Coniunctio

Conjunctionis: This operation signifies the union or synthesis of opposites, representing the integration of diverse elements to achieve unity and wholeness.

In coniunctio, the previously separated substances such as Sol & Luna or sulphur and mercury are combined through the secret fire to create a new third substance. This philosophical child is more than the sum of its parents. In psychology, the operation often involves an association between the conscious and the subconscious, which thereby creates an expanded consciousness. In herbal alchemy, a coniunctio occurs when the alchemical tincture is re-combined with its salt. Together they create a new compound that is significantly more powerful than the two parts are individually. What distinguishes coniunctio from coagulatio is that coniunctio does not necessarily require a new body but can be a compound of the red and white elixir. In the human alchemy, there can be a union between the etheric and the astral bodies without the involvement of the physical body. There is a coniunctio coeleste – heavenly union – where the soul and spirit marry and create a new whole in the form of a soul-spirit. We meet it as a bright hermaphrodite with angel wings, which shows that the soul is now one with the higher guardian angel. There is also a coniunctio corporalis – corporeal union – whereby the soul-spirit reunites with the rejuvenated and re-created body. The alchemical image of the hermaphrodite with bat wings conveys that the lower material forces have now been refined and restored in purified form. The final union in the opus is called the alchemical wedding and involves a vertical fusion of body, soul and spirit as well as a horizontal union of masculine and feminine. Then the alchemical cross is created, through which the intersection of the rosy heart gives birth to the divine child.

• Alchemy – the divine work

"To deal with the coniunctio in human words is a disconcerting task, since you are forced to express and formulate a process taking place ‘‘in Mercurio” and not on the level of human thought and human language, i.e. not within the sphere of discriminating consciousness. On this side of the epistemological barrier we have to separate the opposites in order to produce comprehensible speech. You have to state, that a is not b, that above it not below, that the perfume of the Spiritus Sanctus is not the malus odor sepulchrorum sive inferni and that the nuptiae spirituales are not the carnal union of bodies. Yet in the archetypal unimaginable event, that forms the basis of conscious apperception, a is b, stench is perfume, sex is amor Dei, as inevitable as the conclusion, that God is the complexio oppositorum. The Alchemists were more or less aware of this shocking state of affairs, although rarely explicitely so. Usually, whether consciously or not, they tried not to commit themselves, yet they also did not avoid symbolic allusions or pictures of an alluring kind. They expressed for instance shock at the idea of incest, yet they could not refrain from using the term, just as little as undoubtedly Christian poets did, for instance Chrétien de Troyes: 'Dieu qui fit de sa fille sa mére (God who made His daughter His mother - i.e. Mary)'"

• Jung, letter to John Trinick, October 15th 1957

"The fourth Degree is the Reconciliation or the Reuniting. Just as after rain appears again The fair and lovely sunshine: So after wrath comes once more Much greater love in a single hour. What you once brought apart, Is united again with power: So that much seed might strongly With many children bless you. Meanwhile Neptune must Prepare a warm bath rightly, So that both together, man and wife, May finely wash their bodies clean."

Alchemical Quotes On The Coniunctio (taken from 'The Stone of the Philosophers' by Edward Kelly)

Rhasis

: "Change the bodies into water, and the water into earth: then all is done."

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Galienus

: "Prepare the bodies, and purify them of the blackness in which is corruption, till the white becomes white and red, then dissolve both, etc."

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Calid (chapter i.)

: "If you do not make the bodies subtle, so that they may be impalpable to touch, you will not gain your end. If they have not been ground, repeat your operation, and see that they are ground and subtilized. If you do this, you will be directed to your desired goal."

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Aristotle

: "Bodies cannot be changes except by reduction into their first matter."

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Calid (chapter v.)

: "Similarly, the Sages have commanded us to dissolve the bodies so that heat adheres to their inmost parts; then we proceed to coagulation after a second dissolution with a substance which most nearly approaches them."

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Menabadus

: "Make bodies not bodies, and incorporeal things bodies, for this is the whole process by which the hidden virtue of Nature is extracted."

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Ascanius

: "The conjunction of the two is like the union of husband and wife, from whose embrace results golden water."

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"Anthology of Secrets"

: "Wed the red man to the white woman, and you have the whole Magistery."

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"The Sounding of the Trumpet"

: "There is another quicksilver and permanent tincture which is extracted from perfect bodies by dissolution, distillation, sublimation, and subtilization."

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Hermes

: "Join the male to the female in their own proper humidity, because there is no birth without union of male and female."

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Plato

: "Nature follows a kindred nature, contains it, and teaches it to resist the fire. Wed the man to the woman, and you have the whole Magistery."

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Avicenna

: "Purify husband and wife separately, in order that they may unite more intimately; for if you do not purify them, they cannot love each other. By conjunction of the two natures you get a clear and lucid nature, which, when it ascends, becomes bright and serviceable."

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"Art of Alchemy"

: "Two bodies provide us with everything in our water."

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Trevisanus

: "Only that water which is of the same species, and can be thickened by bodies, can dissolve bodies."

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Hermes

: "Let the stones of mixture be taken in the beginning of the first work, and let them be equally mixed into earth."

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"Mirror"

: "Our Stone must be extracted from the nature of two bodies, before it can become a perfect Elixir."

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Democritus

: "You should first dissolve the bodies over white hot ashes, and not grind them except only with water."

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"Rosary" of Arnold

: "Extract the Medicine from the most homogeneous bodies in Nature."

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I have thus proved the number of the bodies from which the Elixir is obtained. I will now shew by quotations what these bodies are.

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"Exposition of the Letter of King Alexander"

: "In this art you must wed the Sun and the Moon."

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"The Sounding of the Trumpet"

: "The Sun only heats the earth and imparts to it his virtue through the mediation of the Moon, which, of all stars, most readily receives his light and heat."

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"The Correction of Fools"

: "Sow gold and silver, and they will yield to your labour a thousandfold, through the mediation of that thing which alone has what you seek. The Tincture of gold and silver exhibits the same metallic proportions as the imperfect metals, because they have a common first matter in Mercury."

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Again

: "Tinge with gold and silver, because gold gives the golden and silver the silver colour and nature. Reject all things that have not naturally or virtually the power of tinging, as in them is no fruit, but only waste of money and gnashing of teeth."

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Senior

: "I, the Sun, am hot and dry, and thou, the Moon, art cold and moist; when we are wedded together in a closed chamber, I will gently steal away thy soul."

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Rosinus to Saratant

: "From the living water we obtain earth, a homogeneous dead body, composed of two natures, that of the Sun and that of the Moon."

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Again

: "When the Sun, my brother, for the love of me (silver) pours his sperm (i.e. his solar fatness) into the chamber (i.e. my Lunar body), namely, when we become one in a strong and complete complexion and union, the child of our wedded love will be born."

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Hermes

: "Its humidity is of the empire of the Moon, and its fatness of the empire of the Sun, and these two are its coagulum and pure seed."

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Astratus says

: "Whoever would attain the truth, let him take the humour of the Sun and the Spirit of the Moon."

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Turba Philosophorum

: "Both bodies in their perfection should be taken for the composition of the Elixir, whether orange or white, for neither becomes liquid without the other."

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Again, Gold says

: "No one kills me but my sister."

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Aristotle

: "If I did not see gold and silver, I should certainly say that Alchemy was not true."

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The Sage

: "The foundation of our Art is gold and its shadow."

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"Art of Alchemy"

: "We have already said that gold and silver must be united."

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"Rosary"

: "There is an addition of orange colour by which the Medicine is perfected from the substance of fixed sulphur, i.e., both medicines are obtained from gold and silver."

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The Sage

: "Whoever knows how to tinge sulphur and quicksilver has reached the great arcanum. Gold and silver must be in the Tincture, and also the ferment of the spirit."

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"Rosary"

: "The ferment of the Sun is the sperm of the man, the ferment of the Moon, the sperm of the woman. Of both we get a chaste union and a true generation."

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"The Sounding of the Trumpet"

: "You want silver to subtilize your gold, and make it volatile by removing its impurity, since the silver has a greater need of the light of gold. Therefore Hermes, as also Aristotle in his treatise on Plants, says that gold is its father, and silver its mother; nothing else is needed for our Stone. Silver is the field in which the seed of gold is sown." And a little further on: "In my sister, the Moon, grows your wisdom, and not in any other of my servants, saith the Lord Sun. I am like seed sown in good and pure soil, which sprouts and grows and multiplies and yields great gain to the sower. I, the Sun, give to thee, the Moon, my beauty, the light of the Sun, when we are united in our smallest parts." And the Moon says to the Sun: "Thou hast need of me, as the cock has need of the hen, and I need thy operation, who art perfect in morals, the father of lights, a great and mighty lord, hot and dry, and I am the waxing Moon, cold and moist, but I receive thy nature by our union."

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Avicenna

: "In order to obtain the red and the white Elixir, the two bodies must be united. For though gold is the most fixed and perfect of the metals, yet if it be dissolved into its smallest parts, it becomes spiritual and volatile, like quicksilver, and that because of its heat. This tincture, which is without number, is called the hot male seed. But if silver be dissolved in warm water, it remains fixed as before, and has little or no tincture, yet it readily receives the tincture in a temperament of hot and cold, and is called the cold, dry, female seed. Gold or silver by themselves are not easily fusible, but a mixture of the two melts readily, as is well known to goldsmiths. Hence if our Stone did not contain both gold and silver, it would not be liquid, and would yield no medicine through any magistery, nor tincture, for if it yielded tincture it would still have no tinging power."

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And a little further on: "Take heed, then, and operate only on gold, silver, and quicksilver, since all the profit of our Art is derived from these three."

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I may add that crude Mercury is the water which the Sages have used for the purpose of solution. I have proved that two bodies must be dissolved, and that they are no other than gold and silver. Now I will describe the conjunction of these two bodies by means of the crude Mercury of the Sages.

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"The Light of Lights"

: "Know that it is gold, silver, and Mercury that whiten and redden within and without. The Dragon does not die, unless he be killed with his brother and sister, and it must be not by one, but by both together."

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"The Ladder of the Sages"

: "Others say that a true body must be added to these two, to strengthen and shorten the operation."

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"Treasury of the Sages"

: "Our Stone has body, soul, and spirit, the imperfect body is the body, the ferment the soul, and the water the spirit."

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"The Way of Ways"

: "The water is called the spirit, because it gives life to the imperfect and mortified body, and imparts to it a better form; the ferment is the soul, because it gives life to the body, and changes it into its own nature."

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Again

: "The whole Magistery is accomplished with our water, and of it. For it dissolves the bodies, calcines and reduces them to earth, transforms them into ashes, whitens and purifies them, as Morienus says: "Azoth and fire purify Laton, that is to say, wash it and thoroughly remove its obscurity; Laton is the impure body, Azoth is quicksilver."

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"The Sounding of the Trumpet"

: "As without the ferment there is no perfect tincture, as the Sages say, so without leaven there is no good bread. In our Stone the ferment is like the soul, which gives life to the dead body through the mediation of the spirit, or Mercury."

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"The Rosary" and Peter of Zalentum say

: "If the ferment, which is the medium of conjunction, be placed in the beginning, or in the middle, the work is more quickly perfected."

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"The Sounding of the Trumpet"

: "The Elixir of the Sages is composed of three things, viz., the Lunar, the Solar, and the Mercurial Stone. In the Lunar Stone is white sulphur, in the Solar Stone red sulphur, and the Mercurial Stone embraces both, which is the strength of the whole Magistery."

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Eximenus

: "The water, with its adjuncts, being placed in the vessel, preserves them from combustion. The substances being ground with water, there follows the ascension of the Ethelia and the imbibition of water is sufficient by itself to complete the work."

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Plato

: "Take fixed bodies, join them together, wash the body in the bodily substance, and let it be strengthened with the incorporeal body, till you change it into a real body."

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Pandulphus

: "The fixed water is pure water of life, and no tinging poison is generated without gold and its shadow. Whoever tinges the poison of the Sages with the Sun and its shadow, has attained the highest wisdom."

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Again

: "Separate the elements with fire, unite them by means of Mercury, and the Magistery is complete."

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Exercit, 14

: "The spirit guards the body and preserves it from fire, the clarified body keeps the spirit from evaporating over the fire, the body being fixed and the spirit incombustible. Hence the body cannot be burnt, because the body and spirit are one through the soul. The soul prevents them from being separated by the fire. Hence the three together can defy the fire and anything else in the world."

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Rhasis("Book of Lights")

: "Our Stone is named after the creation of the world, being three and yet one. Nowhere is our Mercury found purer than in gold, silver and common Mercury."

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When bodies and spirits are dissolved, they are resolved into the four elements, which become a firm and fixed substance. But when they are not both dissolved, there is a particular mixture which the fire can still separate."

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Rosinus

: "In our Magistery are a spirit and bodies, whence it is said: It rejoices being sown in the three associated substances."

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Calid

: "Prepare the strone bodies with the dissolves humidity, till either shall be reduced to its subtle form. If you do not subtilize and grind the bodies till they become impalpable, you will not find what you seek."

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Rosinus

: "The Stone consists of body, soul, and spirit, or water, as the Philosophers say, and is digested in one vessel. Our whole Magistery is of, and by, our water, which dissolves the bodies, not into water, but by a true philosophical solution into the water whence metals are extracted, and is calcined and reduced to earth. It makes yellow as wax those bodies into whose nature it is transformed; it substantialises, whitens, and purifies the Laton, according to the word of Morienus."

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Aristotle

: "Take your beloved son, and wed him to his sister, his white sister, in equal marriage, and give them the cup of love, for it is a food which prompts them to union. All pure things must be united to pure things, or they will have sons unlike themselves. Therefore, first of all, even as Avicenna advises, sublime the Mercury, and purify in it impure bodies. Then pound and dissolve. Repeat this operation again and again."

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Ascanius

: "Stir up war between copper and Mercury till they destroy each other and devour each other. Then the copper coagulates the quicksilver, the quicksilver congeals the copper, and both bodies become a powder by means of diligent imbibition and digestion. Join together the red man and the white woman till they become Ethelia, that is, quicksilver. Whoever changes them into a spirit by means of quicksilver, and then makes them red, can tinge every body."