I consider my art practice to be alchemical and have intuitively created many images that support this. But until recently I have only been playing with the theory behind alchemy. Now though, because I will be talking about the alchemical properties of making images in my thesis (if I can get away with it), I have been taking a closer look at Jung, Metzner and eagerly await the release of Hillman's latest publication Alchemical Psychology.I would like to follow this blog entry with some occasional insights into alchemy and thought this might be a good place to start - with someone else's perspective.
My cyber-friend Steve Parker also used images as a way to 'transform', initially to heal after a heart attack. Being a psych he was aware of the alchemical process he was involved in. His 2007 blog entry gives a clear account of how it worked for him:
This was another image that asked to be drawn. After I finished it, I saw the flames as representing trauma and anger, and the smoke as representing depression. I assumed that there were two different parts of me that needed to be healed: my injured physical body and my devastated emotional state.Only when I reviewed all of the drawn images a year later did I understand that there was also an intense psychological process going on, a transformational process.
Carl Jung, following a dream he had in 1926, came to the brilliant realization that alchemy was a metaphor for psychological and spiritual development. Alchemy, at the time Jung wrote about it, was generally regarded as an obscure quest to turn base metal into gold. But Jung understood alchemy to be a significant parable -- for turning the “base metal” of human existence into something of great and eternal value.
Dealing with the aftermath of the heart attack has transformed me. I have been less caught up in the "base" life of my everyday existence, and my interests and attention have instead focused on deeper issues of meaning and purpose and values.
My ego had been burnt to a crisp, and something changed in the process.
I think it is interesting that both images have a 'substance' emanating from the head - which for me confirms once again, that this stuff is real, that archetypal patterns exist and do connect us. It feels reassuring that there is at least something 'stable' about existence, albeit always evolving itself, within certain parameters.
images: My painting Mortificatio and Steve's Alchemy from the blog entry (see links in sidebar)
