: 67 cm.
Photo: Vaughan Hart.
The Bollingen tower stands as a physical clue to experiment. As an alchemical symbol it came to bridge
Jung's own unconscious, to his early fantasies of a the gap between the past and the present for Jung, and
hermit life, and to his obvious romance with the between his inner self and the world around him;
medieval legends of Merlin and the Grail as a natural indeed an archetypal setting in alchemical mythology
ancestor. This was a rural fantasy because, unlike the for the forging of such links between microcosm and
medieval hermit, Jung had another world, a family and macrocosm had been the tower. Like the alchemical
a medical practice that served to define Bollingen as a symbols that Jung saw as having unlocked the
place of meditation. If the forest and lake at Bollingen unconscious, it enjoyed an equal existence in both
had charmed Jung, then the tower was his attempt to dream and reality. In this sense the Bollingen retreat lies
charm nature in return. The tower became an object or at the heart of Jung's work, as his autobiography would
talisman kept and lived in for its magical properties; it seem to suggest since he dedicates a complete chapter
was Jung's attempt to build the archetypal dwelling in to it.
order to bind man to nature. As an identification of self, Jung's tower found a near
Indeed, in the Bollingen tower Jung's experiment contemporary parallel in the Villa Malaparte on Capri,
with the very role of architecture itself is preserved: the also built as a retreat by a writer, the Italian surrealist
possibility of building the mind's comprehension of Curzio Malaparte.41 As an intentional model of a theory
patterns in nature as the setting for the enactment of
archetypal roles, informed by myth as a record of 41. Built between 1938 and 1942. See Marida Talamona, "Villa
recurring "situations." The whole style, development, Malaparte," AA Files: Annals of the Architectural Association School
form, and iconography of the tower are part of this of Architecture 18 (Autumn 1989): 3-14.
of nature it reflected Einstein's tower at Potsdam, which

was completed at about the time of Jung's first tower,
albeit to express a scientific universe.42 The notion that
architecture was akin to a m?ndala in its embodiment
of natural thought patterns, that it necessarily houses
certain ritualistic and archetypal roles, and that its
inception is more like a dream than a rational
process?all explicit in this experiment into the house
archetype as a metaphor of self?was in direct
opposition to the mechanical nature of much of the
architecture of this time. Contemporary architecture
sought, through the use of pure geometric forms and
new mechanical servicing, to express man's autonomy
from nature, and rigidly defined the arts of architecture,
sculpture, and painting that were united at Bollingen.
Indeed the African hut and primitive cultures were to
have a wide influence on architectural theorists mainly
after Jung's death. As an alchemical tower Jung's retreat
probably found its closest parallel three centuries
earlier, in the type of observation tower built in 1577
by Tycho de Brahe on the Danish island of Hveen?a
product of the alchemical side of the Renaissance
eclipsed by the scientific view of nature that Carl Jung
so clearly sought to question through the building of a
tower at Bollingen.43
42. Built between 1919 and 1924. See William Chaitkin, "Einstein
and Architecture," in Maurice Goldsmith, Alan Mackay, James
Woudhuysen, eds., Einstein, the First Hundred Years (Oxford, 1980),
pp. 132-144; Joseph Rykwert, "Organic and Mechanical," RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics 22 (Autumn 1992): 11-18.
43. See Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (London: Hutchison,
1959), pp. 286-304.

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Carl Jung's Alchemical Tower at Bollingen

Author(s): Vaughan Hart

Figure 4. Gate entrance to inner court or keep. Photo: Vaughan Hart.

reinforce this reading of Jung's tower as an attempt to

Figure 7. Hermit pictured as a wise man or magician from

Ramon Lull's Llibre qui es de l'orde de Cavalleria (circa

Figure 9. Occult, or hermetic, microcosm from Saint

medieval legend, for he notes "Do you know what I

Figure 11. Mercury face carved by Jung in the tower wall,

stone, which Jung said expressed the tower's meaning,

Inside the tower, extending from the battlements to the

the pious old couple Philemon and Baucis are

"Philemon R. C." had been a feature of the Renaissance

"I knew that in finding the m?ndala as an expression of

of nature it reflected Einstein's tower at Potsdam, which

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