Alchemical Sublimatio
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A lecture by Edinger on sublimatio, the alchemical operation by which matter is volatilised by heat and rises as vapour, recorded in two parts (1:23:43 in total). It corresponds to the Sublimatio chapter of his Anatomy of the Psyche (1985).
Edward F. Edinger
Edward F. Edinger (1922–1998) was an American psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, widely regarded as one of the most important interpreters of Jung. Trained in medicine at Yale, he worked in analysis with Esther Harding and was a founding member and later president of the C.G. Jung Foundation in New York. In 1979 he moved to Los Angeles, where he was a senior analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute and gave the lecture series recorded here. His books include Ego and Archetype (1972), The Creation of Consciousness (1984), Anatomy of the Psyche (1985) and many volumes drawn from his lectures.
Parts
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Part 1: Alchemical Sublimatio, Part 1
0:42:17
Edinger opens by answering why alchemy is relevant to depth psychotherapy, quoting Jung (CW 13 ¶353): the collective meaning of archetypal images needs comparative research in periods when symbol-formation was unimpeded, and alchemy is such a reservoir. The alchemists 'were living out a dream', their egos lacking epistemological criticism, so they became lifelong witnesses to the images of psychic transformation; he then turns to sublimatio.
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Part 2: Alchemical Sublimatio, Part 2
0:41:26
Part 2 opens in the middle of the so-called Mithras Liturgy, an ancient ritual of ascent: the initiate draws in breath from the sun's rays, rises into the air, sees the gods and is reborn as immortal. Edinger reads it psychologically as a revelation of the archetypal psyche, which frees a person from a purely personal ego attitude to experience himself as living among archetypal realities.