Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts - Herbert Silberer (great reads .TXT) 📗
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In Section 9 of the parable, and also later, red and white appear in roses. The white and the red tincture are often in alchemy compared to white and red roses.
In Section 9 the wanderer comes to those houses where people work alone or by twos. They work in a slovenly fashion. The alchemistic quacks are generally called “bunglers” and “messy cooks” by the masters of the art. These are the ones who do not work according to the “possibilities of nature,” which is, nevertheless, the touchstone of all right production.
The garden (Sec. 10, 11) is one of the “rose gardens” of which, e.g., the alchemist, Michael Meier, likes to speak.
There are difficulties in uniting the red youths with the white maidens. A wall separates them. The wanderer removes the obstruction in unlocking the door. That may indicate a chemical unlocking, by which the bodies are chemically brought nearer together.
The wanderer comes to a mill (Sec. 11). The mill naturally indicates the already mentioned trituration of the substance. It has, however, also reference to fermentation and in particular to that by means of meal.
Rulandus (Lex., pp. 211 ff., s. v. Fermentum): [pg 133] “Ferment is elixir, leaven, or yeast as it is called; it makes porous the body that swells up and the spirit finds a place in it so that it becomes fit to bake. As now the meal is not yeast, but meal and water [mill water] and the whole dough is thoroughly leavened and real yeast, so also the lapis [stone] is itself the ferment, yet gold and mercury are also called ferment.”
Now begins the main work—marriage, prison, embrace, conception, birth, transfiguration—to which the rest of the parable is devoted.
The prison is the philosophic egg. It is also called “Athanor, a sieve, dunghill, bain-marie (double cooker), a kiln, round ball, green lion, prison, grave, brothel, vial, cucurbit.” It is just like the belly and the womb, containing in itself the true, natural warmth (to give life to our young king). The warmth that is used must first be gentle, “like that after the winter”; it must be stronger like the sun in spring, in summer [cf. the seasons in our parable]. (Flamel, pp. 50 ff.)
Daustenius (Ros., VII): “... And this thing can be a symbol of a woman's belly, which, when she has conceived, will immediately close the womb.”
Id. (Ros., VII): “Therefore, when you have put them (the white woman and the red man) in their vessel, then close it as fast as possible....” [Seal of Hermes.]
Id. (Ros., VIII): “Therefore that you arrange the substances right and fine, and regulate your [pg 134] work well, and marry consanguineous matter with masses acting consanguineously....” [Incest.]
Id. (Ros., VII): “So now this is our solution, that you marry the Gabricum with the Beja, which when he lies with the Beja, dies immediately and is changed into her nature. Although the Beja is a woman, still she improves the Gabricum because he is come out of her.” [Death of the bridegroom son. It should be remembered in this connection that all metals or all substances generally—consequently also the [Symbol: Sun]—come forth from the “mother,” the primal substance [Symbol: Mercury].]
In a “Vision” of Daustenius, the king is to return into his mother's womb in order to be procreated afresh. The king “goes into his bedroom and unexpectedly is fired with a great desire for coition, and goes to sleep at once, and has lain with a surpassingly beautiful maiden, who was a daughter of his mother” [weakened form of mother incest]. Later the vision says, “The woman, however, incloses her man, as a mother, quite carefully in the innermost part of her body.”
The bodies inclosed in the vessel fall to pieces and are partly volatile. The vapors [soul] return, however, into the bodies. There conception takes place.
Daustenius [Ros. IX.]: “... From that are airy spirits come, that with each other rise into the air, and there have conceived life, that is blown into them by their dampness, as the human being has life from air, by which it increases.... For life of [pg 135] all natural things depends upon the blowing in of air.”
The bestowing of life by a blowing in of air plays a great part in myths. Also there occurs quite frequently special impregnations by air and wind. It is a primitive impregnation theory, that is found also in the ideas of children.
Children think of the blowing in of air into the anus as a natural sexual theory. I know several cases where this practice is carried out with emphasis on the erotic under the pretense of “playing doctor.” A child once told what papa and mamma do when they are alone; they put their naked backsides together and blow air into each other.
Another infantile theory explains impregnation by the swallowing of an object. In myths and fairy lore this motive occurs with extraordinary frequency. To the swallowing as conception, corresponds defecation as parturition. Incidentally we should note that the bodies in the philosophic egg turn actually into a rolling, stinking, black mass, which is expressly called dung by many authors. The water is also called urine. The prima materia is also called urine. In the philosophical egg the white woman swallows the red man, man-eating motive. (Stucken.)
Liber Apocal. Hermetis (Cited by Hohler, p. 105 f.): “... Therefore the philosophers have married this tender young maiden to Gabricus, to have them procreate fruit, and when Gabricus sleeps he dies. The Beja [i.e., the white maiden] [pg 136] has swallowed him and consumed him because of her great love.”
Now as to the intra-uterine nourishment of the fetus by means of the water of life:
Daustenius [Ros. vi.]: “... The fruit in the womb is nourished only by the mother's blood.” Id. (Ros. x):
Later he says (Id., XI): “Lay the son by her that she suckle him.” [The water of life is therefore also the milk.]
The new king is born, and now he and his consort appear in priceless garments (cf. Section 18 of the parable). The color change of the substance is expressed by means of the change of garments, like peacock's tail, rainbow. The process goes from black through gray to white, yellow, red, purple.
The end is reached with purple. The wanderer at the end describes the virtues of the philosopher's stone. We have already compared the great elixir with soma. In the old alchemistic book, which bears the name of the Persian magician, Osthanes (Berthelot, Orig., p. 52), the divine water heals all maladies. Water of life,—elixir of life.
[pg 137]Many readers will shake their heads over the psychoanalytic exposition of the parable. The gross development of sexuality and the Œdipus complex may seem improbable to him. The alchemistic hieroglyphic has now in unexpected manner shown after all, that these surprising things were not read into the parable by psychoanalysis, but rightly found in it, even though psychoanalysis has not by any means exhausted the contents of the parable. What might at first have appeared to be bold conjecture, as for example, killing of the father, incest with the mother, the conception of the red blood and white bones as man and woman, the excrementitious substance as procreative, the prison as the uterus, has all been shown to be in use as favorite figurative expression among the alchemistic authors.
The alchemists like to dwell on the process of procreation, and on infantile sexual theories. The deep interest that they show in these matters, and without which they would not have used them so much in their hieroglyphics, the meaning that these things must have, in order to be regarded as worthy to illustrate the processes of the great work, and finally, the meaning that in some form or other they actually have in the emotional life of every man, all of this makes it evident that the line of imaginative speculations with which we have become acquainted, deserves independent treatment. In practice there was a fission, and procreation becomes an independent problem for alchemists. Yet the followers of the art did learn from nature, in order that their art [pg 138] might follow the works of nature even to improve on her; what wonder then if many of them set themselves to the artificial creation—generation—of man? Yet the belief in generatio equivoca has not long been dead. Must it not have seemed somehow possible, in view of the supposed fact that they saw insects develop out of earth, worms out of dung, etc., that they should by special artificial interposition, be able to make higher forms of life come out of lifeless matter? And of all the substances not one was indeed completely lifeless for the “animated” metals even, grew and increased. In short, if we regard the matter somewhat more closely, it is after all not so extraordinary that they made serious attempts to create the homunculus.
Generally Paracelsus is regarded as the author of the idea, which to the somewhat uncritical, could not, in my opinion, help being in the air. There are different views regarding the part played by Paracelsus. The instructions that he gives for the production of the homunculus are found in a work (De natura rerum) whose authorship is not settled. And supposing that Paracelsus was the writer, it must be considered whether he does not lay before the inquisitive friend to whom the work is dedicated merely a medley of oddities from the variegated store that he had collected from all sources on his travels among vagrant folk. We must accept the facts as we find them; the question as to whether it was Paracelsus or not would be idle. Enough that there is a book by some writer who describes the [pg 139] work and describes it in such a way that naïve scholarship could have thought it quite consistent. The idea as such has appeared conceivable to us. Its form in the book mentioned appears clearly determined by alchemistic ideas. The reader will immediately perceive it himself as I give here some passages from the book. (Cf. the Strassb. Folio Ausg. des Paracelsus, Vol. I, pp. 881-884.) A consideration of the production of the homunculus appears important to me because it shows the main content of alchemistic ideas in enlarged form and complete development, a content that gives, moreover, the very thing that psychoanalysis would here look for.
Paracelsus begins with the fact that putrefaction transforms all things into their first shape and is the beginning of generation and multiplication. The spagiric [One of the names for alchemy. From σπᾶν (separate), and αγείρειν (unite).] art is able to create men and monsters. Such a monster is the Basilisk. “The Basilisk” grows and is born out of and from the greatest impurity of women, namely from the menstrua and from the blood of sperm that is put into a glass and cucurbit,
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