Page 50 - A critical exposition of Jung's theory of alchemy

quadrature to the four elements of Western alchemy, but he knew that
Chinese alchemy uses five elements, and was probably aware that
Paracelsus in the Volumen Medicinae Paramirum implies that it takes
five kinds of medicine to treat the whole person. Yet he does not deal
with this. Similarly when his favourite alchemist, Gerard Dorn, prefers
the trinity of Paracelsus’ Three Principles to Fours (seeing fours as
ungodly), Jung has to, for once and somewhat arbitrarily, pronounce
Dorn to be incorrect. Although Jung remarks that the “use of the Trinity
formula in alchemy is so common that further documentation is
unnecessary”, he argues that as Mercury can contain both Sol and Luna,
the alchemical trinity is a quaternity in disguise (CW 14:184-5). But as
Sulphur, and Salt also sometimes contain opposites, we actually might
have a senary. The argument about the importance of fours is further
weakened as Jung can use the Cross to generate almost any single digit
number he cares to. It is possible that Jung supports fours as symbols of
wholeness because of his theory of the four functions (CW 12: 106), but
he also suggests that the four could be important as it derives from the
structure of the carbon atom (ibid: 218).

Likewise if the Ouroboros was a mandala, we might expect to find
more of them towards the end of the work, but this is not the case as far
as I know. Again, descriptions of the Philosophers’ stone seem more
likely to be symbols of the Self when it is described in terms of the
paradoxes of its manufacture, then when portrayed as a red glassy power
and weighed (as in the quotation from Van Helmont given in the history
section).

Jung also tends to take symbols which can be fairly rare and speak
of them as if many alchemists actually used them - such as the cutting of
the egg with a sword (CW 13: 82) or when writing “in alchemy the eye
is the coelum (heaven)” (CW 14: 52). Even when discussing Dorn’s
three conjunctions, he casually writes “what the alchemists call unio
mentalis” rather than “what Dorn calls unio mentalis” (CW 14: 531).

Jung claims that alchemy is represented spontaneously in the dreams
of his patients. He argues that “anyone who wishes to understand the
symbolism of dreams cannot close his eyes to the fact that the dreams of
modern men and women often contain the very images and metaphors
found in medieval treatises” (CW 13: 69). However the client Kristine
Man, who is mentioned in the “Study in the Process of Individuation” as
knowing nothing of alchemical imagery, actually appears to have had a
fair exposure to occult writings, being the daughter of a leading
American Swedenborgian, as well as having read Jung’s pre-alchemical

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