J. The Creator as Ruler of the threefold and fourfold universe, with water and fire as the counterpart of heaven.-"Liber palris sapienliae," Theatrum chemicum Britannicum (1652) 

I 
INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
Calamum quassatum non conteret, et linum fumigans non extinguet .. 
-ISAIAS 42 : 3 
The bruised reed he shall not break, and the smoking flax he shall not quench .... (D.V.) 

(] 

2. A pair of alchemists, kneeling by the furnace and praying for God's blessing. -Mutus liber (1702) 

For the reader familiar with analytical psychology, there is no need of any introductory remarks to the subject of the following study. But for the reader whose interest is not professional and who comes to this book unprepared, some kind of preface will probably be necessary. The concepts of alchemy and the individuation process are matters that seem to lie very far apart, so that the imagination finds it impossible at first to conceive of any bridge between them. To this reader I owe an explanation, more particularly as I have had one or two experiences since the publication of my recent lectures which lead me to infer a certain bewilderment in my critics. 
	I 	What I now have to put forward as regards the nature of the 
human psyche is based first and foremost on my observations of people. It has been objected that these observations deal with experiences that are either unknown or barely accessible. It is a remarkable fact, which we come across again and again, that absolutely everybody, even the most unqualified layman, thinks he knows all about psychology as though the psyche were something that enjoyed the most universal understanding. But anyone who really knows the human psyche will agree with me 
~ 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
when I say that it is one of the darkest and most mysterious regions of our experience. There is no end to what can be learned in this field. Hardly a day passes in my practice but I come across something new and unexpected. True enough, my experiences are not common places lying on the surface of life. They are, however, within easy reach of every psychotherapist working in this particular field. It is therefore rather absurd, to say the least, that ignorance of the experiences I have to offer should be twisted into an accusation against me. I do not hold myself responsible for the shortcomings in the lay public's knowledge of psychology. 
	3 	There is in the analytical process, that is to say in the dialec- 
tical discussion between the conscious mind and the unconscious, a development or an advance towards some goal or end, the perplexing nature of which has engaged my attention for many years. Psychological treatment may come to an end at any stage in the development without one's always or necessarily having the feeling that a goal has also been reached. Typical and temporary terminations may occur (1) after receiving a piece of good advice; (2) after making a fairly complete but nevertheless adequate confession; (3) after having recognized some hitherto unconscious but essential psychic content whose realization gives a new impetus to one's life and activity; (4) after a hard-won separation from the childhood psyche; (5) after having worked out a new and rational mode of adaptation to perhaps difficult or unusual circumstances and surroundings; (6) after the disappearance of painful symptoms; (7) after some positive turn of fortune such as an examination, engagement, marriage, divorce, change of profession, ete.; (8) after having found one's way back to the church or creed to which one previously belonged, or after a conversion; and finally, (9) after having begun to build up a practical philosophy of life (a "philosophy" in the classical sense of the word). 
	4 	Although the list could admit of many more modifications 
and additions, it ought to define by and large the main situations in which the analytical or psychotherapeutic process reaches a temporary or sometimes even a definitive end. Experience shows, however, that there is a relatively large number of patients for whom the outward termination of work with the doctor is far from denoting the end of the analytical process. It is rather the 
4 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
case that the dialectical discussion with the unconscious still continues, and follows much the same course as it does with those who have not given up their work with the doctor. Occasionally one meets such patients again after several years and hears the often highly remarkable account of their subsequent development. It was experiences of this kind which first confirmed me in my belief that there is in the psyche a process that seeks its own goal independently of external factors, and which freed me from the worrying feeling that I myself m~ght be the sole cause of an unreal-and perhaps unnatural-process in the psyche of the patient. This apprehension was not altogether misplaced inasmuch as no amount of argument based on any of the nine categories mentioned above-not even a religious conversion or the most startling removal of neurotic symptoms-can persuade certain patients to give up their analytical work. It was these cases that finally convinced me that the treatment of neurosis opens up a problem which goes far beyond purely medical considerations and to which medical knowledge alone cannot hope to do justice. 
	5 	Although the early days of analysis now lie nearly half a cen- 
tury behind us, with their pseudo-biological interpretations and their depreciation of the whole process of psychic development, memories die hard and people are still very fond of describing a lengthy analysis as "running away from life," "unresolved transference," "auto-eroticism"-and by other equally unpleasant epithets. But since there are two sides to everything, it is legitimate to condemn this so-called "hanging on" as negative to life only if it can be shown that it really does contain nothing positive. The very understandable impatience felt by the doctor does not prove anything in itself. Only through infinitely patient research has the new science succeeded in building up a profounder knowledge of the nature of the psyche, and if there have been certain unexpected therapeutic results, these are due to the self-sacrificing perseverance of the doctor. Unjustifiably negative judgments are easily come by and at times harmful; moreover they arouse the suspicion of being a mere cloak for ignorance if not an attempt to evade the responsibility of a thorough-going analysis. For since the analytical work must inevitably lead sooner or later to a fundamental discussion between "I" and "You" and "You" and "I" on a plane stripped of 
h 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
all human pretences, it is very likely, indeed it is almost certain, that not only the patient but the doctor as well will find the situation "getting under his skin." Nobody can meddle with fire or poison without being affected in some vulnerable spot; for the true physician does not stand outside his work but is always in the thick of it. 
This "hanging on," as it is called, may be something undesired by both parties, something incomprehensible and even unendurable, without necessarily being negative to life. On the contrary, it can easily be a positive "hanging on," which, although it constitutes an apparently insurmountable obstacle, represents just for that reason a unique situation that demands the maximum effort and therefore enlists the energies of the whole man. In fact, one could say that while the patient is unconsciously and unswervingly seeking the solution to some ultimately insoluble problem, the art and technique of the doctor are doing their best to help him towards it, "Ars totum requirit hominem!" exclaims an old alchemist, It is just this homo totus whom we seek. The labours of the doctor as well as the quest of the patient are directed towards that hidden and as yet unmanifest "whole" man, who is at once the greater and the future man. But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via) not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors. It is on this longissima via that we meet with those experiences which are said to be "inaccessible." Their inaccessibility really consists in the fact that they cost us an enormous amount of effort: they demand the very thing we most fear, namely the "wholeness" which we talk about so glibly and which lends itself to endless theorizing, though in actual life we give it the widest possible berth.! It is infinitely more popular to go in for "compartment psychology," where the left-hand pigeon-hole does not know what is in the right. 
I am afraid that we cannot hold the unconsciousness and 
1 It is worth noting that a Protestant theologian, writing on homiletics, had the courage to demand wholeness of the preacher from the ethical point of view. He substantiates his argument by referring to my psychology. See Handler, Die Predigt. 
6 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
impotence of the individual entirely responsible for this state of affairs: it is due also to the general psychological education of the European. Not only is this education the proper concern of the ruling religions, it belongs to their very nature-for religion excels all rationalistic systems in that it alone relates to the outer and inner man in equal degree. We can accuse Christianity of arrested development if we are determined to excuse our own shortcomings; but I do not wish to make the mistake of blaming religion for something that is due mainly to human incompetence. I am speaking therefore not of the deepest and best understanding of Christianity but of the superficialities and disastrous misunderstandings that are plain for all to see. The demand made by the imitatio Christi-that we should follow the ideal and seek to become like it-ought logically to have the result of developing and exalting the inner man. In actual fact, however, the ideal has been turned by superficial and formalistically-minded believers into an external object of worship, and it is precisely this veneration for the object that prevents it from reaching down into the depths of the psyche and giving the latter a wholeness in keeping with the ideal. Accordingly the divine mediator stands outside as an image, while man remains fragmentary and untouched in the deepest part of him. Christ can indeed be imitated even to the point of stigmatization without the imitator coming anywhere near the ideal or its meaning. For it is not a question of an imitation that leaves a man unchanged and makes him into a mere artifact, but of realizing the ideal on one's own account-Deo concedente-in one's own individual life. We must not forget, however, that even a mistaken imitation may sometimes involve a tremendous moral effort which has all the merits of a total surrender to some supreme value, even though the real goal may never be reached and the value is represented externally. It is conceivable that by virtue of this total effort a man may even catch a fleeting glimpse of his wholeness, accompanied by the feeling of grace that always characterizes this experience. 
	8 	The mistaken idea of a merely outward imitatio Christi is 
further exacerbated by a typically European prejudice which distinguishes the Western attitude from the Eastern. Western man is held in thrall by the "ten thousand things"; he sees only particulars, he is ego-bound and thing-bound, and unaware of 
7 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
the deep root of all being. Eastern man, on the other hand, experiences the world of particulars, and even his own ego, like a dream; he is rooted essentially in the "Ground," which attracts him so powerfully that his relations with the world are relativized to a degree that is often incomprehensible to us. The Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal-Christ-in its outward aspect and thus to rob it of its mysterious relation to the inner man. It is this prejudice, for instance, which impels the Protestant interpreters of the Bible to interpret EvTO~ vuwv (referring to the Kingdom of God) as "among you" instead of "within you." I do not mean to say anything about the validity of the Western attitude: we are sufficiently convinced of its rightness. But if we try to come to a real understanding of Eastern man-as the psychologist mustwe find it hard to rid ourselves of certain misgivings. Anyone who can square it with his conscience is free to decide this Question as he pleases, though he may be unconsciously setting himself up as an arbiter mundi. I for my part prefer the precious gift of doubt, for the reason that it does not violate the virginity of things beyond our ken. 
Christ the ideal took upon himself the sins of the world. But if the ideal is wholly outside then the sins of the individual are also outside, and consequently he is more of a fragment than ever, since superficial misunderstanding conveniently enables him, quite literally, to "cast his sins upon Christ" and thus to evade his deepest responsibilities-which is contrary to the spirit of Christianity. Such formalism and laxity were not only one of the prime causes of the Reformation, they are also present within the body of Protestantism. If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing. The Eastern attitude (more particularly the Indian) is the other way about: everything, highest and lowest, is in the (transcendental) Subject. Accordingly the significance of the Atman, the Self, is heightened beyond all bounds. But with Western man the value of the self sinks to zero. Hence the universal depreciation of the soul in the West. Whoever speaks of the reality of the soul or psyche2 is accused 
2 [The translation of the German word Seele presents almost insuperable difficulties on account of the lack of a single English equivalent and because it combines the two words "psyche" and "soul" in a way not altogether familiar to the Eng- 
8 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
of "psychologism." Psychology is spoken of as if it were "only" psychology and nothing else. The notion that there can be psychic factors which correspond to divine figures is regarded as a devaluation of the latter. It smacks of blasphemy to think that a religious experience is a psychic process: for, so it is argued, a religious experience "is not only psychological." Any· thing psychic is only Nature and therefore, people think, nothing religious can come out of it. At the same time such critics never hesitate to derive all religions-with the exception of their own-from the nature of the psyche. It is a tell ing fact that two theological reviewers of my book Psychology and Religion-anI:' of them Catholic, the other Protestant-assiduously overlooked my demonstration of the psychic origin of religious phenomena. 
	.10 	Faced with this situation, we must really ask: How do we 
know so much about the psyche that we can say "only" psychic? For this is how Western man, whose soul is evidently "of little worth," speaks and thinks. If much were in his soul he would speak of it with reverence. But since he does not do so we can only conclude that there is nothing of value in it. Not that this is necessarily so always and everywhere, but only with people who put nothing into their souls and have "all God outside." (A 
lish reader. For this reason some comment by the Editors will not be out of place. 
[In previous translations, and in this one as well, "psyche"-for which Jung in the German original uses either Ps,'che or Seele-has been used with reference to the totality of all psychic processes (cf. lung, Psychological 1'YI)IS, DeL 48); Le .. it is a comprehensive term. "Soul," on the other hand, as used in the technical terminology of analytical psychology, is more restricted in meaning and refers to a "function complex" or partial personality and never to the whole psyche. It is often applied specifically to "anima" and "anim us"; e.g., in this connection it is lIsed in the composite word "soul-image" (Seelenbild). This conception of the soul is more primitive than the Christian one with which the reader is likely to be more familiar. In its Christian context it refers to "the transcendental energy in man" and "the spiritual part of man considered in its moral aspect or in relation to God." (CL definition in The ShoTteT OXfOTd English DictionaTY·) 
[In the above passage in the text (and in similar passages), "soul" is lIsed in a non-technical sense (i.e., it does not refer to "animus" or "anima"), nor does it refer to the transcendental conception, but to a psychic (phenomenological) fact of a highly numinous character. This usage is adhered to except when the COI'text shows clearly that the term is used in the Christian or Neoplatonic sense. -EDITORS.] 
9 

I. INTRODL'CTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
little more Meister Eckhart would be a very good thing sometimes!) 
An exclusively religious projection may rob the soul of its values so that through sheer inanition it becomes incapable of further development and gets stuck in an unconscious state. At the same time it falls victim to the delusion that the cause of all misfortune lies .outside, and people no longer stop to ask themselves how far it is their own doing. So insignificant does the soul seem that it is regarded as hardly capable of evil, much less of good. But if the soul no longer has any part to play, religious life congeals into externals and formalities. However we may picture the relationship between God and soul, one thing is certain: that the soul cannot be "nothing but." 3 On the contrary it has the dignity of an entity endowed with consciousness of a relationship to Deity. Even if it were only the relationship of a drop of water to the sea, that sea would not exist but for the multitude of drops. The immortality of the soul insisted upon by dogma exalts it above the transitoriness of mortal man and causes it to partake of some supernatural quality. It thus infinitely surpasses the perishable, conscious individual in significance, so that logically the Christian is forbidden to regard the soul as a "nothing but." 4 As the eye to the sun, so the soul corresponds to God. Since our conscious mind does not comprehend the soul it is ridiculous to speak of the things of the soul in a patronizing or depreciatory manner. Even the believing Christian does not know God's hidden ways and must leave him to decide whether he will work on man from outside or from within, through the soul. So the believer should not boggle at the fact that there are somnia a Deo missa (dreams sent by God) and illuminations of the soul which cannot be traced back to any external causes. It would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest himself everywhere save only in the human soul. Indeed the very intimacy of the relationship between God and 
3 [The term "nothing but" (nichts als), which occurs frequently in Jung to denote the habit of explaining something unknown by reducing it to something apparently known and thereby devaluing it, is borrowed from William James, Pragmatism, p. 16: "What is higher is explained by what is lower and treated for ever as a case of 'nothing but'-nothing but something else of a quite inferior 50rt."] 4 The dogma that man is formed in the likeness of God weighs heavily in the scales in any assessment of man-not to mention the Incarnation. 
10 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
the soul precludes from the start any devaluation of the latter.5 It would be going perhaps too far to speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself the faculty of relationship to God, i.e., a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about.6 This correspondence is} in psychological terms} the archetype of the God-image. 
	12 	Every archetype is capable of endless development and dif- 
ferentiation. It is therefore possible for it to be more developed or less. In an outward form of religion where all the emphasis is on the outward figure (hence where we are dealing with a more or less complete projection), the archetype is identical with externalized ideas but remains unconscious as a psychic factor. When an unconscious content is replaced by a projected image to that extent, it is cut off from all participation in and influence on the conscious mind. Hence it largely forfeits its own life, because prevented from exerting the formative influence on consciousness natural to it; what is more, it remains in its original form-unchanged, for nothing changes in the unconscious. At a certain point it even develops a tendency to regress to lower and more archaic levels. It may easily happen, therefore, that a Christian who believes in all the sacred figures is still unde· veloped and unchanged in his inmost soul because he has "all God outside" and does not experience him in the soul. Hi~ deciding motives, his ruling interests and impulses, do not spring from the sphere of Christianity but from the unconsciow and undeveloped psyche, which is as pagan and archaic as ever Not the individual alone but the sum total of individual live in a nation proves the truth of this contention. The great event~ of our world as planned and executed by man do not breathe the spirit of Christianity but rather of unadorned paganism These things originate in a psychic condition that has remainec archaic and has not been even remotely touched by Christianity The Church assumes, not altogether without reason, that the fao 
5 The fact that the devil too can take possession of the soul does not diminish it significance in the least. 
6 It is therefore psychologically quite unthinkable for God to be simply th "wholly other," for a "wholly other" could never be one of the soul's deepes and closest intimacies-which is precisely what God is. The only statements tha have psychological validity concerning the God-image are either paradoxes 0 antinomies. 
11 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
of semel credidisse (having once believed) leaves certain traces behind it; but of these traces nothing is to be seen in the broad march of events. Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside-in image and in word, in Church and Bible-but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old; that is to say the inner correspondence with the outer God-image is undeveloped for lack of psychological culture and has therefore got stuck in heathenism. Christian education has done all that is humanly possible, but it has not been enough. Too few people have experienced the divine image as the innermost possession of their own souls. Christ only meets them from without, never from within the soul; that is why dark paganism still reigns there, a paganism which, now in a form so blatant that it can no longer be denied and now in all too threadbare disguise, is swamping the world of so-called Christian civilization. 
	13 	With the methods employed hitherto we have not succeeded 
in Christianizing the soul to the point where even the most elementary demands of Christian ethics can exert any decisive influence on the main concerns of the Christian European. The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. Christianity must indeed begin again from the very beginning if it is to meet its high educative task. So long as religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened. It has yet to be understood that the mysterium magnum is not only an actuality but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche. The man who does not know this from his own experience may be a most learned theologian, but he has no idea of religion and still less of education. 
	14 	Yet when I point out that the soul possesses by nature a re- 
ligious function,7 and when I stipulate that it is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God- 
7 Tertullian, Apologeticus, xvii: "Anima naturaliter christian a." 12 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind, then it is precisely the theologian who seizes me by the arm and accuses me of "psychologism." But were it not a fact of experience that supreme values reside in the soul (quite apart from the aVT{/u/WV 71"V€vp..a who is also there), psychology would not interest me in the least, for the soul would then be nothing but a miserable vapour. I know, however, from hundredfold experience that it is nothing of the sort, but on the contrary contains the equivalents of everything that has been formulated in dogma and a good deal more, which is just what enables it to be an eye destined to behold the light. This requires limitless range and unfathomable depth of vision. I have been accused of "deifying the soul." Not I but God himself has deified it! I did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is naturaliter religiosa) i.e., possesses a religious function. I did not invent or insinuate this function, it produces itself of its own accord without being prompted thereto by any opinions or suggestions of mine. With a truly tragic delusion these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. For it is obvious that far too many people are incapable of establishing a connection between the sacred figures and their own psyche: they cannot see to what extent the equivalent images are lying dormant in their own unconscious. In order to facilitate this inner vision we must first clear the way for the faculty of seeing. How this is to be done without psychology, that is, without making contact with the psyche, is frankly beyond my comprehension.S 
	15 	Another equally serious misunderstanding lies in imputing 
to psychology the wish to be a new and possibly heretical doctrine. If a blind man can gradually be helped to see it is not to be expected that he will at once discern new truths with an eagle eye. One must be glad if he sees anything at all, and if he begins to understand what he sees. Psychology is concerned with the act of seeing and not with the construction of new religious S Since it is a question here of human effort, I leave aside acts of grace which are beyond man's control. 
13 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
truths, when even the existing teachings have not yet been perceived and understood. In religious matters it is a welI-known fact that we cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly, for it is in the inward experience that the connection between the psyche and the outward image or creed is first revealed as a relationship or correspondence like that of sponsus and sponsa. Accordingly when I say as a psychologist that God is an archetype, I mean by that the "type" in the psyche. The word "type" is, as we know, derived from TlJ7!"O', "blow" or "imprint"; thus an archetype presupposes an imprinter. Psychology as the science of the soul has to confine itself to its subject and guard against overstepping its proper boundaries by metaphysical assertions or other professions of faith. Should it set up a God, even as a hypothetical cause, it would have implicitly claimed the possibility of proving God, thus exceeding its competence in an absolutely illegitimate way. Science can only be science; there are no "scientific" professions of faith and similar contradictiones in adiecto. We simply do not know the ultimate derivation of the archetype any more than we know the origin of the psyche. The competence of psychology as an empirical science only goes so far as to establish, on the basis of comparative research, whether for instance the imprint found in the psyche can or cannot reasonably be termed a "Godimage." Nothing positive or negative has thereby been asserted about the possible existence of God, any more than the archetype of the "hero" posits the actual existence of a hero. 
Now if my psychological researches have demonstrated the existence of certain psychic types and their correspondence with well-known religious ideas, then we have opened up a possible approach to those experienceable contents which manifestly and undeniably form the empirical foundations of alI religious experience. The religious-minded man is free to accept whatever metaphysical explanations he pleases about the origin of these images; not so the intellect, which must keep strictly to the principles of scientific interpretation and avoid trespassing beyond the bounds of what can be known. Nobody can prevent the believer from accepting God, Purusha, the Atman, or Tao as the Prime Cause and thus putting an end to the fundamental disquiet of man. The scientist is a scrupulous worker; he cannot take heaven by storm. Should he allow himself to be seduced 
14 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
into such an extravagance he would be sawing off the branch on which he sits. 
	17 	The fact is that with the knowledge and actual experience 
of these inner images a way is opened for reason and feeling to gain access to those other images which the teachings or religion offer to mankind. Psychology thus does just the opposite of what it is accused of: it provides possible approaches to a better understanding of these things, it opens people's eyes to the real meaning of dogmas, and, far from destroying,. it throws open an empty house to new inhabitants. I can corroborate this from countless experiences: people belonging to creeds of all imaginable kinds, who had played the apostate or cooled off in their faith, have found a new approach to their old truths, not a few Catholics among them. Even a Parsee found the way back to the Zoroastrian fire-temple, which should bear witness to the objectivity of my point of view. 
	18 	But this objectivity is just what my psychology is most 
blamed for: it is said not to decide in favour of this or that religious doctrine. Without prejudice to my own subjective convictions I should like to raise the question: Is it not thinkable that when one refrains from setting oneself up as an arbiter mundi and, deliberately renouncing all subjectivism, cherishes on the contrary the belief, for instance, that God has expressed himself in many languages and appeared in divers forms and that all these statements are true-is it not thinkable, I say, that this too is a decision? The objection raised, more particularly by Christians, that it is impossible for contradictory statements to be true, must permit itself to be politely asked: Does one equal three? How can three be one? Can a mother be a virgin? And so on. Has it not yet been observed that alI religious statements contain logical contradictions and assertions that are impossible in principle, that this is in fact the very essence of religious assertion? As witness to this we have Tertullian's avowal: 
"And the Son of God is dead, which is worthy of belief because it is absurd. And when buried He rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." 9 If Christianity demands faith in such contradictions it does not seem to me that it can very well condemn those who assert a few paradoxes more. Oddly enough the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, while 9 Tertullian, De carne Christi,5 (Migne, P.L., vol. 2, col. 751). 
15 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fulness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible. 
Not everyone possesses the spiritual strength of a Tertullian. It is evident not only that he had the strength to sustain paradoxes but that they actually afforded him the highest degree of religious certainty. The inordinate number of spiritual weaklings makes paradoxes dangerous. So long as the paradox remains unexamined and is taken for granted as a customary part of life, it is harmless enough. But when it occurs to an insufficiently cultivated mind (always, as we know, the most sure of itself) to make the paradoxical nature of some tenet of faith the object of its lucubrations, as earnest as they are impotent, it is not long before such a one will break out into iconoclastic and scornful laughter, pointing to the manifest absurdity of the mystery. Things have gone rapidly downhill since the Age of Enlightenment,for, once this petty reasoning mind, which cannot endure any paradoxes, is awakened, no sermon on earth can keep it down. A new task then arises: to lift this still undeveloped mind step by step to a higher level and to increase the number of persons who have at least some inkling of the scope of paradoxical truth. If this is not possible, then it must be admitted that the spiritual approaches to Christianity are as good as blocked. We simply do not understand any more what is meant by the paradoxes contained in dogma; and the more external our understanding of them becomes the more we are affronted by their irrationality, until finally they become completely obsolete, curious relics of the past. The man who is stricken in this way cannot estimate the extent of his spiritual loss, because he has never experienced the sacred images as his inmost possession and has never realized their kinship with his own psychic structure. But it is just this indispensable knowledge that the psychology of the unconscious can give him, and its scientific objectivity is of the greatest value here. Were psychology bound to a creed it would not and could not allow the unconscious of the individual that free play which is the basic condition for the production of archetypes. It is precisely the 
16 

20 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
spontaneity of archetypal contents that convinces, whereas any prejudiced intervention is a bar to genuine experience. If the theologian really believes in the almighty power of God on the one hand and in the validity of dogma on the other, why then does he not trust God to speak in the soul? Why this fear of psychology? Or is, in complete contradiction to dogma, the soul itself a hell from which only demons gibber? Even if this were really so it would not be any the less convincing; for as we all know the horrified perception of the reality of evil has led to at least as many conversions as the experience of good. 
The archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalents of religious dogmas. In the hermeneutic language of the Fathers the Church possesses a rich store of analoRies with the individual and spontaneous products to be found in psychology. What the unconscious expresses is far from being merely arbitrary or opinionated; it is something that happens to be "just-so," as is the case with every other natural being. It stands to reason that the expressions of the unconscious are natural and not formulated dogmatically; they are exactly like the patristic allegories which draw the whole of nature into the orbit of their amplifications. If these present us with some astonishing allegoriae Christi, we find much the same sort of thing in the psychology of the unconscious. The only difference is that the patristic allegory ad Christum spectat-refers to Christwhereas the psychic archetype is simply itself and can therefore be interpreted according to time, place, and milieu. In the West the archetype is filled out with the dogmatic figure of Christ; in the East, with Purusha, the Atman, Hiranyagarbha, the Buddha, and so on. The religious point of view, understandably enough, puts the accent on the imprinter, whereas scientific psychology emphasizes the typos, the imprint-the only thing it can understand. The religious point of view understands the imprint as the working of an imprinter; the scientific point of view understands it as the symbol of an unknown and incomprehensible content. Since the typos is less definite and more variegated than any of the figures postulated by religion, psychology is compelled by its empirical material to express the typos by means of a terminology not bound by time, place, or milieu. If, for example, the typos agreed in every detail with the dogmatic figure of Christ, and if it contained no determinant that went beyond 
17 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
that figure, we would be bound to regard the typos as at least a faithful copy of the dogmatic figure, and to name it accordingly. The typos would then coincide with Christ. But as experience shows, this is not the case, seeing that the unconscious, like the allegories employed by the Church Fathers, produces countless other determinants that are not explicitly contained in the dogmatic formula; that is to say, non-Christian figures such as those mentioned above are included in the typos. But neither do these figures comply with the indeterminate nature of the archetype. It is altogether inconceivable that there could be any definite figure capable of expressing archetypal indefiniteness. For this reason I have found myself obliged to give the corresponding archetype the psychological name of the "self"-a term on the one hand definite enough to convey the essence of human wholeness and on the other hand indefinite enough to express the indescribable and indeterminable nature of this wholeness. The paradoxical qualities of the term are a reflection of the fact that wholeness consists partly of the conscious man and partly of the unconscious man. But we cannot define the latter or indicate his boundaries. Hence in its scientific usage the term "self" refers neither to Christ nor to the Buddha but to the totality of the figures that are its equivalent, and each of these figures is a symbol of the self. This mode of expression is an intellectual necessity in scientific psychology and in no sense denotes a transcendental prejudice. On the contrary, as we have said before, this objective attitude enables one man to decide in favour of the determinant Christ, another in favour of the Buddha, and so on. Those who are irritated by this objectivity should reflect that science is quite impossible without it. Consequently by denying psychology the right to objectivity they are making; an untimely attempt to extinguish the life-light of a science. Even if such a preposterous attempt were to succeed, it would only widen the already catastrophic gulf between the secular mind on the one hand and Church and religion on the other. 
It is quite understandable for a science to concentrate more or less exclusively on its subject-indeed, that is its absolute raison d'etre. Since the concept of the self is of central interest in psychology, the latter naturally thinks along lines diametrically opposed to theology: for psychology the religious figures point to the self, whereas for theology the self points to its-theology's 
18 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
-own central figure. In other words, theology might possibly take the psychological self as an allegory of Christ. This opposition is, no doubt, very irritating, but unfortunately inevitable, unless psychology is to be denied the right to exist at all. I therefore plead for tolerance. Nor is this very hard for psychology since as a science it makes no totalitarian claims. 
	22 	The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychol- 
ogy in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha. We can see this from the scope and substance of all the pronouncements that have been made about Christ: they agree with the psychological phenomenology of the self in unusually high degree, although they do not include all aspects of this archetype. The almost limitless range of the self might be deemed a disadvantage as compared with the definiteness of a religious figure, but it is by no means the task of science to pass value judgments. Not only is the self indefinite but-paradoxically enough-it also includes the quality of definiteness and even of uniqueness. This is probably one of the reasons why precisely those religions founded by historical personages have become world religions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. The inclusion in a religion of a unique human personality -especially when conjoined to an indeterminable divine nature 
-is consistent with the absolute individuality of the self, which 
combines uniqueness with eternity and the individual with the universal. The self is a union of opposites par excellence) and this is where it differs essentially from the Christ-symbol. The androgyny of Christ is the utmost concession the Church has made to the problem of opposites. The opposition between light and good on the one hand and darkness and evil on the other is left in a state of open conflict, since Christ simply represents good, and his counterpart the devil, evil. This opposition is the real world problem, which at present is still unsolved. The self, however, is absolutely paradoxical in that it represents in every respect thesis and antithesis, and at the same time synthesis. (Psychological proofs of this assertion abound, though it is impossible for me to quote them here in extenso. I would refer the knowledgeable reader to the symbolism of the mandala.) 
	23 	Once the exploration of the unconscious has led the conscious 
mind to an experience of the archetype, the individual is con19 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
fronted with the abysmal contradictions of human nature, and this confrontation in turn leads to the possibility of a direct experience of light and darkness, of Christ and the devil. For better or worse there is only a bare possibility of this, and not a guarantee; for experiences of this kind cannot of necessity be induced by any human means. There are factors to be considered which are not under our control. Experience of the opposites has nothing whatever to do with intellectual insight or with empathy. It is more what we would call fate; Such an experience can convince one person of the truth of Christ, another of the truth of the Buddha, to the exclusion of all other evidence. 
Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures. For this reason Christianity rightly insists on sinfulness and original sin, with the obvious intent of opening up the abyss of universal opposition in every individual-at least from the outside. But this method is bound to break down in the case of a moderately alert intellect: dogma is then simply no longer believed and on top of that is thought absurd. Such an intellect is merely one-sided and sticks at the ineptia mysterii. It is miles from Tertullian's antinomies; in fact, it is quite incapable of enduring the suffering such a tension involves. Cases are not unknown where the rigorous exercises and proselytizings of the Catholics, and a certain type of Protestant education that is always sniffing out sin, have brought about psychic damage that leads not to the Kingdom of Heaven but to the consulting room of the doctor. Although insight into the problem of opposites is absolutely imperative, there are very few people who can stand it in practice-a fact which has not escaped the notice of the confessional. By way of a reaction to this we have the palliative of "moral probabilism," a doctrine that has suffered frequent attack from all quarters because it tries to mitigate the crushing effect of sin.10 Whatever one may think of this phe10 Z6ckler ("Probabilismus," p. 67) defines it as follows: "Probabilismis the name generally given to that way of thinking which is content to answer scientific questions with a greater or lesser degree of probability. The moral probabilism with which alone we are concerned here consists in the principle that acts of ethical self-determination are to be guided not by conscience but according to what is probably right, i.e., according to whatever has been recommended by any representative or doctrinal authority." The Jesuit probabilist Escobar (d. 1669) was, for instance, of the opinion that if the penitent should plead a probable opinion 
20 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
nomenon one thing is certain: that apart from anything else it holds within it a large humanity and an understanding of human weakness which compensate for the world's unbearable antinomies. The tremendous paradox implicit in the insistence on original sin on the one hand and the concession made by probabilism on the other is, for the psychologist, a necessary consequence of the Christian problem of opposites outlined above -for in the self good and evil are indeed closer than identical twins! The reality of evil and its incompatibility with. good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives. Since "the soul is by nature Christian" this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus: we all have to be "crucified with Christ," i.e., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to veritable crucifixion. In practice this is only possible up to a point, and apart from that is so unbearable and inimical to life that the ordinary human being can afford to get into such a state only occasionally, in fact as seldom as possible. For how could he remain ordinary in face of such suffering! A more or less probabilistic attitude to the problem of evil is therefore unavoidable. Hence the truth about the self-the unfathomable union of good and evil-comes out concretely in the paradox that although sin is the gravest and most pernicious thing there is, it is still not so serious that it cannot be disposed of with "probabilist" arguments. Nor is this necessarily a lax or frivolous proceeding but simply a practical necessity of life. The confessional proceeds like life itself, which successfully struggles against being engulfed in an irreconcilable contradiction. Note that at the same time the conflict remains in full force, as-is once more consistent with the antinomial character of the self, which is itself both conflict and unity. 
as the motive of his action, the father-confessor would be obliged to absolve him even if he were not of the same opinion. Escobar quotes a number of Jesuit authorities on the question of how often one is bound to love God in a lifetime. According to one opinion, loving God once shortly before death is sufficient; another says once a year or once every three or four years. He himself comes to the conclusion that it is sufficient to love God once at the first awakening of reason, then once every five years, and finally once in the hour of death. In his opinion the large number of different moral doctrines forms one of the main proofs of God's kindly providence, "because they make the yoke of Christ so light" (Z6ckler, p. 68). Cf. also Harnack, History of Dogma, VII, pp. 10 I ff. 
21 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
Christianity has made the antinomy of good and evil into a )rld problem and, by formulating the conflict dogmatically, ised it to an absolute principle. Into this as yet unresolved nflict the Christian is cast as a protagonist of good, a fellow ayer in the world drama. Understood in its deepest sense, beg Christ's follower involves a suffering that is unendurable to e great majority of mankind. Consequently the example of 1Tist is in reality followed either with reservation or not at all, Id the pastoral practiCe of the Church even finds itself obliged "lighten the yoke of Christ." This means a pretty considerable duction in the severity and harshness of the conflict and hence, 
practice, a relativism of good and evil. Good is equivalent to e unconditional imitation of Christ and evil is its hindrance. an's moral weakness and sloth are what chiefly hinder the imition, and it is to these that probabilism extends a practical unTstanding which may sometimes, perhaps, come nearer to 1Tistian tolerance, mildness, and love of one's neighbour than e attitude of those who see in probabilism a mere laxity. AIough one must concede a number of cardinal Christian vires to the probabilist endeavour, one must still not overlook e fact that it obviates much of the suffering involved in the litation of Christ and that the conflict of good and evil is thus bbed of its harshness and toned down to tolerable proportions. his brings about an approach to the psychic archetype of the If, where even these opposites seem to be united-though, as say, it differs from the Christian symbolism, which leaves the nflict open. For the latter there is a rift running throug'h the )rld: light wars against night and the upper against the lower. he two are not one, as! they are in the psychic archetype. But, en though religious dogma may condemn the idea of two jng one, religious practice does, as we have seen, allow the nat'al psychological symbol of the self at one with itself an ap'oximate means of expression. On the other hand, dogma inits that three are one, while denying that four are one. Since den times, not only in the West but also in China, uneven Imbers have been regarded as masculine and even numbers as minine. The Trinity is therefore a decidedly masculine deity, 
which the androgyny of Christ and the special position and :neration accorded to the Mother of God are not the real luivalent. 
22 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS Of< ALl-HEM Y 
	26 	With this statement, which may strike the reader as peculiar, 
we come to one of the central axioms of alchemy, namely the saying of Maria Prophetissa: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth." As the reader has already seen from its title, this book is concerned with the psychological significance of alchemy and thus with a problem which, with very few exceptions, has so far eluded scientific research. Until quite recently science was interested only in the part that alchemy played in the history of chemistry, concerning itself very little with the part it played in the history of philosophy and religion. The importance of alchemy for the historical development of chemistry is obvious, but its cultural importance is still so little known that it seems almost impossible to say in a few words wherein that consisted. In this introduction, therefore, I have attempted to outline the religious and psychological problems which are germane to the theme of alchemy. The point is that alchemy is rather like an undercurrent to the Christianity that ruled on the surface. It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness, and just as the dream compensates the conflicts of the conscious mind, so alchemy endeavours to fill in the gaps left open by the Christian tension of opposites. Perhaps the most pregnant expression of this is the axiom of Maria Prophetissa quoted above, which runs like a leitmotiv throughout almost the whole of the lifetime of alchemy, extending over more than seventeen centuries. In this aphorism the even numbers which signify the feminine principle, earth, the regions under the earth, and evil itself are interpolated between the uneven numbers of the Christian dogma. They are personified by the serpens mercurii) the dragon that creates and destroys itself and represents the prima materia. This fundamental idea of alchemy points back to the 0\i10 (Tehom),l1 to Tiamat with her dragon attribute, and thus to' the primordial matriarchal world which, in the theomachy of the Marduk myth,12 was overthrown by the masculine world of the father. The historical shift in the world's consciousness towards the masculine is compensated at first by the chthonic femininity of the 
11 Cf. Genesis I : 2. 
12 The reader will find a collection of these myth motifs in Lang, Hat ein Gott die Welt erschafJen? Unfortunately philological criticism will have much to take exception to in this book, interesting though it is for its Gnostic trend. 
23 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
unconscious. In certain pre-Christian religions the differentiation of the masculine principle had taken the form of the father-son specification, a change which was to be of the utmost importance for Christianity. Were the unconscious merely complementary, this shift of consciousness would have been accompanied by the production of a mother and daughter, for which the necessary material lay ready to hand in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. But, as alchemy shows, the unconscious chose rather the Cybele-Attis type in the form of the prima materia and the filius macrocosmi, thus proving that it is not complementary but compensatory. This goes to show that the unconscious does not simply act contrary to the conscious mind but modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner. The son type does not call up a daughter as a complementary image from the depths of the "chthonic" unconscious-it calls up another son. This remarkable fact would seem to be connected with the incarnation in our earthly human nature of a purely spiritual God, brought about by the Holy Ghost impregnating the womb of the Blessed Virgin. Thus the higher, the spiritual, the masculine inclines to the lower, the earthly, the feminine; and accordingly, the mother, who was anterior to the world of the father, accommodates herself to the masculine principle and, with the aid of the human spirit (alchemy or "the philosophy"), produces a son -not the antithesis of Christ but rather his chthonic counterpart, not a divine man but a fabulous being conforming to the nature of the primordial mother. And just as the redemption of man the microcosm is the task of the "upper" son, so the "lower" son has the function of a salvator macrocosmi. 
This, in brief, is the drama that was played out in the obscurities of alchemy. It is superfluous to remark that these two sons were never united, except perhaps in the mind and innermost experience of a few particularly gifted alchemists. But it is not very difficult to see the "purpose" of this drama: in the Incarnation it looked as though the masculine principle of the father-world were approximating to the feminine principle of the mother-world, with the result that the latter felt impelled to approximate in turn to the father-world. What it evidently amounted to was an attempt to bridge the gulf separating the two worlds as compensation for the open conflict between them. 
I hope the reader will not be offended if my exposition 24 

ANU PS Yl;HULU<.;ll;AL PKU15LlCMS U~ ALl;tllClVl Y 
sounds like a Gnostic myth. We are moving in those psycho logical regions where, as a matter of fact, Gnosis is rooted. Thl message of the Christian symbol is Gnosis, and the compensatior effected by the unconscious is Gnosis in even higher degree M yth is the primordial language natural to these psychic proc esses, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near th! richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery. Such pro cesse: are concerned with the primordial images, and these are bes and most succinctly reproduced by figurative language. 
	29 	The process described above displays all the characteristic 
features of psychological compensation. We know that the masl of the unconscious is not rigid-it reflects the face we turn to wards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendlines softens its features. It is not a question of mere optical reflectior but of an autonomous answer which reveals the self-sufficing na ture of that which answers. Thus the filius philosophorum is no just the reflected image, in unsuitable material, of the son 0 God; on the contrary, this son of Tiamat reflects the features 0 the primordial maternal figure. Although he is decidedly her maphroditic he has a masculine name-a sign that the chthonil underworld, having been rejected by the spirit and identifie( with evil, has a tendency to compromise. There is no mistakinl the fact that he is a concession to the spiritual and masculinl principle, even though he carries in himself the weight of thl earth and the whole fabulous nature of primordial animality 
	3° 	This answer of the mother-world shows that the gulf be 
tween it and the father-world is not unbridgeable, seeing tha the unconscious holds the seed of the unity of both. The esseno of the conscious mind is discrimination; it must, if it is to h aware of things, separate the opposites, and it does this contri naturam. In nature the opposites seek one another-les extreme se touchent-and so it is in the unconscious, and particularly il the archetype of unity, the self. Here, as in the deity, the oppc sites cancel out. But as soon as the unconscious begins to manifes itself they split asunder, as at the Creation; for every act of dawn ing consciousness is a creative act, and it is from this psychologi cal experience that all our cosmogonic symbols are derived. 
	31 	Alchemy is pre-eminently concerned with the seed of unit 
which lies hidden in the chaos of Tiamat and forms the countel part to the divine unity. Like this, the seed of unity has a trini 25 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
arian character in Christian alchemy and a triadic character in lagan alchemy. According to other authorities it corresponds to he unity of the four elements and is therefore a quaternity. The >verwhelming majority of modern psychological findings speaks n favour of the latter view. The few cases I have observed which lroduced the number three were marked by a systematic defiiency in consciousness, that is to say, by an unconsciousness of fle "inferior function." The number three is not a natural ex,ression of wholeness, since four represents the minimum num,er of determinants in a whole judgment. It must nevertheless e stressed that side by side with the distinct leanings of alchemy md of the unconscious) towards quaternity there is always a acillation between three and four which comes out over and ver again. Even in the axiom of Maria Prophetissa the qua~rnity is muffled and alembicated. In alchemy there are three s well as four regimina or procedures, three as well as four :>lours. There are always four elements, but often three of them re grouped together, with the fourth in a special position)metimes earth, sometimes fire. Mercurius13 is of course quadztus) but he is also a three-headed snake or simply a triunity. 'his uncertainty has a duplex character-in other words, the ~ntral ideas are ternary as well as quaternary. The psycholgist cannot but mention the fact that a similar puzzle exists in le psychology of the unconscious: the least differentiated or inferior" function is so much contaminated with the collective nconscious that, on becoming conscious, it brings up among :he:rs the archetype of the self as well-TO lv Tf.TapTOV, as Maria rophetissa says. Four signifies the feminine, motherly, physical; lree the masculine, fatherly, spiritual. Thus the uncertainty as 
In alchemical writings the word "Mercurius" is used with a very wide range meaning, to denote not only the chemical element mercury or quicksilver, ercury (Hermes) the god, and Mercury the planet, but also-and primarilye secret "transforming substance" which is at the same time the "spirit" inveiling in all living creatures. These different connotations will become apparIt in the course of the book. It would be misleading to use the English "Merlry" and "mercury," because there are innumerable passages where neither word les justice to the wealth of implications. It has therefore been decided to retain e Latin "Mercurius" as in the German text, and to use the personal pronoun nce "Mercurius" is personified), the word "quicksilver" being employed only lere the chemical element (Hg) is plainly meant. [Author's note for the English n.] 
26 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
to three or four amounts to a wavering between the spiritual and the physical-a striking example of how every human truth is a last truth but one. 
	32 	I began my introduction with human wholeness as the goal 
to which the psychotherapeutic process ultimately leads. This question is inextricably bound up with one's philosophical or religious assumptions. Even when, as frequently happens, the patient believes himself to be quite unprejudiced in this respect, the assumptions underlying his thought, mode of life, morale, and language are historically conditioned down to the last detail, a fact of which he is often kept unconscious by lack of education combined with lack of self-criticism. The analysis of his situation will therefore lead sooner or later to a clarification of his general spiritual background going far beyond his personal determinants, and this brings up the problems I have attempted to sketch in the preceding pages. This phase of the process is marked by the production of symbols of unity, the so-called mandalas, which occur either in dreams or in the form of concrete visual impressions, often as the most obvious compensation of the contradictions and conflicts of the conscious situation. It would hardly be correct to say that the gaping "rift" 14 in the Christian order of things is responsible for this, since it is easy to show that Christian symbolism is particularly concerned with healing, or attempting to heal, this very wound. It would be more correct to take the open conflict as a symptom of the psychic situation of Western man, and to deplore his inability to assimilate the whole range of the Christian symbol. As a doctor I cannot demand anything of my patients in this respect, also I lack the Church's means of grace. Consequently I am faced with the task of taking the only path open to me: the archetypal images-which in a certain sense correspond to the dogmatic images-must be brought into consciousness. At the same time I must leave my patient to decide in accordance with his assumptions, his spiritual maturity, his education, origins, and temperament, so far as this is possible without serious conflicts. As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately 14 Przywara, Deus semper maior, I, pp. 71ff. 
27 

L iN U{UUUCTiUN TU THE RELIGIOUS 
proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. 
	33 	I would be only too delighted to leave this anything but easy 
task to the theologian, were it not that it is just from the theologian that many' of my patients come. They ought to have hung on to the community of the Church, but they were shed like dry leaves from the great tree and now find themselves "hanging on" to the treatment. Something in them clings, often with the strength of despair, as if they or the thing they cling to would drop off into the void the moment they relaxed their hold. They are seeking firm ground on which to stand. Since no outward support is of any use to them they must finally discover it in themselves-admittedly the most unlikely place from the rational point of view, but an altogether possible one from the point of view of the unconscious. We can see this from the archetype of the "lowly origin of the redeemer." 
	34 	The way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first, 
and only gradually do the signs increase that it is leading anywhere. The way is not straight but appears to go round in circles. More accurate knowledge has proved it to go in spirals: th~ dream-motifs always return after certain intervals to definite forms, whose characteristic it is to define a centre. And as a matter of fact the whole process revolves about a central point or some arrangement round a centre, which may in certain circumstances appear even in the initial dreams. As manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams rotate or circumambulate round the centre, drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in distinctness and in scope. Owing to the diversity of the symbolical material it is difficult at first to perceive any kind of order at all. N or should it be taken for granted that dream sequences are subject to any governing principle. But, as I say, the process of development proves on closer inspection to be cyclic or spiral. We might draw a parallel between such spiral courses and the processes of growth in plants; in fact the plant motif (tree, flower, etc.) frequently recurs in these dreams and 
28 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
fantasies and is also spontaneously drawn or painted.15 In alchemy the tree is the symbol of Hermetic philosophy. 
	115 	The first of the following two studies-that which composes 
Part Il-deals with a series of dreams which contain numerous symbols of the centre or goal. The development of these symbols is almost the equivalent of a healing process. The centre or goal thus signifies salvation in the proper sense of the word. The justification for such a terminology comes from the dreams themselves, for these contain so many referenr.es to religious phenomena that I was able to use some of them as the subject of my book Psychology and Religion. It seems to me beyond all doubt that these processes are concerned with the religioncreating archetypes. Whatever else religion may be, those psychic ingredients of it which are empirically verifiable undoubtedly consist of unconscious manifestations of this kind. People have dwelt far too long on the fundamentally sterile question of whether the assertions of faith are true or not. Quite apart from the impossibility of ever proving or refuting the truth of a metaphysical assertion, the very existence of the assertion is a selfevident fact that needs no further proof, and when a consensus gentium allies itself thereto the validity of the statement is proved to just that extent. The only thing about it that we can verify is the psychological phenomenon, which is incommensurable with the category of objective rightness or truth. No phenomenon can ever be disposed of by rational criticism, and in religious life we have to deal with phenomena and facts and not with arguable hypotheses. 
	36 	During the process of treatment the dialectical discussion 
leads logically to a meeting between the patient and his shadow, that dark half of the psyche which we invariably get rid of by means of projection: either by burdening our neighbours-in a wider or narrower sense-with all the faults which we obviously have ourselves, or by casting our sins upon a divine mediator with the aid of contritio or the milder attritio.16 We know of 
15 See the illustrations in Jung, "Concerning Mandala Symbolism." 
16 Contritio is "perfect" repentance; allritio "imperfect" repentance (contritio im1Jerfecta, to which category cont,.itio natura/is belongs). The former regards sin as the opposite of the highest good; the latter reprehends it not only on account of its wicked and hideous nature but also from fear of punishment. 
29 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
course that without sin there is no repentance and without re· pentance no redeeming grace, also that without original sin the redemption of the world could never have come about; but we assiduously avoid investigating whether in this very power of evil God might not have placed some special purpose which it is most important for us to know. One often feels driven to some such view when, like the psychotherapist, one has to deal with people who are confronted with their blackest shadowY At any rate the doctor cannot afford to point, with a gesture of facile moral superiority, to the tablets of the law and say, "Thou shalt not." He has to examine things objectively and weigh up possibilities, for he knows, less from religious training and education than from instinct and experience, that there is something very like a felix culPa. He knows that one can miss not only one's happiness but also one's final guilt, without which a man will never reach his wholeness. Wholeness is in fact a charisma which one can manufacture neither by art nor by cun· ning; one can only grow into it and endure whatever its advent may bring. No doubt it is a great nuisance that mankind is not uniform but compounded of individuals whose psychic structure spreads them over a span of at least ten thousand years. Hence there is absolutely no truth that does not spell sal· vation to one person and damnation to another. All universal· isms get stuck in this terrible dilemma. Earlier on I spoke of Jesuit probabilism: this gives a better idea than anything else of the tremendous catholic task of the Church. Even the best-intentioned people have been horrified by probabilism, but, when brought face to face with the realities of life, many of them have found their horror evaporating or their laughter dying on their lips. The doctor too must weigh and ponder, not whether a thing is for or against the Church but whether it is for or against life and health. On paper the moral code looks clear and neat enough; 
17 A religious terminology comes naturally, as the only adequate one in the circumstances, when we are faced with the tragic fate that is the unavoidable concomitant of wholeness. "My fate" means a daemonic will to precisely that fatea will not necessarily coincident with my own (the ego will). When it is opposed to the ego, it is difficult not to feel a certain "power" in it, whether divine or infernal. The man who submits to his fate calls it the will of God; the man who puts up a hopeless and exhausting fight is more apt to see the devil in it. In either event this terminology is not only universally understood but meaningf' as well. 
30 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
but the same document written on the "living tables of the heart" is often a sorry tatter, particularly in the mouths of those who talk the loudest. We are told on every side that evil is evil and that there can be no hesitation in condemning it, but that does not prevent evil from being the most problematical thing in the individual's life and the one which demands the deepest reflection. What above all deserves our keenest attention is the question "Exactly who is the doer?" For the answer to this question ultimately decides the value of the deed. It is true that society attaches greater importance at first to what is done, because it is immediately obvious; but in the long run the right deed in the hands of the wrong man will also have a disastrous effect. No one who is far-sighted will allow himself to be hoodwinked by the right deed of the wrong man, any more than by the wrong deed of the right man. Hence the psychotherapist must fix his eye not on what is done but on how it is done, because therein is decided the whole character of the doer. Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good. 
	37 	The encounter with the dark half of the personality, or 
"shadow," comes about of its own accord in any moderately thorough treatment. This problem is as important as that of sin in the Church. The open conflict is unavoidable and painful. I have often been asked, "And what do you do about it?" I do nothing; there is nothing I can do except wait, with a certain trust in God, until, out of a conflict borne with patience and fortitude, there emerges the solution destined-although I can· not foresee it-for that particular person. Not that I am passive or inactive meanwhile: I help the patient to understand all the things that the unconscious produces during the conflict. The reader may believe me that these are no ordinary products. On the contrary, they are among the most significant things that have ever engaged my attention. Nor is the patient inactive; he must do the right thing, and do it with all his might, in order to prevent the pressure of evil from becoming too powerful in him. He needs "justification by works," for "justification by faith" alone has remained an empty sound for him as for so many 
31 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
others. Faith can sometimes be a substitute for lack of experience. In these cases what is needed is real work. Christ espoused the sinner and did not condemn him. The true follower of Christ will do the same, and, since one should do unto others as one would do unto oneself, one will also take the part of the sinner who is oneself. And as little as we would accuse Christ of fraternizing with evil, so little should we reproach ourselves that to love the sinner who is oneself is to make a pact with the devil. Love makes a man better, hate makes him worse-even when that man is oneself. The danger in this point of view is the same as in the imitation of Christ; but the Pharisee in us will never allow himself to be caught talking to publicans and whores. I must emphasize of course that psychology invented neither Christianity nor the imitation of Christ. I wish everybody could be freed from the burden of their sins by the Church. But he to whom she cannot render this service must bend very low in the imitation of Christ in order to take the burden of his cross upon him. The ancients could get along with the Greek wisdom of the ages: M1]Dfv ayuv, r<8 KU(P<8 7rUVTa 7rpo(wrn KUAU (Exaggerate nothing, all good lies in right measure). But what an abyss still separates us from reason! 
	38 	Apart from the moral difficulty there is another danger 
which is not inconsiderable and may lead to complications, particularly with individuals who are pathologically inclined. This is the fact that the contents of the personal unconscious (i.e., the shadow) are indistinguishably merged with the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious and drag the latter with them when the shadow is brought into consciousness. This may exert an uncanny influence on the conscious mind; for activated archetypes have a disagreeable effect even-or I should perhaps say, particularly-on the most cold-blooded rationalist. He is afraid that the lowest form of conviction, namely superstition, is, as he thinks, forcing itself on him. But superstition in the truest sense only appears in such people if they are pathological, not if they can keep their balance. It then takes the form of the fear of "going mad"-for everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane. It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears. The 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
psychological elucidation of these images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind's eye with some kind of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material. 
	39 	Part II of this volume gives a large number of such exam- 
ples. The reader will be particularly struck by the numerouS connections between individual dream symbolism and medieval alchemy. This is not, as one might suppose, a prerogative of the case in question, but a general fact which only struck me some ten years ago when first I began to come to grips with the ideas and symbolism of alchemy. 
	40 	Part III contains an introduction to the symbolism of al- 
chemy in relation to Christianity and Gnosticism. As a bare introduction it is naturally far from being a complete exposition of this complicated and obscure subject-indeed, most of it is concerned only with the laPis-Christ parallel. True, this parallel gives rise to a comparison between the aims of the opus alchymicum and the central ideas of Christianity, for both are of the utmost importance in understanding and interpreting the images that appear in dreams and in assessing their psychological effect. This has considerable bearing on the practice of psychotherapy, because more often than not it is precisely the more intelligent and cultured patients who, finding a return to the Church impossible, come up against archetypal material and thus set the doctor problems which can no longer be mastered by a narrowly personalistic psychology. Nor is a mere knowledge of the psychic structure of a neurosis by any means sufficient; for once the process has reached the sphere of the collective uncon· scious we are dealing with healthy material, i.e., with the universal basis of the individually varied psyche. Our understand· ing of these deeper layers of the psyche is helped not only by a knowledge of primitive psychology and mythology, but to an even greater extent by some familiarity with the history of oUI 

I. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
modern consciousness and the stages immediately preceding it. On the one hand it is a child of the Church; on the other, of science, in whose beginnings very much lies hid that the Church was unable to accept-that is to say, remnants of the classical spirit and the classical feeling for nature which could not be exterminated and eventually found refuge in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. As the "spiritus metallorum" and the astrological components of destiny the old gods of the planets lasted out many a Christian century. IS Whereas in the Church the increasing differentiation of ritual and dogma alienated consciousness from its natural roots in the unconscious, alchemy and astrology were ceaselessly engaged in preserving the bridge to nature, i.e., to the unconscious psyche, from decay. Astrology led the conscious mind back again and again to the knowledge of Heimarmene, that is, the dependence of character and destiny on certain moments in time; and alchemy afforded numerous "hooks" for the projection of those archetypes which could not be fitted smoothly into the Christian process. It is true that alchemy always stood on the verge of heresy and that certain decrees leave no doubt as to the Church's attitude towards it,19 but on the other hand it was effectively protected by the obscurity of its symbolism, which could always be explained as harmless allegory. For many alchemists the allegorical aspect undoubtedly occupied the foreground to such an extent that they were firmly convinced that their sole concern was with chemical substances. But there were always a few for whom laboratory work was primarily a matter of symbols and their psychic effect. As the texts show, they were quite conscious of this, to the point of condemning the naIve goldmakers as liars, frauds, and dupes. Their own standpoint they proclaimed with propositions like "Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi." Although their labours over the retort were a serious effort to elicit the secrets of chemical transformation, it was at the same time -and often in overwhelming degree-the reflection of a parallel psychic process which could be projected all the more easily into the unknown chemistry of matter since that process is an uncon- 
IS Paracelsus still speaks of the "gods" enthroned in the mysterium magnum (PhilosoPhia ad Athenienses, p. 403), and so does the 18th-cent. treatise of Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes chymisches Werk, which was influenced by Paracelsus. 
19 Cf. Sanchez, Opus morale, Decalog. 2, 49n., 51; and Pignatelli, Consultationes canonicae, canon ix. 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
scious phenomenon of nature, just like the mysterious alteration of substances. What the symbolism of alchemy expresses is the whole problem of the evolution of personality described above, the so-called individuation process. 
	41 	Whereas the Church's great buttress is the imitation of 
Christ, the alchemist, without realizing it and certainly without wanting it, easily fell victim, in the loneliness and obscure problems of his work, to the promptings and unconscious assumptions of his own mind, since, unlike the Christians, he had no clear and unmistakable models on which to rely. The authors he studied provided him with symbols whose meaning he thought he understood in his own way; but in reality they touched and stimulated his unconscious. Ironical towards themselves, the alchemists coined the phrase "obscurum per obscurius." But with this method of explaining the obscure by the more obscure they only sank themselves deeper in the very process from which the Church was struggling to redeem them. While the dogmas of the Church offered analogies to the alchemical process, these analogies, in strict contrast to alchemy, had become detached from the world of nature through their connection with the historical figure of the Redeemer. The alchemical four in one, the philosophical gold, the laPis angularis) the aqua divina) became, in the Church, the four-armed cross on which the Only-Begotten had sacrificed himself once in history and at the same time for all eternity. The alchemists ran counter to the Church in preferring to seek through knowledge rather than to find through faith, though as medieval people they never thought of themselves as anything but good Christians. Paracelsus is a classical example in this respect. But in reality they were in much the same position as modern man, who prefers immediate personal experience to belief in traditional ideas, or rather has it forced upon him. Dogma is not arbitrarily invented nor is it a unique miracle, although it is often described as miraculous with the obvious intent of lifting it out of its natural context. The central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy, which, in accordance with psychological laws, simply had to grow up at a time when the classical religions had become obsolete. It was founded on the perception of symbols thrown up by the unconscious individuation process which always sets in when the collective dominants of human life fall into decay. At such a time there is bound to 

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGIOUS 
be a considerable number of individuals who are possessed by archetypes of a numinous nature that force their way to the surface in order to form new dominants. This state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identify themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious, and, because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers. In so far as the archetypal content of the Christian drama was able to give satisfying expression to the uneasy and clamorous unconscious of the many, the consensus omnium raised this drama to a universally binding truth-not of course by an act of judgment, but by the irrational fact of possession, which is far more effective. Thus Jesus became the tutelary image or amulet against the archetypal powers that threatened to possess everyone. The glad tidings announced: "It has happened, but it will not happen to you inasmuch as you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God!" Yet it could and it can and it will happen to everyone in whom the Christian dominant has decayed. For this reason there have always been people who, not satisfied with the dominants of conscious life, set forth-under cover and by devious paths, to their destruction or salvation-to seek direct experience of the eternal roots, and, following the lure of the restless unconscious psyche, find themselves in the wilderness where, like Jesus, they come up against the son of darkness, the aVT{/-,L/-,oV 71'vfii/-,u. Thus an old alchemist-and he a cleric!-prays: "Horridas nostrae mentis purga tenebras, accende lumen sensibus!" (Purge the horrible darknesses of our mind, light a light for our senses!) The author of this sentence must have been undergoing the experience of the nigredo) the first stage of the work, which was felt as "melancholia" in alchemy and corresponds to the encounter with the shadow in psychology. 
	42 	When, therefore, modern psychotherapy once more meets 
with the activated archetypes of the collective unconscious, it is merely the repetition of a phenomenon that has often been observed in moments of great religious crisis, although it can also occur in individuals for whom the ruling ideas have lost their meaning. An example of this is the descensus ad in/eras depicted in Faust) which, consciously or unconsciously, is an opus alchymicum. 

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF ALCHEMY 
	43 	The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a 
great-indeed, the decisive-role in alchemy, since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hierosgamos or "chymical wedding." Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese yang and yin), are melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore incorruptible. The prerequisite for this, of course, is that the artifex should not identify himself with the figures in the work but should leave them in their objective, impersonal state. So long as the alchemist was working in his laboratory he was in a favourable position, psychologically speaking, for he had no opportunity to identify himself with the archetypes as they appeared, since they were all projected immediately into the chemical substances. The disadvantage of this situation was that the alchemist was forced to represent the incorruptible substance as a chemical product-an impossible undertaking which led to the downfall of alchemy, its place in the laboratory being taken by chemistry. But the psychic part of the work did not disappear. It captured new interpreters, as we can see from the example of Faust) and also from the signal connection between our modern psychology of the unconscious and alchemical symbolism. 

3. Symbol of the alchemical work. -Hermaphroditisches Sonn- und Mondskind (1752) 

4. Representation of the symbolic process which begins in chaos and ends with the birth of the phoenix.- Title-page, Beroalc!e de Verville, Le Tableau des riches inventions or Le Songe de Poliphile (1600) 

11 
INDIVIDUAL DREAM SYMBOLISM IN RELATION TO ALCHEMY 
A STUDY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES AT WORK IN DREAMS 
... facilis descensus Avern, noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; 
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere c auras, hoc opus, hic labor est .... 
VIRGIL, Aeneid, VI, 126-; 
... easy is the descent to A vernus: night ar day the door of gloomy Dis stands open; but 1 recall thy steps and pass out to the upper ai this is the task, this the toil! 
- Trans. by H. R. Faircloug 

5. Seven virgins being transformed.-Beroalde de Vcrville, L~ Songe de PoliPhile (1600) 
1. INTRODUCTION 
1. THE MATERIAL 
	44 	The symbols of the process of individuation that appear in 
dreams are images of an archetypal nature which depict the centralizing process or the production of a new centre of personality. A general idea of this process may be got from my essay, "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious." For certain reasons mentioned there I call this centre the "self," which should be understood as the totality of the psyche. The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. 
	45 	The symbols now under consideration are not concerned with 
the manifold stages and transformations of the individuation process, but with the images that refer directly and exclusively to the new centre as it comes into consciousness. These images belong to a definite category which I call mandala symbolism. 
41 

n. INDIVIDUAL DREAM SYMBOLISM IN RELATION TO ALCHEMY 
n The Secret of the Golden Flower, published in collaboration rith Richard Wilhelm, I have described this symbolism in some etail. In the present study I should like to put before you an inividual series of such symbols in chronological order. The mateial consists of over a thousand dreams and visual impressions oming from a young man of excellent scientific education.1 For he purposes of this study I have worked on the first four hunred dreams and visions, which covered a period of nearly ten 10nths. In order to avoid all personal influence I asked one of lY pupils, a woman doctor, who was then a beginner, to underlke the observation of the process. This went on for five months. ~he dreamer then continued his observations alone for three 10nths. Except for a short interview at the very beginning, be)Te the commencement of the observation, I did not see the reamer at all during the first eight months. Thus it happened hat 355 of the dreams were dreamed away from any personal ontact with myself. Only the last forty-five occurred under my bservation. No interpretations worth mentioning were then ttempted because the dreamer, owing to his excellent scientific raining and ability, did not require any assistance. Hence conitions were really ideal for unprejudiced observation and reording. 
First of all, then, I shall present extracts from the twenty-two rritial dreams in order to show how the mandala symbolism l1akes a very early appearance and is embedded in the rest of he dream material. Later on I shall pick out in chronological ,rder the dreams that refer specifically to the mandala.2 
With few exceptions all the dreams have been abbreviated, ither by extracting the part that carries the main thought or by ondensing the whole text to essentials. This simplifying procelure has not only curtailed their length but has also removed )ersonal allusions and complications, as was necessary for reaons of discretion. Despite this somewhat doubtful interference I lave, to the best of my knowledge and scrupulosity, avoided any I must emphasize that this education was not historical, philological, archaeo)gical, or ethnological. Any references to material derived from these fields came nconsciously to the dreamer. 
"Mandala" (Sanskrit) means "circle," also "magic circle." Its symbolism inludes-to mention only the most important forms-all concentrically arranged gures, round or square patterns with a centre, and radial or spherical arrangelents. 
42 

1. INTRODUCTION 
arbitrary distortion of meaning. The same considerations had also to apply to my own interpretation, so that certain passages in the dreams may appear to have been overlooked. Had I not made this sacrifice and kept the material absolutely complete, I should not have been in a position to publish this series, which in my opinion could hardly be surpassed in intelligence, clarity, and consistency. It therefore gives me great pleasure to express my sincere gratitude here and now to the "author" for the service he has rendered to science. 
11. THE METHOD 
	48 	In my writings and lectures I have always insisted that we 
must give up all preconceived opinions when it comes to the analysis and interpretation of the objective psyche,3 in other words the "unconscious." \IV e do not yet possess a general theory of dreams that would enable lIS to use a deductive method with impunity, any more than we possess a general theory of consciousness from which we can draw deductive conclusions. The manifestations of the subjective psyche, or consciousness, can be predicted to only the smallest degree, and there is no theoretical argument to prove beyond doubt that any causal connection necessarily exists between them. On the contrary, we have to reckon with a high percentage of arbitrariness and "chance" in the complex actions and reactions of the conscious mind. Similarly there is no empirical, still less a theoretical, reason to assume that the same does not apply to the manifestations of the unconscious. The latter are just as manifold, unpredictable, and arbitrary as the former and must therefore be subjected to as many different ways of approach. In the case of conscious utterances we are in the fortunate position of being directly addressed and presented with a content whose purpose we can recognize; but with "unconscious" manifestations there is no directed or adapted language in our sense of the word-there is merely a psychic phenomenon that would appear to have only the loosest connections with conscious contents. If the expres- 
3 For this concept see Jung, "Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology," and Wolff, "Einflihrung in die Grundlagen der komplexen Psychologie," pp. 34ff. 
43 

n. INDIVIDUAL DREAM SYMBOLISM IN RELATION TO ALCHEMY 
sions of the conscious mind are incomprehensible we can always ask what they mean. But the objective psyche is something alien even to the conscious mind through which it expresses itself. We are therefore obliged to adopt the method we would use in deciphering a fragmentary text or one containing unknown words: we examine the context. The meaning of the unknown word may become evident when we compare a series of passages in which it occurs. The psychological context of dreamcontents consists in the web of associations in which the dream is naturally embedded. Theoretically we can never know anything in advance about this web, but in practice it is sometimes possible, granted long enough experience. Even so, careful analysis will never rely too much on technical rules; the danger of deception and suggestion is too great. In the analysis of isolated dreams above all, this kind of knowing in advance and making assumptions on the grounds of practical expectation or general probability is positively wrong. It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. We can then apply the meaning we have thus discovered to the text of the dream itself and see whether this yields a fluent reading, or rather whether a satisfying meaning emerges. But in no circumstances may we anticipate that this meaning will fit in with any of our subjective expectations; for quite possibly, indeed very frequently, the dream is saying something surprisingly different from what we would expect. As a matter of fact, if the meaning we find in the dream happens to coincide with our expectations, that is a reason for suspicion; for as a rule the standpoint of the unconscious is complementary or compensatory4 to consciousness and thus unexpectedly "different." I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but, in my experience at least, these are rather rare. 
Now, the method I adopt in the present study seems to run directly counter to this basic principle of dream interpretation. It looks as if the dreams were being interpreted without the least regard for the context. And in fact I have not taken up the con4 I intentionally omit an analysis of the words "complementary" and "compensatory," as it would lead us too far afield. 
44 

6. A maternal figure presiding over the goddesses of fate.- Thenaud, "Traite de la cabale" (MS., 16th cent.) 
text at all, seeing that the dreams in this series were not dreamed (as mentioned above) under my observation. I proceed rather as if I had had the dreams myself and were therefore in a position to supply the context. 
	50 	This procedure, if applied to isolated dreams of someone 
unknown to me personally, would indeed be a gross technical blunder. But here we are not dealing with isolated dreams; they form a coherent series in the course of which the meaning gradually unfolds more or less of its own accord. The series is 
45 

	
3. The anima mundi, guide of mankind, herself guided by God.-Engraving by J.-T. de Bry, from Fludd, Vtriusque cosmi (1617) 
n. INDIVIDUAL DREAM SYMBOLISM IN RELATION TO ALCHEMY 

he context which the dreamer himself supPlies. It is as if not Ine text but many lay before us, throwing light from all sides ill the unknown terms, so that a reading of all the texts is suffiient to elucidate the difficult passages in each individual one. 110reover, in the third chapter we are concerned with a definite rchetype-the mandala-that has long been known to us from Ither sources, and this considerably facilitates the interpretation. )f course the interpretation of each individual passage is bound o be largely conjecture, but the series as a whole gives us all the lues we need to correct any possible errors in the preceding >assages. 
It goes without saying that while the dreamer was under the lbservation of my pupil he knew nothing of these interpretaions and was therefore quite unprejudiced by anybody else's >pinion. Moreover I hold the view, based on wide experience, hat the possibility and danger of prejudgment are exaggerated. ~xperience shows that the objective psyche is independent in he highest degree. Were it not so, it could not carry out its nost characteristic function: the compensation of the conscious nind. The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a par'ot, but the unconscious does not-which is why St. Augustine hanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. [he unconscious is an autonomous psychic entity; any efforts to lrill it are only apparently successful, and moreover are harmful o consciousness. It is and remains beyond the reach of subjective: lrbitrary control, in a realm where nature and her secrets can be leither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but nay not meddle . 

Jlltcvra: Natur<e <:..) 

	

. :c.~~\:" ""/// 
-~ ~:::::- 
----:o::."E?=- 
.~. ~ 
/l}1j 111\\\~ 

7.	The Uroboros as symbol of the aeon.Horapollo, SeZecta hierogZyphica (1597) 
r 

52 

53 

2. THE INITIAL DREAMS 

I. DREAM: 

The dreamer is at a social gathering. On leaving, he puts on a stranger's hat instead of his own. 

The hat, as a covering for the head, has the general sense of something that epitomizes the head. Just as in summing up we bring ideas "under one head" (unter einen Hut), so the hat, as a sort of leading idea, covers the whole personality and imparts its own significance to it. Coronation endows the ruler 

11. INDIVIDUAL DREAM SYMBOLISM IN RELATION TO ALCHEMY 
with the divine nature of the sun, the doctor's hood bestows the dignity of a scholar, and a stranger's hat imparts a strange personality. Meyrink uses this theme in his novel The Golem, where the hero puts on the hat of Athanasius Pernath and, as a result, becomes involved in a strange experience. It is clear enough in The Golem that it is the unconscious which entangles the hero in fantastic adventures. Let us stress at once the significance of the Golem parallel and assume that the hat in the dream is the hat of an Athanasius, an immortal, a being beyond time, the universal and everlasting man as distinct from the ephemeral and "accidental" mortal man. Encircling the head, the hat is round like the sun-disc of a crown and therefore contains the first allusion to the mandala. We shall find the attribute of eternal duration confirmed in the ninth mandala dream (par. 134), while the mandala character of the hat comes out in the thirty-fifth mandala dream (par. 254). As a general result of the exchange of hats we may expect a development similar to that in The Golem: an emergence of the unconscious. The unconscious with its figures is already standing like a shadow behind the dreamer and pushing its way into consciousness. 
2. DREAM: 
The dreamer is going on a railway journey, and by standing in front of the window, he blocks the view for his fellow passengers. He must get out of their way. 
	5 	The process is beginning to move, and the dreamer discovers 
that he is keeping the light from those who stand behind him, namely the unconscious components of his personality. We have no eyes behind us; consequently "behind" is the region of the unseen, the unconscious. If the dreamer will only stop blocking the window (consciousness), the unconscious content will become conscious. 
3. HYPNAGOGIC VISUAL IMPRESSION: 
	5 	By the sea shOTe. The sea breaks into the land, flooding 
everything. Then the dreamer is sitting on a lonely island. 
The sea is the symbol of the collective unconscious, because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface.1 
1 The sea is a favourite place for the birth of visions (i.e., invasio:1s by unconscious contents). Thus the great vision of the eagle in II Esdras 11 : , rises out 
48 

2. THE INITIAL DREAMS 
Those who stand behind, the shadowy personifications of the unconscious, have burst into the terra firma of consciousness like a flood. Such invasions have something uncanny about them because they are irrational and incomprehensible to the person concerned. They bring about a momentous alteration of his personality since they immediately constitute a painful personal secret which alienates and isolates him from his surroundings. It is something that we "cannot tell anybody." We are afraid of being accused of mental abnormality-not without reason, for much the same thing happens to I unatics. Even so, it is a far cry from the intuitive perception of such an invasion to being inundated by it pathologically, though the layman does not realize this. Isolation by a secret results as a rule in an animation of the psychic atmosphere, as a substitute for loss of contact with other people. It causes an activation of the unconscious, and this produces something similar to the illusions and hallucinations that beset lonely wanderers in the desert, seafarers, and saints. The mechanism of these phenomena can best be explained in terms of energy. Our normal relations to objects in the world at large are maintained by a certain expenditure of energy. If the relation to the object is cut off there is a "retention" of energy, which then creates an equivalent substitute. For instance, just as persecution mania comes from a relationship poisoned by mistrust, so, as a substitute for the normal animation of the environment, an illusory reality rises up in which weird ghostly shadows flit about in place of people. That is why primitive man has always believed that lonely and desolate places are haunted by "devils" and suchlike apparitions. 
4. DREAM: 
	58 	The dreamer is surrounded by a throng of vague female 
forms (cf. fig. 33). A voice within him says, "First I must get away from Father." 
	59 	Here the psychic atmosphere has been animated by what 
the Middle Ages would calI succubi. We are reminded of the visions of St. Anthony in Egypt, so eruditely described by Flall- 
of the sea, ~nd the vision of "Man"-uvOpw7ros-in '3: 3, 2.'), and 5' comes lip "from the midst of the sea." CL also ]3: 52: "Like as thou canst neither seek out nor know the things that are in the deep of the sea: even so can no man upon earth see my Son .... " 
49