The Mysterium Lectures A Journey through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis by Edward F. Edinger

The Mysterium Lectures 

A Journey through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis 

by Edward F. Edinger

5. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes

This very succinct recipe for the Philosophers' Stone which is what the Emerald Tablet is all aboutis probably the most sacred alchemical scripture that exists. It really is a summary of the individuation process at the same time as it has its alchemical referents, and I'd suggest you paste it in your copy of Mysterium because it belongs with it.

Jung brings this up as an amplification because the central image in it is an ascent and descent, just as in Maier's Perigrinatio text. Let's take this opportunity to read the whole thing there are thirteen steps and consider briefly what it means.

1. Truly, without deception, certain and most true.

That means, in very succinct psychological translation, that the psyche is real.

2. What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing.

This is the idea of correspondences, the idea that the little world and the big world mirror each other. In other words the personal psyche, the ego, mirrors the archetypal psyche, the Self.

3. And as a l things proceeded from one, through meditation of the one, so a l things come from this one thing through adaptation.

Everything comes out of the original one, the original Self.

4. Its father is the sun; its mother the moon; the wind has carried it in its belly; its nurse is the earth.

The consciously realized Self is born out of the four elements. It's the product of the four processes that the four elements refer to: calcinatio, solutio, sublimatio and coagulatio. The consciously realized Self is the son or daughter of that fourfold process.

5. This is the father of all, the completion of the whole world.

This refers to the Philosophers' Stone. And so it says the Philosophers' Stone is both the source and the goal of this recipe. The father as source, and the completion as the goal.

6. Its strength is complete if it be turned into (or toward) earth.

It must undergo coagulatio in order to be fully realized.

7. Separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the dense, gently, and with great ingenuity.

A separatio process is required. The essential meaning must be extracted from the concrete particulars.

And here, especially, is where the reference to the Maier text comes in:

8. It ascends from the earth to the heaven, and descends again to the earth, and receives the power of the above and the below. Thus you will have the glory of the whole world. Therefore a l darkness will flee from you.

This ascent followed by descent is the hallmark of the alchemical savior, as opposed to the Christian or Gnostic savior who starts in heaven, comes down and then goes back up again. The alchemical savior starts on earth, goes up and comes back to earth. The difference indicates the crucial importance that the ego has for the realization of the alchemical process.

9. Here is the strong power of the whole strength; for it overcomes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid.

This refers to the aqua permanens that penetrates everything. In other words it describes the nature of the anima mundi which has that penetrating power that can be found everywhere.

10. Thus the world has been created.

The creation of a unique, conscious, whole individual is equivalent to the creation of the world. A number of texts make that equation.

11. From here will come the marvelous adaptations, whose manner this is.

"Marvelous adaptations," adaptationes mirabiles; that means miracles. The personal experience takes on a miraculous quality because it's penetrated by the transcendent dimension. And when one is open to the unconscious, synchronistic events happen that correspond to these miracles, these "marvelous adaptations."

12. So I am called HERMES TRISMEGISTUS, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.

This recipe is signed, signed by Hermes Trismegistus, the personification of unconscious wisdom. And it's an illustration of the fact that the unconscious comes to meet the ego through this tendency to personify. Here that absolute knowledge, that unconscious wisdom, is personified as Hermes who signs his recipe.

13. What I have said about the operation of the sun is finished.

Sun refers to gold, and so the gold has now been made.139

I want to conclude with a quote from Jung in which he describes just what the ascent and descent mean in real terms. This journey takes place in the dark fourth quarter I spoke of earlier, in that hell-hole where the opposites have been activated. Here's what Jung says about it in paragraph 296:

Ascent and descent, above and below, up and down, represent an emotional realization of the opposites, and this realization gradually leads, or should lead, to their equilibrium. This motif occurs very frequently in dreams, in the form of going up-and downhill, climbing stairs, going up or down in a lift, balloon, aeroplane, etc.... As Dorn interprets it, this vacillating between the opposites and being tossed back and forth means being contained in the opposites. They become a vessel in which what was previously now one thing and now another floats vibrating, so that the painful suspension between opposites gradually changes into the bilateral activity of the point in the centre. This is the "liberation from opposites."

That "liberation from opposites" would correspond to Maier's meeting Mercurius. After he's been up and down and gone through all those different stations, then at the end he meets Mercurius, the inner guide who tells him the way to go.

139 The complete Latin text of the Emerald Tablet is given in Edinger, Anatomy, p. 231, where there is a misprint in the translation of number 3: "And as all things proceeded from one, through mediation ... " should read: "And as all things proceeded from one, through meditation ... " [not mediation].