ashes
The Seba library treats Ash in 8 passages, across 6 authors (including Abraham, Lyndy, Jung, Carl Gustav, von Franz, Marie-Louise).
Ash is the incorruptible substance left in the alembic after the matter of the Stone has been subjected to the purgatorial fire. The ash can no longer be set on fire, and is, psychologically speaking, free from the turmoil of the passions.
Abraham defines ash as the definitive alchemical-psychological symbol of purification achieved through calcination: the incombustible, passionless residue synonymous with the albedo.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis
Ash is the calcined and annealed substance, freed from all decomposition. ‘The white foliated earth is the crown of victory, which is ash extracted from ash, and their second body.’
Jung cites Senior’s paradoxical formula — ash extracted from ash — to establish ash as the perfected alchemical earth, the opus’s triumphant second body and crown.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
In other alchemical treatises, too, earth or ash is the most precious thing and a great mystery. The Turba calls it a ‘spiritual dust’ which turns
Von Franz identifies ash as the supreme mystery substance in alchemical literature, equating it with ‘spiritual dust’ and situating it within the symbolic complex of the earth, the self, and the Promised Land.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966thesis
Nominaverunt . . . cinerem .. . et aquam mundam, quia mundata est a tenebris animae. ‘Hunc cinerem ne vilipendas, quoniam ipse est diadema cordis tui, et permanentium cinis, corona victoriae et coagulum lactis.’
Von Franz’s Latin source texts establish ash (cinis) as the diadem of the heart and crown of victory, a purified substance cleansed from the darkness of the soul.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
The end product of calcinatio is a white ash. This corresponds to the so-called ‘white’
Edinger identifies white ash as the terminal product of the calcinatio operation, linking it directly to the albedo and the ego’s connection with transpersonal, immortal aspects of the archetypal psyche.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985supporting
The pêliai nymphai are ash-trees, the mothers of the men of the Bronze Age… In the wood of the world-ash Yggdrasill a human pair hide themselves at the end of the world, and from them will spring a new race of men.
Jung reads the ash-tree mythologically as a regenerative world-mother whose wood shelters and births new humanity, establishing ash in a mythological register of death-and-renewal distinct from the alchemical one.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
After he had listened to the Buddha’s unimpassioned directions about his ashes, Ananda left his master’s bedside and fled to one of the other huts in the grove.
Armstrong’s narrative reference to the Buddha’s instructions about his bodily ashes touches on ash as funeral remnant within Buddhist tradition, illuminating the cross-cultural resonance of ash as sacred post-mortem substance.
, Buddha, 2000aside
μελίη [f.] ‘ash, lance made of ash-wood’ (ll., also Thphr.). PG? (S, V), IE? *smel- ‘ash, grey’.
Beekes provides the Greek etymological root for ‘ash’ (as tree and material), connecting the term to Proto-Greek and possible Indo-European roots meaning ‘grey,’ underlining the colour-symbolism latent in the alchemical use.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside