Page 46 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

words of alchemy are different for us, they “incorporate events that one
can touch and see. The work of soul-making requires corrosive acids,
heavy earths, ascending birds; there are sweating kings, dogs and
bitches, stenches, urine and blood. How like the language of our dreams
and how unlike the language into which we interpret dreams” (ibid: 37).
Thus we can discuss the degrees, types and qualities of our interior heat,
whether it is sharp and penetrating, whether like that of horse dung or
water, and so on. Alchemy (at least in some of its forms) also recognised
that there are analogies between the world and psychic experience - it
“recognises soul in physical substance and admits the ‘stuffness’ of
soul” (1982b: 113). This conceivably leads us to consider that the
(psychological) work leads us back out into the world: “From the
alchemical perspective the human individual may be a necessary but
cannot be a sufficient focus; the rescue of the cosmos is equally
important. Neither can take place without the other. Soul and world are
inseparable” (1991: 91). This alchemical language, Hillman claims,
cannot be taken by us as other than metaphor, it forces us to realise that
when we speak of the psyche we speak in metaphor and there is always
more to come. In itself, this frees us from the directness of everyday or
scientific language, which abstracts us away from the particulars of our
actual process (1978: 39-40). Hillman implies that Jung loses some of
this and that his followers tend to translate even alchemy into Jungian
abstractions. The huge variety of different alchemical conjunctions
becomes simply the union of opposites. Difference and specificity in the
texts and in the process is ignored - it might be possible to suggest that
this always happens when a person looks for over-riding commonality
rather than investigating individual texts. This is a point to which we
shall return.

Criticisms

Generally Jung’s work on alchemy has been well received by
historians of alchemy, as it extended the possible understandings of the
subject. Jung revitalised the study of alchemy’s shifting focus, not away
from the strange symbols of alchemy but onto them and onto their
dynamics. He explained that what seemed to be chemically impossible
stemmed from psychological and cultural processes, rather than from

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