Symbols ana a

^K Fernery, Dictionnairc. 141

9. 
   Cf. GAG 2:91, 94-96, 98, 144
   
10. 
    In Syne sms, Dion.. 48.
    
11. 
    The Grear Magical Papyrus of Paris, text in Introduzione alia niagm. l:144ff.
    
12. 
    In 1 lippolytus, Philnsophumena. 4.19. ^t3 Ibid., 5:14
    

¹⁴ Boehme, Dc signatura. 3, SSI9, 20. { "Das Wesen gehcr altes aus dem Todc durchs Stcrbcn, welches gesdvehr in der groficn Angst des Impressens. da due sLcrbendc Qual ft. welches das mcrcurialische Lcben isr . und diescr Schrcck isr aus dem Mcrcurio oder aus der Angst des 'fades. —Trans.]
^L' Karhadjpanishad, 2.4.2
sePARACioo: sun
add cdood
ature takes pleasure in itself” and "Na­ture dominates itself.” Here is the possi­bility of "nature” being desire, abandon­ment to itself, spontaneity, and identification with self-gratification. At the same time ft is the possibility of saying no to itself, of manifesting itself as that which acts against itself, that which dominates and transcends itself, to the point of actually making the distinction between that which dominates ("masculine," ac­tive) and that which Is dominated ("feminine,” passive), in which alone is found the ancient chaotic nature. Such are, sub specie interioritatis, the two poles that in splitting apart, release one from the other.
We can also say that in the One the All, the "One” and the "All” now crystal­lize as two distinct principles. The "One” takes on the meaning of a center that manifests in the heart of chaos (the "All”) and affirms itself there as a principle of incorruptible fixity, stability, and transcendence. From the signature, of O—"the first matter” we move on to 0, which is the ancient hieroglyph of the Sun. And that which in the originating matter was undetermined possibility, a passive potentiality for any quality, change, or chaotic transformation, is turned into a quite different principle, which in hermetism corresponds to the feminine symbol of the Moon C.
Sun 0 and Moon C is die fundamental hermetic duality. It can be said that the Serpent, upon multiplying itself, has opposed itself to itself¹ and the principle symbols that expressed themselves as the "prima materia"—Woman, Dragon, Mercury the Whters—now serve only to express the lunar force. Separated from the center, this force becomes a blind impulse and savage flood. Its downward direction is the direction of the "fall” precisely indicated by the alchemical hiero­glyphic of the Water principle V, under that aspect identical to the Moon C.
The dragons (like, the Bulls) become those which the solar heroes-- Mithras, Hercules, Jason, Apollo, Horus, etc.—fight against. They are called by the alche­mists, in the hermetic interpretation of the myth, "green" and "undigested,” because they have not yet suffered the "maturation" or domination that will transmute them to higher orders of power. In place of the Primordial Woman, of the solitary Virgin of the World, tcdcrfiov Kdpr), are introduced pairs in which is expressed the duality of the Tellurian and Uranian principle: Earth-Heaven, "Above, the celestial. Below, the terrestrial. The work is completed, masculine and feminine helping together.”^{104 105} Mercury is "fixed” and "coagulated": such is the sense of Flamel’s sixth figure, which is a crucified Serpent.¹⁰⁶
if the Dragon figures again in the center of the "Citadel of the Philosophers” of Khunrath, it is nevertheless a dragon that must be conquered and killed: the one that incessantly devours itself. This is Mercury as burning thirst,¹⁰⁷ covetousness, hunger, blind drive for gratification/’ and thus the "viscous nature,” the principle of identification and self-absorption nature "fascinated" and conquered by na­ture.¹⁰⁸ Such is, macroscopically the secret of the sublunary world of changing and
becoming, opposed to the uranian region of being, of the discarnate stability of celestial natures reflecting the mode of pure spiritual virility.


35
Transposed to hermetic, metallurgical symbols, the principle of the Sun 0 corresponds to Gold, that substance which no acid can alter; and the principle of the Moon C corresponds to fluid Silver or Silver-Water (the ancient name for Quicksilver or Mercury).
Under a certain aspect the solar principle can be related to the color red and the second principle to whire, referring, then, to Fire and Light, respectively. Fire is the proper virtue of the solar principle, not the fire of desire, generative ardor, or lust, but the flamma non urcns, the nonmaterial principle of all animation.⁷ Light, per se, is more closely related to the feminine, lunar principle as Wisdom which, with respect to 0 has the same nature as the light that the Moon reflects from the solar principle.
There is a special alchemical symbol chat is in part equivalent to the Sun, arsenic, which is explained by the Greek word apcrevtKrdvmeaning both "arsenic” and "masculine” or "virile."⁸ Still another symbol is Niter or Saltpeter, whose ideogram ® indicates the predominance of a phallico-virile principle (the vertical I which cuts through the. "prima materia” O. The symbolism of Niter (Salicccr) is much used by Boehme, with which he expresses the "heat that activates the. light,’’ the "active, boiling virtue" of the divine powers in opposition to Mercurius or Sound (the corresponding Light principle), which is, we shall learn, the principle of all individuation. ^{109 110}
Nine
FRozeo add
FLooiinq tciAceRS
Once the two principles have been separated, the connec­tion that can be made between them is of two kinds: 0 (the Sun, Gold) can be. dominated by C (the Moon, the Waters), or it can dominate them. In the first case we have the law of becoming, proper to that world which, from ancient times to the scholastic era has been appropriately referred to as sublunary, and in the Hindu tradition, notably in Buddhism, the world of samsara -which is the hermetic "dissolution," the secret of those myths in which figure men and primordial beings devoured by dragons or other natures personifying the wet principle of chaos (for example, the Egyptian myth of Typhon-Seth and Osiris).
The second case refers to everything that reflects the immovable 0 having the character of an (''exhaustively’’) completed, perfected thing, and to everything in which exists more cosmos than chaos through the predominance of a law of order, organization, and equilibrium over mere change.
From this there follows, in particular, a relation of the Gold principle -Sun, Fire, Niter, etc—to everything that is individual and corporeal, in the sense of a signature having the stable imprinting of a power.; and of the Moon principle to everything that is "volatile’’ and unable to grasp the "vital spirit," the subtle energy of transformations. Tn the literature we find a multitude of allusions confirming such relationships—Frozen Waters and Flowing Waters: forces individualized and fixed by the Solar principle, and forces in the elemental state. In Aristotelian terminol­ogy, we can say that in general the Sun is "form" and the power of individuation,
while the Moon—which preserves che archaic Mother and Woman symbols - expresses the "material” and universal: to the undifferentiated vitality to the cosmic spirit or ether-light, corresponds the feminine. Everything, on the contrary, that opposes it as specialization, qualification, or concrete individuation reflects, then, the masculine solar principle. Here functions that power of limitation, the contracting virtue (the coagula in opposition to the solve) to which this passage of Boehme refers: ''The universal divinity, in its most intimate and essential genera­tion, in its nucleus, possesses a sharp and terrible asperity, which astringent quality is an excessive, radical, firm attraction . . . , similar to winter, when the cold is bitter and unbearable, to the point of water being transformed into fee."¹¹¹
The strange alchemical terms "cold fire" and "igneous cold” have an analogous meaning: the peculiarity of the Fire of the "primordial Masculine" as ft opposes the moist and savage quality of the "impure matter" and of the Lunar Dragon, is precisely to be frozen at the same time. It animates, and also dominates, binds, projects a "fixation"; and from it detaches forms in which the Waters are chained together by a law, till they culminate in the miracle of the Mysterium Magnum, of a life with a central consciousness that says to itself: "I." In pages to come the context of our discourse will show precisely how Gold or the Sun, in one of its main practical senses, expresses what we can call the ego principle; whether it manifest itself in "earthy," "vulgar” form, (where it is only a mirror of the true Sun projected by the fortuitous Waters of the "Current"), or wherher it unites only to itself, or is pure, in the form of noble, living metal, and then acquires effectively the value of "center” as in the primordial state. Such is the key to understanding the operations of the Art according to the central meaning of the work of palingenesis.
We should mention again that, in this context, the. choice of the symbol of the Stone for the human body acquires a complementary justification; the body, as a completed, organized, and stable Nature is a "fixed” thing as opposed to the instability of psychic principles and the volatility attributed to "spirits”; so not only is the relation of Sun, Gold, and Fire with the body (directly or through the equivalent symhols) very frequent, but when the same spiritual interior being has acquired the supernatural stability of the regenerated, the corporeal principles are elevated to a higher plain, and the "two are made one” in a "spiritual corporeality"; and the word that serves once again to express chat corporeality will be tin's same Stone: the Philosopher’s Stone. The hermetic imperative is: "Transform yourselves, ye dead stones into living philosophical