Drying, as a term within the depth-psychology corpus, occupies a remarkable range of registers: cosmological, alchemical, phenomenological, and thanatological. At its most archaic, as traced by Onians through Greek and Homeric sources, drying designates the literal evaporation of life-moisture from the body — the aion or vital fluid whose loss constitutes ageing and death, and whose deliberate expulsion by fire constitutes cremation. The ancient equation of the dead with the dry, and of the living with the moist, undergirds a cosmology in which the soul’s departure is inseparable from desiccation. Heraclitus’s celebrated aphorism that ‘the dry soul is wisest and best’ inaugurates a second tradition, taken up by both Hillman and Alchemical Psychology, in which drying figures as a telos of psychological refinement — the calcination or evaporation that reduces emotional turbulence to the salt of wisdom, the distilled residue of experience. Hillman, drawing on alchemical operations, insists on the paradox: premature drying kills the germ of life; drying that proceeds organically yields the philosopher’s stone. Moore and Ficino’s solar psychology registers spirit’s drying tendency as both gift and danger. Across all these voices, the central tension is between drying as consummation and drying as destruction — a distinction that proves foundational to alchemical and archetypal therapeutics alike.
the dead were for the Greeks pre-eminently ‘dry’. It fits our finding that cdcbv, the ‘life’, was the ‘liquid’, that Homer expresses ‘living, alive’ by ‘moist, wet’, 8iep6s.
Onians establishes the foundational Greek equation of death with dryness and life with moisture, grounding the thanatological significance of drying in the concept of the aion as vital fluid.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the ‘drying’, the elimination of flesh or moisture and so of the vaporous yjruxri. It is not a totally different process… Homer tells us that the burning enables the yjyfi to depart.
Onians argues that cremation is essentially an accelerated drying designed to complete the release of the psyche by eliminating bodily moisture, unifying the funerary and cosmological significance of the term.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
Evaporation lets off the steam, boils away the moisture that has kept you stuck… The reduction of the past to dry facts yields the salt of wisdom that the old are supposedly able to dispense.
Hillman reframes drying as a psychological process of late life in which emotional moisture evaporates to leave behind the residue of wisdom — the ‘salt’ that characterizes aged perception.
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999thesis
‘Premature drying only destroys the germ of life, strikes the active principle on the head as with a hammer, and renders it passive’… the opus needs intense heat to dry up the personalized moistures.
Hillman articulates the alchemical paradox that drying is both necessary to soul-making and potentially destructive when applied prematurely, demanding discrimination between life-releasing and life-annihilating forms of calcination.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010thesis
‘Hated old age is withering and drying me up’ (notpoclvov TccptxeOei) says Sophron… when this liquid is dried up, the living creature lacks sense and dies; on this account indeed old men are dry (Zr|pof) and lack sense.
Onians documents the pre-Socratic physiological doctrine that ageing is constituted by the progressive drying of life-moisture, linking cognitive decline and death directly to desiccation.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
it expedites the ‘drying’, the evaporation of the liquid of life — and with it, we can explain Homer’s name for the funeral process… The essence of the Homeric funeral.
Onians proposes that cremation’s deepest purpose in Homeric thought is to expedite drying — the ritual evaporation of the life-liquid — thereby releasing the soul for its journey to Hades.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
the earliest instances extant… refer to the shrinking, shrivelling, the ‘drying up’ of the body with starvation or old age… old age ‘wastes and dries up’ (nccpccivov TapixsOei) its victim.
Onians traces the philological evidence in ancient Greek texts showing that the vocabulary of mummification and funerary practice originally described organic drying through age or starvation.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
since it is apt to dissolve in every moist place, it must be kept dry. Here we are given the advice dear to philosophers as far back as Heraclitus who claimed that, though souls love moisture, the dry soul is the best.
Hillman reads the alchemical prescription for keeping the Philosopher’s Stone dry as continuous with Heraclitean psychology, in which dryness marks the ideal condition of the wisest soul.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
We have seen that for Ennius awakening from sleep to normal consciousness was a ‘drying’ process… ‘the dry soul is wisest and best’, ocuri ^A/XTI cro<pcoTcnTi KCCI ctpicrrr|.
Onians situates Heraclitus’s aphorism about the dry soul within a broader physiological framework linking waking consciousness, cognitive clarity, and dryness against the moistening of sleep and emotion.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
I suggested for the Homeric practice of scorching, ‘drying’, the dead body by fire and then putting the dry bones in wine and grease, it was believed in late classical antiquity and the middle ages that…
Onians extends his analysis of ritual drying to post-Homeric funerary practices, showing that the sequence of desiccation followed by rehydration with wine and oil reflects a persistent belief in restoring or preserving vital substance.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
IE *skelh,- ‘dry up, wither’… σκελετός [m.] ‘dried up body, mummy, skeleton’… -εύω (κατα-) [v.] ‘to mummify, dry up, parch’… -εία (-ίη) [f.] ‘drying up, withering’.
Beekes traces the Indo-European root *skelh- ‘to dry up’ through its Greek derivatives, establishing the etymological basis for the equation of skeleton, mummy, and desiccation in ancient thought.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
age: conceived as a drying process, 214-15, 219-21, as a slough to be cast off… aion (aiwv): identified with the life-fluid… diminishes with age.
Onians’s index entry confirms the systematic treatment of ageing as drying throughout his work, situating this within the broader framework of aion as life-fluid that progressively desiccates.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Spirit: cultivation, 59-62; drying tendency, 134; and music, 195; practices, 74; as sexual, 132; and soul, 48–50.
Moore’s index entry in his Ficino study registers spirit’s ‘drying tendency’ as a distinct structural feature of the solar-spiritual principle in Ficinian astrological psychology.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990supporting
Spirit: cultivation, 59-62; drying tendency, 134; and music, 195; practices, 74; as sexual, 132; and soul, 48–50.
Moore’s earlier edition index confirms the consistent Ficinian association of spirit with a drying tendency, contrasted with the moistening quality attributed to soul.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982supporting
aDoe; ‘dryness, heat’… aUAeoc; ‘barren, arid’… verbs ‘to parch’… Hitt. bat-i ‘to dry up’… Lat. area ‘to be dry’.
Beekes traces the Proto-Indo-European etymology of the Greek root for dryness to a root meaning ‘to dry up,’ confirming the deep linguistic association of desiccation, barrenness, heat, and the sacred in the ancient world.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
The first is called Sulphur, or heat and driness, and the latter Argent-vive, or cold, and moisture. These are the Sunne and Moone of the Mercurial source.
Abraham’s dictionary records Flamel’s alchemical identification of sulphur with heat and dryness as one pole of the fundamental masculine/feminine, solar/lunar opposition in the Great Work.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998aside
After the prima materia has been found, it has to submit to a series of chemical procedures in order to be transformed into the Philosophers’ Stone.
Edinger’s overview of alchemical operations provides the broader procedural context within which drying (calcination, coagulation) functions as one of the major transformative stages.
, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985aside