Alchemy & Kabbalah from within Depth Psychology Stack
Alchemy & Kabbalah from within Depth Psychology: Two stacks to finish off this three part post. I left a big one out can you guess which one?
From Alchemy and Psychotherapy, Mysterium Coniunctionis chapter by Catherine Bygott: "The inter-relationship of the material and spiritual is at the heart of alchemy. The word 'laboratory' is itself an expression of this unification; it contains both the Latin word 'laborare' (to work) and 'orare' (to pray). Alchemy is sacred work. In the laboratory, an alchemist's first task is to work with lead, the blackness. Carl Jung describes this psychological situation: "Introversion, introspection, meditation and careful investigation of desires and their motives... a turning away from sensuous reality, a withdrawal of the fantasy-projections that give "the ten thousand things" their attractive and deceptive glamour... the soul "stands between good and evil," the disciple will have every opportunity to discover the dark side of his personality, his inferior wishes and motives" (CW 14, para. 673). As psychic contents free themselves from their projected attachment to the body, to outer objects and to the world, the spiritual alchemist suffers encountering the chthonic spirit, dragon or devil-on the night sea journey of the nigredo. The nigredo introduces an extended period of melancholy and depression as the soul struggles in darkness with a chaos of inner and outer experience. Psychotherapy often begins under its influence. Jung's interpretation of a relevant alchemical text provides guidance: "contemplate your lack of fantasy, of inspiration and inner aliveness, which you feel as sheer stagnation and a barren wilderness, and impregnate it with the interest born of alarm at your inner death, then something can take shape in you, for your inner emptiness conceals just as great a fullness if only you allow it to penetrate you" (CW 14, para 190)
"Contemplation gradually shifts the focus from perceiving the cause of one's difficulty as lying in the objective, outer world towards experiential knowledge that this complex interplay of inner and outer experience originates in the subjective, inner world. Psychotherapeutic process encourages discussion and reflection on darkness. Difficult emotions are revisited again and again in the laboratory until the lighter atmosphere of self awareness is able to be sustained. This circular process was known to the alchemists as the circulation. Deep resistance may arise in the process as it involves the the mortificatio of natural, unconscious living and the birth of consciousness. As long as shadow is not recognised, there can be no healing. Carl Jung saw this, the medieval alchemist lived it. In Sonnet 53, Shakespeare raises the question at the heart of the nigredo, "What is your substance/ Whereof are you made/That millions of strange shadows on you tend." With sufficient integration, the chaos of nigredo gives way to the albedo, an ordered polarisation of opposites, the coincidentia oppositorum. The upper realm of spirit and soul separates from the lower realm of body and earthly instinct. Desire once fulfilled brings disappointment, whether for a fast car, or a beautiful partner. The glittery illusion of soul projection drops away draining the desired object of its colour and appeal, leaving only aching awareness of inner emptiness. In the albedo phase, the soul's purposes are symbolic ones not to be given lasting, concrete form. In Jung's words, "he will learn to know his soul... who conjures up a delusory world for him. He attains this knowledge with the help of the inner spirit, spontaneous insight... for the goal of inner marriage, in so far as the spirit is also a "window into eternity"... it conveys to the soul a certain "divine flux" and the knowledge of higher things wherein consists precisely an animation of the soul."
Books mentioned:
Part 1
Jung and the Alchemical Imagination by Jeffrey Raff, The Wedding of Sophia by Jeffrey Raff, The Black Sun by Stanton Marlan, The Mystery of the Conjunctio by Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures by Edward Edinger, Alchemical Active Imagination by Marie-Louise Von Franz, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology by Marie-Louise Von Franz, Salt and the Alchemical Soul by Ernst Jones, C G Jung and James Hillman, Turn of an Age by Alfred Ribi, Alchemy and Psychotherapy by Dale Mathers, Alchemical Psychology by James Hillman, Alchemical Studies by C G Jung, Psychology and Alchemy by C G Jung.
Part 2
I and Thou by Martin Buber, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem, The Mystical Marriage by Gerhard Wehr, The Book of Lilith by Barbara Black Koltuv, A Psychological Interpretation of RUTH by Yehezkel Kluger, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition by David Bakan, The Magician and the Analyst by Robert L Moore Ph.D., The Way of Splendor by Edward Hoffman, The Cosmic Shekinah by Sorita D’Este and David Rankine, Homo Mysticus by Jose Faur, Maimonides’ Cure of Souls by David Bakan, Dan Merkur et al., Alchemy and Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis by Michael Eigen, Opening the Inner Gates by Edward Hoffman, Kabbalistic Visions by Sanford L. Drob.
