MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 
AN INQUIRY 
INTO THE SEP ARA TION AND SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITES IN ALCHEMY 

I 
THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
1. THE OPPOSITES 
The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.1 To begin with they form a dualism; for instance the opposites are humidum (moist) / siccum (dry), frigidum (cold) / calidum (warm), superiora (upper, higher) / inferiora (lower), sPiritus-anima (spirit-soul) / corpus (body), coelum (heaven) / terra (earth), ignis (fire) / aqua (water), bright / dark, agens (active) / patiens (passive), volatile (volatile, gaseous) / fixum (solid), pretiosum (precious, costly; also carum) dear) / vile (cheap, common), bonum (good) / malum (evil), manifestum (open) / occultum (occult; also celatum) hidden), oriens (East) / occidens (West), vivum (living) / mortuum (dead, inert), masculus (masculine) / foemina (feminine), Sol / Luna. Often the polarity is arranged as a quaternio (quaternity), with the two opposites crossing one another, as for instance the four elements or the four qualities (moist, dry, cold, warm), or the four directions and seasons,2 thus producing the cross as an emblem of the four elements and symbol of the sublunary physical world.3 This fourfold Physis, the cross, also appears in the 
1 Ripley says: "The coniunctio is the uniting of separated qualities or an equalizing of principles." "Duodecim portarum axiomata philosophica," Theatrum chemicum, I1, p. 128. 
2 Cf. the representation of the tetrameria in Stolcius de Stolcenberg, Viridarium chymicum, Fig. XLII. 
3 Cf. "Consilium coniugii," Ars chemica, p. 79: "In this stone are the four elements, and it is to be compared to the world and the composition of the world." • [For the Latin or Greek of the quotations marked with an asterisk, see the Appendix.-EDlTORS.] Also Michael Maier, De circulo physico quadrato, p. 17: "Nature, I say, when she turned about the golden circle, by that movement made its four qualities equal, that is to say, she squared that homogeneous simplicity turning back on itself, or brought it into an equilateral rectangle, in such a way that contraries are bound together by contraries, and enemies by enemies, as if with everlasting bonds, and are held in mutual embrace." • Petrus Bonus says: "The elements are conjoined in the circle in true friendship"· (Bibliotheca chemica, I1, p. lI5). 
3 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 
signs for earth ~. Venus ~, Mercury l;l, Saturn?, and Jupiter 2l.f 
	• 	The opposites and their symbols are so common in the texts 
that it is superfluous to cite evidence from the sources. On the other hand, in view of the ambiguity of the alchemists' language, which is "tarn ethice quam physice" (as much ethical as physical), it is worth while to go rather more closely into the manner in which the texts treat of the opposites. Very often the masculine-feminine opposition is personified as King and Queen (in the Rosarium philosoPhorum also as Emperor and Empress), or as serous (slave) or vir rubeus (red man) and mulier candida (white woman); 11 in the "Visio Arislei" they appear as Gabricus (or Thabritius) and Beya, the King's son and daughter.s Theriomorphic symbols are equally common and are often found in the illustrations.7 I would mention the eagle and toad ("the eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground"). which are the "emblem" of Avicenna in Michael Maier,8 the eagle representing Luna "or Juno, Venus, Beya, who is fugitive and winged like the eagle, which flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes." The toad "is the opposite of air, it is a contrary element, namely earth, whereon alone it moves by slow steps, and does not trust itself to another element. Its head is very heavy and gazes at the earth. For this reason it denotes the philosophic earth, which cannot fly [i.e., cannot be sublimated], as it is firm and solid. Upon it as a foundation the golden house 9 is to be built. Were it not for the 
f Cf. John Dee, "Monas hieroglyphica," Theatr. chem., 11, p. uo. 
11 Cf. "Consilium coniugii," Ars chemica, pp. ligf., and "Clangor buccinae," Artis aunferae, I, p. 484. In the Cabala the situation is reversed: red denotes the female, white (the left side) the male. Cf. Mueller, Der Sohar und seine Lehre, pp. 20f. 
e "Aenigmata ex visione Arislei," Art. aunf., I, pp. 146ft. Union of sun and myon: 
Petrus Bonus (ed. Lacinius), Pretiosa margarita novella (1546), p. 112. The archetype of the heavenly marriage plays a great role here. On a primitive level this motif can be found in shamanism. Cf. Eliade, Shamanism, p. 75. 
7 The most complete collection of the illustrations that appeared in printed works is Stolcius de Stolcenberg's P'iridarium chymicum figuris cupro incisis adornatum (Frankfurt, 1624)' 
8 Symbola aureae mensae, p. 192 •• 
• The "treasure-house" (gazophylacium, domus thesauraria) of philosophy, which is a synonym for the aurum philosoPhorum, br lapis. Cf. von Franz, Aurora Consurgens, pp. 101ff. The idea goes back to Alphidius (see "Consilium coniugii," Ars chemica, p. 108) and ultimately to Zosimos, who describes the lapis as a shining 
4 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
earth in our work the air would flyaway, neither would the fire have its nourishment, nor the water its vessel." 10 
	!l 	Another favourite theriomorphic image is that of the two 
birds or two dragons, one of them winged, the other wingless. This allegory comes from an ancient text, De Chemia Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus.H The wingless bird or dragon prevents the other from flying. They stand for Sol and Luna. brother and sister, who are united by means of the art.12 In Lambspringk's "Symbols" 13 they appear as the astrological Fishes which, swimming in opposite directions, symbolize the spirit / soul polarity. The water they swim in is mare nostrum (our sea) and is interpreted as the body,14 The fishes are "without bones and cortex." 15 From them is produced a mare immensum, which is the aqua permanens (permanent water). Another symbol is the stag and unicorn meeting in the "forest." 16 The stag signifies the soul, the unicorn spirit, and the forest the body. The next two pictures in Lambspringk's "Symbols" show the lion and lioness,11 or the wolf and dog, the latter 
white temple of marble. Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, Ill, i, 5. 
10 Symb. aur. mensae, p. 200. 
11 The printing is undated, but it probably comes from Samuel Emmel's press at Strasbourg and may be contemporaneous with Ars chemica, which was printed there in 1566 and matches our libellus as regards type, paper, and format. The author, Senior Zadith filius Hamuel, may perhaps have been one of the Harranites of the 10th cent., or at least have been influenced by them. If the Clavis maioris saPientiae mentioned by Stapleton ("Muhammad bin Umail: His Date, Writings, and Place in Alchemical History") is identical with the Latin treatise of the same name, traditionally ascribed to Artefius, this could be taken as proved, since that treatise contains a typical Harranite astral theory. Ruska ("Studien zu M. ibn Umail") groups Senior with the Turba literature that grew up on Egyptian soil. 12 Senior says: "I joined the two luminaries in marriage and it became as water having two lights" • (De chemia, pp. 15f.). 
13 Musaeum hermeticum, p. 343. (Cf. Waite, The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, I, pp. 276f.) 
14 Corpus (as corpus nostrum) usually means the chemical "body" or "substance," but morally it means the human body. "Sea" is a common symbol of the unconscious. In alchemy, therefore, the "body" would also symbolize the unconscious. 15 "Aenigmata philosophorum 11," Art. aurif., I, p. 149. Cf. Aion, pars. 195. 213 n. 51. 
1~ See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 240. 
17 They also appear in the "XI'Clavis" of Basilius Valentinus, Chymische SchrifJten, p. 68, and in P'iridarium, Figs. XI, LV, LXII. Variants are lion and snake (Viridarium, Fig. XII), lion and bird (Fig. LXXIV), lion and bear (Figs. XCIII 
	andCVI). 	5 

MYSTERIVM CONIUNCTIONIS 
two fighting; they too symbolize soul and spirit. In Figure VII the opposites are symbolized by two birds in a wood, one fledged, the other unfledged. Whereas in the earlier pictures the conflict seems to be between spirit and soul, the two birds signify the conflict between spirit and body, and in Figure VIII the two birds fighting do in fact represent that conflict, as the caption shows. The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the "hylical" body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit. 
	4 	The elevation of the human figure to a king or a divinity, 
and on the other hand its representation in subhuman, theriomorphic form, are indications of the transconscious character of the pairs of opposites. They do not belong to the ego-personality but are supraordinate to it. The ego-personality occupies an intermediate position, like the "anima inter bona et mala sita" (soul placed between good and evil). The pairs of opposites constitute the phenomenology of the paradoxical self, man's totality. That is why their symbolism makes use of cosmic expressions like coelum / terra.18 The intensity of the conflict is expressed in symbols like fire and water,19 height and depth,20 life and death.21 
2. THE QVATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCVRIUS 
	5 	The arrangement of the opposites in a quaternity is shown 
in an interesting illustration in Stolcenberg's Viridarium chymicum (Fig. XLII), which can also be found in the PhilosoPhia reformata of Mylius (1622, p. 117). The goddesses represent the four seasons of the sun in the circle of the Zodiac (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) and at the same time the four degrees of heat- 
18 Cf. Petrus Bonus, "Pretiosa margarita novella," Theatr. chem., V, pp. 647f.: 
"Hermes: At the end of the world heaven and earth must be joined together, which is the philosophical word." • Also Mus. herm., p. 8011 (Waite, 11, p. 263). 
19 Ms. Incipit: "Figurarum Aegyptiorum Secretarum:' 18th cent. (Author's collection.) 
20 "Thus the height is hidden and the depth is made manifest"· (Mus. herm., p:652). 
21 Cf. the oft-repeated saying: "From the dead he makes the living"· (Mylius, PhilosoPhia reformata, p. 191). 
6 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
ing,22 as well as the four elements "combined" around the circular table.23 The synthesis of the elements is effected by means of the circular movement in time (circulatio, rota) of the sun through the houses of the Zodiac. As I have shown elsewhere,24 the aim of the circulatio is the production (or rather, reproduction) of the Original Man, who was a sphere. Perhaps I may mention in this connection a remarkable quotation from Ostanes in Abu'l-Qasim, describing the intermediate position between two pairs of opposites constituting a quaternio: 
Ostanes said, Save me, 0 my God, for I stand between two exalted brilliancies known for their wickedness, and between two dim lights; each of them has reached me and I know not how to save myself from them. And it was said to me, Go up to Agathodaimon the Great and ask aid of him, and know that there is in thee somewhat of his nature, which will never be corrupted .... And when I ascended into the air he said to me, Take the child of the bird which is mixed with redness and spread for the gold its bed which comes forth from the glass, and place it in its vessel whence it has no power to come out except when thou desirest, and leave it until its moistness has departed.26 
	6 	The quaternio in this case evidently consists of the two 
malefici, Mars and Saturn (Mars is the ruler of Aries, Saturn of Capricorn); the two "dim lights" would then be feminine ones, the moon (ruler of Cancer) and Venus (ruler of Libra). The opposites between which Ostanes stands are thus masculine / feminine on the one hand and good / evil on the other. The way he speaks of the four luminaries-he does not know how to save himself from them-suggests that he is subject to Heimarmene, 22 Mylius, p. 118. The fourth degree is the coniunctio, which would thus correspond to Capricorn. 
23 Mylius remarks (p. 115): " ... equality arises ... from the four incompatibles mutually partaking in nature:' • A similar ancient idea seems to be that of the -I(Ala.K>, rpciTrEra. (solar table) in the Orphic mysteries. Cf. Proclus, Commentaries on the Timaeus of Plato, trans. by Taylor, 11, p. 1178: "And Orpheus knew indeed of the Crater of Bacchus, but he also establishes many others about the solar table."· Cf. also Herodotus, The Histories, Ill, 17-18 (trans. by de Selincourt, p. 181), and Pausanias, Description of Greece, VI, 26, 2 (trans. by Jones, Ill, pp. 1561£.). 
24 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, index, s.v. "rotundum," "sphere," "wheel," and especially (par. 469, n. 110) the wheel with twelve buckets for raising souls in the Acta Archelai. 
25 Holmyard, Kitiib al·'ilm al·muktasab, p. 118. 
7 

MY~TJ<.;KIUM L;UNIUNL;llUNl:S 
. he compulsion of the stars; that is, to a transconscious factor leyond the reach of the human will. Apart from this commlsion, the injurious effect of the four planets is due to the fact :hat each of them exerts its specific influence on man and makes lim a diversity of persons, whereas he should be one.26 It is pre:umably Hermes who points out to Ostanes that something in:orruptible is in his nature which he shares with the Agathodainon,21 something divine, obviously the germ of unity. This 
16 The idea of uniting the Many into One is found not only in alchemy but also in lrigen, In Libr. I Reg. [I Sam.] Hom., I, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 998): "There vas one man. We, who are still sinners, cannot obtain this title of praise, for each If us is not one but many ... See how he who thinks himself one is not one, but ,eems to have as many personalities as he has moods, as also the Scripture says: \. fool is changed as the moon."· In another homily, In Ezech., 9, 1 (Migne, P.G., rol. 13, col. 732) he says: "Where there are sins, there is multitude ... but where 'irtue is, there is singleness, there is union,"· Cf. PorPhyry the PhilosoPher to 'lis Wife Marcella, trans. by Zimmern, p. 61: "If thou wouldst practise to ascend nto thyself, collecting together all the powers which the body hath scattered and lroken up into a multitude of parts unlike their former unity .. ," Likewise the ;ospel of Philip (cited from Epiphanius, Panarium, XXVI, 13): "I have taken mowledge (saith the soul) of myself, and have gathered myself together out of 'very quarter and have not begotten (sown) children unto the Ruler, but have 'ooted out his roots and gathered together the members that were scattered lbroad. And I know thee who thou art, for I (she saith) am of them that are from lbove," Games, The ApocryPhal New Testament, p. u.) Cf. also Panarium, (XVI, 3: "I am thou, and thou art I, and wherever thou art, there I am, and I am cattered in all things, and from wherever thou wilt thou camt gather me, but in rathering me thou gatherest together thyself." The inner multiplicity of man 'eBects his microcosmic nature, which contains within it the stars and their (astroogical) influences. Thus Origen (In Lev. Horn., V, 2; Migne, P.G., vol. 12, cols. 149-50) says: "Understand that thou hast within thyself herds of cattle ..• Bocks ,f sheep and flocks of goats ... Understand that the fowls of the air are also vithin thee. Marvel not if we say that these are within thee, but understand that hou thyself art another world in little, and hast within thee the sun and the noon, and also the stars ... Thou seest that thou hast all those things which he world hath."· And Dorn ("De tenebris contra naturam," Theatr. chem. I, l. 533) says: "To the four less perfect planets in the heavens there correspond he four elements in our body, that is, earth to Saturn, water to Mercury [instead If the moon, see above], air to Venus, and fire to Mars. Of these it is built up, and t is weak on account of the imperfection of the parts. And so let a tree be planted rom them, whose root is ascribed to Saturn,"· etc., meaning the philosophical ree, symbol of the developmental process that results in the unity of the filius 'hilosophorum, or lapis. Cf. my "The Philosophical Tree," par. 409. 
7 The aoya.(J~s lJalp.wII is a snakelike, cilthonic fertility daemon akin to the "genius" ,f the hero. In Egypt as well it was a snakelike daemon giving life and healing lower. In the Berlin Magic Papyrus it is the aoya.8os oy£wpoy6. who fertilizes the :arth, On Gnostic gems it appears together with Enoch, Enoch being an early 
8 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTlO 
. 
germ is the gold, the aurum philosoPhorumJ28 the bird of Hermes or the son of the bird, who is the same as the filius philosoPhorum.2g He must be enclosed in the vas Hermeticum and heated until the "moistness" that still clings to him has departed, i.e., the humidum radicale (radical moisture), the prima materia, which is the original chaos and the sea (the unconscious). Some kind of coming to consciousness seems indicated. We know that the synthesis of the four was one of the main preoccupations of alchemy, as was, though to a lesser degree, the synthesis of the seven (metals, for instance). Thus in the same text Hermes says to the Sun: 
... I cause to come out to thee the spirits of thy brethren [the planets], 0 Sun, and I make them for thee a crown the like of which was never seen; and I cause thee and them to be within me, and I will make thy kingdom vigorous.so 
This refers to the synthesis of the planets or metals with the sun, to form a crown which will be "within" Hermes. The crown signifies the kingly totality; it stands for unity and is not subject to Heimarmene. This reminds us of the seven- or twelve-rayed crown of light which the Agathodaimon serpent wears on Gnostic gems,S1 and also of the crown of Wisdom in the Aurora Consurgens.S2 
	7 	In the "Consilium coniugii" there is a similar quaternio with 
the four qualities arranged as "combinations of two contraries, parallel of Hermes. The Sabaeans who transmitted the Agathodaimon to the Middle Ages as the 71'IIWP.a. 71'ap£lJpoII (familiar spirit) of the magical procedure, identified it with Hermes and Orpheus. (Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, n, p. 624.) Olympiodorus (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, 11, iv, 18) mentions it as the "more secret angel" (p.lJITTIKWT£POII 4')'')'£>'011), as the uroboros or "heaven," on which account it later became a synonym for Mercurius. 
28 Cf. the Indian teachings concerning hiranyagarbha, 'golden germ,' and purusha. Also "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," pars. 917f. 
29 Cf. il>''I rijf 0PIII(JOOYOlllUof (the matter of the generation of the bird) in Zosimos (Berthelot, Ill, xliv, I). 
so Holmyard, p. 117. 
SI Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, figs. 203-5. 
S2 von Franz, pp. 53f. Cf. also Goodenough, "The Crown of Victory ... ," Senior (De chemia, p. 41) calls the terra alba foliata "the crown of victory," In Heliodori carmina, v. 252 (ed. by Goldschmidt, p. 57) the soul, on returning to the body, brings it a IIIK'ITlKOII ITTE/J.P.a., 'wreath of victory,' In the Cabala the highest Sefira (like the lowest) is called Kether, the Crown. In Christian allegory the crown signifies Christ's humanity: Rabanus Maurus, Allegoriae in Sacram ScriPturam (Migne, P L., vol. 112, col. 909). In the Acts of John, §109 Games, ApocryPhal New Testament, p. 268) Christ is called the diadem. 

MYSTERlUM CONlUNCTIONIS 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 

~ 
~ ::s 
~ .... 
'"' 
'a 
'" 

caeleste 

terrestre 

n 
.a 
o 
~ ti' 

autumn, winter, and spring, male and female. If thou callest this spiritual, what thou doest is probable; if corporeal, thou sayest the truth; if heavenly, thou liest not; if earthly, thou hast well spoken." 38 Here we are dealing with a double quaternio having the structure shown in the diagram on page 10. 
	8 	The double quaternio or ogdoad stands for a totality, for 
something that is at once heavenly and earthly, spiritual or corporeal, and is found in the "Indian Ocean," that is to say in the unconscious. It is without doubt the Microcosm, the mystical Adam and bisexual Original Man in his prenatal state, as it were, when he is identical with the unconscious. Hence in Gnosticism the "Father of All" is described not only as masculine and feminine (or neither), but as Bythos, the abyss. In the scholia to the "Tractatus aureus Hermetis" 39 there is a quaternio consisting of superius I inferius) exterius I interius. They are united into one thing by means of the circular distillation, named the Pelican: 40 "Let all be one in one circle or vessel." "For this vessel is the true philosophical Pelican, nor is any other to be sought after in all the world." The text gives the following diagram: 
c 

	
E 
88 Theatr. chem., V, p. Ill. This treatise (Micreris = Mercurius) is undoubtedly old and is probably of Arabic origin. The same saying is ouoted by "Milvescindus" (Bonus, "Pretiosa marg. nov.," Theatr. chem., V, pp. 662f.). In the Turba he is called "Mirnefindus:' 
89 This treatise, of Arabic origin, is printed in Bibliotheca chemica, I, pp. 400ft 40 "For when she applies her beak to her breast, her whole neck with the beak is bent into the shape of a circle .... The blood flowing from her breast restores life to the dead fledglings." • Ibid., p. 442 b. 
11 
cold and moist, which are not friendly to heat and dryness." 33 Other quaternions are: "The stone is first an old man, in the end a youth, because the albedo comes at the beginning and the rubedo at the end." 34 Similarly the elements are arranged as two "manifesta" (water and earth), and two "occulta" (air and fire).35 A further quaternio is suggested by the saying of Bernardus Trevisanus: "The upper has the nature of the lower, and the ascending has the nature of the descending." 36 The following combination is from the "Tractatus Micreris": "In it [the Indian Ocean] 37 are images of heaven and earth, of summer, 
33 Ars chemica, p. 196.- 
84 "Opusculum autoris ignoti," Art. aurif., I, p. 390. The author is generally cited as "Rhasis." Cf. Ruska, Turba Phil., pp. 161f. Also Ephraem Syrus, Hymni et Sermones (ed. Lamy, I, col. 136): "Thy babe, 0 Virgin, is an old man; he is the Ancient of Days and precedeth all time." - 
85 Dom in "Physica Trismegisti," Theatr. chem., I, p. 420. The division of the elements into two higher "psychic" elements and two lower "somatic" elements goes back to Aristotle. Cf. Lippmann, Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie, 
	I, p. 147. 	36 "Liber de a1chemia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 775. 
87 Sea is a synonym for the prima materia. 
10 

B 

D 

	9 	BC D E represent the outside, A is the inside, "as it were the 
origin and source from which the other letters flow, and likewise the final goal to which they flow back," 41 F G stands for Above and Below. "Together the letters AB C D E F G clearly signify the hidden magical Septenary." 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." 42 This little inner circle corresponds to the Mercurial Fountain in the Rosarium, which I have described in my "Psychology of the Transference." The text calls it "the more spiritual, perfect, and nobler Mercurius," 43 the true arcane substance, a "spirit," and goes on: 
For the spirit alone penetrates all things, even the most solid bodies.44 Thus the catholicity of religion, or of the true Church, consists not in a visillle 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 shepherd 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 seventeenth chapter of St. Luke.45 
41 Ibid .• 
42 Ibid., 408 b. Cf. the words of the "bride" in Aurora Consurgens, p. 143: "I am the mediatrix of the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold ... that which is dry I make moist ... that which is hard I soften, and the reverse." (Cf. Senior, De chemia, p. 34.) 
43 Bibl. chem., 408 a. 
44 "It will penetrate every solid thing"· ("Tabula smaragdina"). The sentence "for the spirit alone penetrates all things, even the most solid bodies," is probably not without reference to "for the Spirit searcheth all things, y"a, the deep things of God" in I Cor. 2: 10 (A V). Likewise the Mercurius of the alchemists is a "spirit of truth," a sajJientia Dei, but one who presses downward into the depths of matter, and whose acquisition is a donlt1/! Spi"itus Sancti. He is the spirit who knows the secrets of matter, and to possess him brings illumination, in accordance with Paul's "even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (I Cor. 2: 11). 
45 Luke 17: 21f. Recently, "within you" (intra vos, '.ros "J1.w.) has been translated as "among you," therefore, as our author says, "in the visible and bodily gathering together of men." This shows the modern tendency to replace man's inner co- 
12 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
That the Ecclesia spiritualis is meant is clear from the text: "] you will ask, where then are those true Christians, who are f from all sectarian contagion?" They are "neither in Samal nor in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Geneva, nor in Leipzi but are scattered everywhere through the world, "in Turkey, Persia, Italy, Gaul, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, El land, America, and even in farthest India." The author c( tinues: "God is Spirit,46 and those who worship him must w< ship him in the spirit and in truth. After these examinations a avowals I leave it to each man to judge who is of the tr Church, and who not." 47 
	10 	From this remarkable excursus we learn, first of all, that t 
"centre" unites the four and the seven into one.48 The unil ing agent is the spirit Mercurius, and this singular spirit thl causes the author to confess himself a member of the Eccles spiritualis, for the spirit is God. This religious background already apparent in the choice of the term "Pelican" for the ci cular process, since this bird is a well-known allegory of Christ. The idea of Mercurius as a peacemaker, the mediator betwef the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes bac to Ephesians 2 : 13ff.: 
hesion by outward community, as though anyone who had no communion wil himself would be capable of any fellowship at all! It is this deplorable tendenl that paves the way for mass-mindedness. 
46 n •• iiJ1.11 /) 8.os. John 4: 24. 
47 Bibl. chem., I, p. 443 a. 
48 Iq his "Speculativa philosophia" (Theatr. chem., I, p. 291) Dorn says of th union: "Such is the philosophical love between the parts of inanimate things, an the enmity also, as between the parts of men. [An allusion to projection!] But n more in the former than in the latter can there be a true union, unless the cm ruption of the said parts be removed before they are joined together; wherefor that which thou doest is for the sake. of peace between enemies, that friends ma come together in unity. In all imperfect bodies and those that fall short of thei ultimate perfection friendship and enmity are both innate [an apt formulatiOl of the coexistence of opposites in the unconscious "imperfect" state]; if the lattel be removed by the work or effort of man, needs must the other return to its ulti mate perfection through the art, which we have set forth in the union of man." • Cf. "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 259ff. 
49 Cf. Honorius of Autun, Speculum de m)lsteriis ecclesiae (Migne, PL., vol. 172 col. 936): "For it is said that the pelican so loves her young that she puts them to death with her claws. But on the third day for grief she wounds herself, and letting the blood from her body drip upon the fledglings she raises them from the 
13 

MYSTERIUM CUNIUNCTIONIS 
But now in Christ Jesus you who 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 foundation 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 into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [RSV] 50 
	11 	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 opposites 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 the healing power of its brilliance, as when we see the splendour of the outward sun. Rather does it 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.11l 
Mercurius is conceived as "spiritual blood," 52 on the analogy 
dead. The pelican signifies the Lord. who so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son. whom on the third day he raised up. victor over death. and exalted above every name .•. • Pelican is also the name of a retort, the spout of which runs back into the belly of the vessel. [Cf. Alchemical Studies, fig. B7.] 
60 Cf. the comment on 11 Cor. 3 : 6 ("for the letter killeth. but the spirit giveth life") in Olympiodorus (Berthelot. 11, iv. 41), where one with knowledge of the hidden alchemical art is speaking: "How. then. do I understand the transformation (JLETafJoATJI')? How are the water and the fire, hostile and opposed to one another by nature. how are they come together in one, through harmony and friendship?" 51 Bibl. chem., I, p. 442 b. 
62 The aqua permanens "whose power is the spiritual blood, that is, the tincture. 
14 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
of the blood of Christ. In Ephesians those who are separate "are brought near in the blood of Christ." He makes the tw one and has broken down the dividing wall "in his flesh." Car (flesh) 53 is a synonym for the prima materia and hence for Me: curius. The "one" is a "new man," He reconciles the two "i one body," 54 an idea which is figuratively represented in a chemy as the two-headed hermaphrodite, The two have on spirit, in alchemy they have one soul. Further, the lapis is fre quently compared to Christ as the laPis angularis (come: stone).55 As we know, the temple built upon the foundation ( the saints inspired in the ShePherd of H ermas a vision of th great building into which human beings, streaming from th four quarters, inserted themselves as living stones, melting int it "without seam." 56 The Church is built upon the rock th" gave Peter his name (Matthew 16 : 18). 
	12 	In addition, we learn from the scholia that the circle and th 
Hermetic vessel are one and the same, with the result that th mandala, which we find so often in the drawings of our patient 
... For the body incorporates the spirit through the tincture of the blood: for 2 that has Spirit, has also blood .•. • (Mylius. Phil. ref., pp. 42f.) These quotatiOl come from the Turba (ed. by Ruska, p. 129) and from the book al Hablb (quotl by Ruska, pp. 42£.). For the Greek alchemists gold was the "red blood of silve: (Berthelot. 11, iv, 38 and 44). Cf. also Philo, Quaestiones in Genesim, 11. 59: "BI blood is the essence of the sensible and vital spirit; for he says in another pIal [Leviticus 17 : 14]: The spirit of all flesh is its blood .•. • Cf. Leisegang. Der heilil Geist, p. 97 n. and p. 94 n. 
53 "Son. you must take of the fatter flesh." • (Quotation from Aristotle in Rosariu philosophorum, Art. aurif., n. p. 318.) The prima materia "grows from flesh ar blood."· ("Mahomet" in "Rosinus ad Sarratantam," Art. aurif., I. p. 308.) "1 take the egg in the flesh."· (Laurentius Ventura. Theatr. chem., n. p. 27, "Choose the tender flesh and you shall have the most excellent thing."· (Ibi< p. 292.) "Flesh and blood" correspond to the "inward and hidden fire." (Dor Theatr. chem., I, p. 599.) For the patristic view see Augustine. Quaestiones Heptateuchum, I, Ix (Migne. PL., vo!. 34, col. 616): "Perhaps he who was deli ered for our transgressions [Christ] is signified by the flesh at evening." • 
54 Cf. "Aenigmata phi!. ••. Art. aurif., I (1593), p. 151: "And then take the gla vessel with the bride and bridegroom and cast them into the furnace. and cau them to be roasted for three days, and then they will be two in one flesh."· (C Gen. It : 24 and Matt. 19 : 5.) 
611 "As Christ in the holy Scriptures is called the Stone rejected by the builders. also doth the same befall the Stone of the Wise"· ("Epilogus Orthelii," Thea; chem., VI, p. 431). 
66 "The Shepherd of Hermas," tr. by Lake. n. pp. 217ff .• Similitude 9. 
15 

MYSTERlUM CONlUNCTlONIS 
corresponds to the vessel of transformation. Consequently, the usual quaternary structure of the mandala 57 would coincide with the alchemists' quaternio 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 the treatise of Hermes is, comparatively speaking, very old, and in place of the Christian Anthropos mystery 58 contains a peculiar paraphrase of it, or rather, its antique parallel,59 the scholia cannot be dated earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century.60 The author seems to have been a Paracelsist physician. 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 sense of sun and gold], and who goes through the streets [vicos] and houses of all the planets, and in his regeneration has obtained the power of Above and Below, 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.61 
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.62 Altogether, he is very like the redeemer of the Basilidians, who mounts upward through the planetary spheres, conquering them or robbing them of their power. The remark 
57 Cf. my "A Study in the Process of Individuation." 
58 Cf. Schweitzer's view of Christian concepts as "late Jewish eschatology": 
Geschichte der Leben-]esu-Forschung, p. 635. 
59 The text is in Psychology and Alchemy, par. 454. 
60 What would appear to be the first edition of the scholia, dated 1610, was published in Leipzig under the title Hermetis Trislllegisti Tractatus vere aureus de Lapidis philosophici secreto. Cum Scholiis Dominici Gnosii MD. The scholia are also printed in Theatr. chem., IV~ pp. 672ff., but there the author is said to be anonymous. 
61 Dorn, "Congeries Paracelsicae chemicae," Theatr. chem., I, p. 578. 
62 In Aurora Consurgens, also (pp. 129f.), the Adam composed of the four elements is contrasted with the Adam "from pure elements," who, as the concluding sentence shows, is produced by the circulation of the four elements. 
16 

1. 1nL l..V1Vlrvr~Ll'11~ v.t' 1nL l...oVr'lUl"' ••.... lJU 
that he contains the powers of Sol reminds us of the above-men tioned passage in Abu'l-Qasim, where Hermes says that he unite~ the sun and the planets and causes them to be within him as ;: crown. This may be the origin of the designation of the lapis a~ the "crown of victory." 63 The "power of Above and Below' refers to that ancient authority the "Tabula smaragdina," whid is of Alexandrian origin.64 Besides this, our text contains allu sions to the Song of Songs: "through the streets and houses 01 the planets" recalls Song of Songs 3 : 2: "I will _ .. go aboul the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek hirr whom my soul loveth." 65 The "white and red" of Mercuriw refers to 5 : 10: "My beloved is white and ruddy." He is likened to the "matrimonium" or coniunctio; that is to say he is thi! marriage on account of his androgynous form. 
3. THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON 
	13 	In the text cited at the end of the last section Dorn continues: 
"Hermes Trismegistus called the stone 'orphan'." 66 "Orphan" as the name of a precious stone is found in Albertus Magnus, The stone was called "orphan" because of its uniqueness-"it was never seen elsewhere"-and it was said to be in the Emperor's crown. It was "wine-coloured" and sometimes shone in the night, "but nowadays it does not shine [any more] in the darkness." 67 As Albertus Magnus was an authority on alchemy, he may have been the direct source both for Dorn and for Petrus Bonus (see n. 66). "Orphan" as the name of a gem may therefore mean something like the modern "solitaire" -a very apt name for the unique lapis Philosophorum. Apart from Darn and Petrus Bonus, it seems that this name is found only in the 
63 Gratarolus, Verae alchemiae, n, p. 265. 
64 "He receives the power of the higher and the lower things. So shall you have th( glory of the whole world."" "Tabula smaragdina," De alchemia, p. 363. Also Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, p. 2. 
65 Cf. Aurora Consurgens, p. 135. 
66 Theatr. chem., I, p. 578 .•• I do not know to which Hermes text Dorn is referring here. The orphan first appears in the Pretiosa margarita novella of Petrus Bonus: 
"This Orphan stone has no proper name" •• (Theatr. chem., V. p. 663). It is also in the edition of Janus Lacinius, 1546, p. 54r. 
67 Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. "Orphanus." 
17 

lVl I;:).l~1'\.lU.l.\"J. \..ovJ. ....• J.un\..oJ..lVnl.3 
Carmina Heliodori.68 There it refers to the opcpaJlo<; UOLKO<; (homeless orphan) who is slain at the beginning of the work for purposes of transformation. 
	14 	The terms "son of the widow" and "children of the widow" 
appear to be of Manichaean origin. The Manichaeans themselves were called "children of the widow." 69 T~e "orphan" referred to by Hermes must therefore have for his counterpart a vidua (widow) as the prima materia. For this there are synonyms such as mater, matrix, Venus, regina, femina, virgo, puella praegnans, "virgin in the centre of the earth," 70 Luna,71 meretrix (whore), vetula (old woman), more specifically vetula extenuata (enfeebled, exhausted),12 Mater Alchimia, "who is dropsical in the lower limbs and paralysed from the knees down," 73 and finally virago. All these synonyms allude to the virginal or maternal quality of the prima materia, which exists without a man 74 and yet is the "matter of all things." 75 Above all, the prima materia is the mother of the lapis, the filius philosoPhorum. Michael Maier 76 mentions the treatise of an anonymous author Delphinas, which he dates to some time before 
68 Ed. by Goldschmidt, I, vv. 112-14, p. 29. Heliodorus was a Byzantine of the 8th cent. (Goldschmidt, p. 2: "In 716-17, in the reign of Theodosius [Ill].") Cassel (Aus Literatur und Symbolik, p. 248) gives Arnold (Arnaldus?), cited in Lesser's Lithotheologie, p. 1161, as the source for "Orphanus." I was unable to verify this state· ment. 
69 It is said that in the Book of Secrets, Mani spoke of "the son of the widow," Jesus (Schaeder, Urform und Fortbildungen des manichiiischen Systems, p. 75 n.). Bousset (The Antichrist Legend, p. 70) mentions the reign of a widow who; will precede the Antichrist (according to a Greek and Armenian Apocalypse of Daniel. p. 68). Freemasons are also reckoned among the "children of the widow" ~Eckert, Die Mysterien der Heidenkirche, erhalten und fortgebildet im Bunde der alten und neuen Kinder der Wittwe). "Widow" in the Cabala is a designation for Malchuth. Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata, I, p. 118. 
70 Mylius, Phil. ref., p. 173. 
71 Gratarolus, Verae alch., Il, p. 265. 
72 This expression appears for the first time in Aurora consurgens, Part U, Art. aurif., I, p. 201. Mylius (Phi/. ref.), copies it. The "vieille extenuee" mentioned in Pernety (Dictionnaire mytho-hermitique, p. 280) goes back to the same source. Cf. also "a mistress of about a hundred years of age" in "Aureum saeculum redivivum," Mus. herm., p. 64 (Waite, I, p. 59)' 
73 Aurora consurgens Il, Art. aurif., I, p. 196. 
74 In Aurora Consurgens, p. 77, seven women seek one husband. 
75 Cf. the "matrices of all things" in Rulandus, Lexicon of Alchemy, p. 226. 76 Symb. aur. mensae, p. 344. 
18 

1. THE CO:\fPO:'>lENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
1447.77 He stresses that this author insisted particularly on the mother-son incest. Maier even constructs a genealogical tree showing the origin of the seven metals. At the top of the tree i: the lapis. Its father is "Gabritius," who in turn was born of Isi: and Osiris. After the death of Osiris Isis married their SOl Gabritius; 78 she is identified with Beya-"the widow marrie: her son." The widow appears here as the classical figure of the mourning Isis. To this event Maier devotes a special "Epi thalamium in Honour of the Nuptials of the Mother Beya anc Her Son Gabritius." 79 "But this marriage, which was begur with the expression of great joyfulness, ended in the bitternes of mourning," says Maier, adding the verses: 
Within the flower itself there grows the gnawing canker: 
Where honey is, there gall, where swelling breast, the chancre.81 
For, "when the son sleeps with the mother, she kills him with the stroke of a viper" (viPerino conatu). This viciousness recalls the murderous role of Isis,81 who laid the "noble worm" in the pad of the heavenly Father, Ra.82 Isis, however, is also the healer, f01 she not only cured Ra of the poisoning but put together the dis membered Osiris. As such she personifies that arcane substance be it dew 83 or the aqua permanens,84 which unites the hostile 77 Printed in Theatr. chem., Ill, pp. 871ff. under the title "Antiqui Philosoph Galli Delphinati anonymi Liber Secreti Maximi totius mundanae gloriae." 
78 Gabritius therefore corresponds to Horus. In ancient Egypt Horus had long bee I equated with Osiris. Cf. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten ;fg)'pter p. 406. The Papyrus Mimaut has: "Do the terrible deed to me, the orphan of th, honoured widow."· Preisendanz relates the "widow" to Isis and the "orphan" t, Horus, with whom the magician identifies himself (Papyri Graecae Magicae, I pp. 54£). We find the "medicine of the widow" in the treatise "Isis to Horus, Berthelot, A lch. grecs, I, xiii, 16. 
79 Symb. aur. mensae, p. 515. The epithalamium begins with the words: "Whel the mother is joined with the son in the covenant of marriage, count it not a incest. For so doth nature ordain, so doth the holy law of fate require, and th thing is not unpleasing to God." • 
80 "Est quod in ipsis floribus angat, 
Et ubi mel, ibi fel, ubi uber, ibi tuber." 
81 In Greco-Roman times Isis was represented as a human-headed snake. Cf. illus tration in Erman, Religion der ;fgypter, p. 391. For Isis as apaKwP see Reitzenstein Poimandres, p. 31. 
82 Erman, p. 30!. The text derives from the time of the New Kingdom. 
83 Preisendanz, Papyri Graec. Magicae, Il, p. 74: "I am Isis who am called dew." , 84 Synonymous with aqua vitae. The relation of the "soul-comforting" water of th Nile to Isis is indicated on a bas-relief (illustrated in Eisler, Weltenmantel un( 
19 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTlONIS 
elements into one. This synthesis is described in the myth of Isis, "who collected the scattered limbs of his body and bathed them with her tears and laid them in a secret grave beneath the bank of the Nile." 85 The cognomen of Isis was XYJP-€ta, the Black One.86 Apuleius stresses the blackness of her robe (Palla nigerrima) 'robe of deepest black'),87 and since ancient times she was reputed to possess the elixir of life 88 as well as being adept in sundry magical arts.89 She was also called the Old One,90 and she was rated a pupil of Hermes,91 or even his daughter.92 She appears as a teacher of alchemy in the treatise "Isis the Prophetess to her Son Horus." 93 She is mentioned in the role of a whore in Epiphanius, where she is said to have prostituted herself in Tyre.94 She signifies earth, according to Firmicus Maternus,95 and was equated with Sophia.96 She is P-Vpt';'V1JP-O~, 'thousand-named', the vessel and the matter (x';'pa Kat VA'Y]) of good and evi1.n She is the moon.98 An inscription invokes her as "the One, who art AIL" 99 She is named a';'mpa, the redemptrix.lOo In 
Himmelsult, 1. p. 70) in the Vatican. of a priestess of Isis bearing the situla (watervessel). The two great parallels are the cup of water in the Early Christian communion, and the water vessel of Amitabha. For the Christian cup of water see "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," pars. 311ff.; for the holy water in the worship of Amitabha, see Hastings, Encyclopaedia, I, p. 386 b, "Amitayus." 
85 Latin MS, 18th cent., "Figurarum Aegyptiorum secretarum." (Author's possession.) 
86 Eisler, n, p. 328, n. 1. 
87 The Golden Ass, XI, 3 (trans. Adlington and Gaselee, p. 543): "utterly dark cloak." Cf. Hippolytus, Elenchos, I, 8. 
88 Diodorus, Bibliotheke Historike, I, 25: 7"0 T7i~ a.1Ja.vat7ia.~ </>a.pP.a.KOV. 
89 She tried to make the child of the king of Phoenicia immortal by holding him in the fire. Plutarch, "!sis and Osiris," 16, Moralia (trans. by Babbitt, V, pp. 40f.). 90 Diodorus, I, § 11. 
91 Ibid., I, 27. 
92 The great Paris Magic Papyrus, line 2290. Preisendanz, Papyri Graee. Mag., I, p.143· 
9:1 Bcrthelot, Alch. grecs, I, xiii. Tlt7,~ 7rpo</>';;T<~ 7"0/ vlo/ 'Tlpo/. 94 Ancoratus (ed. by HoIl), c. 1°4, I, p. 126. 
95 Liber de errore protanarum religiotlum (ed. by Halm), n, 6: "The earth is the body of Isis." • Cf. Plutarch, "!sis and Osiris," 38, pp. 92£. 
96 Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen, p. 108, and Poimandres, p. 44. 97 Plutarch, 53, pp. 13of. 
98 Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 270. 
99 Corpus InseriPtionum Latinarum, X, No. 3800 (= 3580), from Capua: "TE TIBI / UNA QUAE / ES OMNIA / DEA ISIS / ARRIVS BAL / BINUS V.C:' (Now in Naples Museum.) 
100 Reitzenstein, Die hellenistisehen Mysterienreligionen (1927), pp. 27ff. 20 

15 
16 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
Athenagoras she is "the nature of the Aeon, whence all thing grew and by which all things are." 101 
All these statements apply just as well to the prima materi in its feminine aspect: it is the moon, the mother of all thing! the vessel, it consists of opposites, has a thousand names, is aJ old woman and a whore, as Mater Alchimia it is wisdom anc teaches wisdom, it contains the elixir of life in potentia and i the mother of the Saviour and of the filius Macrocosmi) it is th earth and the serpent hidden in the earth, the blackness and th dew and the miraculous water which brings together all that i divided. The water is therefore called "mother," "my mothe who is my enemy," but who also "gathers together all my di vided and scattered limbs." 102 The Turba says (Sermo LIX) 
Nevertheless the Philosophers have put to death the woman whe slays her husbands, for the body of that woman is full of weapon and poison. Let a grave be dug for that dragon, and let that womal be buried with him, he being chained fast to that woman; anc the more he winds and coils himself about her, the more will he h cut to pieces by the female weapons which are fashioned in the bod~ of the woman. And when he sees that he is mingled with the limbs 0 the woman, he will be certain of death, and will be changed wholl~ into blood. But when the Philosophers see him changed into blood they leave him a few days in the sun, until his softness is consumed and the blood dries, and they find that poison. What then appears is the hidden wind.1°3 
The coniunctio can therefore take more gruesome forms thal the relatively harmless one depicted in the Rosarium.104 
It is clear from these parallels that Maier was fully justifie( in giving the name Isis to the prima materia or feminine trans formative substance.105 As Kerenyi has brilliantly shown, usin~ 101 Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 22 (Migne, P.G., vol. 6, col. 939f.). 
102 Ros. phil., Art. aurif. (1572), n, p. 413. From the so-called "Dicta Belini" (Apol lonius of Tyana), "Allegoriae sapientum," Distinctio 28, Theatr. ehem., V. p. 97. 103 Ruska, Turba philosophorum, p. 247. The wind is the pneuma hidden in th. prima materia. The final illustration in Maier's Serutinium ehymicum shows thi burial. 
104 Cf. also the p.aX1] IJ1]X.ta. (female combat) in Carmen Archelai, one of th. Car mina Heliodori (p. 56, IV, lines 23of.) (ed. by Goldschmidt), where the materi: f1ees under the rain of projectiles and ends up as a "corpse" in the grave. 
105 The corresponding masculine substance is red sulphur, the vir or serous rubeus whose redness relates him to Typhon. In a "dirge for Gabricus who died aftel recently celebrating his marriage," Maier (Symb. aur. mensae, p. 518) does in fac 
21 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNGrIONIS 
the example of Medea,106 there is in that myth a typical combination of various motifs: love, trickery, cruelty, motherliness, murder of relatives and children, magic, rejuvenation, and-gold.107 This same combination appears in Isis and in the prima materia and forms the core of the drama instigated by the mother-world, without which no union seems possible. 
	17 	In Christian tradition the widow signifies the Church; in St. 
Gregory 108 the analogy is the story of the widow's cruse of oil (II Kings 4). St. Augustine says: "The whole Church is one widow, desolate in this world." 109 She "lacketh a husband, lacketh a man," for her bridegroom has not yet come. So too the soul is "destitute in the world." "But," Augustine continues, "thou art not an orphan, thou art not reckoned as a widow ... Thou hast a friend ... Thou art God's orphan, God's widow." 110 
	18 	Another tradition to be considered in regard to the widow 
is the Cabala. There the abandoned Malchuth is the widow, as Knorr von Rosenroth says: "[AlmanahJ Widow. This is Malchuth, when Tifereth is not with her." 111 Tifereth 112 is the son 113 and is interpreted by Reuchlin as the Microcosm. Malchuth 114 is Domina, the Mistress.115 She is also called Shekinah,116 the "indwelling" (of God), and virago.117 The Sefira 
mention Typhon as a possible cause of his death. He begins by saying: "She who was the cause of your life is also the cause of your death," but he then adds: 
"Three there seem to be who may have caused your death: Typhon, .your mother, and Mulciber's [Vulcan's] furnace. He [Typhon] scatters the limbs of your body; it may be your mother alone, instead of your brother. But your mother feigns innocence." It is clear that Maier suspects the mother in particular, and wants to make Typhon, the red slave, only a "causa ministerialis." 
106 Kerenyi, Tochter der Son ne, pp. 921f. 
107 For this reason, the story of Medea's murder of Creon, her father-in-law, was also interpreted as an alchemical arcanum. Cl. Petms Bonus, Theatr. chem., V, p.686. 
108 Super Ezechielem Hom., III (Migne, P.L., vo1. 76, col. 808). 109 Expositions of the Book of Psalms, Ps. 131,23, vo1. 6, p. 105.· 110 Ibid., Ps. 145, 18f., vo1. 6, p. 356. 
111 Kabbala denudata, I, 1, p. 118.· Knon's source is Moses Cordovero, Pardes Rimmonim, ch. 23. 
	112 Tifereth means 'beauty.' 	113 Kabbala denudata, p. 202. 
	114 Malchuth means 'kingdom, dominion.' 	115 Kabbala denudata, p. 528. 
116 She is called moon (p. 456), earth (p. 156), bride (p. 477), matron, queen of hea;en, fish-pool (p. 215), sea, well, tree of knowledge of good and evil, hind of loves ("so is Malchuth especially called because of the mystery of the new moon," 
	p. 77), belly (p. 192), etc.· 	117 Kabbala denudata, p. 163. 
22 

I. THE C01\1PO"JENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
Tifereth is the King, and in the usual arrangement of th Sefiroth he occupies the second place: 
Kether Tifereth Yesod Malchuth. 
Kether, the Crown, corresponds to the upward-growing root c the Tree of the Sefiroth.ll8 Yesod 119 signifies the genital regio of the Original Man, whose head is Kether. Malchuth, conforrr ing to the archetypal pattern, is the underlying feminine prir ciple.120 In this wicked world ruled by evil Tifereth is ne united with Malchuth.l2l But the coming Messiah will reunit the King with the Queen, and this mating will restore to Go his original unity.122 The Cabala develops an elaborate hiero: gamos fantasy which expatiates on the union of the soul with th Sefiroth of the worlds of light and darkness, "for the desire of th upper world for the God-fearing man is as the loving desire of man for his wife, when he woos her." 123 Conversely, the She kinah is present in the sexual act: 
118 According to some authorities, Sefira is derived from 11'q, a. Ipa.. Cf. Hasting Encyclopedia, VII, p. 625 b, "Kabbala." According to a more recent view the wO! is derived from the root sfr, 'primordial number.' Cf. Scholem, Major Trends i Jewish Mysticism, pp. 76ff. For the Tree of the Sefiroth see "The Philosophic Tree," par. 411, and Scholem, pp. 214ff. 
119 Yesod means 'foundation.' In the MS in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Fr. 1476 pI. 8, Yesod is depicted like the Son of Man in Revelation 1 : 12 If., with the seve stars in his right hand, the sword issuing from his mouth, and standing betwee the seven candlesticks. See infra, our Plate 3. 
120 Cl. Kabbala denudata, I, p. 240, 4: " ... for Malchuth shall be called watered garden, Isaiah 58: 11, when Yesod is in her, and fills her, and waters hI with waters from on high."· P. 477: "When Malchuth receives the inflowir from the fifty gates through Yesod, then is she called bride."· For Yesod ; membrum genitale, ibid., p. 22. Cf. also Scholem, pp. 227l., and Hurwitz, Arch tYPische Motive in der chassidischen Mystik, pp. 1231f. 
121 Cf. the legend of Father Okeanos and Mother Tethys, who could no longl come together in a conjugal embrace. Iliad, XIV, 11. 300 If. (trans. by Rieu), p. 26 and Roscher, Lexikon, V, col. 394 B, lines 301f. This reference points only to tl similarity of the motif, not to an equivalence of meaning. 
122 Cf. the cohabitation of Gabricus and Beya brought about by the interventic of the philosophers. 
123 Der Sohar (ed. by Mueller), p. 234. There is a parallel to this in the psychot experiences of Schreber (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness), where the "rays of Gol' longingly seek to enter into him. 
23 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 
The absconditus sponsus enters into the body of the woman and is joined with the abscondita sponsa. This is true also on the reverse side of the process, so that two spirits are melted together and are interchanged constantly between body and body .... In the indistinguishable state which arises it may be said almost that the male is with the female, neither male nor female,124 at least they are both or either. So is man affirmed to be composed of the world above, which is male, and of the female world below. The same is true of woman,125 
	~ 	The Cabala also speaks of the thalamus (bride chamber) or 
nuptial canopy beneath which sponsus and sponsa are consecrated, Yesod acting as paranymPhus (best man).126 Directly or indirectly the Cabala was assimilated into alchemy. Relationships must have existed between them at a very early date, though it is difficult to trace them in the sources. Late in the sixteenth century we come upon direct quotations from the Zohar) for instance in the treatise "De igne et sale" by Blasius Vigenerus.127 One passage in this treatise is of especial interest to us as it concerns the mythologem of the coniunctio: 
[The Sefiroth] end in Malchuth or the moon, who is the last to descend and the first to ascend from the elemental world. For the moon is the way to heaven, so much so that the Pythagoreans named her the heavenly earth and the earthly heaven or star,128 because in the elemental world all inferior nature in respect to the heavenly, and the heavenly in respect to the intelligible world, is, as the Zohar says, feminine and passive, and is as the moon to the sun. In the same measure as [the moon] withdraws from the sun, until she is in opposition to him, so does her light increase in relation to us in this lower world, but diminishes on the side that looks upwards. Contrariwise, in her conjunction, when she is totally darkened for us, she is fully illuminated on that side which faces the sun. This should teach us that the more our intellect descends to the things 124 Cf. the parallel in the Gospel according to the Egyptians (lames, ApocrYPhal New Testament, p. 11): "When the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female." 
125 Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, p. 381. 126 Kabbala denudata, I, p. 338. 
127 Theatr. chem., VI, pp. Ifl. Blaise de Vigenere or Vigenaire (1523-96) was a learned scholar of Hebrew. He was secretary to the Duc de Nevers and then to Henry III of France. 
128 Cf. Proc1us, Commentaries on the Timaeus of Plato, where he says that Orpheus called the moon the heavenly earth (41 e), and the Pythagoreans the aetheric earth (32 b). 
24 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
of sense, the more it is turned away from intelligible things, and the reverse likewise.129 
The identification of Malchuth with Luna forms a link with alchemy, and is another example of the process by which the patristic symbolism of sponsus and sponsa had been assimilated much earlier. At the same time, it is a repetition of the way the originally pagan hierosgamos was absorbed into the figurative language of the Church Fathers. But Vigenerus adds something that seems to be lacking in patristic allegory, namely the darkening of the other half of the moon during her opposition. When the moon turns upon us her fullest radiance, her other side is in complete darkness. This strict application of the SolLuna allegory might have been an embarrassment to the Church, although the idea of the "dying" Church does take account, to a certain extent, of the transience of all created things.13o I do not mention this fact in order to criticize the significance of the ecclesiastical Sol-Luna allegory. On the contrary I want to emphasize it, because the moon, standing on the borders of the sublunary world ruled by evil, has a share not only in the world of light but also in the daemonic world of darkness, as our author clearly hints. That is why her changefulness is so significant symbolically: she is duplex and mutable like Mercurius, and is like, him a mediator; hence their identification in alchemy.131 Though Mercurius has a bright side concerning whose spirituality alchemy leaves us in no doubt, he also has a dark side, and its roots go deep. 
	20 	The quotation from Vigenerus bears no little resemblance to 
a long passage on the phases of the moon in Augustine.132 Speaking of the unfavourable aspect of the moon, which is her changeability, he paraphrases Ecclesiasticus 27: 12 with the words: "The wise man remaineth stable as the sun, but a fool is 129 Theatr. chem., VI, p. 17. Malchuth is also called moon (Kabb. denud. I, 1, pp. 195 and 501). Other cognomens are house and night, and in Joseph Gikatila (Shaare ora) fountain, sea, stone, sapphire, tTp.e of knowledge, land of life. (This information was supplied by Dr. S. Hurwitz.) Malchuth is the "kingdom of God," described in the Zohar as Kenesseth Israel, "the mystical archetype of the community of Israel" (Scholem, p. 213). 
130 Cf. Rahner, "Mysterium Lunae," pp. 313lf. 131 Jung, "The Spirit Mercurius," par. 273. 
132 Epistola LV, 7f. (CSEL, XXXIV, pp. 176f.) 
25 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTlONIS 
changed as the moon," 133 and poses the question: "Who then is that fool who changeth as the moon, but Adam, in whom all have sinned?" 134 For Augustine, therefore, the moon is manifestly an ally of corruptible creatures, reflecting their folly and inconstancy. Since, for the men of antiquity and the Middle Ages, comparison with the stars or planets tacitly presupposes astrological causality, the sun causes constancy and wisdom, while the moon is the cause of change and folly (including lunacy).135 Augustine attaches to his remarks about the moon a moral observation concerning the relationship of man to the spiritual sun,136 just as Vigenerus did, who was obviously acquainted with Augustine's epistles. He also mentions (Epistola LV, 10) the Church as Luna, and he connects the moon with the wounding by an arrow: "\\Thence it is said: They have made ready their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the darkness of the moon at the upright of heart." 137 It is clear that Augustine did not understand the wounding as the activity of the new moon herself but, in accordance with the principle "omne malum ab homine," as the result of man's wickedness. All the same, the addition "in obscura luna," for which there is no warrant in the original text, shows how much the new moon is involved. This hint of the admitted dangerousness of the moon is confirmed 
133 The Vulgate has: "Homo sanctus in sapientia manet sicut sol, nam stultus sicut luna mutatur" (DV: "A holy man continueth in wisdom as -the sun, but a fool is changed as the moon"). 
134 "Quis ergo est iIIe stultus, qui tamquam luna mutatur, nisi Adam, in quo omnes peccaverunt?" 
135 Sol corresponds to the conscious man, Luna to the unconscious one, i.e., to his anima. 
136 "For man's soul, when it turns away from the sun of righteousness, that is, from inward contemplation of the unchangeable truth, turns all its strength to earthly things, and thereby is darkened more and more in its inward and higher parts; but when it begins to return to that unchangeable wisdom, the more it dra}Vs nigh thereto in loving affection, the more is the outward man corrupted, but the inward man is renewed from day to day; and all that light of natural disposition, which was turned towards lower things, is directed to the higher, and in a certain wise is taken away from things of earth, that it may die more and more to this world and its life be hid with Christ in God." • (CSEL, XXXIV, p. 178.) 
137 "Unde est illud: Paraverunt sagittas suas in pharetra, ut sagittent in obscura lu~a rectos corde." The Vulgate, Psalm 10: 3, has only "in obscura" (DV: "For behold, the wicked bend their bow, they fit the arrow to the string, to shoot in the darkness at the upright of heart"). Cf. the "arrows drunk with blood" in Aurora Consurgens, p. 67. 
26 

u 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTlO 
when Augustine, a few sentences later on, cites Psalm 71 : 7: "In his days justice shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon shall be destroyed." 138 Instead of the strong "interficiatur" the Vulgate has the milder "auferatur"-shall be taken away or fail.139 The violent way in which the moon is removed is eXplained by the interpretation that immediately follows: 
"That is, the abundance of peace shall grow until it consumes all changefulness of mortality." From this it is evident that the moon's nature expressly partakes of the "changefulness of mortality," which is equivalent to death, and therefore the text continues: "For then the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, and whatever resists us on account of the weakness of the flesh shall be utterly consumed." Here the destruction of the moon is manifestly equivalent to the destruction of death. 140 The moon and death significantly reveal their affinity. Death came into the world through original sin and the seductiveness of woman (= moon), and mutability led to corruptibility. 141 To eliminate the moon from Creation is therefore .as desirable as the elimination of death. This negative assessment of the moon takes full account of her dark side. The "dying" of the Church is also connected with the mystery of the moon's darkness.l42 Augustine's cautious and perhaps not altogether unconscious disguising of the sinister aspect of the moon would be sufficiently eXplained by his respect for the Ecclesia-Luna equation. 
All the more ruthlessly, therefore, does alchemy insist on the dangerousness of the new moon. Luna is on the one hand the brilliant whiteness of the full moon, on the other hand she is the blackness of the new moon, and especially the blackness of the eclipse, when the sun is darkened. Indeed, what she does to 138 "Orietur, inquit, in diebus eius justitia et abundantia pacis, quoad usque interficiatur [una." 
139 DV; "In his days justice shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon shall faiL" 
140 Augustine further remarks that the name "Jericho" means "moon" in Hebrew, and that the walls of this city, the "walls of mortal life," collapsed (EPis t., LV, 10). 
141 According to Origen, the sun and the moon were involved in the Fall (Peri Archon, I, 7, 4). Cited in Rahner, "Mysterium Lunae," p. 327. 
142 Rahner (p. 314) speaks very .lptly of the "mystical darkness of its (the moon's, i.e., the Church's) union with Christ" at the time of the new moon, the latter signifying the "dying" Church. 
27 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 
the sun comes from her own dark nature. The "Consilium coniugii" 143 tells us very clearly what the alchemists thought about Luna: 
The lion, the lower sun,144 grows corrupt through the flesh. [His flesh is weak because he suffers from "quartan fever." 145] Thus is the lion 146 corrupted in his nature through his flesh, which follows the times of the moon,147 and is eclipsed. For the moon is the shadow of the sun, and with corruptible bodies she is consumed, and through her corruption is the lion eclipsed with the help of the moisture of Mercurius,148 yet his eclipse is changed to usefulness and to a better nature, and one more perfect than the first. 
The changefulness of the moon and her ability to grow dark are interpreted as her corruptibility, and this negative quality can even darken the sun. The text continues: 
During the increase, that is during the fullness of the blackness of the lead, which is our ore, my light 149 is absent, and my splendour is put out. 
Then comes a passage which may have inspired the picture of the death of the royal pair in the Rosarium} but which is also significant as regards the dark side of the conjunction of Sol and Luna: 150 
143 First printing in Ars chemica (1566), p. 136. 
144 The text has "id est Sol inferius," and so has the later printing of 1622 (Theatr. chem., V, p. 515) as well as' Manget's Bibl. chem. (II, p. 248a). It could therefore mean "the sun below." This would presumably be a "subterranean sun" equivalent to the Sol niger (Mylius, Phil. ref., p. Ig, and Ripley, Chymische SchrifJten, p. 51). 
145 The quartan fever occurs every fourth day. The text has here: "For on every fourth day he naturally suffers from a quartan fever." • 
146 Leo, as the domicilium solis, stands for the sun, i.e., for the active (red) Mercurius. 
147 "Per carnem suam sibi contemporaneam Lunarem vilescit." The original Arabic text of Senior (De chemia, p. g) has "canem" instead of "carnem." The dog is Hecate's animal and pertains to the moon (pars. 174ff.). In Manichaeism it is said of the Original Man and his sons, who descended into matter, that "consciousness was taken from them, and they became like one who is bitten by a mad dog or a snake" (Theodore bar Konai, cited in Reitzenstein and Schaeder, Studien zurn antiken Synkretismus ous Iran und Griechenland, p. 343)' 
148 The aqua permanens. 
149 Sol is speaking. 
150 "Consilium coniugii," pp. 141f.· 
28 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
After this 151 is completed, you will know that you have the substance which penetrates all substances, and the nature which contains nature, and the nature which rejoices in nature.152 It is named the Tyriac 153 of the Philosophers, and it is also called the poisonous serpent, because, like this, it bites off the head of the male in the lustful heat of conception, and giving birth it dies and is divided through the midst. So also the moisture of the moon,154 when she receives his light, slays the sun, and at the birth of the child of the Philosophers she dies likewise, and at death the two parents yield up their souls to the son, and die and pass away. And the parents are the food of the son ••• 
	12 	In this psychologem all the implications of the Sol-Luna 
allegory are carried to their logical conclusion. The daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon, or with her position midway between heaven and the sublunary world,155 displays its full effect. Sun and moon reveal their antithetical nature, which in the Christian Sol-Luna relationship is so obscured as to be unrecognizable, and the two opposites cancel each other out, their impact resulting-in accordance with the laws of energetics-in the birth of a third and new thing, a son who resolves the antagonisms of the parents and is himself a "united double nature." The unknown author of the "Consilium" 156 was not conscious of the close connection of his psy- 
151 The preceding passage runs: " ... let the residual body, which is called earth, be reduced to ashes, from which the tincture is extracted by means of water ... Then join it to its head and tail." • This refers to the production of the uroboros as the arcane substance that changes the natures. 
152 This is the well-known formula of Democritus. Berthelot, A lch. grecs, II, i, 3: 
"Nature rejoices in nature, nature subdues nature, nature rules over nature."· 153 Tyria tinctura or Tyrius color (Turba, Sermo XIV), laPis tyrii coloris (Sermo XXI, XXVII). "Thus we call our Tyrian (colour) at each step of the procedure by the name of its colour"· (Sermo LXII). "This is the red sulphur, shining in the darkness; and it is the red jacinth, and the fiery and death-dealing poison, and the conquering Lion, and the evil-doer, and the cleaving sword, and the Tyrian (tincture) which heals all infirmities"· (Theatr. chem., V, p. 705)' Tyriaca is identical with Theriaca, which is none other than the arcane substance. 
154 Luna sends the dew. 
155 Where the aerial realm of the demons and Satan begins. 
156 Schmieder (Geschichte der Alchemie, p. 106) thinks the author was an Arab of the 13th cent. The fact that the author took over carnem / canem, a mistake possible only in Latin, shows, however, that he must have been one of the early Latinists. 
29 

MYSTERlUM CONlUNCTIONIS 
chologem with the process of transubstantiation, although the last sentence of the text contains clearly enough the motif of teoqualo) the "god-eating" of the Aztecs.157 This motif is also found in ancient Egypt. Yhe Pyramid text of Unas (Vth dynasty) says: "Unas rising as a soul, like a god who liveth upon his fathers and feedeth upon his mothers." 158 It should be noted how alchemy put in the place of the Christian sponsus and sponsa an image of totality that on the one hand was material, and on the other was spiritual and corresponded to the Paraclete. In addition, there was a certain trend in the direction of an Ecclesia spiritualis. The alchemical equivalent of the GodMan and the Son of God was Mercurius, who as an hermaphrodite contained in himself both the feminine element, Sapientia and matter, and the masculine, the Holy Ghost and the devil. There are relations in alchemy with the Holy Ghost Movement which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was chiefly connected with the name of Joachim of Flora (11451202), who expected the imminent coming of the "third kingdom," namely that of the Holy Ghost.159 
	211 	The alchemists also represented the "eclipse" as the descent 
of the sun into the (feminine) Mercurial Fountain,lOo or as the disappearance of Gabricus in the body of Beya. Again, the sun in the embrace of the new moon is treacherously slain by the snake-bite (conatu viPerino) of the mother-beloved, or pierced by the telum passion is) Cupid's arrow.161 These ideas explain the strange picture in Reusner's Pandora) 162 showing Christ being pierced with a lance by a crowned virgin whose body ends in a 
157 Cf. Bernardino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 3: The Origin of the Gods (trans. by Anderson and Dibble), pp. Sf.; also "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," p. 224. 
158 Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, I, p. 45. 159 Cf. my account in Aion, pars. 137ff., 232ff. 
lOO Cf. the Koran, Sura 18 (trans. by Dawood, p. 96), "the sun setting in a pool of black mud." 
161 Ripley, Opera omnia, p. 423. "Consilium coniugii," Ars chemica, p. 186: "He slew himself with his own dart." "Rosinus ad Sarrat.," Art. aurif., I, p. 293: 
"Who with an arrow from our quiver bound together, that is, joined in one body, wretched me, that is, I who possess the matter of Mercury and the Moon ... and my beloved, that is, the fatness of the Sun with the moisture of the Moon." • 162 1588 edn., p. 249. The picture is reproduced in my ~'Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," fig. B4. 
30 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONlUNCTIO 
serpent's taiJ.163 The oldest reference to the mermaid in alchemy is a quotation from Hermes in Olympiodorus: "The virginal earth is found in the tail of the virgin." 164 On the analogy of the wounded Christ, Adam is shown in the Codex Ashburnham pierced in the side by an arrow.l65 
	24 	This motif of wounding is taken up by Honorius of Autun 
in his commentary on the Song of Songs.166 "Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck" (DV).l67 The sponsa says (I : 4): "I am black, but comely," and (1 : 5) "Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath scorched me." This allusion to the nigredo was not missed by the alchemists.168 But there is another and more dangerous reference to the bride in 6: 4f.: "Thou art beautiful, 0 my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me ... 10: Who is this that looketh forth as the rising dawn [quasi aurora consurgens],169 fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?" 170 The bride is not only lovely 163 The drawing of this tail is certainly odd, and one wonders whether it represent~ water (?) or steam (?). The prototype of the picture can be found in the so-called Drivaltigkeitsbuch, fol. 2r. (Codex Gennanicus Monacensis 598, 15th cent.) as well as in the Codex Germ. Alch. Vad., 16th cent. There she has a proper snake's tail One text describes the vapours as arrows ("Consil. coniug.," p. 127). Cf. the eagle~ armed with arrows in the picture of Hermes Trismegistus from Senior (Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 128). 
164 Berthelot, Alch. grecs, n, iv, 24.· 
165 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 131. 166 Migne, PL., vol. 172, col. 419. 
167 "Vulnerasti cor meum soror mea sponsa. Vulnerasti cor meum in uno oculorurr tuorum et in uno crine colli tui." The correct translation is [as in A V]: "Thou hasl ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one 01 thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck." 
168 Cf. Aurora Consurgens, p. 133. 
169 Here is, significantly enough, the source of the title of that mysterious treatist discussed in von Franz, Aurora Consurgens, which complements the present work 170 A V mod.· A more exact translation of the original text would be "terrible a~ a host of armies." The Hebrew word nidgiilOt is read by recent commentators a~ nirgiilot, plural of Nirgal or Nergal. The Babylonian Nergal was the god of wa: and the underworld, the Lord of spirits, and the god of the midday heat of sum mer. Wittekindt (Das Hohe Lied und seine Beziehungen zum lStarkult, p. 8) there fore translates "terrible as the planets." "Evidently the opposites in the figure 0 Istar are meant. ... She is the gracious goddess of love and beauty, but she i also warlike, a slayer of men" (p. g). On account of his magic. even greater con 
31 

and innocent, but witch-like and terrible, like the side of Selene that is related to Hecate. Like her, Luna is "all-seeing," an "allknowing" eye. m Like Hecate she sends madness, epilepsy, and other sicknesses. Her special field is love magic, and magic in general, in which the new moon, the full moon, and the moon's darkness play a great pan. The animals assigned to her-stag, lion, and cock l72-are also symbols of her male partner in alchemy. As the chthonic Persephone her animals, according to Pythagoras, are dogs,173 i.e., the planets. In alchemy Luna herself appears as the "Armenian bitch." 174 The sinister side of the moon plays a considerable role in classical tradition. 
	15 	The sponsa is the dark new moon-in Christian interpreta- 
tion the Church in the nuptial embrace 175-and this union is at the same time a wounding of the sponsus, Sol or Christ. Honorius comments on "Thou hast wounded my heart" as follows: 
By heart is signified love, which is said to be in the heart, and the container is put in the place of the contained; and this metaphor is taken from the lover who loves his beloved exceeding much, so that his heart is wounded with love. So was Christ upon the cross wounded for love of his Church: 176 "Thou didst first wound my heart when I was scourged for thy love, that I might make thee my sister. ... Again thou didst wound my heart with one of thine 
sideration should be given to the underworld aspect of Nergal as the Lord of spirits. Cf. Morris Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, I, pp. 361, 467. The reading nirgiilOt is also accepted by Haller (Das Hohe Lied, p. 40). Hebrew d and r are very easily confused. 
171 Roscher, Lexikon, 11, col. 3138. 
172 Ibid., col. 3185. 
173 Ibid. 
] 74 Cf. infra, par. 174; also "The Psychology of the Transference," par. 458, n. 4. 175 In Cabalistic interpretation she is Israel, bride of the Lord. Thus the Zohar says: "And when is he (God) called One? Only at that hour when the matrona (= Malchuth) will pair with the King, and 'the kingdom will belong to God,' as is said. What is meant by kingdom? It is the children of Israel, for the King unites himself with her, as is said: 'On that day God is known ... as One.' " 
176 Augustine (Sermo suppositus, 120, 8) says: "Like a bridegroom Christ went forth from his chamber, he went out with a presage of his nuptials into the field of the world .... He came to the marriage bed of the cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up to the torment in the place of his bride, ... and he joined the woman to himself for ever." - 
32 

1.111..1"; l,;UMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
eyes 177 when, hanging upon the cross, I was wounded for love of thee, that I might make thee my bride to share my glory." 178 
	26 	The moment of the eclipse and mystic marriage is death on 
the cross. In the Middle Ages the cross was therefore logically understood as the mother. Thus in the Middle English "Dispute between Mary and the Cross," the cross is a "false tree" that destroyed Mary's fruit with a deadly drink. She laments: "My sonys stepmodir I thee calle." Sancta Crux replies: 
Lady, to thee I owe honour ... 
Thi fruyt me florysschith in blood colour.179 
	27 	The motif of wounding in alchemy goes back to Zosimos (3rd 
cent.) and his visions of a sacrificial drama.18o The motif does not occur in such complete form again. One next meets it in the Turba: "The dew is joined to him who is wounded and given over to death." 181 The dew comes from the moon, and he who is wounded is the sun.182 In the treatise of Philaletha, "Introitus apertus ad occlusum Regis palatium," 183 the wounding is caused 177 It is remarkable that in ancient Egypt as well the eye is connected with the hierosgamos of the gods. The first day of autumn (i.e., of the dwindling sun) is celebrated in the Heliopolitan inscriptions as the "feast day of the goddess Yusasit," as the "arrival of the sister who makes ready to unite herself with her father," On that day "the goddess Mehnit completes her work, so that the god Os iris may enter into the left eye," Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 286. 
178 Honorius, loco cit. - The wounding of the Redeemer by love is an idea that gave rise to some curious images among the later mystic writers. The following is from a Libellus Desideriorum Joannis Amati: "I have learnt an art, and have become an archer, good intention is my bow and the ceaseless desires of my soul are the arrows. The bow is spanned continually by the hand of God's gracious help, and the Holy Ghost teaches me to shoot the arrows straight to heaven. God grant that I may learn to shoot better, and one day hit the Lord Jesus." Held, Angelus Silesius: Siimtliche Poetische Werke, I, p. 141. 
179 Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, pp. 19711. 
180 Berthelot, Alch. grecs, Ill, i-vi. The aspect of killing is discussed in my "The Visions of Zosimos," pars. 9111., and the sacrificial death in "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," pars. 37611. 
181 Ruska, Turba, Sermo 58, p. 161.- 
182 Hg (the alchemical "dew") "penetrates" the gold (sun) by amalgamation. 
183 The treatise is supposed to have been written in 1645. Printed in Mus. herm., pp. 64711. (Waite, 11, pp. 16511.). The name of the author, Eirenaeus Philaletha, is a pseudonym ("peaceful lover of truth"); the real author is conjectured to be the English alchemist Thomas Vaughan (1621-65)-incorrectly, it seems to me. See Waite, The Works of Thomas Vaughan, pp. xivll., and Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica, 11, p. 194. 
33 

M Yl>l~KIUM \..VNIUN\..llVNll> 
by the bite of the rabid "Corascene" dog,184 in consequence of which the hermaphrodite child suffered from hydrophobia. m Dorn, in his "De tenebris contra naturam," associates the motif of wounding and the poisonous snake-bite with Genesis 3: "For the sickness introduced into nature by the serpent, and the deadly wound she inflicted, a remedy is to be sought." 186 Accordingly it is the task of alchemy to root out the original sin, and this is accomplished with the aid of the balsamum vitae (balsam of life), which is "a true mixture of the natural heat with its radical moisture." "The life of the world is the light of nature and the celestial sulphur,187 whose substance is the aetheric moisture and heat of the firmament, like to the sun and moon." 188 The conjunction of the moist (= moon) and the hot (= sun) thus produces the balsam, which is the "original and incorrupt" life of the world. Genesis 3 : 15, "he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (RSV), was generally taken as a prefiguration of the Redeemer. But since Christ was free from the stain of sin the wiles of the serpent could not touch him, though of course mankind was poisoned. Whereas the Christian belief is that man is freed from sin by the redemptory act of Christ, the alchemist was evidently of the opinion that the "restitution to the likeness of original and incorrupt nature" had still to be accomplished by the art, and this can only mean that Christ's work of redemption was regarded as incomplete. In 184 See infra, par. 174. 
185 Mus. herm., p. 658: "This is the infant Hermaphrodite, who from his very cradle has been bitten by the mad Corascene dog, wherefore he rages in madness with perpetual fear of water (hydrophobia)." - (See infra, pars. 176f.) The "rabid black dog" is chased away "with water and blows," and "thus will the darkness be dispelled." From this it can be seen that the mad dog represents the nigredo and thus, indirectly, the dark new moon, which eclipses the sun (cf. Senior, De chemia, p. g: "Leo decays, weakened by the dog [flesh]"). - The "infant" would correspond to the raging Attis, KaT'rJ<Ph iJ.KOU<f/J-a 'Pia~, "the dark rumour of Rhea," "whom the Assyrians call thrice-desired Adonis," the son-lover who dies young (Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, g, 8). According to the legend of Pessinus, Agdistis (Cybele), the mother of Attis, was herself hermaphroditic at first but was castrated by the gods. She drove Attis mad, so that he did the same thing to himself at his wedding. Zeus made his body incorruptible, and this forms the parallel to the incorruptibilitas of the alchemical "infant." Cf. Pausanias, DescriPtion of Greece, VII, 17 (Frazer trans., Ill, pp. 266f.). 
186 Theatr. chem., I, p. 518.- 
187 Lux naturae and caeleste sulPhur are to be understood as identical. 188 Theatr. chem., I, p. 518.- 
34 

I. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
view of the wickednesses which the "Prince of this world," 189 undeterred, goes on perpetrating as liberally as before, one cannot withhold all sympathy from such an opinion. For an alchemist who professed allegiance to the Ecclesia spiritualis it was naturally of supreme importance to make himself an "unspotted vessel" of the Paraclete and thus to realize the idea "Christ" on a plane far transcending a mere imitation of him. It is tragic to see how this tremendous thought got bogged down again and again in the welter of human folly. A shattering example of this is afforded not only by the history of the Church, but above all by alchemy itself, which richly merited its own condemnation -in ironical fulfilment of the dictum "In sterquiliniis invenitur" (it is found in cesspools). Agrippa von Nettesheim was not far wrong when he opined that "Chymists are of all men the most perverse." 190 
	28 	In his "Mysterium Lunae," an extremely valuable study for 
the history of alchemical symbolism, Rahner 191 mentions that the "waxing and waning" of the bride (Luna, Ecclesia) is based on the kenosis 192 of the bridegroom, in accordance with the words of St. Ambrose: 193 
Luna is diminished that she may fill the elements. Therefore is this a great mystery. To her it was given by him who confers grace upon all things. He emptied her that he might fill her, as he also emptied himself that he might fill all things. He emptied himself that he might come down to us. He came down to us that he might rise again for all. ... Thus has Luna proclaimed the mystery of Christ.194 
	189 John 12 : 31. 	190 The Vanity of Arts and Sciences (anon. trans.), p. 315'- 
191 Zeitschrift fur kath. Theol., LXIII, p. 431. 192 = emptying. See next paragraph. 
193 Hexameron, IV, 8, 32 (Migne, P.L., vol. 14, col. 204).- 
194 Prof. Rahner was kind enough to send me the following explanation: "The fundamental idea of the theologians is always this: the earthly fate of the Church as the body of Christ is modelled on the earthly fate of Christ himself. That is to say the Church, in the course of her history, moves towards a death, as well in her individual members (here is the connecting-link with the doctrine of 'mortification') as in her destiny as a whole, until the last day when, after fulfilling her earthly task, she becomes 'unnecessary' and 'dies,' as is indicated in Psalm 71 : 7: 'until the moon shall fail: These ideas were expressed in the symbolism of Luna as the Church. Just as the kenosis of Christ was fulfilled in death, even death on the cross (Phil. 2 : 8), and out of this death the 'glory' of the divine nature (2 : gf.) was bestowed on Christ's 'form as a servant' (2 : 7), whence this whole process can be compared with the setting (death) of the sun and its rising anew (glory), even so it is with the parallel kenosis of Ecclesia-Luna. The closer Luna approaches to 
35 

M Y~T-"KIUM l.;UNIUNCTIONIS 
	29 	Thus the changefulness of the moon is paralleled by the 
transformation of the pre-existent Christ from a divine into a human figure through the "emptying," that passage in Philippians (2 : 6) which has aroused so much comment: " ... who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be dung to, but emptied himself, taking the fotm of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (RSV / DV).105 Even the most tortuous explanations of theology have never improved on the lapidary paradox of St. Hilary: "Deus homo, immortalis mortuus, aeternus sepultus" (God-man, immortaldead, eternal-buried).106 According to Ephraem Syrus, the kenosis had the reverse effect of unburdening Creation: "Because the creatures were weary of bearing the prefigurations of his glory, he disburdened them of those prefigurations, even as he had disburdened the womb that bore him." 107 
the sun~ the more is she darkened until, at the conjunction of tile new moon;-aIl her light is 'emptied' into Christ, the sun. (It is well worth noting that just at this point Augustine speaks of the strange speculations of the Manichaeans about the two 'light-ships,' when the ship of Luna pours out its light into the ship of the sun, EPistola 55, iv, 6.) Augustine now applies this to the individual Christians of whom the Ecclesia is composed. The remarkable paradox of Luna, that she is darkest when nearest the sun, is a symbol of Christian asceticism: 'The more the inward man draws nigh to the sun, the more is the outward man destroyed, but the inward man is renewed from day to day' (a variation of II Cor. 4 : 16). That is, the Christian dies like Luna and his life is 'hid with Christ in God' (Coloss. 3 : 3)' All this Augustine says in EPistola 55, v, 8. Afterwards he applies it to the Church and her destiny (EPistola 55, vi, 10): she will vanish into Christ, the sun, at the end of time: 'donec interficiatur Luna.' Augustine here translates the aVTavaLpEOii of Psalm 71: 7 by 'interficiatur'; in his Enarratio in Ps. 7I (Migne, P.L., vol. 36, cols. 907f.) he expatiates on the translation of this Greek word and there renders it by 'tollatur' (is removed) and 'auferatur' (taken away). The doctrine implied in all these passages is that the Church in her future glory ceases her work of salvation, which is destined only for the earth, and that she is totally eclipsed by the splendour of Christ the sun, because (and this again is a strange paradox) in the resurrection of the flesh she herself has become the 'full moon: and indeed the ·sun.' 'Permanebit cum Sole,' she 'shall live while the sun endures,' as Ps. 71: 5 (RSV 72 : 5) says." 
195 "Os EV /LOp<pii OEOU iJ1rapXwv OVX ap7f'a'Y/Lov -r,'Y~qaTO TO elvaL Lua OEo/ aAAa: <a.UTOV <1C€VWqEV /LOP<P?]V 50UAOU Aaf3wv. 
196 De trinitate, I, 13 (Migne, PL., vol. 10, col. 35)' The passage says literally: 
"Hence, just as the truths that God became man, that the Immortal died, that the Et!rnal was buried, do not belong to the order of the rational intellect but are an exceptional work of power, so it ;s an effect not of intellect but of omnipotence that he who is man is likewise God, that he who died is immortal, that he who was 
	buried is eternal." • 	197 Hymni et Sermones (ed. Lamy), n, col. 802 .• 
36 

1. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTlO 
	30 	St. Ambrose's reference to the kenosis makes the changing 
of the moon causally dependent on the transformation of the bridegroom. The darkening of Luna then depends on the sponsus, Sol, and here the alchemists could refer to the darkening of the beloved's countenance in Song of Songs I : 4-5. The sun, too, is equipped with darts and arrows. Indeed, the secret poisoning that otherwise emanates from the coldness and moisture of the moon is occasionally attributed to the "cold dragon," who contains a "volatile fiery spirit" and "spits flames." Thus in Emblem L of the Scrutinium J!lk he is given a masculine role: he wraps the woman in the grave in a deadly embrace. The same thought OCCllrs again in Emblem V, where a toad is laid on the breast of the woman so that she, sllckling it, may die as it groWS.109 The toad is a cold and damp animal like the dragon. lt "empties" the woman as though the moon were pouring herself into the sun.200 
4. ALCHE:\1Y A~D MANICHAEIS;\1 
	31 	At the beginning of the last section I mentioned the term 
"orphan" for the lapis. Here the motif of the unknown or absent father seems to be of special importance. Mani is the best-known example of the "son of the widow." His original name was said to be KOVj3pLKO, (Cubricus); later he changed it to Manes, a BabyIonian word meaning "vessel." 201 As a four-year-old boy he was sold as a slave to a rich widow. She came to love him, and later adopted him and made him her heir. Together with her wealth he inherited the "serpent's poison" of his doctrine-the four books of Scythianos, the original master of his adoptive father Terebinthos, named "Budda." 202 Of this Scythianos there is a 198 Maier, Scrut. chymicum, p. 148. 
199 Ibid., p. 13, from "Tractatulus Aristotelis," Art. aurif., I, p. 369. 
200 CL the Manichaean idea of the moon emptying her "soul-content" into the sun. 201 Epiphanius, Panm'ium, LXVI, 1 (cd. by Holl), Ill, pp. 14f.; Hegemonius, Acta Archelai (ed. by Beeson), LXII; Socrates Scholasticlls, The Ecclesiastical History, I, 22; Theodoret, Haereticarum fabularul/l compendiuln, I, 26 (Migne, P.G., vo!. 83, col. 378). 
202 This might be a reference to Buddhism. The Manichaean theory of metempsychosis may possibly come from the same source. Scythianos is said to have travelled to India. According to Suidas, Lexikon (ed, by Adler, part 3, p. 318), ScythianosManes was a BpaX/Lav'1< (Brahman). Cr. also Cedrenus, Historiarum compendium, I, 456 (Migne, P.G., vol. 121, co!. 498). 
37 

MYSTJ<:KIUM CUNIUNCTIUNiS 
legendary biography which equates him with Simon Magus; 203 like him, he is said to have come to Jerusalem at the time of the apostles. He propounded a dualistic doctrine which, according to Epiphanius,204 was concerned with pairs of opposites: "white and black, yellow and green, moist and dry, heaven and earth, night and day, soul and body, good and evil, right and wrong." From these books Mani concocted his pernicious heresy which poisoned the nations. "Cubricus" is very like the alchemical Kybrius,205 Gabricus,206 Kibrich,207 Kybrich, Kibric,208 Kybrig, Kebrick,209 Alkibric,21O Kibrit,211 Kibrith,212 Gabricius, Gabrius,213 Thabritius, Thabritis,214 and so on.215 The Arabic word kibrit means sulphur. 
	32 	In the Aurora consurgens "sulphur nigrum" stands side by 
side with "vetula," the first being a synonym for spirit and the second for soul. Together they form a pair roughly comparable to the devil and his grandmother. This relationship also occurs in Rosencreutz's Chymical Wedding,216 where a black king sits beside a veiled old woman. The "black sulphur" is a pejorative name for the active, masculine substance of Mercurius and points to its dark, saturnine nature, which is evil.217 This is the wicked Moorish king of the Chymical Wedding, who makes the king's daughter his concubine (meretrix), the "Ethiopian" of other treatises,218 analogous to the "Egyptian" in the "Passio 
203 Cyril of Jerusalem, Katechesis, VI, 21 (Opera, ed. by Reischl, I, p. 185)' 
204 Panarium, LXVI, 2 (ed. by Holl, Ill, p. 18). 
	205 Rulandus, Lexicon, p. 187. 	206 Art. aurif., II, p. 246. 
207 "Maria Prophetissa," Art. aurif., I, p. 321. 208 "Scala philosophorum," ibid., II, p. 116. 
209 Reusner, Pandora, p. 297, interpreted as "arsenic," i.e., the active masculine element, from /1.PP'T/V or /1.pq'T/v, 
210 Petrus de Silento, "Opus," Theatr. chem., IV, p. 1114. 
211 Anthonius de Abbatia, Epistolae duae, in Roth-Scholtz, Deutsches Theatrum 
	Chemicum, Ill, p. 703. 	212 Pernety, Dict. mytho-hermetique, p. 233. 
	213 Ibid., p. 179. 	214 "Visio Arislei," Art. aurif., I, pp. 147f. 
215 The name "Cubricus" for Mani has so far not been satisfactorily explained. Cf. Schaeder, Urform und Fortbildungen des manich. Systems, pp. 88f, n. 
216 Trans. by Foxcroft, p. 162. 
217 Cf. my "Spirit Mercurius," pars. 271, 276. 
218 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 484. Also Aurora Consurgens, p. 57: " ... the shadow of death, for a tempest hath overwhelmed me; then before me shall the Ethiopians fall down and my enemies shall lick my earth." • Cf. Origen, De oratione, 27, 12 (Migne, P.G., vol. 11, cols. 514f.): "He who participates in 'the 
38 

J.. J.nJ:. \..oVlnrVl"1.r..l~l.:) U.l" Itl.r.. LVl .•••• lUl"l\...11V 
Perpetuae," 219 who from the Christian point of view is the devil. He is the activated darkness of matter, the umbra Solis (shadow of the sun), which represents the virginal-maternal prima materia. When the doctrine of the "Increatum" 220 began to play a role in alchemy during the sixteenth century, it gave rise to a dualism which might be compared with the Manichaean teaching.221 
	S3 	In the Manichaean system matter (hyle) is personified by the 
dark, fluid, human body of the evil principle. As St. Augustine says, the substance of evil "had its own hideous and formless bulk, either gross which they called earth, or thin and tenuous like the air; for they imagine it to be some malignant mind creeping over the earth." 222 The Manichaean doctrine of the Anthropos shares the dual form of its Christ figure with alchemy, in so far as the latter also has a dualistic redeemer: Christ as saviour of man (Microcosm), and the lapis Philosophorum as saviour of the Macrocosm. The doctrine presupposes on the one hand a Christ incapable of suffering (impatibilis), who takes care of souls, and on the other hand a Christ capable of suffering (Patibilis),223 whose role is something like that of a spiritus vegetativus, or of Mercurius.224 This spirit is imprisoned in the body of the princes of darkness and is freed as follows by angelic beings who dwell in the sun and moon: assuming alternately male and female form they excite the desires of the wicked and cause them to break out in a sweat of fear, which falls upon the 
dragon' is none other than 'the Ethiopian' spiritually, himself changed into a serpent."· (Alexandrian Christianity, trans. by Oulton and Chadwick, p. 301). Epiphanius, Panarium, XXVI, 16 (ed. by Holl, I, p. 296) speaks of the "Aethiopes denigrati peccato" (Ethiopians blackened by sin). 
219 Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitas, ed. by van Beek, pp. 26f. Cf. also M.-L. von Franz's "Passio Perpetuae," in Aion (Swiss edn., pp. 389ff.). 
220 Cf. Paracelsus, "Philosophia ad Athenienses" (Sudhoff. XIII, pp. 39of.); Dorn. "Physica genesis," Theatr. chem., I, p. 380, and Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 430ff. 
221 Cf. "the unbegotten father, the unbegotten earth, and the unbegotten air" of the Manichaeans (Augustine, De Actis cum Felice, I, 18; Migne, PL., vol. 42. col. 532), mentioned by Bardesanes and Marinus (Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 97) and by Hermogenes: "God created all things from coexistent and ungenerated matter," • (Hippolytus, Elenchos, VIII, 17, 1.) 
222 Confessions, V, 10 (trans. by Sheed. p. 75). 
223 Augustine, Reply to Faustus, XX, 2 (trans. by Stothert and -others. p. 253). 224 Wa1ch, Entwurf einer vollstiindigen Historie der Ketzereien, I, p. 753. 
39 

lVJY.:')1.1:.K.1U1V.1 \.....Vl~.1Ul~\....llVf'll~ 
earth and fertilizes the vegetation.225 In this manner the heavenly light-material is freed from the dark bodies and passes into plant form.226 
	34 	The inflammation by desire has its analogy in the alchemist's 
gradual warming of the substances that contain the arcanum: 
Here the symbol of the sweat-bath plays an important role, as the illustrations show.22i Just as for the Manichaeans the sweat of the archons signified rain,228 so for the alchemists sweat meant dew.229 In this connection we should also mention the 
225 Augustine, "The Nature of the Good," 44 (Earlier Writings, trans. by Burleigh, P·344)· 
226 Cf. Faust n, the angel scene at Faust's death. Mephistopheles is addressing the angels: 
"Us spirits you caIl damned, and look askance. 
Witch-masters, you, par exceIlence; For men and maid you lead astray. What an adventure curst and dire! Is this love's elemental game?" 
(Faust, Part Two, trans. by Wayne, p. 277.) 
22i Maier, Scrut. chymicum, pp. 82ft Laurentius Ventura, "De ratione conficiendi Lapidis," Theatr. chelll., n, p. 293: "The stone ... begins to sweat because of the narrowness of its prison." • 
228 Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, IX; "This prince sweats because of his tribulation, and his sweat is rain." • Christensen ("Les Types du premier Homme et du premier Roi dans l'histoire legendaire des Iraniens," p. 16) quotes from the Bundahisn (3, 19) that Ormuzd fashioned a "shining youth" from his sweat and that the first men were made from the sweat of Ymir (p. 35). According to Arabic tradition, Ormuzd sweated because of his "doubting thought" (cf. my "Answer to Job," par. 579); from this doubting thought came Ahriman, and from his sweat Gayomart. In ancient Egypt, the gods of the seasons brought forth the harvest with the sweat of Osiris' hands (Budge, Coptic ApocrYPha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, Intro., pp. Ixviif.). Dom ("Congeries Paraceisicae," Theatr. chem., I, p. 584) has the following remarkable passage on the lapis: "In its last operations ... a dark liquid, ruddy like blood, drips from the matter and its vessel; whence they predicted that in the last days there would come upon the earth a most pure man, through whom would be brought about the liberation of the world, and that he would give forth drops of blood of a rose-red hue, whereby the world would be redeemed from the fall." • Cf. my "The Philosophical Tree," pars. 383ff. 
229 "And Marcus says, They conceive in the baths, signifying the gentle and damp heat of the baths in which the stone sweats when it begins to dissolve" • ("Consil. coniugii," Ars chemica, p. 167.) This passage is a commentary on Senior, De chemia, p. 79. The "Epistola ad Hermannum," Theatr. chem., V, p. 894, says; "Then- the most perfect body is taken and applied to the fire of the Philosophers; then ... that body becomes moist, and gives forth a kind of bloody sweat after the putrefaction and mortification, that is, a Heavenly Dew, and this dew is caIled the Mercury of the Philosophers, or Aqua Permanens."· Cf. the Creator making 
4° 

1. THE COMPONENTS OF THE CONIUNCTIO 
strange legend reported in the Acta Archelai) concerning the apparatus which the "son of the living Father" invented to save human souls. He constructed a great wheel with twelve buckets which, as they revolved, scooped up the souls from the deep and deposited them on the moon-ship.2an In alchemy the rota is the symbol of the opus circulatoriurn. Like the alchemists, the Manichaeans had a "virago," the male virgin Joel,231 who gave Eve a certain amount of the light-substance.za2 The role she plays in regard to the princes of darkness corresponds to that of Mercurius duplex, who like her sets free the secret hidden in matter, the "light above all lights," the filius philosophorum. I would not venture to decide how much in these parallels is to be ascribed directly to Manichaean tradition, how much to indirect influence, and how much to spontaneous revival. 
	35 	Our starting-point for these remarks was the designation of 
the lapis as "orphan," which Dorn mentions apparently out of the blue when discussing the union of opposites. The material we have adduced shows what an archetypal drama of death and rebirth lies hidden in the coniunctio, and what immemorial human emotions clash together in this problem. It is the moral task of alchemy to bring the feminine, maternal background of the masculine psyche, seething with passions, into harmony with the principle of the spirit-truly a labour of Hercules! In Dorn's words: 
Learn therefore, 0 Mind, to practise sympathetic love in regard to thine own body, by restraining its vain appetites, that it may be apt with thee in all things. To this end I shall labour, that it may drink with thee from the fountain of strength,233 and, when the two are made one, that ye find peace in their union. Draw nigh, 0 Body, to this fountain, that with thy Mind thou mayest drink to satiety and hereafter thirst no more after vanities. 0 wondrous efficacy of this fount, which maketh one of two, and peace between enemies! The fount of love can make mind out of spirit and soul, but this maketh one man of mind and body.z34 
the first men out of sweat in Eliade (Shamanism, p. 334 n.), who mentions this in connection with the sweat-bath. 
230 Text in Psychology and Alchemy, par. 469, n. 110. 231 A parallel to Barbelo. 232 "And when it appears, it is as a comely woman to men, but to women it has the appearance of a beautiful and desirable youth." • (Acta Archelai, IX.) 
233 "Est hominum virtus fides vera" (the strength of man is true faith). Dorn, 
	"Speculativa philosophia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 298. 	234 Ibid., p. 229. 
41 

II 
THE P ARADOXA 
I. THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE AND THE POINT 
	36 	The tremendous role which the opposites and their union 
play in alchemy helps us to understand why the alchemists were so fond of paradoxes. In order to attain this union, they tried not only to visualize the opposites together but to express them in the same breath.1 Characteristically, the paradoxes cluster most thickly round the arcane substance, which was believed to contain the opposites in uncombined form as the prima materia, and to amalgamate them as the lapis Philosophorum. Thus the lapis 2 is called on the one hand base, cheap, immature, volatile, and on the other hand precious, perfect, and solid; or the prima materia is base and noble,3 or precious and parvi momenti (of little moment). The materia is visible to all eyes, the whole world sees it, touches it, loves it, and yet no one knows it.4 "This 
1 Cf. Bonus, "Pretiosa margarita novella," Theatr. chem., V, pp. 660f.: "The philosophers of old saw that this stone in its birth and sublimation ... could be compared in parables ... with all things that are in the_world, whether bodily or intellectual. Wherefore whatever they are able to say and declare concerning virtues and vices, concerning the heavens and all things corporeal or incorporeal, the creation of the world ... and of all the elements ... and concerning corruptible and incorruptible, visible and invisible things, spirit and soul and body ... and concerning life and death, good and evil, truth and falsehood, unity and multiplicity, poverty and riches, that which flies and that which flies not, war and peace, conqueror and conquered, toil and repose, sleep and waking, conception and birth, childhood and old age, male and female, strong and weak, white and red and all colours, hell and the pit and their darkness and their sulphurous fires, and also concerning paradise and its sublimity, its light and beauty, and its inestimable glory, and in short concerning those things that are and those that are not, those which may be spoken of and those which may not be spoken of, all these things they are able to say of this worshipful stone." - 
2 By "lapis" is meant both the initial material, the prima materia, and the endproduct of the opus, the lapis in its strict sense. 
3 Or again, the filius is "vilis et carior" (base and more dear). "Consil. coniugii," Ars chemica, p. 150. Cf. Senior, De chemia, p. 11. 
4 "Tractatus aureus," Mw. herm., p. 10 (Waite, I, p. 13). 
42 

n. THE P ARADOXA 
stone therefore is no stone," 5 says the Turba, "that thing is cheap and costly, dark, hidden, and known to everyone, having one name and many names." 6 The stone is "thousand-named" like the gods of the mystery religions, the arcane substance is "One and All" (~v TO ,niv). In the treatise of Komarios, where "the philosopher Komarios teaches the Philosophy to Cleopatra," it is said: "He showed with his hand the unity of the whole." 7 Pelagios asks: "Why speak ye of the manifold matter? The substance of natural things is one, and of one nature that which conquers all." 8 
	37 	Further paradoxes: "I am the black of the white and the red 
of the white and the yellow of the red"; 9 or "The principle of the art is the raven, who flies without wings in the blackness of night and in the brightness of day." 10 The stone is "cold and moist in its manifest part, and in its hidden part is hot and dry." 11 "In lead is the dead life," 12 or "Burn in water and wash in fire." 13 The "Allegoriae sapientum" speak of two figures, one of which is "white and lacking a shadow, the other red and lacking the redness." 14 A quotation from "Socrates" runs: "Seek the coldness of the moon and ye shall find the heat of the sun." 15 The opus is said to be "a running without running, moving without motion." 16 "Make mercury with mercury." 17 The philosophical tree has its roots in the air 18 (this is probably a reference to the tree of the Sefiroth). That paradox and ambivalence are the keynotes of the whole work is shown by The Chymical Wedding: over the main portal of the castle two words are written: "Congratulor, Condoleo." 19 
	38 	The paradoxical qualities of Mercurius have already been 
discussed in a separate study.20 As Mercurius is the principal 
/) Cf. the "body that is not a body," in "Rosinus ad Euthiciam," Art. aurif., I, P·249· 
6 Sermo XIII, Ruska, p. 122.- 
7 Berthclot, Alch. grecs, IV, xx, 3. (MS. 2252, Bibl. Nat., Paris.) 
	8 Ibid., IV, i. 7.- 	9 Ros. phil., Art. aurif., 11, p. 258. 
	10 "Tractatus aureus," Ars chemica, p. 12. 	11 Ros. phil., Art. aurif., 11, p. 259. 
	12 Mylius, Phil. ref., p. 269. 	13 Ros. phil., p. 269. 
	14 Theatr. chem., V, p. 67. 	15 Ibid., p. 87. 
16 "Tractatus Aristotelis," Theatr. chem., V, p. 886.- 
17 Khunrath, Von hylealischen Chaos .. p. 224, and others.18 "Gloria mundi," Mus. herm., p. 270 (Waite, I, p. 218). 19 Trans. by Foxcroft, p. 30. 
20 "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 255ff. 
43 

MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 
name for the arcane substance, he deserves mention here as the paradox par excellence. What is said of him is obviously true of the lapis, which is merely another synonym for the "thousandnamed" arcane substance. As the "Tractatus aureus de Lapide" says: "Our matter has as many names as there are things in the world." 21 The arcane substance is also synonymous with the Monad and the Son of Man mentioned in Hippolytus: 
Monolmos ... thinks that there is some such Man of whom the poet speaks as Oceanus, when he says: Oceanus, origin of gods and origin of men.22 Putting this into other words, he says that the Man is all, the source of the universe, unbegotten, incorruptible, everlasting; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten and capable of suffering, and whose birth is outside time, neither willed nor predetermined .... 23 This Man is a single Monad, uncompounded and indivisible, yet compounded and divisible; loving and at peace with all things yet warring with all things and at war with itself in all things; unlike and like itself, as it were a musical harmony containing all things; ... showing forth all things and giving birth to all things. It is its own mother, its own father, the two immortal names. The emblem of the whole man (TfA£LOV avOpw7I'ov), says Monoi'mos, is the jot or tittle.24 This one tittle is the uncompounded, simple, unmixed Monad, having its composition from nothing whatsoever, yet composed of many forms, of many parts. That single, undivided jot is the many-faced, thousand-eyed, and thousand-named jot of the iota. This is the emblem of that perfect and invisible Man .... The Son of the Man is the one iota, the one jot flowing from on high, full and filling all things, containing in himself everything that is in the Man, the Father of the Son of the Man.25 
21 Mus. herm., p. 10 (Waite, I, p. 13).· 
22 A condensation of the Iliad, XIV, 201 and 246: "I am going to the ends of the fruitful earth to visit Ocean, the forbear of the gods, and Mother Tethys ... even Ocean Stream himself, who is the forbear of them all." (Trans. by Rieu, pp. 262£.) 23 Elenchos VIII, 12, 2ff. (Cf. Legge trans., PhilosoPhumena, II, p. 107.) 
24 The iota, the smallest Greek character, corresponding to our "dot" (which did not exist in Greek). Cf. Luke 16: 17: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fall." • 
25 Elenchos VIII, 12, 5ff. (Legge, II, pp. 107f.). All this is a Gnostic paraphrase of John 1 and at the same time a meaningful exposition of the psychological self. In Jewish tradition Adam signifies, not a letter, but only the small hook at the top of the Yod ( ~ ). (Shaare Kedusha, Ill, 1, cited in Encycl. judai.ca, s.v. "Adam Kadmon.") 
44 

u. 1nL .l"'AKJUJVAA 
	39 	The alchemists seem to have visualized their lapis or prima 
materia in a similar manner. At any rate they were able to cap the paradoxes of Mono'imos. Thus they said of Mercurius: 
"This spirit is generated from the substances of the sea 28 and calls himself moist, dry, and fiery," 27 in close agreement with the invocation to Hermes in the magic papyrus entitled "The Secret Inscription," where Hermes is addressed as a "damp-fiery-cold spirit" (~ypo7I'Vptvo"'VXpbV 7I'V(vp.a).28 
	40 	The mystery of the smallest written sign, the point, is also 
known to alchemy. The point is the symbol of a mysterious creative centre in nature. The author of the "Novum lumen" 29 admonishes his reader: 
But you, dear reader, you will have above all to consider the point in nature ... and you need nothing else, but take care lest you seek that point in the vulgar metals, where it is not. For these metals, the common gold more especially, are dead. But our metals are alive, they have a spirit, and they are the ones you must take. For know that fire is the life of the metals. 
The point is identical with the prima materia of the metals, which is a "fatty water" (aqua pinguis), the latter being a product of the moist and the hot. 
	41 	John Dee (1527-1607) speculates as follows: "It is'not unrea- 
sonable to suppose, that by the four straight lines which run in opposite directions from a single, individual point, the mystery of the four elements is indicated." According to him, the quaternity consists of four straight lines meeting in a right angle. "Things and beings have their first origin in the point and the monad." 30 The centre of nature is "the point originated by God," 31 the "sun-point" in the egg.32 This, a commentary on the 
28 Pemety (Diet. mytho-hermetique, p. 293, s.v. "mer") says of the "sea" of the alchemists: "Their sea is found everywhere, and the sages navigate it with a calmness which is not altered by winds or tempests. Their sea in general is the four elements, in particular it is their mercury." Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 57, n. 1, and par. 265. For the "man from the sea" cf. II Esdras (Apoc.) 11 and 13, fifth and sixth visions. 
27 Mylius, Phil. ref., p. 192.· 
28 Pap. IV, lines 1115ff. Preisendanz, Pap. Graec. Magicae, I, p. 110. 29 Mus. herm., p. 559 (Waite, II, p. 89). 
30 "Monas hieroglyphica," Theatr. chem., II, p. 218 .• 31 Mus. herm., p. 59. 
32 "Consil. coniugii," Ars chemica, pp. 95 and 125: "Punctus Solis in medio rubeus" 
45 

lVlI;)l£.K.1UJ.V.l ••...• VJ,"'t.lU!"'t"-'.l.1Vl .... J..;) 
Turba says, is the "germ of the egg in the yolk." 33 Out of this little point, says Dorn in his "Physica Genesis," the wisdom of God made with the creative Word the "huge machine" of the world.34 The "Consilium coniugii" remarks that the point is the chick (PUllUS).35 Mylius adds that this is the bird of Hermes,36 or the spirit Mercurius. The same author places the soul in the "midpoint of the heart" together with the spirit, which he compares with the angel who was "infused with the soul at this point" (i.e., in the womb).37 Paracelsus says that the "anima iliastri" dwells in the fire in the heart. It is "incapable of suffering," whereas the "anima cagastris" is capable of suffering and is located in the water of the pericardium.3s Just as earth corresponds to the triangle and water to the line, so fire corresponds 
(the sun-point in the midst of the yolk). Yolk corresponds to fire. "In the midst of the yolk" is the quintum elementum, the quintessence, from which will grow the chick. Cf. Mylius, Phil. ref·, p. 145. 
33 "The sun-point is the germ of the egg, which is in the yolk, and that germ is set in motion by the hen's warmth." • Codex Berolinensis Latinus 532, fo!' 154v. Ruska, Turba, p. 94. 
34 Theatr. chem., I, p. 382: "0 wondrous wisdom, which by a word alone was able to bring into being every part of the vast and weighty mass of this huge machine that hath been made since the creation." • 
35 Ars chemica, p. 95. 
36 MyIius, Phil. ref., p. 131. 
37 P. 21. Here Mylius mentions the "crime of the spirit," from an anonymous treatise CLiber de arte chymica incerti authoris," Art. aurif., I, pp. 613f.). The crime of the spirit was that the spirit brought about the fall of the sou!. It says to the soul: "I will bring thee to eternal death, to hell and the house of darkness. To whom the soul: My spirit, why dost thou not return me to that breast wherefrom by flattery thou didst take me? I thought thou wert bound to me by necessity. But I am thy friend, and I will conduct thee to eternal glory." • "I will do so indeed, but alas, I am compelled to go away, though I will set thee above all precious stones and make thee blessed. Wherefore I beseech thee, when thou corn est to the throne of thy kingdom, be mindful sometimes of me." • This passage points fairly clearly to Luke 23 : 42: "Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." Accordingly the soul, as the laPis pretiosissimus, has the significance of a redeemer. The spirit, on the other hand, plays the role of the Gnostic Naas, the serpent who brought about the fall of our first parents. The text even says of it: "But if that spirit re· maineth with the soul and body, there is perpetual corruption there." • For this remarkable aspect of the spirit see my "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," sec. 3, and "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 264ff., also Aniela Jaffe's comments on "Phosphorus" in "Bilder und Symbole aus E. T. A. Hoffmanns Marchen 'Der Goldene Topf.' " Here the spirit obviously plays the role of a "Luciferian" (lightbringing) princiPium individuationis. 
3S Cf. my "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon," par. 201. 
46 

H. THE P ARADOXA 
to the point.39 Democritus stresses that fire consists of "fier} globules." 40 Light, too, has this round form, hence the designa· tion "sun-point." This point is on the one hand the world'5 centre, "the salt-point in the midst of the great fabric of the whole world," as Khunrath calls it (salt = Sapientia). Yet it is "not only the bond but also the destroyer of all destructible things." Hence this "world-egg is the ancient Saturn, the ... most secret lead of the sages," and the "ambisexual Philosophic Man of the Philosophers, the Catholick Androgyne of the Sophists," the Rebis, etc.H The most perfect form is round, because it is modelled on the point. The sun is round and so i5 fire, since it is composed of the "fiery globules" of Democritus. God fashioned the sphere of light round himself. "God is an in telligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circum ference is nowhere." 42 The point symbolizes light and fire, alsc the Godhead in so far as light is an "image of God" or an "exemplar of the Deity." This spherical light modelled on the point i5 also the "shining or illuminating body" that dwells in the heart of man. The light of nature is the "radical moisture" (humidum radicale) which, as "balsam," works from the heart, like the sun in the macrocosm and, we must conclude, like God in the "su· pracelestial world." Thus does Steeb describe the on)Tlpo~ (ho~, the "second God" in man.43 The same author derives the gold from the dew or supracelestial balsam sinking into the earth. Here he is probably referring to the older formulations of Maier,44 where the stin generates the gold in the earth. Hence the gold, as Maier says, obtains a "simplicity" approaching that of the circle (symbol of eternity) and the indivisible point. The gold has a "circular form." 45 "This is the line which runs back upon itself, like the snake that with its head bites its own tail, wherein that supreme and eternal painter and potter, God, ma}' rightly be discerned." 46 The gold is a "twice-bisected circle," i.e., one divided into four quadrants and therefore a quaternity, a division made by nature "that contraries may be bound together by contraries." 47 It can therefore, he says, be compared 
	39 Steeb, Coelum SePhiroticum, p. 19. 	40 Cf. Aristotle, De ani ma, I, 2. 
41 Von Hylealischen Chaos, pp. 194ff. 
42 Cf. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5 (trans. by James, p. 60).· 
	43 Coel. SePhir., pp. 19,33, 35ff., 117. 	44 De circulo quadrato, p. 29. 
	45 Ibid., p. 15. 	46 p. 16. 	47 Ibid., p. 41. 
47 

MYSTERIUM CUNIUNCTIONIS 
to the "sacred city," Jerusalem 48 (cf. Revelation 2 I : IOff.). It is "a golden castle engirt with a triple wall," 49 "a visible image of eternity." 50 "Though gold be mute so far as sound or voice is concerned, yet by virtue of its essence it proclaims and everywhere bears witness to God." And just as God is "one in essence," so the gold is "one homogeneous substance." 51 For Dorn the unity of God,52 the "unarius," is the "centre of the ternarius," the latter corresponding to the circle drawn round the centre.53 The point as the centre of the quaternio of the elements is the place where Mercurius "digests and perfects." 54 
2. THE SCINTILLA 
	41 	The point is identical with the U?rLV8~p,55 scintilla, the "little 
soul-spark" of Meister Eckhart.56 We find it already in the teachings of Saturninus.57 Similarly Heraclitus, "the physicist," is said to have conceived the soul as a "spark of stellar essence." 58 Hippolytus says that in the doctrine of the Sethians the darkness 
48 "And therefore it represents the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem," p. 38. Cf. the heavenly Jerusalem as "bride" in Aurora Consurgens, pp. 53f., and as the domus thesauraria (treasure-house) of the SaPientia Dei, pp. 101ff. 
49 - Cf. the Anthropos symbolism in the Codex Brucianus, Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 138f. 
50 De circ. quad., pp. 42£.51 Ibid., pp. 45f.- 
52 Nelken reports ("Analytische Beobachtungen iiber Phantasien eines Schizophrenen," p. 536) on an insane patient with Gnosticist delusions who stated that God the Father had shrunk to a small point owing to the continual emission of his semen. The semen was lured from him by a "cosmic whore," who sprang from his blood when it mixed with the darkness. This is a pathological version of the "vir a foemina circumdatus" ("A woman shall compass a man": Jeremiah 31 : 22). 53 "Congeries Paracelsicae," Theatr. ch em., I, pp. 545ff. Dorn is an opponent of the quaternity. Cf. "Psychology and Religion," par. 104 and n. 47. 
54 Anonymous scholia to the "Tractatus aureus" in Theatr. chem., IV, p. 691. 
55 Bousset (Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 321) says: "The Gnostics believed that human beings, or at any rate some human beings, carry within them from the beginning a higher element (the <T7I'LVO-f}p) deriving from the world of light, which enables them to rise above the world of the Seven into the upper world of light, where dwell the unknown Father and the heavenly Mother." 
56 Meerpohl, "Meister Eckhardts Lehre vom Seelen£Unklein." 
57Irenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 24. The pneumatikoi have in them a little bit of the Pleroma (11, 19). Cf. the teaching of Satorneilos in Hippolytus, Elenchos, VII, 28, 3 (Legge, 11, pp. 80f.). 
li8 Macrobius, In somnium Scipionis, I, cap. xiv, 19. 
48 

"held the brightness and the spark of light in thrall," 59 and tha1 this "smallest of sparks" was finely mingled in the dark waters 6( below.61 Simon Magus 62 likewise teaches that in semen and min there is a very small spark which "increases and becomes Cl power 63 boundless and immutable." 64 
	43 	Alchemy, too, has its doctrine of the scintilla. In the firsl 
place it is the fiery centre of the earth, where the four element~ "project their seed in ceaseless movement." "For all things havt their origin in this source, and nothing in the whole world i~ born save from this source." In the centre dwells the Archaeus "the servant of nature," whom Paracelsus also calls Vulcan, idea tifying him with the Adech, the "great man." 65 The Archaeus the creative centre of the earth, is hermaphroditic like the Pro tanthropos, as is clear from the epilogue to the "Novum lumen' of Sendivogius: "When a man is illuminated by the light oj nature, the mist vanishes from his eyes, and without difficulty ht may behold the point of our magnet, which corresponds to bott centres of the rays, that is, those of the sun and the earth." Thi~ cryptic sentence is elucidated by the following example: Wher you place a twelve-year-old boy side by side with a girl of tht same age, and dressed the same, you cannot distinguish betweer them. But take their clothes off 66 and the difference will becomt apparent.67 According to this, the centre consists in a conjunc tion of male and female. This is confirmed in a text by Abraharr 59 Elenchos, V, 19,7 (Legge, I, p. 162).- 
60 This idea occurs in alchemy in numerous variations. Cf. Maier, Symb. aUT mensae, p. 380, and Scrut. chymicum, Emblema XXXI, p. 91: "The king swimminl in the sea, crying with a loud voice: Whoso shall deliver me shall have a grea; reward." - Likewise Aurora Consurgens, p. 57: "Who is the man that liveth knowing and understanding, to deliver my soul from the hand of hem" - anc beginning of ch. 8. 
61 Elenchos, V, 21,1. 
62 Cf. "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," par. 359. 
63 Cf. Aion, par. 344, n. 147 for a parallel in Frances G. Wickes, The Inner Worla of Man, p. 245. 
64 Elenchos, VI, 17,7. 
65 Von den dreyen ersten Principiis oder essentiis, ch. IX. (Sudhoff, Ill, p. 11.) Cl "Paracelsus the Physician," par. 39, n. 56; "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,' pars. 168, 209, 226. 
66 The motif of undressing goes back to the Song of Songs 5 : 7: "The keepers 0 the walls took away my veil from me," and 5 : 3: "I have put off my coat, ho'll shall I put it on?" Th~ undressing symbolizes the extraction of the soul. 
67 Mus. herm., p. 579 (Waite, 11, p. 106). 
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