Late in life, Jung decided that the form of spirituality he would not just study but adopt personally was alchemy. He believed that alchemy could serve as the completion and fulfillment of Christianity, as a 'redeeming' agent for Christianity, to paraphrase. My understanding is that he felt that alchemy was compatible with the discoveries he had made in the realms of psychology, archetypes and comparative religion. (I'm trying not to claim more knowledge than I have here).
While many associate alchemy with the transmutation of base metals into gold, this represents just one aspect or stage in the long history of alchemy. (Modern chemistry is descended from this branch of alchemy). If what I have read is correct, it has survived to this day as a set of practices concerned largely with the spiritual transformation of is adherents.
In alchemy there is no community to sign up to, there are no creeds to sign on to, it is a path followed by the individual in privacy. (Perhaps it is because of this that Dr. I claims alchemy is not a 'living religion'; I'm sure there are many who would disagree...) At a time when spiritual traditions are responding to Western individualism with a renewed emphasis on the community, this stance seems both controversial and liberating...
As someone so palpably afraid of contradicting the authoritative voices of religious orthodoxy, I wonder at the courage it takes to so boldly declare one's own ultimate authority on the subject of one's own spirit. I could take a leaf out of the alchemists' book.
For me, the trap is in accepting the validity of alchemy as a spiritual path purely because it was written about by Jung, thus making Jung himself the infallible authority who is to be trusted and obeyed...
[Copyright 1985 LBL], downloaded 8th January, 2010, from:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/lbl/index1.htm
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