the timboucher experience

This afternoon, I bought another book by Marie Louise Von Franz, who is easily my favorite author. The book is “Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology.” I read Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy a while back, and it was really interesting, but also really dense. Von Franz has an incredible ability to cut things down to their essence and explain them in everyday terminology. At least, I think so.

Reading her books is always a real delight for me, because it really solidifies a lot of connections that were kind of hazy for me before, as well as forging all kinds of new ones. I think, in a lot of ways, she’s actually much better to read than Jung (whom she studied under). I always find myself going back to her books, searching for different quotes and things. So, to save myself time later, I’m just gonna jot down the ones that strike me as I go through it.

One final note before I dive into the quoted passages… another book that I recommend highly for getting acquainted with some really beautiful alchemical art and symbolism is Alexander Roob’s, “Alchemy and Mysticism.” It’s just a stunning book, and the art collected in it blows my mind apart in the best possible way.

“This is what happens to original experiences which are handed on, for a selection is made and what fits or coincides with what is already known is handed on, while other details tend to get dropped, because they seem strange and one does not know how to deal with them.

It seems, therefore, that symbolism handed on by tradition is to a certain extent rationalized and purged of the scurrilities of the unconscious, the funny little details which the unconscious tags on, [which are] sometimes contradictions and dirt. That, on a small scale, happens even without ourselves. (p. 16)”

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“He discovered that members of the tribe often dreamt about it, and that in those dreams, as one would expect, and as would happen with us, there were variations in little details which did not fit with what actually took place. Australian Aborigines say that if a dream contained a good idea, it was told to the tribe and adopted as a part of the festival, which in that way varied sometimes, though in the main they kept to the tradition which had been handed on. (p. 17)”

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“…Normally, mankind has not approached the unconscious individually, but, with few exceptions, has related to it indirectly through religious systems. (p. 18)”

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“Naturally, in all religious systems there are sects which tend to revivify immediate experiences. Wherever a religion seems to be too codified a compensatory sect is usually formed to revivify individual experiences, and this accounts for the many splits. … The one claiming to be orthodox, and the other claiming to have the living spirit, which would also be the contrast between extravert and introvert types. But even in the tradition of the introvert who claims to have the living spirit, there is very little real personal experience of the unconscious. There are always only a few individuals who have such experiences, probably because they are so dangerous and frightening that only rare and unusually courageous people go this way, or fools, who do not know how dangerous the thing is, and who therefore are driven mad by it. (p. 19-20)

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“Thus, in these forms of approach to the unconscious, conscious direction and a prescribed way, or path, must be conformed to, and certain thoughts which come up ignored. For this reason the symbolism which appears in such forms is not quite of the same kind as that in dreams and active imagination, for we tell people [in psychoanalysis] simply to observe what comes up, which naturally produces slightly different material, so that we can only compare the two products relatively. (p. 21)”

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“Thus there exists in alchemy an astonishing amount of material from the unconscious, produced in a situation where the conscious mind did not follow a definite program, but only searched. Dr. Jung himself approached the unconscious in a similar manner, and in analysis we too try to get people to adopt an attitude where they do not approach the unconscious according to a program. We simply say for instances that the situation looks bad, that the subject is in an unsatisfactory condition, and that we should look at that and at the life phenomenon which we call the unconscious and consider together what that might represent, or could be driving at. (p. 22)”

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