Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts

The present work is a contribution to science in that it shows the essential relationships of what is found in the unconscious of present day mankind to many forms of thinking of the middle ages. These same trends are present today in all of us though hidden behind a different set of structural terms, utilizing different mechanisms for energy expression.

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Excerpt:

The sexual propensity forbidden by the censor is incest. That it can be mentioned in the parable in spite of the censor is accounted for by the exceedingly clever and unsuspected bringing about of the suggestion. Dreams are very adroit in this respect, and the same cleverness (apparently unconscious on the part of the author) is found in the parable, which is in every way analogous to the dream. Incest can be explicitly mentioned, because it is attributed to persons that have apparently nothing to do with the wanderer.

That the king in the crystal prison is none other than the wanderer himself, we indeed know, thanks to our critical analysis. The dreamer of the dream does not know it. For him the king is a different person, who is alone responsible for his actions; although in spite of the clear disguise, some feeling of responsibility still overshadows the wanderer, a peculiar feeling that has struck us before, and now is explained.

Later we shall see that from the beginning of the parable, incest symbols are in evidence. Darkly hinted at first they are later somewhat more transparent, and in the very moment when they remove the last veil and attain a significance intolerable for the censor, exactly at that psychologic moment the forbidden action is transferred to the other, apparently strange, person.

A similar process, of course, is the change of situation in the strawberry dream at the exact moment when the affair begins to seem unpleasant to the dreamer. This becoming unpleasant can be beautifully followed out in the parable. The critical transition is found exactly in one of those places where the representation appears most confused. It is in this way that the weakest points of the dream surface are usually constituted. Those are the places where the outer covering is threadbare and exposes a nakedness to the view of the analyzer.

The critical phase of the parable begins in the 11th section. The elders consult over a letter from the faculty. The wanderer notices that the contents concern him and asks, "Gentlemen, does it have to do with me?" They answer, "Yes, you must marry your woman that you have recently taken." Wanderer: "That is no trouble; for I was, so to speak, born [how subtle!] with her and brought up from childhood with her." Now the secret of the incest is almost divulged. But it is at once effectually retracted. In Sec. 12 we read, "So my previous trouble and toil fell upon me and I bethought myself that from strange causes [these strange causes are the dream censor who, ruling in the unconscious, effects the displacements that follow], it cannot concern me but another that is well known to me [in truth a well-known other].

Then I see our bridegroom with his bride in the previous attire going to that place ready and prepared for copulation and I was highly delighted with it. For I was in great anxiety lest the affair should concern me." The anxiety is quite comprehensible. It is just on account of its appearance that the displacement from the wanderer to the other person takes place.