The artifex himself bears no correspondence to Christ; rather he sees this correspondence to the Redeemer in his wonderful Stone."
- Carl Jung, 'Psychology and Alchemy'
"Long before Paracelsus, as I have said, this filius was equated with Christ. The parallel comes out very clearly in the sixteenth-century German alchemists who were influenced by Paracelsus. For instance, Heinrich Khunrath says: “This [the filius philosophorum], the Son of the Macrocosm, is God and creature . . . that [Christ], is the son of God, the θεάνθρωπος, that is, God and man; the one conceived in the womb of the Macrocosm, the other in the womb of the Microcosm, and both of a virginal womb. . . . Without blasphemy I say: In the Book or Mirror of Nature, the Stone of the Philosophers, the Preserver of the Macrocosm, is the symbol of Christ Jesus Crucified, Saviour of the whole race of men, that is, of the Microcosm. From the stone you shall know in natural wise Christ, and from Christ the stone.”
- Carl Jung, Paracelsus As A Spiritual Phenomenon
"And just as, in Christianity, the Godhead conceals itself in the man of low degree, so in the “philosophy” it hides in the uncomely Stone. In the Christian projection the descensus spiritus sancti stops at the living body of the Chosen One, who is at once very man and very God, whereas in alchemy the descent goes right down into the darkness of inanimate matter whose nether regions, according to the Neopythagoreans, are ruled by evil."
- Carl Jung, 'Psychology and Alchemy'
“Christ is compared and united with the earthly stone . . . it is an outstanding type and lifelike image of the incarnation of Christ.”
- Mus. herm., p, 118:
"Since it is not man but matter that must be redeemed, the spirit that manifests itself in the transformation is not the “Son of Man” but, as Khunrath very properly puts it, the filius macrocosmi. Therefore, what comes out of the transformation is not Christ but an ineffable material being named the “stone,” which displays the most paradoxical qualities apart from possessing corpus, anima, spiritus, and supernatural powers."
- Carl Jung, 'Psychology and Alchemy'
"Mercurius, it is generally affirmed, is the arcanum, the prima materia, the “father of all metals,” the primeval chaos, the earth of paradise, the “material upon which nature worked a little, but nevertheless left imperfect”: He is also the ultima materia, the goal of his own transformation, the Stone, the tincture, the philosophic gold, the carbuncle, the philosophic man, the second Adam, the analogue of Christ, the king, the light of lights, the deus terrestris, indeed the divinity itself or its perfect counterpart"
- Carl Jung, 'The Spirit Mercurius'
"In the image of Mercurius and the lapis the “flesh” glorified itself in its own way; it would not transform itself into spirit but, on the contrary, “fixed” the spirit in Stone, and endowed the Stone with all the attributes of the three Persons. The lapis may therefore be understood as a symbol of the inner Christ, of God in man. I use the expression “symbol” on purpose, for though the lapis is a parallel of Christ, it is not meant to replace him. On the contrary, in the course of the centuries the alchemists tended more and more to regard the lapis as the culmination of Christ’s work of redemption. This was an attempt to assimilate the Christ figure into the philosophy of the “science of God.” In the sixteenth century Khunrath formulated for the first time the “theological” position of the lapis: it was the filius macrocosmi as opposed to the “son of man,” who was the filius microcosmi. This image of the “Son of the Great World” tells us from what source it was derived: it came not from the conscious mind of the individual man, but from those border regions of the psyche that open out into the mystery of cosmic matter"
- Carl Jung, 'The Visions Of Zosimos'
"The attributes of the Stone incorruptibility, permanence, divinity, triunity, etc. are so insistently emphasized that one cannot help taking it as the deus absconditus in matter. This is probably the basis of the lapis-Christ parallel, which occurs as early as Zosimos (unless the passage in question is a later interpolation). Inasmuch as Christ put on a “human body capable of suffering” and clothed himself in matter, he forms a parallel to the lapis, the corporeality of which is constantly stressed. Its ubiquity corresponds to the omnipresence of Christ. Its “cheapness,” however, goes against the doctrinal view."
- Carl Jung, 'The Visions Of Zosimos'
"The divinity of Christ has nothing to do with man, but the healing Stone is “extracted” from man, and every man is its potential carrier and creator. It is not difficult to see what kind of conscious situation the lapis philosophy compensates far from signifying Christ; the lapis complements the common conception of the Christ figure at that time. What unconscious nature was ultimately aiming at when she produced the image of the lapis can be seen most clearly in the notion that it originated in matter and in man, that it was to be found everywhere, and that its fabrication lay at least potentially within man’s reach. These qualities all reveal what were felt to be the defects in the Christ image at that time: an air too rarefied for human needs, too great a remoteness, a place left vacant in the human heart. Men felt the absence of the “inner” Christ who belonged to every man. Christ’s spirituality was too high, and man’s naturalness was too low."
- Carl Jung, 'The Visions Of Zosimos'