Massa Confusa as Chaotic Ground

The massa confusa is the alchemical name for the chaotic state the opus begins in — the black cloud, the undifferentiated matter, the prima-materia before any operation has been performed upon it. Von Franz, in Alchemy: An Introduction, captions the image directly: “The prima materia, or massa confusa, as a black, chaotic cloud, a state of conscious confusion typical of the beginning of both the alchemical work and the process of individuation” (von Franz 1980, caption to illustration 61).

The concept is load-bearing because it names the psychological situation analysis opens in. The analysand arrives in a condition the tradition has a name for: the contents are not yet distinguished, the complexes are fused with the ego, the drives are identical with their objects. Love, aggression, ambition, and depression appear in projection as Mr. So-and-So and Miss So-and-So — not as the analysand’s own Venus, Mars, Saturn. The opus begins by acknowledging the chaos as chaos.

The [[nigredo-albedo-rubedo|nigredo]] follows as the stage at which the chaos is cooked — deliberately entered, not fled. In von Franz’s reading of the Aurora Consurgens, “every chapter begins with a black, chaotic state and ends on a positive note” (von Franz 1980, p. 204); the pattern of descent-and-return is structural. The massa confusa is therefore the correct name for the first hour of the work — the psyche as it is before the long distillations have begun.

Relationships

• prima-materia
• nigredo-albedo-rubedo
• individuation
• alchemy-as-individuation

Primary sources

• von-franz-alchemy (von Franz 1980)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)