THE FIRES OF ALCHEMY: A TRANSPERSONAL VIEWPOINT

'Living Alchemy' was Barbara Somers' title for the series of talks on which this book is based, and that best describes what it is about. The seminars for small groups of mainly psychotherapists and counsellors, were given between 1987 and 1993 at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology, which she founded with Ian Gordon-Brown in 1974. You would find your way down the concrete steps, through the inner door and a loving welcome, into the warm half-light; settle down, breathe out the day, the candle is lit, - "and now I'll begin." That was the temenos, symbolic of her approach. Alchemy is 'the art that requires the whole person: secret and dangerous, costing not less than everything.' It is about transformation, inner as well as outer: about the relationship between spirit and matter. 'Love,' said Paracelsus, 'is the agent of the process,' that would finally make manifest the gold within the flask, and the release of the divine within man. Both taken to be implicit from the beginning. Barbara Somers has a profound and enduring love for the tradition, and with her Jungian background, deep interest in Eastern systems of spiritual development, and years of psychotherapy practice and teaching, alchemy, as she speaks of it here, brings us right to the heart of the transpersonal vision and practice as it developed at the Centre in England up until Ian Gordon-Brown's death in 1996. Visions evolve, and the arrival of this book now, when transpersonal psychology itself is going through processes of 're-visioning,' is timely. In the first part of the book we are given an introduction to the subject, a brief historical overview, and then a focus on Western alchemy, with an in-depth exploration of four main stages of the work, - the Calcinatio, Solutio, Coagulatio, and Rubedo processes, using illustrations from 16th and 17th century texts. The discussion throughout is in relation to the human condition we find ourselves in now, to the practice and processes of psychotherapy from a transpersonal perspective, and is interwoven with clinical and dream material. There is an interesting introductory chapter to the second part which explores the connections between Western and Eastern alchemical traditions, and that is followed by penetrating chapters on the Chinese text 'The Secret of the Golden Flower,' and the Japanese 'Oxherding' pictures. These two sections contain material most dear to Barbara Somers' own heart, and that is reflected in the depth and flow of her commentary which arguably comes through most profoundly in this part of the book, in Hazel Marshall's faithful transcription. Barbara Somers' approach follows in the wake of Jung, and while she draws also on the work of Marie Louse Von Franz, Stanislas Klossovski and Johannes Fabricius among others, the selection, emphasis, and distillation from the mass of material is very much her own. Since these seminars were prepared, there have been a number of important books published on alchemy, such as 'Anatomy of the Psyche' by Edward Edinger, 'The Mystery of Human relationship' by Nathan Schvartz-Salant, Alexander Roob's 'Alchemy and Mysticism', and 'The Philosopher's Stone' by Peter Marshall, which in their very different ways, provide a wealth of immensely rich and detailed scholarship, research, and commentary which was not available at that time. But what Barbara Somers does supremely well, is to offer a quality of approach and insight to the material which enables us to truly connect with the whole metaphor, appreciating its relevance, whether we have a particular interest in pursuing the subject through a broader study of the literature, in terms of the parallels with the psychotherapeutic process, or simply in trying to make sense of experience within our own lives. Alchemy is the world and language of paradox. Illumination comes through intuition, imagination, practical awareness and feeling, as well as intellect. Not through trying to drag the mystery into the full light of everyday consciousness, but by being willing to take light down into the darkness, and tolerate the presence of shadow where the opposites reside, allowing them to be there, while we learn to see better in the dark. Reading David Lorimer's brilliant introduction to 'Science, Consciousness, and Ultimate Reality', and participating in a stimulating Network special interest group 'Consciousness' day, I was again struck by the fact that we are indeed still seeking the Philosopher's Stone, - all alchemists in the process. Still spiralling round the central mystery expressed in the famous saying of Maria Prophetessa: 'One becomes two, two become three, and out of the third comes the fourth, as the One.' We are so often ensnared in the second stage, in the constellation of opposites, with a recurring addiction to the idea that there has to be an 'either /or answer'. Are we not experiencing now, that the process is indeed hotting up, when our perception of those opposites has to come together in new ways, making room for the third transcendent function, accommodating paradox and a diversity of truth comprising the fourth, that is the One?