" Not only alchemy but also the heliocentric idea furnishes instructive examples of the problem as to how the process of knowing is connected with the religious experience of transmutation undergone by him who acquires knowledge [
Wandlungserlebnis dos Erkennenden
]; it transcends natural science and can be comprehended only through symbols, which both express the emotional, feeling aspect of the experience and stand in vital relationship to the sum total of contemporary knowledge and the actual process of cognition. "

― C.G. Jung , The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche