- Dioses, Diosas y Seres Sobrenaturales
- Mitos De La Creación Y Los Orígenes
- El Hombre y Lo Sagrado
- Muerte, Ultratumba y Escatología
- Especulaciones Sobre el Hombre y Dios.
In my book Psychology and Alchemy I devoted a special chapter to the projection of
psychic contents (hallucinations, visions, etc.) and therefore need not dwell
here on the spontaneous production of the tree symbol among the alchemists:
THE
ALCHEMIST'S TREE GREW
AND
BLOSSOMED IN THE RETORT
(a)
Suffice to say that
the adept saw branches and twigs in the retort, where his tree grew and
blossomed. He was advised to contemplate its growth, that is, to reinforce it
with active imagination. The vision was the thing to be sought (res quaerenda). The
tree was “prepared” in the same way as salt. And just as the tree grew in the
water, so also it was putrefied in it, “burnt” or “cooled” with the water. It
was called oak, vine, myrtle
CW13 ¶ 374
THE
GROWTH, EXPANSION, DEATH, AND
REBIRTH
OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL TREE
(b)
Dorn draws an
impressive picture of the growth, expansion, death, and rebirth of the
philosophical tree. Its branches are veins running through the earth, and
although they spread to the most distant points of the earth's surface they all
belong to the same immense tree, which apparently renews itself. The tree is
obviously thought of as a system of blood vessels. It consists of a liquid like
blood, and when this comes out it coagulates into the fruit of the tree.
Strangely enough, in ancient Persian tradition the metals are connected with
the blood of Gayomart: his blood, soaking into the earth, turned into the seven
metals
CW13 ¶ 376
THE
TREE AS A METAPHORICAL FORM
OF
THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE
(c)
This remarkable
text [Dorn's] explains the tree as a metaphorical form of the arcane substance,
a living thing that comes into existence according to its own laws, and grows,
blossoms, and bears fruit like a plant. This plant is likened to the sponge,
which grows in the depths of the sea and seems to have an affinity with the
mandrake.Dorn then makes a distinction between the “living things of nature”
and those of matter. By the last-named are obviously meant concrete, material
organisms. But it is not so clear what the former are meant to be. A sponge
that bleeds and a mandrake that shrieks when pulled up are neither “vegetabilia
materiae” nor are they found in nature, at least not in nature as we know it,
though they may occur in that more comprehensive, Platonic nature as Dorn
understood it, that is, in a nature that includes psychic “animalia,” i.e.,
mythologems and archetypes. Such are the mandrake and similar organisms. How
concretely Dorn visualized them is a moot point. At any rate the “stone that is
no stone, nor of the nature of stone” comes into this category
CW13 ¶ 382