Page 32 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

Jung also quotes some alchemists, who consider that something in
the human is important for the work. The anonymous Consilium
coniugii states “The Philosophers maintain that the father of gold and
silver is the animating principle of earth and water, or man or part of a
man such as hair, blood menstruum etc”. Jung states that Gerard Dorn
implies the miracle of gold making was performed by a natura
abscondita (hidden nature) which is “perceived not with the outward
eyes but solely by the mind”. It could only be used if the adept had
closely approached divine things, and purified the substances correctly.
Dorn continues: “There is in the human body a certain aetherial
substance, which preserves its other elemental parts and causes them to
continue.. [and] the Philosophers, through a kind of divine inspiration,
knew that this virtue and heavenly vigour can be freed from its fetters…
by its like” (CW 14: 95-6). The link between micro and macrocosm,
might also imply that ‘interior’ work was not always divorced from
laboratory work. Dorn also wrote “Thou wilt never make the One which
thou seekest, except first there be made one thing of thyself” (ibid: 234-
5). For some alchemists the boundaries between self and flask, between
observer and observed, might not have been as pronounced as they were
to become.

Perhaps the most frequently returned to examples of the recognition
of mental work which Jung gives, are the definitions from Ruland, a late
16th Century follower of Paracelsus.

Meditatio is defined as an “inner dialogue with someone unseen”,
and hence could be seen as a dialogue with an aspect of the unconscious
- similar to the process Jung called Active imagination, in which the
person is actively involved in the images but at the same time is
observing them rather than controlling them (CW 12: 274, 255, 346;
CW 14: 495-6, 529-).

Ruland also defines Imaginatio as “the star (astrum) in man, the
celestial and supercelestial body”. But as Jung notes, the obscurity of
this definition is increased by astrum being a technical term to
Paracelsus (CW 12: 277-8). Earlier Ruland remarks that the astrum is
“the virtue and potency of things obtained by preparation” (Ruland
1893: 52), which implies that if imagination is the star then it needs
development and preparation as well. We must be careful about taking
the use of ‘star’ as implying the same things cross culturally, even
within the same field. When Aleister Crowley proclaims “Every man
and woman is a star”, it may have no connection at all with Paracelsian
subtle bodies (even if Crowley is a knowledgeable occultist), and even

28