From Nature to the Unconscious: Jung and Paracelsianism

Based chiefly upon Jung’s Paracelsica, this study examines the underpinnings of Carl Gustav Jung’s lifelong interest in his countryman, Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), the physician, philosopher, and alchemist who radically renewed Western alchemy. The author attempts to demonstrate the line of thinking connecting the Paracelsian concept of nature with the Jungian theory of the unconscious. Such Paracelsian themes as magic phenomenality (the theories of signatures and correspondences), the two “lights” as sources of revelation (the light of Nature and the light of the Holy Spirit), of Man’s purpose as the being entrusted with carrying on the work of Creation (as an alchimia macrocosmi) are linked to the major concepts in Jungian theory, of which they are the historic antecedents.