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Mercurius: The Spirit In Matter

MrRING

Android Futureman
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I was reading the blog of Rick Veitch about his latest dream comics in the resurrected Rare Bit Fiends and came across this bit that seemed interesting:
http://www.rickveitch.com/
Mercurius is an enigmatic figure at the arcane core of alchemy, being descibed as both the beginning and end of whatever it was the old alchemists were doing. Most people think of turning lead into gold or Harry Potter style spell casting when they think of alchemists, but I’m here to tell you they were into something else entirely. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was one of the first to see it in our time, but his writings can be very confusing.

This new RARE BIT FIENDS material is my attempt to share with readers how I personally came to grips with what Jung and the alchemists (and as it turns out many others) were actually talking about; direct experience of the living heart of nature.

When I make a statement like that, I hope you won’t assume I’m the victim of some sort of mind cult. While there definitely is a cult of personality around C.J. Jung, we dreamworkers recognize the extraordinary value of his research. He left us a realistic model of the human psyche and the tools to investigate it. What Einstein is to physics, Jung is to dreamwork.

I really wasn't familiar with the term, so I looked it up:
http://jungcurrents.com/jung-speaks-about-mercurius-and-alchemy
When the alchemist speaks of Mercurius, on the face of it he means quicksilver (mercury), but inwardly he means the world-creating spirit concealed or imprisoned in matter.

The dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol in alchemy of which we have documentary evidence.

It appears as the Ouroboros, the tail-eater, in the Codex Marcianus, which dates from the tenth or eleventh century, together with the legend ‘the One, the All’.

Time and again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail. For this reason the opus was often called circulare (circular) or else rota (the wheel).

Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work: he is the prima materia, the caput corvi, the nigredo; as dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again in the lapis.

He is the play of colours in the cauda pavonis and the division into the four elements.

He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone.

He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught – a symbol uniting all the opposites.”

Psychology and Alchemy
Part 3,
Chapter 3.1
 
https://aras.org/concordance/content/spirit-mercurius
A SPIRIT SEALED INSIDE A BOTTLE

(j)

The secret hidden in the roots is a spirit sealed inside a bottle. Naturally it was not hidden away among the roots to start with, but was first confined in a bottle, which was then hidden. Presumably a magician, that is, an alchemist, caught and imprisoned it. As we shall see later, this spirit is something like the numen of the tree its spiritus vegetativus which is one definition of Mercurius. As the life principle of the tree, it is a sort of spiritual quintessence abstracted from it, and could also be described as the principium individuationis. The tree would then be the outward and visible sign of the realization of the Self. The alchemists appear to have held a similar view. Thus the “Aurelia occulta” says: “The Philosophers have sought most eagerly for the centre of the tree which stands in the midst of the earthly paradise.” According to the same source, Christ himself is this tree. The tree comparison occurs as early as Eulogius of Alexandria (c. A.D. 600), who says: “Behold in the Father the root, in the Son the branch, and in the Spirit the fruit: for the substancein the three is one.” Mercurius, too, is trinus et unus

CW13 ¶ 243

THE MERCURIAL ESSENCE AS THE PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS

(k)

So if we translate it into psychological language, the fairytale tells us that the mercurial essence, the principium individuationis, would have developed freely under natural conditions, but was robbed of its freedom by deliberate intervention from outside, and was artfully confined and banished like an evil spirit. (Only evil spirits have to be confined, and the wickedness of this spirit was shown by its murderous intent). Supposing the fairytale is right and the spirit was really as wicked as it relates, we would have to conclude that the Master who imprisoned the principium individuationis had a good end in view. But who is this well-intentioned Master who has the power to banish the principle of man's individuation? Such power is given only to a ruler of souls in the spiritual realm

CW13 ¶ 244
 
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