ABSTRACT
In his commentary on the alchemical treatise, De Sulphure, Jung writes, ‘the psyche is only partly identical with our empirical conscious being; for the rest it is projected and in this state it imagines or realises those greater things which the body cannot grasp, i.e., cannot bring into reality.’ He continues:
That this activity of the soul ‘outside the body’ refers to the alchemical opus is evident from the remark that the soul has the greatest power over the body…. ‘Thou canst conceive the greater’, says our author; therefore your body can bring it into reality-with the help of the art and with God’s permission (Deo concedente), this being a fixed formula in alchemy.
(Jung, 1944: para. 399)