Mortificatio
Mortification, killing
The killing of what has ruled too long.
Mortificatio: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The alchemists killed the matter before it could be renewed: the old king slain, the dragon cut in pieces, the body laid in the grave. Jung read the old king as a dominant of consciousness grown stale, which has to die.
Edward Edinger gave the operation a chapter of Anatomy of the Psyche (1985), as the experience of defeat and loss that the psyche undergoes when an outworn attitude is broken.
Mortificatio: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The slaying of the king in Frazer’s Golden Bough; the crucifixion; the skeleton and the skull of the memento mori.
From the Sources
The Sophic Hydrolith describes the body of the Sun at the start of the work as totally dissolved, decomposed and robbed of all strength, turning coal-black (the 'Raven's Head') within forty days, and so despoiled of its soul.
“At first the earthly Body of the Sun is totally solved, and decomposed, and robbed of all strength (the Body, which was first of a muddy impurity, changing to a coal-black colour, called by the Sages the Raven's Head, within the space of forty days), and is thus despoiled of its Soul.”
The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged: Most Faithfully Instructing All Disciples of the Sopho-Spagyric Art How That Greatest and Truest Medicine of the Philosopher's Stone May Be Found and Held, "The Sophic Hydrolith", p. 82. Now first done into English from the Latin original published at Frankfort in the year 1678; containing twenty-two most celebrated chemical tracts; in two volumes, Volume I; London: James Elliott and Co., Temple Chambers, Falcon Court, Fleet Street, E.C., 1893 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
Redgrove describes a series of pictures in Janus Lacinus in which the king's son, urged on by the servants, kills his father and catches his blood, meaning that the gold seems to vanish or die in an amalgam with mercury.
“In the next picture (plate 3, fig. B), the son, incited by the servants, kills his father; and, in the third, he catches the blood of his murdered parent in his robes; whereby we understand that an amalgam of gold and mercury is to be prepared, the gold apparently disappearing or dying, whilst the mercury is coloured thereby.”
H. Stanley Redgrove, Alchemy: Ancient and Modern, Chapter II, § 25. Second and revised edition; London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1922 (first published 1911) (Project Gutenberg eBook #43240). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Edward F. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche (1985)
- “Rex and Regina,” in Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Nigredo.
Also among Operations of the Work
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Mortificatio.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/mortificatio.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
Putrefactio (Putrefaction) · Lead (Saturn) · The Eclipse (The black sun) · The Bird · The Raven (Caput corvi) · The Tomb
Nearby in the alphabet: The Mirror: Reflection, and the truth one would rather not see. The Moon: The light of the night, waning and returning. The Mountain: The height to be climbed, where heaven and earth meet. Multiplicatio: The finished stone increasing its power.