Transformation for the European medieval alchemist consisted of releasing the uncommon
gold, aurum non vulgi that was actually imminent in all things, by a psycho-metaphysical
transmuting process. Within the vas hermetiacum, the retort hermetically sealed,
processes were initiated that were intended only to accelerate and fulfill, not to oppose, the
travail of nature, which was normally to render from the element of its soil a ‘golden
flowering` of the spirit. The vessel on the left shows the rain from a cloud being
transformed by a winged monster through a hermaphroditic process. The result is poured
onto the centre retort, a spiritual beginning of a virgin birth of a new man. The distillate
from the transformed rain condenses in the heated vessel on the right, out of whose
sulphur rises a living caduceus of the world axis, surrounded by copulating snakes.
(2) 1:58
The channel through which transformation takes place is the connecting line between you
and divine otherness, between you and whatever else other than you there actually is. The
connection is established through the act of surrender to that otherness so that one can
receive or become conscious of that otherness. By duplication of that otherness one obtains
a nature’ or substance that gradually evolves to a perfect copy of the original otherness.
The process of surrender automatically leads to the transfomation of one’s own substance
through the agency of the sushumna nadi or central energy channel between oneself and
God.
(3)
In this figure we see the lunar Queen and the solar King with the waters beneath. The text
explains that techniques alone are unable to initiate transformation independent of nature,
that the philosopher’s stone, the `lapus philosophorum.’ is something situated midway
between a perfected and unperfected body, and that nature herself initiates this by
technique carried to perfection. The text goes on to say, “What is perfect does not
transform but vanishes; however, what is imperfect does indeed transform,” In C.G. Jung’s
later years, his search for complete transformation led him to make this statement about
this King and Queen; “If no bond of love exists, they have no soul,” In this picture, the
bond is effected by the dove from above and the water from below. Thus the underlying
idea of psyche proves to be a half-bodily, half-spiritual substance, an “ahima media nature”
as the alchemists call it, a hermaphroditic being capable of uniting the opposites, but who
is never complete in the individual unless also related to another individual. An unrelated
being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness only through the soul, and the soul
cannot exist without it’s other side, which is always found in another you