Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts - Herbert Silberer (great reads .TXT) 📗

way to get back into the uterus again. One of the simplest ways was to fructify the mother and procreate oneself again. Here the prohibition against incest steps in, so now the sun myths and rebirth myths teem with all possible proposals as to how one could encompass incest. A very significant way of encompassing it is to change the mother into another being or rejuvenate her, in order to make her vanish after the resulting birth [respective propagation], i.e., to cause her to change herself back. It is not incestuous cohabitation that is sought, but rebirth, to [pg 420] which one might attain quickest by cohabitation. This, however, is not the only way, although perhaps the original one.” (Jung, Jb. ps. F., IV, pp. 266 ff.) In another place it is said: The separation of the son from the mother signifies the separation of man from the pairing consciousness of animals, from the lack of individual consciousness characteristic of infantile archaic thought. “First by the force of the incest prohibition could a self-conscious individual be produced, who had before been, thoughtlessly one with the genus, and only so first could the idea of the individual and conclusive death be rendered possible. So came, as it were, death into the world through Adam's sin. The neurotic who cannot leave his mother has good reason; fear of death holds him there. It appears that there is no concept and no word strong enough to express the meaning of this conflict. Whole religions are built to give value to the magnitude of this conflict. This struggle for expression, enduring thousands of years, cannot have the source of its power in the condition which is quite too narrowly conceived by the common idea of incest; much more apparently must we conceive the law that expresses itself first and last as a prohibition against incest as a compulsion toward domestication, and describe the religious system as an institution that most of all takes up the cultural aims of the not immediately serviceable impulsive powers of the animal nature, organizes them and gradually makes them capable of sublimated employment.” (Jb. ps. F., IV, pp. 314 ff.)

Note D (274). Jung divides the libido into two currents lengthwise, one directed forward, the other backward: “As the normal libido is like a constant stream, which pours its waters into the world of reality, so the resistance, dynamically regarded, is not like a rock raised in the river bed, which is flowed over and around by the stream, [pg 421] but like a back current flowing towards the source instead of towards the mouth. A part of the soul probably wants the external object, another part, however, prefers to return to the subjective world, whither the airy and easily built palaces of the phantasy beckon. We could assume this duality of human will, for which Bleuler from his psychiatric standpoint has coined the word ambitendency, as something everywhere and always existing, and recall that even the most primitive of all motor impulses are already contradictory as where, e.g., in the act of extension, the flexor muscles are innervated.” (Jb. ps. F., IV, p. 218.)

Note E (279). Of the wonderful abilities that pass current as fruits of the yoga practice, the eight grand powers [Maha-siddhi] are generally mentioned: 1. To make oneself small or invisible [animan], 2, 3. to acquire the uttermost lightness or heaviness [laghiman, gariman], 4. to increase to the size of a monster and to reach everything even the most distant, as e.g., to the moon with the tips of the fingers [mahiman or prapti], 5. unobstructed fulfillment of all wishes, e.g., the wish to sink into the earth as into water and to emerge again [prakamya], 6. perfect control over the body and the internal organs [isitva], 7. the ability to change the course of nature [vasitva], and 8. by mere act of will to place oneself anywhere [yatra kamavasayitva]. Besides these eight marvelous powers many others might be named, which are partly included in the above; such an exaltation of sensitiveness that the most remote and imperceptible images, the happenings in other worlds on planets and stars, as also the goings on in one's own interior and in other men's are perceived by the senses; the knowledge of the past and the future, of previous existences and of the hour of death; understanding the language of animals, the ability to summon the dead, etc. These miraculous powers, however, suffer [pg 422] from the disadvantages of being transitory, like everything else won by man through his merit—with the exception of salvation. (Garbe, Samkhya and Yoga, p. 46.)

Note F (305). Jung (Jb., Ill, p. 171) refers to Maeterlinck's “inconscient supérieur” (in “La Sagesse et la Destinée”) as a prospective potentiality of subliminal combinations. He comments on it as follows: “I shall not be spared the reproach of mysticism. Perhaps the matter should none the less be pondered: doubtless the unconscious contains the psychological combinations that do not reach the liminal value of consciousness. Analysis resolves these combinations into their historical determinants for that is one of the essential tasks of analysis, i.e., to render powerless by disconnecting them, the obsessions of the complexes that are concurrent with the purposeful conduct of life. History is ignorant of two kinds of things: what is hidden in the past and what is hidden in the future. Both are probably to be attained with a certain measure of probability, the former as a postulate, the latter as a historical prognosis. In so far as to-morrow is contained in to-day, and all the warp of the future already laid, a deepened knowledge of the present could make possible a more or less wide-reaching and sure prognosis of the future. If we transfer this reasoning, as Kant has already done, to the psychologic, the following things must result; just as memory traces, which have demonstrably become subliminal, are still accessible to the unconscious, so also are certain very fine subliminal combinations showing a forward tendency, which are of the greatest possible significance for future occurrences in so far as the latter are conditioned by our psychology. But just as the science of history troubles itself little about the future combinations which are rather the object of politics, just so little are the psychological combinations the object of the analysis, but would be rather the object of an infinitely [pg 423] refined psychological synthesis, which should know how to follow the natural currents of the libido. We cannot do this, but probably the unconscious can, for the process takes place there, and it appears as if from time to time in certain cases significant fragments of this work, at least in dreams, come to light, whence came the prophetic interpretation of dreams long claimed by superstition. The aversion of the exact [sciences] of to-day against that sort of thought-process which is hardly to be called phantastic is only an overcompensation of the thousands of years old but all too great inclination of man to believe in soothsaying.”

Note G (317). The umbilical region plays no small part as a localization point for the first inner sensations in mystic introversion practices. The accounts of the Hindu Yoga doctrine harmonize with the experiences of the omphalopsychites. Staudenmaier thinks that he has, in his investigations into magic, which partly terminated in the calling up of extremely significant hallucinations, observed that realistic heavenly or religious hallucinations take place only if the “specific” nerve complexes [of the vegetative system] are stimulated as far down as the peripheral tracts in the region of the small intestine. (Magie als exp. Naturw., p. 123.) Many visionary authors know how to relate marvels of power to the region of the stomach and of the solar plexus. In an essay on the seat of the soul, J. B. van Helmont assures us that there is a stronger feeling in the upper orifice of the stomach than in the eye itself, etc.; that the solar plexus is the most essential organ of the soul. He recounts the following experience. In order to make an experiment on poisonous herbs he made a preparation of the root of aconite [Aconitum napellus] and only tasted it with the tip of his tongue without swallowing any of it. “Immediately,” he says, “my skin seemed to be constricted as with a bandage, and soon after, there occurred an extraordinary [pg 424] thing, the like of which I had never experienced before. I noticed with astonishment that I felt, perceived and thought no longer with my head, but in the region of my stomach, as if knowledge had taken its seat in the stomach. Amazed at this unusual phenomenon, I questioned myself and examined myself carefully. I merely convinced myself that my power of perception was now much stronger and more comprehensive. The spiritual clearness was coupled with great pleasure. I did not sleep nor dream, I was still temperate and my health perfect. I was at times in raptures, but they had nothing in common with the fact of feeling with the stomach, which excluded all coöperation with the head. Meantime my joy was interrupted by the anxiety that this might even bring on some derangement. Only my belief in God and my resignation to his will soon destroyed this fear. This condition lasted two hours, after which I had several attacks of giddiness. I have since often tried to taste of aconite, but I could not get the same result.” (Van Helmont, Ortus Medic, p. 171, tr. Ennemoser, Gesch. d. Mag., p. 913.)

Note H (381). For the old as for the new royal art the material is man, as man freed from all framework. “Not man of the conventional social life, but man as the equally entitled and equally obligated being of divine creation, enters the temple of humanity with the obligation always to remain conscious of his duty and to put aside everything that comes up to hinder the fulfillment of the highest duty.” (R. Fischer.) Compare with this what Hitchcock says of the material of the Philosopher's Stone: “Although men are of diverse dispositions ... yet the alchemists insist ... that all the nations of men are of one blood, that is, of one nature; and that character in man, by which he is one nature, it is the special object of alchemy to bring into life and action, by means of which, if it could universally [pg 425] prevail, mankind would be constituted into a brotherhood.” (H. A., pp. 48 ff.) [The tests] ... “begin with the stripping of the metals. Now alchemy recommends, once the propitious matter is seen, carefully examined and recognized, to clean it externally for the purpose of freeing it of every foreign body that could adhere accidentally to its surface. The matter, in fine, should be reduced to itself. Now it is an absolutely analogous matter that the candidate is called to strip himself of everything that he possesses artificially; both it and he ought to be reduced strictly to themselves. In this state of primitive innocence, of philosophic candor retrieved, the subject is imprisoned in a narrow retreat where no external light can penetrate. This is the chamber of meditation which corresponds to the matras of the alchemist, to his philosophic egg hermetically sealed. The uninitiated finds there a dark tomb where he must voluntarily die to his former existence. By decomposing the integuments that are opposed to the true expansion of the germ of individuality, this symbolic death precedes the birth of the new being who is to be initiated.” (W. S. H., pp. 87 ff.)

Note I (411). As to the Chamber of the Companion hung in red, it represents the sphere of action of our individuality, measured by the extent of our sulphurous radiation. This radiation produces a kind of refractive [refringent] medium, which refracts the surrounding diffused light [[Symbol: Mercury] is meant] to concentrate it on the spiritual nucleus of the subject. Such is the mechanism of the illumination, by which those benefit who have seen the blazing star shine. Every being bears in himself this mysterious star, but too often in the condition of a dim spark hardly perceptible. It is the philosophic child, the immanent Logos or the Christ incarnate, which legend represents as born obscurely in the midst of the filth of a cave serving as a stable. The initiation becomes the vestal of this inner fire [Symbol: Sulfur]; archetype or [pg 426] principle of all individuality. She knows how to care for it as long as it is brooded in the ashes. Then she devotes herself to nourishing it judiciously, to render it keen for the moment when it finally should overcome the obstacles that imprison it and