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Spiritus Mercurius

Spiritus Mercurius

For Jung, spiritus mercurius is the alchemical name for the autonomous spirit-archetype as the tradition encountered it in matter. The texts use pneuma and spiritus in “the original concrete sense of ‘air in motion’” (Jung 1967, Alchemical Studies, par. 261) — Mercurius is aereus, volans, the lapis elevatus cum vento, spirituale corpus, spiritus visibilis tamen impalpabilis. He is also anima media natura, “a life-giving power like a glue, holding the world together and standing in the middle between body and spirit” (Jung 1967, par. 263).

Mercurius therefore unites the antinomies the spirit-soul question forces. He is “the spirit of the Lord which fills the whole world and in the beginning swam upon the waters” and at once “the spirit of Truth, which is hidden from the world” (Jung 1967, par. 263, citing the alchemists’ identification of Mercurius with anima mundi). He is “as much a fire as a water, both of which aptly characterize the nature of spirit” (Jung 1958, Psychology and Religion: West and East, par. 356). And he is the psychopomp — “a spirit that penetrates into the depths of the material world and transforms it,” the mediator between God and the lapis, the filius macrocosmi set against Christ as filius microcosmi (Jung 1958, par. 357).

For Jung this antinomian double-naming exposes the psychic nature of the arcanum. “The psychic nature of the arcane substance did not escape the alchemists; indeed, they actually defined it as ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’” (Jung 1967, par. 260). The spiritus mercurius is pneuma read inward — the autonomous spirit-archetype as it appears under the conditions of the alchemical projection.

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