Strangely Committed To Writing

Luminarium Philosopherum, Jake Baddeley

I had a dream that I found a room in the middle of my home. There was a sense that it had always been there, but I hadn’t noticed it before….

And when I began to imagine that middle room, I kept on getting an image from alchemy, of an old Alchemist working at his furnace or his stove, putting coals on the fire, and mixing substances together, and forging metals in the fire, and it is like some kind of experimental alchemical work, and making something in the fire, and one of the most important things about writing seems to be to get the heat just right. And as Marie Louise Von Franz has said ‘Too much heat and it can destroy the work and no heat and nothing happens’.

There is also the old idea of the ‘opus’ in alchemy, which is the life’s work or the ‘great work’(sometimes they just called it ‘the work’, and sometimes they called it the ‘Art’, which is a little less heavy than ‘work’). When Jung talks about the ópus’, he talks about it as the work of becoming more of who we are, and the opus reminds of some kind of an inner work, or a soul work or a creative work of making the soul(and satisfying something deep within us). And writing is like working on the ópus’ of becoming more of who we are. Anyway, I am strangely committed to writing, and am not always committed to some other things. And I liked that dream about finding a room in the middle of my place….I…