Alchemy gives us a language of substance, which cannot be taken substantively, concrete expression which are not literal. This is its therapeutic effect: it forces metaphor upon us. We are carried by the language into an as-if; into both the materialization of the psyche and the psychezation of matter as we utter our words
‘Until’ all has become liquid’
As you can probably already sense, alchemy gives us a language of substance. Not the abstract and theoretical jargon of modern psychology, but a language that speaks to and from the soul itself. If Jung’s critique of modern culture is right, and we suffer from a one-sidedness, favoring the apollonian day-light conciousness of rationality, reason, clarity, then this neurosis is also to be found in my language; in the way I think and perceive myself, others and the world. Alchemy, in this regard gives us a language of the night, of ambivalence and embodiment, through which we can approach the mysteries of soul, without ever appropriating and explaining them away. In other words; the imagistic and metaphorical language of alchemy provides a cure and a poetic compensation to the worship of rationality and clarity that we suffer from today; a “Bain Marie” in which our rigid and abstract concepts can be dissolved. “Do not proceed until all has become liquid” as an alchemical saying goes, which is to say; let’s loosen our rigid and congealed concepts and ideas about “reality” and surrender our egoic/heroic pretense to know and thus master the psyche. Only from this fluid groundless, ground can the Opus proceed.
It is quite commonplace to refer to our present day civilization as the "civilization of the image" (...) But one wonders whether — like all commonplaces — this one does not also harbor a radical misunderstanding, a complete misapprehension. For, instead of the image being raised to the level of the world to which it belongs, instead of being invested with a symbolic function that would lead to inner meaning, the image tends to be reduced simply to the level of sensible perception and thus to be definitely degraded.
The ‘Mundus Imaginalis’
‘But why imagination?’ you might then ask. Isn’t that just fantasy and an escape from the hard and cold facts of reality? Well, what if imagination was not “just” fantasy, but a legitimate way of knowing? An organ of perception akin to smelling or tasting? And what if the realm that we perceive with this organ – the mundus imaginalis of gods, daimons, ancestors, spirits, angels – was acknowledged as equally real, in the sense of having an effect upon our way of being-in-the-world?
According to Jung, these forces are autonomous archetypes that populate the collective unconscious, and if not acknowledged and imaginally engaged with, they tend to force their reality upon us in rather, destructive, blind and symptomatic ways. Needles to say: This applies both on an individual and collective level.
By cultivating the imagination and engaging with these psychic forces they can on the other hand become alies, teachers, helpers, guardians of the soul from whom we can draw meaning, vitality and insight.
"The task of individuation lay in establishing a dialogue with these fantasy figures - or contents of the collective unconscious - and integrating them into consciousness, and hence recovering the value of the mythopoetic imagination which had been lost the modern age”
The Symbolic Treasure House
Finally, there is another reason why Alchemy matters today – at least in the Western world, (which – psychologically – is today so all pervasive that it engulfs almost the entire world anaway). Alchemy roots us in a tradition whose soil is that of our own Western soul. This doesn’t mean that we can or should only practice within traditions that are native to our home countries, but it does imply that we cannot afford to just turn the back on our own tradition and history. Whether we like it or not Western culture is deeply (in)formed by our Christian heritage. Herein lies the roots of many modern conflicts and predicaments, and herein lies potentially also the “medicina” and “solvent”. Alchemy worked for centuries on filling in the gaps that was left by the Christian tension of opposites and its dualistic split between mind and matter, masculine and feminine, sun and moon ect. Would it be so absurd then to think that the symbolic treasure house of Alchemy actually contains a few gems that could be valuable today, as we still struggle to find a way forward in the aftermath and debris of the Christian Church? This was the belief of Jung, which carried and fueled his immensely laborious study of alchemy with intense heat and fire; the urgency of finding a remedy for the Western culture and the modern predicament; healing the split instead of destructively acting out the opposition left by Christianity in an open state of conflict.