Alchemy as Active Imagination

Across the Jungian alchemical corpus runs a thread that names the opus not only as a map of individuation and not only as a projection, but as a method — a practice of active-imagination conducted in the medium of image. Jung, commenting on Paracelsus, translates the alchemical imaginatio as “meditating” and makes the identification explicit: “In the Paracelsist tradition imaginatio is the active power of the astrum (star) or corpus coeleste sive supracoeleste (Ruland), that is, of the higher man within. Here we encounter the psychic factor in alchemy: the artifex accompanies his chemical work with a simultaneous mental operation which is performed by means of the imagination. Its purpose is to cleanse away the impure admixture and at the same time to bring about the ‘confirmation’ of the mind” (Jung, Alchemical Studies). The adept’s work in the retort is paralleled by, and dependent on, a mental operation in the imagination. The opus is a method of the soul conducted through the discipline of image.

The thread runs from Paracelsus and Dorn — whose unio mentalis names the alchemical stage as a conjunction in the imagination itself — through Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis to Hillman’s claim that “these images or subtle bodies […] are the light by which we see the world” (Alchemical Psychology). Edinger reads the alchemical operations as images to be met actively, not interpreted discursively.

Sources

• carl-jung: the imaginatio as the “active power” of the higher self within; the artifex works by a simultaneous mental operation.
• james-hillman: images are not reflections of a prior world but the light by which the world is seen; the alchemical operations are possibilities of image-making.
• edward-edinger: the operations of the opus (calcinatio, solutio, etc.) are to be encountered imaginally, in dream and reverie.
• marie-louise-von-franz: alchemical projection is the mechanism by which the imagination meets matter and matter meets the imagination.