Filius Philosophorum

The filius philosophorum — “the son of the philosophers” — is one of the names by which the alchemical tradition designates the lapis, the stone, the fruit of the opus: the reconciled product of the [[coniunctio|coniunctio]] in which sol and luna, sulfur and mercury, king and queen have been joined and transformed. The title filius names the product as offspring; philosophorum marks it as belonging to the philosophical rather than the vulgar alchemy.

Jung reads the filius philosophorum — along with its cognates filius regius, filius macrocosmi, rebis, hermaphroditus, homunculus — as a symbol of the Self, the totality achieved as fruit of the individuation process. The alchemical filius and the Christian Christ as archetype are, in Aion and Mysterium Coniunctionis, the same psychological reality under two confessional idioms; Jung’s insistence on the psychological-equivalence argument is one of the most contested, and most fertile, moves of his mature work. See lapis-philosophorum, coniunctio, and rebis.

Relationships

• lapis-philosophorum
• coniunctio
• self-as-paradox-of-totality