Why we may go through a ‘smelly’ stage in therapy…
Jung and Edinger talk about body odour, discharge, phlegm, ‘odor sepulcrorum’ (the stench of graves) as part of the alchemical transformation as the first phase of the magnum opus. It is in the ‘nigredo’ stage in which we fall deeply into our unconscious world where we become the mineral world ourselves. This is lower than the animal or plant world. We need to go this deep as we encounter the ‘prima materia’, the core wounding. It is a killing, a ‘motificatio’, a death, decay, of what needs to die.
Dreams of rotting, flesh, poison, corpses, graves, moons, excrement, toads, multilation, exile, skeletons, wilderness, sacrifice, torture, vultures, severe air pollution, worms, the cruxifiction etc can appear at this time. It is about the decomposition of the psyche. ‘Putrefaction is of so great efficacy that it blots out the old nature and transmutes everything into another new nature, and bears another new fruit. All living things die in it, all dead things decay, and then all these dead things regain life’ (Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche).
Edinger also talks about the client needing to accept the blackness by ‘slaying’ something. The inner dragon needs to be killed. The image links the alchemical opus with the hero that captures the maiden from the dragon. The alchemist redeems the ‘anima mundi’ from the imprisonment within the ‘prima materia’. In psychotherapy this is the time of resentment, power, pleasure and demands, this process needs to occur to release the libido trapped in it’s primitive and infantile form. There also must be a sacrifice of purity and innocence to reach the pit of the darkness, the soul has to temporarily separate from the body.
I’ve had many clients go through this ‘smelly’ period during the therapy, it’s very natural! Even if I am working online, when I work with a client during this process, after the session my own room will smell. It’s all part of the alchemical process that happens in deep therapeutic work. Afterwards many colours will appears in your life in many forms and in both dreams and meditations too… that’s when you know you’re through…
If you want more support during this phase, St John of the Cross and ‘the dark night of the soul’ is great work to read as well as Marion Woodman’s work with the black madonna.
🌹 ‘The precious stone is the philosopher’s stone extracted from the ugly prima materia, which is poison in its original form but panacea after undergoing the mortificatio.’ Edinger 💛
Nurse The Soul 