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SAL
Salt as the Arcane Substance
[234] In this section I shall discuss not only Salt but a number of symbolisms that are closely connected with it, such as the bitterness of the sea, sea-water and its baptismal quality, which in turn relates it to the Red Sea. I have included the latter in the scope of my observations but not the symbol of the sea as such. Since Luna symbolizes the unconscious, Sal, as one of its attri butes, is a special instance of the lunar symbolism. This explains the length of the present entire chapter: extensive digressions are necessary in order to do justice to the various aspects of the unconscious that are expressed by salt, and at the same time to explain their psychological meaning.
[235] Owing to the theory of correspondentia, regarded as axiomatic in the Middle Ages, the principles of each of the four worlds the intelligible or divine, the heavenly, the earthly, and the infernal379corresponded to each other. Usually, however, there was a division into three worlds to correspond with the Trinity: heaven, earth, hell.380 Triads were also known in alchemy. From the time of Paracelsus the most important triad was Sulphur-Mercurius-Sal, which was held to correspond with the Trinity. Georg von Welling, the plagiarist of Johann Rudolf Glauber, still thought in 1735 that his triad of fire, sun, and salt381 was in its root entirely one thing.382 The use of the Trinity formula in alchemy is so common that further documentation is unnecessary. A subtle feature of the Sulphur-Mercurius-Sal formula is that the central figure, Mercurius, is by nature androgynous and thus partakes both of the masculine red sulphur and of the lunar salt.383 His equivalent in the celestial realm is the planetary pair Sol and Luna, and in the intelligible realm Christ in his mystical androgyny, the man encompassed by the woman,384 i.e., sponsus and sponsa (Ecclesia). Like the Trinity, the alchemical triunity is a quaternity in disguise owing to the duplicity of the central figure: Mercurius is not only split into a masculine and a feminine half, but is the poisonous dragon and at the same time the heavenly lapis. This makes it clear that the dragon is analogous to the devil and the lapis to Christ, in accordance with the ecclesiastical view of the devil as an autonomous counterpart of Christ. Furthermore, not only the dragon but the negative aspect of sulphur, namely sulphur comburens, is identical with the devil, as Glauber says: Verily, sulphur is the true black devil of hell, who can be conquered by no element save by salt alone.385 Salt by contrast is a light substance, similar to the lapis, as we shall see.
[236] From all this we get the following schema:
[237] Here we have another of those well-known quaternities of opposites which are usually masked as a triad, just as the Christian Trinity is able to maintain itself as such only by eliminating the fourth protagonist of the divine drama. If he were included there would be, not a Trinity, but a Christian Quaternity. For a long time there had been a psychological need for this, as is evident from the medieval pictures of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin; it was also responsible for elevating her to the position of mediatrix, corresponding to Christs position as the mediator, with the difference that Mary only transmits grace but does not generate it. The recent promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption emphasizes the taking up not only of the soul but of the body of Mary into the Trinity, thus making a dogmatic reality of those medieval representations of the quaternity which are constructed on the following pattern:
Only in 1950, after the teaching authority in the Church had long deferred it, and almost a century after the declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, did the Pope, moved by a growing wave of popular petitions,386 feel compelled to declare the Assumption as a revealed truth. All the evidence shows that the dogmatization was motivated chiefly by the religious need of the Catholic masses. Behind this stands the archetypal numen of feminine deity,387 who, at the Council of Ephesus in 431, imperiously announced her claim to the title of Theotokos (God-bearer), as distinct from that of a mere Anthropotokos (man-bearer) accorded to her by the Nestorian rationalists.
[238] The taking up of the body had long been emphasized as an historical and material event, and the alchemists could therefore make use of the representations of the Assumption in describing the glorification of matter in the opus. The illustration of this process in Reusners Pandora388 shows, underneath the coronation scene, a kind of shield between the emblems of Matthew and Luke, on which is depicted the extraction of Mercurius from the prima materia. The extracted Spirit appears in monstrous form: the head is surrounded by a halo, and reminds us of the traditional head of Christ, but the arms are snakes and the lower half of the body resembles a stylized fishs tail.389 This is without doubt the anima mundi who has been freed from the shackles of matter, the filius macrocosmi or Mercurius-Anthropos, who, because of his double nature, is not only spiritual and physical but unites in himself the morally highest and lowest.390 The illustration in Pandora points to the great secret which the alchemists dimly felt was implicit in the Assumption. The proverbial darkness of sublunary matter has always been associated with the prince of this world, the devil. He is the metaphysical figure who is excluded from the Trinity but who, as the counterpart of Christ, is the sine qua non of the drama of redemption.391 His equivalent in alchemy is the dark side of Mercurius duplex and, as we saw, the active sulphur. He also conceals himself in the poisonous dragon, the preliminary, chthonic form of the lapis aethereus. To the natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, and to Dorn in particular, it was perfectly clear that the triad must be complemented by a fourth, as the lapis had always been regarded as a quaternity of elements. It did not disturb them that this would necessarily involve the evil spirit. On the contrary, the dismemberment and self-devouring of the dragon probably seemed to them a commendable operation. Dorn, however, saw in the quaternity the absolute opposite of the Trinity, namely the female principle, which seemed to him of the devil, for which reason he called the devil the four-horned serpent. This insight must have given him a glimpse into the core of the problem.392 In his refutation he identified woman with the devil because of the number two, which is characteristic of both. The devil, he thought, was the binarius itself, since it was created on the second day of Creation, on Monday, the day of the moon, on which God failed to express his pleasure, this being the day of doubt and separation.393 Dorn puts into words what is merely hinted at in the Pandora illustration.
[239] If we compare this train of thought with the Christian quaternity which the new dogma has virtually produced (but has not defined as such), it will immediately be apparent that we have here an upper quaternio which is supraordinate to mans wholeness and is psychologically comparable to the Moses quaternio of the Gnostics.394 Man and the dark abyss of the world, the deus absconditus, have not yet been taken up into it. Alchemy, however, is the herald of a still-unconscious drive for maximal integration which seems to be reserved for a distant future, even though it originated with Origens doubt concerning the ultimate fate of the devil.395
[240] In philosophical alchemy, salt is a cosmic principle. According to its position in the quaternity, it is correlated with the feminine, lunar side and with the upper, light half. It is therefore not surprising that Sal is one of the many designations for the arcane substance. This connotation seems to have developed in the early Middle Ages under Arabic influence. The oldest traces of it can be found in the Turba, where salt-water and sea-water are synonyms for the aqua permanens,396 and in Senior, who says that Mercurius is made from salt.397 His treatise is one of the earliest authorities in Latin alchemy. Here Sal Alkali also plays the role of the arcane substance, and Senior mentions that the dealbatio was called salsatura (marination).398 In the almost equally old Allegoriae sapientum the lapis is described as salsus (salty).399 Arnaldus de Villanova (1235?1313) says: Whoever possesses the salt that can be melted, and the oil that cannot be burned, may praise God.400 It is clear from this that salt is an arcane substance. The Rosarium, which leans very heavily on the old Latin sources, remarks that the whole secret lies in the prepared common salt,401 and that the root of the art is the soap of the sages (sapo sapientum), which is the mineral of all salts and is called the bitter salt (sal amarum).402 Whoever knows the salt knows the secret of the old sages.403 Salts and alums are the helpers of the stone.404 Isaac Hollandus calls salt the medium between the terra sulphurea and the water. God poured a certain salt into them in order to unite them, and the sages named this salt the salt of the wise.405
[241] Among later writers, salt is even more clearly the arcane substance. For Mylius it is synonymous with the tincture;406 it is the earth-dragon who eats his own tail, and the ash, the diadem of thy heart.407 The salt of the metals is the lapis.408 Basilius Valentinus speaks of a sal spirituale.409 It is the seat of the virtue which makes the art possible,410 the most noble treasury,411 the good and noble salt, which though it has not the form of salt from the beginning, is nevertheless called salt; it becomes impure and pure of itself, it dissolves and coagulates itself, or, as the sages say, locks and unlocks itself;412 it is the quintessence, above all things and in all creatures.413 The whole magistery lies in the salt and its solution.414 The permanent radical moisture consists of salt.415 It is synonymous with the incombustible oil,416 and is altogether a mystery to be concealed.417
[242] As the arcane substance, it is identified with various synonyms for the latter. Above all it is an ens centrale. For Khunrath salt is the physical centre of the earth.418 For Vigenerus it is a component of that virginal and pure earth which is contained in the centre of all composite elementals, or in the depths of the same.419 Glauber calls salt the concentrated centre of the elements.420
[243] Although the arcane substance is usually identified with Mercurius, the relation of salt to Mercurius is seldom mentioned. Senior, as we noted, says that by divers operations Mercurius is made from salt,421 and Khunrath identifies Mercurius with common salt.422 The rarity of the identification strikes us just because the salt of the wise really implies its relation to Mercurius. I can explain this only on the supposition that salt did not acquire its significance until later times and then at once appeared as an independent figure in the Sulphur-Mercurius-Sal triad.
[244] Salt also has an obvious relation to the earth, not to the earth as such, but to our earth, by which is naturally meant the arcane substance.423 This is evident from the aforementioned identification of salt with the earth-dragon. The full text of Mylius runs:
What remains below in the retort is our salt, that is, our earth, and it is of a black colour, a dragon that eats his own tail. For the dragon is the matter that remains behind after the distillation of water from it, and this water is called the dragons tail, and the dragon is its blackness, and the dragon is saturated with his water and coagulated, and so he eats his tail.424
The rarely mentioned relation of salt to the nigredo425 is worth noting here, for because of its proverbial whiteness salt is constantly associated with the albedo. On the other hand we would expect the close connection between salt and water, which is in fact already implicit in the sea-water. The aqua pontica plays an important role as a synonym for the aqua permanens, as also does mare (sea). That salt, as well as Luna, is an essential component of this is clear from Vigenerus: There is nothing wherein the moisture lasts longer, or is wetter, than salt, of which the sea for the most part consists. Neither is there anything wherein the moon displays her motion more clearly than the sea, as can be seen . . . from its ebb and flow. Salt, he says, has an inexterminable humidity, and that is the reason why the sea cannot be dried up.426 Khunrath identifies the femina alba or candida with the crystalline salt, and this with the white water.427 Our water cannot be made without salt,428 and without salt the opus will not succeed.429 According to Rupescissa (ca. 1350), salt is water, which the dryness of the fire has coagulated.430
- The Bitterness
[245] Inseparable from salt and sea is the quality of amaritudo, bitterness. The etymology of Isidore of Seville was accepted all through the Middle Ages: Mare ab amaro.431 Among the alchemists the bitterness became a kind of technical term. Thus, in the treatise Rosinus ad Euthiciam,432 there is the following dialogue between Zosimos and Theosebeia: This is the stone that hath in it glory and colour. And she: Whence cometh its colour? He replied: From its exceeding strong bitterness. And she: Whence cometh its bitterness and intensity? He answered: From the impurity of its metal. The treatise Rosinus ad Sarratantam episcopum433 says: Take the stone that is black, white, red, and yellow, and is a wonderful bird that flies without wings in the blackness of the night and the brightness of the day: in the bitterness that is in its throat the colouring will be found. Each thing in its first matter is corrupt and bitter, says Ripley. The bitterness is a tincturing poison.434 And Mylius: Our stone is endowed with the strongest spirit, bitter and brazen (aeneus);435 and the Rosarium mentions that salt is bitter because it comes from the mineral of the sea.436 The Liber Alze437 says: O nature of this wondrous thing, which transforms the body into spirit! . . . When it is found alone it conquers all things, and is an excellent, harsh, and bitter acid, which transmutes gold into pure spirit.438
[246] These quotations clearly allude to the sharp taste of salt and sea-water. The reason why the taste is described as bitter and not simply as salt may lie first of all in the inexactness of the language, since amarus also means sharp, biting, harsh, and is used metaphorically for acrimonious speech or a wounding joke. Besides this, the language of the Vulgate had an important influence as it was one of the main sources for medieval Latin. The moral use which the Vulgate consistently makes of amarus and amaritudo gives them, in alchemy as well, a nuance that cannot be passed over. This comes out clearly in Ripleys remark that each thing in its first matter is corrupt and bitter. The juxtaposition of these two attri butes indicates the inner connection between them: corruption and bitterness are on the same footing, they denote the state of imperfect bodies, the initial state of the prima materia. Among the best known synonyms for the latter are the chaos and the sea, in the classical, mythological sense denoting the beginning of the world, the sea in particular being conceived as the
, matrix of all creatures.439 The prima materia is often called aqua pontica. The salt that comes from the mineral of the sea is by its very nature bitter, but the bitterness is due also to the impurity of the imperfect body. This apparent contradiction is explained by the report of Plutarch that the Egyptians regarded the sea as something impure and untrustworthy (
), and as the domain of Typhon (Set); they called salt the spume of Typhon.440 In his Philosophia reformata, Mylius mentions sea-spume together with the purged or purified sea, rock-salt, the bird, and Luna as equivalent synonyms for the lapis occultus.441 Here the impurity of the sea is indirectly indicated by the epithets purged or purified. The sea-spume is on a par with the salt andof particular interestwith the bird, naturally the bird of Hermes, and this throws a sudden light on the above passage from Rosinus, about the bird with bitterness in its throat. The bird is a parallel of salt because salt is a spirit,442 a volatile substance, which the alchemists were wont to conceive as a bird.
[247] As the expulsion of the spirit was effected by various kinds of burning (combustio, adustio, calcinatio, assatio, sublimatio, incineratio, etc.), it was natural to call the end-product ashagain in a double sense as scoria, faex, etc., and as the spirit or bird of Hermes. Thus the Rosarium says: Sublime with fire, until the spirit which thou wilt find in it [the substance] goeth forth from it, and it is named the bird or the ash of Hermes. Therefore saith Morienus: Despise not the ashes, for they are the diadem of thy heart, and the ash of things that endure.443 In other words, the ash is the spirit that dwells in the glorified body.
[248] This bird or spirit is associated with various colours. At first the bird is black, then it grows white feathers, which finally become coloured.444 The Chinese cousin of the avis Hermetis, the scarlet bird, moults in a similar way.445 We are told in the treatise of Wei Po-yang: The fluttering Chu-niao flies the five colours.446 They are arranged as follows:
[249] Earth occupies the central position as the fifth element, though it is not the quintessence and goal of the work but rather its basis, corresponding to terra as the arcane substance in Western alchemy.447
[250] As regards the origin and meaning of the avis Hermetis, I would like to mention the report of Aelian that the ibis is dear to Hermes, the father of words, since in its form it resembles the nature of the Logos; for its blackness and swift flight could be compared to the silent and introverted [
] Logos, but its whiteness to the Logos already uttered and heard, which is the servant and messenger of the inner word.448
[251] It is not easy for a modern mind to conceive salt, a cold-damp, lunar-terrestrial substance, as a bird and a spirit. Spirit, as the Chinese conceive it, is yang, the fiery and dry element, and this accords with the views of Heraclitus as well as with the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost as tongues of fire. Luna, we have seen, is unquestionably connected with mens, manas, mind, etc. But these connections are of a somewhat ambiguous nature. Although the earth can boast of an earth-spirit and other daemons, they are after all spirits and not spirit. The cold side of nature is not lacking in spirit, but it is a spirit of a special kind, which Christianity regarded as demonic and which therefore found no acclaim except in the realm of the magical arts and sciences. This spirit is the snake-like Nous or Agathodaimon, which in Hellenistic syncretism merges together with Hermes. Christian allegory and iconography also took possession of it on the basis of John 3 : 14: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. The mercurial serpent or spirit Mercurius is the personification and living continuation of the spirit who, in the prayer entitled the Secret Inscription in the Great Magic Papyrus of Paris, is invoked as follows:
Greetings, entire edifice of the Spirit of the air, greetings, Spirit that penetratest from heaven to earth, and from earth, which abideth in the midst of the universe, to the uttermost bounds of the abyss, greetings, Spirit that penetratest into me, and shakest me. . . . Greetings, beginning and end of irremovable Nature, greetings, thou who revolvest the elements that untiringly render service, greetings, brightly shining sun, whose radiance ministereth to the world, greetings, moon shining by night with disc of fickle brilliance, greetings, all ye spirits of the demons of the air. . . . O great, greatest, incomprehensible fabric of the world, formed in a circle! . . . dwelling in the aether, having the form of water, of earth, of fire, of wind, of light, of darkness, star-glittering, damp-fiery-cold Spirit! [
].449
[252] Here is a magnificent description of a spirit that is apparently the exact opposite of the Christian pneuma. This antique spirit is also the spirit of alchemy, which today we can interpret as the unconscious projected into heavenly space and external objects. Although declared to be the devil by the early Christians, it should not be identified outright with evil; it merely has the uncomfortable quality of being beyond good and evil, and it gives this perilous quality to anyone who identifies with it, as we can see from the eloquent case of Nietzsche and the psychic epidemic that came after him. This spirit that is beyond good and evil is not the same as being six thousand feet above good and evil, but rather the same distance below it, or better, before it. It is the spirit of the chaotic waters of the beginning, before the second day of Creation, before the separation of the opposites and hence before the advent of consciousness. That is why it leads those whom it overcomes neither upwards nor beyond, but back into chaos. This spirit corresponds to that part of the psyche which has not been assimilated to consciousness and whose transformation and integration are the outcome of a long and wearisome opus. The artifex was, in his way, conscious enough of the dangers of the work, and for this reason his operations consisted largely of precautions whose equivalents are the rites of the Church.
[253] The alchemists understood the return to chaos as an essential part of the opus. It was the stage of the nigredo and mortificatio, which was then followed by the purgatorial fire and the albedo. The spirit of chaos is indispensable to the work, and it cannot be distinguished from the gift of the Holy Ghost any more than the Satan of the Old Testament can be distinguished from Yahweh. The unconscious is both good and evil and yet neither, the matrix of all potentialities.
[254] After these remarkswhich seemed to me necessaryon the salt-spirit, as Khunrath calls it, let us turn back to the amaritudo. As the bitter salt comes from the impure sea, it is understandable that the Gloria mundi should call it mostly black and evil-smelling in the beginning.450 The blackness and bad smell, described by the alchemists as the stench of the graves, pertain to the underworld and to the sphere of moral darkness. This impure quality is common also to the corruptio, which, as we saw, Ripley equates with bitterness. Vigenerus describes salt as corruptible, in the sense that the body is subject to corruption and decay and does not have the fiery and incorruptible nature of the spirit.451
[255] The moral use of qualities that were originally physical is clearly dependent, particularly in the case of a cleric like Ripley, on ecclesiastical language. About this I can be brief, as I can rely on Rahners valuable Antenna Crucis II: Das Meer der Welt. Here Rahner brings together all the patristic allegories that are needed to understand the alchemical symbolism. The patristic use of mare is defined by St. Augustine: Mare saeculum est (the sea is the world).452 It is the essence of the world, as the element . . . subject to the devil. St. Hilary says: By the depths of the sea is meant the seat of hell.453 The sea is the gloomy abyss, the remains of the original pit,454 and hence of the chaos that covered the earth. For St. Augustine this abyss is the realm of power allotted to the devil and demons after their fall.455 It is on the one hand a deep that cannot be reached or comprehended456 and on the other the depths of sin.457 For Gregory the Great the sea is the depths of eternal death.458 Since ancient times it was the abode of water-demons.459 There dwells Leviathan (Job 3 : 8),460 who in the language of the Fathers signifies the devil. Rahner documents the patristic equations: diabolus = draco = Leviathan = cetus magnus = aspis (adder, asp) = draco.461 St. Jerome says: The devil surrounds the seas and the ocean on all sides.462 The bitterness of salt-water is relevant in this connection, as it is one of the peculiarities of hell and damnation which must be fully tasted by the meditant in Loyolas Exercises. Point 4 of Exercise V says he must, in imagination, taste with the taste bitter things, as tears, sadness, and the worm of conscience.463 This is expressed even more colourfully in the Spiritual Exercises of the Jesuit Sebastian Izquierdo (1686): Fourthly, the taste will be tormented with a rabid hunger and thirst, with no hope of alleviation; and its food will be bitter wormwood, and its drink water of gall.464
- The Red Sea
[256] It might almost be one of the alchemical paradoxes that the Red Sea, in contrast to the significance ordinarily attached to mare, is a term for the healing and transforming baptismal water,465 and is thus an equivalent of the alchemical aqua pontica. St. Augustine says, The Red Sea signifies baptism;466 and, according to Honorius of Autun, the Red Sea is the baptism reddened by the blood of Christ, in which our enemies, namely our sins, are drowned.467
[257] We must also mention the Peratic interpretation of the Red Sea. The Red Sea drowned the Egyptians, but the Egyptians were all non-knowers (
). The exodus from Egypt signifies the exodus from the body, which is Egypt in miniature, being the incarnation of sinfulness, and the crossing (
)468 of the Red Sea is the crossing of the water of corruption, which is Kronos. The other side of the Red Sea is the other side of Creation. The arrival in the desert is a genesis outside of generation (
). There the gods of destruction and the god of salvation are all together.469 The Red Sea is a water of death for those that are unconscious, but for those that are conscious it is a baptismal water of rebirth and transcendence.470 By unconscious are meant those who have no gnosis, i.e., are not enlightened as to the nature and destiny of man in the cosmos. In modern language it would be those who have no knowledge of the contents of the personal and collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is the shadow and the inferior function,471 in Gnostic terms the sinfulness and impurity that must be washed away by baptism. The collective unconscious expresses itself in the mythological teachings, characteristic of most mystery religions, which reveal the secret knowledge concerning the origin of all things and the way to salvation. Unconscious people who attempt to cross the sea without being purified and without the guidance of enlightenment are drowned; they get stuck in the unconscious and suffer a spiritual death in so far as they cannot get beyond their one-sidedness. To do this they would have to be more conscious of what is unconscious to them and their age, above all of the inner opposite, namely those contents to which the prevailing views are in any way opposed. This continual process of getting to know the counterposition in the unconscious I have called the transcendent function,472 because the confrontation of conscious (rational) data with those that are unconscious (irrational) necessarily results in a modification of standpoint. But an alteration is possible only if the existence of the other is admitted, at least to the point of taking conscious cognizance of it. A Christian of today, for instance, no longer ought to cling obstinately to a one-sided credo, but should face the fact that Christianity has been in a state of schism for four hundred years, with the result that every single Christian has a split in his psyche. Naturally this lesion cannot be treated or healed if everyone insists on his own standpoint. Behind those barriers he can rejoice in his absolute and consistent convictions and deem himself above the conflict, but outside them he keeps the conflict alive by his intransigence and continues to deplore the pig-headedness and stiff-neckedness of everybody else. It seems as if Christianity had been from the outset the religion of chronic squabblers, and even now it does everything in its power never to let the squabbles rest. Remarkably enough, it never stops preaching the gospel of neighbourly love.
[258] We should get along a lot better if we realized that the majority views of others are condoned by a minority in ourselves. Armed with this psychological insight, which today no longer has the character of revelation since common sense can grasp it, we could set out on the road to the union of the opposites and would then, as in the Peratic doctrine, come to the place where the gods of destruction and the god of salvation are together. By this is obviously meant the destructive and constructive powers of the unconscious. This coincidentia oppositorum forms a parallel to the Messianic state of fulfilment described in Isaiah 11 : 6ff. and 35 : 5ff., though with one important difference: the place of genesis outside of generationpresumably an opus contra naturam is clearly not paradise but
the desert and the wilderness. Everyone who becomes conscious of even a fraction of his unconscious gets outside his own time and social stratum into a kind of solitude, as our text remarks. But only there is it possible to meet the god of salvation. Light is manifest in the darkness, and out of danger the rescue comes. In his sermon on Luke 19: 12 Meister Eckhart says: And who can be nobler than the man who is born half of the highest and best the world has to offer, and half of the innermost ground of Gods nature and Gods loneliness? Therefore the Lord speaks in the prophet Hosea: I will lead the noble souls into the wilderness, and speak into their hearts. One with the One, One from the One, and in the One itself the One, eternally!473
[259] I have gone into this Hippolytus text at some length because the Red Sea was of special significance to the alchemists. Sermo LXII of the Turba mentions the Tyrian dye, which is extracted from our most pure Red Sea. It is the parallel of the tinctura philosophorum, which is described as black and is extracted from the sea.474 The old treatise Rosinus ad Euthiciam says: And know that our Red Sea is more tincturing than all seas, and that the poison,475 when it is cooked and becomes foul and discoloured, penetrates all bodies.476 The tincture is the dip and the baptismal water of the alchemists, here asserted to come from the Red Sea. This idea is understandable in view of the patristic and Gnostic interpretation of the Red Sea as the blood of Christ in which we are baptized; hence the paralleling of the tincture, salt, and aqua pontica with blood.477
[260] The Red Sea appears in a very peculiar manner in the Tractatus Aristotelis ad Alexandrum Magnum, where a recipe says:
Take the serpent, and place it in the chariot with four wheels, and let it be turned about on the earth until it is immersed in the depths of the sea, and nothing more is visible but the blackest dead sea. And there let the chariot with the wheels remain, until so many fumes rise up from the serpent that the whole surface [planities] becomes dry, and by desiccation sandy and black. All that is the earth which is no earth, but a stone lacking all weight. . . . [And when the fumes are precipitated in the form of rain,] you should bring the chariot from the water to dry land, and then you have placed the four wheels upon the chariot, and will obtain the result if you will advance further to the Red Sea, running without running, moving without motion [currens sine cursu, movens sine motu].478
[261] This curious text requires a little elucidation. The serpent is the prima materia, the Serpens Hermetis, which he [Hermes] sent to King Antiochus, that he might do battle with thee [Alexander] and thine army.479 The serpent is placed in the chariot of its vessel and is led hither and thither by the fourfold rotation of the natures, but it should be securely enclosed. The wheels are the wheels of the elements. The vessel or vehicle is the spherical tomb of the serpent.480 The fourfold rotation of the natures corresponds to the ancient tetrameria of the opus (its division into four parts), i.e., transformation through the four elements, from earth to fire. This symbolism describes in abbreviated form the essentials of the opus: the serpent of Hermes or the Agathodaimon, the Nous that animates the cold part of nature that is, the unconsciousis enclosed in the spherical vessel of diaphanous glass which, on the alchemical view, represents the world and the soul.481 The psychologist would see it rather as the psychic reflection of the world, namely, consciousness of the world and the psyche.482 The transformation corresponds to the psychic process of assimilation and integration by means of the transcendent function.483 This function unites the pairs of opposites, which, as alchemy shows, are arranged in a quaternio when they represent a totality. The totality appears in quaternary form only when it is not just an unconscious fact but a conscious and differentiated totality; for instance, when the horizon is thought of not simply as a circle that can be divided into any number of parts but as consisting of four clearly defined points. Accordingly, ones given personality could be represented by a continuous circle, whereas the conscious personality would be a circle divided up in a definite way, and this generally turns out to be a quaternity. The quaternity of basic functions of consciousness meets this requirement. It is therefore only to be expected that the chariot should have four wheels,484 to correspond with the four elements or natures. The chariot as a spherical vessel and as consciousness rests on the four elements or basic functions,485 just as the floating island where Apollo was born, Delos, rested on the four supports which Poseidon made for it. The wheels, naturally, are on the outside of the chariot and are its motor organs, just as the functions of consciousness facilitate the relation of the psyche to its environment. It must, however, be stressed that what we today call the schema of functions is archetypally prefigured by one of the oldest patterns of order known to man, namely the quaternity, which always represents a consciously reflected and differentiated totality. Quite apart from its almost universal incidence it also appears spontaneously in dreams as an expression of the total personality. The chariot of Aristotle can be understood in this sense as a symbol of the self.
[262] The recipe goes on to say that this symbolic vehicle should be immersed in the sea of the unconscious for the purpose of heating and incubation,486 corresponding to the state of tapas,487 incubation by means of self-heating. By this is obviously meant a state of introversion in which the unconscious content is brooded over and digested. During this operation all relations with the outside world are broken off; the feelers of perception and intuition, discrimination and valuation are withdrawn. The four wheels are placed upon the chariot: outside everything is quiet and still, but deep inside the psyche the wheels go on turning, performing those cyclic evolutions which bring the mandala of the total personality,488 the ground-plan of the self, closer to consciousness. But so long as consciousness has not completed the process of integration it is covered by the blackest dead sea, darkened by unconsciousness and oppressed by heat, as was the hero in the belly of the whale during the night sea journey.489 Through the incubation the snake-like content is vapourized, literally sublimated, which amounts to saying that it is recognized and made an object of conscious discrimination.
[263] The evaporatio is followed by the desiccation of the surface, which then appears sandy and black. Here the imagery changes: the allusion to the subsiding flood means psychologically that the black blanket of unconsciousness hiding the nascent symbol is drawn away. Arena (sand) is defined as the pure substance of the stone,490 and accordingly the text describes the regenerated earth as a stone lacking all weight. The text does not explain just why it is weightless, but it is evident that nothing material, which alone has weight, is left over, and all that remains is the psychic content of the projection.
[264] The opus is far from having come to an end at this point, for the nigredo (terra nigra) still prevails and the substance of the stone is still black. It is therefore necessary for the fumes (evaporationes) to precipitate and wash off the blackness, whence the whole earth becomes white. The rain now falls so copiously that the earth is almost turned into a sea. Hence the direction that the chariot should be brought to dry land. This is clearly another allusion to Noahs Ark and the flood.491 With the coming of the flood the previous state of chaos would be restored, and the result of the opus would again be swamped by unconsciousness. This motif recurs in the form of the dragon that pursued Leto and the woman crowned with stars (Rev. 12 : 1f.).
[265] If the chariot reaches dry land, this obviously means that the content has become visible and remains conscious, and then, says the text, you have placed the wheels upon the chariot.492 The four natures or elements are gathered together and are contained in the spherical vessel, i.e., the four aspects or functions are integrated with consciousness, so that the state of totality has almost been attained. Had it really been attained the opus would be consummated at this point, but the result (effectus) is obtained only by advancing further. The result therefore means something more than integration of the four natures. If we take the loading of the chariot as the conscious realization of the four functions, this does in fact denote only the possibility of remaining conscious of the whole previous material, that is, of the principal aspects of the psyche. The question then arises as to how all these divergent factors, previously kept apart by apparently insuperable incompatibilities, will behave, and what the ego is going to do about it.
[266] The singular image of the Nous-serpent enthroned on a chariot reminds us of the chariot-driving, snake-shaped gods of southern India, for instance on the immense black temple at Puri, which is itself a chariot of stone. I certainly dont want to suggest that there is any direct Indian influence in our text, for there is another model closer to hand, and that is Ezekiels vision of the four creatures, with the faces respectively of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. These four figures are associated with four wheels, their construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went.493 Together they formed the moving throne of a figure having the appearance of a man. In the Cabala this chariot (Merkabah) plays an important role as the vehicle on which the believers mount up to God and the human soul unites with the world-soul.
[267] An interpretation of the four wheels as the quadriga and vehicle of divinity is found in a window medallion by Suger, the twelfth-century maker of stained glass for the Abbey of Saint-Denis.494 The chariot which is depicted bears the inscription QUADRIGE AMINADAB,referring to the Song of Songs 6: 11 (DV): My soul troubled me for the chariots of Aminadab.495 God the Father stands on a four-wheeled chariot holding the crucifix before him. In the corners of the medallion are the four emblems of the evangelists, the Christian continuation of Ezekiels winged creatures. The four gospels form, as it were, a quaternary podium on which the Redeemer stands.
[268] Still another source might be Honorius of Autun. In his commentary on Song of Songs 6 : 11, he says that his animalis vita was troubled because the chariot signified the four evangelists. It was this chariot that the apostles and their followers had driven through the world. For Christ had said in the gospels: Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish (Luke 13: 3). And it was to him, Honorius, that the words were addressed: Return, return, O Shulamite (Song of Songs 6 : 13).496
[269] Psychologically the vision of Ezekiel is a symbol of the self consisting of four individual creatures and wheels, i.e., of different functions. Three of the faces are theriomorphic and only one anthropomorphic, which presumably means that only one function has reached the human level, whereas the others are still in an unconscious or animal state. The problem of three and four (trinity and quaternity) plays a great role in alchemy as the axiom of Maria497 and, like the vision of Ezekiel, is concerned with the God-image. The symbols of the self are as a rule symbols of totality, but this is only occasionally true of God-images. In the former the circle and the quaternity predominate, in the latter the circle and the trinity and this, moreover, only in the case of abstract representations, which are not the only ones to occur.
[270] These hints may throw a little light on the strange idea of the serpent-chariot. It is a symbol of the arcane substance and the quintessence, of the aether that contains all four elements, and at the same time a God-image or, to be more accurate, an image of the anima mundi. This is indicated by the Mercurial serpent, which in its turn was interpreted by the alchemists as the spirit of life that was in the wheels (DV).498 We should also mention that according to Ezekiel 1 : 18 the inter-revolving wheels were full of eyes round about. The old illustrators therefore produced something like an astrolabe in their attempts to depict the vision. The notion of wheels is naturally connected with movement in all directions, for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole earth (Zech. 4 : 10). It is said of the horses, too, that they walk to and fro through the earth (Zech. 6 : 7). Eyes are round and in common speech are likened to cart-wheels. They also seem to be a typical symbol for what I have called the multiple luminosities of the unconscious. By this I mean the seeming possibility that complexes possess a kind of consciousness, a luminosity of their own, which, I conjecture, expresses itself in the symbol of the soul-spark, multiple eyes (polyophthalmia), and the starry heaven.499
[271] By reason of its solar nature the eye is a symbol of consciousness, and accordingly multiple eyes would indicate a multiplicity of conscious centres which are co-ordinated into a unity like the many-faceted eye of an insect. As Ezekiels vision can be interpreted psychologically as a symbol of the self, we may also mention in this connection the Hindu definition of the selfhere hiranyagarbhaas the collective aggregate of all individual souls.500
[272] Ezekiels vision is of psychological importance because the quaternity embodied in it is the vehicle or throne of him who had the appearance of a man. Together with the spirit of life in the wheels it represents the empirical self, the totality of the four functions. These four are only partly conscious. The auxiliary functions are partly, and the inferior or subliminal function is wholly, autonomous; they cannot be put to conscious use and they reach consciousness only indirectly as a fait accompli, through their sometimes disturbing effects. Their specific energy adds itself to the normal energy of the unconscious and thereby gives it an impulse that enables it to irrupt spontaneously into consciousness. As we know, these invasions can be observed systematically in the association experiment.501
[273] The quaternity of the self appears in Ezekiels vision as the true psychological foundation of the God-concept. God uses it as his vehicle. It is possible for the psychologist to verify the structure of this foundation, but beyond that the theologian has the last word. In order to clear up any misunderstandings, especially from the theological side, I would like to emphasize yet again that it is not the business of science to draw conclusions which go beyond the bounds of our empirical knowledge. I do not feel the slightest need to put the self in place of God, as short-sighted critics have often accused me of doing. If Indian philosophers equate the atman with the concept of God and many Westerners copy them, this is simply their subjective opinion and not science. A consensus generalis on this point would in itself be yet another fact which, for the empirical psychologist, is as well worth considering as the remarkable view of many theologians that religious statements have nothing to do with the psyche. Similarly, it is characteristic of the mystical philosophy of the alchemists that the Mercurial serpent is enthroned on the chariot. He is a living spirit who uses as his chariot the body that consists of the four elements. In this sense the chariot is the symbol of earthly life. A Georgian fairytale closes with the verses:
I have dragged a cart up the mountain,
It has become like a mountain.
Summon me from this life
Over to eternity.502
[274] As I have said, the process of transformation does not come to an end with the production of the quaternity symbol. The continuation of the opus leads to the dangerous crossing of the Red Sea, signifying death and rebirth. It is very remarkable that our author, by his paradox running without running, moving without motion, introduces a coincidence of opposites just at this point, and that the Hippolytus text speaks, equally paradoxically, of the gods of destruction and the god of salvation being together. The quaternity, as we have seen, is a quaternio of opposites, a synthesis of the four originally divergent functions. Their synthesis is here achieved in an image, but in psychic reality becoming conscious of the whole psyche503 faces us with a highly problematical situation. We can indicate its scope in a single question: What am I to do with the unconscious?
[275] For this, unfortunately, there are no recipes or general rules. I have tried to present the main outlines of what the psycho therapist can observe of this wearisome and all too familiar process in my study The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious. For the layman these experiences are a terra incognita which is not made any more accessible by broad generalizations. Even the imagination of the alchemists, otherwise so fertile, fails us completely here. Only a thorough investigation of the texts could shed a little light on this question. The same task challenges our endeavours in the field of psycho therapy. Here too are thousands of images, symbols, dreams, fantasies, and visions that still await comparative research. The only thing that can be said with some certainty at present is that there is a gradual process of approximation whereby the two positions, the conscious and the unconscious, are both modified. Differences in individual cases, however, are just as great as they were among the alchemists.
- The Fourth of the Three
[276] In the course of his mystic peregrination504 Maier reached the Red (Erythraean) Sea, and in the following way: he journeyed to the four directions, to the north (Europe), to the west (America), to the east (Asia).505 Leaving Asia and turning south to Africa, he found a statue of Mercury, made of silver, and with a golden head. The statue pointed to Paradise, which he espied far off. Now because of its four rivers, and because it was the abode of the originally androgynous Primordial Man (Adam), the Garden of Eden was a favourite mandala in Christian iconography, and is therefore a symbol of totality andfrom the psychological point of viewof the self. If we take the four directions and the four elements (see note 505) as a symbolical equivalent of the four basic functions of consciousness, we can say that Maier had become conscious of three of them by the time he reached Asia. This brings him to the fourth and last, the inferior function, which is the darkest and the most unconscious of all. Africa is not a bad image for this. But just as Maier was about to direct his steps thither, he had a vision of paradise as the primordial image of wholeness, which showed him that the goal of his journey lay in the attainment of this wholeness. By the time he reached Africa, he says, the sun was in its house, Leo, and the moon was in Cancer, the moon having Cancer for the roof of its house. The proximity of the two houses indicates a coniunctio Solis et Lunae, the union of supreme opposites, and this is the crowning of the opus and the goal of the peregrination. He adds: And this gave me great hope of the best augury.
[277] The fourth function has its seat in the unconscious. In mythology the unconscious is portrayed as a great animal, for instance Leviathan, or as a whale, wolf, or dragon. We know from the myth of the sun-hero that it is so hot in the belly of the whale that his hair falls out.506 Arisleus and his companions likewise suffer from the great heat of their prison under the sea.507 The alchemists were fond of comparing their fire to the fire of hell or the flames of purgatory. Maier gives a description of Africa which is very like a description of hell: uncultivated, torrid, parched,508 sterile and empty.509 He says there are so few springs that animals of the most varied species assemble at the drinking-places and mingle with one another, whence new births and animals of a novel appearance are born, which explained the saying Always something new out of Africa. Pans dwelt there, and satyrs, dog-headed baboons, and half-men, besides innumerable species of wild animals. According to certain modern views, this could hardly be bettered as a description of the unconscious. Maier further reports that in the region of the Red Sea an animal is found with the name of Ortus (rising, origin). It had a red head with streaks of gold reaching to its neck, black eyes, a white face, white forepaws, and black hindpaws. He derived the idea of this animal from the remark of Avicenna: That thing whose head is red, its eyes black and its feet white, is the magistery.510 He was convinced that the legend of this creature referred to the phoenix, which was likewise found in that region. While he was making inquiries about the phoenix he heard a rumour that not far off a prophetess, known as the Erythraean Sibyl, dwelt in a cave. This was the sibyl who was alleged to have foretold the coming of Christ. Maier is probably referring here not to the eighth book of the Sibylline Oracles, verse 217, at which point thirty-four verses begin with the following letters: IHOY XPEITO EOY YIO THP TAYPO,511 but to the report of St. Augustine in Decivitate dei,512 which was well known in the Middle Ages. He also cites the passage about the sibyl in the Constantini Oratio of Eusebius and emphasizes that the sibylline prophecy referred to the coming of Christ in the flesh.512a
[278] We have seen earlier that the Erythraean Sea is a mysterious place, but here we meet with some noteworthy details. To begin with, our author reaches this sea just when he has completed the journey through the three continents and is about to enter the critical fourth region. We know from the Axiom of Maria and from Faust the crucial importance of that seemingly innocent question at the beginning of the Timaeus:
SOCRATES: One, two, three but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those guests of yesterday who were to entertain me today?
TIMAEUS: He suddenly felt unwell, Socrates; he would not have failed to join our company if he could have helped it.513
[279] The transition from three to four is a problem514 on which the ambiguous formulation of Maria does not shed very much light.515 We come across the dilemma of three and four in any number of guises, and in Maiers Symbola aureae mensae as well the step from three to four proves to be an important development presaged by the vision of paradise. The region of the Red Sea is proverbially hot, and Maier reached it at the end of July, in the intense heat of summer. He was, in fact, getting hot, uncommonly hot, as hot as hell, for he was approaching that region of the psyche which was not unjustly said to be inhabited by Pans, Satyrs, dog-headed baboons, and half-men. It is not difficult to see that this region is the animal soul in man. For just as a man has a body which is no different in principle from that of an animal, so also his psychology has a whole series of lower storeys in which the spectres from humanitys past epochs still dwell, then the animal souls from the age of Pithecanthropus and the hominids, then the psyche of the cold-blooded saurians, and, deepest down of all, the transcendental mystery and paradox of the sympathetic and parasympa thetic psychoid processes.
[280] So it is not surprising that our world-voyager felt that he had landed in the hottest placehe was in Arabia Felixin the sweltering heat of summer! He was painfully aware that he was risking his skin: Its your concern when your neighbours wall is on fire.516 He was the banquet-giver and the guest, the eater and the eaten in one person.
[281] The innumerable species of animals begin to show up already by the Red Sea, headed by the fabulous four-footed Ortus, which combines in itself the four alchemical colours, black, white, red, and yellow517 (the gold streaks on head and neck). Maier does not hesitate to identify the Ortus with the phoenix, the other legendary inhabitant of Arabia Felix,518 less perhaps on account of its appearance than on account of its name; for the phoenix, too, after consuming itself in the land of Egypt, each time rose renewed, like the reborn sun in Heliopolis.
[282] The Ortus is the alchemical animal which represents the living quaternity in its first synthesis. In order to become the ever-living bird of the spirit it needs the transforming fire, which is found in Africa, that is, in the encounter with and investigation of the fourth function and the animal soul represented by the Ortus. By interpreting it as the phoenix, Maier gave it a far-reaching change of meaning, as we shall see. For besides his animal soul he also discovered in its vicinity a kind of feminine soul, a virgin, to whom he at first appeared like an importunate guest.519 This was the sibyl who foretold the coming of Christ. Thus, by the Red Sea, he met the animal soul in the form of a monstrous quaternity, symbolizing, so to speak, the prima materia of the self and, as the phoenix, rebirth. The mystery alluded to here is not only the encounter with the animal soul but, at the same time and in the same place, the meeting with the anima, a feminine psychopomp who showed him the way to Mercurius and also how to find the phoenix.520
[283] It is worth noting that the animal is the symbolic carrier of the self. This hint in Maier is borne out by modern individuals who have no notion of alchemy.521 It expresses the fact that the structure of wholeness was always present but was buried in profound unconsciousness, where it can always be found again if one is willing to risk ones skin to attain the greatest possible range of consciousness through the greatest possible self-knowledgea harsh and bitter drink usually reserved for hell. The throne of God seems to be no unworthy reward for such trials. For self-knowledgein the total meaning of the wordis not a one-sided intellectual pastime but a journey through the four continents, where one is exposed to all the dangers of land, sea, air, and fire. Any total act of recognition worthy of the name embraces the fouror 360!aspects of existence. Nothing may be disregarded. When Ignatius Loyola recommended imagination through the five senses522 to the meditant, and told him to imitate Christ by use of his senses,523 what he had in mind was the fullest possible realization of the object of contemplation. Quite apart from the moral or other effects of this kind of meditation, its chief effect is the training of consciousness, of the capacity for concentration, and of attention and clarity of thought. The corresponding forms of Yoga have similar effects. But in contrast to these traditional modes of realization, where the meditant projects himself into some prescribed form, the self-knowledge alluded to by Maier is a projection into the empirical self as it actually is. It is not the self we like to imagine ourselves to be after carefully removing all the blemishes, but the empirical ego just as it is, with everything that it does and everything that happens to it. Everybody would like to be quit of this odious adjunct, which is precisely why in the East the ego is explained as
