Practical Application of Alchemical Theory

As DR GRINNELL has told us, alchemical theory is made from ‘the formation of apperceptive symbols of a conceptual order’, (GRINNELL 1) and this echoes Jung's method of arriving at certain psychological insights by the enrichment of dream imagery ‘amplified to the point of intelligibility’. The alchemists called this theoria, in contrast to practica, which refers to specific transformations; but the two are continually represented by the philosophical alchemists as being identical. While the understanding of the personal, and to some extent the cultural, psyche requires the method of scientific testing, the archetypal experience is best understood with this attitude: that theory and practice are of one substance.

Most of you will recall an illustration frequently reproduced by students of alchemy of the title page to Maier's Tripus Aureus, showing what Jung calls ‘the double-face’ of alchemy (JUNG 3, p. 290, fig. 1). The picture is divided in two parts, like the design for a stage set, partitioned to form two rooms—a library on one side and a laboratory on the other. In the centre foreground is a round alchemical furnace, tended by a man clothed only in trunks, whose place is in the laboratory. On the other side, against a background of shelved books, are three richly attired men described as ‘an abbot, a monk and a layman’, denoting three important alchemical philosophers: John Cremer, Abbot of Westminster, Basilius Valentinus and Thomas Norton. Exactly in the centre of the picture on top of the furnace we see a tripod holding a round, sealed glass vessel containing a lively winged serpent. Two plain serpents are stretched out on the stone surface below. One of the learned men is pointing out this phenomenon to the other two. How can we describe the meaning of this gesture? It would be all too easy, as James Hillman has warned us in his paper, ‘The therapeutic value of alchemical language’, to try to fit the image into one of our psychological concept-slots (HILLMAN