The Seba library treats Melusina in 9 passages, across 2 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C. G.).
In the legend Melusina sometimes has the tail of a fish and sometimes that of a snake; she is half human, half animal... That is the moment when the harbinger of fate, the anima, an archetype of the collective unconscious, appears.
Jung identifies Melusina as the anima appearing at a moment of catastrophic crisis, reading her half-animal form as the universal mark of the collective unconscious's intrusion into personal life.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
Melusina comes into the same category as the nymphs and sirens who dwell in the 'Nymphidida,' the watery realm... Melusines, on the other hand, dwell in the blood.
Jung explicates Paracelsus's doctrine locating Melusina within the Aquaster and specifically in the blood, establishing her as a physiological as well as mythological presence in the Paracelsian system.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
D. MELUSINA... A. MELUSINA AND THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION... B. THE HIEROSGAMOS OF THE
The table of contents of Alchemical Studies reveals that Melusina is assigned its own structural section and is explicitly linked to the process of individuation in the commentary on Gerard Dorn.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
D. MELUSINA... A. MELUSINA AND THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION... B. THE HIEROSGAMOS OF THE EVERLASTING MAN
The parallel table of contents in the Collected Works confirms that Melusina and individuation are formally linked as consecutive analytical headings within Jung's Paracelsus study.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
Paracelsus gives clear indications of the nuptial mood... he disregards entirely the projection on a real person or a concretely visualized, personified image, but chooses instead the legendary figure of Melusina. Now this figure is certainly not an allegorical chimera or a mere metaphor: she has
Jung argues that Paracelsus's recourse to Melusina rather than a real woman signals that she functions as a genuine archetypal image, not an allegory, thereby grounding her in the autonomous reality of psychic figures.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
Melusina as the aqua permanens, opening the side of the filius (an allegory of Christ) with the lance of Longinus... From their union is born the hermaphrodite, the incarnate Primordial Man.
Jung's caption to a woodcut from Reusner's Pandora identifies Melusina as the aqua permanens, placing her at the center of the alchemical coniunctio and the generation of the Primordial Man.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
As functions of consciousness, and particularly as imaginatio, speculatio, phantasia, and fides, they 'intervene' and stimulate Melusina, the water-nixie, to change herself into human form. Dorn thinks of this as a 'vision appearing in the mind' and not as a projection on a real woman.
Jung explains that for Dorn the Scaiolae—functions of consciousness—activate Melusina as an interior visionary figure, distinguishing the alchemical imagination from projection onto an external person.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
Melusina departs from her nymphididic nature, to remain in another transmutation if that difficult Adech permit, who rules over both the death and life of the Scaiolae.
The Latin text of Paracelsus's De vita longa, as cited and translated by Jung, describes Melusina's transformation out of her nymphididic nature as contingent on the Adech, the inner principle governing life and death.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
We meet one of these arcana at once— Melusina, a magical creature belonging half to folklore and half to the alchemical doctrine of Paracelsus, as her connection with the permutatio and transmutatio shows. According to him, Melusines dwell in the blood, and, since blood is th
Jung situates Melusina at the intersection of folk tradition and Paracelsian alchemy, emphasizing her dual nature and her somatic locus in the blood as key to her role in transmutation.
, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966supporting