AOP Pg 083 (xx) Cluster Diagram Coagulatio

Author's Diagram

Cooling can turn a liquid into a solid

A chemical reaction may produce a new compound that is solidfor example, the coagulation of egg white when it is heated

INTO EARTH

AOP Pg 083 (b) FigNo004.01

Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, (1618)

Dream:

It is dawn, the light of the rising sun just emerging. I am up to my waist in a substance that is a mixture of black mud, slime, and shit. There is no one else around and this black expanse stretches to the horizon. It is like the beginning of the world, the first day of creation. I start to thrash my legs, to churn in the black mud with great and persistent effort. I continue doing this for hours and slowly the primeval ooze begins to harden and become firm. I notice the sun is rising into the sky and its heat is drying up the water and providing solid earth. I anticipate being able to stand on firm ground

These myths tell us that coagulatio is promoted by action (diving, churning, whirling motion). They correspond to what Faust learned from the Spirit of Mephistopheles: “In the beginning was the deed” ( Goethe, Faust, pt. 1, line 1237 ). Psychologically this means that activity and psychic movement promote ego development. Exposing oneself to the storm and stress of action, the churn of reality, solidifies the personality

A certain alchemical text mentions three agents of coagulatio: magnesia, lead, and sulphur. Magnesia had a different meaning to the alchemists than it does to us; it was a general term referring to various crude metallic ores or impure mixtures. Psychologically this could refer to the union of the transpersonal spirit with ordinary human reality

The next agent of coagulatio mentioned is lead. Lead is heavy, dull, and burdensome. It is associated with the planet Saturn, which carries the qualities of depression, melancholy, and galling limitation. Thus, free, autonomous spirit must be connected with heavy reality and the limitations of personal particularity. In analytic practice this linkage with lead is often accomplished when the individual takes personal responsibility for fleeting fantasies and ideas by expressing them to the analyst or to another person. It is astonishing to observe the difference between an idea thought and an idea spoken. It's the difference between mercury and lead (fig. 004.02)

Eagle chained to a Ground Animal

SULPHUR

It is paradoxical. “As the corrupter it has affinity with the devil, while on the other hand it appears as a parallel of Christ” ( CW14: par. 153 ). Thus, if part of the meaning of sulphur is desirousnessthe striving for power and pleasure-we reach the conclusion that desire coagulates

In the New Testament the flesh is explicitly equated with sinful desirousness.Not only is desirousness a characteristic of fleshthe coagulated aspect of the psychebut also desire is said to initiate the incarnating process. For instance, incarnation and desire are linked in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. When a soul is about to be reincarnated and lodged in a womb, it has visions of mating couples and is overcome by intense desireif a male, desire for the mother and aversion for the father, if a female, desire for the father and aversion for the mother

The incarnating process is linked with desire, with a descent or fall from heaven, and with a putting on of clothes. The motif of the fall from heaven because of pride or passion goes back to Genesis 6 : 2 ( AV ): “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Also relevant is Lucifer's rebellion and fall from heaven so beautifully described by Milton, [ Milton, “Paradise Lost,” in Milton: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, bk.11, lines 40-49 ].This passage contains calcinatio symbolism, but its main reference is to coagulatio. It is a magnificent description of the initial preconscious act that lays the foundation of the ego. Angels or their equivalents still fall from heaven in modern dreams (fig. 004.03)

The Fall of the Rebel Angels

Dreams of planes crashing or objects falling generally refer to coagulatio. For instance, a man who was in the process of developing a more authentic relation to his religion had this dream:

Falling Rock

DREAM COMMENTARY

Psychotherapeutic experience verifies the idea that desire promotes coagulatio. For those who are already driven by desirousness, coagulatio is not the operation needed. However, many patients have an inadequate libido investment, a weakness of desire sometimes bordering on anhedonia. Such people don't know what they want and are afraid of their own desires. They are like unborn souls in heaven shrinking from the fall into concrete reality. These people need to cultivate their desiresseek them, nourish them, and act on them. Only thus will psychic energy be mobilized that will promote life experience and ego development. In psychotherapy, the emergence of transference desires will often indicate the beginning of a coagulatio process and therefore should be treated with care

The lure of desire is the sweetness of fulfillment. Honey as the supreme example of sweetness is therefore an agent of coagulatio. Paracelsus says that “the prime matter of honey is the sweetness of the earth which resides in naturally growing things.” And again, honey “is the prime materialized matter, for honey and wax are one.” According to the alchemist Dorn's recipe for joining the spirit (unio mentalis) with the body, one of the required agents is honey.Honey, because of its preservative qualities, was considered by the ancients to be a medicine of immortality and had a Eucharistic use in some early Christian communities

COAGULATIO FOLLOWED BY

Coagulatio is generally followed by other processes, most often by mortificatio and putrefactio. What has become fully concretized is now subject to transformation. It has become tribulation calling out for transcendence.The body and flesh are identified with death because anything that is born into spatio-temporal existence must submit to the limitations of that existence, which include an end, death. This is the price of being real. Once a content has fully coagulated or incarnated it becomes lifeless with no further possibilities for growth

CONCEPTS

Concepts and abstractions don't coagulate. They make air, not earth. They are agents of sublimatio. The images of dreams and active imagination do coagulate. They connect the outer world with the inner world by means of proportional or analogous images and thus coagulate soul-stuff. Moods and affects toss us about wildly until they coagulate into something visible and tangible; then we can relate to them objectively. Jung says in his memoirs: “To the extent that I managed to translate the emotions into imagesthat is to say, to find the images which were concealed in the emotionsI was inwardly calmed and reassured” ( MDR, p. 177 )

Coagulatio is experienced as a bondage because it confines individuals to their actual reality, the portion they were given by destiny. Perhaps this accounts for the phrase, “he was bound to do that.” Language is stating that destiny is bondage (fig. 004.08) . Embodied existence is even described as a prison or tomb. Plato speaks of the soul as being “enshrined in the living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell” ( Phaedrus, 250 ). Less negatively, the body is described as the house or temple of the soul. Oliver Wendell Holmes uses this image in his poem The Chambered Nautilus

Fortune or Nemesis carrying the Cup and Harness of Destiny

CLOTHES

Dream:

A tapestry is being brought down from the attic. It is in two separate parts which are to be joinedthe burlap backing and the threaded design. First the burlap backing is brought downstairs. Next the threaded design was to be brought down. We were supposed to study the design of the tapestry in order to understand it. This would involve the counting of the threads. The design was very rich and complex

This dream is of considerable interest as an example of the reaction of the unconscious to the biological fact of conception. It has several similarities with the myths. First, the event is described as a fall, a descent from the attic. Secondly, there is a distinction made between the material ground (the burlap) and the image of meaning (threaded design) to be superimposed on it. This would correspond to the distinction between the soul and the flesh, which will house it, or the material, which will carry the stamp of its image. In addition, the counting of the threads would correspond to the measuring function of the second Fate, Lachesis

Coagulatio dreams sometimes occur at the approach of death, as though to express the meaning of the incarnation now ending. An eighty-two-year-old woman had this dream a few weeks before her sudden death:

Over-cooked Roast

Another example is a woman's report of the death of her grandfather. “Before my grandfather died, he was in a nursing home for eight or ten years, so senile that he seemed to recognize no one. Everyone kept asking, `Why doesn't he die?' Everyone kept saying how much better it would have been if he could have died when his active life was over; always he had found meaning only in work and activity. The night before his death, one of his daughters (my aunt) dreamed”:

Oriental Carpet

CONCLUSION

CLOTHES AND DEATH

FOOD AND MEAL IMAGERY

To eat something means to incorporate itliterally, to turn it into body. Hence, dreams in which the dreamer is offered something to eat indicate that an unconscious content is ready for coagulatio, assimilation by the ego

Dream:

I go out for dinner at a very special place. It is not really a restaurant, but the basement of a monastery. The food is served by monks. For dessert they serve “cow-dung cookies”supposedly a delicacy like filet mignon. However they warn me to be careful, for some may not have crystallized out of their prior form. The idea of eating them causes me great distress

Whenever food is offered one in a dream, the general rule is that is should be eaten no matter how unpleasant it seems. Sometimes, as in this dream, it will have strange or miraculous qualities, indicating that it is coming from the archetypal level of the psyche. Biblical examples are the manna from heaven sent to the Israelites in the wilderness ( Exod. 16 : 12 ) and the feeding of the four thousand ( Matt. 15 : 32 ). In some cases the food to be eaten clearly symbolizes the need to assimilate a relation to the Self. Isaiah speaks of the word of God as bread to be eaten.Christ says “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” ( John 4 : 34, AV )

AOP Pg 111 (x) FigNo004.15

Note the Tiny Black Devil Entering Judas' Mouth. An enlargement of this detail is shown below. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. The Guennol Collection and the Pierpont Morgan Library

The Last Supper

HOLY COMMUNION

The sacrament of baptism pertains to solutio

The sacrament of matrimony to coniunctio

CONCLUSION