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‘Do not be disturbed because you sometimes find contradictions in my treatises, after the custom of the philosophers; these are necessary if you understand that no rose is found without thorns.’ This good advice to any reader of Mysterium Coniunctionis was given by an alchemist who compared his method of exposition to the paradoxical nature of Mercurius, whose end was also his beginning. Jung's book exemplifies the ‘roundness’ of alchemical thought in its ‘mystic peregrination’. In a circular journey through more than 550 pages, Jung puts into practice his method of circumambulation and amplification, by means of which the meaning of a symbol is intimated by viewing its overlapping, interpenetrating, and contradictory motifs from multiple standpoints. As images pile upon images, and analogies are compounded with ideas, the central theme (of separation and analysis which lead to synthesis and unity) emerges and re-emerges in ever-varying forms. Roses bloom in unexpected places, but the path is often a thorny one for an English empiricist who has been encouraged by the section headings to expect progress from a beginning to an end, only to find that as he goes forward he meets himself coming back.…
… Jung often complains of being misunderstood, but his love of paradox and his reluctance to maintain a systematic thesis create major problems for the conscientious expositor or reviewer, who cannot always be sure when he is dancing, or boxing, with his own projected shadow. In order to elucidate Jung's thought, ideas have often to be pieced together from a paragraph here and a paragraph there. The pieces are often widely separated and, not infrequently, are concealed in long stretches of tedious repetition which must be endured if vital passages are not to be overlooked. Nevertheless, the search is worth while, and I find that in this book many of Jung's leading ideas emerge with remarkable clarity.…
… He repudiates the suggestion that he is uncritically applying psychologi