On the Nature of Change in the Four Elements a Comparison Of

On the Nature of Change in the Four Elements A Comparison of Classical and Jungian Thought The alchemical Squaring of the Circle. Source: D. Stolcius von Stolcenberg. 1624. Viridarium chymicum. Frankfurt. Ben Rovers CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY MA in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred MA-thesis 11th December 2015 2 ON ELEMENTS The four elements are not a conception of much use to modern chemistry – that is, they are not the elements of nature. But (…) earth, air, water and fire are still the four elements of imaginative experience, and always will be. (Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, in: Ball 2002:11). ON CHANGE …all is in motion and mixture and transition and flux and generation, not "being," as we ignorantly affirm, but "becoming." This has been the doctrine, not of Protagoras only, but of all philosophers, with the single exception of Parmenides (Plato, Theaetetus, 152e) ON KNOWING ABOUT IT There are some things which are as yet shut up in the treasure house of nature, namely those things which still have not attained to anyone's notice, regarding which there are certain things the capacity of human cognition does not suffice to comprehend; there are certain things which are able to be known, to the knowing of which, however, the soul of no man has yet attained. (Alkindi, De Radiis Stellicis [On The Stellar Rays], 40). 3 4 Table of Contens ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................................ 7 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 9 2. PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS AND RUDIMENTARY ANSWERS ................................................................... 13 2.1 THE NATURE OF REALITY AND HOW WE CAN KNOW IT .......................................................................................... 13 2.2 ELEMENTS: THE BASIC ‘STUFF’ OF WHICH REALITY IS MADE ................................................................................... 14 2.3 WHAT THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS ARE AND HOW MANY THERE ARE .................................................................. 16 2.4 PRIMARY QUALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH THE ELEMENTS ........................................................................................ 17 3. CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CHANGE IN ELEMENTS ............................................................................ 19 3.1 PRE-EMPEDOCLEAN NOTIONS ON ELEMENTS AND CHANGE ................................................................................... 19 3.2 EMPEDOCLES: LOVE AND STRIFE BETWEEN FOUR ELEMENTS .................................................................................. 23 3.3 HIPPOCRATES: MODERATE BLENDING AND BALANCE OF HUMOURS ........................................................................ 25 3.4 PLATO: SOUL AND GEOMETRY OF CHANGE ........................................................................................................ 27 3.5 ARISTOTLE: MATTER, FORM AND PRIVATION ...................................................................................................... 31 3.6 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 35 4. JUNG ON PSYCHIC FUNCTIONS AND CHANGE ....................................................................................... 37 4.1 PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES AND ENANTIODROMIA ................................................................................................... 38 4.2 QUATERNITY AND THE CONIUNCTIO OPPOSITORUM ............................................................................................ 40 4.3 COMPARING PERSPECTIVES ............................................................................................................................ 43 4.4 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 47 5. CONCLUSION: CLASSICAL ELEMENTS AS THE GATES TO CONSCIOUSNESS ............................................. 49 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................... 53 5 6 Abstract For many centuries astrologers worked with the classical elements of fire, air, water and earth in delineating horoscopes. Influenced by the depth psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, astrologers in the second half of the twentieth century starting replacing these elements with Jung’s psychic functions (intuition, thinking, feeling and sensation). According to these astrologers, intuition can be equated with fire, thinking with air, feeling with water and sensation with earth (e.g. Greene 1977, Hamaker-Zondag 1978). Other astrologers criticized this way of working, arguing that Jung’s functions cannot be equated to the classical elements (Hand 1981, Banzhaf 1994). This thesis investigates the relation between Jung’s four psychological types and the four classical elements. Can they be equated to each other? More specifically, how does Jung describe change from the dynamic between psychic functions, and does this theory converge with classical theories on elements? To answer these questions, classical Greek theories of elements are discussed, starting with the Milesian thinkers in the sixth century BCE and ending with Aristotle’s systematized and refined model. These theories are then compared to Jung’s ideas on psychological types and on the quaternity. The analysis shows that to fully understand Jung’s ideas on elements, we have to look beyond his work on psychological types. His later work on alchemy and on the quaternity shows very close links to classical theories on elements. He translates the classical ideas into a theory of consciousness, replaces the classical elements with the four functions of psyche, and shows how these are all needed in a process to get from unconscious oneness to conscious oneness. In doing so, he closely follows classical insights, coming from authors such as Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Plato. His approach is definitely more platonic than aristotelian, which may explain why the basic opposites at work in his model deviate from the classical scheme as we know it from Aristotle. 7 8 1. Introduction According to British academic Paul Strathern (200:255), the Aristotelian theory of the four elements which had survived for two thousand years, definitely succumbed after the French chemist Antoine de Lavoisier discovered that pure water, when boiled, does not turn into earth. The observation is only partly true; unquestionably the four elements are no longer the building blocks of modern physics and chemistry, but on a symbolic and imaginative level they seem more alive than ever.1 The concept of (four) elements is omnipresent in ancient myth, cosmogonies and cosmological theories (Von Franz 1995:233-261).2 Throughout history they have been applied to disciplines such as alchemy, astrology, medicine and psychology (Banzhaf 1994, Greenbaum 2005, Tobyn 2013). In Astrology the concept is still widely used. It is not clear when astrologers started incorporating elements in their craft, but we may assume this already happened quite early on, since astrology has always been closely linked to disciplines such as natural philosophy, cosmology and medicine, in which elements are a crucial component of one sort or another (Greenbaum 2005:5-18, Tobyn 2013:161-201). In the second half of the twentieth century astrologers started incorporating psychological concepts. Heavily influenced by the depth psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, a new branch of astrology developed in which psychological analysis of a person was combined with classical astrological delineation. In this branch of astrology a seemingly new idea on elements was introduced, inspired by Jung’s psychic functions (intuition, thinking, feeling and sensing). These were linked to the four classical elements of fire, air, water and earth. Psychological 1 The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_elements_in_popular_culture shows a whole range of applications of the four elements in modern popular culture. 2 The four ‘classical’ elements, fire, air, water and earth, are not the only elements in these early visions, but the four play a crucial role. 9 astrologers such as Liz Greene (1977:52-90 and Karen Hamer-Zondag (1978, 1979), started working with this new scheme which rapidly became popular in the astrological community. Other astrologers, such as Robert Hand (1981) and Hajo Banzhaf (1994), were critical of the way Jungian concepts entered astrology. Hand (1981: 241-246) sums up the problems; Jung wrote that his psychic functions are connected to the elements, but he never explained how the connection should be made. According to Hand (and others), the particular attribution of feeling to water and intuition to fire is - at the very least - confusing, as is Jung’s idea that feeling is a ‘rational’ function.3 Another problem is that Jung seems to create new opposites: intuition versus sense (fire vs. earth) and thinking versus feeling (air vs. water). In early Greek theories of elements, certainly in Aristotle’s model, these elements share qualities, respectively dryness and moistness. In this model fire and water, air and earth are the ‘real’ oppositions, because these elements do not share qualities. For example, fire

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