alchemy

The observed changes in the matter, brought about by various chemical operations, named in Latin (such as separatio, coniunctio, calcinatio, solutio, sublimatio, and coagulatio), were actually a reflection or projection of the inner workings of the human psyche.

One could say that they are like different interpretations and portrayals of the same story or play, taking place in anything from three to five discernible acts or phases, named after colors: nigredo (blackening), albedo (whitening), citrinas (yellowing), and rubedo (reddening). (In later alchemical texts, from the fifteenth century, citrinas was

We have already discussed Jung's idea that in alchemy, when light and darkness and male and female come together, the filius philosophorum is born.

Considered from the wider perspective of the history of the human spirit, alchemy and its goal appeared not only as physical processes leading to chemistry, but also as a religious discipline whose goal was the transformation of earthly man into an illuminated philosopher.

For Jung, alchemy had a dual face. He saw it as both a quest to literally transform matter in the laboratory as well as a spiritual quest aimed at the transformation of the soul and thus as a religious philosophy.

Alchemy itself has been seen as gold making, Self-making, and God making, and there are also the divides between phenomena and noumena, limit and transcendence, mechanism and vitalism, thought and being, image and idea, spirit and nature, soul and spirit, ontology and history, absolutism and relativism.

"The alchemical operations were real, only this reality was not physical but psychological. Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation ofthe cosmos."'