Jung, Alchemy and

History
A Critical Exposition of Jung’s
Theory of Alchemy
by Jon Marshall
Hermetic Research Series Number 12

Jung, Alchemy and History

A Critical Exposition of Jung’s
Theory of Alchemy
By Jon Marshall

It is well known that Jung’s encounter with alchemy was important

for the development of his psychology, and that his writings on the
subject have a reputation for difficulty.

Jon Marshall here gives a brief history of alchemy, a short account

of Jung’s position arranged by subject, a small amount on James
Hillman’s use of alchemy, and some brief criticism. The aim is to
provide people with enough background for them to read Jung’s
writings on alchemy themselves. The overall theme is that Jung’s
writings, while interesting, important and influential, do not
exhaust the complexities of alchemy.

Jon Marshall indicates that Jung gets much from the alchemists,
that they deepen tendencies within his own works, but it is
extremely doubtful that he clears up the mysteries of the texts
themselves. It might be possible to suggest that if the alchemist
projected the secrets of their psyche onto the Work, Jung projected
the secrets of his Analytic Psychology onto Alchemy.

Adam McLean
15 Keir Street
Glasgow G41 2NP
UK
www.alchemywebsite.com/bookshop
Jung, Alchemy and History

A Critical Exposition of Jung’s

Theory of Alchemy

by Jon Marshall

Hermetic Research Series No. 12.

Glasgow 2002
Hermetic Research Series
15 Keir Street
Glasgow G41 2NP
U.K.

Number Twelve - Jung, Alchemy and History

© Jon Marshall 2002

Printed and bound by Adam McLean

 Jung, Alchemy and History:
A Critical Exposition of Jung’s Theory of
Alchemy
It is well known that Jung’s encounter with alchemy was important
for the development of his psychology, and that his writings on the
subject have a reputation for difficulty. This difficulty largely arises as
the later writings, in particular, were written without much thought for
the audience who might read them (Edinger 1996: 11), and because
Jung’s prodigious scholarship encouraged him to continue to produce
more and more elaborations and examples, until the reader, and
sometimes apparently the writer, lose track of what it was that was being
elucidated. In some ways the books exemplify his technique of dream
amplification, far more than they read like normal psychological texts.
In this discussion, I give a brief history of alchemy, a brief account
of Jung’s position arranged by subject, a small amount on James
Hillman’s use of alchemy, and some brief criticism. The aim is to
provide people with enough background for them to read Jung’s
writings on alchemy themselves. The overall theme is that Jung’s
writings, while interesting, important and influential, do not exhaust the
complexities of alchemy.
As Jung’s writings on alchemy fill three volumes of the collected
works, a fair proportion of a fourth, with a fifth volume having a
connected study, and a seminar series as yet unavailable to the general
public, I am necessarily giving an incomplete summary.
Since Jung’s death, enough has been published on the history of
alchemy to have doubled the size of his library. When Jung wrote we
1
knew almost nothing about Chinese alchemy particularly of the internal
variety. Now many of the internal processes are relatively clear and
public, making Jung’s interpretations of the Secret of the Golden Flower
considerably more dubious than they once appeared. We still know
relatively little about Indian and Islamic alchemy, though perhaps not as
little as we once did. But there are still huge numbers of areas in which
more work needs to be done.

Problems with history of alchemy.

There are three main problems facing anyone who engages with the
history of Alchemy.
1) Alchemists often wrote anonymously, or pseudonymously, so it is
often hard to date texts or to guess their provenance.
2) It is not clear what many alchemists were writing about. As the
alchemist Geber (who was probably a 13th Century Italian pretending to
be a 8th Century Arabian who may also not have existed but been a
pseudonym for a group of writers) wrote: “Whenever I have seemed to
speak most clearly and openly about our science, I have in reality
expressed myself most obscurely and have hidden the object of my
discourse”. Often alchemical texts make sense up to a point and then
seem to depart into luxuriant imagery.
3) With all occult sciences, the ‘real history’ is obscured by invented
traditions, or by intuitions repeated as fact. While these tales may carry
some kind of allegorical spiritual truth or some psychological interest,
they do not correspond to events that can be discovered in a normal way.
It is always vital to check and recheck your sources.

There are also two common errors about Alchemy:

1) Alchemists were persecuted by the Church. There is little evidence

for this, despite the fact that many alchemists imply heretical theologies.
The Church did issue one bull against forging coins through alchemy,
and frequently monks were instructed to get on with their monkish
business rather than pursuing alchemy, but I know of no case in which
anyone prior to the 17th century was in trouble with the church solely for
the practice of alchemy. Alchemists were far more likely to have
problems with secular authorities who might go so far as to kidnap
people and set them to work on improving the treasury. In Britain,
alchemy was perfectly legal with a license from the King. Whatever
2
else, alchemical secrecy and obscurity did not arise through repression.
Even if this did so eventuate in the West, this does not explain the
similar obscurity of Eastern writings.
2) People will frequently inform you that real alchemists were only
teaching the perfection of the Soul, or the making of ‘spiritual gold’.
This is likewise not the case. Any study of the lives of the alchemists,
including those alchemists who were known as adepts, shows they were
almost always interested in laboratory work, whether on metals or
medicines. They were also frequently involved in technological
innovation and discovery. This kind of ‘spiritual’ interpretation must be
distinguished from the interpretation of Jung, as he assumed that most of
the early alchemists did work with substances - although he was not
much interested in this aspect of the work. The spiritual alchemy
argument often relies on the assumption that a distinction between soul
and matter is obvious and universal. Likewise there is a tendency for
followers of this position to argue that as alchemists frequently deny
they are engaged in a search for riches, alchemy must be about the
search for spiritual perfection. It is conceivable that others might argue
that because alchemy often concerned itself with what we might call
practical things, it had no truck with what we might call esoteric things.
Either position is mistaken, and it could be more accurately suggested
that this categorical distinction was not one followed throughout most of
the history of alchemy, even though there may have been alchemists
more interested in transmutation of the soul than in metals and vice
versa.

History of Alchemy
As far as we know, and it is fairly unclear, Western alchemy began
in Alexandria some time in about the 2nd or 3rd Century AD in a
collision between both Greek philosophy and mystery religions, with
Egyptian metal work and possibly Egyptian philosophy. These
illustrations, although they come from Byzantine manuscripts of the
Greek texts, clearly show distillation equipment which appears to be non
allegorical and thus implies some kind of familiarity with chemical
process.
The recipes which survive from Egypt, in the so called Leyden and
Stockholm papyri dated to about the end of the third century AD (far
earlier than our surviving Greek alchemical manuscripts) (Caley 1926,
1927), concern such matters as the making of gold alloys, changing the
3
Alchemical apparatus from the Greek manuscript, MS Marcianus graecus 299

4
Alchemical apparatus and drawings from the MS Marcianus graecus 299

5
appearance of metals, manufacture of artificial gems and so on. It is
ambiguous from the texts, whether the authors considered these
processes transmutation or imitation, or a mixture of both. The Classical
world tended to enforce a distinction between artisans and leisured
philosophers, so there was plenty of room for the philosophic
misunderstanding of practical techniques, and for the comparison of
chemistry to the imagined functions of the soul. Sometimes, however,
sections of the texts can seem completely ‘spiritual’ in their orientation
as when Olympiodorus quotes Zosimos as writing:

If thou wilt calmly humble thyself in relation to thy body, thou

wilt calm thyself also in relation to the passions, and by acting
thus, thou wilt summon the divine to thyself and in truth the
divine, which is everywhere will come to thee. But when thou
knowest thyself, thou knowest also the God who is truly one (q
CW 13: 285).

Alexandrian alchemy may also have been influenced by the ritual

techniques which accumulated around metal work in the early Middle
East (Eliade 1962), but there is no clear evidence for this, and as ritual
tends to accumulate around everything that humans do (particularly
when it involves uncertainty), there is no necessary connection. A final
local influence might be found in the relation of Alchemy, often known
as the ‘Hermetic Art’ or ‘Hermetic Philosophy’, to the mystical texts,
probably written in Alexandria after the second century AD which
pretended to give the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians, and which are
known as the Hermetica. Some of the texts under this name give
‘practical’ magical and astrological formulae, and it is conceivable there
may have been alchemical texts from this period. Despite Arabic texts
quoting alchemical texts attributed to Hermes (cf. Stapleton et al 1949),
there is no evidence of an earlier connection or a related origin. In all,
there has not been enough study of the practical Hermetica, to be
absolutely clear on this point 1.

1. Jung suggests that many early Latin alchemical texts derive from the
Harranite school, who he thinks may also be the source of the Hermetica (CW
13: 206). The Harranites appear to be a Neoplatonic group, who flourished in
the 11th Century, and who were reputed to consult an oracle of a talking head,
which they had manufactured (CW 9ii: 126, CW 11: 239-42).

6
 Jung writes that “alchemy, as the earliest Greek and Chinese texts
show, originally formed part of the Gnostic philosophical speculations,
which also included a detailed knowledge of the techniques of the
goldsmith and ironsmith, the faker of precious stones, the druggist and
apothecary. In East and West alike alchemy contains as its core the
Gnostic doctrine of the Anthropos, and by its very nature has the
character of a peculiar doctrine of redemptions” (CW 13: 204-5).
There is the further possibility that Western alchemy was influenced
by Chinese alchemy, but that is also not clear. Certainly the trade routes
existed, but Chinese alchemy seems more preoccupied with life
extension than Western alchemy of this time (Needham).
Before progressing it is necessary to briefly consider the problems
of the identification of substances, and their boundaries. How would you
define gold, or copper or tin or iron? None of these substances are just
‘found’, they all must undergo some kind of extraction process from
their natural state as ores to become the substances we know. The way
people generally proceeded to make identification was by lists of
adjectives. For example gold was something with a yellow tinge which
was malleable and heavy (Crossland 1978: 55-). Colour was frequently
considered to be a vital property of a substance, so processes which
changed the colour were held to change the substance. Many substances
also had symbolic or religious resonances - although it is probable that
the symbolic properties of substances could never entirely be divorced
from the properties of substances. Therefore, what we today might
consider entirely different substances, or mixtures of substances, could
be considered the same substance, and on occasions what we would call
the same substance could be given different names. Finding better and
repeatable tests for substances required lengthy experimentation,
agreement on what were good examples of relatively pure forms of
those substances, and agreement on what were relevant properties or
associations. It is also not immediately obvious that substances do not
frequently change into other different kinds of substance - the modern
distinction between elements, compounds and mixtures was not clear for
many years. Nature seems full of transformations - therefore the idea
that the cosmos is full of patterns of transmutation is not particularly
strange. Furthermore these transformations could be explained by Greek
philosophy.
The theories of Aristotle were to have most influence until the late
medieval period. These distinguished between Matter and Form. Matter
was the underlying substratum of a thing, which was given its properties
7
by the Form it possessed. Thus all substances had the same Matter but
different Forms, and could be changed into one another if it was possible
to change the Forms. All that had to be done was to strip away form,
producing a chaos of original matter (the prima materia), and then to
reinstate a new Form.
The most important Forms were the Four Elements: Earth, Air, Fire
and Water

O Fire

Hot Dry

M Air L Earth

Moist Cold

N Water

Heat O D Sulphur
Moisture N A Mercury.

Aristotle also proposed that the heavens, being perfect and

unchanging were composed of a fifth element, which did not enter into
earthly substance. These elements should be thought of as qualities
rather than substances (Matter is the substance), Earth was stability and
firmness, Water the property of fluids and so on. These elements were
themselves composed of two oppositions: Hot and Cold, and Dry and
Moist. Thus Fire was Hot and Dry, Water was Cold and Moist etc. This
allowed general transmutation. If the Cold was expelled from Water by
the application of heat it became Hot and Moist Air.
In the Metereologica, Aristotle argued that there were two
exhalations produced within the Earth. One was Smoky and hot, and the
other was Vaporous or moist, and the two congealed in various
combinations to produce the stones and metals. Again this suggests that
by changing the proportion of the exhalations any metal could be
8
changed into any other metal. At some time, and it is not clear when
(perhaps in the Islamic World), but at least before the late medieval
period in the West, the two exhalations where identified with Sulphur
and Mercury, though again it was often stated that these substances
where not ordinary Sulphur and Mercury, but resembled them: they
were conceptual or ‘Philosophic’ Sulphur and Mercury.
In general Western alchemy is associated with the quest for an
elixir, or a Philosophers’ Stone (Lapis philosophorum) (often described
as a crystalline red powder) which will transmute or perfect all, or some,
substances human and non-human.
Again it is unclear precisely when it happened, but the few known
metals became associated with the planets. This may go back to the
Persian Mysteries as Origen (c.185-254) quotes Celsus (c. 180) as
claiming that the Persians claimed there was a ladder going to heaven
with seven steps; the first step was lead and was assigned to Saturn, the
next tin and Venus, the next copper and Jupiter, then iron and Mercury,
then “a mixture of metals” and Mars, then silver and the Moon and
finally Gold and the Sun (Origen 1976: 583). By the late Renaissance
the ‘standard’ usage was Mercury associated with the planet Mercury,
Copper with Venus, Iron with Mars, Tin with Jupiter, Lead with Saturn,
Silver with the Moon and Gold with the Sun.

Q Sol Gold
R Luna Silver
S Mercury Mercury
T Venus Copper
U Mars Iron
V Jupiter Tin
W Saturn Lead

It is possible that this association of planets and metals, means that

the substances written of by early alchemists should be conceived more
as energies and potentials 2 than as substances in the way we use the

2. In this kind of context, Jung quotes the late 16th Century alchemist, Gerard
Dorn as writing “Luna consists of the six spiritual metals and their powers…
From the planet Mercury, from Aquarius and Gemini, or from Aquarius and

9
term, or at the least there was the possibility of metaphoric expansion.
This association of metals with planets, could lead to exploration of
complex interior astronomies, and correspondences between the small
world of the human (the microcosm) and the great world of the cosmos
(the macrocosm) - which should not be confused with a distinction
between inner and outer as they contain each other. The distinction
between the Human and the Natural was not quite as firm as it was to
become.
Alchemy has usually been said to have been lost to the Western
world (though perhaps it never technically entered the Western world
from Alexandria) until the 12th Century when translation academies
were set up in Spain to translate Arabic texts into Latin 3. These
translations were difficult as Latin was not replete with the required
technical terms, and translators sometimes transliterated, sometimes
guessed and sometimes incorporated their own explanations into the
texts. The texts were then dictated to even more ignorant copyists.
Confusion was bound to arise, and some of the problems in Western
theory may arise because of this.
Perhaps the earliest significant Western contribution to Alchemy
was the discovery of the distillation of wine and the manufacture of
spirits. These spirits, as the word suggests, were identified with the
essence, or spirit, of the substance. The supposed Testament of
Raymond Lull proposed that spirit congealed into matter (that there was
no hard and fast division between spirit and matter), and that the spirits
of wine were not only an example of the substance of the heavens (the
fifth element or quintessence), but helped extract this spirit with its
heavenly potencies from other substances.
Although some alchemists argued that metals were alive and grew in
the earth very slowly and that as they matured they changed into other
metals - eventually reaching gold (as gold has the perfect Form),
Western alchemy also tended, like the rest of medieval philosophy, to
grade substances, so metals where arranged into grades of perfection and

Pisces, Luna has her liquidity and her white brightness” and so on (CW 14:
176).
3. It is possible that this supposed loss is primarily a loss of records, or of
alchemy being a craft which did not write down its secrets, but there is little
evidence for this - I only know of one 9th Century Italian text, the Mappae
Clavicula which speaks of increasing gold (Singer 1948: 45).

10
nobility (though this could clearly correspond to maturity). As an author
pretending to be the British Franciscan Roger Bacon wrote “Alchemy...
is the science which teaches how to make and to generate a certain
medicine, which is called elixir, which when it is projected onto metal or
imperfect substances, perfects them completely at the moment of
projection” (Davis 1931: 1945-6). Alchemy was thus a medicine for the
world. In a work which actually was written by him, Bacon also draws
an implicit distinction between speculative and practical alchemy. It
appears that speculative alchemy used the theory of alchemy to
demonstrate the logical truth of alchemy (scientia) and to apply it to
questions of the role of and function of the divine, while practical
alchemy investigates, through action, the workings of the world and
hence allows one to speculate upon the mind, or intentions of God.
We may also note in writin gs of this period, frequent use of what we
might call over concrete analogies. Thus John Dastin argues that gold is
like the sun, and therefore as the sun behaves in one way gold will
behave similarly. Again he argues that because the prima material
behaves like Mercury it is Philosophic Mercury, and given form by
Sulphur (see Josten 1949).
Alchemists in this period tended to work alone. They may
occasionally have been given some words of instruction, but on the
whole there is no good evidence of any organisation of, or long lasting
schools of, alchemists.
This was to change after the work of Paracelsus, who, in some ways,
Jung considered the founder of depth psychology. Paracelsus was an
alchemical medical reformer of the time
of Luther. Luther burnt the Papal Bull
in 1520 and Paracelsus burnt the Canon
of Medicine in 1526. Paracelsus
attacked the isolation of physicians
from the sick, and argued that they must
not only know the theory of medicine
but observe the course of sickness
directly and know how to make
medicines and perform surgery. At that
time medicines were made by
apothecaries who were supposed to be
servants to physicians and not to
prescribe themselves. Likewise physicians were distinct from surgeons
who were supposed to operate, or bleed, according to their instructions.
11
Paracelsus also denied the ancient theory that disease came from
imbalance of the humours, and argued that disease came from outside.
He also prescribed alchemically prepared metallic medicines as well as
alchemically prepared herbal medicines4. Both the human and the
universe functioned alchemically. He wrote that “Anyone who would
become a physician must lean the book of Alchemy thoroughly by
heart” (Paracelsus 1894: 165). Alchemy “separates what is impure and
draws out what is pure”, it is “such an art... as separates the useless from
the useful and reduces it to its ultimate matter or nature” (ibid: 167).
This attack on physicians gave apothecaries, surgeons and other
practitioners a language and a medical repertory with which to define
their independence from the physicians, and to legitimate their own
practices without the same costly and lengthy training. It started a
struggle which changed medicine for ever. Together with the invention
of printing, this movement drove the distribution of texts and the
exchange of recipes. We find in the 17th century that alchemists were to
become more organised and able to exchange relatively uncoded
formulations. Jung recognises that many alchemist were loners (CW 12:
314), but does not seem to realise that this pattern changed over time,
and it is probably connected to changes in alchemy.
Paracelsus held that the physician themselves could enter into the
pattern of the disease by inspiration, and control it through the
imagination which was a product of the astral spirit distributed through
nature and which generated things (Pagel 1982a: 109-12, 120-3). To
Paracelsus knowledge arose out of a kind of union between the astral
spirits present in humans and in Nature. Scientia was the knowledge
inside the natural object which allowed it to function. A pear tree had
the scientia to produce pears, for example, and it was this that Paracelsus
wanted to uncover and internalise to gain the true understanding of the
nature of the object’s essence. Such “overhearing” was not a matter of
sensual perception but of deeper union, an overcoming of apparent
boundaries between experimenter and object (Pagel 1982a: 50-1, 59-61,
Hannaway 1975: 25-6, 31). The language necessary to convey this

4. You may often hear new age therapists talking about alchemy as restoring
internal balance and as using natural medicines, this is quite inaccurate - if we
are going to do comparisons we could much more readily claim that alchemy
overthrew traditional western medicines of harmony and lead to modern
synthetic medicines.

12
approach meant Paracelsus was obscure. He used a huge variety of
neologisms such as astrum, arcanum, archeus, illiaster and zinkum, few
of which he attempted to define except through his usage. In any case
the main guide for any of his followers was not to be his writings but
their experience.
In alchemical theory Paracelsus replaced the four elements of
Aristotle with the Three Principles of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury.

The Three Principles

Heat
Flame
D SULPHUR Structure
Substance
Oil

Solidity
G SALT Colour
Coagulation
Balsam

Vapour
Smoke
A MERCURY Activity
Virtue
Arcana

These principles, like the Elements, were not substances. Sulphur

was the cause of combustibility, structure and substance. Salt gave
solidity and colour. Vapour, and fluidity came from Mercury. In burning
a twig, the flame was the Sulphur, the smoke the Mercury and the ashes
the Salt (Debus 1966: 27-8). This seems to have freed his followers from
the confines of four element theory and, from then on, a huge variety of
different numbers of principles were elaborated (quite often five of
them), as well as other ways of thinking about matter (Debus 1966: 39).
The early 17th century alchemist Van Helmont proposed that Nature
acted by imagination and instruction, on a basic substratum of the single

13
element of water, through a kind of spiritual device he called the
Archeus which carried out the instruction contained in the Image. To
transmute a person to health you gave them substances impregnated
with the correct idea, so that the Archeus could begin to function
properly again. He also recognised the existence of Airs, but these
separated substances rather than helped constitute them. Essentially,
Van Helmont refined and clarified the innovations of Paracelsus, while
continuing the attack on Galenic medicine, and furthering the arguments
that to understand Life the Universe and Everything, you needed
chymistry and meditation (Pagel 1982b: 21-3, Partington 1961: 218).
In the Ortus... Van Helmont described his experiences with the
Philosophers Stone. Though he himself never claimed to have made it,
he did claim he was given some and conducted experiments with it.
There is relatively little doubt that this text was written by Van Helmont,
so it seems a good example of such claims. He wrote:
for truly, I have divers times seen it, and handled it with my
hands: But it was of colour such as is in Saffron in its Powder,
yet weighty, and shining like unto powdered Glass: There was
once given unto me one fourth part of one Grain: But I call a
Grain the six hundredth part of one Ounce: This quarter of one
Grain therefore, being rouled up in Paper, I projected upon eight
Ounces of Quick-silver made hot in a Crucible; and straight
away all the Quick-silver, with a certain degree of Noise, stood
still from flowing, and being congealed, setled like unto a
yellow Lump: but after pouring it out, the Bellows blowing,
there were found eight Ounces and a little less than eleven
Grains of the purest Gold: Therefore one only Grain of that
Powder, had transchanged 19186 Parts of Quick-silver, equal to
it self, into the best Gold
(see Read 1947: 67).

English alchemists, in particular, seem to embraced atomism, in

which substances were made out of different arrangements or sizes of
the same kinds of atoms. Thus all that had to be done was to rearrange
the atoms, and the substance would change. Alchemists in the first half
of the 17th Century in England were also often engaged in religious and
political ventures directed at the reform of society and medicine, through
the use of alchemy and direct contact with the holy spirit. Exchange of
texts and recipes, and even collaboration, was common. Although this
kind of reform movement culminated in both the Royal Society and a
14
Society of Chymical Physitians shortly after the Restoration of Charles
II, many of the most important alchemists stayed in London to help cure
victims of the Great Plague of 1665 and died themselves. This series of
deaths together with the political reaction against reform, drove
alchemists back into secrecy, destroyed their ability to use the same kind
of language and eventually produced the kinds of ‘clear scientific’ style
of writing pursued by people like Robert Boyle, who himself was more
or less covertly seeking the secrets of alchemy without success - though
he did claim to have witnessed the degradation of gold - a reverse
transmutation (Idhe 1964) 5. It is a possible hypothesis that alchemy, by
neglecting the bent of Medieval and Renaissance scientia of proceeding
by logical deduction from axioms, introduced the method of opinion and
experiment, and the aim of replication, which lead to modern science.
Also at this time, the division between live soul and dead matter
became so ‘obvious’ to people that alchemy itself appeared to split more
radically than previously between those alchemies devoted to
transmutation of spirit and those devoted to matter. For example
productions such as the Book of Lambspring, the works of Khunrath and
the writings of Jacob Boehme seem entirely spiritual. It is possible to
question the increase in this split, by pointing out that when we cannot
understand something we should not automatically say it is religious -
but at the moment I incline its favour. By the 19th Century it was part of
almost every esotericist’s argument that alchemy was mainly, or only,
about spiritual things - although some were still prepared to argue that
laboratory work might occur when the spiritual transmutation had taken
place. Amongst the most interesting of these writers is Mary Anne
Atwood, an English woman who suggested that Alchemy was related to
Mesmerism and the control of a magnetic fluid, and that it descended
from the Greek mystery Religions, so she uses a great deal of neo-
Platonic philosophy in her elucidation. Her position, that alchemy was
connected to gnosticism or old paganism, is thus similar to Jung’s (CW
13: 122; CW 12: 304, 357), and Jung is possibly too quickly dismissive
of her work, as he might be of most of the esoteric alchemists. Writing
of alchemy in the 18th century, Jung states that the decay of alchemy
had begun at least a century earlier, at the time of Jacob
Boehme, when many alchemists deserted their alembics and

5. For the best account of Boyle’s alchemy see Principe (1998).

15
 melting pots and devoted themselves entirely to Hermetic
philosophy. It was then that the chemist and the Hermetic
philosopher parted company... [the latter] lost the empirical
ground from under its feet and aspired to bombastic allegories
and inane speculations (CW 12: 227).
Which again shows that Jung was not particularly interested in
spiritual alchemy.

General features of Alchemy

With alchemy we are faced with great and sometimes deliberate
obscurity of language and image. The alchemists frequently admit they
write in an obscure or misleading manner, or say that they have hidden
what is essential to their art. Thus it is possible to read many things into
alchemical texts. Esoteric interpreters tend to disregard the often clear
and decodable chemical instructions which we can understand, as
obfuscation, and to see the remarks about spiritual transformation, which
we largely don’t understand, as being more important. Other people are
more likely to refer only to the laboratory work they can decode, and
ignore the rest as potentially decodable. Jung himself, though
recognising the existence and importance of laboratory work, largely
ignores the chemistry as irrelevant (as for example in the Zosimos paper
CW 13: 74).
Western alchemy is filled with recurrent symbols, Sun and Moon
headed humans, Kings, Queens, copulation, hermaphrodites, winged
Mercuries, wolves, lions, birds and dragons, and recurrent uses of
colours in particular green, black, white and red. When arranged as
graphic emblems these symbols can become quite complex with many
different elements in different patterns. It is not clear that these images
and terms always refer to the same things between different texts or
even within the same text. The alchemical commentator Petrus Bonus
wrote c.1330 “There must be a profound natural faculty for interpreting
the significance of those symbols and analogies of the philosophers,
which in one place have one meaning and in another a different” (1894:
134-5). Similarly Elias Ashmole wrote in 1652 of the alchemists that:
“Their chiefest study was to wrap up their Secrets in Fables, and spin
out their Fancies in Vailes and Shadows, whose Radii seems to extend
every way, yet so, that they all meete in a Common Centre, and point
onely at One thing” (Ashmole 1652: 440).
16
17
As Jung wrote “It is characteristic of alchemy that there are no clear cut
concepts, so that one concept can take the place of another ad infitum, at
the same time each concept functions as though it referred to a single
substance” (CW 13:: 142). Again a blanket statement must be modif ied,
there seems no doubt that some alchemists tended to use such symbols
in a fairly straightforward way - particularly the later ones - but this also
does not mean that all did.
Alchemists, perhaps because of this combination of symbolic
imagination with laboratory work, also tended to anticipate results, and
reported them as occurrences. Even reputed adepts did this. Ashmole
records a “Retraction of [George] Ripley's... Wherein he beseeches all
men wheresoever they shall meete with any of his Experiments written
by Him... (from the yeare 1450 to the yeare 1470.) either to burne them
or afford them no Credit, being written acording to his esteeme, not
proofe; and which (afterwards upon tryal) he found false and vaine: for
so long was he seeking the Stone, but in the truth of practise had not
found it, till towards the end of that yeare” (1652: 455-6).
So it is more than possible that alchemists saw what they expected
was in the texts, and there may have been many different types of
alchemies, and traditions of alchemy. We cannot in advance dismiss
certain self proclaimed alchemists as not really alchemists.
Doing practical alchemy was extremely difficult, flasks would break
or leak, fires would go out and there was no way of controlling or even
measuring temperature. Substances had what we would call impurities
which produced different kinds of reactions (Principe 1987). It was no
wonder that success in the venture, particularly in a process with any
complexity, would seem to be dependent upon the grace of God, or upon
the particular powers or state of the alchemist, and alchemists often
make precisely that kind of point - that success comes from God, from
prayer and from morality. Likewise we can expect that the alchemists
would have to pay extreme attention to the work, to concentrate upon it,
just to regulate the fire and look for the signs of progress if nothing else.
They might also inhale various poisons, and with all these factors we
can expect that some at least were sometimes, or often, in altered states
of consciousness, possibly hallucinating, certainly engaging in symbolic
thought, and this is were we come to Jung.

18
 Jung
According to Jung, after the break with Freud he wished to discover
if his own psychological experiences had any similarities in the
historical record. Firstly, between 1918 and 1926, he studied the
gnostics 6, but found them too remote from his experience (Jung 1963:
200-1). He had known of the psychological aspect of alchemy because
of the work of fellow psychoanalyst Herbert Silberer, with whom he was
in correspondence circa 1914 when Silberer’s book on the subject was
being published, and according to Richard Noll Jung had mentioned
alchemy in lectures in 1913 (Noll 1977: 171), but had considered the
subject too obscure and confusing (Jung 1963: 204). Silberer had related
the symbols and processes of alchemy to the processes of
psychoanalysis and the building of a new religious/ethical ego through
the symbols freeing the ego from its old ties and dissolving opposites.
Silberer himself was not only influenced by the 19th Century American
writer General Hitchcock, who gave a largely ethical interpretation of
alchemy, but also (I think) by Jung’s early writings particularly the
Psychology of the Unconscious. As might be expected, Freud violently
rejected Silberer, who committed suicide as a result.
In 1928 Richard Wilhelm sent Jung a translation of the Chinese
alchemical text The Secret of the Golden Flower for a commentary -
largely it appears because he thought that Jung’s theories might
elucidate the text - and Jung wrote that it “gave me undreamed of
confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation
of the centre” (Jung 1963 197), i.e. the symbolic representation of the
Self, and the idea that the Self is not centred in the ego.
Possibly also inspired by the paintings of his client Kristine Man
(CW 9, I: 305), Jung then began to explore the Western alchemists,
largely by compiling a list of index cards for phrases that he considered
odd or interesting (Jung 1963: 200-5). In Memories Dreams and
Reflections he is reported as commenting that he found “the experiences
of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences and their world was

6. Jung had already read widely in the European occult from as early as 1895
(Jung 1963: 98-9). Sometimes, it seems that Jung’s theories are held to be
wrong because they may have been influenced by the nineteenth century occult.
Those with this kind of position would rarely say that Newton or Boyle theories
were irrelevant because they were influenced by alchemists.

19
my world”, and adds that “only after I had familiarised my self with
alchemy did I realise that the unconscious is a process... [and I then]
arrived at the central concept of my psychology: the process of
individuation” (Jung 1963: 205, 209). To simplify: the process of
individuation might be described as a spontaneous process, usually
arising in the second half of life (if at all), by which the person becomes
more integrated and gains a sense of their wholeness - perhaps in
opposition to the diversity of their instincts (cf. Jacobi 1968: 61, 107-9).

Jung’s Early Psychology

By the time that Jung became seriously interested in alchemy, his
early psychology was established. In this he had generalised the libido
from sexual drive to psychic energy in general, with the psyche as a self
regulating, self correcting, homeostatic system with lib ido flowing
between oppositions, and proposed that symbols channelled or directed
this libido. He had proposed that neglected aspects of a person’s being
could go off and form independent complexes in the psyche. He had
formed the theory of introverted and extroverted personality types, with
the theory of the four functions of Feeling, Thought, Intuition and
Sensation, and proposed that the unconscious was not simply the
repressed but a creative force which acted in compensation to the ego.
As the unconscious is not complementary to the consciousness but
dynamically compensatory, and it modifies consciousness (and vice
versa), he argued that people should not simply analyse the unconscious
but learn to live with it. Dreams, unlike in psychoanalysis where they
always lead back to sex and childhood trauma, became ways the
unconscious deals with current problems, using mythic and cultural
symbols as well as personal symbols, and leading forward to solutions.
Jung had proposed the existence of a whole Self, which cannot be
experienced directly but only intimated - the centre of the Self never
coincides with the ego, it is always outside immediate consciousness. He
was also working with images, which resembled Eastern Mandalas,
taking them as symbols which not only showed the unity of the Self, but
helped to produce the journey towards an awareness of this totality. In a
way, Jung proposes that problems and contradictions within a person’s
life are not so much solved in therapy as dissolved within a more
inclusive state of consciousness.
Jung had also developed the idea of a Collective Unconscious,
which could only be accessed after we had explored our personal
20
unconscious (CW 12: 62). It must be said that Jung is often confusing
about this Collective Unconscious. Sometimes it appears to be primarily
a social phenomenon, sometimes it appears biological and sometimes
even cosmological. It is probably fairer to Jung to say it could be all
three, although it might be analytically useful to try and separate them.
However, if the existential status of the Collective Unconscious is
unclear, then that of the archetypes which structure it is even less so.
Despite repeatedly insisting that the archetypes are not specific images,
but structures and potential constellations, and that the contents of the
archetype are always determined by culture and personal experience,
Jung continually treats the archetypes as specific images. For example
he states that Water is a symbol for the living part of the psyche, and
that Mercurius is a symbol of the intellect (CW 12: 69, 74).

Jung and Alchemy

Jung attempted to explain the obscurity of alchemy, the drive of its
marked and colourful symbols, and the reality behind people’s reporting
the discovery of things, like the Philosophers’ Stone, which we might
regard as chemically impossible.
Basically Jung argued that the alchemical work acted as a kind of
dynamic Rorschach blot in which the equally dynamic processes of the
psyche were projected onto the substances the alchemist was working
with. Alchemy was a kind of a collective conscious dream. Alchemical
works were so obscure, not because the alchemist was inherently trying
to conceal something (although this possibility was largely ignored by
Jung as irrelevant), but because of the difficulty of representing both the
psychic processes (which were unclear to begin with) and the work on
substances, at the same time. Furthermore, during this work, Jung
implies that alchemists sometimes did reach a kind of enlightenment in
which they had worked through (unbeknownst to themselves) their
psychological problems and became aware of, and went into dialogue
with, their Self. Thus the claimed discovery of the Philosophers’ Stone
was the discovery of a symbol for the Self. The alchemical work
expressed the individuation process as well as the chemical process. In
particular Jung argued that Christianity was in many ways incapable of
dealing with such psychological processes and, in some cases, actually
generated the pathological ego for which alchemy (or the alchemical
dream) was a compensation. In this case he apparently forgot that there
were non-Christian alchemies, or never made any comparisons.
21
 Jung emphasised how some aspects of alchemical practice as
mentioned by some alchemists, such as entering the work in
imagination, having dialogues with imaginary figures, or praying to God
could further this individuation process.
More controversially still, Jung argued that the symbols revealed in
alchemy are ‘archetypal’ and universal found in all human beings. To
anticipate an argument later, I would suggest that Jung’s method
confused possibly universal processes in the psyche, which is probable,
with the presence of universal symbols which seems less so.
Jung himself seems also to have believed that some texts themselves
could generate useful processes in therapy. Jaffe writes about an
analytical session with Jung in which he simply discussed with her a late
17th century text, the Mutus Liber which consists entirely of illustrative
plates (1989: 55).
In this paper I am going to expound Jung’s theories of alchemy by
subject area, even though this imposes a rather explicit order upon his
original texts.

Alchemy and Christianity

Jung opens his book Psychology and Alchemy by stating that within
the psyche there is a process which seeks its own goals independently of
external forces (CW 12: 5), and this is in some ways a religious
function. However this function can be disrupted by religious dogma
which detracts from experience (ibid: 13). In particular Christianity has
made the antinomy of good and evil absolute, so that it is impossible to
use Christian symbols to unite these opposites. This means that what is
considered evil (however vital to the human) must always be expelled
(ibid: 19, 22). As well as ‘overcoming’ the division between whatever is
defined as good or defined as evil, alchemy also reminds us of the body
and the world of instinct, and how this is not separate from spirit while
on earth (ibid: 123). The Philosophers’ Stone acts as a symbol for the
Self which complements the image of Christ and arises from defects in
the Christ image. It is “the culmination of Christs work of redemption”
(CW13: 95-6).
Alchemy should perhaps be considered heretical to Christianity - the
alchemist is completing the unfinished work of redemption in Nature
(CW 12: 306, 355), postulating an eternal and uncreated matter (ibid:
322), or rescuing a trapped God within matter, as well as obviously
implying a connection between alchemist and God unmediated by a
22
Priest, not to mention regular hints of incest. In the Paracelsus paper (in
CW 13), Jung attempts to show that there was a conflict between
Paracelsus’ alchemy and orthodox Christianity, which Paracelsus
himself was not aware of.
All of these points, except perhaps the last, could do with historical
illumination, as well as could the question of the relation of
transubstantiation in the Mass and transmutation in alchemy - both
require a human to produce the result 7. Strangely, despite arguing at
length on the inadequacies of Christ as a symbol for wholeness, and the
Philosophers’ Stone as compensating for its deficiencies 8, he devotes
much time to showing that some alchemists implied that Christ was
analogous to the Stone 9. For example Khunrath writes, “the Stone of the
Wise… is the symbol of Christ Jesus Crucified” (CW 14: 265 see also
327-9), and in the Water Stone of the Wise, the anonymous author writes
“Jesus Christ is compared and united with the earthly philosophical
stone of the Sages, whose material and preparation… is an outstanding
type and lifelike image of the incarnation of Christ” (ibid: 345).
Sometimes the evidence for this parallel seems simply to amount to the
familiarity of alchemists with scripture and their ready quoting of it -
perhaps as a familiar metaphor for aspects of the work, or as attempts to
justify their hope of receiving God’s help or inspiration in their
difficulties with the work, or perhaps by demonstrating that alchemy is
not incompatible with Christianity despite its possibly heretical
implications. As well, the associations may arise because, for some
alchemists, alchemy seems to have been a science of everything. It was
used to explain all forms of generation, and could thus be extended to
explain the mysteries of Christianity and of God’s actions in the world.
There was no necessary distinction between the problems of Natural

7. My understanding, which may be wrong, of the transubstantiation of the

Eucharist is that in the Mass the Form of the Substance remains the same, but
the Substance is held to change to share that of Christ. If so, this is a further
obverse to the alchemical work.
8. The stone, Jung suggests at one time, is not a more complete symbol for the
Self than Christ, as it primarily represents those aspects of the self which cannot
be integrated via this dominant symbol. Hence it always appears unfinished
(CW 13: 241-242).
9. It is possible that after the Second World War, when the horrors of the Nazi
regime became even clearer, Jung decided that Christianity was not entirely a
bad thing, and should not be discarded easily.

23
Science and of Theology.
Perhaps more to the point, as Jung admits, the term stone as in
‘corner stone’ was used in the New Testament apparently as a reference
to Christ or the church (i.e. Mat. 21:42-4, Mark 12: 10, Luke 20: 17-18,
Acts 4: 10-11, Eph. 2: 20). The term ‘living stones’ was used of
believers (1 Pet 2: 4-8). Revelations (2: 17) mentions a “white stone” in
conjunction with a “hidden manna”. So consequently it is not really
surprising that alchemists saw a possible correspondence between their
wondrous Stone and the Stone of Christian doctrine. Such
correspondence does not necessarily need an archetypal explanation 10.
The use and spread of the Christ Lapis parallel also require more
historical work to explore its ramifications, although Jung suggests that
alchemy’s movement from ascent to descent and its conflict with the
Christian movement of descent and ascent, would eventually lead to
theological problems for alchemists, and thus “those who identified the
lapis absolutely with Christ stopped working in the laboratory, and those
who preferred laboratory work slowly gave up their mystical language”
(CW 14:221-3). So the alchemists “made the world conscious that the
revelation was neither complete nor final” and thus instigated the
division between faith and knowledge (CW 14: 254-5).
The Philosophers’ Stone is not the only alchemical mandala
according to Jung, and there are others such as the Ouroboros, squaring
the circle (CW 12 124-6, 128-), and the quaternity or the recurrence of
the number four. We are never told why there might be so many
different and recurrent mandalas, or if some might be more appropriate
for some stages of the work than others.

Projection and Participation

As we have seen, Jung postulated that alchemy was a kind of
collective dream acting in unconscious compensation to the
consciousness produced by Christianity. “Life calls not for perfection
but completeness” (CW 12: 159). “Alchemy”, he writes, “endeavours to
fill in the gaps left open by the Christian tension of opposites” (ibid: 23).

10. Jung seems to miss the point on this issue, arguing that Christ is not the
cause of the Philosophers’ Stone (CW 14: 450). The Biblical comparison may
not be the source of the Philosophers’ Stone, but it may well have influenced
the possibility of the parallel between Christ and the Lapis being acceptable.

24
“Alchemy afforded numerous ‘hooks’ for the projection of those
archetypes which could not be fitted smoothly into the Christian
process” (ibid: 34) partly because the alchemists had no clear models of
natural processes which enabled them to elucidate the actual behaviour
of the world (ibid: 35), and partly because the process appeared to occur
externally to the alchemist so that they did not identify with the symbols
thrown up, and could treat them, or observe them, impersonally (ibid:
37). Psychological “projection is never made, it simply happens, it is
simply there”, so psychic experience appeared as the “particular
behaviour of the chemical process”. Alchemists did not practice their art
because they believed in theoretical correspondences, but they
experienced correspondences which they made into theory (ibid: 245). It
is usually the disconnected independent complexes in people which get
projected (ibid: 299) and these fantasies are “identical with the fantasy
products that can still be found today among both sick and healthy
people who have never heard of alchemy” (CW 13: 205).
Jung then attempts to demonstrate his assertion about the presence
of psychological projection in alchemy, by quoting some works which
he asserts report hallucinations or projections, seen in the swirling mists
and liquids of the retort 11. For example Lull writes “without invocation
and without spiritual exaltation you can see fugitive spirits condensed in
the air in the shape of divers monsters, beasts and men, which move like
clouds hither and thither” (CW 12: 250).
One of the great secrets of alchemy was the initial substance, the
prima materia. This is never revealed, though alchemists routinely assert
that without knowing the initial substance it is impossible to do the work
at all. Jung argues that this is because, more importantly than any actual
material, the desired properties result from the projection of an
individual (personal) unconscious, and therefore will have huge
variations (CW 12: 317). He writes: “Consciousness rests upon

11. Needham writes “This one can easily imagine, for in the behaviour of
substances undergoing physical and chemical change there are many
happenings which nowadays we know how to neglect as subsidiary - solid or
liquid surface films, interference colours, clouds formed when immiscible
liquids are brought together, or fortuitous shapes assumed by vapours in
evaporation or distillation, bubble masses that take strange forms. Indeed the
whole transition from alchemy to modern chemistry might be seen from the
psychological point of view as fundamentally the withdrawal of a mass of
projections” (Needham 1983: 5-6).

25
unconscious premises, in other words on a sort of unknown prima
materia, and of this the alchemists said everything that we could
possibly say about the unconscious” (CW 12: 437). In other words:
where there is a mystery, there will be projection.
In favour of Jung’s general position we could also argue that the
highly abstract theoretical or ‘philosophic’ theories of alchemy, many of
which had no empirical grounding or outer world referents, and many of
which were primarily religious in orientation (such as the idea of a
divine spirit being trapped in matter), could lead the work of some
alchemists to be more than usually subject to psycholo gical
determination. The properties of metals could have been blended with
the symbolic properties of their associated planets and gods. Mercury
does not seem to have the same range of associations, or properties, as
the chemist’s mercury (Hg). The fact that Sulphur was both a conceptual
substance (‘philosophic sulphur’, or ‘non vulgar sulphur’) and a real
substance might well affect some alchemists views of the real substance.
It is also possible that the union of substances was not quite as concrete
and specific for all alchemists as it is for the modern chemist, and
fantasies about other conjunctions might have played a part in their
views and expectations of what would and did happen. Even if
everything is decodable into ‘ordinary chemicals’, we might still wish to
know how the Philosophers’ Stone, when attained, gets its reality. We
might also wonder if the ambiguity and sheer lack of clarity of many
texts, with the obscure defined in terms of the more obscure, lead to the
alchemist using fantasy, or association, to identify materials? It is
certainly possible that some alchemical texts are introspectively
‘magical texts’, more driven by the associations and metaphors of
language, coupled with hope and imagination, than they are by
following a transparent (if coded) reference to non-human reality.
The problem is that Jung does not demonstrate that many of the
symbolic descriptions he refers to are not straightforward and
conventional allegories. For example when someone says “I love you
with all my heart”, they may not necessarily believe they are feeling
with their organic heart. Likewise when we talk of the essence of a
debate, we are not implying that there is a spiritual substance we can
extract from an argument. Sometimes words can become fictional things
as when governments talk of the virtue of private enterprise, as if the
abstraction of ‘private enterprise’ could be a person with morals. As this
conventionality does not disprove the possibility of the psychic
motivation of the symbols used, this might be considered a weak
26
objection, and such conventionality might even allow us to consider the
symbols collective, but this needs detailed and specific research of a
type which Jung does not provide. Every form of human endeavour is
collective and symbolic in some way. Alchemy might not be any more
or less reducible to psychology and culture than physics 12. If this should
be the case, then we can no longer assert that the projections have
nothing to do with the substances being used - substances do have
certain properties and are more likely to attract certain kind of
projections depending upon these properties - and a proper Jungian
exploration of the psychology of alchemy could not afford to overlook
the chemical process that particular alchemists might have observed.
Jung also approaches this issue of psychological involvement in
alchemy by quoting some alchemists who write of the importance of the
mind or imagination to the work (CW 12: 246ff). Thus Turrius writes
that the “prima materia is nothing, but is conceived solely by the
imagination it cannot be contained in any of these places [heaven, earth,
or water]” (CW 14: 84). If I may quote three writers not quoted by Jung.
Petrus Bonus wrote that a particular process happened “through the
addition of the Hidden Stone which is not sensuously apprehended but
only known intellectually... The hidden Stone may be called the gift of
God, and if it does not mingle with our Stone, the work of Alchemy is
marred” (1894: 124). Ashmole tells us that one of the Secrets of the
work is how to handle the Universal Spirit (1652: 446-7) and several
pages later when describing the manufacture of talismans tells us that
the Spirit can be influenced by the “strength and Efficacy of the
Imagination and Passion” (ibid: 464). Paracelsus defends those arts
whose results are determined by imagination and are thus uncertain,
while distinguishing imagination from phantasy which leads to folly.
“He who is born in imagination finds out the latent forces in Nature…
He who imagines compels herbs to put forth their hidden nature”
(Paracelsus 1894: 305-8) 13.

12. Perhaps a better comparison might be with Economics, or the social

sciences in general, in which it is sometimes hard to extricate ‘theory’ from
‘belief’ and ‘fantasy’ about what should be rather than what is. The disjunction
between model and reality frequently seems to produce what looks like magical
incantation, or reiteration, from that model’s supporters.
13. Paracelsus’ claims about scientia, being an overhearing of inner functions in
the matter being explained, would also imply a fair degree of psychological
involvement with the work.

27
 Jung also quotes some alchemists, who consider that something in
the human is important for the work. The anonymous Consilium
coniugii states “The Philosophers maintain that the father of gold and
silver is the animating principle of earth and water, or man or part of a
man such as hair, blood menstruum etc”. Jung states that Gerard Dorn
implies the miracle of gold making was performed by a natura
abscondita (hidden nature) which is “perceived not with the outward
eyes but solely by the mind”. It could only be used if the adept had
closely approached divine things, and purified the substances correctly.
Dorn continues: “There is in the human body a certain aetherial
substance, which preserves its other elemental parts and causes them to
continue.. [and] the Philosophers, through a kind of divine inspiration,
knew that this virtue and heavenly vigour can be freed from its fetters…
by its like” (CW 14: 95-6). The link between micro and macrocosm,
might also imply that ‘interior’ work was not always divorced from
laboratory work. Dorn also wrote “Thou wilt never make the One which
thou seekest, except first there be made one thing of thyself” (ibid: 234-
5). For some alchemists the boundaries between self and flask, between
observer and observed, might not have been as pronounced as they were
to become.
Perhaps the most frequently returned to examples of the recognition
of mental work which Jung gives, are the definitions from Ruland, a late
16th Century follower of Paracelsus.
Meditatio is defined as an “inner dialogue with someone unseen”,
and hence could be seen as a dialogue with an aspect of the unconscious
- similar to the process Jung called Active imagination, in which the
person is actively involved in the images but at the same time is
observing them rather than controlling them (CW 12: 274, 255, 346;
CW 14: 495-6, 529-).
Ruland also defines Imaginatio as “the star (astrum) in man, the
celestial and supercelestial body”. But as Jung notes, the obscurity of
this definition is increased by astrum being a technical term to
Paracelsus (CW 12: 277-8). Earlier Ruland remarks that the astrum is
“the virtue and potency of things obtained by preparation” (Ruland
1893: 52), which implies that if imagination is the star then it needs
development and preparation as well. We must be careful about taking
the use of ‘star’ as implying the same things cross culturally, even
within the same field. When Aleister Crowley proclaims “Every man
and woman is a star”, it may have no connection at all with Paracelsian
subtle bodies (even if Crowley is a knowledgeable occultist), and even
28
less when some late 20th Century astrophysicist makes the statement
“we are all literally stardust” - even though the recurrence might be
interesting.
Again we really need some kind of historical investigation into the
ways that mental processes were introduced into the work and the ways
these changed 14. For example it would be interesting to investigate how
widespread was the practice Ruland calls meditatio. It might be that the
tradition of involving the imagination is quite late, or corresponds to a
particular stream of alchemy, as could the issue of the importance of
some subtle part of the alchemist to the work. To some extent, we might
be able to suggest that Jung’s theory of projection in alchemy depends
upon his perception of a separation between psyche and matter - so that
the two cannot interact (cf CW 12: 279). If one theorised differently then
it might not be only an unconscious, or irrational, action to ‘mix’ the
two. Jung also states that projection only works as long as it is
unconscious, and cannot be commented upon (CW 12: 299), yet in
contradiction to himself, he is able to quote alchemists such as Gerald
Dorn, who are explicit about this intertwining of person and work.
Jung also discusses the dangers of not regarding these symbols of
individuation as impersonal and taking them as entirely subjective. This
can produce, at best, an unstable result or even bypass the entire goal of
the process. If people go further to identify the process with the ego, this
can lead to inflation and madness (CW 12: 477ff). Hence the dangers the
alchemists warn of (see also CW 13: 322ff).
Jung first mentioned this issue in his earliest work on Alchemy
(SGF: 44-5), but elaborated it at length in the ‘Psychology of the
Transference’, where he uses an incomplete sequence of plates from the

14. In Chinese alchemy there is an explicit internal technique to do with the

manipulation of body energies (nei tan) which, ignoring the problems of
cultural transmission, would reinforce the idea of a participation between the
alchemist and their work. Unfortunately at the time of Jung’s encounter with
the Chinese text Secret of the Golden Flower neither he nor the translator,
Richard Wilhelm, was aware of this fact (Needham 1983: 246). Hence Jung had
to work from a mistranslated and misunderstood text which became even more
vague as a result and allowed the imposition of Western concepts. It could be
said that Jung’s whole programme of alchemical interpretation was based on
this misunderstanding.

29
Rosarium philosophorum 15 to discuss how the removal of transference
projections (in which the relationship with the therapist replicates earlier
family relationships), as a dynamic in itself, leads to an intimation of
wholeness. The soul, according to Jung, needs another for it to exist
(CW 16: 244), and the transfer situation is part of this coming to
existence. This work can, as well, involve the danger of submerging
oneself in the collective images and loosing individuality, or becoming
inflated through identifying with these images (ibid: 261-3, 268-72).
This can result in torment.
There may be a minor inconsistency in Jung’s approach here, as he
earlier argued that alchemy worked as a process of individuation
because alchemists were able to project their inner contents and observe
them impersonally, which allows their psyche to work things out
through their own dynamics. Withdrawal of projection might be
expected to interfere with this process, and if it is a final process, then
we have the problem of why the Philosophers’ Stone can be the final
symbol for the Self.

The Terms of Alchemy as Primarily Psychological

With Jung’s argument about projection, it is implied that the
substances and terms of alchemy are primarily of interest because of
their psychological representations. I have already argued that this
distinction cannot be made with ease, and that knowledge of the
laboratory work would be important for knowledge of the kinds of
projections made, but let us continue. In the article ‘The Spirit
Mercurius’ (in CW 13) Jung makes a rambling study of a fairly central
alchemical symbol, which emphasises how this symbol expresses
incompatible opposites, as well as all kinds of different substances
which are probably not opposites. Philosophic Mercury can also be
identified with the god Mercury or Hermes, and the planet Mercury in
astrology, and these lead to further elaborations in alchemy, which
presumable have little to do with the chemical Hg (CW 13: 221-2, 225,
230-1). Mercury is also often described as the arcanum, the father of
metals, the primeval chaos, the goal of its own transformation, the

15. It must be said that though these plates may have been the inspiration for
Jung’s discussion, I, personally, do not find that they add anything to the clarity
of exposition.

30
tincture, “the beginning, middle and end of the work” (ibid: 235).
In other words he suggests that Mercury does not represent a
defined concept across the works of the alchemists and must thus
primarily represent something psychological. However this randomness
could also be generated if Mercury was not an archetypal symbol, but
simply reinvented individually, because of the lack of clarity of the
texts. Likewise the apparent impossibility of Mercury representing a
single substance does not necessarily means that it is an unconscious
projection. It could be a metaphor which is explored and stretched
beyond its usefulness, it could be inconsistent because of its role in an
explanatory structure of filling gaps (similar to the way that Levi-Strauss
argues that the idea of mana works in Polynesian languages {1987: 55,
63-4}), or it could simply be that across several hundred years the term
was used to represent different things in different people’s work.
In Mysterium Coniunctionis Jung also considers of some of the chief
terms in alchemy such as Sol, Sulphur, Luna and so on. He attempts to
show that these terms are not just incoherent across the whole realm of
alchemical texts - something that may not be surprising - but that this
incoherence has certain types of pattern and association which can only
be psychologically driven. Thus Sol is both the Sun and Gold - a kind of
energy- it is associated with redness, with a sea, with an inner warmth,
with a seed, and with shadows (CW 14: 92-99). Sol can derive from
Sulphur, and Sulphur can be red or white, it can be a synonym for the
prima materia and for the lapis. Sulphur is fiery and this heat is both
hidden and revealed in combustibility. Often the same things are said of
Sulphur as are said of Mercury, or they are explicitly linked, identified
or derived from each other. Sulphur can be associated with the soul, or a
seed, as it has generative powers (perhaps because, as Bachelard points
out, of the common European association of hidden fire with life), it
colours, it coagulates and it corrupts (putrefies or ferments). It is both a
poison and a medicine. It can become a parallel to both Christ and the
Devil (CW 14: 111-28). Luna is the partner of Sol, it is associated with a
dew which can extract souls from bodies or give bodies souls, it is
derived from the cold moist part of Mercury, is never slain alone
(although the other terms often die), and it has a dark side - its external
light is feminine, but its internal light is masculine. In the section on
Luna Jung tends to use quite a large number of non-alchemical
references to expand the range of associations, which perhaps
diminishes the alchemical import of these associations (CW 14: 129-42,
174 8). Salt, as well as being dry, also is associated with water
31
(especially as the arcane substance - perhaps because salt water joins the
opposites of dryness and moistness), bitterness, fire, the albedo, ash, and
through the Bible with wisdom - thus again allowing symbolic
resonances which have little to do with chemistry (CW 14: 189-194,
236-46).
Similar objections to those made about the Mercury article can be
made, but it is still possible that these terms (because of their
associations with other substances and events, and because of the
distinction between the conceptual, or philosophic term, and the
common term), do carry part of a network of metaphoric associations
which we might nowadays decry as irrelevant or as an obstacle to
knowledge. However this in itself does not mean that the symbols are
universal archetypes, or that they express deep universal processes of the
psyche.

Jung’s Interpretations of Alchemical Texts

As previously mentioned Jung only rarely attempts to interpret
particular texts, preferring to interpret the whole of alchemy at once. His
earliest venture into the field attempts to interpret part of the Greek text
attributed to Zosimos as a series of dreams, while ignoring the rest of the
text that cannot be so interpreted. In the Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung
interprets parts of Eirenaeus Philalethes, Introitus apertus…, Michael
Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae, and Abraham Eleazar’s Uraltes
Chymisches Werck. Again, he writes that alchemical texts are like
dreams: and like dreams they can be translated into rational speech. He
continues:
In order to interpret dreams we need some knowledge of the
dreamer’s personal situation, and to understand alchemical
parables we must know something about the symbolic
assumptions of the alchemists. We amplify dreams by the
personal history of the patient and the parables by the statements
found in the text... (CW 14: 160).
This sounds impressive, but in practice Jung does not actually refer
to the texts in any detail. Thus his analysis of a passage from Philalethes,
proceeds as follows. Philalethes writes “if thou knowest how to moisten
this dry earth with its own water, thou wilt loosen the pores of the
earth”. Jung explains that means that if you contemplate your lack of
fantasy, then something can come alive. Philalethes writes “and this
32
thief from outside will be cast out with the workers of wickedness”.
Jung explains that something has stopped your fantasy, namely the
sulphur of greedy desire. You no longer wish to be fruitful for any sake
but your own, and are thus barren. And so on. There is not even the
vaguest attempt to see how the author uses terms like “dry earth”,
“moisture”, “pores of the earth”, “thief” or so on, in the rest of his fairly
considerable body of texts. There is even no attempt to try and
investigate how other alchemists of the same time period (middle 17th
Century) might use them. The text is made to be an allegory of some
kind of psycho-spiritual teaching. Although this commentary clarifies
some of Jung’s theories about how individuation might proceed, it is
hardly analogous to amplifying a person’s dreams through their personal
history or problems. Jung finishes by answering the question of whether
Philalethes had anything like Jung’s interpretation in mind when he
wrote, by writing “I regard this as out of the question, and yet I believe
that these authors invariably said the best, most appropriate, and clearest
thing they could about the matter in hand”, and that in time his own
interpretation would likewise be felt to be metaphorical (ibid: 172-3).
Unfortunately, this could be a license to read almost anything into the
texts as there is no check. Although this may be fruitful, it may not tell
us much, if anything, about alchemy.
Jung’s longest late analysis of a text is of Ripley’s Cantilena, and
although he makes comparisons outside the text, he does not make
comparison with other Ripley texts so that he could explore the
dynamics of an alchemist at a particular time and place.
In the Ripley analysis, Jung is primarily concern with the symbol of
the King. The King represents an exalted personality and carries myth:
“it is a psychic figure which reaches far back into prehistory” (CW 14:
258). However the king is not a fixed figure but one which undergoes
transformation from an imperfect into a more perfect state (ibid: 265-6).
Jung argues that the King represents a hypertrophy of the ego, it
represents violence of the will, selfishness and greed without bounds.
This calls for compensation, and the king is dissolved, and separated out
from the unconscious, whereupon he revives in a better state (ibid: 272-
3). In the Ripley poem the King starts off barren, despite his high state.
He is compared with the Ancient of Days (i.e. God), but he needs to be
reborn (ibid: 275-80). He is to be dissolved by his mother’s breast, and
unites with the mother, who becomes sick with poison and seals up her
chamber to feast on peacock’s flesh, Green Lion’s blood, and Mercury’s
mead [?] (ibid: 282-5). There then follows a discussion of the
33
symbolism of colours, because of the mention of the peacock, and a
discussion of the symbolism of Lions, of which Jung remarks that they
frequently appear after the dragon’s death, and that there are frequently
two lions (as is the case with many alchemical animals), sometimes one
is winged and the other wingless (ibid: 295-6, 298). The lion is often
identified with a hidden substance, and supposedly refers to those parts
of us which are considered the ‘animal’, or emotional layers (ibid: 296-
7). Eventually after discussing how female symbols in alchemy, and the
male mind more generally, can often be described as virgin, whore and
mother, he concludes that the Queen in the poem essentially eats herself,
and is enriched by knowledge of the unconscious (ibid: 307-10). The
poem and Jung’s analysis get somewhat confused at this point, but in
outline the King is reborn, while the Queen is kept shut in and heated,
and his limbs putrefy (ibid: 311-13). The Queen becomes a semi-divine
figure, Luna, somewhat like the Virgin Mary. The King is reborn, the
mother’s bed changes from square to ‘orbicular’, which Jung compares
to the squaring of the circle which he claims indicates perfection (ibid:
316). The King is raised to heaven (ibid: 316-17), and apparently
identified with Christ (ibid: 321-29). A new life is born in the alchemist.
Jung asks why if this text simply described a coded chemistry, does
the author climax his work in a way which could seem both ecstatic and
blasphemous? He implies that the answer is because the adept’s soul
grew in a work with a logic which goes beyond the logic of chemistry
and which is imposed upon chemistry (CW 14: 317-20). Jung’s
presentation does suggest that there might be a non-chemical process
going on here, even if just in the drive towards the use of particular
symbols, and in the pull of their associations. However, by ignoring the
other works of Ripley and by ignoring the possible chemistry underlying
Ripley’s work, he significantly weakens the strength of his case.

Stages of the Work

To some extent Jung argues that the stages of the alchemical work,
correspond to stages in the individuation process. He points out that
although the alchemists hardly ever agree on the course of the work -
which might be expected given the individual projections involved -
they originally described four stages:
Melanosis (Blackening)
Leukosis (Whitening)
34
 Xanthosis (Yellowing)
and Iosis (Reddening)
During the 15th and 16th Centuries, this was generally simplified to
three stages.
Nigredo (black)
Albedo (white)
Rubedo (red).
This particular simplification might be unexpected to Jung, given
the importance of the number 4 to him as an archetypal intimation of
wholeness. Surprisingly he insists the change arose because of
unspecified inner reasons (which might imply that archetypes are
unstable) rather than for any ‘external’ cultural reasons - though it might
be thought hard to separate these kinds of reasons (CW 12: 229-30).
Nigredo is the first stage, though elsewhere (CW 16: 182) Jung will
point out that it is rarely the initial stage as it is usually produced by
work - the stripping away of forms mentioned earlier. It is also the
chaos, the depression, the production of separation (CW 12: 230).
Elsewhere he will suggest that it can also involve dismemberment, and
the production of the philosophers’ mercury which is both one and a
duality (CW 16: 197). Edinger comments that the reduction of bodies
into the prima materia is equivalent to reducing the fixed aspects of the
personality into their original undifferentiated condition - thus producing
an innocence and a confusion (1985: 10-11). Jungian commentators
often compare the nigredo to the ‘Dark night of the soul’, but this is
perhaps overly simplistic.
The separation occurring in the nigredo produces the first opposites,
which can then be joined.
However this first possible union of opposites is not long lasting and
passes into death or decay through the processes known as mortificatio,
calcinatio, or putrefactio (CW 12: 231). These, correspond to different
types of chemical operation with their psychological associations.
After this stage washing can lead to the albedo, or there might be a
reunion of soul and body to get a resurrection, or the many colours of
the peacock’s tail might appear (CW 12: 231).
Eventually we get the albedo, which is the making of silver, Luna or
Moon.
After this we may have another union, but often we move straight to
the Rubedo, the reddening and the making of the Stone, or the making of
Gold or Sol, the Sun (CW 12: 232). Though Jung does not seem to
35
discuss it, after the making of the Philosophers’ Stone, there is usually
another separate stage in which the Stone is cast onto another material
changing it into Gold. This is usually called Proiectio (projection,
throwing) or Multiplicatio (multiplication - the increase of the amount of
gold). Quite why these final stages are psychologically not significant is,
of course, unexplained.
As Jung himself points out this is only a schematic outline. There
are so many variations he feels it is pointless going into them (CW 12:
239) - though it seems possible we could find out more about the history
of alchemy and the transmission of its ideas, or even the changes in
people’s psychology, through looking at the variants in these stages.
The following table represents Jung’s schematic of the Stages of the
Work, from some later summaries he made in 1951-2.
(CW 20: pp 751-3; Jung & Eliade 1952: pp 228-9)

Beginning Dragon, Chaotic Spirit, Nigredo.

The Elements are fighting with each other.
Suffering. Melancholy. Encounter with the
Shadow.

First Coniunctio Synthesis, of those opposites separated in the

Nigredo.

Dawn Peacock’s tail. A new phase moves into action.

Albedo The Whiteness. Pure body. Refined but lacking

soul. One does not live. An Abstract State.
Needs blood.

Second Coniunctio Sacred Marriage. Incest.

Rubedo Experience of Being.
The repressed no longer has autonomy.

Third Meeting of Consciousness and Unconscious.

Coniunctio Awareness of centre of Self.
Lapis Philosophorum

The three coniunctios probably arise from Jung’s reading of Gerard

Dorn, who also used three coniunctios in his description of the work, as
shall be discussed in the next section.
36
 Union of Opposites
Jung finishes Psychology and Alchemy by suggesting that as the
condition of any unconscious content is potential, suspended between
the “polar opposites” of being and non being, a union of opposites must
play a decisive role in any kind of numinous uniting symbol (CW 12:
476-7).
Jung devoted his final, vastly complex, work, the Mysterium
Coniunctionis, to this question of the process of the union of symbols
which are “conceived as opposites” (CW 14: 3 emphasis added) within
the psyche, which is supposed to have a polar structure like all natural
processes (CW 14: xvi). Opposites “are the ineradicable and
indispensable preconditions of all psychic life” (ibid: 170). “There is no
energy without the tension of opposites” (ibid: 418). Sometimes these
opposites are opposites in terms of process, (the work of Luna is the
constellation of unconscious concepts, and the work of Sol is the
integration of these contents into life {ibid: 154}), and sometimes “the
opposites slumber side by side [in the unconscious]; they are wrenched
apart by the activity of the conscious mind” (ibid: 156). Jung remarks of
the marriage of opposites, that “we seldom find a high point of religious
feeling where this eternal image of the royal marriage does not appear”,
and “wherever this image is obscured [a person’s] life loses its proper
meaning and consequently its balance” (ibid: 166-7).
He opens the Mysterium with a section on the epigram known as the
Enigma of Bologna, which he uses to show that some alchemists
thought that texts which dealt with paradoxes where obviously
alchemical, thus trying to show the importance of opposites to alchemy.
Later in his commentary on Ripley’s Cantilena, he remarks that the
Conscious ego needs to separate opposites for clarity (discrimination is
its essence), but if the separation is so hard that the opposite is lost or
repressed (the evil is no longer seen in the good, the white in the black,
or vice versa) then we have one-sidedness, and the ability of the ego to
actually cope with, or extract meaning from, reality decays. As a result
the unconscious tries to compensate against this ego will which becomes
even more fanatical, until overturned in what he calls an enantiodromia
(CW 14: 333-4). Thus the process involving the symbol of the King in
the Ripley text shows this kind of structure (ibid: 355). Jung draws up a
table of this process (ibid: 371) and with slight modifications it looks
like:
37
 Ego bound state -
feeble and unable to Sick or unproductive King
cope with its reality

Ascent of unconscious, Disappearance of the King into

and/or descent of ego the Mother’s body, or his
into the unconscious dissolution in water.
Conjunction is ‘nefarious’ -
incest, murder, death

Conflict and synthesis Pregnancy, sickbed, display of

of unconscious and colours
conscious

Formation of new ego King’s son, hermaphrodite,

dominant roundness.
Conjunction is more
‘heavenly’

Finally Jung, basing his theory on that of alchemist Gerard Dorn,

claims that the coniunctio moves through three separate stages: firstly
the unio mentalis in which the spirit and soul are united together and
separated from the body; secondly, the unio mentalis is reunited with the
body; and finally this union is united with the World unus mundus.
The passage from Dorn is short:
We conclude that meditative philosophy consists in the
overcoming of the body by mental union {unio mentalis}. This
first union does not as yet make the wise man, but only the
mental disciple of wisdom. The second union of the mind with
the body shows forth the wise man, hoping for and expecting
that blessed third union with the first unity {i.e. the unus
mundus, the latent unity of the world}. May Almighty God
grant that all men be made such and may he be one in All.
38
 (CW 14: 465, parts between { } added by Jung).
Jung comments that mental union is not the cumulating point of the
work. The second stage is when the unity of spirit and soul, or intellect
and feeling, is co-joined with the body to make this first unity valid and
permanent (CW 14: 465-6). Jung quotes Dorn that “the mind is well said
to be composed when the spirit and the soul are joined by such a bond
that the body’s appetites and the hearts affections are restrained” (ibid:
471, n60). The spirit is a spiraculum (literally an air hole or vent) of
eternal life. The soul is the organ of spirit, and the body is the instrument
of soul. Jung argues that Dorn is suggesting we must separate mind from
body and join the opposites in the mind. This can be a relief for the
body, as it is previously subject to the soul’s appetites and wish-
fantasies. The separation withdraws these projections from the bodily
sphere, and allows the soul to discover its ‘goods’ and ‘evils’, under the
guidance of a less personal function of spirit - which here stands for
rationality, tradition and the archetypes (ibid: 472-3). Every such
operation, writes Jung, is a figurative death and, if not faced, could
become a real death (ibid: 474).
However, in the long term an insistence on the primacy of spirit
cripples life for most people, or lead to further pathologies (CW 14: 471-
2), and the insights gained must be reunited with the body, and with
one’s life (ibid: 476). Dorn states that when this second union takes
place the body resigns itself to and obeys the union of spirit and soul.
The body becomes spirit and the spirit body. Dorn writes:
Make the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed and in this manner
you have our Magistery… Make the unyielding body tractable,
so that by the excellence of the spirit coming together with the
soul it becomes a most stable body ready to endure all trials. For
gold is tried in the fire…… Learn not heaven… through the
earth, but learn the virtues of one by those of the other… [The
medicine which preserves] you can find nowhere but in
heaven… Thou wilt never make from others the One which thou
seekest except first there be made one thing of thyself (see CW
14: 481-2).
The unio mentalis is the ego coming to terms with its background,
the second stage concerns confrontation with the ‘shadow’, or personal
repressed, or the problem of how to confront reality while torn. This
stage represents, to some extent, an ascetic withdrawal. It allows the
removal of projections from the world and the integration of them into
39
the person’s conscious psyche (CW 14: 497-9). The representations of
the Self which arise at this stage are propaedeutic, or preparatory,
actions. They are anticipations of wholeness, which will generally fall
apart: the work will be interrupted, the vessels will break, the stars will
not be right, and the alchemist will have to start again, probably after
having written down their anticipations which will lead them to the
Stone if they can just get it right next time (ibid: 533).
Jung analyses a recipe given by Dorn which involves the mixing of
new heaven, honey, chelidonia, rosemary flowers, mercuralis, red lily,
and human blood, with heaven of red wine or of Tartarus (CW 14: 479-
80), to try and show that these substances have primarily symbolic
connotations, rather than real properties (ibid: 493). For example, the
Cheledonia, or celandine, was reputed to cure blindness, and also
suggested gold and the highest value (ibid: 483, 490). Through the
laboratory work on symbolic materials Dorn was, Jung argues, able to
draw the forces of the cosmos into his quintessence and thus unite the
unio mentalis with the body (ibid: 532). However not enough of Dorn’s
text is given for us to decide what the recipe was supposed to do, nor is
it proven that Jung does have what Dorn calls “full knowledge of the
terms of the art”, even if this knowledge is provided by meditation on
ourselves (ibid: 480) - these terms could simply be coded. Furthermore,
one example cannot be evidence of a general practice.
Jung comments that there is a degree of ambiguity in Dorn’s text, it
is not really clear, for example, whether the corpus the union of spirit
and soul is to be united with is the adept’s body or that of a substance in
the retort. The unio mentalis is also a substance hidden in the body and a
quintessence sublimed from phlegm (CW 14: 487-8).
Jung briefly compares Dorn’s three stages to the three stages of
illumination, as proposed by St. Bonadventure, which involve giving up
the bodily and temporal, entering into the mind as the image of God, and
finally passing into the eternal (CW 14: 504-5). This again raises the
question whether Dorn is summarising a strictly alchemical insights or
importing ones from his Christian background. In general again,
although Jung’s analysis of Dorn’s text provides insights, we cannot be
sure, without further analysis, whether it is to the point of Dorn’s text, or
to the work of alchemy generally.
The third stage, which Dorn may not discuss, is an anticipation of
the union of the adept with the One, the potential world of the first day,
a joining of the personal with the supra-personal. Jung hints that this
might not be impossible, and argues that because psychology and
40
‘microphysics’ tend to deal in paradoxes or antinomies when they push
into the unknown, then psyche and physis may come from a
hypothetical common stratum which is neither. However it could be
suggested, in a way not incompatible with what Jung wrote elsewhere,
that the antinomies stem not from the materials involved, but from the
fact that they are as yet unknown. In a way, it might also be implied that
if this common stratum exists, then alchemy (as transmutation of metals
with the participation of the adept), may not be impossible after all (CW
14: 536ff).

Hillman
One of the most interesting developments of Jung’s theory, from the
therapeutic point of view, is that of James Hillman, who to some extent
divorces alchemy entirely from its historical background - although I
would still suggest that his thesis about the changing vision of air
(1982a), could be suggestive to historians. Hillman has primarily
developed alchemy as a form of poetry to describe the process of
change, and to engage with it. He writes that “Where Jung does a
psychology of alchemy, I am trying to do an alchemical psychologising”
(1982b: 112).
Jung had briefly suggested that the language of alchemy was
particularly appropriate to therapy, writing: “Intellectual or supposedly
scientific theories are not adequate to the nature of the unconscious
because they make use of a terminology which has not the slightest
affinity with its pregnant symbolism. The waters must be drawn together
and held fast by one water… the kind of approach which makes this
possible must therefore be plastic and symbolical” (CW 16: 270). Later
Jung had emphasised the idea that alchemy produced a language
whereby the unknown energies of the psyche can flow non-neurotically
(CW 9-II: 169).
Hillman develops this idea, suggesting that neurosis is an inevitable
result of a one-sided organisation of consciousness, and that this is
reflected in the language we use (1978: 30). Ordinary conceptual
language tends to become concrete and directed, so that when we use
terms like ego, unconscious or libido we think of them as concrete
realities and as explanations, rather than as tools we use to grasp at
psychic events. Hillman states that he, for instance has never met these
things outside of textbooks (ibid: 36). Psychology’s terms are abstract
and give the impression that the soul is abstract and ungraspable. The
41
words of alchemy are different for us, they “incorporate events that one
can touch and see. The work of soul-making requires corrosive acids,
heavy earths, ascending birds; there are sweating kings, dogs and
bitches, stenches, urine and blood. How like the language of our dreams
and how unlike the language into which we interpret dreams” (ibid: 37).
Thus we can discuss the degrees, types and qualities of our interior heat,
whether it is sharp and penetrating, whether like that of horse dung or
water, and so on. Alchemy (at least in some of its forms) also recognised
that there are analogies between the world and psychic experience - it
“recognises soul in physical substance and admits the ‘stuffness’ of
soul” (1982b: 113). This conceivably leads us to consider that the
(psychological) work leads us back out into the world: “From the
alchemical perspective the human individual may be a necessary but
cannot be a sufficient focus; the rescue of the cosmos is equally
important. Neither can take place without the other. Soul and world are
inseparable” (1991: 91). This alchemical language, Hillman claims,
cannot be taken by us as other than metaphor, it forces us to realise that
when we speak of the psyche we speak in metaphor and there is always
more to come. In itself, this frees us from the directness of everyday or
scientific language, which abstracts us away from the particulars of our
actual process (1978: 39-40). Hillman implies that Jung loses some of
this and that his followers tend to translate even alchemy into Jungian
abstractions. The huge variety of different alchemical conjunctions
becomes simply the union of opposites. Difference and specificity in the
texts and in the process is ignored - it might be possible to suggest that
this always happens when a person looks for over-riding commonality
rather than investigating individual texts. This is a point to which we
shall return.

Criticisms
Generally Jung’s work on alchemy has been well received by
historians of alchemy, as it extended the possible understandings of the
subject. Jung revitalised the study of alchemy’s shifting focus, not away
from the strange symbols of alchemy but onto them and onto their
dynamics. He explained that what seemed to be chemically impossible
stemmed from psychological and cultural processes, rather than from

42
deception. However, this does not mean that criticism cannot be made 16.
Jaffe writes that “Jung’s method of research was pre-eminently
historical” (1989: 46). But sadly his method is actually almost a-
historical. The approach he uses might be better compared with the
comparative method of early anthropology, best exemplified by James
Frazer of Golden Bough fame, in which examples of an apparently
similar type of custom and myth are taken from different cultures and
historical periods and compared, either to extract the underlying cause of
their similarities, or for the light they can shed upon each other. Jung
argued that he was attempting to find the full range of the meaning of a
symbol and that this could only be done through comparative research.
It was only by viewing authors together that he thought we can get the
whole picture, and he proposed that alchemy and hermetic philosophy
were particularly good grounds for the study of the formation of images.
He remarked truly that the alchemists themselves often recommended
this type of procedure, and compared his method to comparative
anatomy (CW 13: 273-4; CW 14: 249).
There are some fairly standard objections to this method:
1) It rips out fragments of customs and texts from their cultures, or
even from a lengthier narrative, thus depriving them of the context
which makes them meaningful. The same symbols may not always
mean, or refer to, the same things in different contexts (this may be
especially true with some alchemy). If symbols and texts do not have
meaning independent of their context, we cannot strip fragments of text,
or images, away from their embodying text and images (and the work of
the writer) and then compare them to other equally stripped texts, and
say they have an overriding meaning (even if we believe this is what
many alchemists did). The new context we have provided them by our
work, will necessarily influence their meaning. There is a strong form of
this argument, that we always distort meaning by providing a context,
but we can endeavour to minimise, rather than maximise, this effect,
through careful attention to as much of the original context as possible.
2) Any apparent coherence may be given by the observer not the

16. The most detailed critique from historians of alchemy is that contained in
Principe and Newman (2001: 401-408). For an attempt to clear up some of the
issues raised in that article from a Jungian point of view, see Tilton (2002). I
have attempted not to replicate these arguments.

43
data. For example the observer invents a category which they call
alchemy and looks for confirmatory examples ignoring everything that
might be present which does not fit with their definition. This is
particularly likely to be the case when the analyst chooses fragments out
of texts from widely differing periods. This is not something to which
Jung alone is subject to, many other people also dismiss large amounts
of alchemical writings as not really alchemical, in order to further their
own interpretation as constituting the only ‘real’ alchemy. Jung, for
example, dismisses some writers for being concerned with gold making
or mysticism (CW 12: 316).
3) This method also deletes the sense of possible change and of its
consequences - and alchemy does change over time as implied in the
brief history given above. If alchemy is related to psychology and
unconscious compensation, then these changes are important to the
kinds of compensation alchemy offers. Jung himself seems to think the
psyche may change with social organisation or ideology, but deletes this
from his alchemical studies. Yet if Western alchemy is a compensation
for problems within Christianity, then it may well be expected to change
as Christianity changes, and we might also expect Jung to investigate
what this says about non-Christian alchemies - what are they
compensations for?
4) A further, particularly Jungian problem, is that many of his
examples are not examples of the same type of symbol within a similar
context, but ‘amplifications’ which follow symbols or motifs into other
kinds of contexts and into other symbols - that is they often do not
appear to clear up ‘the problem’, but proceed by association to widen the
problem. Thus in the essay on Zosimos Jung writes, in the following
order, about: sacrifice, dismemberment, flaying, stuffing, scalping,
taking the soul, torture, hell, testing metals on the touchstone, heads,
obtaining the arcane substance, gold from the sun, rays, the hermetic
krater, death and rebirth, Isis, Horus, water and the Nile, Osiris, spirit as
water as paradox, pairs of opposites, violations, states that chemical
recipes are of no interest, and discusses Mercurius, and roundness. He
covers all this within six pages (CW 13: 70-76). Some of these
associations may seem to have little to do with alchemy, or even of the
Greece of the period of Zosimos. Sometimes a reader may be hard
pressed to see the relevance of a whole chain of associations. This may
be completely legitimate and even valuable in dealing with someone’s
dream, but it does mean that the books read largely as a web of free
44
association, if scholarly ones. The finding of ‘archetypes’ is almost
inevitable if you expand the field of association without limit (or until
you reach a symbol which strikes you as numinous), but the connection
of those ‘archetypes’ to the original symbol, or textual passage, may be
extremely tenuous. It also means that Jung may actually, amidst all the
amplifications, hide his insights, or at worse, attempt to escape the
possibility that his theory of alchemy is extremely reductive.
Further, by not being grounded in investigation of particular
alchemists, or of changing patterns in the history of alchemy, his method
assumes (rather than proves) the existence of an a-historical psychology.
Given that Jung himself argues that psychology changes with the
‘dominant world view’, this is not an assumption that he can make
without much stronger justification than he ever gives. Occasional
reports of similarities with dream images of his clients, who he does not
know for certain never saw alchemical images anywhere, or of historical
gaps between the use of particular symbols, are not good enough.
We might again object to the idea that all of alchemy is archetypal
and universal. If, for example there is, as Jung seems to theorise in his
early writings, a historical connection between gnosticism, paganism
and alchemy, then it is not that surprising that they might use similar
symbols 17. Jung, depending on which theory of the archetypes he is
using (determined or undetermined), needs to show similar structures,
occurring in independent texts, which he only really attempts by
reduction of all unions to the union of binary opposites, the assertion
that vaguely circular figures are mandalas and thus intimate wholeness
of the Self, or by the use of the Quaternity which behaves similarly.
Fours in Jung’s work are specific exemplars of wholeness. One of
his recurrent criticisms of Christianity is that threes (Trinities), are
unstable and tend towards fours. The devil, or the Virgin Mary are the
unspoken fourth (despite God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Virgin and
Devil, making a five). Part of his recurrent ‘proof’ of this is to quote the
aphorism attributed to ‘Maria Prophitissa’ “One becomes two, two
becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as forth” (CW 12: 23),
but quoting one alchemist can hardly count as proof that such instability
was widely recognised or active. Clearly he can easily relate this

17. Later Jung will suggest that the issue is that there is no historical connection
(despite early alchemical writings having such a link), and therefore the same
ideas can arise spontaneously (CW 14: 438).

45
quadrature to the four elements of Western alchemy, but he knew that
Chinese alchemy uses five elements, and was probably aware that
Paracelsus in the Volumen Medicinae Paramirum implies that it takes
five kinds of medicine to treat the whole person. Yet he does not deal
with this. Similarly when his favourite alchemist, Gerard Dorn, prefers
the trinity of Paracelsus’ Three Principles to Fours (seeing fours as
ungodly), Jung has to, for once and somewhat arbitrarily, pronounce
Dorn to be incorrect. Although Jung remarks that the “use of the Trinity
formula in alchemy is so common that further documentation is
unnecessary”, he argues that as Mercury can contain both Sol and Luna,
the alchemical trinity is a quaternity in disguise (CW 14:184-5). But as
Sulphur, and Salt also sometimes contain opposites, we actually might
have a senary. The argument about the importance of fours is further
weakened as Jung can use the Cross to generate almost any single digit
number he cares to. It is possible that Jung supports fours as symbols of
wholeness because of his theory of the four functions (CW 12: 106), but
he also suggests that the four could be important as it derives from the
structure of the carbon atom (ibid: 218).
Likewise if the Ouroboros was a mandala, we might expect to find
more of them towards the end of the work, but this is not the case as far
as I know. Again, descriptions of the Philosophers’ stone seem more
likely to be symbols of the Self when it is described in terms of the
paradoxes of its manufacture, then when portrayed as a red glassy power
and weighed (as in the quotation from Van Helmont given in the history
section).
Jung also tends to take symbols which can be fairly rare and speak
of them as if many alchemists actually used them - such as the cutting of
the egg with a sword (CW 13: 82) or when writing “in alchemy the eye
is the coelum (heaven)” (CW 14: 52). Even when discussing Dorn’s
three conjunctions, he casually writes “what the alchemists call unio
mentalis” rather than “what Dorn calls unio mentalis” (CW 14: 531).
Jung claims that alchemy is represented spontaneously in the dreams
of his patients. He argues that “anyone who wishes to understand the
symbolism of dreams cannot close his eyes to the fact that the dreams of
modern men and women often contain the very images and metaphors
found in medieval treatises” (CW 13: 69). However the client Kristine
Man, who is mentioned in the “Study in the Process of Individuation” as
knowing nothing of alchemical imagery, actually appears to have had a
fair exposure to occult writings, being the daughter of a leading
American Swedenborgian, as well as having read Jung’s pre-alchemical
46
writing. The American General Hitchcock, who wrote the interpretation
of Alchemy which influenced Silberer, also wrote on Swedenborg as a
Hermetic Philosopher, and Swedenborg’s early chemical writings show
much influence of alchemy, and his later mysticism often explores the
mysteries of correspondences 18. The client who had the string of dreams

18. Thus in the Arcana Coelestria #1551 Swedenborg writes: “The most
ancient people compared the goods and truths present in man to metals”, and
goes on to say in the Apocalypse Revealed # 913: “The reason why ‘gold’
signifies the good of love is because metals, as well as each and every thing
which appears in the natural world, corresponds; gold to the good of love, silver
to the truths of wisdom, copper or brass to the good of charity, and iron to the
truths of faith”. Swedenborg (Arcana Coelestria #10300) argues that Salt is
“that longing for good which is of the love of truth”, remarking that “Salt has
this signification from its conjunctive nature; for it conjoins all things, and from
this gives them relish; salt even conjoins water and oil, which otherwise will not
combine”. Perhaps in favour of Jung’s position that his client could have
learned nothing from Swedenborg, is that Swedenborg did not seem particularly
interested in the quicksilver, Mercury and the serpent which was the focus of
some of Kristine Man’s pictures, and which constituted the somewhat tenuous
connection with alchemy, which Jung announced.
To give an example of Swedenborg’s rather unwieldy system of interpretation
in action, in the Apocalypse Explained #242 Swedenborg writes: “ ‘To buy of
Me gold tried by fire, that thou mayest be enriched,’ signifies that they should
acquire for themselves from the Lord genuine good, that they may be able to
receive the truths of faith. This is evident from the signification of ‘buying’, as
being to acquire and appropriate to oneself (see Arcana Coelestia, n. 4397,
5374, 5397, 5406, 5410, 5426); also from the signification of ‘gold tried by
fire,’ as being genuine good, thus good from the Lord (of which presently); also
from the signification of ‘that thou mayest be enriched,’ as being to be enabled
to receive the truths of faith… It now remains to be shown that ‘gold’ in the
Word signifies the good of love ”. Likewise from the same source: “ ‘He shall
purge them as gold and silver’ This is said because ‘gold’ signifies good, and
‘silver’ the truth therefrom”.
The alchemical influences on the theory of Swedenborg is not so obvious in his
‘spiritual’ works but he does write in Apocalypse Explained #1084: “In the
bosom of the earth, in certain places, are minerals impregnated with gold,
silver, copper, and iron. From the vapours stored up in the earth the gold
attracts its element, the silver, copper and iron do the same, and this by some
kind of unknown heat, distinctly, together, and in an instant”. Swedenborg may
have held two theories of particles in his life in one (1722) the particles of
different materials are of different shapes and thus materials cannot be

47
summarised in Psychology and Alchemy was, according to Hillman,
Wolfgang Pauli a noble prize winning physicist with an interest in the
history of science. Given that Pauli’s dreams are heavily summarised
and selected (Jung uses 59 out of 400 recorded dreams) and that Jung
removes the personal detail from these summaries (CW 12: 215), it is no
wonder the dreams appear to be have the impersonal type of symbolism
Jung was looking for. Even so the connection with explicit alchemical
symbolism is often tenuous.
Jung also seems to concretize, or conceptualise, some of the terms
of the work, in a way which seems incompatible with some of his earlier
remarks. Thus Sulphur becomes the motive factor in consciousness,
will, compulsion etc (CW 14: 128). Luna is wisdom and intuitiveness
(ibid: 130), Salt is cultivated wisdom (ibid: 241), The King is collective
conviction, but becomes renewal (ibid: 309) and the Nigredo is the
darkness of the unconscious. In some ways this turns the terms from
symbols indicating mysteries into signs pointing at only one thing - even
if the thing pointed at is obscure. Likewise there is a possibility that
Jung reduces different kinds of oppositions to the one model of
opposition.
Reading the works I am also struck by how reductionist Jung’s
model is. Everything in alchemy becomes synonymous of a very few
things, either consciousness, the unconscious, complexes, the Self, or
the union of opposites. Whereas what strikes me about the actual texts is
their incredible concrete specificity, not just any old couple but a
specific type of couple, in a specific environment, with specific degrees
of heat (and I mean metaphorical specificity), a specific type of mercury
etc.
Jung seems to lose this concreteness within the generalities of his
theoretical system, in which ‘the self’ and the coniunctio, despite being
‘unrepresentable’ become so abstract that they leach this specific life

transmuted into one another (1847a: 75- ), in the later theory (1740) it appears
that (most?) particles are round and properties of material depend upon the
geometry of the arrangement of particles. “There is a first substance of the
World, with others in their order similar to it” (1992: 162-). This is a difficult
issue, in the Principles of Chemistry of 1721, the cubical particles of salt seem
to be formed out of the interstices of the round particles of water when these
latter particles are arranged in a cubical shape (1847b: 28-), which implies that
at least some particles can be created by the physical arrangement of other
particles.

48
from the texts. Alchemy may not be an allegory - not always a way of
writing in which symbols are translatable into fixed one to one
correspondence into either psychological or chemical concepts. This is
particularly the case with the ‘mystical’ parts of alchemy, and it is
probable that Jung’s tendency to translate alchemical symbols into his
concepts, hides the texts from us - certainly it makes them less strange
and adds to the temptation to dismiss those which cannot be easily
decoded.
The modern esoteric alchemist Adam McLean, tries to explore some
of this specificity. In his Study Course on Alchemical Symbolism
McLean argues that the Sun and Moon, which are the best known set of
opposites are only rarely brought into resolution, but that the opposition
of male and female is frequently resolved, and in a number of different
ways. He lists three types of resolution of this latter opposite:
a) hermaphrodite,
b) marriage, &
c) procreation (child)
He explains the differences as follows: “the formation of the
hermaphrodite is a kind of inner resolution, a fusion, of the different
qualities of male and female, while the birth of a child is a resolution by
creating a third facet outside of the initial two opposites. We can see the
marriage then as a meeting of the two”.

49
 Similarly McLean suggests that there can be different ways of
resolving the opposition indicated by serpents or dragons - the eating the
tail, and the intertwining in the Caduceus - both of which may have
different kind of meanings. He adds that “the snake image is found in
many different traditions with differing resonances” - there is no
universal meaning for snake. In other words we must take the meaning
from its context.
Trees unite the above with the below (through a mediator): roots,
trunk and branches, but are also “a tree of transformation in which the
essence of the material in the realm of the roots is drawn up into the
flowering and fruiting of the tree’s canopy”. So we can ask what is
being transformed into what - what are the roots in and what is on the
branches 19.
Birds unite the above and the below but in a different way to trees 20.
“There are”, McLean writes “a veritable aviary of specific birds - Crow,
Swan, Pelican, Phoenix, Peacock, among others - but these are related to
stages of the alchemical process and are used in a quite definite
manner”. However birds in general are often used to represent the
circulations, or repeated distillations, used in laboratory alchemy. “Some
texts refer to repeated circulations as ‘eagles’, and state that the
alchemist should wait until a certain number of eagles have appeared in
their flask”.
A further use of the bird image might also reflect the Christian
tradition of the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a bird. “This
appears in some emblems as introducing a kind of grace or external

19. According to Jung the Philosophical Tree expresses experiences which are
capable of moving us “to long and thorough reflections, from which in time,
insights and convictions grow up” (CW 14: 233). He also writes “If a mandala
may be described as a symbol of the self seen in cross section, then the tree
would represent a profile view of it: the self depicted as a process of growth”
(CW 13: 253). In alchemy specifically he suggests that the tree “in general
represents the growth of the arcane substance and its transformation into
philosophical gold” (ibid: 274).
20. Jung writes that birds “represent spirits or souls, or in technical terms, the
aqua, the extracted transformative substance” (CW 14: 157). Later, and more
definitely, he writes “Birds as winged being have always symbolized spirit or
thought” (CW 13: 259). In the same essay he remarks that “Birds…. have a
special relationship to the tree… The tree with the bird stands for the opus and
its consummation” (ibid: 315).

50
impulse which enters into the alchemical process at some important
stage”.
A third idea often conveyed by bird symbols is that of the
interaction of the volatile and the fixed. One bird might be tied to the
ground, or wingless, and another rises upwards, or the birds might fight,
one on top and one on the bottom.
Furthermore McLean insists that the meaning of a symbol can
change from text to text and that in alchemical plates the symbols are
not just units by themselves but can enter into relationship with each
other, and this relationship must be considered. Thus he suggests that
“the fusion into the hermaphrodite” in an emblem is “paralleled in other
domains pictured through the subsidiary symbols in the emblem. Thus
what is happening in the background or on the ground beneath is vitally
important for us understanding the symbolic force of the emblem”.
McLean points to some of the simpler of these relationships, such as
whether the images are in the left or right hand side of the picture, at the
top or the bottom, or being arranged to form a triangle, a square or so
on.
“Alchemical emblems are not textual information encoded in
symbols which can be precisely decrypted into a ‘meaning’, but they are
instead dynamic gateways, before which we can stand and allow
ourselves to enter into an inner dialogue with the imagery”. I would
suggest the same is true of dreams, - they are not texts to be decoded,
but presentations to be explored.
Even if McLean is wrong in his assertions, they do point at a more
complex exploration of the meaning of alchemical symbols than that
which is undertaken by Jung, and with the addition of both historical and
chemical explanation, might well prove greatly informative.

Conclusion
So what did Jung most obviously gain from alchemy?
It reinforced the idea that psychology was not about will. We have
to observe the work in progress, changing tack many times and not push
it to a pre-ordained conclusion. To be successful we have, like the
alchemists often said, to give up the desire to make gold in order to
make gold. The trend of alchemy is to allow things to manifest, and to
reveal their capacities. Things can be messy. Depression is not
necessarily to be avoided. Things can be dangerous. There is no fixed
order to the stages of the work The language of myth and symbol is an
51
important way of searching after something that is quested for but
unknown until it arises. Paradox and contradiction are important
psychological facts. Furthermore therapy is not about making one side
dominant, it is about synthesising and reconciling divisions from another
point of view. The ego can never become dominant it is always off the
centre of the self - we cannot have the Freudian formulation that where
the id is there the ego shall be.
It is clear that Jung gets much from the alchemists, that they deepen
tendencies within his own works, but it is extremely doubtful that he
clears up the mysteries of the texts themselves. It might be possible to
suggest that if the alchemist projected the secrets of their psyche onto
the Work, Jung projected the secrets of his Analytic Psychology onto
Alchemy.

52
Glossary

Prima Materia Base substance, Chaos

Massa Confusa Undifferentiated substance.
Nigredo Blackening
Albedo Whitening
Rubedo Reddening
Separatio Separation of joined parts.
Separation of opposites
Coniunctio Joining
Mortificatio Causing to die, to torture or mortify
Putrefactio Allowing to putrefy, to ferment, emit bubbles
and foul gases
Calcinatio Calcination (burning to ash)
Solutio Dissolution, to dissolve
Coagulatio Coagulation, to make solid
Sublimatio Volatilisation, turning into air
Proiectio Throwing the Philosopher's Stone onto the substance to be
transformed, usually while the substance is melted.
Multiplicatio Multiplying the Gold you have obtained.
Medatatio Inner dialogue
Imaginatio Imaginal potentizing
Lapis Stone, usually the Philosopher's Stone
or Lapis Philosophorum

53
 Bibliography

References to works by Jung are, when ever possible, by Volume

number of the Collected Works and then by Page number. For example
CW 12, is collected Works Volume 12.

Ashmole, Elias
(1652) Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, London. Reprint 1967, Johnson
Reprint Co, NY.
Bachelard, Gaston
(1987) The Psychoanalysis of Fire, Quartet, London.
Caley, Earl R.
(1926) “The Leyden Papyrus X: An English Translation with Brief Notes”,
Journal of Chemical Education, Vol.3, No. 10, pp1149-1166.
(1927) “The Stockolm Papyrus: An English Translation with Brief Notes”,
Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 4, No. 8, pp 979-1002.
Crossland, Maurice
(1978) Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry, Dover, NY.
Davis, Tierny L.
(1931) “The Mirror of Alchemy of Roger Bacon”, Journal of Chemical
Education, Vol.8, pp1945-53.
Debus, Alan
(1966) The English Paracelsians, Franklin Watts, NY.
Edinger, Edward F.
(1985) Anatomy of the Psyche, Open Court, NY.
(1996) The Aion Lectures, Inner City Books, Toronto
Eliade, Mircea
(1962) The Forge and the Crucible, Rider & Co, London
Hannaway, Owen
(1975) The Chemists and the Word: the Didactic Origins of Chemistry,
Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore.
Hillman, James
(1978) “Therapeutic Value of Alchemical Language”, Dragonflies: Studies
in Imaginal Psychology, Vol.1. No.1. pp33-42.
(1982a) “The Imagination of Air and the Collapse of Alchemy”, Eranos
Jahrbuch, Vol.50, pp273-333.
(1982b) “Salt: A chapter in Alchemical Psychology”, in Joanne Stroud &
Gail Thomas eds. Images of the Untouched, Dallas, Spring Publications,
1982
(1991) “ The Yellowing of the Work”, in Mary Ann Mattoon, ed. Paris
1989, Personal and Archetypal Dynamics in the Analytical Relationship:
Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress for Analytical
Psychology, Daimon Verlag 1991.

54
Idhe, A. J.
(1964) “Alchemy in Reverse: Robert Boyle and the Degradation of Gold”,
Chymia Vol.9.
Jacobi, Jolande
(1968) The Psychology of C.G. Jung: An Introduction with Illustrations,
RKP, London.
Jaffe, Aniela
(1989) From the Life and Work of C.G. Jung, Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln.
Josten, C.H.
(1949) “The text of John Dastin’s ‘Letter to Pope John XXII’”, Ambix,
Vol.4, No.1&2, pp34-51.
Jung, C.G. (& Jaffe, A).
(1963) Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Pantheon Books, NY.
Jung, C.G. & Eliade, M.
(1952) “Eliade’s Interview for ‘Combat’ ”, in William McGuire & R.F.C.
Hull eds. C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Thames &
Hudson, London, 1978.
Levi-Strauss, Claude.
(1987) Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, RKP, London.
McLean, Adam
(2001) A Study Course on Alchemical Symbolism, CD-Rom, Adam McLean,
Glasgow.
Needham, Joseph, et al.
(1983) Science & Civilisation in China, Vol.V:5, Spagyrical Discovery and
Invention: Physiological Alchemy, CUP.
Noll, Richard
(1997) The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, Random House, NY.
Origen
(1976) Contra Celsum, in The Ante Nicene Fathers, Vol.4, Eerdmans,
Michegan.
Pagel, Walter
(1982a) Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era
of the Renaissance (2nd Edition), Karger, Basel.
(1982b) Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and
Medicine,CUP.
Paracelsus
(1894) The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus the Great,
Vol.2, ed. by A.E. Waite, London. Reprint: University Books, NY, 1967.
(1949) Volumen Medicinae Parmirum, Translated from the Original German
by Kurt F. Leidecker, Supplement to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
No.11, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.
Partington
(1961) A History of Chemistry, Vol. 2, Macmillan, London

55
Petrus Bonus
(1894) The New Pearl of Great Price, ed. and trans. A.E. Waite, J Elliot,
London.
Principe, Lawrence
(1987) “‘Chemical Translation’ and the Role of Impurities in Alchemy:
Examples from Basil Valentine’s Triumph-Wagen”, Ambix, Vol.34, No.1..
(1998) The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest,
Princeton UP.
Principe, L. & Newman, W.
(2001) “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy”, in W.R.
Newman & A. Grafton ed. Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in
Early Modern Europe.
Read, John
(1947) Humour and Humanism in Chemistry, G. Bell & Sons, London.
Ruland, Martin
(1893) A Lexicon of Alchemy , trans & edited by A.E. Waite, Reprint Samuel
Weiser, York Beach.
Singer, Charles
(1948) The Earliest Chemical Industry, Folio Society, London.
Stapleton, H.E., Lewis, G.L, Sherwood Taylor, F.
(1949) “The sayings of Hermes quoted in the Ma Al -Waraqi of Ibn Umail”,
Ambix, vol 3, pp 69-90.
Swedenborg, Emanuel
(1847a) Miscellaneous Observations Connected with the Physical Sciences,
London, Reprint Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn, 1976.
(1847b) Some Specimens of a Work on the Principles of Chemistry, with
Other Treatises, London, Reprint Swedenborg Scientific Association, Bryn
Athyn, 1976.0
(1992) Scientific and Philosophical Treatises (1716-1740), Swedenborg
Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn.
(1998) New Search 98 Release 2: (Collected Works Cd-Rom), Academy of
the New Church.
Tilton, Hereward
(2002) The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in
the Works of Count Michael Maier (1569-1622), Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis,
Department of Studies in Religion, University of Queensland.

56