magnetic chain
The term ‘Magical Chain’ (alias: magnetic-chain) appears in the depth-psychology corpus at the intersection of several interrelated preoccupations: the metaphysics of attraction, the transmission of numinous influence across a linked series of beings or substances, and the structural analogy between magnetic force and psychic contagion. Jung’s treatment in ‘Aion’ is pivotal: he traces how the alchemical tradition transferred the mysterious arresting power of the Echeneis fish onto the magnet, and then reconceived this magnetic attraction as an interior property that man himself possesses, drawing the archetypal center toward consciousness. Von Franz elaborates the theme within the Neoplatonic-hermetic lineage, showing how imaginal or psychoid intermediaries make possible the magical influencing of matter through concentrated inner states — a doctrine transmitted from Ibn Sina through Renaissance magicians such as Ficino and Bruno. The Platonic root is Plato’s ‘Ion’, where the Muse’s inspiration passes like a magnetic chain through poet to rhapsode to audience. Jung’s historical psychiatry in the Symbolic Life situates ‘animal magnetism’ as a predecessor of hypnosis, demystifying but not dissolving the chain-metaphor’s psychological depth. The cluster of related concepts — magnet, magnes, lapis, archetypal attraction, numinosity, somnambulism — reveals why the magical chain matters to depth psychology: it models how unconscious contents exert gravitational pull across the threshold between psyche and world.
in the alchemical view the attraction no longer proceeds from the fish but from a magnet which man possesses and which exerts the attraction that was once the mysterious property of the fish
Jung argues that alchemy interiorized the magical chain of attraction, relocating numinous magnetic power from an external creature (the Echeneis) to an inner faculty possessed by the individuation-seeking alchemist.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which bear the name of Plato
Plato’s ‘Ion’ supplies the locus classicus for the magical chain as a series of magnetic rings through which divine inspiration descends from Muse to poet to performer to audience — the foundational image for all later depth-psychological appropriations of the term.
, Ion, -390thesis
The magnetic stone teaches us, for in it the power of magnetizing and attracting iron is not seen with the eyes; it is a spirit hidden within, not perceptible to the sense.
Jung cites Dorn and Augustine to establish that the magnet’s power was experienced as numinous, invisible spirit — the experiential basis for the alchemical and depth-psychological concept of a hidden magnetic chain linking psyche and matter.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
the archetypal world has a relationship with the inner soul of man and can be reached and influenced through certain forms of religious yogic meditation. This is a kind of creative imagination
Von Franz traces the hermetic transmission through Avicenna into the Christian West, describing how imaginatio serves as the operative link in the magical chain between archetypal forms and material reality.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Bruno’s mandala also aimed at turning one into an efficient religious ‘magician’ who could produce parapsychological effects in the outer world.
Von Franz situates Giordano Bruno’s mnemotechnical mandala as a Renaissance systematization of the magical chain, designed to channel cosmic influence through the inner man outward into the world.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
People in these states were wholly under the will of the magnetist, they were ‘magnetized’ by him.
Jung’s historical account of Mesmeric animal magnetism identifies the magnetic chain’s modern clinical descendant in hypnotic influence, demystifying the transmission while preserving its psychological structure.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
I hold in my right hand the two serpents and
Von Franz presents a Graeco-Egyptian magical papyrus formula as an empirical instance of the magical chain in action: the operator wields symbolic instruments to compel a cosmic power (Hecate) to transmit influence to a specific person.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
The Echeneis exercises an attraction on ships that could best be compared with the influence of a magnet on iron.
The Echeneis-remora bestiary passage establishes the zoological source-image of the magical chain: a small creature halting vessels by mysterious attraction, directly analogous to the magnet’s pull on iron.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
all magic is accomplished by the
Lévi’s synthetic magical doctrine, as described by Place, posits a unified theory of will through which all the strands of Western occultism — Kabbalah, Hermeticism, alchemy — form a single interconnected magical chain.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
Each life has its ‘feel’ to it, the way its time courses, which turns a case history into a soul history, a chain of events into a patterned rhythm.
Hillman’s formulation of feeling as the connective tissue of biographical time touches analogically on the chain-motif, reimagining the succession of life-events as a feeling-toned continuum rather than a mechanical series.
, Lectures on Jung’s Typology, 2013aside