Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy : A Companion Work to C.G. Jung's Mysterium Conjunctionis

Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts #89

by Marie-Louise von Franz

Aurora Consurgens, the 89th title in the series of Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts, reputed to be the last work of St. Thomas Aquinas, was seen by psychologist Cari G. Jung as a validation of his view that the traditional practice of alchemy was an attempt to express unconscious psychic contents through their projection onto matter. Marie-Louise von Franz's analysis and commentary suggest that Aquinas experienced a breakthrough of the unconscious while expounding on the vision of the mystic marriage in the biblical Song of Solomon. She also draws attention to insights that she believes relevant to the process of individuation in modern men and women.

Genres: Alchemy, Psychology, Philosophy

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Marie-Louise von Franz was a Swiss Jungian psychologist and scholar.

Von Franz worked with Carl Jung, whom she met in 1933 and knew until his death in 1961. Jung believed in the unity of the psychological and material worlds, i.e., they are one and the same, just different manifestations. He also believed that this concept of the unus mundus could be investigated through research on the archetypes of the natural numbers. Due to his age, he turned the problem over to von Franz. Two of her books, Number and Time and Psyche and Matter, deal with this research.

Von Franz, in 1968, was the first to publish that the mathematical structure of DNA is analogous to that of the I Ching. She cites the reference to the publication in an expanded essay "Symbols of the Unus Mundus," published in her book Psyche and Matter. In addition to her many books, Von Franz recorded a series of films in 1987 titled The Way of the Dream with her student Fraser Boa.

Von Franz founded the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. In The Way of the Dream she claims to have interpreted over 65,000 dreams. Von Franz also wrote over 20 volumes on Analytical psychology, most notably on fairy tales as they relate to Archetypal or Depth Psychology, most specifically by amplification of the themes and characters. She also wrote on subjects such as alchemy, discussed from the Jungian, psychological perspective, and active imagination, which could be described as conscious dreaming. In Man and His Symbols, von Franz described active imagination as follows: "Active imagination is a certain way of meditating imaginatively, by which one may deliberately enter into contact with the unconscious and make a conscious connection with psychic phenomena."

Reviews

[J. Sparks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marie-Louise von Franz's discussion of the Medieval text "Aurora Consurgens" challenges the limits of twentieth and twenty-first century thinking. She shows the spiritual meaning of instinctual experience, breaking down the old spirit-body dualism that has plagued Western consciousness for two thousand years. The book is not an easy read, but will worth the effort.

[Lex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This here is a beautiful, ecstatic riddle! Incredible, fluid, provoking, and multilayered in depth. When it comes to alchemical commentary and analysis, this work is a piece of art of the highest regard. Von Franz is unmatched in skill and knowledge! She runs circles around any other commentator, and depth psychologist, within the alchemical space to date. There's a reason Jung relied on her.

Caution is always thrown to those of literal-hyperrational limits.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a short, twelve-chapter treatise on alchemical conjunction, some of which would have only been a paragraph or two, von Franz certainly found a lot to unpack. How much of this was her psychological perspective willing many of these passages to be a meaningful description of the individuation process, or if there was still some mysterium left over from Jung’s final word on Coniunctionis, is hard to say. Even harder is what to make of this possible deathbed reverie from the otherwise subdued rationalist Thomas Aquinas, other than someone had the hots for a sister-spouse anima figure that goes by the name of Wisdom.

[Reese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to comprehend, you must have perseverance, but of course, if alchemy interests you, then you should take a gander.

[Jorge Turenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In few words: the key to understand Jung's work . It requieres a deep knowledge of Jung's work , else, could be not understood