The Rosarium Philosophorum begins with a representation of the site of
its creation myth (see picture on the left; 1st picture of Carl
Jung’s essay). It is not the Garden of Eden, as in
the Old Testament (Genesis 2 and 3), but the Fountain of Mercury, the latter
being the central archetype of alchemy. Mercury, an
absolutely ambivalent being, symbolizes the personification of the ambivalence
between the physical/psychic and the spirit/psychic energy. In this
fountain a transformation takes place and thus the symbolism immediately shows
us that this creation myth is governed by an energetic transformation process.
This fountain of Mercury, in which the sexual union of
the king (Rex) and the queen (Regina) – the ultimately divine beings – happens,
is at the same time compared to the uterus. In it the hostile opposites, the
feminine and the masculine principle, goddess and god, matter and spirit, are
united.
3.2
The king,
the queen, the dove as Mercury and the three flowers
Contrary
to biological sexuality, the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the dove, accompanies
the pair (see figure on the right; 2nd picture of Jung’s essay).
Symbolically seen, the dove possesses, however, much less the characteristics of
a spirit but much more of the psychophysical realm, Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli
referenced in their correspondence[1].
As a flying body, the dove means the Mercurial bipolarity as mentioned above,
i.e., it symbolizes the union of the spiritual and the material and is therefore
able to have a relationship with both, the spirit and the body (or matter in
general)[2].
Further,
in our picture Mercury (the dove) is connected in a dual manner with the number
six. On the one hand it touches the six-pointed star which hovers in the sky. On
the other hand it is related to the three flowers that connect the royal couple
and are
arranged in such a way as to also form a hexagon. This hexagon is however a very
special one because it is formed with three flowers, and its angular arrangement
builds a
double-triadicstructure
that consists of three blooms and three roots (respectively three bulbs).
As
I have shown in my
bookI Cercatori
di Dio [The Quest for God; DiRenzo
ed., Rome, 1994] this sixfold structure, especially in its form of the double
triad, belongs to a primal structure of the material universe, to the so-called
quark/antiquark sextette, which is itself the background of the atomic nucleus
and the atomic force. It represents further the so-called unus mundus[3],
the potential world of the alchemist Gerardus Dorneus before
the creation (i.e., before the
Genesis), which transcends the split between matter and spirit (see below).
3.3 Carl Jung’s interpretation: The archetypal
child as the third
With
the help of the sexual act performed in the water of the fountain of Mercury,
yet the third will be created from the two opposites. This third entity
possesses many different alchemical names: The stone (lapis),
the philosopher’s gold, the filius
Philosophorum, the infans solaris
(sun child), the red tincture, the sun/moon child, and so forth.
However,
one must beware of the idea that this child, the product of the sexual union, as
in the biological process carries forward the characteristics of its parents. It
is on the contrary the so-called tertium non datur
(“the
third does not exist”), the excluded third of Western
philosophy, as it has essential attributes of the
child archetype[4].
To
show this difference to the human child, Carl Jung
begins the description of the phenomenology of the child archetype as follows[5]:
“Abandonment,
exposure, danger, etc. are all elaborations of the ‘child’s’ insignificant
beginnings and of its mysterious and miraculous birth. This statement describes
a certain psychic experience of a creative nature, whose object is the emergence
of a new and as yet unknown content.
In the psychology of the individual there is always, at such moments, an
agonizing situation of conflict from which there seems to be no way out – at
least for the conscious mind, since as far as this is concerned, tertium
non datur[the
third does not exist; RFR]. But out of this collision
of opposites the unconscious psyche always creates a third
thing of an irrational nature, which
the conscious mind neither expects nor understands.” [emphasis mine]
This
“third thing of an irrational nature”, which is unexpected and
incomprehensible to the consciousness represents further “an anticipation of
future developments”[6].
Western
philosophy is double valued. In it only a “yes” or “no” exists; there is
no third. This principle, which is also behind modern digitalization and thus
behind the computer, is however not sufficient for the description of the
processes in the psyche, in the personal as well as in the collective. This is
why the depth psychologist continues as follows[7]:
“[The
child] presents itself in a form that is neither a straight ‘yes’ nor a
straight ‘no’, and is consequently rejected by both. For the conscious mind
knows nothing beyond the opposites and, as a result, has no knowledge of the
thing that unites them. Since, however, the solution of the conflict through the
union of opposites is of vital importance, and is moreover the very thing that
the conscious mind is longing for, some inkling of the creative act, and of the
significance of it, nevertheless gets through. From this comes the numinous
character of this ‘child’. A meaningful but unknown content always has a
secret fascination for the conscious mind. The new configuration is a nascent
whole; it is on the way to wholeness, at least in so far as it excels in
‘wholeness’ the conscious mind when torn by opposites and surpasses it in
completeness. For this reason all uniting symbols have a redemptive significance.”
The
most interesting aspect of this quotation is the fact that the depth
psychologist speaks of the opposites between the ego
and the Self that must be united. This fact is very obvious in
Carl Jung’s essay The transcendent
function[8].
There he writes[9]:
“The
psychological ‘transcendent function’ arises from the union of conscious and
unconscious contents.”
As
he mentions in the continuation of his article, the means for this union is
Active Imagination. Then he concludes[10]:
“[The
active imagination is] the bringing together of opposites for the production of
the third: the transcendent function.”
Thus,
we can conclude that Carl Jung’s theory, of which Active Imagination is one of
the most important empirical tools, roots in the reunion of the first, the
(Logos) ego with the second, the (Logos) Self to the third. This third principle
he calls the archetype of the child or the transcendent function.
[1]Atom and Archetype, The Pauli/Jung
Letters 1932 – 1958, ed. C.A. Meier, Princeton
University Press, 2001; originally published in German as Wolfgang Pauli und C.G. Jung, Ein Briefwechsel 1932 – 1958, ed.
C.A. Meier, Springer, Berlin, 1992
