Timothy Lyons

Thinking the Float Tank – Friday, August 25, 2023 (Day 2)

Sinking into the Prima Materia: Coniunctio in the Black Vas

Speaker Bio:

Timothy Lyons, is a Jungian psychotherapist in Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. and Takoma Park, Maryland with over 25 years of experience. Tim’s practice combines depth psychology with concepts from integrative medicine to understand the relationship of psyche and soma and the healing power of creativity, imagination, and dreams. His post graduate work includes studies at the Philadelphia Jung Institute, infant observation, and art therapy. His work is further influenced by studies in Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga philosophies, having completed teacher training in Trul Khor (Tibetan yoga). His career also includes working as architect, editor, writing for the Washington Post, lecturing at the Jung Society of Washington and the Smithsonian Institution.

Abstract:

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.

Dr. Timothy Lyons

Illustrations:

Coniunctio in the Black Vas, from the Pretiosissimum Donum Dei (17th Century)