Separatio

Separatio is the alchemical operation that addresses the massa-confusa: the discrimination of contraries that lie undistinguished within the prima-materia. Edinger gives the canonical statement: “The prima materia was thought of as a composite, a confused mixture of undifferentiated and contrary components requiring a process of separation” (Edinger 1985, Anatomy of the Psyche).

The alchemists understood the operation as a recapitulation of cosmogony. Paracelsus, citing the creation, writes that “the first separation began with the four elements, when the first matter of the world was one chaos” (Edinger 1985, citing Paracelsus). Edinger, glossing the alchemical instruction “separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the dense,” renders the psychological sense: separatio names the labor of disentangling the concrete from the symbolic, the literal from the libidinal, the ego from its projections.

Separatio is not a single moment but a recurrent operation. “Each new increment of prima materia calls forth” a new cosmogonic act of separation (Edinger 1985). Wherever the psyche presents fresh undifferentiated material, the work begins again.

Relationships

• massa-confusa
• prima-materia
• alchemical-operations
• opus-alchymicum
• separation-of-the-world-parents
• nigredo-albedo-rubedo

Primary sources

• edinger-anatomy-of-the-psyche (Edinger 1985)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)
• jung-psychology-and-alchemy (Jung 1944)