Proiectio

Proiectio — the casting of the stone upon base matter — names the terminal operation of the alchemical opus in which the completed Philosopher’s Stone is thrown onto impure substance to transmute it. Abraham (A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998): the stone is “projected upon” the metal, the leaven is cast into the dough, the tincture is released into the vessel. The paired operation is multiplicatio — the casting produces increase in both the quantity and quality of the stone itself, so that proiectio and multiplicatio together constitute a single circular action: the stone gives itself away and is multiplied by the giving. Edinger (Anatomy of the Psyche, 1985): “Strictly speaking, these operations are performed not by the alchemist, but by the lapis.” The stone is its own agent; the projection is the stone’s own self-disseminating action, not a further operation performed upon it. Psychologically, proiectio images the moment at which the activated Self radiates into the world through the individuated subject — not as ego-expansion but as the Self’s own self-communication, the cibus sempiternus and lumen indeficiens of the realized lapis.

Relationships

• lapis-philosophorum
• multiplicatio
• rubedo
• self
• alchemical-operations

Primary sources

• edinger-anatomy-of-the-psyche (Edinger 1985)
• abraham-dictionary-alchemical-imagery (Abraham 1998)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)