Page 29 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

“Alchemy afforded numerous ‘hooks’ for the projection of those
archetypes which could not be fitted smoothly into the Christian
process” (ibid: 34) partly because the alchemists had no clear models of
natural processes which enabled them to elucidate the actual behaviour
of the world (ibid: 35), and partly because the process appeared to occur
externally to the alchemist so that they did not identify with the symbols
thrown up, and could treat them, or observe them, impersonally (ibid:
37). Psychological “projection is never made, it simply happens, it is
simply there”, so psychic experience appeared as the “particular
behaviour of the chemical process”. Alchemists did not practice their art
because they believed in theoretical correspondences, but they
experienced correspondences which they made into theory (ibid: 245). It
is usually the disconnected independent complexes in people which get
projected (ibid: 299) and these fantasies are “identical with the fantasy
products that can still be found today among both sick and healthy
people who have never heard of alchemy” (CW 13: 205).

Jung then attempts to demonstrate his assertion about the presence
of psychological projection in alchemy, by quoting some works which
he asserts report hallucinations or projections, seen in the swirling mists
and liquids of the retort11. For example Lull writes “without invocation
and without spiritual exaltation you can see fugitive spirits condensed in
the air in the shape of divers monsters, beasts and men, which move like
clouds hither and thither” (CW 12: 250).

One of the great secrets of alchemy was the initial substance, the
prima materia. This is never revealed, though alchemists routinely assert
that without knowing the initial substance it is impossible to do the work
at all. Jung argues that this is because, more importantly than any actual
material, the desired properties result from the projection of an
individual (personal) unconscious, and therefore will have huge
variations (CW 12: 317). He writes: “Consciousness rests upon

11. Needham writes “This one can easily imagine, for in the behaviour of
substances undergoing physical and chemical change there are many
happenings which nowadays we know how to neglect as subsidiary - solid or
liquid surface films, interference colours, clouds formed when immiscible
liquids are brought together, or fortuitous shapes assumed by vapours in
evaporation or distillation, bubble masses that take strange forms. Indeed the
whole transition from alchemy to modern chemistry might be seen from the
psychological point of view as fundamentally the withdrawal of a mass of
projections” (Needham 1983: 5-6).

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