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Distillatio

Distillatio

Distillatio — from distillare, “to drip down” — names the alchemical operation by which a substance is heated until its volatile spirit vaporizes, rises, condenses, and descends again as purified liquid. The process is iterative: Rupescissa, cited by Jung (Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1955), held that the circular distillation must be repeated a thousand times. The vessel emblematic of the operation is the Pelican, a reflux flask in which the condensed distillate runs back into the belly of the retort, feeding the cycle; Jung identifies this as the circulatio and treats it as the operative heart of the opus — “The alchemists were fond of picturing their opus as a circulatory process, as a circular distillation or as the uroboros, the snake biting its own tail” (Aion, 1951). Paracelsus’s retorta distillatio — distillation “turned back upon itself” — extracts the volatile spirit from the impure body ex medio centri, “from the midst of the centre” (Alchemical Studies, 1967). Abraham (1998) gives the iconography: ascending birds are volatile spirit rising; descending birds are the same spirit returning as “showers of rain, tears or dew from heaven onto the dead, blackened bodies below, cleansing and whitening them.” Jung’s psychological reading is precise: the circulatio is not mere repetition but circumambulation — a spiraling return to the same material at successively deeper or higher levels of consciousness. Jung (Mysterium Coniunctionis ¶296): “Ascent and descent, above and below, up and down, represent an emotional realization of opposites.… 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.” The centre is the Self. Edinger (Anatomy of the Psyche, 1985) states the equivalence: “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.” Von Franz (Alchemy, 1980) supplies the experiential texture: the same problems recur — they seem settled, then reappear — but this is not failure; the issue has “simply reappeared on another level… it may now have become a feeling problem.” Edinger’s critical distinction between the lesser and greater sublimatio sharpens the stakes: the lesser sublimatio (abstraction, getting perspective) must always be followed by descent and coagulation. “It can be disastrous to be stuck in the sky. Ascent and descent are both needed. As an alchemical dictum says, ‘Sublimate the body and coagulate the spirit.’”

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