Sol and Luna Woodcut 2 of the Rosarium Philisophurum, 1550 edition
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coniunctio The mysterium coniunctionis, the mystery of conjunction, lies at the heart of alchemy. Often it is envisaged as the meeting of the alchemical King and Queen, Sol and Luna, although it can take darker, gruesome forms, such as a writhing dragon curled round a man in a grave (Jung 1995, 35). The process of transformation begins when these opposites meet, but they are not conjoined until the process is completed. Schwartz-Salant writes, "the union of the solar and lunar, the coniunctio, which was the focus of Jung’s studies, remains shrouded in mystery. Perhaps we have not yet achieved the necessary consciousness to deal with such realms." (27) Such consciousness, however, seems to be on the rise. Deconstruction’s delicate juggling of apparent binaries, refusing to oppose them and refusing to resolve them into one thing, is instructive: The peculiarity of deconstructive practice must be reiterated here. Displacing the opposition that it initially apparently questions, it is always different from itself, always defers itself. It is neither a constitutive nor, of course, a regulative norm… The displacement… marks a shifting limit rather than the desire for a complete reversal. (Spivak, 1987: 103) In Western World and the Individual I discuss the relationship between the individual subject and society; in Hypertext Fiction, that between the user and the hypertext, in creating the hypertext’s meaning. What we must realise is that the coniunctio is more than the conscious bringing-together of any two opposites; it is the resurgence of unconscious content when a particular adaptation is no longer appropriate (I explain this adaptation in Western World and the Individual: Compensate.) For example, the resurgence of the feminine principle – in essentialist celebration such as Women Who Run With Wolves, in political movements, in the feminist reclamation of women’s writings, in the reevaluation of intuition, and so on – is more than the product of a deliberate, individual choice; it is a general movement. (By ‘feminine principle’ I do not mean women, but rather the qualities of the anima that are traditionally associated with and encouraged in Western women. Jung holds that the anima is always dominant in women, and a woman’s unconscious is her animus. I believe this will vary increasingly as men and women’s rôles are less rigidly defined.) One cannot speak long about this initial meeting of opposites, however, before reaching a discussion of the nigredo.
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Sol and Luna Woodcut 3 of the Rosarium Philisophurum, 1550 edition
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