Alchemical Active Imagination
by Marie-Louise Von Franz
Ch. 1 - Origins of Alchemy
Alchemy sprung from a mix of Greek pre-Socratic philosophy and Egyptian ritual and astrology.
Greeks gave us matter and space, time, the concept of energy, the concept of the particle, the concept of affinity of the elements.
Greeks switched from a religious-mythic view of the world to more rationalistic, philosophical one.
Egyptians had chemical techniques but they were mostly used in service to their death rituals. These rituals were observed and practiced so that the deceased would have a proper afterlife.
The Egyptians had a pantheon of Gods behind which there was a larger, more encompassing Godhead--- the Ba-soul of the universe. The dead person, upon death, was transformed into that god.
The Sun-god Re attained dominance at one point in the Egyptian collective pscyhe---the archetypal principle of consciousness came to helm the society, and so there was an increase in rational consciousness. Compensatory to this the more unrestrained aspects--the irrational, the emotional, the Dionysian---of feeling life went down to god Osiris. In contrast to the ruling, ordering sun god, Osiris was the suffering god---representing the passive, suffering aspect of nature and of the psyche. Osiris is often represented as being vegetal in nature, alluding to the seething, passive, suffering flux of beings in nature.
The Ba-soul normally is met only after death---during life man would live by society's rules and regulations (Persona is held accountable). But what if it appeared during life? This happens in the scroll “Dispute Between a Man and his Ba.”
Egyptians wanted to assure the immortality of the soul through the preservation of the body.
The link between alchemy and astrology---one must wait for the right day for the universe to arrange itself.
Jung would say this is a forerunner of contemporary psychology's view of synchronicity.
The mix of extraverted and introverted thinking produced alchemy. There are outer chemical aspects as well as inner aspects to the work.
The introverts approached the problem having presupposed that the mystery of the structure of the universe was already in themselves, in their own bodies and in that part of their personality we'd call the unconscious.
Hence the introverted aspect of alchemy led to forms of deep introspection and meditative exercises similar to yoga.
Science is fundamentally an extraverted practice. However the prevailing motivating dynamic behind the great scientists has always been to understand the universe--to know God, in some sense.
Alchemy concerns itself with the prima materia -- the material by which everything else is made.
Alchemy was a form of active imagination with materials -- the complexes and archetypes were called forth and you had it out with them. As a sculptor or painter has it out with himself in the creation of a work, an alchemist has it out with himself in the process of experimentation.
---
“Now, you see, if you think of an archetypal motif and of an archetypcal background, such as appears very often in myths and fairty tales, people get caught in a trap. They enter a castle and the door shuts behind them, and that always means that they are in the Self. Now they have reached that point in their psyche where they can no longer run away from themselves. Now they are in for it, and the ego, which always flirts with the idea of getting away from what it ought to do, knows that it is caught in the mousetrap and hitherto has to fulfill the requirements of the Self and will not be released before that is accomplished.
In all fairy tales and mythological patterns one is always released again, in spite of everything, but only after one has done the heroic deed. Trying to run away is no good, for you cannot escape.”
--
pp 24-25.
Chapter 2 - Divine Power in Matter
Alchemy tended to be upheld and tolerated in the more individualistic, introverted traditions -- e.g. Shiite -- rather than the orthodox, book-based, literalist ones -- e.g. Sunni.
Alchemy was never hostile to prevailing religious traditions but rather formed itself as an undercurrent to them, compensatory in nature as dreams are to day-consciousness.
Jung posits that the soul is the objective psyche -- it lives in the deeper layers of the unconscious, far, far below the ephemeral desires, hopes and wishes of the restless ego.
The Trinity is based on the masculine number three, whereas alchemy is based on the feminine number four.
Alchemy is to dream as religion is to consciousness.
The unconscious doesn't act contrary to the conscious mind--it modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner.
Christ's chthonic brother is a referent in alchemical texts, signifying that the alchemists were after the nighttime forms.
Alchemy at its heart involves individual experimentation with the unknown.
--
“Through study one acquires knowledge; through knowledge, love, which creates devotion; devotion creates repitition, and by making continuous repitition one creates in oneself experience, virtue, and power, through which the miraculous work is done, and the work in nature is of this quality. “ Gustav Dorn
---
p 36.
In a way the person effecting the process has a critical influence on the dynamics. The self is extrojected into the work.
A transformation is induced in oneself--one is motivated by an inner factor heretofore unseen.
Dorn says that alchemy is work on one's personality as well as upon outer matter.
--
The famous Giordano Bruno too believed in this and sketched a whole theory in which he showed how a man could become a magus, a magician, through inner meditative exercises. Giardano Bruno himself tried to do this by meditating on certain mandala structures, of which he drew a countless number, and recommended one special one, namely a mandala made from metals and chemical materials that one had to hang over one's bed and meditate on. Bruno pointed out that if one meditated on this chemically real mandala for years, one unified one's own inner personality and saved one's soul from extraverted distractions and dissociation. If this was done with the proper attitude, with certain exercises which he called "contractions" -- one became a potent magus, and even outer materials would begin to play a part.
--
p. 38
Synchronistic events encouraged the efforts of the alchemists. In driving at the heart of all existence, synchronicities act as signposts indicating the proper direction for the alchemists' efforts.
“Form itself consists in the influence of the ethereal region on the elemental world.” (p. 41)
In order for the elemental world to be ready for, or open to, receive the influence of form, it must be first broken down into its more chaotic, primal state. Hence, the nigredo, or putrefying process.
In alchemy coarse materials must undergo putrefaction and corruption---a material returns first to its original chaotic state, before form swoops in and structures it.
Alchemical gold refers to the male God's creative seed in matter.
The Dragon story must be read in the book or simply remembered, it is too complex to take notes on.
The Self is to be observed and its influence is to be lived out. Its contents are brought into consciousness, and ego-relations are to be established with it, by establishing a relationship with one's dreams, dreams being objective psychic events that fall outside of an individual's volition.
"Dorn believes that our simple nature is endowed with a certain kind of extraverted, dissociated, impulsive restlnessness. Natural man always has something apelike in him; people cannot even sit quietly but wriggle and scratch....Try once to think of nothing even for half a second. You cannot! You will talk to yourself, think about your problems or about what you have to do, and so on. It is the constant autonomous restlessness of the life we lead, and our willpower is insufficient to enable a simple inner life to overcome that autonomous liveliness. With the help of the Self, however, it becomes possible. It is that which quiets and gives peace to this kind of apelike dissociated activity of our body and mind... In modern psychological language we would say that through meditative concentration and introversion the unconscious begins to flow. The springs of the dream life, of the objective psyche, starts flowing again in contrast to the flickering restlessness of our conscious mind, and appease it.”
p. 49
"...Of this constant repetition and devoted concentration on the inner life of the soul, something is born within one, namely, a relatively constant realization of the Self."
"One day, after having struggled with one's miseries, it happens that one feels inwardly at peace, that one has connected with one's own inner center. In Chinese terms, one is in Tao and one is happy; one feels, "Now I understand what it all means and now I have it"--but two minutes later the devil has won again, and it's all lost once more. However the child would express that this inner experience has now become a constant presence within oneself, even if the dragon flies away again; that is to say, ordinary man gets going again with his own nonsensical thoughts and actions, but in spite of that, inwardly there is now another entity at the bottom of the soul, so to speak, which is a constant personification and realization of the Self."
p. 49
Gold in alchemy refers to the divine creative something that is present in everything. Gold is why there is something instead of nothing. The seed of God in all matter that creates something from nothing.
A common theme is the introspected, discovered, created Self versus exteriorized distraction and dissociation. It cannot simply be fixed by the ego -- like Rohr’s claim that making the false self feel better about itself is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or solving problems on the same level at which they are created. Contact must be made with autonomous contents and the Self. With time and effort the inner experience becomes constant and matured.
Ch. 3
“The oneness and wholeness of the personality exists potentially at the back of the ego complex; it is its parent. But insofar as we realize the Self through a conscious effort, by concentrating on our dreams, it becomes a part of our conscious personality; in that form it is like an inner child which now nourishes itself like a salamander in the fire of emotion and keeps growing. The awareness of the importance and activities of the Self increases more and more. That the Self attracts life from the fire would mean that it attracts more and more libido.”
p. 54
“But if this child grows and becomes red and takes on the color of blood, it would mean that the realization of the Self encompasses or comprehends more and more of the life of that person, attracting more and more libido until there is a unified inner personality which permeates all activities of the conscious person. In this stage one has to wash or add more water to the matured inner content, obviously in support of what happens afterwards, for then comes this strange thought: that suddenly the red salamander-child begins to cure sick people; it becomes a kind of general medicine.”
p. 55
This can be interpreted to mean perhaps that a personality in whom contact with the Self has been broached adequately can draw the sick into the healing process--like metal fillings to a magnet.
Another way, a bit muddled, as Von-Franz herself admits:
“Perhaps one could say that the archetype of the Self gets into a more and more excited or activated state, whereby more and more synchronistic events happen outside and around it which relate to it. A kind of experience takes place of the oneness of the Self with what one generally conceives, throughout one’s life, to be the cosmos or the whole outer world.”
p. 56
“Then comes the remarkable passage that I quoted earlier, where Dorn points out that one should not seek what one needs from the outside, for we have it all with or even within us, though it does not come from us.”
p. 57
Dorn’s terminology:
Anima:
The force or impulse of life.
Animus or Spiritus:
The willpower to do the right thing. The center of willpower, something like the ego. The ego intention of the personality.
Body:
Both the physical body and a facet of the personality that is purely rationalistic, a sober realist who says “I only believe what I can see before my eyes and all the rest is idealist fantasy-junk.” Sensate, external sensate.
These three are somewhat chaotically mixed up.
You have to cut them up (distractio) and unify the anima and the animus; then they become the mens, the mind, or also the internus homo, the man who is turned completely inward or is concentrated on the internal.
“If one does not succeed in building up the inner man [the mens], then one remains an exteriorized human being and an abyss of darkness. We would say that anyone who cannot bring forth this distractio remains in unconsciousness.”
The body however returns later on. It is not simply discarded as with conventional ascetic exercises.
Predominantly the body is simply subdued, temporarily, through asceticism. But then later it comes back and joins the illuminated state reached first through the capacities and effort of the mens. In this way the result that the alchemists were aiming for was more real and practical than that of Christian or Buddhist ascetics, who wanted to simply toss the body aside as an inveterate evil.
Dorn thought that the mission was not to know who one is, but what one is. That is, to be more objective about the scope of one’s entirety beyond the inadequate, biased subjectivity of the ego.
---
Re: The Self
‘Everybody should carefully consider within himself what I have said before and should taste it again and again, as if drinking it again and again, and should carry it around with an honest mind. Then slowly certain sparks will come. From day to day they will come alive and alight before the inner mental eyes, and slowly those sparks will coalesce into such a light that in time one will always know what one needs and will thus only be attached to that inner truth by which great tranquility and great quietness of mind are achieved.’ -Dorn
“We cannot approach this inner experience in a beeline. But if one meditates on the facts that Dorn has presented here, then one wll always have a spark--one could say an ‘Aha’ reaction--and these many, many sparks of light or ‘Aha’ reactions will slowsly become something more continuous and will consolidate into what one would call in the language of Jungian psychology a constant awareness of the Self. This exactly describes what we are trying to do.”
“The dream one gets at night is always like a letter from the same inner center, from the Self. Every dream is that, and the writer of the letter is always the same: the Self, the one thing, the quid. Therefore, if you go on for a long time having these ‘Aha’ reactions, you slowly become aware of the nature of that nocturnal letter writer, or constantly aware of the presence and reality of the Self. That gives the ego peace of mind.”
p.72
True Self / False Self. The restless scurrying about of the dissociate, discarnate, scattered False Self is amended or resolved by an awareness of the inner unity of the True Self. While Rohr referred to meditation in the style of Tolle, the Rawness asserted that any sort of awareness of the True Self, no matter how wonky it appears to outsiders, as is perhaps the case with his given examples of Kabbalah or Buddhist meditation, needs to be done in order to have a sense of inner wholeness, of inner poise, to balance out the persona.
---
by Marie-Louise Von Franz
Ch. 1 - Origins of Alchemy
Alchemy sprung from a mix of Greek pre-Socratic philosophy and Egyptian ritual and astrology.
Greeks gave us matter and space, time, the concept of energy, the concept of the particle, the concept of affinity of the elements.
Greeks switched from a religious-mythic view of the world to more rationalistic, philosophical one.
Egyptians had chemical techniques but they were mostly used in service to their death rituals. These rituals were observed and practiced so that the deceased would have a proper afterlife.
The Egyptians had a pantheon of Gods behind which there was a larger, more encompassing Godhead--- the Ba-soul of the universe. The dead person, upon death, was transformed into that god.
The Sun-god Re attained dominance at one point in the Egyptian collective pscyhe---the archetypal principle of consciousness came to helm the society, and so there was an increase in rational consciousness. Compensatory to this the more unrestrained aspects--the irrational, the emotional, the Dionysian---of feeling life went down to god Osiris. In contrast to the ruling, ordering sun god, Osiris was the suffering god---representing the passive, suffering aspect of nature and of the psyche. Osiris is often represented as being vegetal in nature, alluding to the seething, passive, suffering flux of beings in nature.
The Ba-soul normally is met only after death---during life man would live by society's rules and regulations (Persona is held accountable). But what if it appeared during life? This happens in the scroll “Dispute Between a Man and his Ba.”
Egyptians wanted to assure the immortality of the soul through the preservation of the body.
The link between alchemy and astrology---one must wait for the right day for the universe to arrange itself.
Jung would say this is a forerunner of contemporary psychology's view of synchronicity.
The mix of extraverted and introverted thinking produced alchemy. There are outer chemical aspects as well as inner aspects to the work.
The introverts approached the problem having presupposed that the mystery of the structure of the universe was already in themselves, in their own bodies and in that part of their personality we'd call the unconscious.
Hence the introverted aspect of alchemy led to forms of deep introspection and meditative exercises similar to yoga.
Science is fundamentally an extraverted practice. However the prevailing motivating dynamic behind the great scientists has always been to understand the universe--to know God, in some sense.
Alchemy concerns itself with the prima materia -- the material by which everything else is made.
Alchemy was a form of active imagination with materials -- the complexes and archetypes were called forth and you had it out with them. As a sculptor or painter has it out with himself in the creation of a work, an alchemist has it out with himself in the process of experimentation.
---
“Now, you see, if you think of an archetypal motif and of an archetypcal background, such as appears very often in myths and fairty tales, people get caught in a trap. They enter a castle and the door shuts behind them, and that always means that they are in the Self. Now they have reached that point in their psyche where they can no longer run away from themselves. Now they are in for it, and the ego, which always flirts with the idea of getting away from what it ought to do, knows that it is caught in the mousetrap and hitherto has to fulfill the requirements of the Self and will not be released before that is accomplished.
In all fairy tales and mythological patterns one is always released again, in spite of everything, but only after one has done the heroic deed. Trying to run away is no good, for you cannot escape.”
--
pp 24-25.
Chapter 2 - Divine Power in Matter
Alchemy tended to be upheld and tolerated in the more individualistic, introverted traditions -- e.g. Shiite -- rather than the orthodox, book-based, literalist ones -- e.g. Sunni.
Alchemy was never hostile to prevailing religious traditions but rather formed itself as an undercurrent to them, compensatory in nature as dreams are to day-consciousness.
Jung posits that the soul is the objective psyche -- it lives in the deeper layers of the unconscious, far, far below the ephemeral desires, hopes and wishes of the restless ego.
The Trinity is based on the masculine number three, whereas alchemy is based on the feminine number four.
Alchemy is to dream as religion is to consciousness.
The unconscious doesn't act contrary to the conscious mind--it modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner.
Christ's chthonic brother is a referent in alchemical texts, signifying that the alchemists were after the nighttime forms.
Alchemy at its heart involves individual experimentation with the unknown.
--
“Through study one acquires knowledge; through knowledge, love, which creates devotion; devotion creates repitition, and by making continuous repitition one creates in oneself experience, virtue, and power, through which the miraculous work is done, and the work in nature is of this quality. “ Gustav Dorn
---
p 36.
In a way the person effecting the process has a critical influence on the dynamics. The self is extrojected into the work.
A transformation is induced in oneself--one is motivated by an inner factor heretofore unseen.
Dorn says that alchemy is work on one's personality as well as upon outer matter.
--
The famous Giordano Bruno too believed in this and sketched a whole theory in which he showed how a man could become a magus, a magician, through inner meditative exercises. Giardano Bruno himself tried to do this by meditating on certain mandala structures, of which he drew a countless number, and recommended one special one, namely a mandala made from metals and chemical materials that one had to hang over one's bed and meditate on. Bruno pointed out that if one meditated on this chemically real mandala for years, one unified one's own inner personality and saved one's soul from extraverted distractions and dissociation. If this was done with the proper attitude, with certain exercises which he called "contractions" -- one became a potent magus, and even outer materials would begin to play a part.
--
p. 38
Synchronistic events encouraged the efforts of the alchemists. In driving at the heart of all existence, synchronicities act as signposts indicating the proper direction for the alchemists' efforts.
“Form itself consists in the influence of the ethereal region on the elemental world.” (p. 41)
In order for the elemental world to be ready for, or open to, receive the influence of form, it must be first broken down into its more chaotic, primal state. Hence, the nigredo, or putrefying process.
In alchemy coarse materials must undergo putrefaction and corruption---a material returns first to its original chaotic state, before form swoops in and structures it.
Alchemical gold refers to the male God's creative seed in matter.
The Dragon story must be read in the book or simply remembered, it is too complex to take notes on.
The Self is to be observed and its influence is to be lived out. Its contents are brought into consciousness, and ego-relations are to be established with it, by establishing a relationship with one's dreams, dreams being objective psychic events that fall outside of an individual's volition.
"Dorn believes that our simple nature is endowed with a certain kind of extraverted, dissociated, impulsive restlnessness. Natural man always has something apelike in him; people cannot even sit quietly but wriggle and scratch....Try once to think of nothing even for half a second. You cannot! You will talk to yourself, think about your problems or about what you have to do, and so on. It is the constant autonomous restlessness of the life we lead, and our willpower is insufficient to enable a simple inner life to overcome that autonomous liveliness. With the help of the Self, however, it becomes possible. It is that which quiets and gives peace to this kind of apelike dissociated activity of our body and mind... In modern psychological language we would say that through meditative concentration and introversion the unconscious begins to flow. The springs of the dream life, of the objective psyche, starts flowing again in contrast to the flickering restlessness of our conscious mind, and appease it.”
p. 49
"...Of this constant repetition and devoted concentration on the inner life of the soul, something is born within one, namely, a relatively constant realization of the Self."
"One day, after having struggled with one's miseries, it happens that one feels inwardly at peace, that one has connected with one's own inner center. In Chinese terms, one is in Tao and one is happy; one feels, "Now I understand what it all means and now I have it"--but two minutes later the devil has won again, and it's all lost once more. However the child would express that this inner experience has now become a constant presence within oneself, even if the dragon flies away again; that is to say, ordinary man gets going again with his own nonsensical thoughts and actions, but in spite of that, inwardly there is now another entity at the bottom of the soul, so to speak, which is a constant personification and realization of the Self."
p. 49
Gold in alchemy refers to the divine creative something that is present in everything. Gold is why there is something instead of nothing. The seed of God in all matter that creates something from nothing.
A common theme is the introspected, discovered, created Self versus exteriorized distraction and dissociation. It cannot simply be fixed by the ego -- like Rohr’s claim that making the false self feel better about itself is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or solving problems on the same level at which they are created. Contact must be made with autonomous contents and the Self. With time and effort the inner experience becomes constant and matured.
Ch. 3
“The oneness and wholeness of the personality exists potentially at the back of the ego complex; it is its parent. But insofar as we realize the Self through a conscious effort, by concentrating on our dreams, it becomes a part of our conscious personality; in that form it is like an inner child which now nourishes itself like a salamander in the fire of emotion and keeps growing. The awareness of the importance and activities of the Self increases more and more. That the Self attracts life from the fire would mean that it attracts more and more libido.”
p. 54
“But if this child grows and becomes red and takes on the color of blood, it would mean that the realization of the Self encompasses or comprehends more and more of the life of that person, attracting more and more libido until there is a unified inner personality which permeates all activities of the conscious person. In this stage one has to wash or add more water to the matured inner content, obviously in support of what happens afterwards, for then comes this strange thought: that suddenly the red salamander-child begins to cure sick people; it becomes a kind of general medicine.”
p. 55
This can be interpreted to mean perhaps that a personality in whom contact with the Self has been broached adequately can draw the sick into the healing process--like metal fillings to a magnet.
Another way, a bit muddled, as Von-Franz herself admits:
“Perhaps one could say that the archetype of the Self gets into a more and more excited or activated state, whereby more and more synchronistic events happen outside and around it which relate to it. A kind of experience takes place of the oneness of the Self with what one generally conceives, throughout one’s life, to be the cosmos or the whole outer world.”
p. 56
“Then comes the remarkable passage that I quoted earlier, where Dorn points out that one should not seek what one needs from the outside, for we have it all with or even within us, though it does not come from us.”
p. 57
Dorn’s terminology:
Anima:
The force or impulse of life.
Animus or Spiritus:
The willpower to do the right thing. The center of willpower, something like the ego. The ego intention of the personality.
Body:
Both the physical body and a facet of the personality that is purely rationalistic, a sober realist who says “I only believe what I can see before my eyes and all the rest is idealist fantasy-junk.” Sensate, external sensate.
These three are somewhat chaotically mixed up.
You have to cut them up (distractio) and unify the anima and the animus; then they become the mens, the mind, or also the internus homo, the man who is turned completely inward or is concentrated on the internal.
“If one does not succeed in building up the inner man [the mens], then one remains an exteriorized human being and an abyss of darkness. We would say that anyone who cannot bring forth this distractio remains in unconsciousness.”
The body however returns later on. It is not simply discarded as with conventional ascetic exercises.
Predominantly the body is simply subdued, temporarily, through asceticism. But then later it comes back and joins the illuminated state reached first through the capacities and effort of the mens. In this way the result that the alchemists were aiming for was more real and practical than that of Christian or Buddhist ascetics, who wanted to simply toss the body aside as an inveterate evil.
Dorn thought that the mission was not to know who one is, but what one is. That is, to be more objective about the scope of one’s entirety beyond the inadequate, biased subjectivity of the ego.
---
Re: The Self
‘Everybody should carefully consider within himself what I have said before and should taste it again and again, as if drinking it again and again, and should carry it around with an honest mind. Then slowly certain sparks will come. From day to day they will come alive and alight before the inner mental eyes, and slowly those sparks will coalesce into such a light that in time one will always know what one needs and will thus only be attached to that inner truth by which great tranquility and great quietness of mind are achieved.’ -Dorn
“We cannot approach this inner experience in a beeline. But if one meditates on the facts that Dorn has presented here, then one wll always have a spark--one could say an ‘Aha’ reaction--and these many, many sparks of light or ‘Aha’ reactions will slowsly become something more continuous and will consolidate into what one would call in the language of Jungian psychology a constant awareness of the Self. This exactly describes what we are trying to do.”
“The dream one gets at night is always like a letter from the same inner center, from the Self. Every dream is that, and the writer of the letter is always the same: the Self, the one thing, the quid. Therefore, if you go on for a long time having these ‘Aha’ reactions, you slowly become aware of the nature of that nocturnal letter writer, or constantly aware of the presence and reality of the Self. That gives the ego peace of mind.”
p.72
True Self / False Self. The restless scurrying about of the dissociate, discarnate, scattered False Self is amended or resolved by an awareness of the inner unity of the True Self. While Rohr referred to meditation in the style of Tolle, the Rawness asserted that any sort of awareness of the True Self, no matter how wonky it appears to outsiders, as is perhaps the case with his given examples of Kabbalah or Buddhist meditation, needs to be done in order to have a sense of inner wholeness, of inner poise, to balance out the persona.
---
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