An alchemical recipe broken into steps, the basis for an extended meditation…  Quoted from Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW XIV, paragraph 35

(A-F written by Jung;  G-K written by Dorn)

A.  Our starting point for these remarks was the designation of the lapis as “orphan,”

B.  which Dorn mentions apparently out of the blue when discussing the union of the opposites.

C.  The material we have adduced shows what an archetypal drama of death and rebirth lies hidden in the coniunctio

D. and what immemorial human emotions clash together in this problem.

E. It is the moral task of alchemy to bring the feminine, maternal background of the masculine psyche, seething with passions, into harmony with the principle of the spirit,

F. truly a labour of Hercules!

G.  In Dorn’s words:  Learn therefore, O Mind, to practice sympathetic love in regard to thine own body, by restraining its vain appetites, that it may be apt with thee in all things.

H.  to this end I shall labour, that it may drink with thee from the fountain of strength, and, when two are made one, that ye find peace in their union.

I. Draw nigh, O Body, to this fountain, that with the Mind thou mayest drink to satiety and hereafter thirst no more after vanities.

J. O wondrous efficacy of this fount, which makest one of two, and peace between enemies!

K. the fount of love can make mind out of spirit and soul, but this maketh one man of mind and body.”

One of the most interesting aspects of working with embodied active imagination is helping people out of the frontal cortex dead end they often find themselves locked in.  The mind/body split which so exemplifies the manner in which the collective carries consciousness has left us thirsting for connection, to each other and to psyche.  

We long for the intamacy of touch, and “the touching”…being moved by the surprising reveal of the mystery we are always, though we are often unaware, embedded within.

As some significant writing projects are beginning to loom I find myself drawn to revisit two classics which align significantly with my analytic process: Writing Down the Bones and Writing from the Body.

It goes against our rational bias to think that our elbow might want to speak, but science has been increasingly narrowing the gap that imagination has never found it difficult to bridge.  Trauma is clearly held in the body.  As we open up to our bodies, we discover that the stories extend beyond the traumatic.

“The risk is, that the artifex becomes identical with the goal of his opus. He becomes inflated and crazy: “multi perierunt in opere nostro!” There is a “demon” in the prima materia, that drives people crazy.” Unpublished Letter to Alice in Jung History

Not identifying with the collective unconscious is a crucial first step to establishing the ego/Self axis, whereby the energies which are present in the work are not usurped. Instead, they are served.   The risks on a path of individuation are real, for the energies that want to manifest and can show a disregard for the fragility of the ego through which it takes place.  (see definition of Inflation)

I came across this quote from von Franz on Jung at Heart which is worth sharing as it relates to the lopsidedness in the current collective construct of consciousness.

“The contemporary Zeitgeist belittles feeling…I don’t think that we can achieve much if we remain on the level of “reasonable” materialistic thinking— it is not altogether wrong; it is wrong only if we infer “that is it…”

Jung says in a letter that we have become too lopsidedly intellectual and rational and have forgotten that there are factors that cannot be influenced by a one-track intellect. We then see emotionality flaring up as a compensation (letter to Albert Oppenheimer, 10 October 1933. 1973a, 128–129). We need to be more than just reasonable and level-headed, an attitude which only infuriates the young people. We must offer them a creative spiritual, non-materialistic view of reality as a whole—namely a real connection with the unconscious as a supramaterial, extrasensory reality to which we must relate, not only with our minds but also with feeling and emotion.”

When we only see from the perspective of the ego, the focus can be to navigate with the ease of smooth sailing. I’m struck by the opposing image found in the New Testament when out in the storm, Christ sleeps snugly in the boat until, pushed by the desperation of the situation, the disciples wake him up.

Much of the work of a Jungian process, like the image of that small boat tossed in the tempest, is an operation that leads to the awakening of the Anthropos.

What can be done in this moment, wherever you happen to be meeting this text, to access the splendor that resides right where you are but just beyond the periphery of consciousness? How does the light lie across the objects that surround? What process is taking place? Growth, decay, silence?

A developing thirst…

In Irish mythology Bridghid was:

“a woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith’s work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night. And the one side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. And the meaning of her name was Breo-saighit, a fiery arrow.”

I’ve often held close the reading of Shakespeare’s Eighteenth Sonnet that it was drafted to one such Anima Mundi.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

“When an archetype is constellated it can appear in the inner and outer world at the same time.  Each distinct case is an example of creation.”  (From Conversations with C.G. Jung, pg 55)

What will come next into the clearing, this space that opens between us?

The Grail Legend has many layers which capture different aspects of the individuation journey. One of my favorite is the seeking of the location of the grail castle. I see a strong parallel between the search for the elusive entryway to the castle with search for Self, what in Jungian analysis is called the establishment of the ego/Self axis.

In a matter of fact way within the introduction of The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz we hear that “Naturally the Grail Castle cannot be localized in reality.” (pg. 13)

This all points to Henri Corbin’s teachings on the imaginal and his own visionanry experiences.  Corbin makes reference to Blake who in the poem Milton writes,

“And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move

Where’er he goes…”