Kitab Hall ar-Rumuz / Book of the Explanation of Symbols. Psychological Commentary

401 Pages·2009·46.57 MB·English

by  Muhammad Ibn Umail

Book of the Explanation of the Symbols
Kitäb Hall ar-Rumüz
by
Muhammad ibn Umail
Psychological Commentary
by Theodor Abt
Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum
Volume I B
(CALA I B)
Edited by Theodor Abt and Wilferd Madelung
Living Human Heritage Publications, Zurich
Studies from the
Research and Training Centre
for Depth Psychology
According to C. G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz
Book of the Explanation of the Symbols
Kitäb Hall ar-Rumüz
by
Muhammad ibn Umail
Psychological Commentary
by Theodor Abt
Living Human Heritage Publications, Zurich
2009
The Arabic transcription follows the German standard
which is more precise than the English one.
First edition 2009
Living Human Heritage Publications
Münsterhof 16, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland
info @ livinghumanheritage.org
www.livinghumanheritage.org
ISBN-10 3-9522608-8-6
ISBN-13 978-3-9522608-8-3
EAN 9783952260883
Copyright © 2009 by Theodor Abt
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part, in any form.
Layout: Tugba Çetin, Pinar Tuncer and Theodor Abt
Printing and Binding:
Mas Matbaacilik A.§.
Hamidiye Mahallesi Soguksu Caddesi
No:3 34408 Kagithane, îstanbul / Türkiye
T. [phone] (pbx) F. [phone]
[email protected]
Contents
Foreword 7
Part I: The Great Vision of Muhammad ibn Umail 13
1. The Need for an Introduction to the Hall ar-Rumüz 15
2. Was the Vision Really a Vision? 21
3. The Picture of the Vision of Ibn Umail 25
a The Right Half of the Picture: The Antechamber 25
b The Left Half of the Picture: The Sanctuary 29
c Reflections on the Right Half of the Stone Tablet 32
d Reflections on the Left Half of the Stone Tablet 50
e Summary 58
4. The Transmission of Ibn Umail’s Vision to the Occident 59
Part II: Commentary on Ihn UmaiPs Hall ar-Rumüz 65
1. Ibn Umail’s Introduction to His Hall ar-Rumüz 67
2. Symbols of the First and the Second Stone 77
3. Symbols of the Worked-upon Stone 97
4. From the First to the Second Part of the Work 107
5. The Eros-quality of the Stone 123
6. The Dyer and the Dyed 141
7. The Container and the Contained 157
8. Earth and Heaven 201
9. Fire and Water 247
10. The Different Types of Seeker 273
11. The Sister of Prophethood 277
Part III: Ending of Manuscript A and B 287
Text and Commentary 289
Epilogue 295
Part IV: Apparatus 319
1. Bibliography 321
2. List of Illustrations 335
3. General Index 341
4. Glossary 395
5. Diacritical Signs 400
7
Foreword
In the late 19th and early 20th century, chemically-oriented historians
of alchemy such as Marcelin Berthelot, Edmund O. von Lippmann, and
Julius Ruska researched this field mainly from the perspective of modem
chemistry. We owe to these researchers a number of valuable text editions
and text overviews. The goal and objective of their translating and investi­
gating alchemical texts, especially the early Greek, Syriac, and Arabic
ones, was to reveal the development of insights into the stmcture of matter.
Their research was therefore focused on the actual substances concealed in
so-called code names (Decknamen), their recipes and operations given in
alchemical texts. This was looked at from the chemist’s point of view, and
various glossaries and lexica in Greek, Arabic and Latin alchemy support
this approach. The mystical, or as Ruska named it, allegorical, aspect of
alchemy was left aside, being considered the error of adepts who could not
yet distinguish clearly between outer matter and inner fantasies.
On the other hand we find a long tradition of philosophical-spiritual
ways to explain alchemy. For instance, in 1857 Ethan Allen Hitchcock
(1798-1870) proposed a philosophical-symbolic interpretation of alchemy in
his book Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists, stating that it was a
method whereby the adept could be transformed and redeemed. This has
also been and still is the view of the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. In
1914, the Freudian analyst Herbert Silberer published a book that appeared
in English in 1917 with the title Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism,
where he tried to interpret alchemy from the point of view of psychoanalysis.
Later, in 1931, the philosopher Julius Evola published a book La tradizione
ermetica nei suoi simboli, nella sua dottrina e nella sua uArte Regia ” where
he described the history of the hermetic tradition and its symbols. But such
Foreword
a philosophical-psychological approach does not really answer the question
of why the adepts were so strongly attracted by, and unceasingly preoccupied
with, substances, plants and animals, describing most carefully all the
stages of the alchemical process with innumerable symbols from the
material world.
The breakthrough in interpreting alchemy came from G G. Jung
(1875-1961), who successfully united both of the aforementioned aspects of
the alchemist’s quest. With the help of the young philologist Marie-Louise
von Franz (1915-1998), he turned to the sources, i.e. to the texts of Greek,
Arabic and Latin alchemy, in order to understand the hidden meaning of
these documents. Based on his own encounter with what he later called the
objective psyche or the collective unconscious, and thanks to his most
thorough, groundbreaking research of original texts of alchemy, which will
also be mentioned in this book, he demonstrated that we can neither neglect
the material-experimental side of alchemy nor its spiritual dimension as a
religious quest. Therefore he proposed the symbolic-religious viewpoint.
In his seminal publication Psychology and Alchemy (published in German
in 1944) he wrote: «But just because of this intermingling of the physical
and the psychic, it always remains an obscure point whether the ultimate
transformations in the alchemical process are to be sought more in the
material or more in the spiritual realm. Actually, however, the question is
wrongly put: there was no “either-or” for that age, but there did exist an
intermediate realm between mind and matter, i.e. a psychic realm of subtle
bodies whose characteristic it is to manifest themselves in a mental as well
as a material form. This is the only view that makes sense of alchemistic
ways of thought, which must otherwise appear nonsensical.»1 This inter­
mediate realm is ‘populated’ by symbols that connect the two worlds of
psyche and matter.2
But Lawrence M. Principe states that «Jung’s claims have only very
rarely been corroborated by new research in the field of the history of
alchemy».3 This critique is justified as, since the publications of C. G. Jung
1 C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy [Coll. Works 12], § 394.
The word symbol comes from the Greek verb symballein = to throw or to put together.
2
3 «..., dass Jungs Thesen nur äusserst selten durch neuere alchemiegeschichtliche
Forschungen bestätigt wurden.» See C. Priesner, K. Figala, Alchemie, Lexikon einer her­
metischen Wissenschaft, s.v. Decknamen. L. M. Principe is a Professor in the Dept, of
Chemistry at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Foreword 9
and Marie-Louise von Franz, little new source material concerning this
symbolic-religious approach to alchemy has been included in modern
research. Also among Jungian psychologists, alchemy has remained mainly
a field of interest within the framework of those texts known to C. G. Jung
and Marie-Louise von Franz.
Today, newly found Arabic texts of Muhammad ibn Umail, as well
as sources from which he quotes, such as texts of Zosimos, Maria,
Morienus, Hermes, etc., which are preserved in Arabic, confirm Jung’s
view of the symbolic nature of alchemy.4 Some of these neglected texts,
now translated for the first time, permit a better understanding of the
religious quest of those highly respected masters. They build a solid bridge
to modem depth psychology, since symbolic alchemy corresponds exactly
to the analytical setting in modern psychology of the unconscious: «While
the personal problems are not overlooked [...] (these would be the
experientia of the alchemist), the analyst keeps an eye on their symbolic
aspects (these would be the theoria side of the work), for healing only
comes from what leads the patient beyond himself and his ego.»5 The goal
of the work then manifests itself or crystallizes out in an independent,
unique way of living for the individual, lived in close relationship with his
or her unconscious, the result being a lasting two-oneness of the solar or
conscious day-world with the lunar or unconscious night-world. C. G. Jung
called this gradual crystallization of a stable unity of the conscious and
the unconscious the individuation process. This union of the opposites of
the day-world and the night-world is described symbolically in the
alchemical work as unio mystica solis et lunae.
The commentary presented here is on Muhammad ibn Umail’s Hall
ar-rumüz, a text that has already been interpreted by Marie-Louise von Franz.
It was published in this series as CALA I A in 2006. Von Franz wrote her
commentary around the early 1990s, using a translation that dated back to
the beginning of this research project on Arabic alchemy in 1987/88. At that
time I was able to give her a first rough and sometimes misleading text,
4 In 1950 C. G. Jung stated in his article “The Visions of Zosimos” that even back in the
time of Zosimos (around 300 AD), the great alchemists had «replaced the vulgar substances
by symbolic ones, allowing the nature of the archetype to glimmer through». In: Alchemical
Studies [Coll. Works 13], § 397.
5 Ibid., § 397, the passages in brackets are my additions.