The Alchemical Mercurius

Esoteric symbol of Jung's life and works

Mathew Mather

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134507528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Salud mental en psicología

The figure of the alchemical Mercurius features ubiquitously and radically in Jung's later works, but despite this, there has been little research concerning Mercurius in Jungian studies to date. In this book, Mathew Mather explores the figure of the alchemical Mercurius and contextualises and clarifies its significance in Jung's life and works.

Placing the alchemical Mercurius as a central concern reveals a Jungian interpretation in which the grail legend, alchemy and precessional astrology, as three thematic threads, converge. In such a treatment, Jung's belief in the dawning of a new platonic month emerges as a central consideration and an esoteric perspective on Jung's life and works is brought more fully to light, constructing a life-myth interpretation.

The book is comprised of three parts:

• Aurea Catena: locating the figure of the alchemical Mercurius within the Western esoteric tradition

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• Daimonic Encounter: the relevance of this figure in Jung's personal life

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• Magnum Opus: Jung's portrayal of this figure in key texts such as Synchronicity, Aion, Mysterium Coniunctionis; and Emma Jung and von Franz's The Grail Legend.

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The Alchemical Mercurius is a unique contribution to analytical psychology, substantially revealing 'esoteric Jung' and providing valuable perspectives on the theme of his myth for our times. The book will appeal to researchers and academics in the field of analytical psychology as well as postgraduate students.

Part I

Aurea catena

Mercurius, as ‘quicksilver’, as the aqua permanens, is a living and liquid concept. This is why ‘The highest mystery of the whole Work is the Physical Dissolution into Mercury’.

(Figulus, cited in Giegerich 1999: 137)

Chapter 1

Hermeticism

… rich initiatic symbolism, whose aim can best be described as gnosis, does in fact produce an invisible fraternity among those who have glimpsed the mysteries. In this sense a secret Fraternity does exist – and anyone can enter in who sees and seizes the point.

(Churton 2005: 137)

In this statement we can discern three overarching features that are said to characterise Hermeticism: revelation, secrecy and initiation. For Jan Assman, the most important of these is revelation of a supra-mundane knowledge comparable to that in the Bible. Allied to such revelation is the need for secrecy as, unlike those in the Bible, such mysteries are considered only suitable for an elect and worthy few, as their initiates (Assman, foreword, in Ebeling 2007: ix–xii). Thus, the tradition of Hermeticism is coloured by the notion of an inspired lineage of sages imagined as an aurea catena (golden chain) originating with the legendary Hermes Trismegistus whose mysteries can be revealed to initiates by the sage himself, as a spiritual presence, in any given time.

Jung wrote of the aurea catena in terms of an opus magnum or divinum, with he himself taking up the thread from the likes of Goethe and Nietzsche. He considered Goethe to be ‘in the grip of that process of archetypal transformation which has gone on through the centuries … what was alive and active within him was a living substance, a suprapersonal process, the great dream of the mundus archetypus’ (Jung 1963/1995: 232). In a letter dated 1944, we read:

Nowadays, certainly, the number of hermetics has grown increasingly small. But it was never particularly large, because the aurea catena they write about does not run through schools and conscious tradition but through the unconscious. Hermeticism is not something you choose, it is a destiny, just as the ecclesia spiritualis is not an organization but an electio.

(Jung 1973–75: 351)

This makes clear that Jung considered the aurea catena at a specific historical period to be a process refracted in a number of creative individuals in the grip of the unconscious (not restricted to a single individual). It is also clear he considered himself a member of such an electio, in contrast to his more open persona as an ‘objective scientist of the psyche’. Consequently, the task of better understanding his esoteric identity requires an investigative style that largely brackets off such a scientific persona.

As a basis for such an investigation I begin with a largely non-Jungian enquiry as a means of establishing a broad context. More specifically, the four chapters in Part I respond to the following questions:

1 What do we understand by the term Hermeticism in terms of origins, theory, practice, historical influence? From this, can we discern ‘mercurial themes’ as a lens through which to better evaluate Jung’s ‘esoteric identity’?

2 What role does Mercurius play in the history of western alchemy and what specific qualities and themes does this figure constellate?

3 As a case study, are there useful symmetries between the English Renaissance Magus John Dee and Carl Jung that enhance an interpretation of ‘esoteric Jung’?

4 What were Jung’s alchemical and astrological ‘myths’? Is it possible to discern a convergence of these myths pivoted around the figure of the alchemical Mercurius?

These questions are addressed in chapters 1–4, respectively. As will become apparent, the three most prominent figures that emerge are Hermes Trismegistus, John Dee and Carl Jung. From the perspective of precessional astrology, these personalities (together with their historical eras) can be viewed as significant ‘links’ in the aurea catena. Hermes Trismegistus anticipates the first (vertical) Fish of the Age of the Fishes (Pisces). John Dee’s life coincides with the precessed equinox ‘touching’ the tail of the second Fish in this Aeon. Jung’s life is then synchronous with it, reaching the head of the second Fish and touching the first ‘waters’ of the new Platonic month of Aquarius.¹ I now proceed, in this chapter, to address the first of the above questions.

* * *

As a basis on which to work toward unravelling ‘esoteric Jung’ I develop here a broad portrayal of Hermeticism, with an especial emphasis on the following: Hermes Trismegistus; Hermeticism’s theory and practice; Hermeticism and Christianity; and the Renaissance.

Hermes Trismegistus

At first glance the contours of Hermes Trismegistus seem sharp, but on closer inspection they dissolve. Was he a god, like Hermes and Thoth? Many viewed him as such, but for others he was a prophet. It seems to have been in the nature, in the very essence of this fictive figure to be shimmering, iridescent, without form, for many ancient writers were unclear regarding his identity.

(Ebeling 2007: 7)

Hermes Trismegistus, according to the German scholar Florian Ebeling, was a ‘fruitful fiction’ born from two diverse cultures; an amalgam of the Egyptian Thoth and the Greek Hermes. Thus, according to one ancient source, the ibis-headed Thoth as a Moon god was identified with the ‘first Hermes’ who inscribed sacred hieroglyphic writings. The ‘second Hermes’, identified as Greek, is said to have transferred the sacred writings to books after the Flood (Copenhaver 1992/2000: xiv–xvi). Antoine Faivre, who includes Arabic–Islamicist conceptions, offers a third ‘Idris/Hermes’ as the teacher of alchemy (Faivre 1995: 20). Such a threefold depiction affords a chronological perspective to Hermes’ ‘thrice-great’ epithet. This epithet, however, more usually refers to him as the greatest philosopher, the greatest priest and the greatest king; possibly alluding to an earlier Egyptian custom (Ebeling 2007: 62).² Other instances in which the ‘thrice-great’ epithet applies regard his ubiquity within the three worlds, as subterranean, earthly and celestial; the three-sided stones where three roads meet; his three-pronged golden wand, and so on (Faivre 1995: 80).

The synthesis of Hermes Trismegistus from Egyptian and Greek culture saw him, in the first few centuries CE, also breaking the mould of his familiar mythological forms. In Garth Fowden’s words:

The new syncretistic Hermes as a cosmic power, creator of heaven and earth and almighty world-ruler … Presiding over fate and justice, he is also lord of the night, and of death and its mysterious aftermath … He knows ‘all that is hidden under the heavenly vault, and beneath the earth’, and is accordingly much revered as a sender of oracles.

(Fowden, cited in Linden 2003: 9–10)

According to Faivre, there are also numerous examples of ‘shifting or transition between the figure of the sage Trismegistus, who is a mortal, and the god of Olympus’ (Faivre 1995: 16–17). His role in the Corpus Hermeticum, for example, shifts from that of god, to sage, to disciple of the Nous or Divine Intellect. As Faivre further points out: ‘according to the Arab tradition, his life is simultaneously physical and transtemporal, after the example of Elijah’s, and even in his body he manifests a state of eternity’ (ibid.: 20). Another perspective highlights mortal beginnings and the subsequent transmutation of the human sage Thoth into a god, by means of his wisdom (Freke and Gandy 1999: xiii). Either way, legend has it that this god took on human form, functioning variously as prophet, sage and teacher. Thus, as emissary from the divine, he is said to introduce humanity not only to theology and the arcane arts but also to the more secular disciplines of language, writing, music, medicine, astronomy and architecture. The particular nature of this knowledge has also been described in holistic terms as ‘a means of attaining to a knowledge that may be Gnostic, eclectic, or transdisciplinary – or all of these at once’ (Faivre 1995: 11).

Concerning the transcription of such revelatory knowledge, the original number of these sacred texts was said to be ‘twenty thousand’ and, elsewhere, ‘thirty-six thousand and fifty-five’. The surviving texts – considerably fewer – consist in a few works collectively known as ‘the Hermetica’. These form the basis of the Hermetic tradition, which includes not only a revelatory theology, as found in the Corpus Hermeticum, but also more utilitarian subjects such as astrology, alchemy, talismans and magic (Copenhaver 2000: xvi).

As Ebeling points out, the mystique of the Hermetic texts derives from the notion of them as being divinely inspired and originating from an ancient Egyptian past, earlier even than the biblical prophets (Ebeling 2007: 8). However, revised dating of such seminal works as the Corpus Hermeticum has largely collapsed such assumptions. Specifically, in 1614, Isaac Casaubon provided a convincing case that the Corpus Hermeticum was more likely to have been compiled between the first and third centuries CE, in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria (ibid.: 95). Indeed, Casaubon’s demystification is generally considered to have been a significant catalyst in the rapid decline of Renaissance Hermeticism. Based on such observations, scholars such as Ebeling are of the opinion that the literary origins of the writings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus are rather ‘the product of the syncretic, Hellenistic philosophy of nature, which itself was a conglomeration of Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic and Pythagorean doctrines, interspersed with motifs from Egyptian mythology and themes of Jewish and Iranian origin’ (ibid.: 9).

Others emphasise that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were only translated a couple of centuries after Casaubon’s critique. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, for example, consider these hieroglyphic writings, over 5,000 years old, as ‘identical to those expounded in the Hermetica’ (Freke and Gandy 1999: xxvii). In light of this they consider the Corpus Hermeticum to be a second-century reworking of ancient Egyptian wisdom to accommodate a contemporary Greek-speaking readership. In such debates a key issue at stake, at least for some, is the contention that they are a cultural construction (more human-centric) as opposed to an age-old divinely inspired revelation, the prisca theologia. In the words of Assman, ‘greater age meant higher truth. The best knowledge was the oldest knowledge. As a result, Hermetic knowledge came to be viewed as rescued primeval knowledge, the wisdom of Adam, that had in some way survived the Flood’ (Assman, foreword, in Ebeling 2007: ix).

Hermeticism: theory and practice

The Hermetica consists of two distinct forms as theory and practice, underpinned by the notion of an original divine revelation transmitted by Hermes Trismegistus to a circle of adepts. The theory aspect includes a religious doctrine in which man’s place and purpose is revealed in relation to world, cosmos and the divine. The practical aspect, on the other hand, consists of a variety of technical methods said to facilitate such a realisation and to also catalyse man’s spiritual destiny. These include theurgy, astrology, alchemy, magic and talismans. As such, Hermeticism is considered predominantly in doctrinal terms as a spiritual way rather than a philosophical worldview (see Salaman, Van Oyen and Wharton 1999/2004: 126).

However, in the purist sense, there are problems. For example, we can recall how the important Corpus Hermeticum was shown to date from the first to third centuries CE, instead of a primeval past. A further difficulty concerns inconsistencies in this text:

The Corpus … presents two incompatible doctrines that entail two precisely opposed attitudes. In one … the world is penetrated by divinity, therefore beautiful and good. In the other the world is essentially evil, not the work of God’ and further that these represent ‘notions so diverse … [they] cannot lead to the same mode of action but must result in two antagonistic moralities.

(Festugiere, cited in Copenhaver 2000: lv)

Such a theological–philosophical inconsistency runs through much of the Hermetica, leading scholars to divide the texts into monist–optimistic and dualist–pessimistic categories (Ebeling 2007: 32). Another ‘third position’ has also been posed. Brian Copenhaver, citing Fowden, restores a level of conceptual integrity by suggesting that specific philosophical biases would suit different stages of the initiate’s spiritual progress:

a positive view of the cosmos as good and worth understanding would suit an earlier stage of the initiate’s labours … when the body’s needs were still great, while a negative treatment of the world as evil and unworthy of thought might befit a farther station in the spirit’s journey … which entailed liberation from the body.

(ibid.: xxxix)

A further difficulty, in Copenhaver’s opinion, includes a disjunct in the Hermetica between theory and some of the praxis, such as the role of magic (ibid.: xxxvii). Indeed, such problems undermine the notion of a single coherent and unambiguous doctrine, leading commentators such as Heinrich Dorrie (cited in Ebeling 2007: 11) to describe Hermeticism as a ‘thing without corners and edges’.

However, despite such problems, a definite ‘orienting myth’ and technical methods can be discerned. In light of this, and in the context of this limited study, it is deemed sufficient to progress by distilling out key ‘mercurial themes’ of the theory and practice that characterises the Hermetica.

Concerning theory, an overarching theology is to be found in the Oracles in which the divine is composed of three parts: a first paternal transcendent Intellect, a second world-creating Demiurgic Intellect and a third animating female Power as the World Soul. In this conception, the human soul’s redemption lies in escaping the ‘foul tomb’ of matter and ascending to the deity (Copenhaver 2000: xxv).

In this sense, a Hermetic notion is that all of existence can be considered as thoughts in the ‘Big Mind’ of God, resulting in a monist-style theology: ‘Because he unites every thing, his nature is paradoxical. He is the creator who creates himself. He is always hidden from us, yet he is also the world around us. He has no particular name, because all names refer to him’ (Freke and Gandy 1999: 17; see also xxxi).

The material cosmos, as described in the Corpus Hermeticum, is also animated with a continual influx of energy by the divine Life-Force. This is described, in cosmogonic terms, as an erotic divine coupling. The cosmos is thus considered living and dynamic, with every being composed of both matter and Nous in a continual play of growth, dissolution and rebirth (Salaman, Van Oyen and Wharton 1999/2004: 16–17, 53, 59). Tobias Churton develops this conception by...