Page 10 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

appearance of metals, manufacture of artificial gems and so on. It is
ambiguous from the texts, whether the authors considered these
processes transmutation or imitation, or a mixture of both. The Classical
world tended to enforce a distinction between artisans and leisured
philosophers, so there was plenty of room for the philosophic
misunderstanding of practical techniques, and for the comparison of
chemistry to the imagined functions of the soul. Sometimes, however,
sections of the texts can seem completely ‘spiritual’ in their orientation
as when Olympiodorus quotes Zosimos as writing:

If thou wilt calmly humble thyself in relation to thy body, thou
wilt calm thyself also in relation to the passions, and by acting
thus, thou wilt summon the divine to thyself and in truth the
divine, which is everywhere will come to thee. But when thou
knowest thyself, thou knowest also the God who is truly one (q
CW 13: 285).

Alexandrian alchemy may also have been influenced by the ritual
techniques which accumulated around metal work in the early Middle
East (Eliade 1962), but there is no clear evidence for this, and as ritual
tends to accumulate around everything that humans do (particularly
when it involves uncertainty), there is no necessary connection. A final
local influence might be found in the relation of Alchemy, often known
as the ‘Hermetic Art’ or ‘Hermetic Philosophy’, to the mystical texts,
probably written in Alexandria after the second century AD which
pretended to give the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians, and which are
known as the Hermetica. Some of the texts under this name give
‘practical’ magical and astrological formulae, and it is conceivable there
may have been alchemical texts from this period. Despite Arabic texts
quoting alchemical texts attributed to Hermes (cf. Stapleton et al 1949),
there is no evidence of an earlier connection or a related origin. In all,
there has not been enough study of the practical Hermetica, to be
absolutely clear on this point1.

1. Jung suggests that many early Latin alchemical texts derive from the
Harranite school, who he thinks may also be the source of the Hermetica (CW
13: 206). The Harranites appear to be a Neoplatonic group, who flourished in
the 11th Century, and who were reputed to consult an oracle of a talking head,
which they had manufactured (CW 9ii: 126, CW 11: 239-42).

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