Carl Jung on "Alchemy" "Alchemist" -Anthology:

But Mercurius is the divine winged Hermes manifest in matter, the god of revelation, lord of thought and sovereign psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 292.

Not for nothing did alchemy style itself an "art," feeling—and rightly so—that it was concerned with creative processes that can be truly grasped only by experience, though intellect may give them a name. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 482.

That from which things arise is the invisible and immovable God. ~Liber Platonis Quartorum, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 323.

But Mercurius is the divine winged Hermes manifest in matter, the god of revelation, lord of thought and sovereign psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 292.

For the alchemist, the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 312.

True, what the soul imagines happens only in the mind, but what God imagines happens in reality. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 280.

"Sense" and "nonsense" are merely man-made labels which serve to give us a reasonably valid sense of direction. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222.

All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes sense of life. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222.

In the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can also be called "individuation." ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222.

It is only the intervention of time and space here and now that makes reality. Wholeness is realized for a moment only—the moment that Faust was seeking: all his life. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 214.

Just as the father represents collective consciousness, the traditional spirit, so the mother stands for the collective unconscious, the source of the water of life. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 71.

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 81.

Life that just happens in and for itself is not real life; it is real only when it is known. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 81.

Natural man is not a "self"—he is the mass and a particle in the mass, collective to such a decree that he is not even sure of his own ego. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 81.

I conjecture that the treasure is also the "companion," the one who goes through life at our side—in all probability a close analogy to the lonely ego who finds a mate in the self, for at first the self is the strange non-ego. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 117.

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 117.

Western man has no need of more superiority over nature,
whether outside or inside. He has both in almost devilish perfection.
What he lacks is conscious recognition of his inferiority
to the nature around and within him. He must learn that he
may. not do exactly as he wills. If he does not learn this, his own
nature will destroy him. He does not know that his own soul is
rebelling against him in a suicidal way.

In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man's earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.

Only the gods can pass over the rainbow bridge; mortal men must stick to the earth and are subject to its laws. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.

We can never reach the level of our intuitions and should therefore not identify ourselves with them. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.

We should not rise above the earth with the aid of "spiritual" intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.

I have been accused of deifying the soul. Not I but God Himself deified it." ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.

But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 380.

It [the unconscious] is and remains beyond the reach of subjective arbitrary control, in a realm where nature and her secrets can be neither improved upon nor perverted, where we can listen but may not meddle. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 46.

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not—which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 46.

It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 44.

The substance is always the same, but a new value is given to it, and the new value is the treasure. That is the secret of alchemy for instance. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 653.

On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes. But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion". ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Page 96.

This light dwells in the "square inch" or in the "face", that is between the eyes. It is the visualization of the "creative point." ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Alchemical Studies, Page 25.

The circulation is not merely movement in a circle, but means on the one hand the marking off of the sacred precinct, and on the other, the fixation and concentration. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Alchemical Studies, Page 25.

When I say as a psychologist , that God is an archetype, I mean by that the "type" in the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 149

However we may picture the relationship between God and soul, one thing is certain: The soul cannot be "nothing but. " On the contrary it has the dignity of an entity endowed with consciousness of a relationship to Deity. Even if it were only the relationship of a drop of water to the sea ... ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 10.

So long as religion is only faith and outward form, the religion's function is not experienced in our souls, nothing of any importance has happened. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.

A saying of the alchemist is, "God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." The saying holds for God, for the anima mundi and for the soul of man. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 35.

A very widespread view conceives spirit as a higher and psyche as a lower principle of activity, and conversely the alchemists thought of spirit as the ligamentum animae et corporis, regarding it as a spiritus vegetativus (the later life-spirit or nerve-spirit). ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 386.

There is no recrossing the Rubicon. ~Carl Jung; "Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy", 1935.

This process of becoming human is represented in dreams and inner images as the putting together of many scattered units, and sometimes as the gradual emergence and clarification of something that was always there. The speculations of alchemy, and also of some Gnostics, revolve around this process. It is likewise expressed in Christian Dogma, and more particularly in the transformation mystery of the Mass. ~Carl Jung; “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass"; CW 11, par. 399.

[The alchemist Gerhard] Dorn . . . says, "In the body of man there is hidden a certain substance of heavenly nature known to very few ~Carl Jung; "Psychology and Religion" in CW 11, page 93, note 47.

Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. ~Carl Jung; "Alchemical Studies, 1942.

The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. ~Carl Jung; "Alchemical Studies", 1942.

The union of opposites on a higher level of consciousness is not a rational thing, nor is it a matter of will; it is a process of psychic development that expresses itself in symbols. Carl Jung; Collected Works 13; Alchemical Studies; Page 16.

As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. I cannot presume to pass judgment on his final decisions, because I know from experience that all coercion-be it suggestion, insinuation, or any other method of persuasion-ultimately proves to be nothing but an obstacle to the highest and most decisive experience of all, which is to be alone with his own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; CW 12: Page 32.

Alchemy has performed for me the great and invaluable service of providing material in which my experience could find sufficient room, and has thereby made it possible for me to describe the individuation process at least in its essential aspects. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; Paragraph 792.

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence. ~Carl Jung; "The Philosophical Tree" (1945); CW 13: Alchemical Studies; Page 307.

Everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane. ~Carl Jung; "Psychology and Alchemy," 1944.

Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched, and therefore unchanged. His soul is out of key with his external beliefs; in his soul the Christian has not kept pace with external developments. Yes, everything is to be found outside-in image and in word, in Church and Bible-but never inside. Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy, Page 11.

Once the exploration of the unconscious has [begun] ... , the individual is confronted with the abysmal contradictions of human nature, and this confrontation in turn leads to the possibility of a direct experience of light and darkness, of Christ and the devil. ~Carl Jung; "Psychology and Alchemy,"1944.

I would not deny the possibility of parallel dreams, i.e., dreams whose meaning coincides with or supports the conscious attitude, but in my experience, at least, these are rather rare. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; CW 12; Page 48.

In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg — symbolized by the round cooking vessel — will rise the eagle or phoenix, the liberated soul, which is ultimately identical with the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 202.

The stirring up of conflict is a Lucipherian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion. - "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 179

The reality of evil and its incompatibility with good cleave the opposites asunder and lead inexorably to the crucifixion and suspension of everything that lives. Since ‘the soul is by nature Christian’ this result is bound to come as infallibly as it did in the life of Jesus: we all have to be ‘crucified with Christ,’ i.e., suspended in a moral suffering equivalent to veritable crucifixion. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Paragraph 470.

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13; Alchemical Studies; Page 335.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration. ~Carl Jung; Alchemical Studies.

The alchemists projected the inner event into an outer figure, so for them the inner friend appeared in the form of the “Stone,” of which the Tractatus aureus : “Understand, ye sons of the wise, what this exceeding precious Stone crieth out to you: Protect me and I will protect thee. Give me what is mine that I may help thee.” To this a scholiast adds: “The seeker after truth hears both the Stone and the Philosopher speaking as if out of one mouth.” The Philosopher is Hermes, and the Stone is identical with Mercurius, the Latin Hermes. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 283

From the earliest times, Hermes was the mystagogue and psycho pomp of the alchemists, their friend and counselor, who leads them to the goal of their work. He is “like a teacher mediating between the stone and the disciple.” To others the friend appears in the shape of Christ or Khidr or a visible or invisible guru, or some other personal guide or leader figure. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, para. 283

It would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest Himself everywhere save only in the human soul. Indeed the very intimacy of the relationship between Cod and the soul automatically precludes any devaluation of the latter. It would be going perhaps too far to speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself the faculty of relation to God, i.e. a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about This correspondence is, in psychological terms, the archetype of the God-image [q.v.]" ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 399-400 and Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 11.

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 398 and Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 44.

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic text from the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has been turned into a Nazareth Gradually from which nothing good can come. Therefore let us fetch it from the four corners of the earth - the more far-fetched and bizarre it is the better. ~ Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 99 .

Insanity is possession by an unconscious content that, as such, is not assimilatable to consciousness, nor can it be assimilated since the very existence of such contents is denied. ~Carl Jung; Alchemical Studies; Collected Works 13, par 53.

The highest and most decisive experience of all . . . is to be alone with . . . [one's] own self, or whatever else one chooses to call the objectivity of the psyche. The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; CW 12: P.32.

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Alchemy; Page 51.

Hierosgamos. Sacred or spiritual marriage, union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity and also in alchemy. Typical examples are the representation of Christ and the Church as bridegroom and bride (sponsus et sponsa) and the alchemical conjunction of sun and moon. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 395.

Hence one could say —cum grano salis —that history could be constructed just as easily from one's own unconscious as from the actual texts. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 86.

Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche—a blissful and terrible experience. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.

The intellect may be the devil , but the devil is the "strange son of chaos" who can most readily be trusted to deal effectively with his mother. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 90.

But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 146

Matter in alchemy is material and spiritual, and spirit spiritual and material. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, Page 140.

With a truly tragic delusion these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.

It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.

I did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is naturaliter religiosa, i.e., possesses a religious function. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 14.

[Uniting symbols] arise from the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as ‘chaos’ or ‘nigredo’). Empirically, this confusion takes the form of restlessness and disorientation. ~Carl Jung, Aion, CW 9 II, §304.

No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you. ~Carl Jung citing an Alchemist, Letters Vol II, Page 595.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, CW 13, par. 139.

"Sense" and "nonsense" are merely man-made labels which serve to give us a reasonably valid sense of direction. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222, Para 330.

But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes sense of life. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222, Para 330.

No matter how lonely you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you. ~Carl Jung, citing an Alchemist, Letters Vol. II, Page 595.

The color blue cannot be found in alchemy, but it is found in the East, where it takes the place of black and actually represents a color of the underworld. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 366.

As I see it, the psyche is a world in which the ego is contained. Maybe there are fishes who believe that they contain the sea. We must rid ourselves of this habitual illusion of ours if we wish to consider metaphysical assertions from the standpoint of psychology. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies; Page 76, Para 51.

Thus, with Augustine, the first day of creation begins with self-knowledge, by which is meant knowledge not of the ego but of the self, that objective phenomenon of which the ego is the subject. ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, Page 248, Para 301.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 99.

From the alchemical saying :
Heaven above All that is above
Heaven below Also is below
Stars above Grasp this
Stars below And rejoice. ~Carl Jung, CW 1 6, par. 384.

Hence the must fix his eye not on what is done but on how it is done, because therein is decided the whole character of the doer. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 31, Para 36.

I do not hold myself responsible for the shortcomings in the lay public's knowledge of psychology. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 4.

But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 6.

I for my part prefer the precious gift of doubt, for the reason that it does not violate the virginity of things beyond our ken. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 8.

If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 8.

On the contrary it [The Soul] has the dignity of an entity endowed with consciousness of a relationship to Deity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 10.

As the eye to the sun, so the soul corresponds to God. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 10.

The great events of our world as planned and executed by man do not breathe the spirit of Christianity but rather of unadorned paganism. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 11.

The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.

So long as religion is only faith and outward form, and the religious function is not experienced in our own souls, nothing of any importance has happened. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.

It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 13.

Has it not yet been observed that all religious statements contain logical contradictions and assertions that are impossible in principle, that this is in fact the very essence of religious assertion? ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 15.

If the theologian really believes in the almighty power of God on the one hand and in the validity of dogma on the other, why then does he not trust God to speak in the soul? ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 17.

The archetypes of the unconscious can be shown empirically to be the equivalents of religious dogmas. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 17.

In the West the archetype is filled out with the dogmatic figure of Christ; in the East, with Purusha, the Atman, Hiranyagarbha, the Buddha, and so on. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 17.

The message of the Christian symbol is Gnosis, and the compensation effected by the unconscious is Gnosis in even higher degree. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 25.

The alchemistic development of active imagination broke off after the Middle Ages but such interruptions do not occur in the East. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 3, Page 14.

One text says that the "heart" of Mercurius is at the North Pole and that he is like a fire (northern lights). He is, in fact, as another text says, "the universal and scintillating fire of the light of nature, which carries the heavenly spirit within it." ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, Para 256.

To begin with I did not have the feeling at all that I was guilty of plagiarism with my [anima/animus] theory, but in the last 5 years it has become more and more uncanny as I have discovered quite suspicious traces of it also in the old alchemists, and now the mischief seems complete since it turns out that I was discovered already in the 18th century. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 248.

When yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Alchemical Studies, Para 13.

Man was understood, already in antiquity, as a small mirror image of the whole of the world. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Page 59.

But that "the One" should meditate, and that the world should be produced by the spirit in its creative role, is a conception which goes directly back to the philosophy about the Nous in antiquity. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Pages 59-60.

The idea lies concealed here that Christianity is only concerned with the problem of the salvation of man, whereas alchemy is concerned with that of the whole of nature. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Page 61.

The world is an image to us, even when we have a scientific conception of it and assert: "This is so and so", it is still only an image. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Page 62.

Our modern scientific attitude tries to eliminate every subjective factor from scientific reasoning. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 65.

And matter [which was alive and had psychical qualities for him) contained a secret intention, a kind of wish, as if it wanted to be transformed. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 66.

In the cheap and vile substance, which can be found everywhere and which is despised, the highest and most precious substance mind is hidden, which longs to be redeemed and to return to its original state of incorruptibility, to the form in which it was originally created and in which it was of the same nature as the creator. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 66.
We are used to thinking of matter and spirit as of two wholly different and opposite principles. But to the alchemist, the materia was filled with a spiritus, and the two were inseparably one. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.

For man has the yearning in himself to become what he would call the perfect man. Or rather, there is the image of a perfect and complete being in his unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.

There must be a psychical equivalent of matter preformed in man, and this is our own matter, our physical world: the body, for the body is matter. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.

The vegetative processes in our bodies, in their normal functioning, cannot be reached by our consciousness or influenced by our will. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 67.

Inasmuch as they cannot be influenced by consciousness, the functioning of the intestines, the heart, the glands, the whole world of the cerebro-spinal reflexes, and so on, all belong to the vegetative psyche, and lie in the dark, in the unconscious. The vegetative processes in our bodies, in their normal functioning, cannot be reached by our consciousness or influenced by our will. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Lecture VII, Page 68.

…I have been working for many years on the psychology of the unconscious, and it was the enigmatical and puzzling structure of the unconscious which brought me to alchemy, as well as to the study of Yoga and of the Ignatian exercises. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.

This means, applied to alchemy, that it is death to take alchemy as an external occupation, but the man who regards it as an inward experience, can live and rejoice. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XI, Page 97.

The earth, in the alchemistic sense, means the body and in a double sense: chemical bodies (substances), minerals etc., and the human body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 101.

Who would have thought that the alchemists, popularly supposed to be searching for gold, were really promising themselves freedom from illusion, exaggerated emotion, passion, excess and all possible vices ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 108.

The "Processing" is the alchemistic procedure; this, Taoism and the Book of Changes are all the same thing, according to Wei Po-Yang. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 109.

We must assume, therefore, that the spirit has two aspects in alchemy, the human mind as we know it, and the serpent mind, which we can only say is unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.

Therefore the Chinese alchemistic treatises, as far as we know them, do not differ in any essential way from the western treatises, in fact in places they agree with each other almost word for word. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 112.

It was Khunrath who said that Christ is the saviour of man, whereas the mysterious substance of alchemy is the saviour of the universe, not only of man but of nature. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 121.

The central idea of Taoism is no moral question, but is the Tao, the indefinable essence of the right way, and this is also the mystery of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 142.

The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers' stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

The goal of alchemy is not merely material, it is partly in "the Beyond", and is almost exactly similar to the goal of Taoism, where the whole effort is directed towards finding or creating Tao. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

For the Mass itself is an "opus" (the Benedictines themselves use this term), it is a work of transformation, and is therefore similar to the alchemistic procedure. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 156.

The alchemistic opus is older than the Mass, just as the eternal water of alchemy is older than Christian baptism. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 156.

And so we find them in alchemy also, and the fact is recorded that in deep meditation dissociation occurs between the ego and a "second", that takes on the form of an inner figure, or represents something quite objective which will answer questions or produce enlightening remarks. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 172.

The purpose of the meditation of the alchemists is also spiritualis, but in contrast to the other methods of meditation which we studied here - those of Yoga, Mahayana Buddhism and the Ignatian excercises - the subject of meditation in alchemy is something unknown, and not a known dogmatic formula. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 174.

We can therefore assume, psychologically speaking, that the object which is to be transformed in alchemy is connected with the human body: it is a mystery of the body. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 177.

We think of a chaos as complete confusion, but to the alchemists it was a confusion of definite qualities and of special factors. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Pages 201-202.

The idea is that primeval man possessed a substance, a sort of earth, out of which Paradise could grow, and Adam (or primeval man) carries the secret of this earth in himself. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.

The snake in alchemy is the "mercurial serpent", the old Gnostic image for the Nous, the mind, where the spirit was represented as a serpent, as the Agathodaemon (the good daemon), or directly called the serpent of the Nous. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.

This serpent does not represent "reason" or anything approaching it, but rather symbolises a peculiar autonomous mind which can possess one completely, a spirit of revelation which gives us "Intuitionen" (intuitions). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.

Since the time of the old Gnostics, the serpent has been the symbol for the brain and its appendages; that is, for the lower centres of the brain and for the spinal cord, partly on account of its shape, but also from introspective reasons. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.

One could say, in a certain sense, that the unconscious was the invisible, psychical part of the tangible and visible nervous system, just as one might say consciousness was the invisible part of the brain. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.

Living matter is a mystery which is beyond our understanding, if only for the reason that we ourselves consist of living matter. We cannot climb above our own heads, a fact which should be a warning to all those people who try to explain the nature of God. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 216.

…the serpent is the hypostatic, underlying materia (the essence of matter), which sinks into the water, or is as it were in the water, and, through illusion, it deceives the senses. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 219.

To put it more simply: the prima materia can be won from the centre of a stone or substance, but then it is no longer designated as a substance but as an agent. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.

Therefore the prima materia is called "monad", "ens reale" and "forma interna", that is, it is the inner form which gives things their existence, and is, therefore, the cause of all existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.

And this being has body, soul and spirit, and is, therefore, the principle of life itself, as well as the principle of individuation. Its nature is spiritual, it cannot be seen, and it contains an invisible image. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 221.

We could define the unconscious as a psychical existence in ourselves of which we are unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 224.

Even today the majority of people have no idea what psychology is; they have a personal psychology and some metaphysical convictions. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 224.

And it is a curious fact that, all over the earth wherever we find astrology, the stars have essentially the same meaning. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.

While a man sees something in the sky, there is no chance of his seeing it in himself, and so naturally he will attribute his own actions to the stars. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.

The well-known sentence in the Lord's Prayer, "Deliver us from evil", meant, as it was first understood, deliver us from the evil principle of the Heimarmene. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 225.

The beautiful old name, Elizabeth, is a remnant of the same idea. It originated in Babylon and means: "My deity is the seven", that is, these even planets, for only seven were known in those days. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Pages 225-226.

The things, which impress us from outside, can only do so because of our inner attitude. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 226.

You can put the most marvellous things before the eyes of a stupid person and they will make no impression on him, for all impressions come from inside ourselves. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 226.

The elements are of an earthly nature, the physical and chemical constituents of our bodies. These are the earth in us, so to speak, and the stars represent the beginning of psychical life, the influence of the stars in the condition of the chaos. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 229.

Psychologically this means that the souls of the ancestors (potential factors, qualities, talents, possibilities, and so on, which we have inherited from all the lines of our ancestry) are waiting in the unconscious, and are ready at any time to begin a new growth. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.

These are, so to speak, the re-animated souls of the ancestors which have been lying dormant in the unconscious, and the alchemists call these units or souls the sleepers or the dead in Hades who are resurrected by the "holy waters" (that is the miraculous water of alchemy, the fertilising Mercury). ~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.

If we regard alchemy rationally it is complete nonsense but it is exceedingly meaningful psychologically, the whole riddle or secret of the human psyche is to be found in it. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.
The alchemists returned in matter to the mother, the first carrier of the feminine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 117.

Alchemy began about the same time as Christianity, in fact we find alchemical ideas in China long before our era, so one can only be sure that the symbolism and language of the Fathers of the Church play an enormous role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 161-162.

The coniunctio in alchemy is a union of the masculine and feminine, of the spiritual and material principles, from which a perfect body arises, the glorified body after the Last Judgement, the resurrection body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 159.

This means an eternal body, or the subtle body, which is designated in alchemy as the philosopher's stone, the lapis aethereus or invisibilis. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Pages 159.

In alchemy, the redemption of man is brought about through the opus; in contrast to Christianity, where redemption depends entirely on the grace of God. The eastern concept is identical with the alchemical idea: it is the task of the individual to redeem himself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 110.

The chemical and the psychological processes went hand in hand, the alchemists worked with such intensity and expectation that it had a psychological effect on them. This is difficult for us to understand. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 110.

Every profound student of alchemy knows that the making of gold was not the real purpose and that the process was a western form of Yoga. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Page 107.

The alchemists think of the Redeemer as lying hidden or sleeping in the materia, he does not only descend from heaven but comes also from the depths of matter. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 189.

An old alchemist said that God was obviously displeased with his work on the second day when he had separated the waters above from the waters below, thus creating the Binarius (two) which is the devil. On all the other days "God saw that it was good" but not on the second day. (Compare Gen. I. 6-8.) ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 215.

"It is by the revelation of the highest and greatest God that I have attained this art, and only through diligent study, wakefulness, and through constantly reading the authentic books.” ~Carl Jung, Citing an Alchemist, ETH Lecture V. Page 161.

I use the word "Gnosis" intentionally, because alchemy retained, or rediscovered, a great many things which played a very important role in the early days of Christianity. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture V. Page 162.

The lapis philosophorum of the alchemists is the same thing as the Vajra, it is the thing which is produced in the laboratory of a man's life and which is far more durable than he is. These thoughts run parallel both in the East and West. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 9Dec38, Page 43.

Women played a considerable part in alchemy, and worked at it themselves. This is not the case in Indian Yoga, with the exception of Tantrism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24Feb1939, Pages 92.

Alchemical philosophy is an instrument and a way to the inner transformation of man, a problem which is practically unknown today. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.

This leads us over to the secret gnosis of the Middle Ages, when it takes the form of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198

Psychology did not suddenly spring into existence; one could say that it is as old as civilization itself. The ancient science of astrology, which has always appeared in the wake of culture all over the world, is a kind of psychology and alchemy is another unconscious form. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture I, Page 11.

Anthropos: Original or primordial man, an archetypal image of wholeness in alchemy, religion and Gnostic philosophy. There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the "homo totus" of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, par. 152.

Christ can indeed be imitated even to the point of stigmatization without the imitator coming anywhere near the ideal or its meaning. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 7.

The Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal—Christ—in its outward aspect and thus to rob it of its mysterious relation to the inner man. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 8.

If the supreme value (Christ) and the supreme negation (sin) are outside, then the soul is void: its highest and lowest are missing. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 8.

As the eye to the sun, so the soul corresponds to God. Since our conscious mind does not comprehend the soul it is ridiculous to speak of the things of the soul in a patronizing or depreciatory manner. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 11.

Too few people have experienced the divine image as the innermost possession of their own souls. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.

Just as the alchemists knew that the production of their stone was a miracle that could only happen "Deo concedente," so the modern psychologist is aware that he can produce no more than a description, couched in scientific symbols, of a psychic process whose real nature transcends consciousness just as much as does the mystery of life or of matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 296.

These "centres" are the so-called chakras? and you not only find them in the teachings of yoga but can discover the same idea in old German alchemical books, which surely do not derive from a knowledge of yoga. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 16.

In alchemy there lies concealed a Western system of yoga meditation, but it was kept a carefully guarded secret from fear of heresy and its painful consequences. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

For the practising psychologist, however, alchemy has one inestimable advantage over Indian yoga its ideas are expressed almost entirely in an extraordinarily rich symbolism, the very symbolism we still find in our patients today. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

The help which alchemy affords us in understanding the symbols of the individuation process is, in my opinion, of the utmost importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 219.

The third degree of [Alchemical] conjunction is universal: it is relation or identity of the personal with the supra-personal atman, and of the individual tao with the universal tao. . . . ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 762.

An alchemical text says: "The mind should learn compassionate love for the body." ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.

It [Alchemy] is the mental work of 1,700 years, in which there is stored up all they could make out about the nature of the archetypes, in a peculiar way that's foolish. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.

It [Alchemy] is also called Hermetic Philosophy, though, of course, that conveys just as little as the term alchemy. —It was the parallel development, as Narcissism was, to the conscious development of Christianity, of our Christian philosophy, of the whole psychology of the middle ages. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 17.

I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of eons. ~Carl Jung, Quoting an Alchemical Text, MDR 227.

It is not my responsibility that alchemy is occult and mystical, and I am just as little guilty of the mystical delusions of the insane or the peculiar creeds of mankind. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 184-187.

Faust II has been my companion all my life but it was only 20 years ago that certain things began to dawn on me, especially when I read Christian Rosencreutz's Chymical Wedding, which Goethe also knew but, interestingly enough, did not mention among the alchemical literature of his Leipzig days. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 246-247.

So far as we know, Goethe used only the relatively late alchemical literature, and it was the study of the classical and early medieval texts which first convinced me that Faust I and II is an opus alchymicum in the best sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 246-247.

Inasmuch as we attribute to the Holy Spirit the faculty of procreating in matter, we must unavoidably grant it a nature capable of contact with material existence, i.e., a chthonic aspect, as the alchemists did; otherwise it could not influence Physis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 267-268.

Just as some alchemists had to admit that they never succeeded in producing the gold or the Stone, I cannot confess to have solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery. On the contrary I am darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem-things too big for our horizons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396

The very existence of alchemistic philosophy proves that the spiritualization process within Christian psychology did not yield satisfactory results. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 400-401

In Europe, as far as I can make out, Meister Eckhart is about the first where the self begins to play a noticeable role. After him some of the great German alchemists took up the idea and handed it down to Jacob Boehme and Angelus Silesius and kindred spirits. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 453-454.

Goethe's Faust almost reached the goal of classical alchemy, but unfortunately the ultimate coniunctio did not come off, so that Faust and Mephistopheles could not attain their oneness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 453-454.

Astrology differs very much from alchemy, as its historical literature consists merely of different methods of casting a horoscope and of interpretation, and not of philosophical texts as is the case in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 463-464

The bird signifies the aerial, volatile spirit (in the chemical sense "spirit" is volatile, but it also designates the Spiritus Sanctus), whose physical and spiritual meanings are united in the alchemical spiritus Mercurialis. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 476-477

As you know, I have reopened the discussion about alchemical philosophy, i.e., I have at least shown a way which allows a new interpretation of its essential thoughts. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 534-536

The physical side of the problem is a well-known matter, whereas the psychological and Hermetic side of this problem is accessible only to a very few, on account of the fact that the subject of unconscious phenomena is studied only by a very few and the study of alchemy is-if possible-still more unknown. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 534-536

On the side of physics it was Pauli alone who appreciated alchemical thought very highly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 534-536

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 195, Para 392.

I have not been there [Oxford] again although I always dreamt and hoped to delve more deeply into the treasures of alchemistic manuscripts at the Bodleian. Fate has decreed otherwise. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 579-580

All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222

"Sense" and "nonsense" are merely man-made labels which serve to give us a reasonably valid sense of direction. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 222

But just as Buddhism in its many differentiations overlaid the original spiritual adventure, so Christian rationalism has overlaid medieval alchemistic philosophy, which has been forgotten for about 200 years. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 600-603

So I am not in the least surprised when you say that the alchemical pairs of opposites can be correlated with the endophylactictrophotropic and the ergotrop-dynamic systems. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 617-620

The fact that deity and devil belong together also plays a great role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

Nobody has ever known what this primal matter is. The alchemists did not know, and nobody has found out what is really meant by it, because it is a substance in the unconscious which is needed for the incarnation of the god. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 886

Thus, the alchemical process also begins with such a division into the four elements, by which the body is put back into its primordial state and so can undergo transformation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams, Page 367.

We need to find our way back to the original, living spirit which, because of its ambivalence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites, an idea that preoccupied the alchemists for many centuries. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 141

For alchemy is the mother of the essential substance as well as the concreteness of modern scientific thinking, and not scholasticism, which was responsible in the main only for the discipline and training of the intellect. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 266.

Since the object of this endeavor [Alchemy] was seen outside as well as inside, as both physical and psychic, the work extended as it were through the whole of nature, and its goal consisted in a symbol which had an empirical and at the same time a transcendental aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 700.

This remarkable capacity of the human psyche for change, expressed in the transcendent function, is the principal object of
late medieval alchemistic philosophy, where it was expressed in terms of alchemical symbolism. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 360

For the alchemists the process of individuation represented by the opus was an analogy of the creation of the world, and the opus itself an analogy of God’s work of creation. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 550

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557

We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens its features. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 29

The experience of the unconscious is a personal secret communicable only to very few, and that with
difficulty. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 61

The archetype is, so to speak, an “eternal” presence, and it is only a question of whether it is perceived by the conscious mind or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 329

There is always an attraction between conscious mind and projected content. Generally it takes the form of a fascination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 436.

So long as a content remains in the projected state it is inaccessible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 555.

I may define “self” as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche, but this totality transcends our vision; it is a veritable lapis invisibilitatis [stone of invisibility]. In so far as the
unconscious exists it is not definable; its existence is a mere postulate and nothing whatever can be predicated as to its possible contents. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 247.

As a doctor it is my task to help the patient to cope with life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 32

The patient must be alone if he is to find out what it is that supports him when he can no longer support himself. Only this experience can give him an indestructible foundation. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 32

The labours of the doctor as well as the quest of the patient are directed towards that hidden and as yet unmanifest “whole” man, who is at once the greater and the future man. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 6

But no matter how much the parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 152

Our psychic prehistory is in truth the spirit of gravity, which needs steps and ladders because, unlike the disembodied airy intellect, it cannot fly at will. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 79

Experience of the opposites has nothing whatever to do with intellectual insight or with empathy. It is more what we would call fate. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 23.

Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 24.

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557

It has yet to be understood that the Mysterium magnum [the great mystery] is not only an actuality but is first and foremost rooted in the human psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.

The man who does not know this from his own experience may be a most learned theologian, but he has no idea of
religion and still less of education. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 13.

Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending
the fullness of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18

Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 18

The alchemist related himself not only to the unconscious but directly to the very substance which he hoped to transform through the power of imagination. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 394

However remote alchemy may seem to us today, we should not underestimate its cultural importance for the Middle Ages. Today is the child of the Middle Ages and it cannot
disown its parents. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 432

It is clear enough from this material what the ultimate aim of alchemy really was: it was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the
same time spirit. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511

There the main concern is the “diamond body,” in other words, the attainment of immortality through the transformation of the body. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511

Since all the essentials [in Alchemy] are expressed in metaphors they can be communicated only to the intelligent, who possess the gift of
comprehension. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 423.

They [Alchemists] rarely have pupils, and of direct tradition there seems to have been very little, nor is there much evidence of any secret societies or the like. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 422

“True” alchemy was never a business or a career, but a genuine opus to be achieved by quiet, self-sacrificing work. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 422.

It seems as if all the personal entanglements and dramatic changes of fortune that make up the intensity of life were nothing but hesitations, timid shrinking, almost like petty complications
and meticulous excuses for not facing the finality of this strange and uncanny process of crystallization. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 326.

Often one has the impression that the personal psyche is running around this central point like a shy animal, at
once fascinated and frightened, always in flight, and yet steadily drawing nearer. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 326.

In the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can also be called “individuation.” ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 330

All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 330

But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes
sense of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 330

Experience, not books, is what leads to understanding. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 564

Only by standing firmly on our own soil can we assimilate the spirit of the East. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 72

The West lays stress on the human incarnation, and even on the personality and historicity of Christ, whereas the East says: “Without beginning, without end, without past, without future.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 80

The Christian subordinates himself to the superior divine person in expectation of his grace; but the Oriental knows that redemption depends on the work he does on himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 80

The Tao grows out of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 80

On the contrary, when I began my career as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and only later did my professional experience show me
that in my technique I had been unconsciously following that secret way which for centuries had been the preoccupation of the best minds of the East. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 10

We would do well to harbour no illusions in this respect: no understanding by means of words and no imitation
can replace actual experience. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 482

More than once I have had to reach for a book on my shelves, bring down an old alchemist, and show my patient his terrifying fantasy in the form in which it appeared four hundred years ago. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 325.

It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the “superman” Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will
to give birth to the superman, to “create a god for yourself out of your seven devils.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 163.

Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 163.

Whether his fate comes to him from without or from within, the experiences and happenings on
the way remain the same. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 26.

Just as evening gives birth to morning, so from the darkness arises a new light, the stella matutina, which is at once the evening and the morning star— Lucifer, the light-bringer. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 299

Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthrals and overpowers, while at the same
time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm
of the ever-enduring. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 129

If people would only take the trouble to turn up the actual writings of the ancient alchemists, they would find a deep treasure-trove of wisdom, much of which is perfectly applicable to the very events which are happening in the world today. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 444

Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum [the great work] had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation of the cosmos. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 228

It is for this reason that the alchemists believed in the truth of “matter,” because “matter” was actually their own psychic life. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 228