Alchemical symbolism plays a crucial role in analytic psychology, The symbols of alchemy appear around archetypes of the collective unconscious. Common symbols include sun/gold and moon/silver. Those corresponding to an archetype tend to recur.
The work of renowned Swiss psychologist Carl Jung is perhaps the most influential corpus in psychology and alchemy today. By the early 20th century his fascination with symbols and meanings becomes a lifelong obsession.
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A profound connection exists between the symbolic representations in alchemical drawings and the inner images appearing in patients' dreams, visions, and fantasies. They arise from a deep, strange and compelling place.
Difference between Symbols and Archetypes - symbols are visual representations, physical items or events, which stand for another concept, event or intangible feeling. In contrast, archetypes are complex models of conduct, thought and sentiment.
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Symbolic images can be seen as manifestations of the process of transformation, termed by analytical psychology as individuation. For Jung, the appearance of symbols like gold or lapis (stone) symbolize the beginning and goal of the individuation process.
Archetypes arise from the collective unconscious, a compendium of knowledge and understanding shared by all humans regardless of gender, culture or lifestyle. They manifest through symbols. Common archetypes of the collective unconscious include:
shadow
animal
trickster / fool
wise elder / healer
child
father - protection, wisdom, guidance - Sun
mother - compassion, innate knowledge, caregiver - Moon
maiden
self
persona (mask)
anima (feminine) in man
animus (masculine) in woman
The anima and animus are important archetypes, in many ways corresponding to the sulfur (male) and mercury (female) elements and/or symbols. One of the key processes of alchemy and spiritual transformation involves reconciliation of opposites.
In alchemy mercury is a female principle, and sulfur the male, similar to the interactive concept of yin and yang. Union of inner and outer realms, and integration of spirit and matter, is the hieros gamos or divine marriage.
It's found in the 12 Days of Zagmuk and other fertility fests and rites. While the concept of hieros gamos doesn't always involve actual sexual activity during ceremonies, it's often used in a symbolic or mythological sense, as in alchemy and Jungian psychology.
Analytical psychology can help those exploring dreams, symbols, and the archetypal forces within the unconscious mind. By defining archetypes one can begin to resolve past or ongoing issues.
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Jung's magnum opus is Mysterium Coniunctionis. Jung explains mysterium coniunctionis (mystery of the conjunction) as a term for mystical paradox. Mystics who conceptualize a mysterium coniunctionis may find the paradox hard to express in words.
While archetypes themselves come from the collective unconscious, manifestation of archetypes or symbols are often specific to an individual. Thus it's important to identify the symbol as it relates to the person, remembering the whole meaning is not always obvious.
For instance one person might dream of an apple and one of a tree but both are dreaming of an apple tree. Apples and trees are prominent in the symbolism of spiritual alchemy. These elements also signify growth, creativity, abundance and the "mother" archetype.
Edward F. Edinger writes in the introduction to his book The Mystery of The Conjunctio:
One might ask, why alchemy? ... The alchemists were fired with the beginnings of the modern spirit of inquiry, but yet, as investigators of the nature of matter they were still half asleep. So, in their zeal to investigate those newly opened vistas, they projected their fantasies and dream images into matter.
In effect, they dreamed a vast collective dream using chemical operations and materials as imagery and subject matter for that dream. Alchemy is that great collective dream, and what makes it so important for us is that it's the dream of our ancestors.
The alchemists were rooted in the Western psyche which we've inherited, so their imagery, their fantasy, their dream, is our fantasy and our dream. That's what Jung demonstrates so magnificently in his major works on alchemy.
Jung maintains:
The world of alchemical symbols does not belong to the rubbish heap of the past, but stands in a very real and living relationship to our most recent discoveries concerning the psychology of the unconscious.
The Journal of Analytical Psychology said of this book:
What Jung has to convey is so truly original and so far ranging in its implications that I suspect this book will be a real challenge even to those most psychologically sophisticated. What he here presents in rich and documented detail can perhaps best be described as an anatomy of the objective psyche.
Below: Alchemical symbols of Zosimos of Panopolis. He's one of alchemy's most prolific writers. Without Zosimos almost no information about the Alexandria school would exist. Tap the image for translations of the symbols. Left row top is the conical alchemy symbol for Sun.
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