The Stone Symbolism from The Visions of Zosimos of C.G. Jung

The Stone Symbolism from The Visions of Zosimos of C.G. Jung

4. The Stone Symbolism

126 Zosimos contrasts the body (σάρξ in the sense of ‘flesh’) with the spiritual man (πνεματικός). The distinguishing mark of the spiritual man is that he seeks selfknowledge and knowledge of God. 1 The earthly, fleshly man is called Thoth or Adam. He bears within him the spiritual man, whose name is light (ϕῶς). This first man, Thoth-Adam, is symbolized by the four elements. The spiritual and the fleshly man are also named Prometheus and Epimetheus. But “in allegorical language” they “are but one man, namely soul and body.” The spiritual man was seduced into putting on the body, and was bound to it by “Pandora, whom the Hebrews call Eve.” 2 She played the part, therefore, of the anima, who functions as the link between body and spirit, just as Shakti or Maya entangles man’s consciousness with the world. In the “Book of Krates” the spiritual man says: “Are you capable of knowing your soul completely? 

If you knew it as you should, and if you knew what could make it better, you would be capable of knowing that the names which the philosophers gave it of old are not its true names.” This last sentence is a standing phrase which is applied to the names of the lapis. The lapis signifies the inner man, the ἄνθρωπος πνενματικός, the natura abscondita which the alchemists sought to set free. In this sense the Aurora consurgens says that through baptism by fire “man, who before was dead, is made a living soul.” 4 5 The attributes of the stone—incorruptibility, permanence, divinity, triunity, etc.— are so insistently emphasized that one cannot help taking it as the deus absconditus in matter. This is probably the basis of the lapis-Christ parallel, which occurs as early as Zosimos 6 (unless the passage in question is a later interpolation). Inasmuch as Christ put on a “human body capable of suffering” and clothed himself in matter, he forms a parallel to the lapis, the corporeality of which is constantly stressed. Its ubiquity corresponds to the omnipresence of Christ. Its “cheapness,” however, goes against the doctrinal view. 

The divinity of Christ has nothing to do with man, but the healing stone is “extracted” from man, and every man is its potential carrier and creator. It is not difficult to see what kind of conscious situation the lapis philosophy compensates: far from signifying Christ, the lapis complements the common conception of the Christ figure at that time. What unconscious nature was ultimately aiming at when she produced the image of the lapis can be seen most clearly in the notion that it originated in matter and in man, that it was to be found everywhere, and that its fabrication lay at least potentially within man’s reach. These qualities all reveal what were felt to be the defects in the Christ image at that time: an air too rarefied for human needs, too great a remoteness, a place left vacant in the human heart. Men felt the absence of the “inner” Christ who belonged to every man. Christ’s spirituality was too high and man’s naturalness was too low. In the image of Mercurius and the lapis the “flesh” glorified itself in its own way; it would not transform itself into spirit but, on the contrary, “fixed” the spirit in stone, and endowed the stone with all the attributes of the three Persons. 

The lapis may therefore be understood as a symbol of the inner Christ, of God in man. I use the expression “symbol” on purpose, for though the lapis is a parallel of Christ, it is not meant to replace him. On the contrary, in the course of the centuries the alchemists tended more and more to regard the lapis as the culmination of Christ’s work of redemption. This was an attempt to assimilate the Christ figure into the philosophy of the “science of God.” In the sixteenth century Khunrath formulated for the first time the “theological” position of the lapis: it was the filius macrocosmi as opposed to the “son of man,” who was the filius microcosmi. This image of the “Son of the Great World” tells us from what source it was derived: it came not from the conscious mind of the individual man, but from those border regions of the psyche that open out into the mystery of cosmic matter. Correctly recognizing the spiritual one-sidedness of the Christ image, theological speculation had begun very early to concern itself with Christ’s body, that is, with his materiality, and had temporarily solved the problem with the hypothesis of the resurrected body. 

But because this was only a provisional and therefore not an entirely satisfactory answer, the problem logically presented itself again in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, leading first to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and finally to that of the Assumption. Though this only postpones the real answer, the way to it is nevertheless prepared. The assumption and coronation of Mary, as depicted in the medieval illustrations, add a fourth, feminine principle to the masculine Trinity. The result is a quaternity, which forms a real and not merely postulated symbol of totality. The totality of the Trinity is a mere postulate, for outside it stands the autonomous and eternal adversary with his choirs of fallen angels and the denizens of hell. Natural symbols of totality such as occur in our dreams and visions, and in the East take the form of mandalas, are quaternities or multiples of four, or else squared circles. 

The accentuation of matter is above all evident in the choice of the stone as a God-image. We meet this symbol in the very earliest Greek alchemy, but there are good reasons for thinking that the stone symbol is very much older than its alchemical usage. The stone as the birthplace of the gods (e.g., the birth of Mithras from a stone) is attested by primitive legends of stone-births which go back to ideas that are even more ancient—for instance, the view of the Australian aborigines that children’s souls live in a special stone called the “child-stone.” They can be made to migrate into a uterus by rubbing the “child-stone” with a churinga. Churingas may be boulders, or oblong stones artificially shaped and decorated, or oblong, flattened pieces of wood ornamented in the same way. They are used as cult instruments. The Australians and the Melanesians maintain that churingas come from the totem ancestor, that they are relics of his body or of his activity, and are full of arunquiltha or mana. 

They are united with the ancestor’s soul and with the spirits of all those who afterwards possess them. They are taboo, are buried in caches or hidden in clefts in the rocks. In order to “charge” them, they are buried among the graves so that they can soak up the mana of the dead. They promote the growth of field-produce, increase the fertility of men and animals, heal wounds, and cure sicknesses of the body and the soul. Thus, when a man’s vitals are all knotted up with emotion, the Australian aborigines give him a blow in the abdomen with a stone churinga. The churingas used for ceremonial purposes are daubed with red ochre, anointed with fat, bedded or wrapped in leaves, and copiously spat on (spittle = mana). 9 These ideas of magic stones are found not only in Australia and Melanesia but also in India and Burma, and in Europe itself. For example, the madness of Orestes was cured by a stone in Laconia. 

Zeus found respite from the sorrows of love by sitting on a stone in Leukadia. In India, a young man will tread upon a stone in order to obtain firmness of character, and a bride will do the same to ensure her own faithfulness. According to Saxo Grammaticus, the electors of the king stood on stones in order to give their vote permanence. The green stone of Arran was used both for healing and for taking oaths on. 12 11 A cache of “soul stones,” similar to churingas, was found in a cave on the river Birs near Basel, and during recent excavations of the pole-dwellings on the little lake at Burgaeschi, in Canton Solothurn, a group of boulders was discovered wrapped in the bark of birch trees. This very ancient conception of the magical power of stones led on a higher level of culture to the similar importance attached to gems, to which all kinds of magical and medicinal properties were attributed. The gems that are the most famous in history are even supposed to have been responsible for the tragedies that befell their owners. A myth of the Navaho Indians of Arizona gives a particularly graphic account of the primitive fantasies that cluster round the stone. 

In the days of the great darkness, 14 13 the ancestors of the hero saw the Sky Father descending and the Earth Mother rising up to meet him. They united, and on the top of the mountain where the union took place the ancestors found a little figure made of turquoise. This turned into (or in another version gave birth to) Estsánatlehi, “the woman who rejuvenates or transforms herself.” She was the mother of the twin gods who slew the primordial monsters, and was called the mother or grandmother of the gods (yéi). Estsánatlehi is the most important figure in the matriarchal pantheon of the Navaho. Not only is she the “woman who transforms herself,” but she also has two shapes, for her twin sister, Yolkaíestsan, is endowed with similar powers. Estsánatlehi is immortal, for though she grows into a withered old woman she rises up again as a young girl—a true Dea Natura. From different parts of her body four daughters were born to her, and a fifth from her spirit. The sun came from the turquoise beads hidden in her right breast, and from white shell beads in her left breast the moon. She issues reborn by rolling a piece of skin from under her left breast. She lives in the west, on an island in the sea. Her lover is the wild and cruel Sun Bearer, who has another wife; but he has to stay at home with her only when it rains. 

The turquoise goddess is so sacred that no image may be made of her, and even the gods may not look on her face. When her twin sons asked her who their father was, she gave them a wrong answer, evidently to protect them from the dangerous fate of the hero. This matriarchal goddess is obviously an anima figure who at the same time symbolizes the self. Hence her stone-nature, her immortality, her four daughters born from the body, plus one from the spirit, her duality as sun and moon, her role as paramour, and her ability to change her shape. The self of a man living in a matriarchal society is still immersed in his unconscious femininity, as can be observed even today in all cases of masculine mother-complexes. But the turquoise goddess also exemplifies the psychology of the matriarchal woman, who, as an anima figure, attracts the mother-complexes of all the men in her vicinity and robs them of their independence, just as Omphale held Herakles in thrall, or Circe reduced her captives to a state of bestial unconsciousness—not to mention Benoît’s Atlantida, who made a collection of her mummified lovers. 

All this happens because the anima contains the secret of the precious stone, for, as Nietzsche says, “all joy wants eternity.” Thus the legendary Ostanes, speaking of the secret of the “philosophy,” says to his pupil Cleopatra: “In you is hidden the whole terrible and marvellous secret. . . . Make known to us how the highest descends to the lowest, and how the lowest ascends to the highest, and how the midmost draws near to the highest, and is made one with it.” This “midmost” is the stone, the mediator which unites the opposites. Such sayings have no meaning unless they are understood in a profoundly psychological sense. 17 Widespread as is the motif of the stone-birth (cf. the creation myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha), the American cycle of legends seems to lay special emphasis on the motif of the stone-body, or animated stone. We meet this motif in the Iroquois tale of the twin brothers. Begotten in a miraculous manner in the body of a virgin, a pair of twins were born, one of whom came forth in the normal way, while the other sought an abnormal exit and emerged from the armpit, thereby killing his mother. 

This twin had a body made of flint. He was wicked and cruel, unlike his normally born brother. 19 18 In the Sioux version the mother was a tortoise. Among the Wichita, the saviour was the great star in the south, and he performed his work of salvation on earth as the “flint man.” His son was called the “young flint.” After completing their work, both of them went back into the sky. In this myth, just as in medieval alchemy, the saviour coincides with the stone, the star, the “son,” who is “super omnia lumina.” The culture hero of the Natchez Indians came down to earth from the sun, and shone with unendurable brightness. His glance was death-dealing. In order to mitigate this, and to prevent his body from corrupting in the earth, he changed himself into a stone statue, from which the priestly chieftains of the Natchez were descended. 21 20 Among the Taos Pueblos, a virgin was made pregnant by beautiful stones and bore a hero son, who, owing to Spanish influence, assumed the aspect of the Christ child. 23 

The stone plays a similar role in the Aztec cycle of legends. For instance, the mother of Quetzalcoatl was made pregnant by a precious green stone.24 He himself had the cognomen “priest of the precious stone” and wore a mask made of turquoise. The precious green stone was an animating principle and was placed in the mouth of the dead. 25 26 Man’s original home was the “bowl of precious stone.” The motif of transformation into stone, or petrifaction, is common in the Peruvian and Colombian legends and is probably connected with a megalithic stone-cult, and perhaps also with the palaeolithic cult of churinga-like soul-stones. The parallels here would be the menhirs of megalithic culture, which reached as far as the Pacific archipelago. The civilization of the Nile valley, which originated in megalithic times, turned its divine kings into stone statues for the express purpose of making the king’s ka everlasting. In shamanism, much importance is attached to crystals, which play the part of ministering spirits. 

They come from the crystal throne of the supreme being or from the vault of the sky. They show what is going on in the world and what is happening to the souls of the sick, and they also give man the power to fly. 29 The connection of the lapis with immortality is attested from very early times. Ostanes (possibly 4th cent. B.C.) speaks of “the Nile stone that has a spirit.” The lapis is the panacea, the universal medicine, the alexipharmic, the tincture that transmutes base metals into gold and gravel into precious stones. It brings riches, power, and health; it cures melancholy and, as the vivus lapis philosophicus, is a symbol of the saviour, the Anthropos, and immortality. Its incorruptibility is also shown in the ancient idea that the body of a saint becomes stone. Thus the Apocalypse of Elijah says of those who escape persecution by the Anti-Messiah: “The Lord shall take unto him their spirit and their souls, their flesh shall be made stone, no wild beast shall devour them till the last day of the great judgment.” In a Basuto legend reported by Frobenius, the hero is left stranded by his pursuers on the bank of a river. He changes himself into a stone, and his pursuers throw him across to the other side. This is the motif of the transitus: the “other side” is the same as eternity.