Chrysopoeia: From Alchemy to Particle Physics

 

 

I. 

 

One of the problems I have with analytical psychology is that it posits symbols everywhere. 

 

Thus, for example, Jung insists that the alchemists were not literally attempting to turn lead into gold; that chrysopoeia is simply an ancient Greek term for individuation and has nothing to do with the transmutation of base metals. 

 

In other words, the alchemists were metaphorically describing a process of self-realisation and their obscure and seemingly nonsensical texts contained universal truths which, once you understood how to interpret them, anticipated and reinforced his own theories [1].

 

Thus lead, don'tcha know, symbolises the unconscious, that shadowy place of repressed emotions, unresolved conflicts, and unacknowledged forces; whilst gold, on the other hand, symbolises the fully integrated (and fully conscious) self.      

 

 

II.

There's nothing wrong with viewing alchemy as a magical art or esoteric philosophy if that makes happy. But, personally, I prefer to think of it as an early form of science, associated with chemistry and metallurgy.

 

And so I'm pleased to report that our friends at CERN have demonstrated (on several occasions) that you can, in fact, turn actual lead into actual gold - though the great work requires a particle accelerator rather than a simple melting-pot or crucible. 

 

In 2002 and 2004, scientists using the Super Proton Synchrotron reported producing a minuscule amount of gold nuclei from lead nuclei, by inducing photon emissions within deliberate near-miss collisions of the latter.

 

And, earlier this year, another experimental team at CERN announced that they had used the Large Hadron Collider to replicate the 2002 SPS experiments at higher energies and created a total of roughly 260 billion gold nuclei over three runs (that might sound a lot, but, again, it's a tiny, tiny amount of material; think trillionths of a gram). [2].

 

 

III.

 

So, how's it done? 

 

Well, since the crucial difference between an atom of lead and an atom of gold is that the former contains three more protons [3], all you have to do is subtract these with an artificially produced electric field and Bob's your uncle, you have accomplished something that medieval alchemists could only dream of and followers of Jung only conceive in relation (yawn) to the psyche.  

 

Of course, that's not so easy; as I indicate above, you're going to need access to some serious technology if you wish to fire lead atoms towards each other at extremely high speeds. But it is doable - and that's pretty amazing, I think (even if not something that the scientists at CERN particularly welcome) [4].

 

Notes

 

[1] Jung readily admits that he initially regarded alchemical texts to be nonsensical and impossible to understand. However, curious, he pressed on and eventually discovered passages that he thought significant and which seemed to correlate with findings in his own work: 'I realised that the alchemists were talking in symbols ... [and that] only after we have learned how to interpret them can we recognise what treasures they hide'.  

      See  C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded and ed. by Aniela Jaffe (Vintage Books, 1965), p. 204.

 

[2] Despite its very high density, the gold nucleus is incredibly small, with a diameter of approximately 3 x 10⁻¹⁴ metres. This is about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a gold atom itself. So even 260 billion gold nuclei don't amount to much and cannot be directly observed. 

      Gold is defined as a distinct element on the basis of its nucleus consisting of 79 protons. The neutrons meanwhile - which vary in number depending on what isotopic variety of gold one is dealing with - determine the stability and mass of the nucleus.   

 

[3] For those, like me, who need a reminder ... A proton is a subatomic particle with a positive electrical charge. They are found in every atomic nucleus of every element.  

 

[4] Equally amazing is the fact that if you only subtract one proton from an atom of lead you'll produce thallium - a rare, naturally occurring silvery-white soft metal known for its toxicity - whilst if you subtract two protons, you'll end up with mercury.

      The reason why scientists don't particularly welcome this unintentional alchemy is explained by Ulrik Egede, a professor of physics at Monash University: 

      "Once a lead nucleus has transformed by losing protons, it is no longer on the perfect orbit that keeps it circulating inside the vacuum beam pipe of the Large Hadron Collider. In a matter of microseconds it will collide with the walls. This effect makes the beam less intense over time. So for scientists, the production of gold at the collider is in fact more of a nuisance than a blessing."

      See Ulrik Egede, 'Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider turned lead into gold - by accident', The Conversation (13 May 2025): click here.  

My Pagan Self Revealed (Reflections on a Mexican Devil Mask)

I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus 

and would rather be a satyr than a saint

I.

I have already written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about how, for me, the way to move beyond the ruins of the late 1970s was not via a poppy new romanticism or a shameless embrace of free market capitalism, but, rather, towards a post-punk paganism inspired by a wide range of influences including Nietzsche, Lawrence, Jung, Crowley, McLaren, and Jaz Coleman.*

Thus, after 1982, I defined myself less as an anarchist and more as an anti-Christ and the task, as I saw it then, was to aggressively confront Occidental reason and Christian morality with its absolute Other by promoting a pessimistic vitalism tied to an anti-modern politics. 

In other words, safety pins were replaced by horns on head and the vintage Mexican devil mask that I can be seen holding in the photo above became the face of my soul; i.e., my essential self is a concealed self, a disguised self, the product of playful dissimulation. This is what Wilde refers to as the truth of masks and those who are profound enough to be superficial will understand the philosophical importance of this fact.  

II. 

The native peoples of Mexico have had a thing for the making and wearing of masks for millennia; i.e., long before the Spanish arrived - or the tourists. Obviously, the masks had a ritual and magical significance and were worn during religious ceremonies and festivals. Sometimes they had human features; sometimes animal.

And sometimes they incarnated deities, demons, or devils; the latter often having real horns and images of snakes, lizards, or frogs added to the usually grotesque facial design.

Although my mask is hand-carved from wood, traditional masks were also made from other materials including clay, leather, and wax. After the Conquest of Mexico (1519-21), the Spanish outlawed indigenous beliefs, but Christian evangelisers were happy to exploit the love of masks, dance, and spectacle to propagate their faith amongst the natives.

Often, however, rather than successfully replace old cultural traditions with entirely new forms, masked events became a strange amalgamation of paganism and Catholicism. It was Carnival - but not as the Europeans originally understood it.

Today, masked festivals remain very popular and prevalent in parts of the country with large numbers of native peoples and old customs and beliefs live on, if only in a commercialised and aestheticised form.           

* Note: Readers interested in this earlier post to which I refer - with my reflections on Pagan Magazine - can read it by clicking here. And for another post on the truth of masks, click here. 

Send in the Clowns

I.

In an early school report, one of my teachers noted: "Stephen's work suffers due to his insistence on playing the clown. He has to understand that he is in school to learn and not merely to amuse his classmates."

Despite this po-faced attempt to nip my talent for comedy in the bud, this insistence on playing the clown - influenced in part by Cesar Romero's performance as the Joker in Batman - continued all the way into adolescence, when that fabulous grotesque, Johnny Rotten, the clown prince of punk, became a great inspiration.     

II.

As a matter of fact, I never regarded myself as a clown: certainly not the type who relied on slapstick or other forms of physical comedy; and certainly not the type who was solely interested in entertaining others.

Even at six-years-old, I was more interested in challenging authority and provoking laughter through the use of language - including the language of fashion - than by throwing buckets of water (not that there's anything wrong with throwing buckets of water, as Tiswas demonstrated).

Admiring as I did fun lovin' criminals like the Joker and, later, anarchic pranksters like the Sex Pistols, meant there was always a bit more of a subversive edge to my fooling around, refusal to care, and mockery (of self and others). I may have worn Grimaldi's whiteface makeup, but that's just about where any point of comparison ends.    

III.

If not a clown, then what was I really? Some might say a fool and I've nothing against those who rush in where angels fear to tread.

But I'd probably be happier with the term trickster, as there's something more ambiguous about such a shape-shifting figure and the manner in which they often push things beyond a joke; are they being mischievous, malicious, or both? Either way, they seem to act with the full intelligence of evil.

Primarily, tricksters violate principles of social and natural order. That is to say, tricksters playfully deconstruct reality and dissolve binary distinctions. And that's why Jordan Peterson is absolutely right to describe Derrida as a philosophical trickster - though his ignorant dismissal of Derrida's work (without even attempting to engage with it) is as shameful as that of those four Cambridge dons who, in 1992, opposed the awarding of an honorary degree to M. Derrida on the grounds that his thinking failed to meet accepted standards of philosophical clarity and rigour.

Ironically, Peterson has himself just had an offer of a visiting fellowship rescinded by Cambridge University following a humourless and politically correct backlash from members of both faculty and the student body, who seem to regard him in much the same way he regards Derrida - that is to say, as a dangerous charlatan.

Ultimately, culture requires its clowns and tricksters - almost as comic saviours. Indeed, that's something I would have thought Peterson, as a great reader of Jung, would readily agree with. Thus his loathing of Derrida is, in some ways, surprising as well as disappointing.

Post 333: Invocation of Choronzon

Club Choronzon 333, by deadguy333

www.deviantart.com

According to Pythagoras, three is the first genuine number - as well as the first natural number and first male number. It is also the noblest of all figures, as it uniquely equals the sum of all the numbers before it. 

Even if we might challenge its authenticity and its engendered high status, it nevertheless remains an important number within mathematics, philosophy, and many of the world's religions; think of the Christian Trinity, for example, composed of the consubstantial expressions Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (i.e. three distinct entities, but sharing one divine essence). 

Or, for that matter, think of what our friends in the neo-pagan community refer to as the Triple Goddess - i.e. three female figures portrayed as Maiden, Mother, and Crone symbolizing different stages in the female life cycle or phases of the moon, who are nevertheless aspects of a greater single deity. For like many other hypostatic idealists, including Christians and Platonists, neo-pagans share a profound belief in the fundamental unity of being. 

In other words, whilst the number three has a certain magic and mysticism to it (three's a charm, as they say), it's the number one and an instinctive hatred for plurality which ultimately determines the thinking and theology of the religiously-minded - including Jung and Robert Graves, who are responsible for much of what passes for goddess worship in the modern world.               

For those of us who loathe monotheism and metaphysical notions of synthesis, stability, and identity, however, the will to oneness is - to paraphrase Nietzsche - the one great folly, the one great lie, the one great intrinsic depravity which betrays a lust for revenge upon life; the latter understood as a demon of chaos and innumerable becomings and called by Crowley Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss, whose number is 333.

Schizoanalysis Contra Psychoanalysis

The major difference between schizoanalysis and psychoanalysis is that the latter is designed to deal with figures and images, signs and symbols, whilst remaining ignorant of the forces, flows, and units of production that the former concerns itself with. Thus, whilst schizoanalysis understands the unconscious as a factory of desire, humming with heavy machinery and entirely caught up with material and social forms of production, psychoanalysis thinks of it as the site of fantasy, myth, and dream.

Freud imagines this site as a cross between a nursery and a provincial theatre, but he can at least hear the sound of the desiring-machines in the background, even whilst maintaining an attitude of angry denial. Jung, on the other hand, mistakes the machinic rumble for the voice of God and if he breaks with Freud it is only so he can retreat into mysticism and build his own church. 

When Jung starts speaking about archetypes, he is searching for clues to what he thinks of as the fundamentally religious nature of mankind. It was never sexual anxiety and neurosis that interested him, but uncovering sacred truth. But the unconscious is no more archetypal than it is Oedipal; it doesn't symbolize any more than it imagines, expresses, or represents. Rather, it produces and invests in the real (even when the real has become increasingly artificial). 

For me, whilst taking Freud's work seriously has become problematic, even reading Jung has become impossible. It is to Freud's great credit that, despite his idealism, he continued to insist on libidinal forces and retain his atheism when colleagues all around him - including that snake in the grass, Jung - were shamefully preparing for a reconciliation with religion, so that they too might be able to remain believers and find wider public acceptance of their ideas.

And so, when all's said and done, give me psychoanalysis rather than analytical psychology. But give me schizoanalysis contra psychoanalysis, because I prefer the non-figurative and asignifying unconscious mapped out by Deleuze and Guattari (with the aid of various madmen including Nietzsche, Lawrence, Kafka and Artaud) to the mythic and all-too-human unconscious of both Freud and Jung.

However, I'm aware that D&G's machinic model of the unconscious based on desiring-production, is ultimately just as fanciful and as rooted in what Paul and Patricia Churchland term folk psychology as that invented within the work of Freud and Jung and a more revolutionary theory of mind begins only with scientific realism and neurobiology.