Evelda Drumgo (shown at left) represents Clarice Starling's Jungian shadow. The confrontation with the shadow is associated with the alchemical nigredo stage.
Alchemy is an ancient tradition, the primary objective of which was the creation of the mythical "philosopher's stone", which was said to be capable of turning base metals into gold or silver, and also act as an elixir of life that would confer youth and immortality upon its user. The philosopher's stone is created by the alchemical method known as The Magnum Opus or The Great Work.[a] Often expressed as a series of color changes or chemical processes, the instructions for creating the philosopher's stone are varied. The Great Work originally had four stages:
1) nigredo, a blackening or melanosis
2) albedo, a whitening or leucosis
3) citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis
4) rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis[b]
Jung relates alchemy to psychology in his Psychology and Alchemy:
"The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a great - indeed, the decisive - role in alchemy, since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hierosgamos or 'chymical wedding'. Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese yang and yin), are melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore incorruptible."[c] The chymical wedding (also called the chymical marriage) takes place during the alchemical citrinitas stage.
One of Lecter's goals is to have a chymical wedding come about between himself and Starling.
a. Wikipedia, 'Alchemy'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy.
b. Wikipedia, 'Magnum opus (alchemy)'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_opus_(alchemy).
c. Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 12. Princeton University Press, 1968. p. 37.
