"All the most powerful
ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of
religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy,
and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they
are variants of archetypal ideas, created by consciously applying
and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of
consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external
world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into
visible reality the world within us."
- Carl Gustav Jung, "The
Structure of the Psyche" (1927), in Collected Works Vol. 8, The
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, P. 342
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| The Diamond as a
Symbol of the Self: |
"...The Self is
symbolized with special frequency in the form of a stone.... The
nuclear center, the Self, also appears as a crystal.... The crystal
often symbolically stands for the union of extreme opposites - of
matter and spirit."
- M.-L. von Franz, "The Process of
Individuation," in Man and his Symbols, ed. C. G. Jung
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| On the Lapis
Philosophorum, the Philosophers' Stone -
"'What is this Stone?' Chloe asked....
'...It is told that,
when the Merciful One made the worlds, first of all He created that
Stone and gave it to the Divine One whom the Jews call Shekinah, and
as she gazed upon it the universes arose and had being.'"
- Pp.
43-44, Many Dimensions, by Charles Williams, Eerdmans
paperback, April 1979
"The lapis was thought of as a unity and therefore often stands
for the prima materia in general."
- P. 236, Aion, by C.
G. Jung, Princeton paperback, 1979
"Its discoverer was of the opinion that he had produced the
equivalent of the primordial protomatter which exploded into the
Universe."
- P. 216, The Stars My Destination, by Alfred
Bester, Vintage hardcover, July 1996
"Take it! Keep it! It's your future.... It's yours. Make them
tell you what it is."
- Pp. 252-253, The Stars My
Destination |
"And if the truth about
reality is always in our soul, the soul must be immortal...."
-
Socrates in Plato's Meno dialogue (86b, tr. by W.K.C.
Guthrie)
"This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal
diamond
Is immortal diamond."
- Gerard Manley Hopkins,
1888 |
| The Self as the
Union of Matter and Spirit: |
| Gerard Manley Hopkins
and Carl Jung have, in their own ways, used a diamond to symbolize
the self. Hopkins's "immortal diamond" metaphor probably referred to
a literal stone, although he may also have been referring to a
Platonic concept, or "form." Jung's discussion of the lapis
philosophorum, the philosophers' stone, referred to an alchemical
concept that is rather poorly defined... although Jung occasionally
referred to the chemistry of carbon in discussing the lapis. Jung
also wrote of "quaternity," or fourness, in connection with the
lapis, and drew, as a symbol of the self, a set of four geometrical
diamonds (squares rotated by 45 degrees). This web site discusses
neither alchemy nor chemistry, but does deal with what might be
termed the "sacred geometry" of the diamond.
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| The Geometry of the
Diamond Archetype: |
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Plato tells how Socrates helped
Meno's slave boy "remember" the geometry of a diamond. Twenty-four
centuries later, this geometry has a new theorem.
The Diamond Theorem (S. H. Cullinane):Inscribe a
white diamond in a black square.
Split the resulting
figure along its vertical and horizontal midlines into four
quadrants so that each quadrant is a square divided by one of
its diagonals into a black half and a white half. Call the
resulting figure D. |
D
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Let G be the group of 24 transformations of D obtained by
randomly permuting (without rotating) the four quadrants of D.
Let S4 denote the symmetric group acting on four
elements. Then
(1) Every G-image of D has some ordinary or
color-interchange symmetry (see below),
(2) G is an affine group generated by S4 actions
on parts of D, and
(3) Results (1) and (2) generalize, through intermediate
stages, to symmetry invariance under a group of approximately
1.3 trillion transformations generated by S4
actions on parts of a 4x4x4 cube.
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