Alchemical Gold, Projection, Romantic Love

(The following topic is discussed at length on The Golden World, a series of recordings made in January 2007 of conversations between Robert Johnson, Jerry Ruhl, and Tami Simon, the publisher of Sounds True. Sounds True will publish a six-CD set that includes this material in October 2007.)

Alchemical gold is a metaphorical way of talking about an interior process by which a new center of consciousness emerges or shows forth as a psychological power. Jung wanted to explore this subject and differentiated the word self with two spellings by which self refers to the ego or personal “I,” and Self with a capital “S” is a way of talking about your soul or the organizing principle of wholeness. Such language is clumsy but useful when one wants to consider growth in consciousness, which we all have as our divine potential. The Self often appears in dreams as images such as a king, a chalice, a circle or other containing shape, or something that is golden. The ancient alchemists were concerned about the development of inner gold. It takes a great deal of work to align the ego and the Self, working alchemical gold into greater consciousness.

The earliest development of this maturing begins in childhood. Early on, this golden potential for greater consciousness is invested in your parents. As you grow and learn language and gain faculties of reason and differentiation, you almost always project your potentials on someone nearby. Perhaps it begins with an older brother or sister or someone in the neighborhood. We all select other people to project our potentials upon, and these people become our heroes. A child will follow that person around, worshipping him or her. When you are eight, you choose the 10- or 12-year-old. Then as you incorporate such qualities into yourself, you move up the ladder and worship someone else.

When I was about 10 years old a distant relative of my father graduated from West Point and came to visit. I had lost a leg in a car accident at the age of 8 and was very vulnerable and sensitive, and along came this impressive young man in his uniform who was heroically going off to war. I saw this man only once in my life, yet he impressed me deeply. He was kind and saw that I was tagging along and attaching to him like a dog looking for a new master. He was a hero to me for many months. One has many heroes in life, hooks to hang our projections upon. A year later this man was killed in World War Two fighting in Bataan — he took a part of me with him.

Hero worship is an important and necessary part of our development. The 16-year-old sees divinity in the 20-year-old sports hero or musician or celebrity. The 20-year-old worships the college graduate students or a professor. This goes on throughout life. Almost everyone puts his or her own heroic nature (or God image, if you can stand that terminology), upon someone.

Another way that this alchemical process functions in our time is that of romantic love. Hero worship evolves into romantic infatuations. An adolescent boy sees the feminine side of creation in a flesh and blood girl – and he falls in love with her. He is generally clumsy as a clown, but this is how he learns something about femininity and his own incipient potentials. The parallel thing happens to a girl – she projects her inner gold upon someone else.

You can begin to talk this language of alchemy and projections to someone in their 40s or 50s who has been through the cycle a few times. Then I can explain that instead of falling romantically in love every time someone comes along carrying a bit of your gold, you must make conscious an unlived aspect of yourself. You must ask yourself: What makes this person sparkle for me? Life is not long enough to live out love affairs with everyone we fall in love with.

The divine function of projection is a chief tool for development of a human being. If it is handled with integrity, it can be the brightest thing that one experiences, but so often it goes wrong because the projection of “in love” qualities has much to do with the person doing the projection and little to do with the poor mortal who the projection has landed upon.

There are so many misunderstandings that can go on between two people. We carry around the wounds for years. But if worked with consciously, this process of projecting alchemical gold upon others can be a step up the ladder of consciousness. If only we could remember that others carry our unlived potentials, incubating them for us until we are ready to carry them ourselves, and not blame our loved ones when it is time to take back what is rightfully our own.