Axiom of Maria

The Axiom of Maria Prophetissa is the terse arithmetical formula Jung treats as the signature of the alchemical opus: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth” (quoted Edinger 1995; also Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, §209). A second version runs in palindromic form: “One, and it is two; and two, and it is three; and three, and it is four; and four, and it is three; and three, and it is two; and two, and it is one” (Edinger 1995). The axiom is attributed to Maria Prophetissa, the legendary third-century alchemist, and entered the Jungian vocabulary as the compressed statement of the opus’s structure: a descent from unity through multiplicity and a conscious ascent back to unity.

Edinger maps the axiom onto the Pythagorean tetractys — the triangular figure of four rows of pebbles whose Oracle of Delphi is said to have called “the harmony in which the Sirens sing” (Burkert, quoted Edinger 1999). The descent of the first four numbers corresponds to the division of the original Self through the separation-of-the-world-parents into the fourfold world; the three transitional steps of the ascent — four to three, three to two, two to one — correspond exactly to the three stages of the coniunctio (unio-mentalis, unio-corporalis, unus-mundus). The axiom is thus not a numerical curiosity but the formal notation of the whole alchemical work.

Relationships

• coniunctio
• quaternity-timaean
• unio-mentalis
• unio-corporalis
• unus-mundus
• self
• separation-of-the-world-parents

Primary sources

• jung-psychology-and-alchemy (Jung 1944, §§209–210)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)
• edinger-mysterium-lectures (Edinger 1995)