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Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #65
The Mystery of the Coniunctio: Alchemical Image of Individuation
Edinger puts a human face on the union of opposites in two concise essays: "Introduction to Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis" and "A Psychological Interpretation of the Rosarium Pictures"--the alchemical drawings on which Jung based The Psychology of the Transference.
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1994
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349 people want to read
About the author
Edward F. Edinger
38 books206 followersEdward F. Edinger was a medical psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and American writer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.
Edward F. Edinger Jr. was born on December 13, 1922, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earning his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and his Doctor of Medicine at Yale School of Medicine in 1946. In November 1947, as a first lieutenant, he started a four-week Medical Field Service School at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He became a military doctor in the United States Army Medical Corps and was in Panama. In New York in 1951, he began his analysis with Mary Esther Harding, who had been associated with C.G. Jung.
Edinger was a psychiatrist supervisor at Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York, and later founder member of the C.G. Jung Foundation in Manhattan and the CG Jung Institute in New York. He was president of the institute from 1968 until 1979, when he moved to Los Angeles. There he continued his practice for 19 years, becoming senior analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
He died on July 17, 1998, at his home in Los Angeles at age 75, according to family members due to bladder cancer.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 4, 2018
Really good and quick read. The introduction was my favorite part. I excerpted the heart of it below. The rest of the book was explaining the individuation process through the lens of the Rosarium pictures. As usual, Edinger is a delight to read!
Excerpt:
The opposites constitute the most basic anatomy of the psyche. The flow of libido, or psychic, is generated by the polarization of opposites in the same way as electricity flows between the positive and negative poles of an electrical circuit. So, whenever we are attracted toward a desired object, or react against a hated object, we’re caught up in the drama of opposites. The opposites are truly the dynamo of the psyche. They are the motor, they’re what keeps the psyche alive.
Now just having experiences of being attracted to things and repulsed by things does not constitute consciousness. Consciousness requires a simultaneous experience of opposites and the acceptance of that experience. And the greater the degree of this acceptance, the greater the consciousness.
…The young ego is obliged to establish itself as something definite and therefore it must say, “I am this and I am not that.” No-saying is a crucial feature of initial ego development. But the result of this early operation is that a shadow is created. All that I announce I am not then goes into the shadow. And sooner or later, if psychic development is to occur, that split-off shadow must be encountered again as an inner reality; then one is confronted with the problem of the opposites that had earlier been split apart.
I would say that the most crucial and terrifying pair of opposites is good and evil. The very survival of the ego depends on how it relates to this matter. In order to survive, it is absolutely essential that the ego experience itself as more good than bad. There has to be a heavier weight on the side of good, in the balance, than on the side of evil. And this of course explains the creation of the shadow, for the young ego can tolerate very little experience of its own badness without succumbing to total demoralization.
…As the ego matures, the situation gradually changes, and the individual becomes able to take on the task of being the carrier of evil. Then it is not so important to locate the evil elsewhere. When one is able to acknowledge one’s evil, one becomes a carrier of the opposites, and in so doing contributes to the creation of the coniunctio.
…Once you start thinking about it, and once you become familiar with the phenomenon of the opposites, you’ll see it everywhere. It’s the basic drama that goes on in the collective psyche. Every war, every contest between groups, every dispute between political factions, every game, is an expression of coniunctio energies. Whenever we fall into an identification with one pair of warring opposites, we then lose the possibility, for the time being anyway, of being a carrier of opposites. And instead we become one of G-d’s millstones that grinds out fate. At such times one still locates the enemy on the outside and so doing is simply a particle.
…And Jung puts the same idea in different words:
“If the subjective consciousness prefers the ideas and opinions of collective consciousness and identifies with them, then the contents of the collective unconscious are repressed. ...And the more highly charged the collective consciousness, the more the ego forfeits its practical importance. It is, as it were, absorbed by the opinions and tendencies of collective consciousness, and the result of that is the mass man, the every-ready victim of some wretched “ism.” The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once.”
…You see, failure and guilt are necessary experiences because each is a part of wholeness. In order to experience the union of the opposites, you have to experience failure and guilt. I remember what a revelation it was to me the first time I came across this remark of Jung’s:
“[In a person’s life] there is something very like a felix culpa [a happy fault]. …One can miss not only one’s happiness but also one’s final guilt, without which a man will never reach his wholeness.”
In other places, too, Jung makes it very clear that he attaches value to guilt. We often try desperately to avoid consciousness of our guilt, and in doing so we’re forced into shadow projection. Both shadow projection and factional identification are evidence of an immature ego (which of course is not helped by hostile criticism).
An image I find very helpful is to liken the ego to a fishing boat. Such a boat can take on only a certain amount of fish, no more than it can hold. The load must be commensurate with its size. What if you’re fishing in a small row boat and catch a whale? If you pull it in, you’ll go under.
This is an apt image because the problem of the opposites is indeed a whale: grappling with the opposites leads directly to an encounter with the Self.
…All right, how does one go about whale hunting? Where are the opposites to be found?
Well, you find them by scrutinizing whatever you love and hate. That’s easy to say but I assure you it is exceedingly difficult to do. The reason it’s so difficult is that whenever feelings of love or hate come upon us, they are not accompanied by inclinations to scrutiny.
…Whenever we take too concretely an urge to love or hate, then the coniunctio is exteriorized and thereby destroyed. If we are gripped by a strong attraction to a person or a thing, we must reflect on it. As Jung says:
“Unless we prefer to be made fools of by our illusions, we shall, by carefully analyzing every fascination, extract from it a portion of our own personality, like a quintessence, and slowly come to recognize that we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”
The same applies to our passionate antipathies. They also must be subjected to thorough analytic scrutiny. Whom do I hate? What groups or factions do I fight against? Whoever and whatever they are, they are a part of me; I’m bound to that which I hate as surely as I am to that which I love.
The important thing, psychologically, is where one’s libido is lodged, not whether one is for or against a particular thing. If we follow such reflections diligently, very gradually we will collect our scattered psyche from the outer world …and in doing so we will be working on the coniunctio.
But turning now to that word, coniunctio. What does it mean? What is the coniunctio? …According to alchemical symbolism, the coniunctio is the goal of the process; it’s the entity, the stuff, the substance that is created by the alchemical procedure when finally it succeeds in uniting the opposites.
…For our purposes now, I’m going to rashly tell you exactly how I see the coniunctio. The coniunctio, and the process that creates it, I consider to represent the creation of consciousness, which is an enduring psychic substance created by the union of opposites. – Pgs.11-18
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, what is Sulphur? What does it mean psychologically? Jung has a wonderful passage …He concludes with these words:
“Sulphur represents the active substance of the sun or, in psychological language, the motive factor in consciousness: on the one hand the will…and on the other hand compulsion, an involuntary motivation or impulse ranging from mere interest to possession proper. The unconscious dynamism would correspond to sulphur, for compulsion is the great mystery of human life. It is the thwarting of our conscious will and of our reason by an inflammable element within us, appearing now as a consuming fire and now as life-giving warmth.”
To condense that still further, I’d say that sulphur is desirousness. It is the fire of libido, which is life energy itself. It’s the energy created by the dynamo of the opposites.
But the alchemical text tells us there are two sulphurs: a crude or vulgar Sulphur and a true or philosophical Sulphur, and it it’s only the true Sulphur that can enter into the coniunctio.
Psychologically, this would refer to ego-centered desirousness as contrasted with Self-centered desirousness. Ego-centered desirousness is of an unconscious, infantile nature that demands to have what it wants when it wants it, whereas desirousness that’s centered in the Self is regenerate or transformed desire which the ego serves as a religious duty. It is desire whose nature has been transformed by consciousness.
Unregenerate desirousness is evil, and you can demonstrate that evil nature very readily. All you have to do, when confronted in yourself or others with the crude Sulphur, with the unregenerate desirousness, is to frustrate it, deny it, and you’ll see immediately that it turns vicious. It turns demanding. It turns tyrannical, power-ridden. It immediately demonstrates its true nature when its denied fulfillment, and that’s not the case with the regenerate desirousness.
There’s a wonderful passage in Jung’s Visions Seminars where he tells us how to deal with desirousness. I want to read it to you:
“In this transformation it is essential to take objects away from those animus or anima devils. They only become concerned with objects when you allow yourself to be self-indulgent.
…When you indulge in desirousness, whether your desire turns toward heaven or hell, you give the animus or the anima an object; then it comes out in the world instead of staying in its place….But if you can say: Yes, I desire it and I shall try to get it but I do not have to have it, if I decide to renounce, I can renounce it; then there is no chance for the animus or anima. Otherwise you are governed by your desires, you are possessed…
…But if you have put your animus or anima into a bottle you are free of possession, even though you may be having a bad time inside, because when your devil has a bad time you have a bad time. …Of course he will rumble around in your entrails, but after a while you will see that it was right [to bottle him up]. You will slowly become quiet and change. Then you will discover that there is a stone growing in the bottle. …In so far as self-control, or non-indulgence, has become a habit, it is a stone. …When that attitude become a fait accompli, the stone will be a diamond.”
And the diamond is another image for the coniunctio. – Pgs. 21-23
Excerpt:
The opposites constitute the most basic anatomy of the psyche. The flow of libido, or psychic, is generated by the polarization of opposites in the same way as electricity flows between the positive and negative poles of an electrical circuit. So, whenever we are attracted toward a desired object, or react against a hated object, we’re caught up in the drama of opposites. The opposites are truly the dynamo of the psyche. They are the motor, they’re what keeps the psyche alive.
Now just having experiences of being attracted to things and repulsed by things does not constitute consciousness. Consciousness requires a simultaneous experience of opposites and the acceptance of that experience. And the greater the degree of this acceptance, the greater the consciousness.
…The young ego is obliged to establish itself as something definite and therefore it must say, “I am this and I am not that.” No-saying is a crucial feature of initial ego development. But the result of this early operation is that a shadow is created. All that I announce I am not then goes into the shadow. And sooner or later, if psychic development is to occur, that split-off shadow must be encountered again as an inner reality; then one is confronted with the problem of the opposites that had earlier been split apart.
I would say that the most crucial and terrifying pair of opposites is good and evil. The very survival of the ego depends on how it relates to this matter. In order to survive, it is absolutely essential that the ego experience itself as more good than bad. There has to be a heavier weight on the side of good, in the balance, than on the side of evil. And this of course explains the creation of the shadow, for the young ego can tolerate very little experience of its own badness without succumbing to total demoralization.
…As the ego matures, the situation gradually changes, and the individual becomes able to take on the task of being the carrier of evil. Then it is not so important to locate the evil elsewhere. When one is able to acknowledge one’s evil, one becomes a carrier of the opposites, and in so doing contributes to the creation of the coniunctio.
…Once you start thinking about it, and once you become familiar with the phenomenon of the opposites, you’ll see it everywhere. It’s the basic drama that goes on in the collective psyche. Every war, every contest between groups, every dispute between political factions, every game, is an expression of coniunctio energies. Whenever we fall into an identification with one pair of warring opposites, we then lose the possibility, for the time being anyway, of being a carrier of opposites. And instead we become one of G-d’s millstones that grinds out fate. At such times one still locates the enemy on the outside and so doing is simply a particle.
…And Jung puts the same idea in different words:
“If the subjective consciousness prefers the ideas and opinions of collective consciousness and identifies with them, then the contents of the collective unconscious are repressed. ...And the more highly charged the collective consciousness, the more the ego forfeits its practical importance. It is, as it were, absorbed by the opinions and tendencies of collective consciousness, and the result of that is the mass man, the every-ready victim of some wretched “ism.” The ego keeps its integrity only if it does not identify with one of the opposites, and if it understands how to hold the balance between them. This is possible only if it remains conscious of both at once.”
…You see, failure and guilt are necessary experiences because each is a part of wholeness. In order to experience the union of the opposites, you have to experience failure and guilt. I remember what a revelation it was to me the first time I came across this remark of Jung’s:
“[In a person’s life] there is something very like a felix culpa [a happy fault]. …One can miss not only one’s happiness but also one’s final guilt, without which a man will never reach his wholeness.”
In other places, too, Jung makes it very clear that he attaches value to guilt. We often try desperately to avoid consciousness of our guilt, and in doing so we’re forced into shadow projection. Both shadow projection and factional identification are evidence of an immature ego (which of course is not helped by hostile criticism).
An image I find very helpful is to liken the ego to a fishing boat. Such a boat can take on only a certain amount of fish, no more than it can hold. The load must be commensurate with its size. What if you’re fishing in a small row boat and catch a whale? If you pull it in, you’ll go under.
This is an apt image because the problem of the opposites is indeed a whale: grappling with the opposites leads directly to an encounter with the Self.
…All right, how does one go about whale hunting? Where are the opposites to be found?
Well, you find them by scrutinizing whatever you love and hate. That’s easy to say but I assure you it is exceedingly difficult to do. The reason it’s so difficult is that whenever feelings of love or hate come upon us, they are not accompanied by inclinations to scrutiny.
…Whenever we take too concretely an urge to love or hate, then the coniunctio is exteriorized and thereby destroyed. If we are gripped by a strong attraction to a person or a thing, we must reflect on it. As Jung says:
“Unless we prefer to be made fools of by our illusions, we shall, by carefully analyzing every fascination, extract from it a portion of our own personality, like a quintessence, and slowly come to recognize that we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”
The same applies to our passionate antipathies. They also must be subjected to thorough analytic scrutiny. Whom do I hate? What groups or factions do I fight against? Whoever and whatever they are, they are a part of me; I’m bound to that which I hate as surely as I am to that which I love.
The important thing, psychologically, is where one’s libido is lodged, not whether one is for or against a particular thing. If we follow such reflections diligently, very gradually we will collect our scattered psyche from the outer world …and in doing so we will be working on the coniunctio.
But turning now to that word, coniunctio. What does it mean? What is the coniunctio? …According to alchemical symbolism, the coniunctio is the goal of the process; it’s the entity, the stuff, the substance that is created by the alchemical procedure when finally it succeeds in uniting the opposites.
…For our purposes now, I’m going to rashly tell you exactly how I see the coniunctio. The coniunctio, and the process that creates it, I consider to represent the creation of consciousness, which is an enduring psychic substance created by the union of opposites. – Pgs.11-18
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, what is Sulphur? What does it mean psychologically? Jung has a wonderful passage …He concludes with these words:
“Sulphur represents the active substance of the sun or, in psychological language, the motive factor in consciousness: on the one hand the will…and on the other hand compulsion, an involuntary motivation or impulse ranging from mere interest to possession proper. The unconscious dynamism would correspond to sulphur, for compulsion is the great mystery of human life. It is the thwarting of our conscious will and of our reason by an inflammable element within us, appearing now as a consuming fire and now as life-giving warmth.”
To condense that still further, I’d say that sulphur is desirousness. It is the fire of libido, which is life energy itself. It’s the energy created by the dynamo of the opposites.
But the alchemical text tells us there are two sulphurs: a crude or vulgar Sulphur and a true or philosophical Sulphur, and it it’s only the true Sulphur that can enter into the coniunctio.
Psychologically, this would refer to ego-centered desirousness as contrasted with Self-centered desirousness. Ego-centered desirousness is of an unconscious, infantile nature that demands to have what it wants when it wants it, whereas desirousness that’s centered in the Self is regenerate or transformed desire which the ego serves as a religious duty. It is desire whose nature has been transformed by consciousness.
Unregenerate desirousness is evil, and you can demonstrate that evil nature very readily. All you have to do, when confronted in yourself or others with the crude Sulphur, with the unregenerate desirousness, is to frustrate it, deny it, and you’ll see immediately that it turns vicious. It turns demanding. It turns tyrannical, power-ridden. It immediately demonstrates its true nature when its denied fulfillment, and that’s not the case with the regenerate desirousness.
There’s a wonderful passage in Jung’s Visions Seminars where he tells us how to deal with desirousness. I want to read it to you:
“In this transformation it is essential to take objects away from those animus or anima devils. They only become concerned with objects when you allow yourself to be self-indulgent.
…When you indulge in desirousness, whether your desire turns toward heaven or hell, you give the animus or the anima an object; then it comes out in the world instead of staying in its place….But if you can say: Yes, I desire it and I shall try to get it but I do not have to have it, if I decide to renounce, I can renounce it; then there is no chance for the animus or anima. Otherwise you are governed by your desires, you are possessed…
…But if you have put your animus or anima into a bottle you are free of possession, even though you may be having a bad time inside, because when your devil has a bad time you have a bad time. …Of course he will rumble around in your entrails, but after a while you will see that it was right [to bottle him up]. You will slowly become quiet and change. Then you will discover that there is a stone growing in the bottle. …In so far as self-control, or non-indulgence, has become a habit, it is a stone. …When that attitude become a fait accompli, the stone will be a diamond.”
And the diamond is another image for the coniunctio. – Pgs. 21-23
January 28, 2016
Edward Edinger, the faithful translator of the profound thought of C. G. Jung to the language of us, ordinary mortals, offers down to earth, and yet strikingly to-the-point commentaries to certain passages of the Mysterium Coniunctionis and to the imagery of Rosarium Philosophorum. The two masterpieces contain profound insights into the nature of the psyche's journey through the tricky and dangerous process of individuation or the old alchemical opus of turning the prima materia into gold. Any student of analytical psychology, a "patient" who has effectively embarked upon Jungian analysis and thus knows the process first hand, or those who enacted the opus through other means will get an opportunity to "coagulate" and further elucidate deep experiences of the processes between the conscious mind and the unconscious within the alchemical symbolic framework. The book is bread for serious seekers. This bread will be either useless, an interesting curiosity or, at most, a call for inquiry for those lacking such first hand knowledge. Edward Edinger speaks out of a living experience, not a mere intellectual speculation.
December 2, 2022
In a simple way, it describes the 10 steps of the path to philosophers' stone based on the black and white drawings of the Rosarium Philosophorum.
Well recommended for intuitives.
Well recommended for intuitives.
January 12, 2026
Think of this as a handy pamphlet at the reception desk of your Jungian therapist titled 'The Coniunctio and You'
Despite its length, the book is rich in information and analysis on the Rosarium sequence, a very psychologically pertinent series of images. To summarise:
1. the garden is empty and serene
2. meet someone cool
3. get naked
4. canoodle in the hot tub
5. get your freak on and f*******ck
(Repeat 1-5 until at midlife crisis)
6. get bored, start to die
7. now you're really dead.
8. your spirit is now delicious honey
9. mmmm, feed the birds that good stuff
10. recompose as a (flying) hermaphrodite
(Repeat 1-10 on anything that you are even mildly interested in. Libraries, pets, inanimate objects)
But seriously, showing this anthropomorphised psychological narrative of projection and recollection is enlightening. At its core, the union of lovers through sexual ecstasy is driven by the same foundational soul searching mechanism that compels one to garden, drink coffee, and enjoy the colour red.
Edinger is a compelling writer/speaker. Granted, the book could have been fleshed out a little more. I believe it's just a transcription of talks and Q&As he made. They even left in the parts where he just blatantly admits he has no clue about the meaning of some of the symbols. No postscript follow-up or research either. They must have just written it down sent it straight to print. Authentic or lazy? I'm not sure.
Despite its length, the book is rich in information and analysis on the Rosarium sequence, a very psychologically pertinent series of images. To summarise:
1. the garden is empty and serene
2. meet someone cool
3. get naked
4. canoodle in the hot tub
5. get your freak on and f*******ck
(Repeat 1-5 until at midlife crisis)
6. get bored, start to die
7. now you're really dead.
8. your spirit is now delicious honey
9. mmmm, feed the birds that good stuff
10. recompose as a (flying) hermaphrodite
(Repeat 1-10 on anything that you are even mildly interested in. Libraries, pets, inanimate objects)
But seriously, showing this anthropomorphised psychological narrative of projection and recollection is enlightening. At its core, the union of lovers through sexual ecstasy is driven by the same foundational soul searching mechanism that compels one to garden, drink coffee, and enjoy the colour red.
Edinger is a compelling writer/speaker. Granted, the book could have been fleshed out a little more. I believe it's just a transcription of talks and Q&As he made. They even left in the parts where he just blatantly admits he has no clue about the meaning of some of the symbols. No postscript follow-up or research either. They must have just written it down sent it straight to print. Authentic or lazy? I'm not sure.
May 19, 2020
A brief, accessible read - or rather series of talks, with Q&A included - exploring alchemical imagery and symbols and their significance in Jung's conceptualization of the process of individuation. I found the introduction and discussion of the latter half of the ten images to be the most insightful.
July 28, 2025
This is the second book on alchemy and individuation that I read by Edinger. He is extremely didactic and clear in his lectures (this is a transcription) and this book in particular is not a thorough lesson in psychology and alchemy, but an interpretation of 10 alchemical images. It is worth the time, I recommend it!
January 20, 2014
I think this was ok/good for what it is: a *very* brief introduction to the alchemical images.
I was hoping for something a little meatier, but that's coming because my copy of Edinger's "Anatomy of the Psyche" is in transit to me now.
If I had it to do over, I'd probably skip purchasing this, and go straight to the fuller "Anatomy of the Psyche."
I was hoping for something a little meatier, but that's coming because my copy of Edinger's "Anatomy of the Psyche" is in transit to me now.
If I had it to do over, I'd probably skip purchasing this, and go straight to the fuller "Anatomy of the Psyche."
February 7, 2024
profound. the soul’s ascent to individuation through the alchemical rosarium process.
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