ABSTRACT
There is a resonance between psychoanalysis (Jungian and Lacanian), mysticism, gnostic illumination, and alchemy—all of which described what Jung called an opus divinum. Each discipline describes an initiatory process of transformation and a phenomenology of a path leading to the goals of their respective and overlapping disciplines. These connections are shown by examining a number of themes, including the experience of lack, a via negativa, mystical poverty, a groundless ground, a jouissance, wandering joy, the relationship between illumination and darkness, knowing and unknowing, and the paradoxical, if not mystical, play between them.
