Jung and the Alchemy

Karl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) it is one of the most important figures in the psychology transpersonal as well as one of the considered symbols in this century (so much in the field of the mythology like in what concerns to the interpretation of the dreams) and a great expert of occult currents as the Christian Gnosticism, the Tantra, the Taoism, the I-Ching and the Alchemy. Their books have been published, in Castilian language, almost all for Paidós (In this approach to the "cosmovisión" Jungians of the Alchemy only will not be pointed out in a specific way those published in Paidós, of those that the name of the editorial is not said he will understand each other that they are in Paidós).
Between 1912 and 1919, after separating Freud, Jung it was subject – more patient than I activate, apparently – of an almost uncontrollable irruption of images coming from what he would denominate Collective Unconscious that you/they were, in yes, the "raw material" that, in opinion of their personal secretary, Aniela Jaffe, "he made possible the intellectual production to which was devoted during the rest of their life"(Personality and Work of C.G.Jung).
Looking for historical records to what was happening him and to the intuitions "psychological" to those that was arriving, Jung went into, between 1918 and 1926, in the seemingly chaotic symbolic world of the Christian Gnosticism. Later on he would find their base of historical support in the Alchemy, until the point that it was convinced that their Analytic Psychology connected directly with the Alchemy and that its method "psycho-therapeutic" and revitalized of symbols, compound number "Active Imagination", it was kind of an enhanced method of the "Imaginatio vera et non phantastica" of the Opus alchemist.
In 1928 their hands received a book of Chinese alchemy that was good him to correlate their interior search with that of the alchemists. This work called herself The Secret of the Corn marigold whose oral tradition went back a century VIII of our era. "I devoured the manuscript practically, because their content came to corroborate my ideas unexpectedly on the you send it and the circumvallation around a center. The contact with that work put an end to my isolation, because through its pages I was able to know my ideological precursors and to be related with them", he would admit in its memoirs

Starting from then Jung will dive in the Alchemy, ending up having one of the collections of books and more important infolios of the world, with more than two hundred securities. Almost this whole library alchemist already had it in its possession in 1940. Their knowledge of Latin and of the Greek they facilitated him the reading and nice study of such texts. "The experiences of the alchemists were my own experiences and their world was, in certain sense, my own world", he would admit.
Between the authors and favorite books of Jung, Aniela Jaffe mentions Gerardus Dorneus (s. SVI): "This sage’s thoughts on the laboratory work and the meditation, on the phases of the "opus" and of the "conniunctio", as well as on the concept of the "Unus Mundus", they provided Jung the key for the understanding of the yearnings alchemists" (especially Physica interested him Trismegisti and Meditative Philosophia). He fascinated Paracelso equally and to its figure he dedicated the monograph Paracélsica (1952), at par that, in its memoirs he would admit that he went studying Paracelso that that finally took him "to sense the essence of the Alchemy in its relationship with the religion and the psychology, or rather, the Alchemy in its aspect of religious philosophy."
If he was necessary to speak of books it would be necessary to point out the Rosarium especially Philosophorum (1550), of Arnaldo Vilanova whose images and text were good him to write the book Psychology of the Transfer (1946). Also it is necessary to mention the Mutus Bark (1677). Jung desvelaría, also, the archetypal symbolism of some dreams and their relating symbolic alchemists in Psychology and Alchemy (1944), and at the end of their life he dedicated him the 800 pages of the first two volumes of Mysterium Coniunctionis again (1955-56); the third volume, on the Dawn Consurgens Marie wrote it Louise von Franz who was him of valuable help during many years for her philology knowledge, and that she is author of a biography "spiritual" of very interesting Jung (C.J.Jung. Their myth in our time, Fund of Economic Culture), as well as of the book Alchemy (Firefly).
Their first public exhibition about the opposing parallelisms between their Analytic Psychology and the Alchemy the have to know in two conferences pronounced in sendos congresses of Eranos, in Ascona (Switzerland): "The symbols onírics of the Process of Individuation" and "The concepts Alchemies around the salvation" that are the base on which rotates their rehearsal Psychology and Alchemy.
Besides the mentioned books, the references alchemists in the work Jungians are in almost all their works, highlighting their foreword especially in The secret of the Corn marigold (1929), in which impacts on the Process of Individuation and the archetype of the you send it, and in "Symbology of the Spirit" (1948), in which stops mainly in the symbolism of the Mercury Filosofal (published in Fund of Economic Culture).

Tags: alchemy, archetypes, Jungians, Karl Jung