Cluster Diagram: Sublimatio

Just as calcinatio pertains to fire, solutio to water, and coagulatio to earth, so sublimatio is the operation pertaining to air. It turns the material into air by volatilizing and elevating it. The image derives from the chemical process of sublimation in which a solid, when heated, passes directly into a gaseous state and ascends to the top of the vessel, where it resolidifies on the upper, cooler region. Distillation is a similar process, in which a liquid vaporizes on heating and condenses again in a cooler area

PROCESS

All images that refer to upward movementladders, stairs, elevators, climbing, mountains, flying, and so forthbelong to sublimatio symbolism, as do all the psychological and value connotations associated with being high rather than low. An alchemist text says, “The spirit, therefore, by the help of the water and the soul, is drawn forth from the bodies themselves, and the body thereby is made spiritual; for that at the same instant of time, the spirit, with the soul of the bodies, ascend on high to the superior part, which is the perfection of the Stone, and is called sublimation” ( The Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, p. 138 )

CONCRETE PROBLEM

RAISED ABOVE

Sublimatio is an ascent that raises us above the confining entanglements of immediate, earthy, existence and its concrete, personal particulars. The higher we go the grander and more comprehensive is our perspective, but also the more remote we become from actual life and the less able we will be to have an effect on what we perceive. We become magnificent but impotent spectators. Heaven is the abode of the eternal Platonic forms, the universals, the archetypal images. Hence, whenever a dream or life situation is interpreted from the archetypal standpoint, it is promoting sublimatio. The success of such interpretations may be expressed in dreams by the escape or release of caged birds or some other auspicious upward movement

IDEAS OF SUBLIMATION

SUBLIMATION EXPERIENCED

For the alchemist, the process of sublimation was experienced in symbolic images. He, for example, might see a bird flying up from the matter in the lower part of the vessel to the upper regions. The alchemical vessel was equated with the macrocosm, its lower part being the earth and its upper part, heaven. The sublimate flees earth and is transported to heaven. A text says, “At the end of the sublimation there germinates through the mediation of the spirit, a shining white soul [anima candida] which flies up to heaven with the spirit. This is clearly and manifestly the Stone” ( Quoted in CW12: par. 462 ) (fig. 005.02) . This “white soul” is often represented by a white bird being released from the material being heated

Sublimatio

WHITE BIRD EMERGING

One picture shows a man being cooked in a water bath with a white bird emerging from his head (fig. 005.03)

Extraction of the White Dove

A parallel to this picture occurred in the case of a young woman who was enduring an intense and painful activation of the unconscious. She dreamed:

Giving Birth

AOP Pg 121 (g-3) FigNo005.04

Munch, (1895). Oslo, National Museum

This dream informs the patient that the anxiety she is enduring is part of a larger transformation process, in which the ego is heated by horror in order to bring forth a new birth, the “sublimate,” represented by the flock of doves. Dreams of birds generally refer to sublimatio, and bird phobias may indicate fear of a necessary sublimatio. They are also often connected with a fear of death, death being the ultimate sublimatio whereby the soul is separated from the body

EXTRACTION PROCEDURE

This “expulsion of the quicksilver” is done by sublimatio, which releases the spirit hidden in matter. In the largest sense, this refers psychologically to the redemption of the Self from its original unconscious state. The expulsion of the quicksilver can also be experienced in lesser ways as the extraction of meaning from heavy moods, from concrete events, or from the factuality of nature (fig. 005.05)

Extraction of Mercurius and Coronation of the Virgin

ATTENUATION BY

Sublimatio can mean “grinding” or “hammering” to bring about an attenuation of the material. Very fine powder approaches a gas in its consistency. Note also that the symbolism of grinding contains the moral categories of good and bad. Powder made up of small particles is called “fine,” that with large particles is “coarse.” To be good is to be well pulverized. Encounter with the numinosum may have a pulverizing effect, as indicated by the saying, “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.” “Foliation” has the same implication. An alchemical recipe mentioned earlier reads, “Sow your gold in white foliated earth”that is, in sublimated earth. Foliation is done by hammering

MATTER AND SPIRIT

CULTURAL EVOLUTION SEEN

The whole history of cultural evolution can be seen as a great sublimatio process in which human beings learn how to see themselves and their world objectively. Stoic philosophy was one vast effort to teach humans how to achieve the Stoic goal of apathia by getting above the passions that tie them to the earth. Similarly, Plato's idealism, as well as all later idealistic systems, strive to present life in terms of eternal forms and universal ideas in order to overcome the galling human bondage to the contingencies of matter. Reason, which gives people a standpoint outside their personal likes and dislikes, becomes an indispensable agent of sublimatio by teaching them how to be reflective spectators of themselves

A young man was tragically caught in the archetypal dynamism of sublimatio as an autonomous process of dissociation. It impelled him further and further from personal, earthy reality until the inevitable enantiodromia sent him crashing to the ground

Dream:

I once dreamed that I had climbed a ladder to a high platform, and that then somebody removed the ladder so that I was left stranded on the height with no way of getting down again

Miles Above the Earth

Dream:

Another time I was spread-eagled on the glass floor of a wall-less elevator. There was no shaft. A hydraulic piston was pushing the floor ever upwards. I was fearfully peering over the edge of the floor, watching the earth recede in the distance

Dream:

I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, “This must thou eat.” And I ate the world ( The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 7 : 525. )

A dream of floating in the “great Ether” seems symbolically appropriate for the author of Emersonian transcendentalism. This dream is grand rather than grandiose. In contrast to the pervious dreams, this one contains its own corrective factor. The extreme sublimatio is compensated by the coagulatio image of eating the apple of the world

SUBLIMATIO SYMBOL

The tower image came up in a dream of mine after attending an impressive lecture on mythology. I dreamed:

Broadcasting Tower

DREAM COMMENTARY

The person who is vouchsafed a revelation from God is often “lifted up” and transported to heaven

The symbolism of shamanism also has the motif of ascent to revelation. The shaman climbs the world pillar, or the cosmic ladder, or makes a magical flight in search of a supernatural revelation

This ritual was meant to bring about a revelation of the divine realm and to confer immortality on the initiate by means of an ascent to heaven. In psychological terms, it is a revelation of the archetypal psyche which releases one from a personal ego-attitude, enabling one to experience oneself as an immortalthat is, as living with archetypal realities and making a contribution to the archetypal psyche

Another aspect of ascent symbolism is the theme of translation to eternity. For instance, Heracles ascended to Olympus from his funeral pyre, a quite literal sublimatio. He disappeared from the earth and reappeared on a higher level as a result of being heated. The same thing happened to Elijah ( 2 Kings 2 : 11, RSV ): “Behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them [Elisha and Elijah]. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (fig. 005.06)

Ascension of Elijah

Fire also sublimates Elijah. According to 1 Maccabees 2 : 58, it was Elijah's fiery religious intensity that accounted for his ascension. “Elijah for his consuming fervour for the law was caught up to heaven itself” (JB). Christ ascended to heaven forty days after his resurrection ( Acts 1 : 9 ). According to legend, the Virgin Mary ascended into heaven at the time of her death, and the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin has been on the Church calendar (August 15) since the seventh century, although the assumption was not proclaimed as dogma until 1950 (fig. 005.07)

Assumption of the Virgin

TRANSLATION TO ETERNITY

What does it mean psychologically to translate into eternity that which has been created in time? Individual consciousness or realization of wholeness is the psychological product of the temporal process of individuation. For that to be made eternal is a mysterious idea. It seems to imply that consciousness achieved by individuals becomes a permanent addition to the archetypal psyche

Dream:

Jung: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence fell away or was stripped from mean extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. “I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished”

DREAM COMMENTARY

The majority of sublimatio images we encounter as therapists belong to the lesser, sublimatio. In fact, for contemporary patients, images of ascent, heights, and flying almost always indicate the need for a down-going. Modern individuals have had entirely too much sublimatio, at least of the lesser kind. They need descent and coagulatio (fig. 005.12) . The relative freedom of the sublimated state is an important achievement in psychic development, but only a part. It can be disastrous to be stuck in the sky. Ascent and descent are both needed. As an alchemical dictum says, “Sublimate the body and coagulate the spirit”

The Tower of Babel

SUBLIMATIO REMAINS AT