Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness . . . Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.

The lumen naturae is an image of light at the core of ancient alchemical ideas. One of the aims of alchemy was to beget this light hidden in nature, a light very different from the Western association of light as separate from darkness. In Alchemical Studies, Jung writes about the light of nature (lumen naturae), which he calls “the light of darkness itself, which illuminates its own darkness, and this light the darkness comprehends. Therefore it turns blackness into brightness, burns away ‘all superfluities,' and leaves behind nothing but ‘faecem et sco-riam et terram damnatam' (dross and scoriae and the rejected earth).”¹

The process of burning away the inessential was part of the alchemical phenomenology of fire intended to bring about a purification. The alchemists called the process calcinatio. Edinger dedicates a chapter of Anatomy of the Psyche to this procedure. One aspect of this process is “cremation,” which brings about both the “death and blackness of mortificatio,” as well as drying and “whitening” of the matter undergoing the process.² The alchemists refer to this process as the albedo.

Figure 4.1. Kali, seventeenth century. From Ajit Mookerjee, The Feminine Force, p. 64.

Abraham notes that “The clear moonlight of the albedo leads the adept out of the black night of the soul (the nigredo).”³

The alchemical procedure calcinatio has its parallel in Tantric rites, in which Kali is worshipped at cemeteries. The goddess copulates with her consort, Siva, on the body of a corpse, which is burning in a funeral pyre. These rites symbolically and ritually depict death, out of which a new spiritual “human being arises shining.”⁴ Kali's blackness is said to shine, and in figure 4.1 we see the Kali figure, who reduces the universe to ashes, the darkness just before the “bright” phase of a reconstituted self.⁵ I believe the idea of the shining that we see here parallels the alchemical idea of the whitening and silvering.

In alchemy, certain passages of text also emphasize a shining or glowing blackness. In one, the black matter is called “the Ethiopian.” A text by fifteenth-century alchemist and astrologer Melchior says, “Then will appear in the bottom of the vessel the mighty Ethiopian. . . . He asks to be buried, to be sprinkled with his own moisture and slowly calcined till he shall rise in glowing form from the fierce fire.”⁶

As noted, alchemical texts have traditionally spoken of this kind of renewal as a transition from the blackness of the nigredo to the whiteness of the albedo, but I believe we have to be careful not to interpret this white outcome of the alchemical process in terms of literal color since there is a tendency in modern culture to see white and black as opposites. The whiteness of the albedo is simultaneously a developmental step in a series of alchemical processes and the illuminating quality intrinsic in the blackness of the nigredo process. The whiteness that the alchemists speak of is not a whiteness separate from blackness. On the contrary, to understand the “renewal” that “follows” the ni-gredo, one must go beyond simple dichotomies and see into the complexity of the blackness itself.⁷

“‘Putrefaction extends and continues even unto whiteness,' says Figulus.”⁸ Hillman notes that the “shadow is not washed away and gone but is built into the psyche's body,” which then exhibits its own kind of lustration and contains both darkness and “light.”⁹

It was a light Jung came to know in his alchemical studies. In an Arabic treatise (1541) attributed to Hermes, the Tractatus Aureus,Mer-curius says: “I beget the light, but the darkness too is of my nature.”¹⁰In alchemy, light and dark and male and female are joined together in the idea of the chemical marriage, and from the marriage (of light and dark) the filius philosophorum emerges, and a new light is born: “They embrace and the new light is begotten of them, which is like no other light in the whole world.”¹¹ This light is a central mystery of alchemy.

Jung traces the idea of the filius—the child of the marriage of op-posites—to the archetypal image of the Primordial Man of Light, a vision of the Self that is both light and dark, male and female. Jung finds

Figure 4.2. The alchemist and the lumen naturae, 1721. From Johannes Fabricius, Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art, p. 8.

amplification for figure 4.2 in the mythic figures of Prajapati or Pura-sha in India, in Gayomort in Persia—a youth of dazzling whiteness like Mercurius—and in Metatron, who in the kabbalistic text of the Zohar was created together with light. Paracelsus also describes the Man of Light, whose illumination is the result of the integration of opposites, as identical with the “astral” man. The astral, or primordial, man also expresses our own archetypal possibility for illumination and wisdom: “The true man is the star in us. The star desires to drive men towards great wisdom.”¹²

It is interesting to see Derrida's reading of solar mythology and the problematics of illumination resonating with Jung's thoughts about the primordial man; both struggle with primary dichotomies and are concerned with going beyond the literal nature of light to a more intrinsic understanding. Derrida's reading of solar mythology is more complex. He agrees with Jung that light should not be simply equated with the light of the sun but also linked to the light of enlightenment. Derrida also alludes to a metaphorical Sun that is associated with alternatives to the light of empiricist and other specular conceptions. He speaks of a light that is a “night light [which is a] supplement to day-light.”¹³ In his commentary on Derrida, Martin Jay notes: “The sun is also a star, after all, like all the other stars that appear only at night and are invisible during the day. As such it suggests a source of truth or properness that was not available to the eye, at least at certain times.”¹⁴

Derrida was aware that there were two suns, the literal sun and the Platonic sun representing the Good. Derrida notes that, for Plato, the Good was a nocturnal source of all light—“the light of light beyond light.” Following Bachelard and intimating a philosophical awareness of Sol niger, Derrida also states that the heart of light is black. Plato's Sun “not only enlighten[s], it engenders. The good is the father of the visible sun which provides living beings with ‘creation, growth and nourishment.'”¹⁵

Jung, like Derrida, mentions two images of light: the great light and the inner light of nature, an innerness that is also an outerness.¹⁶ This dual vision is characteristic of the Primordial Man, whose light is ultimately the mundus imaginalis.¹⁷ This, according to twentieth-century French scholar, philosopher, and mystic Henri Corbin, must not be confused with the “imaginary” in our current understanding of the term.¹⁸

The double nature of light is itself an archetypal theme along with the invisibility of the so-called inner light. It is a light that is neither simply subjective nor simply found in the outer world, in phenomena, or in our speech, but it “buildeth shapes in sleep from the power of the word” and can be found in dreams.¹⁹ The attainment of this light was, for Paracelsus, his deepest and most secret passion. His whole creative yearning belonged to the lumen naturae, a divine spark buried in the darkness. The divine spark was, according to the alchemists, an animating principle, “a natura abscondita (hidden nature) perceived only by the inward man.”²⁰

What Paracelsus called the “luminous vehicle,” neo-Platonic philosophers called the “subtle body,” or the soma pneumatikon, a paradoxical term referring to an intermediate realm that “may be said without exaggeration to have been what might be called the very soul of astrology and alchemy.”²¹ This hidden nature is essential in understanding Sol niger.²²

The Subtle Body

Images of the subtle body have been known throughout history and across cultures and have been discussed and imaged in a variety of contexts. From the Western astrological, kabbalistic, alchemical, hermetic, and magical traditions to Indian, Chinese, Buddhist, and Taoist ones, imagining the subtle body has played an important role in medical, psychological, sexual, and sacred psychologies. For all of these traditions, human beings constitute a microcosm, internally linked with the larger universe, and are reflected in a body that is not simply material but also “subtle” and primordial.²³

Sanford L. Drob, a philosopher and psychologist who has written extensively on the kabbala, traces the emergence of the symbol of the primordial man in a number of religious and philosophical traditions from the Atman of the Upanishads to the macroanthropos of Plutarch for whom “the sun is at the heart and the moon located between the heart and the belly.”²⁴ He notes that the Primordial Man is also important in Gnosticism: “In the Nag Hammadi text, the Apocryphon of John, we learn that this anthropos is the first... luminary of the heavens.”²⁵The idea of the Primordial Man also appeared in the Jewish tradition first in the literature of “Merkaveh mysticism.” Drob notes that the “clearest example of this is found in a work that he dates as “no later than the sixth century” titled Shi'ur Koma (the Measure of [the Divine] Body), “where the author seeks a vision of one ‘who sits upon the throne,' a gigantic supernal man who is imprinted with magical letters and names.”²⁶

The one who sits on the throne was part of the ecstatic vision of Ezekiel's chariot and was considered to be an “image” of God. Ezekiel describes what he “sees” above the firmament: “and the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above. And I saw as the colour of electrum, as the appearance of fire round about enclosing it, from the appearance of his loins and upward . . . and downward I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness round about him.”²⁷

Imagining the divine in human form presented a problem for some Jewish thinkers. The twelfth-century, Jewish rationalist Maimonides “believed that the Shi'ur Koma was heretical and should be burned,”²⁸but other authorities understood these images differently. Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism and a colleague of Jung's at the Eranos circle, held that these images did “not imply that God himself had a body” but that a bodily form could be attributed to God's “glory” or the divine presence or “Shekinah.”²⁹ As Jewish mysticism developed, especially in Lurianic kabbala, the attempt to imagine the divine took shape in the image of the Primordial Man, Adam Kadmon, who began to be imagined in bodily form (figure 4.3a).³⁰ The body of Adam Kad-mon is considered to comprise ten sefirot, a kind of infrastructure of fundamental archetypes linking God, human beings, and the world.³¹Sometimes the configuration of these structures is imagined in the form of a tree and at other times as comprising the structure of primordial humans.

In figure 4.3b, the archetypal structure shows itself in the spheres of wisdom, intelligence, beauty, mercy, justice, foundation, honor, victory, and kingdom, which are laid out according to a traditional pat-

Figure 4.3. The body of Adam Kadmon (a) as primordial man, from

Charles Ponce, Kabbalah: An Introduction and Illumination for the World Today, p. 141; and (b) as the tree of life, from Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi, Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge,p.40.

tern, constituting what has also been referred to as the Tree of Life. There have been many descriptions of and variations on both Adam Kadmon and the Tree of Life in kabbalistic literature.³²

Adam Kadmon as Cosmic Man and an image of the subtle body has also been taken up in Christian kabbala. In this image of the head of Adam Kadmon (figure 4.4), the skull is drawn in such a way as to reveal roots as part of the brain structure, linking his subtle body with the image of the tree.³³ From this head, a white light is said to “illuminate a hundred thousand worlds.... The length of His face is three

hundred and seventy thousand worlds. He is called the Long-Face, for this is the name of the ancient of ancients.”³⁴

The body of Adam Kadmon is a body of lights, an illuminated body whose organs are divine lights. The sefirot themselves are a source of

Figure 4.4. The Head of Adam Kadmon, 1684. From Kurt Seligman, The History of Magic, p. 135.

lights, colored translucent spheres that serve to modify the infinite expanse of the God, referred to by the kabbalists as Ein-sof.³⁵ Dramatic images of the subtle body of Adam Kadmon have been painted by Alex Grey, a contemporary artist. One of his paintings, titled Psychic Energy System (1980), represents for the artist the kabbalistic Tree of Life (color plate 7). He writes: “The Kabbalistic Tree, when keyed to the human body is known as the Adam Kadmon or . . . First Man, and denotes the emanation of the highest spiritual world from above the head down through the physical world at the feet. The symbols represent ten divine attributes, such as wisdom, mercy, judgment, and beauty.”³⁶

Grey's image links the kabbalistic subtle body with the Chakra system of the Hindu tradition. He considers them to present a “similar

Figure 4.5. A Tantric image of the subtle body. From David V. Tansley, The Subtle Body: Essence and Shadow, p. 46. Courtesy of Thames and Hudson, London and New York.

spiritual-to-physical spectrum.” In both systems, “the body has become a permeable channel for the circulation of the subtle and fine energies of spiritual consciousness that are ever-present and interpenetrate the self and surroundings.”³⁷

The intensity of such fine energies is also known in Tantric representations of the subtle body, where they are referred to as nadis, which “form an intricate web of subtle energy fibers that permeate the physical form. Certain texts speak of 350,000 nadis, through which the solar and lunar energies flow” (figure 4.5).³⁸

In Praying (color plate 8), Grey depicts what he considers “the spiritual core of light which transcends, unites, and manifests in the various religious paths.” Here again he blends the subtle body idea into a syncretist “portrait revealing a sun in the heart and mind.” “From the inner light in the center of the brain, a halo emanates and surrounds the head. The halo is inscribed with signs of contemplation from six different paths”: Taoist, Hindu, Jewish, Tibetan, Christian, and Islamic.³⁹

Grey's focus emphasizes the significant overlapping unity between the variety of images of the subtle body. However, just as there are differences in the metapsychologies and individual experiences that produced them, differences in general patterns and particulars also exist with regard to the chakras. Phillip Rawson notes that the “Tibetan Buddhists assert that there is a significant difference between their pattern of the subtle body and the normal Hindu one.”⁴⁰ These differences are further compounded as we look at the various traditions we are discussing. Yet, Grey is not wrong about the significant archetypal overlap between them.

In color plate 9, which shows a traditional scroll painting from seventeenth-century Nepal, the ajna chakra is placed in a similar position as Grey's sun and is considered the third eye of wisdom. At the very top, not indicated in Grey's image, are the male and female deities pictured in intimate embrace, signifying the interpenetration of opposite forces.

In figure 4.6 we see a full body view of the chakra system. The ajna chakra is again pictured with male and female deities in an intimate relationship, and a number of different deities appear in each chakra. At times, some of these figures become standardized, but in other representations they change according to the individual, inward psychic experience of yoga and Tantric practice.

Rawson describes how, when “the subtle energy (Bodhicitta) becomes united with the void of wisdom, the sky of the mind fills with infinite visions and scenes. Then like sparks, seed-mantras emerge and crystallize gradually into complete and glowing living forms of de-vatas, beautiful or terrible, which confront the meditator.”⁴¹

Figure 4.6. View of the Chakra system. From Ajit Mookerjee, Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, p. 128. Courtesy Ravi Kumar, Publisher, Paris.

These images of the creative imagination can be both personal and transpersonal to the mediator. Like active imagination in analysis, these forms can become important reference points and inner powers that at times extend individual consciousness, while at other times they challenge and prepare the ego for dissolution and transformation. These images have a personal psycho-spiritual importance, as well as contributing to the traditions from which they emerge and add to the overall collective representation of the subtle body.

The Subtle Body of Taoist Alchemy

Many years ago I read an impressive article by scholar Erwin Rousselle titled “Spiritual Guidance in Contemporary Taoism.”⁴² In the article Rousselle describes two alchemical diagrams, a black-and-white rubbing made from a stone tablet he found in the Monastery of the White Clouds near Beijing and a colored scroll “unquestionably based on the stone rubbing.” Rousselle comments that both “stone and painting are identical” with some small differences.⁴³ The rubbing, figure 4.7, is translated as “Illustration of Inner Circulation” and “consists of a diagram of the head and torso, seen from the side. The entire diagram is framed on the right by the spinal cord, which connects the lower torso with the cranial cavity.”⁴⁴

Rousselle notes that on closer inspection, the whole image is a symbolic one and is in essence a diagram of the subtle body and a map of the transformation process of Taoist alchemy. The progression is “physical as well as spiritual. For the body must provide the vital force through whose sublimation the spiritual, immortal man is born.”⁴⁵Within this subtle body are several images based on alchemical principles. Taoist alchemy, known as inner alchemy (neidam), focuses on visualization and the use of symbols in an effort to achieve purification, spiritual renewal, and union with the Tao.

I particularly remember a section of Rousselle's article dealing with internal alchemy and Chinese medicine, in which he wrote, “In the dark firmament of our inner world the constellations of the microcosm and the genii or gods of our organs appear.” He is describing a system of inner, nonliteral physiology, part of the magico-animistic system of old Chinese cosmology, in which the human being is seen as a little cosmos. Here the processes of transformation, circulation, and renewal are symbolically described in great detail as a guide to the initiate's search for eternal rejuvenation and the creation of the immortal Self.

In this “inner world” one comes across the cave of the spirit field, the plowing of the earth, and a place where “the spring takes its

Figure 4.7. Illustration of Inner Circulatio, Qing dynasty, nineteenth century.

Subtle body image from Chinese alchemy. Used by permission of

The Rosenblum Family Collection.

fore find pictured the Weaving Maiden [who] sets in motion a pulse in the form of a thread [that] can be seen running upward from the spinning wheel to the spinal cord.”⁴⁶ Down further is the yin-yang gate of the underworld. The text is filled with provocative images of transformational archetypes that have remained with me over the years.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to lecture on Taoist alchemy and Jungian analysis in China. With these images in mind and my current work on Taoist alchemy in hand, I set out to find the monastery, the Taoist monks, and the Chinese doctors who might help to further elaborate this process.

In Beijing I had a fruitful exchange with Li Chun-Yin, professor and doctor in charge of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Li elaborated on the complex interrelationships between emotions and “organs” that are reported to have physical, mental, and spiritual functions. She spoke about the process of healing and the use of dreams in her practice and offered examples.

Later I went to the Temple of the White Clouds, where I found a copy of the stone rubbing Rousselle had earlier described. It was a moving experience to arrive there where the work of internal alchemy had been practiced over the centuries. The famous poet Cha Shenxing of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) described the temple in the following poem:

At dusk the old temple is shady and cool. Falling leaves are crushed under my feet, The last sun rays linger in half the court. Grave the closed alchemical stove stands. Serene the stone ordination altar remains. So familiar seem the meritorious pillars. A fairy land indeed this is.⁴⁷

These images capture well the mysterious and legendary temple of the white clouds.⁴⁸

While at the temple, I also acquired a book on internal alchemy, which to my knowledge has not yet been translated into English. In it are some of the images that appear in the Jung/Wilhelm version of The Secret of the Golden Flower, along with many additional illustrations. The copy I obtained was a little blue paperback. I was told that the writer was an unknown Taoist and a student of Master Yin.

The Chinese was extremely difficult to translate even for native Chinese scholars. The title was something like “The Main Purpose of Life” or “The Root of Life.” Years later Stephen Little published Taoism and the Arts of China,which includes a few of the same drawings contained in the book I obtained at the White Cloud Monastery. It appears that the book is a copy of a 1615 text translated as Directions for Endowment and Vitality.

Little's commentary states that the text, which is illustrated with more than fifty diagrams, is a Ming dynasty treatise on inner alchemy. The breadth of the text and illustrations led Joseph Needham to call it “the Summa of physiological alchemy (Neidam).”⁴⁹ The discovery of this book and scroll led me to seek out a number of meetings with Ta oist monks, many of whom were surprisingly willing to share something of their esoteric practice and knowledge of this text and scroll.⁵⁰

For our purposes here, I focus on the birth of the spiritual embryo in the solar plexus. I have written about an analytic parallel to this alchemical process in an article titled “The Metaphor of Light and Renewal in Taoist Alchemy and Jungian Analysis.”⁵¹ The solar plexus is an important area of subtle body theory and a center of vital force in Taoist alchemy.

In figure 4.8, from the text by Master Yin, one can see the importance of this center and the dynamic energies that are activated in the alchemical process. The center is called the elixir field, and in this center a spiritual embryo is born, representing a newly rejuvenated life. The role of the spiritual embryo is similar to Western alchemy's role of the filius philosophorum, which Jung discusses.

In analytic practice as well as in Taoist alchemy, the psyche works to activate this “elixir field.” Experiences similar to these images from Ta oist alchemy appear in analytic practice, but they do so in a highly individual way. Jung's Alchemical Studies references a series of drawings (figure 4.9) that reflect the inner experiences of a patient whose images might well be imagined as parallel to, but highly individual

Figure 4.8 Birth of the spiritual embryo. From Master Yin, Directions for Endowment and Vitality, 1615 (Beijing: Chinese Daoist Association).

expressions of, a subtle body in traditional Taoist alchemy. He briefly comments on these images, noting how in this image, the “black earth” that was previously far below his patient's feet “is now in her body as a black ball, in the region of the manipura-chakra, which coincides with the solar plexus.” In a surprising connection, Jung then states that the “alchemical parallel to this is the ‘black sun.' This means that the dark principle, or shadow, has been integrated [lifted up] and is now felt as a kind of center in the body.”⁵²

Interestingly, Rebekah Kenton, who also has written about the subtle body, notes in the same way that the sun continually radiates energy to the planets, the manipura, or third chakra and distributes psychic energy throughout the entire human framework, regulating and energizing the activity of various organ systems and processes of life.⁵³She adds that the manipura (or Tiferet) is the self, the midpoint of the psyche, so it is important not only with regard to the physical body but also with regard to psychological and subtle body functioning. It is often compared to the dazzling heat and power of the sun.

As shown in the images Jung presents, the dark sun is linked to earth and shadow and to caput corvi and the nigredo. Thus, Sol niger is here lifted to the center of the subtle body. While the dark sphere itself appears inert, the power of Sol niger shows itself in the background and in the flowering tree of life emerging from the head. This is reminis-

Figure 4.9. Figures of the subtle body. From C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies, figures 26 and 28. © The Estate of Carl Gustav Jung. Used by permission.

cent of Adam Kadmon, Grey's halo, the thousand-petaled lotus of Kundalini yoga, and the movement of the spiritual embryo out of the old body and into a sphere of its own, as is illustrated in the Taoist alchemy images of the subtle body in figure 4.10. The subtle body imagery has also shown itself in the clinical material of a patient discussed later in this chapter.

The Appearance of the Subtle Body in Analysis

What follows is material from an analytic patient, part of whose work began with images of the solar plexus and for whom Sol niger played an important role. The idea of a dark energy radiating in the area of the solar plexus was the stimulus for this gifted artist to enter analysis. She represented her dramatic individuation process by producing more than 150 drawings, some of which contain black sun images—a series that culminated in the constellation of what might traditionally be

Figure 4.10. Taoist images of the subtle body. From Master Yin, Directions for Endowment and Vitality, 1615 (Beijing: Chinese Daoist Association).

called a Self figure. I present a small but representative selection of her drawings that are relevant to the themes of darkness, death, renewal, and the black sun. In this case, there are parallels between her analysis and art, myth, literature, and religion that amplify the artistic expression of her individuation process.

As Peter Tatham has noted, for many people something like a “black emptiness (often in the abdominal region)... is not necessarily fatal or even immutable.”⁵⁴ This was clearly the case with this artist. She began her work deeply concerned over a troubled marriage and a profound sense of stasis in her life. She had lost touch with her sexuality and sense of womanhood, and her deeply introverted style had led her into an exploration of deep grief and a profound center of darkness compressed in her solar plexus.

Here the analytic process began with in an image of a “knot” in her stomach. She reported feeling something dead and buried. It was her habit to use the dictionary as a kind of oracle the way one might use

Figure 4.11. Psychic activation in the solar plexus—an internal black orb. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

the I Ching or tarot cards. She would open the book randomly, point to a word, and consider it as a hint for further reflection. Prior to coming into analysis, she remembered pointing to a word and reading something about the “midnight sun.” The experience of a knotlike feeling in her abdomen became more acute, and she represented it in a series of drawings (figure 4.11).

As she progressed from the first image to the next, arrows pointed to this black center from all sides. In her analysis, she began to focus on these interior feelings. Next, in another drawing not portrayed here, the dark center expanded, and her body seemed to encircle it. Hands appeared as if to grasp and reach inside this center. The figure's eyes were closed as if introvertedly looking down into this expanding darkness. The black-and-white, jesterlike hat on the head had tassels looking like miniature black suns. To the upper right of her drawing there was an open doorway.

The theme of grabbing hold of this center is continued in the next image (figure 4.12), in which the interior process is superimposed on a landscape filled with trees. The picture is divided into upper and lower, and in each there appears a circular, glowing orb. From the upper one,

Figure 4.12. Grabbing hold of the lower orb. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

there is a downward motion, and eventually arms reach down to the lower sphere, turning black as they extend below ground. These arms hold onto the sphere as if continuing the process initiated in the previous image.

Figure 4.13. Eruption from the solar plexus. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

shown in figure 4.13, in which what was deeply disturbing to her burst forth out of an empty place in her solar plexus and took the form of a humanized shadow figure.

A similar hole in the solar plexus appears in this Alaskan Inuit image of the body (figure 4.14) of a shaman, or tutelary deity. The idea is that, in religious life, the body is opened up, broken down, and transformed. In terms of Inuit mythology, if we maintain a respectful religious attitude toward our suffering as the price of transformation, then we may hear the crow call in the midst of a cold, arctic darkness: “‘qua, qua, qua'—‘light, light, light'.”⁵⁵

As my patient engaged this dark form in active imagination as portrayed in figure 4.15a, it became overwhelming and aggressive, and in place of having a knot in her abdomen, she found herself in knots in the belly of a beast (figure 4.15b).

Figure 4.14. Shaman's Mask. Eskimo, Lower Kuskowin River, nineteenth century. Collection of George Terasaki, New York. Photo by Werner Forman / Art Resource, New York. Used by permission.

felt consuming, but as she actively responded to the issues that emerged, a change in the quality of her relationship to her unconscious began to take place. The image of dancing with the shadow (figure 4.16) took a dynamic form and eventually led toward integration.

The furthering of her assimilation of the shadow is shown in a rather remarkable drawing of the shadow form installed inside a larger, fleshy pink, humanlike shape shown in grayscale in figure 4.17. The pinkish

Figure 4.15. (a): The beginning of active imagination; (b): the belly of the beast. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.16. Dancing with the shadow. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.17. Incorporation of the shadow. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

figure stands against a black field, but its feet are outside this dark frame. A dark, effulgent orb emerges from within the solar plexus area of the dark figure, and a similar form surrounds the pink image as well. I consider this deep illumination as the emergence of the shine of Sol niger and an expression of the lumen naturae. It is a kind of shadow light that heralds a developing consciousness of both sexuality and other aspects of what Jung would call the repressed feminine shadow.

Figure 4.18. (a): Concentric tufts of darkness; (b): female figure. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

The theme of pinkness continued to represent these issues and in a subsequent image appeared inside a dark sphere. The issues surrounding her female identity and sexuality remained difficult, imagistically wrapped in vagina-like concentric tufts of darkness (figure 4.18a) and emitting a strange luminescence. Later a female figure emerged; her black dress is mandala-like and reminiscent of the vaginal darkness of the prior image (figure 4.18b).

In these images we see the continuing development of feminine sexuality, which continues its awakening in the next image. In this image, portrayed in grayscale in figure 4.19, a pink deer's tongue moistens the gray face of a woman lying in darkness.

The moisture of tears pours down her face. At the top edge of the picture is a green-and-blue band with what looks like an emerging sun and a small plant growing out of the darkness. The whole image gives one the feeling of a possible awakening, Sleeping-Beauty-like, but here the “prince” appears as a nurturing animal soul. Jungian analyst Von Franz notes the importance of animal instinct in such an awakening.⁵⁶

The awakened female body appears in the next image, in which a black field is covered over by intense red, exploding with images of copulating Asian figures (color plate 10). At the bottom of this image a figure reclines on a pillow, bathed in a golden light representing the

Figure 4.19. Instinctual awakening. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

intensity and pleasure of an awakened body and the beginning of the overcoming of the tension of opposites. The rising sun in the earlier animal image is realized in the illuminated body below.

Asian erotic art has produced similar images. For the Chinese, sexuality has a central place in the cosmic scheme of things, and it is useful to place such images against the background of the Taoist vision. As scholars Phillip Rawson and Lazslo Legeza note:

The male and female sexual organs have names whose imagery forms part of the secret language of Taoism. The male is “the red bird,” “the jade stalk,” “the coral stem,” “turtle-head,” “the heavenly dragon pillar,” “the swelling mushroom.” The female is “the peach,” “the open peony blossom,” “the vermillion gate,” “the pink shell.” . . . Sexual intercourse itself is referred to as “the bursting of the clouds and the rain.” “Plum blossom” is a subject painted tens of thousands of times on beds, screens, and porce-lain—is actually a name for sexual pleasure.⁵⁷

For the Taoist, mutual sexual orgasm is the physical or poetic event in which an important exchange takes place; the transference of yin and yang energies creates a valuable harmonization of the soul. This kind of intercourse can be seen as the cultivation of literal sexual acts in the inner realms of the subtle body, as in some forms of Taoist alchemy. Rawson notes that the inner alchemy of Taoism is closely related to both Indian and Buddhist Tantrism. In Tantric Buddhism, sexual images also play an important role in symbolizing the union of opposites. The term yabyum refers to the divine ecstatic embrace of male and female figures, which at the highest level are said to link the forces of wisdom and compassion.

In Western esotericism such processes are also known (e.g., in kab-balistic theory and in alchemy). Alchemically, such a process is known as the coniunctio and in some contexts is thought to represent the culmination of the alchemical work. However, the alchemists made an important distinction between the lesser and greater coniunctio. The lesser coniunctio reflects a premature union of things that have not yet been thoroughly separated and properly integrated. Such “integrations” do not have the stability of the alchemical goal. Edinger notes that in reality these two aspects are combined with each other. “The experience of the coniunctio is almost always a mixture of the lesser and the greater aspects.”⁵⁸ However, because of its instability, the lesser coniunctio is always followed by a death or mortificatio process. “The product of the lesser coniunctio is pictured as killed, maimed, or fragmented (an overlap with the solutio and mortificatio symbolism).”⁵⁹

lovers gave way to a mortificatio process. In the face of a troubled marriage, her personal attempt at integrating her feminine sexual identity and vitality was once again blocked and left her feeling trapped, unable to move forward in her life or her psyche. She felt again as if things were falling apart and that she was facing an impenetrable darkness. She found herself once again in the midst of a nigredo. The loss of the previous hopeful experience of awakening was excruciating.

Entering into this darkness required tears of blood and being stripped to the bone, but it was also a process in which she began to see a key that she hoped could unlock her blockages. She began to see what was behind this black door but was unsure whether it was a vision of life or death (figure 4.20).

Such images reflect an archetypal moment when we stand on the threshold of our individuation and wonder whether going forward is going to lead to our demise. As she went more deeply into her uncertainty, the images of life and death appeared together as if they were two faces of the same skeletal body (figure 4.21). The outer garments have been shredded, and four strange monkeylike figures have appeared, one inside and three outside the door. At the bottom of this drawing a dreamer is shown with an illuminated orb around her head, and a butterfly, often an image of psyche, sits on her uplifted knee. In these images, the ambiguity of life and death is strong. One usually imagines dead figures as reclining and living ones as standing up. Here, as if in the underworld, this expectation is reversed. One might also imagine the female figure in deep meditation or dreaming and the scene we see above her as her dream or vision.

The theme of the dreamer and the skeleton repeats in the next image, not included here. This time the pinkness returns in the orb surrounding the dreamer's head and as some kind of shroud over the skeleton. It is hard to say exactly what is going on here, but the pinkness seems to link the deep dream or meditation to death or to being stripped bare.

In figure 4.22, the dream of death theme seems to bear creative fruit. The pink orb has expanded into a large sphere of two concentric circles in which a tree seems to be sprouting from the dreamer's solar plexus. The orb is now outside her body and seems to be resting on it.

Figure 4.20. Tears of blood, a key to darkness. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.21. The Janus head of life and death. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Four dark birds are flying around inside it, two on the right and two on the left of the tree. As one moves outward into the second sphere, a lone bird appears on the left; on the right, the area is primarily white with a touch of pink and black. The emergence of the tree and of both black-and-white birds are important alchemical themes.⁶⁰

In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung quotes the alchemist Khunrath, who states, “I pray you, look with the eyes of the mind at the little tree of the grain of wheat, regarding all its circumstances, so that you may bring us the tree of the philosophers to grow.”⁶¹ For Jung, Khunrath seems to be pointing to the activation of the psyche through active imagination. Jung illustrates this using the image of “Adam as prima materia, [whose side is] pierced by the arrow of Mercurius.[He is wounded and] the arbor philosphica is growing out of him” (figure 4.23a). Here, creativity, the flowering philosophical tree, is linked to wounding and the mortificatio. It would appear that what is essential to the creative flowering of the psyche is a wounding and a death of the old self, out of which emerges the new life. In this male version of the process, the tree emerges as a phallus.

Jung also presents what he thinks is a female version of this process, reflected in the image of the mortificatio of Eve (figure 4.23b). In this image, the female's figure points to the skull symbolizing the mortifi-catio. Here the tree grows out of Eve's head.⁶²

In this case and other descriptions, wounding, death and creativity, and darkness and light are linked together. The flowering of the tree is also sometimes linked to the flight of birds and the freeing of the creative spirit (as seen from Jung's Alchemical Studies, reproduced as figure 4.9 earlier in this chapter).⁶³ Birds further amplify this freed energy, and in alchemy they appear as black or white or in some combination of these colors as seen both in my patient's and Jung's representations. Traditionally the transformation of a black to a white bird signifies the alchemical albedo, a whitening process that suggests a movement of the psyche out of its dark and depressive leadened state into a reflective sublimation that lightens the soul and is thought to bring a greater sense of consciousness and freedom. It is a kind of purification process and catalyzes psychic development. A classical

Figure 4.22. The emergence of the philosophical tree and the flight of the spirit.

Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.23. (a): Adam as prima materia, pierced by the arrow of Mercurius, from C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 245;

(b): the skull, symbol of a mortificatio of Eve, the feminine aspect of the prima materia. From C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 257.

image of this is seen in Solomon Trismosim's Splendor Solis,which also links the birds with the philosophical tree (color plate 11).

The theme of the albedo and philosophical tree are both present in an interrelated way in my patient's drawings. What is interesting in her expression of these themes is that the emergence of creative energy comes neither from the phallus per se nor from the head, as in Jung's portrayal, but rather from the solar plexus, in between the two positions represented by Jung. This theme, which continues through the next several images, follows our exploration of the solar plexus in many sacred traditions. This representation of the philosophical tree develops into the appearance of what Jung might call a philosophical animus first standing at her feet and subsequently expressing the creative energy of the tree, his head rooted in her solar plexus (figure 4.24a and b). Along with the tree, the theme of the whitening birds and the albedo is present, indicating the upward movement of her psychic energy.

My patient identified the figure as the philosopher Foucault, whose work is in part identified with passion, sexuality, and the politics of liberation and who further expresses the tree's spiritual energy. At the

Figure 4.24. The philosopher Foucault as (a): spiritual animus and (b): the arbor philosophica.Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

time she created this image, my analysand was deeply engaged in reading Foucault, who came alive for her, as the image suggests. Red roots emerge at the bottom of the image. The psyche, as represented by the butterfly, is now engaged in a struggle with the deep experience of its unconscious roots, which might traditionally be conceived of as a compensation for the upward spiritual growth of the figure. The theme is dramatically amplified in figure 4.24b. The figure of the philosopher is enlarged, and his head penetrates the solar plexus of a female body reclining on a couch. A similar couch appeared in the earlier coniunc-tio image, in which the golden woman exhibited a vitalized sexuality.

On the one hand, this couch might traditionally refer to the psychoanalytic couch and to the evolving erotic transference, but here the transference takes on a further dimension. The phallus that penetrates is the head of the philosopher, and this results in a creative flowering up above. One can imagine this as a sublimation in a regressive or defensive sense. On the other hand, I believe it instead represented the development of an eroticized and spiritual unfolding that facilitated rather than retarded her analytic process.

The upside-down figure of the philosopher resembles the image of the hanged man in the tarot, an image that has been given many interpretations by various authors. At times, the tarot image signifies a turning point, linked to sacrifice and death, leading to a reversal of ordinary consciousness; the aspirant becomes grounded in higher truths that come from above. Tarot authority Eden Gray links this reversal to the recognition of “the utter dependency of the human personality on the tree of Cosmic Life.”⁶⁴

For Jung, this turning point can be linked with the beginning of the relativization of the ego and the growing awareness of the Self. The image is related to a number of interpenetrating archetypal themes, including the growth of the filius philosophorum and the theme of the inverted tree (arbor inversa).

Filius Philosophorum

We have already discussed Jung's idea that in alchemy, when light and darkness and male and female come together, the filius philosopho-rum is born. This inner child or immortal fetus, a representation that we have seen in Taoist alchemy, also appeared in the visions of my analysand. In figure 4.25a, a man or rabbi figure is standing on a Star of David, which consists of interlocking triangles symbolizing an integration of opposites, above and below, light and darkness, male and female.

Standing in this place of integration—or where the opposites are unified—implies both the sacred marriage and the birth of the immortal child whom, in this image, the wise old man carries close to his heart. The rabbi's head is covered with what appears to be a yarmulke. The yarmulke in the Code of Jewish Law signifies a stance of humility

Figure 4.25. (a): Rabbi, child, and the black sun; (b): Rabbi with flaming heart, mermaid, and lion. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

or nullification, often a position we are forced into in relation to Sol niger, which appears in the right side of the picture, emitting a shower of black rays. My patient was not Jewish, but her wise old man presented himself in figures 4.25a and 4.25b in the form of a rabbi.

In figure 4.25b, instead of a child we find a flaming heart. Two figures stand on each side of him, a lion on the left and a mermaid on the right. Both figures are black and white and stand erect as if welcoming or calling forth this religious figure. My analysand reported that she felt deeply connected to the mermaid, who is so comfortable in the water and in the depths. For her, the mermaid brought to mind her feelings of fluidity and mystery. It reminded her of an experience long ago in a church, where an old man with a long white beard sat quietly next to her and her child put his head down on his lap. He said nothing to her, but she felt a silent connection of considerable depth with this man.

Her images of the wise old man also resonated with her developing feelings in the transference. As we often sat in silence, she felt as if we too shared an unspoken mystery. Associating to the image, she felt that the old man was bringing her heart to her. The deep feelings of transference were also captured in an important dream in which she found herself giving birth to the moon.

I will not recount the entire complicated dream, but it begins with her lying naked on a high table in the center of a large white room. Three figures are around her, possibly doctors or researchers. She knows she is going to give birth, but she doesn't know to what since she thinks, “I am too old to have a child.” She is apprehensive and wonders whether I should be there with her as this happens. Her labor pains begin with small contractions and grow more intense. She cannot think about anything anymore. She feels she has to let go into the pain, and her body takes over.

She is in such pain that she is delirious and hears everyone gasping. As she looks down at her belly, protruding from it is a huge three-to-four-foot flower bud. As everyone is staring, it begins, petal by petal, to unfold. The petals are all a translucent white. When all the petals are open and lying flat, she can see that the center of it is a clear, still lake. Everyone is mesmerized as the petals begin to close. As this happens, she feels darkness and terror enter the room. With her body in unbearable pain, she begins convulsing. She knows she is going to lose consciousness.

When she opens her eyes, they open into my (her analyst's) face a few inches above her. The room is completely still. We just stay in that place for a while. Then I lean and whisper in her ear, “you just gave birth to the moon.” She looks down, and her belly has become this gleaming black orb—the substance of which is thick and slippery. As we watch, it seems as if there is a body playfully swimming and diving underneath as we can see the ripples and movements on the surface. It is magical and beautiful beyond description.

My analysand's experience of giving birth to the moon suggests an archetypal identification with the Great Mother, the unconscious. Her proclivity toward diving into the unconscious was linked with her relationship to the mermaid. The mermaid image has many historical associations, including the power of prophecy and granting wishes. It is connected with the muses, but the dark side of this figure is considered dangerous.⁶⁵ Listening to a mermaid's song can put one to sleep, seduce one into living under the sea, and, in the worst-case scenario, cause madness, disaster, or death.⁶⁶

My analysand was seduced into the waters of the unconscious, but this required the presence of an additional energy: the lion at the left of the wise old man or rabbi. For Jewish people, the lion has been associated with spiritual strength and the courage to perform God's will and is mentioned more than 150 times in the Old Testament.⁶⁷ The great “sixteenth-century Kabbalist Rabbi Issac Luria was known as Ari, the Lion, in recognition of his extraordinary learning and spiritual power.”⁶⁸ In addition, the name Judah is identified with the lion as in the Davidic monarchy. It is of interest to note that from this royal house a Messiah was expected to emerge, like the filius emerging from the opposites.⁶⁹

For my patient, one might say that such a savior comes in the form of this wise old man bringing her her heart, which he holds in the middle of his chest. He is walking along a middle ground between mermaid and lion, his feet planted on a river of voidness composed of the black rays of Sol niger. It is a path not unlike the mystical middle pillar of the kabbalist that weaves its way between opposites. The middle pillar in kabbalistic thought is also referred to as the Tree of Life and is an essential representation of the unfolding of the soul. A variation on the theme of the tree emphasizing spiritual and psychological development is archetypally portrayed in an inverted position with its roots not in the literal earth but in the heavens, linking it with the forces above.

The Inverted Tree

The theme of the inverted tree has been richly amplified by Jung as well as in an obscure but important article by Indian philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy called “The Inverted Tree.”⁷⁰ Jung notes that “the tree [in general] symbolizes a living process as well as a process of enlight-enment.”⁷¹ It signifies the creative unfolding of the soul, which can be expressed intellectually but is not reducible to the intellect. Jung amplifies the idea of the inverted tree by citing a number of ancient thinkers whose ideas are remarkably similar. Sixteenth-century alchemist Lau-rentious Ventura comments, “The roots of its ores are in the air and the summits in the earth.” The fifteenth-century alchemical text Gloria mundi “likewise mentions that the philosophers had said that ‘the root of its minerals is in the air and its head in the earth.'”⁷² Fifteenthcentury alchemist George Ripley also says that “the tree has its roots in the air, and, elsewhere, that it is rooted in the ‘glorified earth,' in the earth of paradise, or in the future world.”⁷³

A rabbi, the son of Josephus Carnitolus, speaks of the inverted tree with regard to a kabbalistic vision noting, “the foundation of every lower structure is affixed above and its summit is here below, like an inverted tree.” With regard to the kabbala, we have seen that the mystical tree, as a tree of lights, also signifies man, who in Jewish thought “is implanted in paradise by the roots of his hair, a reference to Song of Songs.”⁷⁴ Plato's Timaeus notes that “we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant,” a “plant” the Hindus see as “pour[ing] down from above.”⁷⁵Jung quotes from the Bhagavad-Gita:

In the preceding passage, the inverted tree refers to finding a sacred ground above. It signifies a reversal and relativization of ordinary consciousness that equates with the activation of what Jung calls the religious function.

In my analysand's next image (figure 4.26), two trees appear, one growing from the ground up and the other growing downward as if rooted in the church above it. Although these two trees reflect an archetypal process of the movement of the opposites, an effort to bring together both instinctual and religious dimensions of her psyche, they also capture the erotic energy of the transference that held both of

Figure 4.26. Trees: reaching for the unity of instinct and spirit.

Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

these dimensions. The rosary window or mandala-like sphere, which often indicates a potential unification between two dimensions, appears as a Sol niger image; it is illuminated and has a black center and a sunlike appearance. Just beneath the mandala, two monkeys suggest the presence of the animal instinct or spirit. Nearer the bottom and deeper down, below the red roots another sun appears. It is as if, below all of the blackness, another sky and another sun exist.

Figure 4.27 seems to be an elaboration of the one just discussed but with several changes. This time, the center of the illuminated mandala bursts into many colors, and a second church, or another vision of it, is shown in the center of the dark field in the middle of the page. The entire church is in blackness. Under an arch at its bottom is a sunlike orb in which we again see the image of the two women seen in the spires of the church of the previous image. Now, however, they are now facing in opposite directions and are joined together at the feet, as if to suggest a connection between them. Rather than merging into a simple unity, they have become connected, yet remain separate. At this point the process moves away from the theme of the inverted tree and toward the work of differentiation and doubling.

In addition to the two women facing in opposing directions, two large butterflies appear, one at the top and one at the bottom. Their size has dramatically increased from earlier images, perhaps corresponding to the growth of the psyche. The theme of doubling—two suns, two trees, two women, and two butterflies—has become prominent, emphasizing the themes of both differentiation and sameness.

Figure 4.28 picks up on this theme by depicting two forces with independent centers. They are beginning to overlap but maintain their separateness. These energies are contained in larger egg-shaped, concentric forms, suggesting the potential for new possibilities. I consider it a dynamic Sol niger image expressing the dynamism of the two forces—as if representing all of the doublings and polarities we have been speaking about: light and dark, up and down, sexual and spiritual. Each of the two dynamisms maintains its own center, and yet they can be seen to be interrelated, the force fields of each center radiating and intermingling with the other. In this image of the coniunctio, the two

Figure 4.27. Dark church with butterflies and mandala. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.28. Twin spheres. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

force fields maintain their connection and their acute difference, thus avoiding any premature collapse into undifferentiated unity. This image continues to portray both the dynamic transferential process in the analysis as well as the beginning of separation and the withdrawal of some projections. As the next image depicts, this withdrawal of projections also prefigures the constellation of an archetypal process reflecting the containment of opposites within. What was projected outward is now contained in the fiery inner heat of a whirling inner sun.

In my analysand's next image (color plate 12), the sphere with the two women joined at the feet, first seen in figure 4.27, forms the center of a dramatic mandala. Two luminescent spheres appear, one above and one below, and a powerful, dynamic, fiery energy appears like a wheel of flames or a strange sun that covers the center of the black field. Jung talked about the tension of the opposites and the transcendent

Figure 4.29. The fusion of opposites, 1617. From Johannes Fabricius, Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art, p. 61.

function, and one might well consider this image as a picture of the Sol niger holding the enormous energy that is present when two archetypal energies are contained together.

Figure 4.29 shows an alchemical version of this image in the fusion of opposites. The alchemist points to the fiery energy linking above and below: the sun and the moon.

However, are the two energies we are speaking about a pair of opposites? Traditional theory suggests that this is the case, but it is worth considering that the images we have been discussing seem to reflect the coming together of two independent centers of the “same”—two women, two butterflies, two force fields. The doubling of a single image may not always be a tension of opposites but rather the energy of a doubling of mirror images reflecting and interpenetrating one another, images joined at the heel, so to speak.

“Senex and Puer,” where he notes this process at the center of the feminine personality and the mother-daughter mysteries.⁷⁷ This theme has been further developed by Jungian analysts Claire Douglas and Lyn Cowan and by psychologist and feminist scholar Claudette Kul-karni.⁷⁸ Hillman notes that “Dionysian consciousness understands the conflicts in our stories through dramatic tensions and not through conceptual opposites; we are composed of agonies not polarities.”⁷⁹

In the next two images (figures 4.30 and 4.31), a new woman is emerging. Each image once again emits an odd luminescence and a play between light and dark. In the first one are five Sol niger images. Four of them appear on the bottom of the image as black holes with sun images partially illuminating them and the Earth around them. Over three of the illuminated black holes are butterflies and, as if out of the fourth, a masked female figure unfolds from a pale pink-and-green flower. A central dark sun is present in a black sky. One might here imagine that from the midst of Sol niger, a new psychic energy shows itself.

Figure 4.31 is divided. On the left, the field is black, while on the right it is mostly illuminated. It is an undersea image, and a woman is surfacing like an underworld Aphrodite—the initial emergence of her embodiment.

I end this series of images with one that appeared earlier in the analysis but that, I believe, was a prefiguration of what might traditionally be called a Self image that took on a lived form at this point. Figure 4.32 is an image of a more integrated and peaceful woman standing in a pool of water, connected to the unconscious and the psyche. A snail and white flowers are scattered around the pool. It appears that the woman stands on a sphere similar to the one that surrounds her head like a halo. She stands in a dignified pose, bare breasted, and her skin is pink; her sexuality is expressed as a more natural dimension of her stance in the world. The lower part of her body is wrapped in a black tunic. A butterfly, a classic image of the psyche, appears almost as an adornment— pin or buckle—over the solar plexus area. She is decorated with a bejeweled necklace; flowers adorn her hair; and her head is illuminated by a Sol niger sphere. As noted, a similar sphere can be detected within

Figure 4.30. The flowering of psyche in the midst of darkness. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

Figure 4.31. Underworld Aphrodite. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

the pool, and so we can see the Sol niger both grounding and illuminating her. Here one might imagine that the shine of Sol niger is also the shine of the Self—one that emits an aura or inner radiance.

The emergence of these figures does not suggest the end of her psychic process but did prefigure the ending of her analysis. I here include a fi nal transference dream:

Figure 4.32. Illuminated female figure. Artwork by analysand. Used by permission.

It is just before dawn. Stan and I are sitting together in his living room engaged in intimate but relaxed conversation. The room is very large, and two walls are all windows from floor to ceiling. He gives me two gifts. The first is a necklace made of very unusual stones—a mixture of translucent and opaque/dark, subtle colors with veins of alizarin crimson running through. All but the center stone is [sic] square, and on each side is a small, round glass bead. The center stone is a perfect sphere and a beautiful, transparent greenish color (reminding me of sea glass). Covering this stone are as many black glass beads in a mysterious pattern. The necklace is exquisite.

Next, he hands me a shoe box. Inside, I immediately recognize shoes that had been lost a lifetime before. They had always been my favorite shoes and, although worn, were not worn out. I am so happy to have them back and am amazed not only that he found them but that he even knew of them in the first place.

I wonder what my gift is to him. As soon as I have the thought, I feel a burning in my chest over my heart. When I look down, there is a visible energy emanating from it. At first, it just flows between us; then it slowly begins to fill the room in waves. We sit immersed in this energy, appreciating its warmth and uniqueness.

As the sun just barely begins to fill the room, I hear movement behind and above us. I look around and notice that this very large house is populated by many others. Those around begin coming down the stairs, go into the kitchen for coffee, then appear at the doorway and either ask something of Stan or remind him of something he has to do. I sit and watch him interact with these people... thinking he has a very professional manner but looks drained and tired.

I do not want this night to end. Yet, I feel it is time to leave when his wife comes to the door and stares at him. I gather my gifts as his wife tries to usher me out of the door. I turn around and look at Stan before leaving—the feeling between us is close, heavy, and intense. I think “well, choice is the proof of love and he has chosen this.” I feel, however, that this is not really the end of the relationship.

The ending of our work was marked by the recognition of both eros and limit—the recognition that this was a professional relationship and that the analyst had an independent life. With this, the analysis moved toward ending. My analysand's last statement remained unclear; the feeling that this was not the end of the relationship seemed at the time to refer to her feeling that the inner work with the analyst would not stop with termination, but it also concerned me that the transference aspect was not adequately resolved or the analyst figure integrated. However, it was clear that she felt she had recovered something that had been long lost, a comfortable stance in the world that included her sexuality, eros, and sense of feminine being and that her work would go on independently of formal analysis.

In this chapter we have explored the alchemical idea of the lumen naturae—the light of darkness itself—and amplified it by considering traditional images of the subtle body. We have shown how these archetypal images continue to have dramatic resonances with the images that emerge in contemporary analysis. The black sun is one such image that plays an important role in the transformation of psychic life. Although this chapter ends in a manner coherent with a traditional conception of the Self, I have come to consider the black sun as an image of a non-Self that has helped me to reimagine my understanding of the Self as Jung has described it.

Up to this point we have been considering the Sol niger, the black sun, as a powerful and important image of the unconscious and have been tracing its appearance in a wide variety of contexts from the alchemical mortificatio, in literal and symbolic experiences of death and dying, to the paradoxical shine and luminescence of the lumen naturae in images of regeneration. Like Jung's idea of the Self, Sol niger also expresses a coincidentia oppositorum—a black sun that shines contains the paradoxical play of light and dark, life and death, and spirit and matter. For Jung, the sun was a “symbol of the source of life and the ultimate wholeness of man” as indicated in the alchemical image of the solificatio, a process that corresponds to enlightenment or illumina-tion.¹ In color plate 13, a seventeenth-century miniature, the solificatio is represented as an alchemist whose body is “filled with light,” portraying the ultimate goal of alchemy.²

This represents one of the many important symbols of the Self.³However, for the sun to adequately express human wholeness, it cannot be only an ultimate image of light; it also must include darkness as an essential aspect of its nature. The black sun might well be considered to express this paradoxical dimension of light and darkness and might ultimately be understood as an archetype of the non-Self. This non-Self should not be considered antithetical to the Self or as an independent entity of any kind. Instead, it expresses a mysterious and paradoxical unknowing that was at the core of Jung's original attempt to describe the ungraspable wholeness of the psyche.

Like the sun, the Christ image represented the Self for Jung. He chose the Christ figure because it is “the still living myth of our culture,” and many significant images surround it.⁴ Also like the sun, the Christ image became identified primarily with the “light.” In fact, the early Christians had some difficulty in distinguishing the rising sun from Christ.⁵Jung states that Christ represents the “totality of a divine or heavenly kind, a glorified man, a son of God... unspotted of sin.”⁶ Yet for him, this concept lacks wholeness in the psychological sense. “As the Gnostics said, [he] has put aside his shadow, and thus leads a separate existence which manifests itself in the coming of the antichrist.”⁷ In other words, the principle of darkness has to manifest itself in some form.

Jung realized this, as indicated in this statement concerning the Self. We cannot ignore the shadow that belongs to this figure of light and without which it lacks a body and therewith humanity. “Light and shadow form a paradoxical unity within the empirical self.”⁸

For Jung, ultimately, the Christian concept becomes “hopelessly split into two irreconcilable halves: the last days bring about a metaphysical dualism, namely a final separation of the kingdom of heaven from the flaming world of damnation.”⁹An ideal spirituality striving for the heights is sure to clash with the materialistic earth-bound passion of the modern world. In short, the Christ figure as an image of the Self “lacks the shadow, which belongs to it.”¹⁰

For Jung, the Self can neither be limited to images of light nor split off from its shadow. The Self is a “transcendent concept... that . . . expresses the sum of the conscious and unconscious contents” and as such “can be described only in the form of antimony.”¹¹ “For this reason, [the process of] individuation is a mysterium coniunctionis [a mysterious conjunction of opposites], in that the Self is experienced in a nuptial union of opposite halves.”¹² The emergence of the Christ figure embodied the need to achieve this union, but for Jung the figure falls short of the goal.¹³

Jung's last work, the Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, is dedicated to the task of describing his idea of a mystical union. The union of opposites is an attractive idea because it implies psychological wholeness, but the enormity of the struggle involved in any engagement with otherness and with the darkness of the unconscious has become lost as Jung's theories become assimilated and taken for granted. This point of view has been expressed by Jungian analyst Neil Micklem, who emphasizes the importance of paradox rather than unity and notes that paradox usually gets glossed over as our attention moves toward the more attractive idea of the union of opposites.¹⁴ The theme of the unity of opposites catches the attention of people because it “points in the direction of wholeness,”¹⁵ and the idea of wholeness can easily become a shorthand way to pass over significant tensions. When this happens, the ideal of wholeness can lose its mystery and power and become a cliche or caricature. Micklem writes, “As long as we are fixed on making whole we are likely to miss that paradox.”¹⁶

Yet, mystery and paradox are essential to understanding what Jung calls the Self. For Jung, “paradox is characteristic of all transcendental situations.”¹⁷ This is “because it alone gives adequate expression to their indescribable nature.”¹⁸ Wherever the archetype of the Self predominates, there are always conflicting truths, and the history of reflective philosophical and religious thought is filled with diverse attempts to reconcile such differences. Just a few of these attempts include Buddhism's middle way, Aristotle's golden mean, the rational antinomies of Kant, Hegel's dialectic, Marx's dialectical materialism, Freud's eros and thanatos, Ricouer's tension between suspicion and belief, and Derrida's differance, all of which struggle with the problem in their characteristically different ways. For most of these, a simple rational mastery is not an adequate resolution to the problem of opposites, which seems to require a continuing attempt to express the complexity of the soul. Micklem writes that “Paradox enriches, because only paradox comes near to comprehending the fullness of life, and without it we are inwardly impoverished. . . . When we talk of paradox, we mean the presence of any two conflicting truths present at the same time in con-19

To hold two conflicting truths in consciousness at the same time creates an enormous tension. When confronted with such a situation, most people try to alleviate the tension by merging the paradox into a unity of the same, but in fact each truth must be preserved and is in need of careful differentiation until the transcendent function truly produces a symbolic solution. Symbols too easily become intellectual idealizations. To further illustrate the critique, Micklem points to the image of the hermaphrodite in the last print of the Rosarium Philoso-phorum in Jung's essay “The Psychology of Transference” and notes that most people simply see it as a symbol representing an integrated wholeness without really letting themselves experience its grotesque and monstrous character.²⁰ In short, for Micklem, the coniunctio, or reconciliation of opposites, is a monstrosity almost unbearable for the ego to tolerate.²¹ Yet it is important to confront such an experience if we are to have any genuine recognition of the Self. The tensions we are speaking about “destroy us, but they also make us,” and so we are caught in a strange paradox.²² Such a monstrosity is present in our illnesses and symptoms, and it is important not to turn away from it because it is essential for any differentiated sense of wholeness beyond any idealized ego fantasy. As we have noted, for Jung even the Christ figure could not contain the darkest dimensions of psyche, and, at least for some Christian thinkers, the thought of linking Christ and antiChrist in intimate connection is indeed a monstrous idea.

The issue of monstrosity and the Christian psyche is also discussed by Edinger, who takes up the issue of what was left out of Christian symbolism as it developed over the past two thousand years.²³ He turns to the Reusner's picture Pandora, which he believes contains the essence of alchemy and which, for Jung, was the carrier of those psychological elements elided by Christianity and that served as a counterbalance to it.

In figure 5.1 we see the assumption of Mary into heaven and her coronation. In the lower part of the picture one can see what Edinger calls the birth of a monster. What is so shocking for Edinger is the juxtaposition of the spiritual image of the assumption with “the image of the birth of a monster out of a lump of matter.”²⁴ The whole image reflects the struggle to integrate both the feminine and the principle of materiality into the Christian vision. The image is monstrous to the Christian eye, and for Edinger the lower image of a birth from matter is “like a cuckoo's egg that's been laid in someone else's nest.” The egg has been laid in the nest of the Christian vision, and “something unexpected is going to hatch out of it!”²⁵

Color plate 14 is an image of the unconscious reproduced from Jung's Alchemical Studies in the form of Mercurius, whose three extra heads represent Luna, Sol, and a coniunctio of Sol and Luna on the far right.²⁶ The unity of the three is symbolized by Hermes, who represents the quaternity “in which the fourth is at the same time the unity of the three.”²⁷ This image captures the quality of paradox and monstrosity stressed by Jung, Micklem, and Edinger. It is a symbolic unification but one not easily assimilable by the ego. This image may well be considered an example of a transformation going on in the God image of the Western psyche by virtue of the alchemical process that has been inserted into it, a process that gives birth to new possibilities. The new God image heralds the importance not only of incorporating the feminine and matter into our vision of spirit but also of “the discovery of the unconscious and the process of individuation.”²⁸

On a personal level, it also signifies all of the struggles of incarnated existence: “every hard disagreeable fact” of ordinary life. Edinger uses the eloquence of Shakespeare to describe the painful facts: “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, . . . the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of dis-priz'd love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of th' unworthy takes, [leaving us] to grunt and sweat under a weary life.”²⁹

Figure 5.1. Extraction of Mercurius and the coronation of the virgin, 1582. From Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey through C. G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. 133.

any idealized transcendence. Such experiences hurt, sting, enrage, and sometimes depress and kill us, and yet they must be acknowledged, negotiated, and made conscious if any real awareness of the Self is to take place.

Edinger notes, as Jung and Micklem have, that “the living experience of the Self is a monstrosity. It's a coming together of opposites that appalls the ego and exposes it to anguish, demoralization, and violation of all reasonable consideration.”³⁰ It is a violation of everything we have come to expect as natural, reasonable, and normal. In figure 5.2, Edinger gives us a feeling for this in this image of the unity of opposites. In alchemy, the monstrous aspect of the conjunction is particularly emphasized when the opposites that are brought together are not

Figure 5.2. Union of opposites as monstrosity, 1509. From Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey

Through C. G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, p. 137.

at first well differentiated. This situation is referred to as a monstrum, or premature unity, that is, any unity which does not differentiate itself into distinct realities.³¹

This premature quality of vision can hold true even for those rari-fied spiritual states described in the “images” of “pure light,” the “void,” or “merging bliss.”³² As Hillman states:

To go through the world seeing its one underlying truth in synchronistic revelations, its pre-established harmony, that God is becoming man and man becoming God, that inner and outer are one, that mother is daughter and daughter mother, puer is senex, senex puer, that nature and spirit, body and mind, are two aspects of the same invisible energy or implicate order, thereby neglects the acute distinctions joined by these conjunctions, so that our consciousness, no matter how wise and wondrous, is therefore both premature and monstrous. And by monstrous, alchemy means fruitless, barren, without issue.³³

To have a productive conjunction requires that, even when the bringing together of opposites is not dramatically monstrous, each figure of the pairing remains stubbornly different. Hillman thus describes what a conjunction is not: “It is not a balanced mixture, a composite adding this to that; it is not a blending of substantial differences into a compromise, an arrangement; it is not a symbolic putting together of two halves or two things into a third.”³⁴

Here Hillman pushes forward our traditional Jungian idea of the symbolic outcome of the transcendent function. He emphasizes that the stubborn resistance of differences and incommensurabilities may mean that paradox, absurdity, and overt enormity are more characteristic of a union than is androgynous wholeness or the harmony of the unus mundus, or unitary world. The alchemical conjunction beyond these simple monstrums is more like an absurd pun or the joy of a joke than the bliss of opposites transcended. As a psychological event it takes place in the soul as a recognition, an insight, and an astonishment. “It is not the reconciliation of two differences, but the realization that differences are each images which do not deny each other, oppose each other, or even require each other.”³⁵

The quality of the conjunction that Hillman describes is captured in the following poems, the first of which is said to summarize the operations of Taoist alchemy:

In this image there is a harmony but also the jolting confrontation of differences: “white snow flying in mid Summer.” The second poem is an obscure haiku that humorously captures the subtlety of “the conjunction”:

In this instance, the frog and the skylark at one level are far apart, yet they are both creatures that have a song, and from a certain perspective they express the harmony of the universe.

An even more enigmatic description is given by a female adept of the Complete Reality School (CRS) of Tao, Sun Bu-er, in her poem:

In this enigmatic poem are many strange juxtapositions and hints of a transcendence that do not reconcile the differences but allow them to stand together and nonetheless express an invisible alchemical conjunction that is quite astonishing. Though Micklem, Edinger, and Hillman emphasize the monstrous and/or astonishing aspects of the

coniunctio, not every genuine experience of conjunction has this quality. Consider this description in Cleary's recent translation of the classic Chinese alchemical text and meditation manual, The Secret of the Golden Flower:

[O]nce the two things meet, they join inextricably, the living movement of creative energy now coming, now going, now floating, now sinking. In the basic chamber in oneself there is an un-graspable sense of vast space, beyond measure; and the whole body feels wondrously light and buoyant. This is what is called ‘clouds filling the thousand mountains.' . . . [T]he coming and going is traceless, the floating and sinking are indiscernible. The channels are stilled, energy stops: this is the true intercourse. This is what is called ‘the moon steeped in myriad waters.'³⁹

Here is another description emphasizing the vital pleasures of union: “The pores are like after a bath, the bones and circulatory system are like when fast asleep, the vitality and spirit are like husband and wife in blissful embrace, the earthly and heavenly souls are like child and mother remembering their love.”⁴⁰

A humorous example of seeking an invisible harmony in learning how to paint occurs in a book by Oscar Mandel.⁴¹The author creates a scene in which young Chi Po—the main character—approaches his teacher, Bu Fu, for his first lesson. The fictional character of Chi Po is based on one of China's great painters, Chi Po Shih. The account goes as follows:

“Young one,” said Bu Fu at the beginning of the first lesson, “though I am a sorcerer, we must begin at the beginning.” “And what's the beginning?” said Chi Po. “Tell me, my foolish piece of youth, if your mother and father could give you anything you desired, what things would you ask them for?” That was a question Chi Po had often dreamed of himself, and had answered, too, in his dreams. So he replied without hesitation: “A new hoop, a dog from Peking, strawberries and whipped cream every afternoon, and two rocking chairs, one for Father and one for Mother, because they have always wanted rocking chairs.” “Now sit at the door of my cave,” said Bu Fu, “and watch the sky and the trees, and watch above all the wind and the destruction of the clouds, and watch the squirrels and the conies, and dream of the brush and of your hand which will sweep over the silk of your next painting.” With this, Bu Fu pronounced several frightful incantations, and abandoning Chi Po at the mouth of the cave, he went gathering acorns. Only the bulbul remained with Chi. He sat on a branch where he could watch the newcomer, and you could see by the tilt of his head and the angle of his beak that he doubted whether Chi could doit. And it wasn't easy. Now that Bu Fu had reminded him of the new hoop and the strawberries, Chi Po found it hard to send his thoughts into the trees and to keep his eye on the destruction of the clouds. But the afternoon was warm, and Chi settled drowsily with his back to the cave, chewing on a pine needle as he sat. He watched a cloud leave the top of a cedar and edge cautiously over to the top of another cedar. “Like a tightrope walker,” thought Chi. And then he heard the wind: well now, it ooooed against the rocks, and frushled among the leaves, and tickled in the pines, and it just went loose above the earth. And on top of the wind went the snitting of the sparrows, the wild geese, the magpies, and above all, the lilling of the scarlet throated winch, and “Oh,” thought Chi Po, “the treble of the birds and the bass of the wind—the high of the mountain and the low of the river—the king and the slave—father and boy—above and below—spring and winter,” and on he went in this way, delighted with his discovery and getting drowsy indeed, while the bulbul watched him out of his single eye. “Young one,” said Bu Fu, returning with acorns, “what is on your mind?” “Oh,” said Chi Po, a little ashamed, “nothing.” “Excellent, supreme,” cried Bu Fu, his beard quivering. “You have had your first lesson. Now go home, because I have work in hand. Come back tomorrow. If your mind is still free of that clutter of strawberries and rocking chairs, I will allow you to paint a single dragonfly on a single lotus flower. Off then!” . . . “So,” said Bu Fu the next day, when Chi Po came puffing up to the cave, “what of the clutter?” “I hope it is still gone, sir,” answered Chi Po. “May I try the dragonfly, please?” “And the lotus blossom. Yes you may.” And Bu Fu told Chi Po why a dragonfly needs a flower, and why a flower needs a dragonfly, for the one stays in the ground and rises from the ground upward, while the other moves about and descends from the sky downward. “Therefore” said Chi Po, “I must paint them where they meet, where down flows into up and up flows into down.”⁴²

chapter 4

Lumen Naturae

The Subtle Body

The Subtle Body of Taoist Alchemy

The Appearance of the Subtle Body in Analysis

Filius Philosophorum

The Inverted Tree