The Seba library treats Vas in 6 passages, across 2 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Samuels, Andrew).
Vas nostrum ad hunc modum esse debet, ut in eo materia regi valeat a caelestibus corporibus. Influentiae namque caelestes invisibiles et astrorum impressiones apprime necessariae sunt ad opus.
Jung cites Dorn to establish that the alchemical vessel must be cosmologically attuned, making the vas a receptive structure through which celestial — and by extension, unconscious — influences act upon the material undergoing transformation.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
Vas as matrix: Ripley, Opera omnia, p. 23 … Aurora II … ‘Consil. coniug.’ … When, therefore, we speak of ‘our vessel,’ understand ‘our water’
Jung compiles alchemical authorities to demonstrate that the vas is identified with the prima materia itself — specifically with water — collapsing the distinction between container and contained and rendering the vessel a generative matrix.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
uterus, 179f&n vas as, 237; see also womb
The index entry explicitly equates the vas with the uterus and womb, confirming Jung’s reading of the alchemical vessel as a feminine, generative, containing structure within the symbolic economy of the opus.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
That water is simple and unmixed, this water is composed of two substances: namely of our mineral and of simple water. These composite waters form the philosophical Mercurius.
The alchemical discourse on composite water — cognate with the vas as ‘our water’ — underscores the paradoxical unity of opposites (male/female, simple/composite) that the vessel must hold in productive tension.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
Jung felt that they had intuitively anticipated and imaginatively projected what has been verified in modern times. The lively imagery of alchemy differed markedly from the stylised and sexless expressions of medieval Christianity.
Samuels situates Jung’s use of alchemical symbolism — including the vas — as a deliberate analogical framework for the analytic process, particularly the transference, arguing that alchemy’s relational heat and containment imagery maps onto the analytic setting.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
urina puerorum, fig. 121 urine, as aqua permanens, fig. 121 as prima materia, 235 uroboros
The index associates urine with the aqua permanens and prima materia, both of which the alchemical tradition identifies with the substance proper to the vas, situating the vessel’s contents within a broader symbolic economy of cyclical transformation.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944aside