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The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis
Author: Carl Gustav Jung, R.F.C. Hull (Translator)
Publisher: Princeton University Press (1963)
152

The attention given to the unconscious has the effect of incubation, a brooding over the slow fire needed in the initial stages of the work; hence the frequent use of the terms decoctio, digestio, putrefactio, solutio. It is really as if attention warmed the unconscious and activated it, thereby breaking down the barriers that separate it from consciousness.


56-58

These paradoxes culminate in an allegedly ancient 'monument,' an epitaph said to have been found in Bologna, known as the Aelia-Laelia-Crispis Inscription. It was appropriated by the alchemists, who claimed in the words of Michael Maier, that 'it was set up by an artificer of old to the honour of God and in praise of the chymic art.' I will first give the text of this highly remarkable inscription: \n*Aelia Laelia Crispis*, neither man nor woman, nor mongrel, nor maid, nor boy, nor crone, nor chaste, nor whore, nor virtuous, but all.\nCarried away neither by hunger, nor by sword, nor by poison, but by all. - Neither in heaven, nor in earth, nor in water, but everwhere is her resting place.\n*Lucius Agatho Priscius*, neither husband, nor lover, nor kinsman, neither mourning, nor rejoicing, nor weeping, (raised up) neither mound, nor pyramid, nor tomb, but all.\nHe knows and knows not (what) he raised up to whom.\nThis is a tomb that has no body in it.\nThis is a body that has no tomb round it.\nBut body and tomb are the same. \n\nLet it be said at once: this epitaph is sheer nonsense, a joke, but one that for centuries brilliantly fulfilled its function as a flypaper for every conceivable projection that buzzed in the human mind. It gave rise to a 'cause célèbre,' a regular psychological 'affair' that lasted for the greater part of two centuries and produced a spate of commentaries, finally coming to an inglorious end as one of the spurious texts of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and thereafter passing into oblivion. The reason why I am digging up this curiosity again in the twentieth century is that it serves as a paradigm for that peculiar attitude of mind which made it possible for the men of the Middle Ages to write hundreds of treatises about something that did not exist and was therefore completely unknowable. The interesting thing is not this futile stalking-horse but the projections it aroused. There is revealed in them an extraordinary propensity to come out with the wildest fantasies and speculation - a psychic condition which is met with today, in a correspondingly erudite milieu, only as an isolated pathological phenomenon. In such cases one always finds that the unconscious is under some kind of pressure and is charged with highly affective contents. \n... \nHowever nonsensical and insipid the Aelia-Laelia epitaph may look, it becomes significant when we regard it as a question which no less than two centuries have asked themselves: What is it that you do not understand and can only be expressed in unfathomable paradoxes?


7-8

The opposites between which Ostanes stands are thus masculine / feminine on the one hand and good / evil on the other. The way he speaks of the four luminaries - he does not know how to save himself from them - suggests that he is subject to Heimarmene, the compulsion of the stars; that is, to a transconscious factor beyond the reach of the human will. Apart from this compulsion, the injurious effect of the four planets is due to the fact t hat each of them exerts its specific influence on man and makes him a diversity of persons, whereas he should be one.1\n\n1 The idea of uniting the Many into One is found not only in alchemy but also in Origen, In Libr. I Reg. [I Sam.] Hom., I, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 998): 'There was one man. We, who are still sinners, cannot obtain this title of praise, for each of us is not one but many...See how he who thinks himself one is not one, but seems to have as many personalities as he has moods, as also the Scripture says: A fool is changed as the moon.' In another homily, In Ezech., 9, 1 (Migne, P.G., vol. 13, col. 732) he says: 'Where there are sins, there is multitude...but where virtue is, there is singleness, there is union.' Cf. Porphyry the Philosopher to His Wife Marcella, trans. by Zimmern, p. 61: 'If thou wouldst practise to ascend into theyself, collecting together all the powers which the body hath scattered and broken up into a multitude of parts unlike their former unity...' Likewise the Gospel of Philip (cited from Epiphanius, Panarium, XXVI, 13): 'I have taken knowledge (saith the soul) of myself, and have gathered myself together out of every quarter and have not begotten (sown) children unto the Ruler, but have rooted out his roots and gathered together the members that were scattered abroad. And I know thee who thou art, for I (she saith) am of them that are from above.' (James, *The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 12.) Cf. also Panarium, XXVI, 3: 'I am thou, and thou art I, and wherever thou art, there I am, and I am scattered in all things, and from wherever thou wilt thou canst gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest together thyself.' The inner multiplicity of man reflects his microcosmic nature, which contains within it the stars and their (astrological) influences. Thus Origen (*In Lev. Hom., V, 2; Migne, P.G., vol. 12, cols. 449-50) says: 'Understand that thou hast within thyself herds of cattle...flocks of sheep and flocks of goats...Understand that the fowls of the air are also within thee. Marvel not if we say that these are within thee, but understand that thou thyself art another world in little, and has within thee the sun and the moon, and also the stars..Thou seest that thou has all those things which the world hath.' And Dorn ('De tenebris contra naturam,' *Theatr. chem. I, p. 533) says: 'To the four less perfect planets in the heavens there correspond the four elements in our body, that is, earth to Saturn, water to Mercury [instead of the moon, see above], air to Venus, and fire to Mars. Of these it is built up, and it is weak on account of the imperfection of the parts. And so let a tree be planted from them, whose root is ascribed to Saturn,' etc., meaning the philosophical tree, symbol of the development process that results in the unity of the filius Philosophorum, or lapis. Cf. my 'The Philosophical Tree,' par. 409.


4-5

I would mention the eagle and toad ('the eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground'), which are the 'emblem' of Avicenna in Michael Maier1, the eagle representing Luna 'or Juno, Venus, Beya, who is fugitive and winged like the eagle, which flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes.' The toad 'is the opposite of air, it is a contrary element, namely earth, whereon alone it moves by slow steps, and does not trust itself to another element. Its head is very heavy and gazes at the earth. For this reason it denotes the philosophic earth, which cannot fly [i.e., cannot be sublimated] , as it is firm and solid. Upon it as a foundation the golden house2 is to be built. Were it not for the earth in our work the air would fly away, neither would the fire have its nourishment, nor the water its vessel.'3 \n \n 1 Symbola aureae mensae, p. 192\n 2 The 'treasure-house' (gazophylacium, domus thesauraria) of philosophy, which is a synonym for the aurum philosophorum, or lapis. Cf. von Franz, Aurora Consurgens, pp. 101ff. The idea goes back to Alphidius (see 'Consilium coniugii,' Ars chemica, p. 108) and ultimately to Zosimos, who describes the lapis as a shining white temple of marble. Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, III, i, 5\n 3 Symb. aur. mensae, p. 200


xiv

As is indicated by the very name which he chose for it - the 'spagyric' art - or by the oft-repeated saying 'solve et coagula' (dissolve and coagulate), the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation on the other. For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named the chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia. And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end.