Peacocks Tail

The Seba library treats Peacocks Tail in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including Abraham, Lyndy, Jung, Carl Gustav, Edinger, Edward F.).

In the library 9 passages

the stage occurring immediately after the deathly black stage or nigredo, and just prior to the pure white stage or albedo. After the nigredo, the blackened body of the Stone is washed and purified by the mercurial water during the process of ablution.

Abraham provides the canonical definition of the peacock’s tail as the iridescent, rainbow-coloured phase interposed between nigredo and albedo, occasioned by ablution of the blackened prima materia.

Abraham, Lyndy, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis

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In alchemy, the end of the work announced by the cauda pavonis was the birth of the filius regius. The display of colours in the Basilidian doctrine therefore occurred at the right place.

Jung links the cauda pavonis to the birth of the filius regius and to Gnostic (Basilidian) cosmology, framing the multicoloured display as the appointed announcement of the opus’s culminating product.

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

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a symbol for the rainbow-coloured stage in the opus known as the peacock’s tail. In Greek myth, the hundred eyes of Argus were transferred to the tail of the peacock by Hera. The multi-coloured stage of the peacock’s tail

Abraham traces the mythological substrate of the peacock’s tail to the Argus myth and identifies its alchemical equivalent as the rainbow-coloured stage marked by iridescent multiplicity.

Abraham, Lyndy, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis

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The stages of the work are marked by seven colours which are associated with the planets. This accounts for the relation of the colours to astrology, and also to psychology, since the planets correspond to individual character components.

Jung grounds the polychromatic spectacle of the cauda pavonis in a sevenfold planetary correspondence, giving the rainbow colours a direct psychological valence as representations of distinct character components.

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

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iris see peacock’s tail, island see philosophical tree. jackdaw a symbol of the stage known as the nigredo, the putrefaction which leads to the stage of the peacock’s tail.

Abraham maps the peacock’s tail into a broader symbolic network, connecting it to the iris, the jackdaw, and other emblems of the nigredo that immediately precede it.

Abraham, Lyndy, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998supporting

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On it there sits a peacock, fanning out its tail, and to the left there is an egg, presumably the peacock’s. In view of the important role w

Jung records the spontaneous appearance of a peacock spreading its tail within a patient’s mandala painting, linking the image to the alchemical symbolism of the self emerging from chaos.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting

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the bonnets of the two kings, Anfortas and Gramoflanz, are alike of peacock plumes. In early Christian art the peacock, like the phoenix, was symbolic of the Resurrection.

Campbell situates peacock symbolism within mediaeval mythological narrative, reading peacock plumes as emblems of resurrection and cyclical renewal in the Grail legend.

Campbell, Joseph, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting

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is the sea not the peacock of peacocks? It unfurls its tail even before the ugliest of buffaloes, it never wearies of its lace-fan of silver and satin.

Nietzsche deploys the peacock’s tail as a figure for the sea’s vain, indiscriminate display of beauty, a literary usage tangential to but resonant with the alchemical theme of iridescent self-revelation.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883aside

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