Alchemy And Psychological Development

Alchemy, at least as Jungian analysts understand it, does not try to transform lead or other metals into gold. Perhaps there were some who, under this pretext, would carry out the true activity of alchemy: to symbolically reverse the material, earthly and unconscious in spirit, consciousness and sense. This is the real gold.

This enormous work was done under the hermetic assumption of embodying the spirit and spiritualizing the body. Basically, it consisted of a journey or transit under the protection of the god Hermes-Mercury, mediator of opposites. Thus, the whole issue of the transmutation of stones and metals has to do, according to Jung, with the transformation of the psyche projected onto matter.

The alchemical work is transformed into the symbolic world, as in the case of the Holy Grail. The matter in form, the non-sense in sense, the unconscious in conscious. It would be like a kind of transubstantiation or transformation of matter into pneuma or spirit.

The secret of alchemy and its relation to psychological development

For all the above, it is not surprising that in alchemy we speak of sublimation, distillation and condensation or coagulation, since the central process is regressive (dissolution) and progressive (condensation). These would be the fundamental steps of the alchemical process:

1st Momentum : Nigredo

Nigredo means blackness, black: it is the process of dissolution (melancholy), characterized by regression, the descent into hell or the unconscious.

2nd Momentum : Albedo

Albedo refers to the color white, to purification, to catharsis. It is essential at this time the confrontation with the shadow and the support with the anima or animus.

It is necessary to recognize, incorporate and dominate all those “black” contents of the unconscious. In these phases the first stones for enlightenment are laid.

3rd Momentum : Rubedo

The rubedo or glowing red-gold refers to the iridescence or mystical complexion that occurs in the middle of the Coniunctio or alchemical marriage. Also, in this transcendent moment, the incarnation of meaning takes place as symbolic gold or Sun reborn from the womb of Mother Earth and her darkness.

The great secret of psychological alchemy

Next, a diagram of the initiatory path  traveled by hundreds of people up to the present moment is proposed. It will be presented in the form of ideas-concept, so that it is the reader who creates his own symbolic image on the tour.

• The absolute individual, in every strategy of liberation, builds his magic octagon. From that energetic space-time, won in combat, he carries out his great work.
• Through alchemy, he separates the elements that the other united in maia in the world of forms and unites the elements that the other kept separate  in all emotional mirage.

• Through magic, as a science of the spirit, he integrates into himself everything that the other disintegrated  in the mental fog of illusion.
• Through the process of individuation, he builds a bridge to existence, relying on the shadow, the imagination and the symbolic, the three ancient sphinxes of the universe.
• Only he who exists from Himself, can cross the four circles of what is created:
  • First circle, where the personal unconscious lives . In which, the dead pull towards the earth.
  • Second circle, where the collective unconscious lives , in which archetypal forces pull towards the planetary psychosphere.
  • In the third circle, the cosmic unconscious inhabits , in which the archons pull towards the stars.
  • In the fourth circle, the universal consciousness inhabits , in which the gods pull towards their own arguments, recruiting followers.
• From the four circles the absolute individual frees himself by existing at every step and distilling his own quintessence.

In conclusion, as we see, long before the mere idea of ​​a modern psychology even existed, there were already initiatory paths to reach the completeness of being, the absolute individual or individuation.

As we can see, alchemy was not only the forerunner of chemistry, it was also the forerunner of psychology. Hermes Trismegisto is our most remote ancestor.