The Building Blocks of the Modern Mind

“The collective unconscious is simply the psychic expression of the identity of brain structure irrespective of all racial differences” – Carl C. Jung

The human mind possesses common building blocks that transcend all differences in culture and intellect. This substratum is the Collective Unconscious; a biological mind common to all mankind.

The Biological Mind does not consist only of various types of emotions or thoughts, but also to common patterns and instincts.

The Collective Unconscious is the creator of the various myth motifs, symbols, and the possibility of human communication or why we talk. It is also the realm of the primordial images.

THE ALCHEMICAL MIND

The spiritus mercurialis and his transformations represented as a monstrous dragon. It is a quaternity, in which the fourth is at the same time the unity of the three, the unity being symbolized by the mystagogue Hermes. The three (above) are (left to right); Luna, Sol, and coniunctio Solis et Lunae in Taurus, the House of Venus. Together they form ☿= Mercurius.

Illuminated drawing in a German alchemical ms. c. 1600.

-C.G. JUNG * ALCHEMICAL STUDIES * VOL 13