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105: Understanding the Unknowable

"The spiritual constitution of man in the premodern cycles of culture was such that each physical perception had simultaneously a psychic component which 'animated' it, adding a 'significance' to the bare image, and at the same time a special and potent emotional tone. Thus ancient physics was both a theology and a transcendental psychology, by reasons of the illuminating flashes from metaphysical essences which penetrated through the matter of the bodily senses. Natural science was at once a spiritual science, and the many meanings of the symbols united the various aspects of a single knowledge." Evoila, La tradizione ermetica, pp. 28f.

By our generation, Jung's concept of the collective unconscious is old news. It has evolved into Alan Moore's "ideaspace" or even the Internet-ready term "memespace." There exists, the thought goes, an ephemereal realm in which capital-I Ideas exist, where Archetypes and Pure Concepts play Croquet (though only as a thought experiment) and drink Tea (or rather Tea engages in a discussion of the Idea of a State of Imbibement where one Object ingests Another and Tea, certainly, isn't about to simply become the Object of Action versus the Actor without some participation of its own into the course of its de-Evolution into an nearly empty afternoon ceremony in meatspace).

"The real mystery does not behave mysteriously or secretively; it speaks a secret language, it adumbrates itself by a variety of images which all indicate its true nature. I am not speaking of a secret personally guarded by someone, with a content known to its possessor, but of a mystery, a matter or circumstance which is "secret," i.e., known only through vague hints but essentially unknown." (Jung, Psychology and Alchemy,p. 244)

Alchemy allows the artifex to project the unconscious into matter; it is a tool that allows the underlying mythic constructions of our psychology to manifest itself in the meat space. It unlocks the doors between you and I by demonstrating the existence of the passages between our brains -- the Paths of the Not Dead -- whereby you and I become You-I. It is the opportunity for the unknown to be Realized. Not Known, but Understood.

There's always been the conundrum of the Existence of God. If He is Infinite, then He is Unknowable because Infinity, by definition, has no boundaries and, as such, cannot be Conceived, cannot be limited by something as facile as human perception. But, if alchemy allows you and your Soul to communicate -- even on an unconscious, psychological level -- then it is possible for us to Understand.

Your waking brain is somewhat suspect, after all, caught up in the sensory details of the world and the perceptions and judgements which it leverages against that input data. By virtue of Witnessing, we isolate ourselves from the infinite system. Alchemy degrades, unifies, and resurrects both the physical aspect of the alchemical experiment and the mental state of the artifex.

Posted by Teppo at 07:48 AM | Comments (0) October 13, 2004

104: Alchemy, Alchemy, Hey!

I've been busy with other projects these last few weeks, finishing up a story for the first volume of the Misfit Library's quarterly journal and fighting the distraction of National Novel Writing Month. This will be the third Nanowrimo since I started the BOOK OF LIES and the fact that I haven't finished it yet isn't lost on me. It's a slow moving process, even if the rest of the world is hurtling onward at a breakneck rate.

So, distractions. It is alchemy this time around. I've been doing some spot reading on alchemy, realizing that, of course, one can't synthesize several hundred years of research and commentary in just a few weeks but, as we know, this never stopped me in any way before. A lot of the stories I've been working on have been bleak and dark, and I've had a request by those who have to put up with me on a daily basis for something a bit lighter, a bit sillier. "You know," my wife said, "like talking animals with guns." Which, I haven't failed to notice, is a huge concession to the 12-year old in me. So, emboldened by such license, I've been thinking about animal avatars, the Collective Unconscious, shared myth space, and alchemy.

In his book, Psychology and Alchemy, Carl Gustav Jung brings together his work on the collected mythology space which underlies our psyches with the efforts of the alchemists to more perfectly realize the human creature. There are four stages of the alchemical process: blackening (melanosis), whitening (leukosis), yellowing (xanthosis), and finally reddening (iosis). Jung points out that the third state -- the yellowing stage of the alchemical material -- was eventually abandoned for the more essential trinity of black, white and red.

The red powder, by the way (and this is just a random research detail which popped into my head), was what was purported to have been found at Gloucester by Edward Kelly in the 16th century and was used to validate a great deal of alchemical research during Kelly's and Dr. John Dee's travails in Europe during the last years of the 16th century. Gloucester is where King Arthur was supposedly buried as both Kelly and Dee were wont to mention.

While the traditional quaternity matches the four elements -- air, earth, fire and water -- and the four esssential qualities -- hot, cold, dry, moist -- and everything is happy happy hunky-dory, there was some shift in emphasis in the alchemical literature to align the states of the Magnum Opus with the trinity. And, as Jung is quick to point out, since the alchemical goal was never actually realized (skeptic, he) and the procedure of the Magnum Opus was never officially detailed, he believes the shift from the quaternity to the trinity is a symbolic one, a shifting due to inner psychological reasons.

The blackening is the beginning, either as a existent state of the prima materia or as a realized state from a process of separation (the prima materia made distinct from the dross of the world which hides it from everyday sight). This is the basic alchemical material in its uninitiated state -- its state of pure potential energy. Through a process of heating and combining (this is sometimes symbolized by the marriage of the disparate opposites -- the wedding of the male and female aspects), the black material is baptised -- abluted -- into a state of whiteness, a more purified state that is on the cusp of the sacred space. The white material has been slain, cut free from its primative state and resurrected in a body more pure and whole. This leukotic state is the moon state, a state that reflects the final solution, but is not yet there. "The albedo is, so to speak, the daybreak but not till the rubedo is it sunrise." (Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 232) The final reddening occurs with the application of intense heat. By the light and heat of the solar furnace is the Philosopher's Stone realized.

So, what happens when the sun goes out? What happens with the ancient serpent devours the solar disk and the primal source of extreme heat is extinguished? Are our alchemical hopes all lost?

Posted by Teppo at 08:13 PM | Comments (2)