䷜和䷝

坎和離

⮮ 29&30 ⮯

Solve & Coagula

Mysterium Coniunctionis

玄之又玄

Mysterium Coniunctionis, C.G. Jung (Jung's Collected Works #14, Mysterium coniunctionis: Untersuchungen über die Trennung und Zusammensetzung der seelischen Gegensätze in der Alchemie)

Jung's last major work, completed in his 81st year, on the synthesis of the opposites in alchemy and psychology.

Resolution

Re•Se•Luō

       ➥ se- (“away”) +‎ luō (“to untie, set free, separate 分離”).

Resolution and Independence.

Illustration from Poems of Wordsworth (Caxton Publishing Co, London) by Minnie 'Dibdin' Spooner (1867–1949)

Alchemy’s Magnum Opus/Great Work is in essence an act of dissolution and congealing, an expansive dissipation and a contracting recomposition, which is what the words solve et coagula mean literally.

Loss and restoration of a form is the basic rhythm of an alchemical transformation expressed in the formula, ‘solve et coagula’: the injunction to dissolve and congeal. Chemically this is typified in the process of sublimation, reducing a solid to vapour (solve) and then condensing the vapour to purified solidity (coagula). Another formula reads: ‘fac fixum volatile et volatile fixum’, make the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed, formula that appears in Trismosin’s Aureum Vellus (1598) as

    "Si fixum solvas faciasque volatile

     Et volucrem figas, faciet te vivere tutum.

which William Backhouse translates:

     If thou dissolve the fixt & make it fly,

     And fix the bird, thou shalt live happily.

W. Backhouse expressed the same idea, more enigmatically in his own poem, ‘The Magistery’ (1633):

     The Eagle which aloft doth fly

     See that thou bring to ground;

     And give unto the Snake some wings,

     Which in the Earth is found.

This interplay of fixed and volatile, solid and vaporous, is central to alchemy, for the alchemist saw it as an interplay between the bodily and spiritual aspects within matter. The Mirror makes this clear in its description of solve et coagula:

"Solution and congelation shall be in one operation, and shall make but one work….And this solution and coagulation which we have spoken of, are the solution of the body and the congelation of the spirite, and they are two, yet have but one operation. For the spirits are not congealed except the bodies be dissolved, as likewise the bodies are not dissolved unless the spirit is congealed."

The process of removing or breaking down metallic form is essentially a resolving of bodily matter into spirit. The keynote of the alchemist’s perfecting intention is a spiritualization, and dissolution is the body’s route to spirit:

"the spirit will not dwell with the body, nor be in it, nor by any means abide with it until the body be made subtle and thin as the spirit is. But when it is attenuate and subtle, and hath forsaken his grossness and corpority, and is become spiritual, then shall he be mingled with the subtle spirits, & imbibed in them, so that both shall become one and the same & they shall not be severed, like as water put to water cannot be divided."

Inextricably linked with this purifying loss of form is the coagula which congeal the spirit back into material form. Thus, says the Mirror, ‘this work or mastery is a coniunction or marriage of the congealed spirit with the dissolved body. The process is a transforming circle, the substance returning once more to solidity, but now divested of ‘grossness and corpority’. ‘Corporeal things in this regimen are made incorporeal, & contrariwise things incorporeal corporeal, and in the shutting up of the work, the whole body is made a spiritual fixt thing.’ This ‘spiritual fix thing’ is one definition of the Stone: matter suffused with spirit. Another term often used is ‘corpus subtile’, or subtle body.

φιλαλήθης "nom de plume" of George Starkey (1628–1665) or Eirenaeus Philalethes (the peaceful lover of truth) a 17th-century alchemist and the author of many influential works, expresses this paradoxical condition:

"It is called a stone, not because it is like a stone, but only because by virtue of its fixed nature, it resists the action of fire as successfully as any stone….If we say that its nature is spiritual, it would be no more than the truth; if we described it as corporeal, the expression would be equally correct; for it is subtle, penetrative, glorified, spiritual gold. it is the noblest of all created things after the rational soul, and has the virtue to repair all defects both in animal and metallic bodies, by restoring them to the most exact and perfect temper: wherefore it is a spirit of quintessence."

"It is in this work of dissolving and subliming, of reducing physical substance to spirituality, that the alchemist’s fire looms so large." (pp 46-47) 

The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher's Stone” by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771

Lyndy Abraham’s entry for 'solve et coagula' in her Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery (Cambridge, UK | New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 1998), the standard guide to both metallurgical and literary alchemy, reads:

"Dissolve and coagulate, one of the oldest axioms in alchemy first found in Greek manuscript quotations of Maria Prophetissa (Patai, ‘Maria’, 183). The alchemical process of solution (or dissolution) involves the converting of a solid (a body) into a fluid substance (a spirit), while coagulation is the turning of a fluid into a dry solid. Zoroaster’s Cave states: ‘Our Great business is to make the Body a Spirit, and the Spirit a body’ (74). The opus alchymicium consists of a repeated series of dissolutions and coagulations – the dissolution of the old metal or matter of the Stone into the *prima materia (original stuff from which it was created) and the coagulation of that pure materia into a new and more beautiful form. With each cycle of solve et coagula, the matter in the alembic becomes purer and more potent. A well-known alchemical dictum is ‘Dissolve and congeal, again and again, dissolve and congeal, till the tincture grows in the stone’ (AE,15). The alchemist must never cease in the process of dissolving the stone which has just been coagulated. Subtle in Jonson’s The Alchemist informs Mammon that the ‘medicine’ (i.e. Stone) is exalted by ‘giving him solution; then congeal him;/ And then dissolve him; then again congeal him; For look how oft I iterate the work,/ So many times I add unto his virtue’ (2.3.104-7). The solve or dissolution is associated with the moon (moisture and coldness), while the coagula is associated with the sun (dryness and heat). Dastin wrote in his ‘Speculum philosophia’: ‘for in the beginning of thy operation, help the work in dissolution, by the Moon, and in coagulation by the Sun’ (in FC,41). The moon and the sun here refer to the two contrary actions of the mercurial waters (see stream)"

Frequently the processes of *separation (division) and *coniunctio (union) are identified with the solve et coagula. When the metal or matter for the Stone is killed and dissolved (solve), its soul and spirit is separated from its body (separation). The body is cleansed of its impurity and the soul (or soul/spirit union) may then be reunited with it. The re-entry of the soul/spirit into the purified matter at the coniunctio gives it form, coagulates it. At the simplest level, the solve is the softening of hard things, and the coagula is the hardening of soft things (or the giving of form to amorphous matter). In order for a complete merging or union to take place between body and spirit at the *chemical wedding, the body (a hard substance) has to be spiritualized or made soft, while at the same time the spirit (a soft substance) is materialized or made hard. This is sometimes termed the volatilization and the fixation of the matter. Many alchemical texts claim that these two processes happen simultaneously. The Golden Tract stated: ‘with this solution there takes place simultaneously a consolidation of the spirit’ (HM, 1:40). Artephius wrote of the ‘Sunne” and ‘Moone’, the alchemical lovers (the male and female seeds of metals) which are killed after they have been united in the *chemical wedding: ‘their solution is also their congelation for they have one and the same operation, for the one is not dissolved, but that the other is congealed’ (161) Cf. inversion and RAM's reverse click!.

Philosopher's stone as pictured in Atalanta Fugiens Emblem 21

In a nutshell, solve et coagula, ‘dissolve and conjoin,’ is the axiomatic action or process of every stage in the alchemical purification of gross matter into a Philosopher’s Stone. Because the Magnum Opus is at least as much, perhaps primarily, about the cleansing of the alchemist’s soul as it is about turning lead or ‘hard darkness’ into gold, ‘solid light,’ the alchemist, too, ‘let us go,’ if you will, of all attachments, and is spiritually or psychologically purified in his reconstitution, that is, as he ‘pulls himself back together.’

Solve et coagula is the action of all spiritual growth, the ‘Chemical Theatre’ Nicholls tells us every alchemist believed was taking place in his laboratory vessels, our breaking up and being re-born in a more supernatural or enlightened (illuminated!) condition.