Fragment of Mysterium Coniunctio)

The central point A, the origin and goal, the “Ocean or great sea,” is also called a circulus exiguus very small circle, and a mediator making peace between the enemies or elements, that they may love one another in a meet embrace”. This little inner circle corresponds to the Mercurial Fountain in the Rosarium, which i have described in my “Psychology of the transference”. The text call it “the more spiritual perfect , and nobler mercurius,” the true arcane substance, a “spirits”, and goes on:

For the spirit alone penetrates all things, even the most solid bedies. Thus the catholicity of religion., or of the true Church, consist not in a visible and bodily gathering together of men, but in the invisible, spiritual concord and harmony of those who believe devoutly and truly in the one Jesus Christ. Whoever attaches himself to a particular church outside this King of Kings, who alone is the shephered of the true spiritual church, is a sectarian, a schismatic, and a heretic. For the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, but is within us, as our Saviour himself says in the seventeen chapter of St. Luke. That the Ecclesia spiritualis is meant is clear from the text: “But you will ask, whre then are those true Christians, who are free from all sectarian contagion?”. They are the “neither in Samaria, but are scattered everywhere through the world, “in Turkey, in Persia, Italy, Gaul, Germant, Poland, Bohemia, Morovia, England, America, and even in the farthest India.” The author continues: “God is spirit and the truth. After these examinations and avowals I leave it to each man to judge who is of the true Church, and who not.”

From this remarkable excursus we learn, first of all that the “centre” unities the four and the seven into one. The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit then causes the author to confess himself a member of the Ecclesia spiritualis, for the spirit is God. This religious background is already apparent in the choice of the term “Pelican” for the circular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ. The idea of Mercurio is a peacemaker, the mediator between the warrings elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to Ephesians 2: 1 3 ff.:

But now in Christ Jesus you once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the fundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built inti it for a dwelling place of God in the spirit. [RSV]

In elucidating the alchemical parallel we should note that the author of the scholia to the “Tractatus aureus Hermetis” prefaces his account of the union of apposites with the following remark:

Finally, there will appear in the work that ardently desired blue or cerulean colour, which does not darken or dull the eyes of the beholder by healing power of its brilliance, as when we see the splendour of the outward sun. Rather does in sharpen and strengthen them, nor does he [Mercurius] slay a man with his glance like the basilisk, but by the shedding of his own blood he calls back those who are near to death, and restores to them unimpaired their former life, like the pelican.

Mercurius is conceived as “spiritual blood,” on the analogy of the blood of Christ. In Ephesians those who are separated ”are brought near in the blood of Christ.” He makes the two one and has broken down the dividing wall “ in his flesh.” Caro (flesh) is a synonym for the prima materia and hence for Mercurius. The “one” is a “new man.” He reconciles the two”in one body,”an idea which is figuratively represented in alchemy as the two-headed hermaohrodite. The two have one spirit, in alchemy they have one soul. Further the lapis is frecuently compared to Christ as the lapis angularis (cornerstone). As we know , the temple built upon the fundation of the saint inspired in the Shephered of Hermas a vision of the great building into which human beings, streaming from the four quarters, inserted themself as living stones, melting into it “without seam.” The Church is built upon the rock that gave Peter his name (Matthew 16:18).

In addition, we learn from the scholia that the circle and the Hermetic vessel are one and the same, with the ressult that the mandala, which we find so often in the drawings of our patients, corresponds to the vessel of transformation. Consequently, the ussual quaternary structure of the mandala would coincide with the alchemists quaternario of opposites. Lastly, there is the interesting statement that an Ecclesia spiritualis above all creeds and owing allegiance solely to Christ, the Anthropos, is the real aim of the alchemists´ endeavours. Whereas teh treatise of Hermes is, comparatively speaking, very old, and in place of the Christian Anthropos mytery contains a peculiar paraphase of it, or rather, its antique parallel, the scholia cannot be dated earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. The author seems to have been a Paraceltist ohysician. Mercurius corresponds to the Holy Ghost as well as to the Anthropos; he is as Gerhard Dorn says, “the true hermaphroditic Adam and Microcosm”:

Our Mercurius is therefore that same [Microcosm], who contains within him the perfections, virtues, and powers of Sol [in the dual sence of sun and gold], and who goes through the streets [vicios] and houses all the planets, and in his regenerations has obtained the power of Above and Bellow, wherefore he is to be likened to their marriage, as is evident from the white and the red that are conjoined in him. The sages have affirmed in their wisdom that all creatures are to be brought to one united substance.

Accordingly Mercurius, in the crude form of the prima materia, is in very Truth the Original Man disseminated through the physical world, and in his sublimated form he is that reconstituted totality. Altogether, he is very like the redeemer of the Basilidiands, who mounts upward through the planetary spheres, conquering them or robbing them of their power. The remark that he contains the powers pf Sol reminds us of the above-mentioned passage in Abu´l-Qasim, where Hermes says that he unites the sun and the planets and causes them to be within him as a crown. This may be the origin of the designation of the lapis as the “crown of victory”. The “power of Above and Bellow”refers to that ancient authority the “Tabula smaragdina,” which is of Alexandrian origin. Beside this, our text contains allusions to the Song of Songs: “through the streets and houses of the planets” recalls Songs 3:2: “I will… go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth.” The “White and Red” of Mercurius refers to 5:10: “My beloved is white and ruddy.” He is likened to the “matrimonium” or coniunctio; that is to say ha is this marriage on account of his androgynous form.

CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF”
(Fragment of Mysterium Coniunctio)

The dechristianization of our world, the Luciferian development of science and Technology, and the frightfull material and moral destruction left behind By the second World War have been compared more than once with the eschatological events foretold in the New Testament. These, as we know, are concerned with the coming of the Antichrist: “This is a Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son.”, “Every spirits that dissolveth Jesus… is Antichrist…of whom you have heard that he cometh. “ The Apocalypse is full of expectations of terribles things that will take place at the end of time, before the marriage of the Lamb. This shows plainly that the anima christiana has a sure knowledge not only of the existence of an adversary but also of his future usurpation of power.

Why- my reader will ask –do I discourse here upon Christ abd his adversary, the Antichrist? Our discourse necessarily brings us to Christ, because he is the still living myth of our culture. He is our culture hero, who regardless of his historical existence, embodies the myth of the divine Primordial Man, the mystic Adam. It is he who occupies the centre of the Christian mandala, who is the Lord of the Tetramorph, i.e., the four symbols of the evanngelists, which are like the four columns of his great throne. He is in us and we in him. His Kingdom is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field, the grain of mustard seed which will become a great tree, and the heavenly city. As Christ is in us, so also is his heavenly kingdom.

These few. Familiar reference should be sufficient to make the psycologhical position of the Christ symbol quite clear. Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self. He represent a totality of a divine or heavenly kind, a glorified man, a Son of God sinemacula peccati, unspotted by sin. As Adam secundus he corresponds to the first Adam before the fall, when the latter was still a pure image of God, of which Tertullian (d.222) says: “And This therefore is to be considerer as the image of God in man, that the human spirits has the same motions and sences as God has, Thought not in the same way as God has them. “Origen (185-254) is very much more explicit. The imago Dei imprinted on the soul, not on the body, is an image, “for my soul is not directly the image of God, but is made after the likeness of the former image.