The Salt-Point

Abstract

This paper presents the medieval symbol of the salt-point, a dot in a square in a circle, as a functional blueprint for the emergence of the transcendent self—the person fully entangled with an inner yet higher authority that is experienced as a state of grace. Jung had intuited this self-organizing movement, individuation, through the metaphor of squaring the circle, a continual refinement of the chaotic solutio of bitter salts of experiences and memories toward an end point of coherence of body, soul, and spirit. The salt-point is explored through a fresh perspective of an emergent dissociability of time and psyche through the images of chaos, kronos and Ananke, Aion, kairos and Metanoia, and cosmos. The idea of a salt solutio of time is presented side by side with concepts such as probability and time salt crystals.