It is not intended, before an audience such as this, to waste many words about the well-known details of the symptomatology of Sulphur. In synthesizing these details into a meaningful relation we may describe a constitution which is prone to stagnation: slowed circulation, insufficient oxidation within the cell and delayed elimination; on the other hand, however, we have also to describe its extremest opposite of turbulent impetuosity: increased circulation, ebullitions, active congestions, inflammations, states of increased, exaggerated oxidations and combustion, tissue breakdown and neurovegetative overstimulation.
Into the first category we may place all the symptoms of toxemia, offensiveness of skin and discharges, lack of vital reaction, suppressed and relapsing states, air hunger, poor appetite with increased thirst, the venous, abdominal and general plethora, obesity, ptosis and degenerative states, as well as the improvement from motion.
Into its opposite belong the classical ebullitions of heat, burning, itching, tissue breakdown, poor nutrition and assimilation, the weak, empty, all-gone feeling, the hyperthyroid, tuberculous, catarrhal, hyperpyretic and inflammatory states, as well as the general and nervous hypersensitivity, the aggravation from heat, the desire for high caloric and spiced foods-to name but a few typical symptoms.
We find that an analogous pattern of polar opposites characterizes also the mentals and the personality type. One group of Sulphur patients are rather non-intellectual people, often of the labourer type, heavy, earthy and prosaic; swarthy, rough or obese. They may even be mentally quite dull, slow and disinterested without any introspective tendencies, concerned only with the material and physical facts of everyday life. Psychologically, they could be classified as belonging to the extroverted, sensory type, a type whose main adaptation is by means of the perception and orientation through the physical senses of the immediate material facts.
Their opposite is the extreme mental type, the philosopher, scientist or impulsive artist, concerned only with problems of mind and spirit, of art and philosophy, worrying about who made Good, bubbling over with new ideas, impatient, nervy and restless, even psychologically itching and burning, driven himself and driving everybody else, inspiring, enthusiastic, an inventive genius full of initiative, poor in execution, unreliable and unstable. Disorganised and confused, they are utterly oblivious of things physical and material which they also are not too capable of handling properly.
They are careless, unkempt and dirty. In short, this is the type of Herings “ragged philosopher.” Living in a realm of imagination and always having to reform the world, they also lack real introspective ability and critical evaluation of themselves. Psychologically, they represent an extroverted intuitive type, whose main adaptation is through the ability to “smell out,” as it were, the invisible possibilities inherent in a situation; they are the polar opposite of the sensation type, blind for the material things that are of today, always perceiving hunches and ideas of what might be tomorrow.
Thus far goes our own immediate knowledge of the person who manifests the Sulphur “field.” If we are to fathom its “meaning,” we need other manifestations on different levels in order to abstract a common denominator. One source of such information offers itself to us in the experience of this same entity as a purely psychological phenomenon as we find it reflected in the alchemistic concepts of Sulphur.
Contrary to general popular opinion which considers the alchemists simply as charlatans or, at best, as but primitive pioneers of modern chemistry, C.G. Jung has conclusively demonstrated that the alchemists were the psychologists of their day, searching for a synthesis of human knowledge. Their truest practitioners were seeking the “philosophers stone,” the mysterious “lapis” that symbolized the total man. Analytical psychology describes this total man as the “self” whose phenomenology coincides exactly with the rich and varied symbolism to be found in alchemical literature and in the affiliated pagan, diagnostic and Christian writings.
In working with their materials, the alchemists unconscious psyche reacted in calling forth concepts, images and visions which the alchemist projected upon his substance-namely, ascribed it to the substance as its quality. Whereas, to the modern chemist these Fantasies are absurd and meaningless, for the analytical psychologist they refer to definite formative elements of the unconscious psyche; since these are to be found not only in the alchemists Fantasies, but also in the average dream material of people of out own time, they are meaningful and practically applicable for the diagnosis, interpretation and treatment of contemporary psychological problems.
Thereby, they give of evidence of their psychological truth as timeless, transcendental, meaningful entities of the psychic realm. In passing, it may be mentioned that the analytical psychologist views the alchemistic conceptions only as psychological projections, namely, endopsychic stirrings naively ascribed to a substance; in psychology the question has not been raised at all whether the substance may not have something to do with the images it seems to call forth. For the modern psychologist, limited in his understanding to the usual concepts of chemistry and medicine, knows as little yet about the dynamic tendencies of substances in terms of constitution, personality and psyche as the average homoeopath knows about depth psychology.
We may feel, however, that just by bringing together these two fields of experience, a fuller comprehension of the “field of meaning,” expressing itself in the psychosomatic synchronicity, may be gained.
To the alchemists, Sulphur represented the soul itself,” standing as an intermediary principle between spirit (Mercury) and body (Sal). Therefore Sulphur had a double nature7 (Sulphur duplex): one, the white one, being the active substance of the moon, Sulphur crudum and vulgare, corporeal, heavy, earthly and inimical to the sublime “lapis,” the philosophers stone; the other side was represented by the red form and partakes of the other side was represented by the red form and partakes of the essence of the sun (sol, fur, carrier of the sun) and represented an occult spiritual principle, the fiery sublime material of the “lapis” itself.
The crude or vulgar Sulphur was called earthy filth, corporeal, dense, tough, derived from the “fat of the earth,” ashes of ashes, dregs, scum and refuse of evil smell and weak power, the essence of decay, corruption and putrefaction and the source of imperfection, causing the blackness of every work. The other nature of Sulphur, however, was described as a spiritual principle, the carrier of light and fire, the soul of all natural beings, the “fermentum” which gives life to the imperfect bodies, the principle of the generative power of the sun, spirit of life, light of nature, creator of a thousand things, heart of all things, creating the mind and the colour of all living things, the principle of desirousness (concupiscentia) and aggressiveness.
Moreover, Sulphur was allegorized as the “medicinal” as well as the “medicus,” the physician who receives in incurable wound. This alludes to the ubiquitous myths of the Divine Healer (for instance, Asclepias but also Christ) who always himself suffers the sickness he cures. In the mythologem the god sends the illness, is the illness, is ill (wounded or persecuted), is the medicine, and heals the illness.8.
Sulphur was also represented as partaking of the wider principle of the evil dragon or snake, the devil who tempted man in paradise. This symbol has a double meaning, too; for, according to Gnostic as well as later Christian teaching (Cathari), which the Church banned as heresy, the snake is Lucifer, the first born son of God, or Christ himself who initiated the work of redemption by teaching discrimination to the first parents of man.
We may attempt now to interpret this symbolism in modern psychological terms. Nothing less than the basic polarity and conflict of the soul seems expressed here as it embraces and is torn between spirit and matter and becomes involved in the conflict between good and evil. One aspect expresses the force of physical instincts that involves us in the material and sensory sides of existence, the level of our animal nature which, yet, is the matrix, source and maintaining strength of out physical existence and the stage upon which our lesson of life has to be learned. However, when the instinct side becomes one-sidedly preponderant, a stagnation results of ones inner progress, a corruption of ones humanness through purely materialistic, egotistical instinct-gratification.
The opposite aspect represents the stimulus of the intuitive breath of the spirit which enlivens and quickens existence in continuous process of seething and generation which never allows life to come to a rest, endlessly promotes evolution and development and always is in opposition to standstill and the established order of things. Yet, through its one-sided preponderance, one would lose the ground of reality under ones feet and become oblivious to ones earthly limitations. The person who loses contact with his instinct nature is subject to a psychological inflation as we meet it in the conceit of the “spiritual” person, preaching, teaching and reforming the whole world and completely involved in mental speculations.
