Anatomy of the Psyche
Excerpt-Edward Edinger-Alchemy
The goal of the opus is the creation of a miraculous entity variously called the “Philosophers’ Stone,” “Our Gold,” “Penetrating Water,” “Tincture,” and so forth. It is produced by a final union of the purified opposites, and, because it combines the opposites, it mitigates and rectifies all one-sidedness. Thus the Philosophers’ Stone is described as “a stone having power to give life to all mortal, to purify all corrupt, to soften all hard, and harden all soft bodies.” Again, the Stone (personified as the Sapientia Dei) says of itself: “I am the mediatrix of the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold, and the reverse; that which is dry I make moist, and the reverse, that which is hard I soften, and the reverse. I am the end and my beloved is the beginning. I am the whole work and all science is hidden in me.”7
As the Stone is being prepared, the material is subjected to repeated reversals and turnings-into-the-opposite. The Turba says: “For the elements, being diligently cooked in the fire, rejoice, and are changed into different natures, because the liquefied... becomes not-liquefied, the humid becomes dry, the thick body becomes a spirit, and the fleeing spirit becomes strong and fit to do battle against the fire. Whence the Philosopher saith: Convert the elements and thou shalt find what thou seekest. But to convert the elements is to make the moist dry and the fugitive fixed.”8
Another text says: “Now that the clearness may be manifest throughout without obscurity...the body must be repeatedly opened and made thin after its fixation and dissolved and putrefied....It is purified by separation, and is dissolved, digested, and coagulated, sublimed, incerated, and fixed by the reciprocated action of its own proper Identity, as agent and patient, alternating to improve” (Italics mine).°The psychotherapeutic process is likewise an “alternating to improve.” One is thrown back and forth between the opposites almost interminably. But very gradually a new standpoint emerges that allows the opposites to be experienced at the same time…