What happens when the very thing that helps us grow gets locked away?

In Jungian psychology, Mercurius — the alchemical spirit of transformation — represents the process by which we become more fully ourselves. But as Jung observed through the Grimm fairy tale, this spirit had been sealed away. Not destroyed. Sealed.

When we finally release what's been repressed, it doesn't emerge gracefully. It erupts. Like anger never properly taught, it comes out childish and undisciplined — because we never integrated it. Only after being contained and consciously worked with does it mature, and only then does it offer its gifts.

The real question isn't what the Christian age repressed. It's what our age is repressing. In a world of attention economies, suburban sprawl, and a pill for every problem — have we sealed away Mercurius again?

In one of his most influential works, Psychology and Alchemy, Carl Jung argues that alchemy was far more than a failed science. Instead, it was an undifferentiated mix of object and subject. Alchemy was chemistry insofar as it was a science, and it was a psychological practice…

For an agricultural society, life is a cycle of deaths and rebirths. In the spring, the farmer places the seeds of his crops into the soil. Time moves forward. Storms roll over the fields and define the space between heaven and earth…

In the present study, we sought to examine how military personnel make meaning out of their military vs. civilian life experiences and the degree to which meaning violation impacts their efforts. Veterans anonymously wrote reflective essays, one about a military-related negative life experience and one relating to a civilian-related negative life experience, and completed the Global Meaning Violation Scale (Park, 2016) for each experience. We also coded for generic you (i.e. ‘you’ used generally, instead of regarding a specific individual) as this indicates meaning-making. Although our results revealed no significant difference in generic you usage depending on the condition, and no significant correlations were found between meaning violation and generic you, active-duty military personnel were much less likely to use generic-you than inactive, a category comprised of reservists/national guard, those who served in both active duty and the reserves/national guard, and other, suggesting an impact on meaning making from military status.