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IMAGINATION IN MYSTICISM AND ESOTERICISM:

Marsilio Ficino, Ignatius de Loyola, and Alchemy


Published in Studies in Spirituality, No. 6 (1996).

by Karen-Claire Voss

INTRODUCTION

Although imagination as a religious phenomenon per se has been an underrepresented


topic of investigation, it nevertheless plays a central role in religious experience and
religious praxisespecially in the mystic and esoteric varieties. One reason for this is
that the imagination enables access to deeper levels of reality than those ordinarily
experienced. A second reason is that it helps mediate between things which are
conventionally perceived as ontologically separate. In particular, it permits the realm
called human to come into contact with that which is called divine; in other words, the
imagination functions as a bridge between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The
premise underlying this paper should be made explicit here, at the outset, although I
shall not take it up again in a systematic way. Namely, it is that the universe is
ontologically whole, and therefore, that the separation felt so acutely between the
mystics and God, between the natural magicians of the Renaissance and the cosmos,
and between the alchemists and the Philosophers Stone was not the reflection of a
correct ontology; rather, it was the legacy of a flawed conceptual framework. Thus
mystics, magicians, and alchemists all had to embark on a process of what could be
described as sacred deconstruction before they were able to reach their goal. Closely
related to this is an understanding of what it means to use the faculty of imagination
as a method of gnosis, of knowing. Emphasis will therefore be placed on illustrating
the role played by the imagination in the dissolution of the conceptual categories
which support an experience of separation, and on showing how intentional use of the
imagination functions to enable more intimate knowledge of the object of religious
yearning. 1 In what follows I shall discuss examples of the use of imagination by
Marsilio Ficino, Ignatius de Loyola, and within the alchemical tradition, as well as the
function of the imagination in meditative, magical and alchemical praxis and in the
construction of metaphorical and plastic images.

1 SOME THEORIES ABOUT THE FUNCTION OF IMAGINATION

Islamicist Henry Corbin distinguished between the imaginary and the imaginal as a
way of clarifying the fact that the latter possessed a reality of its own, a depth and
sub-stance not generally associated with the merely imaginary. In an important article,
Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, Corbin relates that, in the
course of translating Arabic and Persian texts dealing with Islamic cosmology, he
realized that he needed to find a satisfactory way to translate different terms referring
1
The theme of the imagination in gnosis is discussed in Karen-Claire Voss, Is there a 'Feminine'
Gnosis? Reflections on Feminism and Esotericism, Aries, 14 (June 1992), 5-24, and further developed
in 'Feminine' Gnosis: Forms of Gnosis in Modem Feminist Thought, an invited lecture given in the
course: Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, offered by the Amsterdam Summer
University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, August 15-19, 1994 (unpublished).
to a phenomenon which in English would usually be called imaginary, lest his
readers think that what was being discussed in those texts was unreal, fictitious, or
trivial. In contrast, the texts he was reading posited the reality of no fewer than three
worlds:

There is the physical, sensible world encompassing both our terrestrial


world (governed by the human souls) and the sidereal universe (governed by
the Souls of the Spheres). The sensible world is the world of the phenomenon
(molk). There is also the supersensible world of the Soul or Angel Souls, the
Malakut, in which the... mystical Cities are located, and which starts at the
convex surface of the ninth Sphere. And there is the world of pure
archangelic Intelligences. Each of these three worlds has its organ of
perception: the sense, imagination, and the intellect, corresponding with the
triad: body, soul and mind.2

The second world is the mundus imaginalis, a very precise order of reality, which
corresponds to a precise mode of perception. 3 In order to distinguish this sort of
perception from the sort that produces unreal sorts of things, and the things to which it
pertains from those which are outside the framework of being and existing, Corbin
eschews use of the word imagination; preferring instead to speak of the imaginal
and the mundus imaginalis 4. Thus the faculty of imagination is a living tool which
allows access by degrees into the realm described by Corbin as the mundus
imaginalis or the supersensible world of the Soul; far from being unreal, it is a
parallel world which is ontologically as real as the world of the senses and that of the
intellect5. The mundus imaginalis corresponds to that which Mircea Eliade calls the
sacred center6. Some of the characteristics of the imaginal world are that it has no
extension in space and that it exists beyond reality as we know it.7 To produce an
extensive analysis of this realm per se is outside the scope of the present paper;
however, the importance of the concept of the imaginal world for understanding
imagination as a phenomenon in esotericism and in mysticism cannot be
overemphasized, since it is the landscape of that world which mystics and esotericists
claim to have experienced. Corbins mundus imaginalis is thought to be the realm to
which the angels described in the Summa Theologica belong, the middle ground
between human beings and the divine8. As such, it must be passed through, not
bypassed by all who seek the divine. A second important contribution to our
understanding of the function of imagination is found in Lynda Sexsons book.
Ordinarily Sacred. Deliberately setting out to muddle the borders of the tight
categories we deal in (real/unreal, sacred/profane, etc.), Sexson tries to show in
particular that the boundaries between the sacred and profane are blurred; religion,
she writes, is made up of nothing specialthe ordinary is holy or potentially holy9.

2
Henry Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, in: Spring (1975), 6-7.
3
Ibid., 1.
4
Ibid., 1-2.
5
Ibid.. 7.
6
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and Profane, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harcourt. Brace & World,
Inc., 1957, 20-65 et passim. First published as Das Heillge und das Profane, Rowahit Taschenbuch
Verlag GmbH, 1957.
7
Corbin, op. cit., 4.
8
Thomas Aqinas, Summa Theologica I, qq. 50-64.
9
Lynda Sexson, Ordinarily Sacred, New York: Crossroad, 1982, 10.
The things of this world are vessels, entrances for stories; when we
touch them or tumble into them, we fall into their labyrinthine resonances. The
world is no longer divided, then, into those inconvenient categories of subject
and object, and the world becomes religiously apprehended10.

Added to Corbins distinction between the quality of imagination which produces


things that are unreal and the quality of the imaginal which produces, or apprehends
that which is truly real, is Sexsons understanding of imagination as a kind of solvent
that dissolves the dichotomies which ordinarily govern our experience of the world. In
marked contrast to the iconoclasm which characterized the Reformation, the
shattering of these false images heralds the possibility of a way in to the imaginal
world11. To illustrate, Sexson describes a continuum which consists of officially
sacralized objects on the one hand - in this example, rosary beads - and found objects
on the other, objects which are consecrated by nothing more - or less - than their
capacity to occasion transmutation12 - here, dogwood berries found and wondered at
by a little girl. Religion, writes Sexson, does not reside in these literal things but
resides in them metaphorically. By metaphor, she continues:

I mean the imaginal reality that gives depth and integrity to our lives.
Imaginal means not merely the imaginative (as in referring to works of art)
and certainly not the imaginary (as in referring to silly things made up); the
imaginal makes up the world.13

Another significant idea has been introduced: the association of imagination with
depth. Here, when I talk about the imagination, or refer to something as pertaining to
the imaginal realm, I mean something which pertains to the really real; that which
has depth, that which Mircea Eliade would say is at the center of the world14. The
notion of the imagination as a solvent which functions to dissolve our ordinary
conceptual boundaries, thereby enabling access to the center, is also emphasized in
the work of a third writer, James Hillman. Hillman provides the reader with an
analysis of the word psyche, in his book Revisioning Psychology. Psyche means
soul, he writes, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things
rather than a thing itself.

This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences


between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events,
between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment - and soul-making
means differentiating this middle ground.15

10
Ibd., 11.
11
See loan P. Couliano's lucid analysis of what he describes as the 'total censorship of the imaginary'
that was characteristic of the Reformation in Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, trans. by Margaret
Cook, with Foreword by Mircea Eliade, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, 193ff. Orig.
published as Eros et magie la Renaissance, Paris: Flammarion, 1984.
12
'Transmutation' as metamorphosis implies a cooperation between knowledge (in the sense of 'gnosis')
and active imagination in order for lead to be changed into silver and silver into gold. The 'gnosis' often
referred to ... esoteric currents is the kind of illuminated knowledge which results in a state of being
conducive to the 'second birth' ,..'. Quoted from Antoine Faivre and Karen-Claire Voss, Western
Esotericism and the Science of Religion, Numen, 42 (1995), 48-77.
13
Sexson, op. cit., 6.
14
Eliade, op.cit.
15
James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, New York: Harper & Row, 1975, p.x.
According to Hillman, since the second and third centuries of the common era we
have progressively lost our experience of the world as an ensouled sphere
encompassing within itself the pluralities of human and divine, matter and spirit, part
and whole - none disconnected from another but forming and reforming in subtly
interactive ways16. At the same time, we have also lost an understanding of the way in
which the psyche once functioned to meld these things into a multivalent whole.
Psyche functioned to enliven the cosmos and to enable its glittering parts to cohere.
The process that Hillman calls psyche corresponds to that which I am calling
imagination.

1 The Magico-religious Use of Images

There is a long tradition of the magico-religious use of imagination to create images


which are located in both interior and exterior space. My discussion of the
imagination in Ficinos natural magic, Ignatius meditative practice, and in alchemy
illustrates its function in each context, and includes a description of its use in both
kinds of spaces. The following preliminary remarks are intended to impart a sense of
the centrality of that tradition.

The very ancient idea of sympathetic magic which accompanies the making of images
can be seen to underlie the doctrines of similitudes and correspondences and the idea
of relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Within a universe in
which like begets like and what is below is just as what is above it is eminently
reasonable to assume that one element can influence another. Moreover, there are
radical ontological implications associated with the principle of similitudes, since, as
E. H. Gombrich succinctly and very precisely expressed, the fetish not only
symbolizes fertility but has it17. It is crucial for contemporary understanding to
realize that the faculty of imagination was understood to cause things, and that its
efficacy as a cause was taken for granted in the same way that we unthinkingly rely
on the efficacy of electrical current to operate the appliances we use today. It is also
important to resist the temptation to limit discussion of the imagination within the
context of esoteric phenomena and practices, rather than the wider context of those
thought of as belonging to religion proper. Imagination has been a central theme in
each of the three major religious traditions of the west, albeit only enjoying a
necessarily limited audience. In Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scripture we have to
confront the idea of persons having been conceived in the image of God, and if Gene-:
sis tells us that we are made in the image of God, various strains of philosophical and
theological thought often lead us to the idea of God being imagination itself, that is,
of divinity defined as an imagining power18. This is certainly an idea which we see
in the alchemical tradition, and in the writings of Marsilio Ficino, together with the
related conceptualization of this imagining power as the cause of the world, as that
which enlivens and continues the whole.

16
Ibid., 1-13 et passim.
17
Emst Gombrich, Icones Symbolicae: The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought, in: Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institute XI (1948), 163-92: 165.
18
Antoine Faivre, L'lmage creatrice (La fonction magique de 1'image et son fondement mythique du
XVIme sicle), in: Revue d'Allemagne XIII (1981), 355-90: 388-389 and 389, respectively.
Thus in an Eliadean sense persons sought to imitate the acts of the gods ab origine
by attempting to mirror the divine paradigmatic act of imagining in their own
endeavors19. The memory tradition whose history and significance is so brilliantly
articulated by Frances Yates in her book The Art of Memory developed an elaborate
set of rules for remembering words and ideas by placing selected images at strategic
points within carefully contrived interior spaces, sometimes called memory
palaces20. There is a complex relationship between mnemonic systems used for
rhetorical purposes and those which are employed for magico-religious purposes. If
their use was not clearly demarcated at their origins, it proved no more so as time
went on. For example, on the religious side, the pre-Reformation church nurtured for
generations a tradition of pre-scribed ritual use of images as a help for fostering
appropriate devotional attitudes21. And, as we shall see, Ignatius consciously utilized
the imagination to help construct an interior image of the world, while in the esoteric
realm, Marsilio Ficino advocated the use of exterior images as an aid for interiorizing
the macrocosm. We cannot forget as well tarot cards, which entailed utilizing exterior
images as powerful mnemonic aids, and which are found to have been used in Europe
from as early as the 15th century on for both meditative and divinatory purposes22. In
every case, one essentially spread out before oneself a detailed imago mundi for
contemplation. Let us turn now to consideration of some specific examples.

2 Marsilio Ficino: The Use of Imagination in De vita Triplici

Marsilio Ficino is, as James Hillman observed, still one of the most neglected
important figures in the movement of Western ideas23. Bom in Figline, near Florence,
in 1433, Ficino is responsible for translating Platos dialogues as well as the newly-
available Corpus Hermeticum from Greek into Latin. He also gathered around him a
circle comprised of some of the best minds of his era24.

Ficinos view of the soul was that it was all things together... the center of the
universe, the middle term in all things25. The soul was the mediating element between
the human and the divine by virtue of the fact that there was an ontological
connection between the two spheres. Ficino understood the soul to be the seat of the
faculty of imagination, and his belief in its efficacy is perhaps nowhere more evident
than in the third volume of De vita triplici, called On Making Your Life Agree with
the Heavens . Therein we find directions for making images as well as advice
concerning their proper use and the benefits that can be expected. In keeping with
19
Eliade, op. cit., 68-113.
20
Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966. See also
Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
21
See for example Christianne Klapisch-Zuber, Holy Dolls, in: Women, Family, and Ritual in
Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.
22
See Robert Klein, Les tarots enlumines du XV siecle, in: L'oeil 145 (January 1967).
23
Hillman, op. cit., 200.
24
According to Paul Oskar Kristeller, It is, perhaps, not too much to say that all of educated Florence
in the second half of the fifteenth century came under the intellectual influence of Ficino's Academy.
The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant, New York: Columbia University Press,
1943, 18-19. Some of the material on Marsilio Ficino appeared in my article entitled: Three Exemplars
of the Esoteric Tradition on the Renaissance, Alexandria: the Journal of the Western Cosmological
Traditions, 3 (January 1995). I am grateful to the editor for permission to use it here.
25
Hillman, op. cit., 201.
Ficinos dual vocation and training - as a physician, he was dedicated to the healing of
the body, as a priest, he devoted himself to the healing of the soul - Book III appears
to have been intended as a prescription not only for integrating the elements of the
human person -body, soul, and intellect - but for integrating the human with the divine
as well. In writing De vita triplici, Ficino was not only attempting to provide a manual
for restoring physical and psychological health; more importantly, he hoped to
provide a formula for placing his readers in the right relation to the cosmos, and thus
to the divine. If one followed Ficinos directions, one could transcend the
conventional understanding of ontological bifurcation of the celestial and terrestrial
spheres. On this interpretation, De vita triplici emerges as a profound corrective to the
traditional scholastic understanding of the universe, for at the very center of scholastic
teaching was the notion that an unbridgeable gulf existed between the human and
divine; these were conceived as polar opposites, rather than as located at different
ends of a continuum.

Turning to Book III, we find clarification of the most important elements in Ficinos
thought: the world both lives and breathes, and it is possible for us to draw its spirit.
What follows is vitally necessary and directly concerns learning how to use the
function of imagination: You must therefore leam how to bring this spirit into
yourself, he writes.26

Ficinos method for drawing the spirit of the world into oneself entailed making
ourselves open to celestial influences by using materials which were linked to those
influences in particular ways; his instructions presuppose an acceptance of certain
ideas (one could term them doctrines) which were prevalent at the time of the
Renaissance. First are those regarding correspondences and sympathies which exist
between and among things and qualities. Second is the notion that the universe was
divided into two parts: the celestial or divine sphere (having to do with the heavens
and with God), and the terrestrial or human sphere (having to do with nature and
persons). Lastly there was an understanding of the person (and by extrapolation, the
world) as a universe in miniature. This was the doctrine of the microcosm and the
macrocosm, succinctly expressed in the Hermetic motto: As above, so below27.
Accordingly, Ficino provides long lists of things, together with their qualities,

26
Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Life, trans. Charles Boer, Irving, TX: Spring Publications, Inc.,1980,
96. A translation of Liber de vita, or De vita triplici, Florence, 1489. Henceforth referred to as De vita.
27
The fabled Tabula Smaragdina was reputedly written by Hermes Trismegistus who is respectfully
mentioned by almost all the alchemical writers. Many, though certainly not all, of the Renaissance
humanists accepted Hermes as an authority. For some exceptions to this view, see Wayne Shumaker,
The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972,207. An
important collection of articles about Hermes Trismegistus is in Antoine Faivre, ed., Presence
d'Hermes Trismeglste, Paris: Editions Albin Michel S.A., 1988. On philosophical hermetism see Mirko
Sladek's L'etoile d'Hermes. Fragments de philosophic hermetique, translated from the German by
Josette Rigal, Paris: Editions Albin Michel S.A., 1993; originally published as Fragmente der
hermetischen Philosophic in der Naturphilosophie der Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang
GmbH, 1984. The most definitive account of the origin and transmission of the Tabula is found in
Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina, Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akten der von-Portheim-Stiftung, 16,
1926. See also Walter Scott, ed. and trans., Hermetica, 4 vols., London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968,
vol. 1: 31, 33, 35-36; and M. Berthelot, Les Origines de L'Alchimie, 1885; reprinted., Osnabruck; Otto
Zeiler, 1966, 35ff., 169. See the preface by Nock in A. D. Nock and A. J. Festugiere, Corpus
Hermeticum, 4 vols., Paris: Societe d'dition, Les Belles Lettres, 1945, i-vi.
arranged according to the celestial bodies with which they are believed to be
associated. In giving us these lists, Ficino intends for his readers to surround
themselves with as many of these things as possible: we are to reflect upon them, use
them, eat them, dress in them, and otherwise immerse ourselves in them, all the while
being careful to insure that each particular activity is done at the appropriate hour,
day, and season. The underlying rationale is that this will maximize the potential for
the embodiment in ones own being of the qualities and attributes inhering in
particular objects, smells, sounds, music, and places. Here particular attention will be
paid to Ficinos emphasis on the spirit-filled material with which images, objects, and
medicines are made, and which imbues them with efficacy.

As we consider the examples below, we should remember that Ficino is not saying
these things are only signs for some quality or other (although he certainly wants to
say that on one level, the lion, for example, represents or signifies the sun). Nor is he
limiting himself to mere similitude, saying that the lion is somehow like the sun. In
the deepest sense Ficino understands lions as symbolic beings that actually participate
in the being of the sun; each partakes of the same spirit282. Ultimately, in fact, he
thinks that everything which is in the world really participates in the life of the
heavens. Let no one have any doubt, he writes:

We and all the things that are around us, with certain preparations, are
able to lay claim to the heavenly bodies. For that is how the heavenly bodies
are made. They rule strictly, and they have been prepared from this from the
beginning.29

We are linked to what Ficino calls the one that is simplest and good by means of the
anima mundi, which permeates everything, but is most concentrated in the planets and
the stars, those heavenly bodies that have been prepared for this from the
beginning30. It has been noted that in his own way, Ficino can be said to have been
reviving the worship of the sun, whom he terms lord of heaven; thus it comes as no
surprise that he considers that the most beneficial influences are derived from the
group he calls solar things31. Within this group we find Gold and the color of gold,
carbuncle, myrrh, golden honey, saffron, the ram, hawk, hen, swan, and lion, beetles,
crocodiles, golden-haired folks with curly hair, magnanimous people, and sometimes
those with bald heads32". Because the Sun is exceedingly powerful - amplitude
belongs especially to the Sun, writes Ficino - we must be cautious about getting too
much of it33. Nevertheless, he writes:

It will be a good beginning in the use of things under this dominance if you
put on Solar things to wear, if you live in Solar places, look Solar, hear
28
See Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith, New York: Harper & Row, 1957; reprint ed. Harper
Colophon, n.d., 42.
29
De vita, 91. It is important to note the belief in a cosmic plan or divine purpose implicit in
Ficino's statement 'they have been prepared for this from the beginning.
30
Ibid., 88.
31
Ibid., 102. See D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1975, 12-24, for a discussion about Ficino's preoccupation with the
Sun. First published in 1958 by the Warburg Institute, University of London. Reissued as volume 22 of
the Studies of the Warburg Institute, Nendeln. Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1969.
32
De Vita, 90.
33
Ibid., 97.
Solar, smell Solar, imagine Solar, think Solar, and even desire Solar.
Likewise, if you will imitate in your life the dignity and gifts of the Sun. Hang
around Solar men and plants, and carefully touch the laurel.34

In short, we are supposed to saturate ourselves with Sunness. Since Ficinos


particular concern is for scholars and since scholars are especially prone to be affected
by Saturn and its concomitant melancholy on account of the reflective nature of their
work35, he pays some attention to Satumian influence, noting that it is not harmful by
nature... and should be used sometimes, the way doctors must sometimes use
poisons. In fact,

The Pythagorean maguses seem to have been extremely cautious in this


matter, when they would become frightened that their constant philosophizing
was the tyranny of Saturn, so they would dress up in white garments and each
day sing songs and make music with Jovial and Apollonian things, and in this
way they lived a long time under Saturn.36

Ficino discusses Jupiter and Venus as well, since these, together with the Sun, are the
powerful planets he calls the "Three Graces of heaven37. Jovial things include silver,
amethyst, topaz, crystal, sapphire; green and airy colors and wine; certain animals like
the lamb, the peacock, the eagle and the calf; and also religious and law-abiding
thoughts. Ficino says that the discourses and deliberations of human reason... belong
to Jove38, who leads one to find philosophy, truth, and religion39, and that

our reason, either through the imagination and the spirit together, or
through deliberation, or through both, can, by a kind of imitation, put itself in
agreement with Jove. Our reason then might take on Jove for his dignity and
nearness to us, and receive the gifts of Jove much more than even the
imagination or the spirit. In the same way, the imagination and the spirit, for
the same reason, receive much more of the heavenly gifts than certain lower
things and materials.40

Then there are Venetian things. I want to call you old people away from these heavier
Gods, says Ficino,

and get you back to Venus through gardens and meadows. I summon all of
you to nourishing Venus, not for her to play with you, but for her to
make jokes with you. 41
The color green, and the plants of the fields and meadows contain the essence of
springtime, the young, fresh time of the year. Because of this, it will help keep a per-
34
De vita, 90.
35
For an interesting and exceedingly relevant description of the possible initiatory function of
depression see Basarab Nicolescu, Jung et la science: histoire et perspectives d'un malentendu,
presented at the colloquium: 'Jung Aujourd'hui', organized by Groupe d'tudes C.G. Jung, Paris,
November 27-28, 1993.
36
Ibid., 93.
37
Ibid., 33.
38
Ibid., 159.
39
Ibid., 100.
40
Ibid., 165.
41
Ibid., 61.
son, even if he is an old man... in a natural state of greenness, as if... he were a laurel
tree, an olive or a pine, still green in winter42. Elsewhere, Ficino adds that the power
of Venus, whom he calls mother of the Muses43, is drawn by turtle-doves, pigeons,
the white water-wagtail, and other things which modesty does not permit me to list44 .
In addition to what has been mentioned already, all of the planetary influences must
be juggled according to ones deficiencies. To return to the case of the melancholy
scholar, we remember that the introduction of Jovial and Apollonian things is believed
to mitigate Satumian influences. Ficino explains how to do this with other planetary
influences too, since each planet has a role in the formation of the whole person. In
this way, the various aspects of the person are able to approximate an ideal balance.
Bringing all the different elements of the person into proper relation to each other by
means of adding or subtracting qualities (like ingredients in a stew) is a primary
desideratum of Ficinos program.

3 The Macrocosm: Ficino and the Imago Mundi

Yet Ficino does not stop at the level of the person, as we discover when we examine
his notion of an imago mundi. Chapter 19 of Book III is called simply On making a
figure of the universe, and begins with the question: Why not make a universal
image, that is, an image of the universe itself?45 According to the ancients, the
enterprise of making an image of the universe is beneficial, and Ficino writes that
they advised coloring this image with the universal and singular colors of the world:
green, gold, and sapphire46.

The ancients decided, therefore, that it was a big help, if you wanted to
capture the gifts of the heavenly Graces, to look at these three powerful colors
frequently, and to color in, on the little wallmap of the universe that you are
making, the sapphire color for the spheres of the world. They thought it was
worthwhile, too, to add the color gold to the spheres of the heavens and the
stars, and to dress Vesta herself, or Ceres, that is, earth, in a green mantle. In
this way, followers of these ancients would either wear this little form of the
universe, or look at it on the wall... Not just to look at it, but to reflect on it in
the soul.47.

Ficino also suggests it would be good to have a little room, one with an arch,
appropriately painted and decorated with representations of the three planets inside
ones house (the bedroom would be excellent for this), and he advises us to
contemplate the whole of life, rather than its parts whenever we are outside the house
by focusing on the shape and colors of the universe48.

42
Ibid., 63.
43
Ibid., 3.
44
Ibid., 91.
45
Ibid., 151.
46
Ficino exhibits a tone of reportage in this portion of Book III, probably resulting from a judicious
fear of ecclesiastical reprisal. The distancing phrase 'the ancients have said', occurs frequently
throughout. Cf. D. P. Walker's comments regarding Ficino's disavowals of magical practice, op. cit., 42-
44 et passim.
47
De Vita, 153.
48
Ibid.
Space precludes more detailed consideration of the imago mundi here. Instead, I wish
to recall the claim made in the introduction to this paper, namely, that one of the most
significant ways in which the faculty of imagination has been employed in the context
of religious experience is to help deconstruct the erroneous conceptualization and
concomitant experience of ontological separation between the celestial and terrestrial
spheres. In advocating the fabrication and contemplation of an imago mundi, an
image of the world in miniature, Ficino is providing a means of bringing microcosm
and macrocosm together. Throughout Ficinos work are two very important ideas
having to do with the way in which synthesis takes place between the intellect and the
body and between the realm of the Ideas and matter. On the microcosmic level the
soul is the mediating term between body and intellect. On the macrocosmic level, the
anima mundi functions analogously between matter and the Idea. These relationships
can be diagrammed as follows:

Micocosmic Level Macrocosmic Level

soul anima mundi

body intellect matter idea

Ficinos directions for making an imago mundi are truly significant. In the first place,
making a physical image of the world is meant to help us overcome the apparent
dis/connection between self and world, and the reason we are to do it is to help us be-
come more attuned to our (very real) participation in the world. Secondly, there is the
fact that, according to Ficinos ontology, the image of a thing is necessarily a part of
the being of that which is imaged. Thirdly, because his advice to contemplate the
whole of life rather than its parts when leaving the house entails interiorizing and
assimilating this image of the world, this microcosm, we thus begin to embody it. In
embodying the microcosm we participate more fully in it; thereby we are enabled to
participate more fully in the macrocosm since the microcosm itself is an image of the
macrocosm and thus operates according to the same principles. Therefore, and once
more in perfect accord with Ficinos ontology, it too participates in the being of that
which it symbolizes - the macrocosm. We can diagram this relation as follows:

Microcosm Imago Mundi Macrocosm


(the Starting Point) (the Means) (the Goal)

To be sure, there are gradations of being within Ficinos schema, but his conception of
the cosmos is that it is whole. It is for this reason that De vita triplici can be
understood as a profound corrective to the traditional scholastic conception of the
universe. Ficinos imago mundi is an important element within a spiritual discipline
that is meant to help us overcome divisions which are usually understood to be
ontological, but are instead only conventional.

4 Imagination in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius de Loyola


Ignatius de Loyola was bom in Spain in 1491, and spent his youth as an officer in the
army of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. At the age of twenty-six he sustained a seri-
ous leg wound and to help relieve the tedium of an enforced convalescence at his fam-
ily home in Guipuscoa asked for novels and short stories. Since none were available,
he had to content himself with heavier fare: the lives of the saints and a life of Christ.
In his autobiography Ignatius says that during this time he paused to think and
reason Suppose that I should do what Saint Francis did, what Saint Dominic did? 49.
The answer came after his recovery, when he made a pilgrimage to Montserrat. In a
church there, during a vigil lasting the entire night, he experienced a dramatic
conversion. Ignatius left his weapons before the statue of Mary, and returned to the
world to found the Society of Jesus. The remainder of his life was devoted to directing
the activities of the order and endeavoring to perfect his own spiritual life. The
Spiritual Exercises were written with the intention to provide exercises that were
calculated to maximize the quality of persons relationship to God during a period of
deliberate retreat from the world under the guidance of a specially trained spiritual
director. The smallest details of life are considered: there are rules for eating,
drinking, sleeping; meditations formulated for particular times during the day - dawn,
noon, evening, and midnight; careful advice for the various emotions a retreatant
might experience, such as despair, pride, etc.; very little escapes consideration. And
among these well-considered directions we find more than twenty-five specific
instructions involving the intentional use of imagination, and no less than twenty-one
pages of points on which to contemplate: brief descriptive references to major
events in the life of Christ, clearly intended as image-making material but without any
accompanying instruction"50. There are also eight references to a process which
Ignatius called bringing to memory, evocative of the Platonic doctrine concerning
our innate memory of the Forms51.

5 The Place of Images in the Church

Ignatiuss Exercises were thoroughly scrutinized before being given papal approbation
in 1548, and are therefore officially orthodox. The Exercises are still in use today as a
guide for persons making retreats conducted by the Jesuits. This is somewhat
surprising in view of their emphasis on memory and imagination, for although it has
always used them the Church has long been wary of images because of their pagan
antecedents52. While images of the saints and of Mary and even of the three persons of
49
The biographical information about Ignatius comes from Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed.. The Reformation:
A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers and Participants, second edition, Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979,431ff.
50
I have used the edition by David J. Fleming, S.J., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal
Translation and a Contemporary Reading, St. Louis, Missouri: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978.
Explicit 'points on which to contemplate' appear on 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 170. 172, 174,
176, 178, 180, 182, 184, 186, 188,192, 194, 196, and 200. Henceforth referred to as Exercises.
51
References to bringing to memory appear on 34, 36, 44, 46, 80, 116, 136, and 138 On 78 Ignatius
refers to five senses of the imagination. And on 82, 84, 86, 88, 92, 116, 118, 120 124, 128, 132, 138,
and 142 he makes specific reference to the 'five senses.'
52
I would argue that the Ignatian use of the imagination belongs to a spectrum which includes, at its
most extreme, the magician who intentionally imagines he is God. On this view, then we should think
of it as a somewhat watered down version of the identical formulation found in magic; thus t would
have been m line with the teachings of the Church to condemn it as potentially heretical. It is
interesting to note that she did not, and also to consider that if someone like the ill-fated Giordano
Bruno had produced the same techniques found in The Spiritual Exercises it certainly would not be in
use today as part of the Jesuit program.
the Trinity were permitted carefully formulated doctrinal distinctions regulated their
use among the faithful and insured that devotion would not be directed to the images
themselves, but beyond the images, to the persons and qualities represented. These
steps were not entirely effectivenuances of this kind were not readily grasped by
those unused to making such distinctions themselves, but in formulating these
pronouncements the Church anticipated and at least tried to address the confusion she
feared would be inevitable53

First, idolatry, as opposed to the use of images as sources of inspiration and as


mnemonic help was officially banned. Secondly, the theologians carefully
distinguished the kinds of veneration that could appropriately be directed to the beings
represented by the images. Three degrees were articulated: latria (adoration),
reserved for God and thus lawfully extended to each of the three persons of the
Trinity); hyperdulia(literally, high veneration), a singular form accorded only to Mary;
dulia (veneration) reserved for the saints. The attitudes toward images, images
themselves, and the Church s teachings pertaining to these degrees of veneration are
related ideas possessed of difficult theological subtleties which were in practice
disregarded by a majority of the faithful. I have introduced them here because similar
issues arise with respect to Ignatius method for composing mental images of God and
the saints.

Ignatius obviously considered the careful and deliberate construction of mental


images to be of important, even critical help in making progress along spiritual lines.
The Ignatian method is something of a hybrid; it is not unrelated to the active
imagination of the magus or the alchemist, both of whom are familiar with the place
and function of imagination in their work, but could easily give pause to ecclesiastics
who are al-ready sensitive about the fine points of images and attitudes toward them.
Moreover, some of the characteristics of the Exercises indicate clear links to the art of
memory.

6 Examples from The Spiritual Exercises

Ignatius distinguishes visible contemplations from invisible ones. The purpose of


the first type is to see with the sight of the imagination the corporeal place where the
thing is found which I want to contemplate54. The second type is an aid for regulating
inner attitudes and dispositions, and forming impressions of qualities which are
incorporeal. Metaphor and analogy are key elements in this process. The First
Exercise includes general instructions for constructing a mental image, or as Ignatius
calls it, an invisible contemplation or meditation:

In an invisible contemplation or meditationas... on the Sinsthe


composition will be to see with the sight of the imagination and consider that
53
For example, after the Council of Ephesus in 431 declared Mary to be the Holy Virgin and
theotokos (bearer of God), it was understood that she could be adored right along with God and the
faithful proceeded to do just that with great fervor. This enthusiasm is not surprising in view of the fact
that Ephesus had previously been the site of a temple to Artemis. Although the temple had been
destroyed thirty years before the Council, at some level the sacred quality of the site remained:
Artemis temple simply became St. Mary-s basilica. For the text of the theotokos declaration see Henry
Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church, second edition, London: Oxford University Press,
1963.
54
Exercises, 32.
my soul is imprisoned in this corruptible body, and all the compound in this
valley, as exiled among brute beasts: I say all the compound of soul and
body.55

Ignatius also emphasizes the importance of asking God for an experience of whatever
emotion is appropriate to the image, for example:

if the contemplation is on the Resurrection, one is to ask for joy with Christ in
joy; if it is on the Passion, he is to ask for pain, tears and torment with Christ
in torment 56.

After calling up an image in the mind, Ignatius sometimes instructs us to develop


things even further by moving from being spectators outside what we see to being
participants within it: Imagining Christ our Lord present and placed on the Cross, let
me make a Colloquy57. Ignatius notes that we are to perform the colloquy as one
friend speaks to another, or as a servant to his master ...58.

In one of his contemplations on hell, Ignatius asks us to see with the sight of the
imagination the great fires, and the souls as in bodies of fire, but here he adds a new
dimension which greatly expands the process because it involves all the senses: hear
with the ears, he writes, the wailings, howlings, cries of hell; then smell, taste,
and touch59. Next we are directed to build an image which will afford a Gods eye
view of all the surface and circuit of the earth:

To see and consider the Three Divine Persons, as on their royal throne or seat
of Their Divine Majesty, how They look on all the surface and circuit of the
earth.60

I note that by telling us to imagine the earth from the perspective of the divinity,
Ignatius is telling us to imagine what God sees, and that this is but a step away from
seeing through Gods eyes, so to speak. Thus, we have additional justification for
locating Ignatius techniques along a spectrum which includes not only the mystic
who seeks oneness with God in the unio mystica, but also the magician who
intentionally imagines he/she is divine, and the alchemist who identifies him/herself
with the creator gods of the beginnings.

7 Influences on The Spiritual Exercises

The situation with respect to the influences on Ignatius in some ways resembles the
situation today, when references to Foucault and Derrida can be overheard in places in
and around the university. Each generation of university folk have their intellectual
fashions: sixteenth-century life at the University of Paris, which Ignatius attended (he
55
Ibid. Specific references to mental images appear on 32, 34, 36, 38, 44, 64, 70, 72, and 76 (on 76
Ignatius emphasizes that we should 'look, mark and contemplate').
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid., 36.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid., 44-46.
60
Ibid., 72.
enrolled in 1528, received the licentiate in theology in 1534, and the masters decree
the following year) would not have been an exception. Ideas concerning natural
magic, the Hermetic texts, alchemy, and memory arts were common coin, and it is
hard to "see how he could have escaped familiarity with them61.

As I stated earlier, many of the characteristics of the Exercises suggest that it belongs
to the tradition of memory treatises which proliferated during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries that were surveyed by Frances Yates in The Art of Memory.
Indeed, Yates remarks that these were so numerous she had difficulty in deciding
which ones to use. Many of these treatises were written by Dominicans, and she refers
to one work in particular which could easily have provided inspiration for The
Spiritual Exercises:

An anonymous treatise, probably by a Dominican, gives a most solemn


description of how to remember the whole order of the universe and the roads
to Heaven and Hell by the artificial memory.62

Because so much of this material seems to have come from out of the Dominican
order, it is appropriate to note that they enjoyed some prominence at the University of
Paris; thus, by virtue of shared theological training, the Dominicans and Ignatius
possessed certain kinds of knowledge in common. For example, Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica, which contains a section on memory was widely known and
extremely influential63. (And of course Aquinas had been one of the luminaries of the
Dominican order.) It would have been virtually impossible for Ignatius to complete
the work for a masters degree in theology without reading Aristotle, whose writings
include De memoria et reminiscentia, or Plato with his account of recollection and the
Ideas in the Phaedrus. Yates has traced the dissemination of these and other classical
writings on memory up through the Renaissance period, demonstrating the links
between rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech, and the memory arts. To help illustrate
she reminds us of Ciceros description of the five parts of rhetoric in his De
inventione.

61
There is a wealth of circumstantial evidence that links Ignatius to unorthodox practice, and therefore
to the memory tradition. For example, when Ignatius matriculated at the University of Alcala in
Barcelona in 1526, Inquistorial authorities summoned him several times; once, in 1527, he was
imprisoned. After his release he went to Salamanca where continued harassment by the Inquisition
drove him to France, where he enrolled at the University of Paris in 1528. Ignatius's contemporary,
Giulio Camillo, arrived in Paris in 1530, with the aim of raising money from Francis I for a memory
theater. (See Yates, op. cit., 129ff.) Did Ignatius know about Camillo's project? Obviously final
determination regarding the influences on Ignatius would require more research. My point here,
however, is that there are a number of potentially fruitful leads that remain to be followed. Jung notes a
similarity between the 'active imagination that takes place in yoga' and 'the spiritual exercises of
Ignatius Loyola, who employs the terms consideratio, contemplatio, meditatio, ponderatio, and
imaginatio per sensus for the realization of the imagined content, in: Alchemical Studies, trans. R. F.
C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967; 1983, n. 11, 164-165. See
also his lectures on Ignatius given at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, reprinted in
Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Ignatius of Loyola: Spring (1977), 183-200 and continued in Spring
(1978), 28-36.
62
Yates, op.cit., 108.
63
Thomas Aquinas, op. cit., II-II, q. 49.
Invention is the excogitation of true things (res), or things similar to truth to
render ones cause plausible; disposition is the arrangement in order of the
things thus discovered; elocution is the accommodation of suitable words to
the invented (things); memory is the firm perception in the soul of things and
words; pronunciation is the moderating of the voice and body to suit me
dignity of the things and words.64

With Ciceros definitions in mind, when we turn again to The Spiritual Exercises we
notice that attention is paid to all but one of the five. Ignatius images include a lot of
details, as we see from his contemplation on Christs nativity:

It will be here to see with the sight of the imagination the road from Nazareth
to Bethlehem; considering the length and the breadth, and whether such road
is level or through valleys; likewise looking at the place or cave of the
Nativity, how large, how small, how low, how high, and how it was prepared.65

He is also concerned about order: the meditations on various aspects of the life of
Christ and the events in the Garden of Eden follow the chronology found in the
scriptures. Ignatius does not explicitly mention elocution, but can be presumed to
have thought very carefully about the wording of his Exercises. He frequently talks
about memory: the contemplator is to bring to the memory an image from the past
which must then be strongly impressed in the mind. Finally, his concern with
experiencing the emotions appropriate to whatever is imagined is not unrelated to
Ciceros definition of pronunciation which calls for the moderating of the voice and
body to suit the dignity of things and words. Moreover, many of the earlier writers on
memory stressed the importance of fixing images in our mind, so they might not be
easily forgotten; for this reason they often utilized images that were memorably
grotesque or otherwise striking66. What could be more vivid than Ignatius image of
hell, which even requires that we imagine its sounds and its smells: the bitter taste of
the condemned souls tears, sadness and the worm of conscience, and touch with
the touch... how the fires touch and burn the souls?

II IMAGINATION IN THE ALCHEMICAL TRADITION

The role of imagination in alchemy has been discussed by scholars as diverse as Carl
Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, Henry Corbin, Gaston Bachelard, Gilbert Durand, and
Antoine Faivre. And while a case can be made for viewing the faculty of the
imagination as both the hermeneutical method and the creative principle of alchemy,
it remains stubbornly resistant to analysis, tending in fact, to be nearly as elusive as
the goal of the alchemical process itself.

The alchemical texts contain only occasional explicit references to the imagination
with the result that would-be hermeneuts must face an uncannily self-referential task.
Just as our alchemical predecessors had to organize chaotic material and amplify
intuitions about meaning in order to proceed with their work, we too must select and
then frame statements from primary and secondary sources and finally flesh out or
64
Yates, op. cit., 8-9.
65
Exercises, 74.
66
See Yates, op. cit., 96-97, for a description of an exceptionally horrible image representing idolatry.
amplify our intuitions about their meaning, in order to produce a coherent exegesis.
Such a methodology has a circularity to which we in the contemporary era have
become un-accustomed: it seems that if we are to discover the proper way to
understanding imagination in alchemy, we must ourselves makes use of something
like it in solving our hermeneutical problem. Circular or not, I believe this
methodological approach to be the most promising tool in the box in this case. Given
the real possibility that the concept of alchemy as a spiritual discipline may be
somewhat unfamiliar to the reader, I want to provide a brief summary of what the
alchemical work entailed, before considering several exemplary alchemical texts.

1 Alchemy as a Spiritual Discipline

According to Jung, whose three volumes on alchemy represent the most


comprehensive articulation to date of its psychological implications, the alchemical
work can be understood in terms of what he calls its double face, i.e., two aspects,
the practical (or operatic) and the theoretical (theoria). Alchemy therefore proceeded
on two more or less distinct levels - the theoretical and the practical 67. With respect
to its practical aspect, on account of the nature of the material, it is virtually
impossible to determine the exact order or number of stages in the alchemical work;
in fact, these vary according to personal preferences and idiosyncrasies68. Nor is it
always apparent what substances are being referred to. We may be told, for example,
that mercury is necessary for a certain procedure, but it may be the metal that is
meant, or the qualities of the metal, or the god himself.69 For a variety of reasons,
primarily adherence to the doctrine of correspondences and similitudes and the view
that there was a relation between microcosm and macrocosm, the alchemists were
given to making analogies between events which occurred on an outer, material

67
Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series XX, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968; 1980, 290. First published as Psychologic und Alchemic, Zurich:
Rascher Verlag, 1944; 2nd ed. revised, 1952. See also Karen Voss, Aspects of Medieval Alchemy:
Cosmogony, Ontology, and Transformation, unpublished M.A. thesis, San Jose State University,
1984,24-39.
68
Partly on account of these idiosyncrasies, and partly because most of the alchemists felt bound to
keep from casting pearls before uninitiated swine, problems like these abound. The alchemical texts are
almost always obscure. Every alchemist had to decide, therefore, what substances to use, which writers
to take seriously, which images and symbols would be of use, etc. This necessity for organization as a
preliminary to beginning the work frequently gave rise to an identification with the divine creators of
cosmogonic myth. The alchemists also had to impose order on chaos. Regardless of the culturally
specific terms in which it is couched, every cosmogonic myth develops the theme of order proceeding
from chaos. For this reason, it was natural for the alchemists to identify the disordered welter of
purportedly instructive texts (characterized by obscure language), and the plethora of syncretic
symbols, images, and mottos, and myths that were the currency of peoples before the so-called
Enlightenment, with the prima materia, with absolute formlessness, with pure potentiality. Their task,
so it must have seemed, was to 'imitate the acts of the gods in the beginning' by actualizing the
Philosopher's Stone which had existed only in potentia. The more syncretistically-minded alchemists
related this identity with creator divinities to the Christian idea of the Word made Flesh, which was
accomplished by means of the Incarnation. In turn, the Incarnation provided a model of brokenness
redeemed, made whole, embodied, and thus we sometimes see that it has become a model for the
alchemical quest for unity appear-in" under the form of the Philosopher's Stone. See for example, K.
Voss, The Hierosgamos Theme in the Images of the Rosarium Philosophorum, in: Alchemy Revisited:
Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Alchemy at the University of Groningen,
17-19 April 1989, ed. by Z.R.W.M. von Martels, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990.
69
See Emblema I on 36 infra, for example.
level, and experiences which took place on an inner, spiritual plane70". There was
thought to be congruence between the maturation of the chemical processes in the
alchemists laboratory and the deepening of their own gnosis. Interpreted
symbolically, the alchemists were attempting to perfect the Self, to lead out the gold
within, as one expressed it. On the material level, the alchemists purpose in the
laboratory was the production of gold, the most perfect of all metals; on the spiritual
level, their goal was to produce the arcane substance variously known as the
Philosophers Stone, the Hermetic Androgyne, or the Rebis.71 When viewed in this
way, the Philosophers Stone and ordinary gold are not so very different; the latter
represented the actualization of all the qualities only potentially present in lesser
metals; the former represented the actualization of all virtues potentially present in
human beings.

Jung maintains that alchemy was a bonafide spiritual discipline, devoted to the
unification of these material and spiritual opposites, as these are conventionally
understood, and that ultimately it was the imagination which would mediate between
them72". This resolution took place on different levels corresponding to deepening
levels of understanding about the true nature of the alchemical operations. The most
profound form of resolution was characterized by a mode of subtle mutual reciprocity
and interpenetration in which each term of an opposition entered fully into the being
of the other, simultaneously present to the other, transforming and being
transformed73. Each alchemist equipped a laboratory, selected and studied texts, and
constructed (and continuously refined, since the al-chemists conception of the nature
of the process, as well as their conception of their relationship to it seem to have
undergone transformation as the work proceeded) a theoretical framework. This last
was critical, since it not only provided a theoretical context within which physical

70
See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York-
Pantheon Books, 1970, 17-25, for a discussion of the four similitudes; and 25-30, for a discussion of
the doctrine of signatures. The book was first published as Les Mots et les choses, Paris: Editions
Gallimard, 1966. See also Gombrich, op. cit. Gombrich seems somewhat discomfited when
contemplating the world view which led to a confusion between the signifier and the signified This is a
very important article, however, and contains a thorough exposition of the most significant issues
related to the question of images in the Renaissance Neo-Platonic tradition.
71
71 One alchemist writes: Our matter has as many names as there are things in the world. A. E.
Waite ed. and trans., The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, 2 vols., London: James Elliott and
Co., 1893,1, 13. The role of the alchemist was to lead out the gold, to actualize what had existed in
potentia. In this respect, it is appropriate to speak of the alchemists as 'midwives' who, in accord with
the cosmic 'plan', were enabling the substances in their vessels to be -redeemed' from their actual state
of baseness and to attain their potential condition of perfection. See Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the
Crucible: The Origins and Structures of Alchemy, trans. Stephen Corrin, New York: Harper
& Row, 1976, 19-52. First published as Forgerons et Alchemistes, Paris: Flammarion, 1956.
72
Jung was adamant about understanding alchemy as a spiritual discipline. See, for example the
contrast he makes between two different writers on the topic in Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry
into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull second edition,
Bollingen Series XX, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963; 1970 457. First published as
Mysterium Coniunctionis: Umersuchung iiber die Trennung und Zusammen-setwng der seelischen
Gegensdtze in der Alchemic, Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1955, 1956. See also my article: Spiritual
Alchemy: Interpreting Representative Texts and Images, in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to
Modem Times, ed. by R. van den Broek and W.J. Hanegraaff, State University of New York Press: New
York, 1995.
73
This is by no means unrelated to the 'interpenetration between matter and spirit' of which Ewert
H. Cousins writes in Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites: The Theology of Bonaventure,
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1978, 170.
experiments were carried out, but a hermeneutical one as well, within which the
results of these experiments could be interpreted.

2 The Alchemical Theoria

It is in the context of the alchemical theoria that we most clearly encounter


imagination as primary modus operandi of the alchemical endeavor. Just as the
alchemical work had a double face, so too did the alchemical imagination. It was the
hermeneutic method of alchemy, but its function was not limited merely to the
articulation of meaning; imagination was also the creative force par excellence74. In
The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard describes his methodological approach to the
study of images as one which consists of designating the image as an excess of the
imagination75. In alchemy the arena in which such imaginal excess takes place is the
theoria. After commenting on the opacity of the documents pertaining to the operatic
in Psychology and Alchemy, Jung makes several provocative remarks concerning the
role of the imagination in the theoria. For example:

The method of alchemy, psychologically speaking, is one of boundless


amplification... This amplificatio forms the second part of the opus, and is
understood by the alchemist as theoria.76

At first glance, this comment may appear adequate, but a closer look shows that in
itself, it simply doesnt tell us enough, and proves somewhat unsatisfying. What does
he mean by amplification? What had to be amplified? And precisely what is
imaginations role here? The contemporary reader of alchemical texts soon discovers
a baroque landscape in which flourished visions, dreams, intuitions, feelings, hunches,
and the like, all with thematic similarities, and all taken very seriously as comprising a
foundation on which to build. But in their initial unmediated state, none of these,
whether taken alone or together, would prove sufficiently substantial for shoring up
the alchemical work. All these elements first had to be mediated in order to form a
coherent foundation. From out of the theoretical context described above was derived
a complex web of metaphorical associations, each with implications for all the others;
this constituted the raw material for the analogy-making that was considered an
integral part of the alchemical endeavor. By means of the imagination, the alchemists
clothed their intuitions with the stuff of association and analogy77. Their method was
to seize upon and then contemplate such amorphous things as dreams, visions,
mythic symbols, portents, signs, etc., at length, with a marked degree of
intentionality, i.e., active imagination, as von Franz and others call it, thereby
gradually imbuing them with solidity, dimension, and form.78 In short, they used their

74
K. Voss, The Hierosgamos Theme, op. cit., 4-9. 75
75
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas with foreword by Etienne Gilson, New
York: Orion Press, 1964, 112. First published as La potique de I'espace, Paris: PUP, 1958. 76 Jung,
Psychology and Alchemy, 289.
76
Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 289.
77
Ibid.
78
See Marie Louise von Franz, Alchemical Active Imagination, Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications,
1979 and Corbin, op.cit., 9. For a comprehensive and extraordinarily sensitive analysis of the use of
imagination in mysticism, see Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, trans. Ralph
Manheim, Bollingen Series XCL, Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1969. First published as LImagination
cratrice dans le Soufisme dIbn Arabi, Paris: Flammarion, 1958. Parts One and Two were originally
published in Eranos-Jahrbcher XXIV (1955) and XXV (1956), Zrich: Rhein-Verlag.
imagination to deliberately exaggerateamplifythese things, to objectify them in
order to work with them. Having done this, the alchemist would go on to further
enrich and embellish what was m place by following a trail of associations, repeating
the amplificatio with those; and then the entire sequence would be repeated with the
next set of associations, and so on.

Just as mythic creator divinities, the alchemists created form from out of chaos; gold,
where only lead had existed before. The thrust of the alchemical work was both
redemptive and incarnational, and if the alchemists stock in trade was the
actualization of what formerly had existed only in potentia, the tool with which they
plied that trade was the imagination. The following texts were based (or purportedly
based) on their authors alchemical experience and were intended for the guidance and
inspiration of fellow alchemists, as raw data for the imagination. With that in mind,
let us turn now to my three examples.

3 The Hermetick Romance or the Chymical Wedding

According to historian Frances Yates, The Hermetick Romance of 1616 is properly


located in the same tradition which gave us two other so-called Rosicrucian
manifestos in the same century: the Fama (first printed edition 1614) and the
Confessio (which appeared in 1615).79 These describe the initiatic events reputedly
experienced by Christian Rosenkreutz, who is still revered by faithful Rosicrucians as
one of the greatest imperators of their order.80

It sets the scene for a focus on the imagination in the opening lines. The protagonist
had just finished praying; a process he describes as including conversation with his
Creator and the contemplation of many great Mysteries, when a frightful tempest
arose. The storms intensity was such that it threatened to cause the entire house to
flye in pieces, clearly heralding an approaching dissolution of the limits of ordinary
time / space. To protect himself lest the storm be sent from the Devil, our character
renewed his efforts at prayer and persisted in my Meditation, until a figure touched
me on the Back. Although frightened, since the touch on the back had changed into
an insistent twitching on his coat, he turned and behold a fair and glorious Lady,
whose Garments were all Skye-colour, andbespangled with golden Stars who,
before leaving, placed a letter for him on the Table. 81

One of the most remarkable things about this passagewhich begins with prayer and
meditation and ends with a letteris that it brings together by degrees two modes of
beinginterior, private, and insubstantial and exterior, public, and substantialwhich
are normally viewed as dichotomized 82. First, the description of the prayer contained
79
Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Boulder: Shambala, 1978, 41-45, 66 et passim.
Christian Rosenkreutz is said to have been born in 1378 and to have lived for 106 years.
80
The Hermetick Romance is contemporaneous with the works of alchemist Michael Maier. See the
discussion of Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, 35-38 of this text.
81
The Hermetick Romance: Or the Chymical Wedding, in: Paul M. Alien, ed., A Christian
Rosenkreutz Anthology, 2nd ed.. Blauvelt, New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1974, 69.
Henceforth referred to as Romance.

82
For a thought-provoking list of some of the things we think of as 'hard' and 'soft' see Wendy
O'Flaherty, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984,
311-312.
a hint of corporeality: the prayer itself was an interaction, involving two persons, the
subject (who prayed) and the object of his prayer (his Creator). Second, the vision was
heralded by physical contact, meaning that it had enough materiality to involve his
senses; in fact, the author uses the phrase bodily vision in a subsequent passage from
which I quote below. Third, the physical contact did not happen merely once, but
repeatedly, and the figure left a letter, a physical token. We see that not only is the
imagination involved here, but imagination of the type described in The Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius, which involves the body and its senses83.

The letter announced a long-awaited Hermetic wedding, which had first been called to
his attention seven Years before... in a bodily Vision [emphasis mine], and it there-
fore became the occasion for a rather anguished examination of conscience, since he
felt he was not sufficiently prepared to participate in the event 84. Added to that was
genuine consternation because he could understand little of the significance of the
announcement, now that it had arrived, for:

In my Head there was nothing but gross misunderstanding, and blindness in


mysterious things, so that I was not able to comprehend even those things
which lay under my Feet, and which I daily conversed with, much less that I
should be born to the searching out, and understanding of the Secrets of
Nature.85

A truly reluctant prophet, he also felt himself unworthy:

In my opinion Nature might every where find a more vertuous Disciple, to


whom to intrust her precious, though temporary, and changeable Treasures.

Not knowing what else to do, he writes:

I betook my self to my usual and most secure course; after I had finished my
earnest and most fervent Prayer, I laid me down in my Bed 86

with the hope that his normally instructive angel might whisper a helpful word or two
of advice. No angel appears to have been forthcoming, but he dreamed a dream
which was... strongly impressed upon my imagination, and which functioned to
reassure him that he was, after all, a fitting candidate for the task to which he had
been called 87.

Our voyager sets out on his journey to the wedding, taking along bread, salt and water
and placing four red roses in his hat (for he is, as he informs us, a brother of the red-
rosie Cross)88 . When he leaves his dwelling, the narrative explains that he is quite
awake, but we again encounter the dissolution of a dichotomy, for the events which
are subsequently related do not happen in ordinary space/time, but rather are
characterized by dreamlike qualities; the conventional demarcation between waking
83
Cf. 16 of this text.
84
Romance, 70.
85
Ibid.
86
Ibid.
87
Ibid., 74-75.
88
Ibid.
and sleeping is blurred. These events belong to an imaginal world into which our
character enters more and more deeply. This is Henry Corbins mundus imaginalis, a
world which Antome Faivre has described as having a geography of its own89.
Indeed, for nearly a hundred pages, we find this character confronted with a series of
symbolic personages, objects, and situations: he is presented with a choice of four
paths to the ceremony; a wind presses him to move in one direction only; there is the
alchemical antithesis in the form of a white dove and a black raven; he sees a Portal
on a Hill, the first in a series of gates, connoting the initiatory steps of gnosis 90.
Finally, because this dreamlike journey into the imaginal world is supposed to take
seven days, we are told of the circumstances attendant upon his going to bed,
dreaming and awakening; all of them highly symbolic, and therefore, worthy of
imaginative contemplation; as are the concomitant philosophical complexities implicit
in the dream within the dream within the myth phenomenon, a frequent
characteristic of myth91.

4 Aureum saeculum redivivum (The Golden Age Restored)

Alchemist Henricus Madathanus provides a similar focus on dreams in Aureum


saeculum redivivum, first printed in 1625 in a collection of ten texts entitled the
Musaeum hermeticum.92 This treatise is also replete with symbols, especially those
having to do with the alchemical marriage, and bears many of the characteristics of
The Hermetick Romance.

I retired to rest... and fell into a deep slumber; when, behold, Solomon
appeared to me in all his power... and with him came his whole harem... One
of them was his most beautiful dove, and was dearest to his heart93.

Solomon takes him to a secret place, restores his spirit with rare nourishment, and
tells him to choose a bride for himself from among a group of virgins. Strongly
attracted by one, he resists at first for she is dressed in utterly vile clothing, but he
capitulates eventually, saying he is sick with love for her, whereupon a clamoring
arises among the women in Solomons entourage which awakens him94.

After he spends the remainder of the night in sleeplessness, morning reveals a pile of
filthy clothing lying on the floor beside his bed! Once more we encounter a corporeal
sign of an incorporeal experience; like the letter deposited on the table by the
mysterious figure in The Hermetick Romance, the clothing is a visible token from the
imaginal world.

Frightened by this episode, the alchemist ignores the pile for five years, until he has a
series of instructive dreams. From a woman in one of these dreams, he learns that the
hideous rags are hiding a box filled with precious jewels. She gives him coals with
89
Antoine Faivre, Esotericsm, in; Lawrence E. Sullivan, ed.. Hidden Truths: Magic, Alchemy and the
Occult, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987, 39.
90
Ibid., 39-40.
91
Wendy O'Flaherty, op. cit., especially Chapter 2, Myths about Dreams.
92
Musaeum hermeticum, Frankfurt: printed for Lucas Jennis, 1625.
93
Waite, op. cit., I, 57.
94
Ibid., 59-60.
which to bum the cloth, and thus, Madathanas is free at last to gaze at the contents of
his treasure box. A sign on the box warns him to stir not up nor awake my love till he
please. Taking that as an exhortation to be patient yet awhile longer, he waits for a
period of time, after which he is at last able to attain the long sought after
Philosophers Stone 95.

Like The Spiritual Exercises, this treatise is thick with points on which to contemplate
imaginatively. An alchemist reading this text could certainly be expected to use his
powers of imagining to learn the symbolic significance of the treasure box filled to the
brim with precious jewels. On the level of chemical operations the box is the
alchemical vessel and the precious jewels the substances which are being combined,
and re-combined and subjected to all manner of processes like heating, evaporation,
etc. On the level of spiritual work, the jewels are presumably things like character
traits and dispositions of the soul which, through meditative practice are also
subjected to a multitude of operations. The time spent waiting before extracting the
jewels from the box corresponds to an incubation period. In the laboratory, the
Philosophers Stone would be achieved only after a period of heating the substances
in the alchemical vessel. Festina lente could well be the motto here, because the
texts are full of warnings that this heating must be done in a carefully regulated way
otherwise the entire process could fail and would have to be repeated. By the same
token, spiritual development cannot be forced either; but can be expected to take place
only under properly regulated conditions.

5 Atalanta Fugiens (Atalanta Fleeing)

Consideration of Michael Maiers Atalanta Fugiens of 1618 adds still more to our
understanding of the alchemical imagination96. The full title is revealing. It reads as
follows:

Atalanta fleeing: that is, new chymical emblems of the secrets of nature- fitted
partly to eyes and intellect, with figures engraved in copper and additional
maxims epigrams and notes, and partly to the ears and the recreation of the
soul with some fifty musical fugues in three parts, of which two are to
correspond to one simple melody suitable for singing in couplets; the whole to
be seen, read, meditated understood, judged, sung and heard with
extraordinary pleasure.

Thus this text, one of the most beautiful of all alchemical treatises, is intended from
the very beginning to press the imagination into the service of helping involve our
sense of sight as well as of hearing. Unlike The Hermetick Romance and The Golden
Age Re-stored, which offer up the multi-sensory experiences of the alchemist/author
for the edification and contemplation of the reader, Atalanta Fugiens constitutes a
demand for participation by giving multi-sensory experience directly to its reader, as
part of an explicit and comprehensive program. It is a unique combination of text,
images, music and lyrics, which is compelling even to the uninitiated97. The text
consists of fifty emblems, each accompanied by an epigram, an ostensibly
95
Ibid., 63-64.
96
Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, The Golden Game: Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth
Century, New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1988, 68.
explanatory, but characteristically cryptic, paragraph, and a fugue with lyrics98. Fifty
emblems are far too many to comment on here, but the following examples provide a
good idea of what lies in store for the reader. :

Emblema I: Portavit eum ventus in ventre suo99".

Mercury is shown here in human form, with wind streaming through his long hair. He
is carrying the still-embryonic Philosophers Stone in the form of a baby within his
body100 . This single image implies innumerable levels of meaning. For an alchemist
who is taking this text seriously, provided here, for example, is symbolic illustration
of the e esoteric meaning contained in the accompanying quotation from the Tabula
Smaragdina (Emerald Table), a frequently quoted text which articulates the view that
the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm, and gives an account of cosmic
causality which is process-oriented, rather than mechanistic. It also conforms to what
Giordano Bruno would call the inner artificer, and thereby provides a model for
looking for the cause of the Philosophers Stone within, rather than outside, the
alchemist, as well as a model for imitating divine creation101.

Emblema XXVII: Qui Rosarium intrare conatur Philosophicum absque clave,


assimilatur homini ambulare volenti absq[ue] pedibus102.

The motifs of the enclosed garden, the rose, and the key are all reminiscent of the
initiatory theme in The Hermetick Romance. The alchemist begins with the premise
that the knowledge which will enable a successful alchemical enterprise is hidden
from the view of the profane. Focusing the imagination on these three images is
expected to provide the adept with valuable clues about the real significance of the
lock, the enclosed garden, and the rose. In a context informed by belief in the doctrine
of correspondences and of the relation between microcosm and macrocosm the sexual
connotations of these motifs could initiate the following associations: sexuality and
reproduction are bound up with the idea of earthly creativity and fecundity, which in
turn is a microcosmic reflection of macro-cosmic process. These motifs also suggest
the idea of penetration. In turn, that idea can be associated with initiation and with
gnosis: one progressively penetrates the secrets of the divine, of nature, and of the
self103.

97
Having once heard selections from the music of Atalanta Fugiens performed while looking at the
images and the text I can attest to its compelling qualities. See Joscelyn Godwin, ed. and trans.,
Atalanta Fugiens: An edition of the Emblems, Fugues and Epigrams, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes
Press, 1989.
98
There are numerous instances in which the paradigmatic Tabula Smaragdina is actually quoted from;
a fact noteworthy in itself since the Tabula is frequently alluded to or paraphrased in other alchemical
texts but relatively rarely quoted from.
99
The wind carries it in its belly'. This is a direct quotation from the Tabula Smaragdina.
100
That is, in the place where his womb would be if he were a woman.
101
Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, trans. with an introduction by Jack Lindsay, West-
port, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1976, 82. First published Castle Hedingham,
Essex: The Daimon Press Ltd., 1962.
102
'He who tries to enter the Rose-garden of the Philosophers without the key is like a man wanting to
walk without feet'.
103
The idea of progressively more profound understanding of the nature of the universe outside the self
as well as the idea of deeper and deeper levels of self-knowledge is bound up with esoteric gnosis.
Emblema XXXVIII: Rebis, ut Hermaphroditus, nascitur ex duobus montibus
Mercurii & Veneris. 104

This illustrates the alchemical marriage. We see Mercury (in the garb of a soldier) and
Venus (in gossamer dress) embracing each other. Mercurys caduceus lies to one side
in the foreground; a precociously-visaged Cupid holds a full quiver of arrows. Above
the heads of the couple is a hermaphroditic figure. One modern writer offers the
following interpretation:

The Rebis, Hermaphrodite or Androgyne of the Wise is born from the union of
the two Principles (Sulphur and Mercury), who enter the mercurial Bath. This,
like the mythical fountain where the nymph Salmacis swam, has the property
of turning both sexes into one: that is, it dissolves the Bodies radically in such
a way that, once recomposed in the Fixation, they are One105 .

: The alchemist knows that the Rebis, or Philosophers Stone is said to be the
product of the alchemical marriage of opposites. He has already been encouraged to
ponder the esoteric meanings of sexuality by following a trail of associations. This led
to the realization that sexuality is a potentially powerful metaphor for microcosmic
and macro-cosmic process. Now the question might well become: How do I
accomplish a union between the opposing elements in the laboratory (and within
myself) that can adequately mirror cosmic process? The alchemist can only do this by
means of the amplicatio described earlier. He or she must press into service the
powers of imagination which will enable a gradual identification of him/herself with
the hermetic androgyne. On a microcosmic scale, the figure of the androgyne
represents the continuous dance of the cosmos as it balances universal energies.

6 The Power of the Imagination

In the case of Ficino, Ignatius, and the alchemical authors, we are dealing with texts
produced by persons who understood and intentionally used the transformative power
of the imagination, which played a central role in the lived experience that preceded
the process of writing. These were never intended to be dry texts, produced with mere
pen and ink and parchment. They were not envisioned as being comprised of
disembodied collections of words (signifiers) comprising sentences and paragraphs
(bundles of syntactical relations) referring to conceptual constructs (that which is
signified). On the contrary, these texts were intended to be embodied constellations of
meaning, which shaped themselves into voices that call to their reader across the
temporal space of history106 .

Gnosis is therefore associated with penetration, and therefore here penetration, like gnosis, has a dual
connotation. Cf. my remarks concerning Eros and the dialectic of gnosis in: Is there a 'Feminine'
Gnosis? Reflections on Feminism and Esotericism, Aries, 14 (June 1992), 16-17.
104
The Rebis, like Hermaphroditus, is born from the two mountains of Mercury and Venus.
105
de Rola, op. cit., 102.
106
Cf. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona on artistsshe has in mind those described by Mircea Eliade, and
Eliade himself whosuspend the traditional perception of time and space by the act of making, an
act in which we share through participating in the environment of that artwork, in her Introduction to
Mircea Eliade, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, ed. Apostolos-Cappadona, New York: Crossroad,
1985.Thequotation appears on p.xi.
At each step, the writers whose works are discussed here sought to make implicit
meanings explicit, to actualize what had previously existed only in potentia. In this
way they sought to mirror the creative process of the universe. But, just as the
universe continuously unfolds new forms, that process of explication and
actualization was never complete. New meanings affected old interpretations, new
forms enriched them. Like spiritual perfection itself, the Philosophers Stone was
always amorphous, never absolutely present, always just beyond reach; yet just as
Ignatiuss God and Ficinos divine Source of all, it drew its seekers toward it.
Throughout we find that the creative, form-making power of the imagination was
continuously present. These texts are able to span the centuries with a bridge
comprised of a formidable number of hermeneutical acts, each making use of the
faculty of the imagination. One set of acts was performed by the original author: the
initial experience and the subsequent attempt to interpret it, and the process of
recollection in order to write it down, or illustrate it. Another set was performed by
those who listened to the author, or read the treatise, or contemplated the images.
Each of these hermeneutical acts unfolds upon one another to form constellations
which unfolded upon still others, forming veritable galaxies of imaginal worlds
all characterized by the same exquisitely enlivened complexity.

SUMMARY

The intentional use of imagination - here understood as pertaining to a level of reality


which Henry Corbin called the mundus imaginalis - plays an important role in the
formulation of mystical language, the construction of images (both metaphorical and
plastic), and meditative, ritual, and magical practices. This article examines the
phenomenon of imagination as it appears in The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius de
Loyola, the writings of Marsilio Ficino, and selected alchemical treatises. Emphasis is
placed on illustrating what it means to use the faculty of the imagination as a method
of gnosis which functions to dissolve conventionally perceived and/or experienced
dichotomies.

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