Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter. He had an only son, whom he wished to send to a high school. However, since he could give him only a little money to take with him, it was used up long before the time for the examinations. So the son went home and helped his father with the work in the forest

The spirit cried in an awful voice: “I have had my punishment and I will be revenged! I am the great and mighty spirit Mercurius, and now you shall have your reward. Whoso releases me, him I must strangle.” This made the boy uneasy and, quickly thinking up a trick, he said, “First, I must be sure that you are the same spirit that was shut up in that little bottle”

Thereupon the boy rubbed his damaged axe with the rag, and the axe turned to silver and he was able to sell it for four hundred thaler. Thus father and son were freed from all worries. The young man could return to his studies, and later, thanks to his rag, he became a famous doctor

THE FOREST AS THE PLACE

As at the beginning of many dreams something is said about the scene of the dream action, so the fairytale mentions the forest as the place of the magic happening. The forest, dark and impenetrable to the eye, like deep water and the sea, is the container of the unknown and the mysterious. It is an appropriate synonym for the unconscious. Among the many trees the living elements that make up the forestone tree is especially conspicuous for its great size. Trees, like fishes in the water, represent the living contents of the unconscious. Among these contents one of special significance is characterized as an “oak.” Trees have individuality. A tree, therefore, is often a symbol of personality. Ludwig II of Bavaria is said to have honoured certain particularly impressive trees in his park by having them saluted. The mighty old oak is proverbially the king of the forest. Hence it represents a central figure among the contents of the unconscious, possessing personality in the most marked degree. It is the prototype of the Self, a symbol of the source and goal of the individuation process. The oak stands for the still unconscious core of the personality, the plant symbolism indicating a state of deep unconsciousness

TREES AS DWELLING PLACES FOR SPIRITS

THE SECRET IS HIDDEN NOT IN THE TOP

The secret is hidden not in the top but in the roots of the tree, and since it is, or has, a personality it also possesses the most striking marks of personalityvoice, speech, and conscious purpose, and it demands to be set free by the hero. It is caught and imprisoned against its will, down there in the earth among the roots of the tree. The roots extend into the inorganic realm, into the mineral kingdom. In psychological terms, this would mean that the Self has its roots in the body, indeed in the body's chemical elements. Whatever this remarkable statement of the fairytale may mean in itself, it is in no way stranger than the miracle of the living plant rooted in the inanimate earth. The alchemists described their four elements as radices, corresponding to the Empedoclean rhizomata, and in them they saw the constituents of the most significant and central symbol of alchemy, the lapis philosophorum, which represents the goal of the individuation process

The secret hidden in the roots is a spirit sealed inside a bottle. Naturally it was not hidden away among the roots to start with, but was first confined in a bottle, which was then hidden. Presumably a magician, that is, an alchemist, caught and imprisoned it. As we shall see later, this spirit is something like the numen of the tree its spiritus vegetativus which is one definition of Mercurius. As the life principle of the tree, it is a sort of spiritual quintessence abstracted from it, and could also be described as the principium individuationis. The tree would then be the outward and visible sign of the realization of the Self. The alchemists appear to have held a similar view. Thus the “Aurelia occulta” says: “The Philosophers have sought most eagerly for the centre of the tree which stands in the midst of the earthly paradise.” According to the same source, Christ himself is this tree. The tree comparison occurs as early as Eulogius of Alexandria (c. A.D. 600), who says: “Behold in the Father the root, in the Son the branch, and in the Spirit the fruit: for the substancein the three is one.” Mercurius, too, is trinus et unus

THE PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS

THE IDEA OF THE PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION

The idea that the principle of individuation is the source of all evil is found in Schopenhauer and still more in Buddhism. In Christianity, too, human nature is tainted with original sin and is redeemed from this stain by Christ's self-sacrifice. Man in his “natural” condition is neither good nor pure, and if he should develop in the natural way the result would be a product not essentially different from an animal. Sheer instinctuality and naïve unconsciousness untroubled by a sense of guilt would prevail if the Master had not interrupted the free development of the natural being by introducing a distinction between good and evil and outlawing the evil. Since without guilt there is no moral consciousness and without awareness of differences no consciousness at all, we must concede that the strange intervention of the master of souls was absolutely necessary for the development of any kind of consciousness and in this sense was for the good. According to our religious beliefs, God himself is this Masterand the alchemist, in his small way, competes with the Creator in so far as he strives to do work analogous to the work of creation, and therefore he likens his microcosmic opus to the work of the World creator

THAT IS, TO THE EARTH, OR THE BODY

THE BOTTLE ISOLATES THE SPIRIT

The bottle is an artificial human product and thus signifies the intellectual purposefulness and artificiality of the procedure, whose obvious aim is to isolate the spirit from the surrounding medium. As the vas Hermeticum of alchemy, it was “hermetically” sealed (i.e., sealed with the sign of Hermes); it had to be made of glass, and had also to be as round as possible, since it was meant to represent the cosmos in which the earth was created. Transparent glass is something like solidified water or air, both of which are synonyms for spirit. The alchemical retort is therefore equivalent to the anima mundi, which according to an old alchemical conception surrounds the cosmos. Caesarius of Heisterbach (thirteenth century) mentions a vision in which the soul appeared as a spherical glass vessel. Likewise the “spiritual” or “ethereal” (aethereus) Philosophers' Stone is a precious vitrum (sometimes described as malleabile) which was often equated with the gold glass (aurum vitreum) of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21 : 21)

BY THE NAME OF PAGAN GOD `MERCURIUS'

HERMES BECOMES THE DEMON OF THE MYSTERIES

THE EVIL SPIRIT IS IMPRISONED

Before continuing our discussion of the spirit Mercurius, I should like to point out a not unimportant fact. The place where he lies confined is not just any place but a very essential onenamely, under the oak, the king of the forest. In psychological terms, this means that the evil spirit is imprisoned in the roots of the Self, as the secret hidden in the principle of individuation. He is not identical with the tree, nor with its roots, but has been put there by artificial means. The fairytale gives us no reason to think that the oak, which represents the Self, has grown out of the spirit in the bottle; we may rather conjecture that the oak presented a suitable place for concealing a secret

NEAR SOME KIND OF LANDMARK

SPIRIT MERCURIUS BEARS SOME

We will not pursue the paradoxical reality of the unconscious any further now, but will return to the fairytale of “The Spirit in the Bottle.” As we have seen, the spirit Mercurius bears some resemblance to the “cheated devil.” The analogy, however, is only a superficial one, since, unlike the gifts of the devil, the gold of Mercurius does not turn to horse droppings but remains good metal, and the magic rag does not turn to ashes by morning but retains its healing power. Nor is Mercurius tricked out of a soul that he wanted to steal. He is only tricked into his own better nature, one might say, in that the boy succeeds in bottling him up again in order to cure his bad mood and make him tractable. Mercurius becomes polite, gives the young fellow a useful ransom and is accordingly set free. We now hear about the student's good fortune and how he became a wonder-working doctor, butstrangely enoughnothing about the doings of the liberated spirit, though these might be of some interest in view of the web of meanings in which Mercurius, with his many-sided associations, entangles us. What happens when this pagan god, Hermes-Mercurius-Wotan, is let loose again?

SPIRITUS VEGETATIVUS, AND STORM DAEMON