Mercurial Fountain

The mercurial fountain is the image with which the Rosarium Philosophorum opens: a fountain whose water is the aqua mercurialis, the chemical-philosophical mercury that is the prima materia, the vehicle of the transformation, and the secret presence of the whole opus under the image of a single flowing source. The fountain is the alchemical figure of Mercurius in his aspect as fons — the ceaseless source from which the work draws its substance.

Jung‘s reading of the Rosarium in [[psychology-of-the-transference|The Psychology of the Transference]] makes the fountain the starting image of the ten-plate sequence: the source from which the waters flow that will, in the next plate, be the bath in which king and queen are immersed. Psychologically the fountain is the autonomous psyche as source — the unconscious as the unending well from which dreams, symptoms, images, and transformations proceed — the Mercurial principle in its inexhaustible aspect. See immersion-in-the-bath and mercurius.

Relationships

• mercurius
• rosarium-philosophorum
• psychology-of-the-transference