It was finally when Richard Wilhelm
brought him the _I-Ching_, and asked him to
write the Introduction to _The Secret of
the Golden Flower_ that he realized that
he was connected up ... that alchemy was a
fundamental thing of all humanity,
including in China.  Including the
development of Taoism, and everything,
because _The Secret of the Golden Flower_
is basically Chinese alchemy. Right?
So then he could connect up alchemy, but
and the point is that alchemy, came up
through Gnosticism. It didn't come up
through the Church. The Gnostics were
on the outs with the Church, and the
Church became this structure, power
structure, send us your money and we'll
build a big temple in Rome. We have all
these beautiful things, and look at the
look at the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, and send us more money so we can
buy more artists. Right? And the Gnostics were
on the outs of those guys, and that's
the significance of Dr. Jung's 11 year-old
dream, when he saw God defecating on the
Cathedral of Basel. Okay? And the point was
that it wasn't about the Church. It's
about God! Right? It's about God and the God-image.
It's not about how God is
worshipped. Really important! I wanted to
talk for just a minute about the
Mysterium Lectures, which is this one,
because ... why did I want to ...
Okay. I wanted to say a couple of things:
One was the reason that Dr. Jung went back
to the alchemists was that they produced
images, and this goes to this fundamental
point. "The Psyche consists essentially of
images. It is a series of images in the
truest sense--a structure that is throughout
full of ... a structure that is
throughout full of meaning and purpose.
It is a picturing of vital activities.
Mind and body are the expression of the
single entity. This living being appears
outwardly as the material body, but
inwardly as a series of images of the
vital activities taking place within it.
And what Dr. Jung is saying in _Mysterium_ is
that the reason he had to go back to the
alchemists was that they could produce the
images without epistemological criticism.
Okay, so Bill, you want to take it from
here. What's ...
epistemological criticism? Okay. [Inaudible]
[Voice]...where they don't  bring a bunch of crap
into the room to where they've already
got preconceived notions...
Right. Okay, so epistemological criticism is the
the question of ... it's the question of
where did your image come from? Did it
come from
Kant, or Schopenhauer, or Jung, or where
did it come from? And it didn't come from
you.  You got that image from somewhere.
You must have heard it somewhere. It
didn't come just naturally from you, but
the
the alchemists didn't have
epistemological criticism when they were
doing their work. In their 1700
years of work, epistemological criticism
was not influencing them. So they came up
with the images in the purest form--and
that's the point.
Okay. And that's the point of _Mysterium_
which, _Mysterium Coniunctionis_, which is
[Voice] See that would be totally different than
say like the traditions you know where
you you've got to learn a tradition like
the brushstrokes and stuff is there ...
something that. There's a
whole tradition of how you gotta do it.
Right. Right. And you don't have to do
that. Right? And so what Dr. Jung is
saying is, or what Dr. Edinger's saying
about Dr. Jung on the _Mysterium Lectures_... I'm
looking at the Introduction to it here,
"It's important at the outset to understand
that Jung's method of approach is
rigorously empirical. He lays before us
with utter objectivity the facts of the
Psyche. This is not the facts of the
personal psyche . The facts of the
personal Psyche are all different,
because each individual has his or her
own life story.
Jung presents the facts of the objective
Psyche, the transpersonal Psyche, and
specifically they're the facts that
manifest themselves in alchemy. He  explains
his rationale in a passage of _Alchemical
Studies_. It is often impossible to establish
the full range of meaning of an
architectypal image from the associated
material of a single
individual. Hence the necessity
of comparative research into symbols. For
this purpose the investigator must turn
back to those periods in human history
when symbol formation still went on
unimpeded; that is
when there was still no epistemological
criticism of the formation of images, and
when, in consequence, facts that in
themselves were unknown could be
expressed in definite visual form. The
period of this kind closest to us is the
medieval natural philosophy. Here as it
here as in a reservoir were collected
the most enduring and the most important
mythologems of the ancient world.
In fact, I was amazed when I read
_Psychology and Alchemy_ that it was like
a history of the human mind. Right?  That's
basically what he was doing, [Voice] Dr. Jung was trying to....Wasn't he trying to do a
kind of anatomy of the  Psyche? Right.
And so Dr. Jung says that this method of
comparative research in the history of
symbols is similar to the relation
between comparative anatomy and human
anatomy. Comparative anatomy studies the
anatomical structure of various
specimens in the course of the
evolutionary process. When we do
comparative Symbol research, we're doing
something analogous to the anatomy of
the Psyche. The anatomy of the Psyche
consists of images, and that's what this
book is about. Here is another passage
from Jung. And then he reads ... he does this
thing about images. So, the point is that
these images were as pure as he could
find them without epistemological
criticism, and therefore he's talking
about the
the evolution of the human mind. And he
definitely did overall his work, the
60 years of study, that proved that
you know there were these same images
across the human species. Okay? [Voice] When he's talking
about [inaudible] ... or Masculine
and Feminine. ... the standing in the pool of water, and all of that.  Well I mean
that's [Voice] Those are the symbols he's  talking
about. Right?  Yeah, those are
the symbols; those are the alchemical
symbols. [Voice] The way the hands ... the way the hands are joined, and all that.
Yeah.  To me the most powerful
alchemical symbol that I saw
though, was the one where it shows the
vas that's very narrow at the top and
it's wide at the bottom and in it are
three dragons, and around it is
civilization.
Okay? The symbols of civilization--
people going to the market and doing
various things, but in that vas are the
are the dragons of our [Voice] Shadow. Well our Shadow; our
instincts. Those are our instincts that keep
us going, but we've now bottled them
and controlled them ...  well, we haven't
controlled them, but [Voice] They're managed? Well. yeah
they're sitting in missile silos and
they're [Voice] Ready to go!  They're sitting in guys
who are looking at people that are not
their wives.
Okay? I mean, [Voice] And dirty statues. [Laughter] Well yeah... well I mean think
of Vice President Pence, you know, he's
sitting there and he's got one of those
dragons in a bottle in his Psyche.
And boy, if he ever goes out with ... if
he ever has dinner with another
woman, and his wife isn't there good Lord.
You know, "Katy bar the door." [Voice] Katy bar the door. [Laughter][An American colloquialism meaning "Anything can happen."]
