Circulatio

Circulatio names the repeated cycling between sublimatio and coagulatio — ascent to archetypal perspective followed by descent into incarnate particulars, then ascent again — which constitutes the working rhythm of the alchemical opus as Edinger describes it. “Sublimatio and coagulatio are thus repeated alternately, again and again. Psychologically, circulatio is the repeated circuit of all aspects of one’s being, which gradually generates awareness of a transpersonal center uniting the conflicting factors” (Edinger 1985).

Jung supplies the operative text: “Ascent and descent, above and below, up and down, represent an emotional realization of 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. It corresponds to the struggle between the winged and the wingless dragon, i.e., the uroboros… 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” (Jung, quoted Edinger 1985).

Circulatio is therefore the alchemical signature of the transcendent-function. Where Jung names the emergence of a third thing from the tension of opposites, the alchemists pictured the same event as the vessel in which ascent and descent alternate until the opposites constitute each other. The operation is not complete at any single moment in the circuit. Completion is the circuit itself, sustained long enough that a new center crystallizes from the oscillation.

Relationships

• sublimatio
• coagulatio
• transcendent-function
• alchemical-operations
• opposites
• coniunctio

Primary sources

• edinger-anatomy-of-the-psyche (Edinger 1985)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)