Coniunctio in the Black Vas
Thinking the Float Tank Conference, West Den Haag: August 25, 2023
The Pretiosissimum Donum Dei, “the most precious gift of God,” a vital 17th century alchemical work, contains an illustration called the “Coniunctio in the Black Vas.” The illustration depicts an entirely black, hermetically sealed vessel resembling a chemistry lab beaker. Lying down within the vas, “married” together and immersed in the “black, blacker than black” agua, is the naked sacred royal couple. The alchemical concept represented here corresponds to the individuation process, the foundation of Carl Jung’s depth psychology. The ultimate goal of alchemy is the sacred marriage, the coniunctio. In order to attain the highest degree of conjunction, the prima materia — what Jung calls “the unknown substance that carries the projection of the autonomous psychic content”— must be extracted from the sacred bath. Jung says of this procedure: “in the unconscious are hidden those ‘sparks of light’ (scintillae), the archetypes, from which a higher meaning can be extracted. The magnet that attracts the hidden thing is the Self.”
In 1953, the psychoanalyst John Lilly began research in neurophysiology that led him to the creation of the float tank. It was designed to allow the occupants to experience sensory isolation in absolute darkness, floating in a bath of warm salt water in a sound proof tank that eliminated external stimuli. Lilly commented, “It has been called sensory deprivation, but I have never found any depriving effect in this at all…from womb to tomb kind of thing…but you quickly find that you continue breathing and when you are in the womb you didn’t breathe, you were fed through the navel.”
In this presentation, through the lens of depth psychology and neurophysiology, we will examine how the black vas is an alchemical precursor to the float tank and how they both function as vessels of rebirth. We will consider the plasma-like nature of thought as it navigates the bloodstream to send its psycho-neuro-endo-immunological metabolic message to different parts of the alchemical vessel we call our body. If the message from these ego identity derived thoughts is infused with the energy of the primordial, unconditioned awareness of the prima materia, and pumped through our blood in a chemical marriage with the Self, it can promote embodied conscious individuation, physical health, and ultimately, liberation.
Timothy Lyons 