Jung on Alchemy

JUNG ON ALCHEMY – C.G. Jung’s research revealed to him that analytical psychology coincided with Alchemy. Jung states:

“I had very soon seen that analytical psychology coincided in a most curious way with alchemy…  The experiences of the alchemists were, in a sense, my experiences, and their world was my world. This was of course, momentous discovery: I had stumbled upon the historical counterpart of my psychology of the unconscious. The possibility of comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology. When I pored over those old texts, everything fell into place: the fantasy-images, the empirical material I had gathered in my practice, and the conclusions I had drawn from it. I now began to understand what these psychic contents meant when seen in historical perspective.”

( C.G. Jung Psychology and Alchemy CW 12, pars. 345ff )

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