This series covers events from 01/23/1982 - 06/05/1982

This series of classes presents alchemy as a process of authentic ontological transformation of the self rather than the transmutation of material substances but is critical of Jung’s psychological interpretation of alchemical texts. Drawing extensively from Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, Atwood's A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, Plotinus's Enneads, and Buddhist texts like The Sublime Science (Uttaratantra), Anthony Damiani integrates Western Hermetic traditions with Plotinian Neoplatonism and the Buddhist Kalachakra tantra.

Since this series comprises twenty-eight classes/papers, it’s more easily described in terms of themes found throughout the classes:

(1) Using the symbolism of the metaphysical chart developed in previous classes, Damiani says he wants to find all the prior principles of the chart manifested in the last house, the twelfth house. Here we find our universe, with three levels: the inerratic sphere, the planetary spheres, and the sublunary elements. Each of these is in turn is threefold: causal, subtle, and gross. For example, the gross level of the planetary spheres is the planetary bodies; the subtle level, their vitality or motion; and the causal level, living images or formulas for how the Ideas are going to be embodied. The Western alchemists refer to these three levels as salt, sulfur, and mercury, respectively. Damiani also compares this framework to the three divisions of the Kalachakra Tantra: inner, outer, and alternative. The inner Kalachakra refers to the body and the elements making up the body. The outer Kalachakra refers to the planetary spheres. The alternative Kalachakra is the mandala of deities, which Damiani likens to the 360° of the zodiac.

(2) Alchemy is not primarily about the transmutation of material substances but about the transformation of the self. The alchemical work is the process of extracting meaning from our experience. The meaning is distilled as essences, golden drops of wisdom. Over the course of many lifetimes, these essences form the quintessential body and, later, the still higher vehicle of the augoeides, the star-wisdom that enables the sage to contemplate the wisdom that is beyond the universe. This idea is elaborated through an analysis of Dorn’s three conjunctions in Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis.

(3) The self is the subject of the alchemical work. Damiani elaborates the notion of the self by referring to Plotinus’s conception of the second soul, the soul that projects the universe from within itself and then associates with vehicles that enable it to experience different levels of that universe. Damiani refers to this outward-facing hypostasis of Soul as the double, or twin, of the heavenly Soul, the Soul in the Nous (this is one meaning of the myth of the Gemini twins). He explains the relationship between the two souls as there being one essence, but two persons. He also draws on the Buddhist notion of bodhicitta, the germ of enlightenment, or the potentiality of Buddhahood, identifying bodhicitta with the second soul. Other synonyms he uses are “heart-atom,” “Nous-atom,” and in some contexts, “Mercurius.” (Is Mercurius the second soul, the pure subjectivity that is gaining experience in the cosmos, or is it the objective, cosmic functioning that provides what the second soul experiences?)

(4) According to Damiani, Jung’s view of the Self is that it’s really the threefold system of stars, planets, and elements. It is the unified cosmic functioning that produces perishable persons that have no real substance, and ultimately these merge back into this functioning. Jung even claims, somewhat misleadingly, to have Plotinus’s support for this (citing IV.9, “Are All Souls One?”). Damiani, on the other hand, argues that each soul is really an eternal individual, whether “soul” applies to the Soul in the Nous, or its double in the cosmos. To Damiani, what Jung claims to be the Self is no self at all but is that which provides the vehicles through which the true self experiences a cosmos.

(5) The presupposition of mentalism (as well as the Yogacara school of Buddhism) is that the entirety of the intelligible world is within the soul. Unlike the dualistic and realist epistemological framework that Jung operates with, Damiani offers the complementary view that each individual soul projects the cosmos from within by drawing on its own intelligible archetype of the world. The purpose of the soul’s projecting a sensible cosmos and then experiencing through a bodily focus what it projects is for it to acquire self-knowledge—that is, to understand that it contains the intelligible world within itself. One of the implications of this is that the entirety of the plan for an individual’s evolution is included in the second soul, or bodhicitta.

(6) Each soul contains within itself the Idea of Man. Drawing on Platonic and Kabbalistic sources, Damiani shows that there are four levels to the Idea of Man (for it is the same as universal manifestation, or the Body of the One), and Jung’s notion of the Anthropos is really just the lowest, sensible level of the Idea of Man.

(7) Damiani distinguishes Jung’s archetypes from Plotinian reason-principles. Jung’s archetypes are at the level of the Dragon (that is, the traces left behind in the psyche of the Earth Mind) or the light of Nature. They are to be found within the imagination, whereas the reason-principles are beyond the imagination and are the principles that organize it.

(8) Throughout, the classes provide many practical and esoteric details about the alchemical work—for example, how one purifies the lower imagination so one can contemplate the archetypes of the productive imagination and the reason-principles beyond them, the need for controlling the lower imagination and the vitality pouring into it so one can free oneself from the tendencies (vasanas) that keep our attention extroverted, and the significance of various lights experienced in meditation. When we understand that our inner life of thoughts, desires, and emotions is contributing each moment to the psychic environment of the Earth (the Dragon), which in turn is the material our souls use to form our body/mind, we will be more vigilant about what we allow to live within us.

(9) Finally, the series includes several papers presented and discussed in class. Some are Damiani’s précis of articles or books by Jungians such as Edward Casey, James Hillman, and Roberts Avens, and some are original papers about some aspect of Jung’s work (one by Anthony Daminai and two by his son Paul Damiani).

This series represents perhaps the most sophisticated attempt in modern times to recover authentic alchemical philosophy as a practical path of spiritual realization, demonstrating how ancient wisdom traditions provide precise methodologies for transforming the individual consciousness that transcend both materialism and psychological reductionism.

Classes and documents available in this series