Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

Philosophers’ Stone 81
only in hints. In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious
into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it. In order to explain
the mystery of matter he projected yet another mystery—his
own unknown psychic background. . . .
. . . I mean by this that while working on his chemical experiments
the operator had certain psychic experiences which appeared
to him as the particular behavior of the chemical process. Since it
was a question of projection, he was naturally unconscious of the
fact that the experiment had nothing to do with matter itself . . . . He
experienced his projection as a property of matter; but what he was
in reality experiencing was his own unconscious. 85
“Early on in my acquaintance with alchemy,” continued Brillig,
“my imagination was struck by the concept of the Philosophers’
Stone, 86 and how similar it was to Jung’s idea of the Self. Psychologically,
the Philosophers’ Stone is an archetypal image of wholeness.
I immediately realized, as you probably have, that the tablet
I’d snatched years before in Kraznac falls into the same category.
“Naturally, having in mind Jung’s remarks, I had to take into account
the possibility that the numinosity I experienced in that stone
was due to something in me. By then I knew the stone was genuine,
but what about me, was I authentic? What about the way I felt?
Could I trust that? It was a new context, but essentially the same
old question, ‘Who am I?’
“Well, I took care of that little item, though it took rather longer
than I’d expected. In fact, the first two years of my analysis were
spent differentiating my ego-self from that greater Self, which I’d
identified with and then projected onto Ms. Little. That’s about
how long it took for me to get a handle on personal boundaries—
where I ended and she began was only the start. My analyst, normally
a patient man, was more than once obliged to remind me of
85 “The Psychic Nature of the Alchemical Work,” Psychology and Alchemy, CW
13, pars. 345-346. Those interested in the therapeutic application of alchemical
thought will find ample reason to rejoice in Edward F. Edinger, Anatomy of the
Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy.
86 “Make a round circle of man and woman, extract therefrom a quadrangle and
from it a triangle. Make the circle round, and you will have the Philosophers’
Stone.” (From the Rosarium philosophorum, cited by Jung in “Psychology and
Religion,” Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par. 92)