"A symbolism as rich as that of alchemy invariably owes its existence to some adequate cause,
never to mere whim or play of fancy.
At the very least it is the expression of an essential part of the psyche.
which however, was unknown, for it is rightly called the unconscious.
Although there is, materialistically speaking, no prima materia at the root of everything that exists,
yet nothing that exists could be discerned were there no discerning psyche."
cont🔽
"the prima materia comes from the mountain in which there are no differences,
or, it is “derived from one thing, and not from separate things, nor from things distinguishing or distinguished.”
And in the mysterium magnum of Paracelsus, the prima materia, “there is no kind of gender.”
Such statements are intuitions about the paradoxical nature of the unconscious,
and the only place where intuitions of this kind could be lodged was in the unknown aspect of things, be it of matter or of man."
"Consciousness grasps only a fraction of its own nature,
because it is the product of a preconscious psychic life which made the development of consciousness possible in the first place.
Consciousness always succumbs to the delusion that it developed out of itself,
but all consciousness rests on unconscious premises,
in other words on a sort of unknown prima materia;
and of this the alchemists said everything that we could possibly say about the unconscious."