Arsenic

"Arsenic" originally meant 'masculine, manly, strong' and was essentially an arcanum, as Ruland's Lexicon shows. There arsenic is defined as an "hermaphrodite, the means whereby Sulphur and Mercury are united."

Jung establishes arsenic as an alchemical arcanum whose symbolic meaning encompasses masculinity, hermaphroditism, and the mediation of the sulphur-mercury union, well beyond its chemical identity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis

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Worthless is this thief, armed with the malignity of arsenic, from whom the winged youth fleeth, shuddering. And though the central water is his bride, yet dare he not display his most ardent love towards her, because of the snares of the thief.

Edinger presents the alchemical text's figure of the arsenic-armed thief as the symbolic obstacle preventing the coniunctio, framing arsenic as an agent of malignant interference in the transformative process.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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sulphur, 106, 110ff, 168, 184, 220, 239, 241, 517 … and arsenic, 164

The index of Mysterium Coniunctionis records a direct structural association between sulphur and arsenic, situating arsenic within the broader network of alchemical polar substances.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting

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If one gives a patient arsenic instead of sodium chloride, the organism will react and throw out the poison, and it is the same in psychology, one cannot feed a person on psychical poison any more than on physical poison.

Jung employs arsenic as an analogy for erroneous interpretation, arguing that the unconscious, like a living organism, instinctively rejects what is toxic, whether chemical or psychological.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting

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the white chalk, the arsenic of the philosophers, the thing common to both ferments. He has to support the upper sphere with his back and wings.

Psychology and Alchemy identifies 'the arsenic of the philosophers' as a mediating substance common to both ferments, embedding it in the symbolic schema of the opus alchymicum.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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arsenic, 161n

Von Franz's index to Aurora Consurgens positions arsenic as a catalogued term within alchemical technical vocabulary, confirming its structural presence in the textual tradition without extended commentary.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting

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She was collecting butterflies and asked a patient for some arsenic to kill them with.

Freud cites arsenic purely as a literal poison in a clinical anecdote about cruelty to animals, without engaging its alchemical or symbolic dimensions.

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900aside

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and this thief from outside will be cast out with the workers of wickedness

This passage alludes to the arsenic-thief motif through the figure of the external thief, contextualizing the malignant obstruction within the broader psychology of creative sterility.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955aside

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