Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts

by Herbert Silberer

Since psychoanalysis has found acceptation, many of its followers believe they are able to solve, with their work of analysis alone, all the psychological, esthetic and mythological problems that come up. We understand only half of the psychic impulses, as indeed we do all spiritual development, if we look merely at the root. We have to regard not merely whence we come but also whither we go. Then only can the course of the psyche be comprehended, ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically, according to a dynamic scheme as it were.

If we apply this fundamental principle to symbolism there develops therefrom the obligation to keep both visible poles in view, between which the advance of significance, the process of intro-determination is completed. (An externalization is also possible, yet the internalization or intro-determination must be regarded as the normal process.) [It corresponds namely to the process of education and progress of culture. This will soon be cleared up.] To the most general type belong then, without doubt, those symbols or frequently disguised images, concerning which we wondered before, that besides representing “titanic” tendencies, they are fitted to represent the anagogic. The solution of the riddle is found the instant we regard these images as types with a certain degree of intro-determination, as types for a few fundamental forces of the soul, with which we are all endowed, and whose typical symbols are for that reason of general applicability. [I will therefore call these types the human elementary [pg 252] types.] For example, if by psychoanalysis we deduce father and mother, etc., from some of the symbols appearing in dreams, we have in these representations of the psychic images, as the psychoanalyst calls them, in reality derived mere types whose meaning will change according to the ways of viewing them, somewhat as the color of many minerals changes according to the angle at which we hold them to the light. The actual father or mother, the experiences that surrounded them, were the material used in the formation of the types; they were external things even if important, while later the father, etc., emerging as symbol, may have significance as a type of the spiritual power of the very person in question; a spiritual power to be sure, which the person in question feels to be like a father for otherwise the father figure would not be suited for the symbol. And we can go so far as to call this spiritual power a father image. That should not however, mislead us into taking that real person, who in the individual case generally (though not always) has furnished the type, for the real or the most essential. The innermost lies in ourselves and is only fashioned and exercised upon persons of the external world.

So then we get for the typical symbol a double perspective. The types are given, we can look through them forward and backward. In both cases there will be distortions of the image; we shall frequently see projected upon each other, things that do not belong together, we shall perceive convergences [pg 253] at vanishing points which are to be ascribed only to perspective. I might for brevity's sake call the errors so resulting errors of superposition. The significance of this concept will, I hope, come to have still greater validity in psychoanalysis. [This error of superposition C. G. Jung attempts to unmask, when he writes: “As libido has a forward tendency, so in a way, incest is that which tends backward into childhood. It is not incest for the child, and only for the adult, who possesses a well constituted sexuality, does this regressive tendency become incest in that he is no longer a child, but has a sexuality that really no longer can suffer a regressive application.” (Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious.) It may moreover be remarked that Freud also is careful not to take the incest disclosed by psychoanalysis in too physical a sense.] This error of superposition is found not only in the view backward but in the forward view. So what I, as interpreter of mystical symbolism, may say about the possible development of the soul will be affected by this error of superposition. It is not in my power to correct it. In spite of everything, the treatment of symbolism from the two points of view must be superior to the onesided treatment; in order to approximate a fundamental comprehension, which to be sure remains an ideal, the different aspects must be combined and in order to make this clear I have added a synthetic treatment to the analytic part of my work.

Looking back through the elementary types, we [pg 254] see the infantile images together with those non-moral origins that psychoanalysis discovers in us; looking forward we notice thoughts directed to certain goals that will be mentioned later. The elementary types themselves thanks to intro-determination represent however a collection of our spiritual powers, which we have first formed and exercised at the time that the images arose, and which are in their nature closely related to these images, indeed completely united with them as a result of the errors of superposition—this collection of powers, I say, accompanies us through our entire life and is that from which are taken the powers that will be required for future development. The objects or applications change, the powers remain almost the same. The symbolism of the material categories which depends on external things changes with them; but the symbolism of the functional categories, which reflects these powers remains constant. The types with their intro-determination belong to the functional categories; and so they picture the constant characters.

That experience to which the suggestions of symbolism (brought to verbal expression by means of introversion) point as to a possible spiritual development, corresponds to a religious ideal; when intensively lived out this development is called mysticism. [We can define mysticism as that religious state which struggles by the shortest way towards the accomplishment of the end of religion, the union with the divinity; or as an intensive cultivation of [pg 255] oneself in order to experience this union.] It presents itself if instead of looking backward we gaze forward from our elementary types to the beyond. But let us not forget that we can regard mysticism only as the most extreme, and therefore psychically the most internal, unfolding of the religious life, as the ideal which is hardly to be attained, although I consider that much is possible in this direction. If my later examination carries us right into the heart of mysticism, without making the standpoint clear every time, we now know what restrictions we must be prepared for.

If I take the view that those powers, whose images (generally veiled in symbolism) are the elementary types, do not change, I do not intend to imply that it is not possible to sublimate them. With the increasing education of man they support a sublimation of the human race which yet shows in recognizable form the fundamental nature of the powers. One of the most important types, in which this transformation process is consummated and which refines the impulse and yet allows some of its character to remain, is the type mother, i.e., incest. Among religious symbols we find countless incest images but that the narrow concept of incest is no longer suited to their psychological basis (revealed through analysis) has been, among psychoanalysts, quite clearly recognized by Jung. Therefore in the case of every symbolism tending to ethical development, the anagogic point of view must be considered, and most of all in religious symbolism. The impulse corresponding [pg 256] to the religious incest symbols is preeminently to be conceived in the trend toward introversion and rebirth which will be treated of later. [Vid. [note C], at the end of the volume.]

I have just used the expression “sublimation.” This Freudian term and concept is found in an exactly similar significance in the hermetic writers. In the receptacle where the mystical work of education is performed, i.e., in man, substances are sublimated; in psychological terms this means that impulses are to be refined and brought from their baseness to a higher level. Freud makes it clear that the libido, particularly the unsocial sexual libido, is in favorable circumstances sublimated, i.e., changed into a socially available impelling power. This happens in the evolution of the human race and is recapitulated in the education of the individual.

I take it for granted that the fundamental character of the elementary psychic powers in which the sublimation is consummated is the more recognizable the less the process of sublimation is extended in time. In mysticism, e.g., the fundamental character penetrates the primal motive because the latter wishes to lead the relatively slightly sublimated impulses by a shortened process to the farthest goal of sublimation. Mysticism undertakes to accomplish in individuals a work that otherwise would take many generations. What I said therefore about the unchangeability of the fundamental powers or their primal motive, is wholly true of its fate in mystical development.

The Mohammedan mystic Arabi (1165-1240) writes, “Love as such, in its individual life, is the same for sensuous and spiritual, therefore equally for every Arab (of an allegory) and for me, but the objects of love are different. They loved sensible phenomena while I, the mystic, love the most intimate existence.” (Horten, Myst. Texte, p. 12.)

The religious-mystical applications of the fundamental powers represented by the types, in the sense of a sublimation, does not manifest therefore in contrast to their retrospective form (titanic, purposeless form) an essentially foreign nature; the important novelty in them is that they no longer are used egotistically but have acquired a content that is ethically valuable, to which the intro-determination was an aid. This determination, whose external aspects we have noticed in the types or symbols, is only the visible expression of a far more important actual intro-determination whose accomplishment lies in an amplification of personality, and will later be considered in detail.