Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Karen-Claire Voss
Introduction
Oneness or Unity
As concerns the Matter, it is one, and contains within itself all that is
needed. Out of it the artist prepares whatever he wants. Its ‘Birth is in the
sand,’ as the philosopher Anastratus says in The Crowd: ‘Nothing is more
precious than the red sand of the sea; it is the distilled moisture of the moon
joined to the light of the Sun and congealed.’ That only this one substance is
required is attested to by Agadmon in the same book. He says: ‘Know that
unless you take my body (sulphur) without the spirit (mercury) ye will not obtain
what ye desire. Cease to think of many things. Nature is satisfied with one
[14]
thing, and he who does not know it is lost.’
If therefore you would know her, [i.e., Nature] you, too, should be
true, single-hearted . . . If you know yourself to be so constituted and your
nature adapted to Nature, you will have an intuitive insight into her working.
[15]
(emphasis mine)
Let the student incline his ear to the united verdict of the Sages,
who describe this work as analogous to the Creation of the World. In the
Beginning God created Heaven and Earth; and the Earth was without form and
void, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘let
there be light,’ and there was light. These words are sufficient for the student of
our Art.[17]
The author of The Glory of the World calls the Stone “Hyle, or first principal of all
things.” It is “The matter that was from the beginning. It was neither moist, nor
dry, nor earth, nor water, nor light, nor darkness, but a mixture of all these
[18]
things, and this mixture is HYLE.” John Mehung’sA Demonstration of
Nature personifies Nature who says: “Chaos is the first substance . . . the
Mistress that maintains the King, the Queen, and the whole court.” [19] Later in the
treatise she instructs the alchemist: “First learn to know me . . . Follow me that
[20]
am the mother of all things created . . .”
Separateness or Duality
Thus, along with the importance accorded to unity by the alchemists of our
Hermetic Museum we also find an emphasis on duality. They compressed the rich
multiplicity of forms in the physical and spiritual world into vivid language
describing several kinds of symbolic oppositions. The treatises are replete with
descriptions of oppositions: sun/moon, heaven/earth, ascension/descension,
male/female, as if to herald, albeit faintly, the “chymical marriage” of the
opposites. When taken as a whole, the descriptions seem to fall into three broad,
but fairly distinct types of oppositions that will be illustrated and discussed
below. I will also note some examples of oppositions for the purpose of
comparison with the Tabula Smaragdina.
First of all, there are pairs that are comprised of complementary elements,
reminiscent of the delicately balanced oppositions we find prior to the ultimate
alchemical resolution. For example, in The Glory of the World we find an account
of two kinds of water: “Know also that two waters flow forth from this fountain;
the one (which is the spirit) towards the rising sun, and the other, the body,
[22]
towards the setting sun.” An understanding of the implications of the metaphor
of the waters would be very important for the alchemical work, since the
movement of the two waters has its analogue in the Tabula’s description of the
ascending and descending movement of the creative will of the world. Examples
of this kind of balanced opposition can be found in other treatises as well: “When
there was nothing but Himself, God, who is infinite in His wisdom, created two
classes of things, namely, those that are in heaven, and those that are under
heaven,” thereby reiterating the Tabula’s oft-quoted pronouncement that “what is
above is just as what is below.” [23]
Not all the alchemical oppositions are as benign as those that have been
discussed thus far. To a third group belong what I like to call “the great
polarities” that are often described in terms denoting extreme conflict. Several
outstanding descriptions of oppositions like these can be found in The Book of
Lambspring, which is comprised of fifteen verses representing different stages in
the alchemical process; each verse is accompanied by a superbly executed
[25]
engraving. Space does not permit an exhaustive commentary on The
Book of Lambspring but I do want to make some comments about two verses in
particular. In one we find two birds, one white, the other red, depicted in combat
with each other, while in a second verse a wolf “from the east” fights with a dog
[26]
“from the west.” These are undoubtedly metaphors referring to elements that
are in opposition to each other and must be resolved before the alchemical work
can proceed. Here it is important to note that not only are they imaged as radical
polarities, but their resolution is portrayed as being possible only when one of
them vanquishes the other. Close examination of the oppositions in this text as
well as many others like it show that the language of war was frequently used in
alchemical descriptions. This is significant. Elsewhere I have argued that of the
three kinds of oppositions one finds in the alchemical texts, only those which
depict paired elements in a balanced opposition follow the model found in
the Tabula Smaragdina and that this warrants refraining from referring to
the Tabula as if it were the only ancient text that functioned in a paradigmatic
[27]
way for the alchemists. However, here I want to emphasize that in my view the
subtle dynamics involved in the alchemical coniunctio can only be modeled after a
description like that found in the Tabula smaragdina.
The aim and object of our Art is to elicit from metals that Sulphur by means of
which the Mercury of the Sages is, in the veins of the earth, congealed into silver
and gold; in this operation the Sulphur acts the part of the male, and our Mercury
that of the female. Of the composition and action of these two are engendered
[31]
the Mercuries of the Philosophers.
In my view those alchemists who imaged the alchemical union under the form of
the hierosgamos would probably also have regarded the Tabula Smaragdina as
paradigmatic. Turning to the extent to which the Tabula functioned not only as a
model of reality, but as a model for reality following Clifford Geertz’s articulation
of the function of symbols, I think it is clear that the Tabula
Smaragdina functioned as a model of reality in as much as it was understood to
be a secret teaching about how the world actually is, how the creative process
actually functions. Given the emphasis in the Tabula Smaragdina on what I call
process causality, it seems equally clear that the alchemists who understood that
the Philosopher's Stone would come about as the result of a mechanistic process
in which two distinct as well as absolutely opposed elements fought to the death,
as it were, did not regard the Tabula Smaragdina as a model for reality. In their
view, in order to produce the Stone, one of the alchemical elements would have
to vanquish the other, in the same way that is depicted in the ancient creation
epic, the Enuma Eliş, in which Marduk, the direct descendant of Tiamat, the
Mother of All the Living, vanquished her. There we read that he
released the arrow, it tore her belly, cut through her insides, splitting the
heart. Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life /and/ cast down her
carcass to stand upon it. Then the lord paused to view her dead body, that he
might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into
[33]
two parts.
The creative process is depicted very, very differently in the Tabula Smaragdina.
It is what I call organic or process causality, and it is characterized by a mode of
exquisitely subtle mutual reciprocity and interpenetration in which each term of
an opposition enters fully into the being of the other, transforming and being
transformed. It is this process that is frequently imaged as a hierosgamos in the
[34]
alchemical texts and its fruit was called the Philosopher's Stone.
Methodology
Karen-Claire Voss
2. What is below is just as what is above, and what is above is just as what is
below for the purpose of penetrating the miracle of each thing.
3. And just as all things have been from one thing, while that thing is meditating,
just as all things have been born from this one thing, by the adaptation of this
one thing.
4. Its father is Sun, its mother is Moon, the wind brought it in its belly, the earth
is its nurse.
1
5. The father of all, the Thelema, of the whole world, is here.
8. It ascends from earth to heaven, and repeatedly descends to the earth, and
receives the power of upper and lower. Thus you will have the glory of the whole
world. Therefore, all obscurity will flee from you.
3
10. Thus the world has been created.
4
11. Hence there will be miraculous adaptation of which this is the way.
12. For that reason, I am called Hermes Trismegistus; I hold three parts of the
philosophy of the whole world.
13. I have completed all that I have to say concerning the operation of the Sun.
Notes:
2. This one thing is inherently capable of penetrating two things, and does.
3. The Latin is in the present perfect tense, passive voice; thus, we have the idea
of an action begun and completed in the past, but continuing its effect into the
present.
4. This is the way,” in the sense of modus operandi; i.e., a recipe for the process
of creating.
[1]
See Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago,
1966), p. 321; The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala,
1978), p. 111and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1964), pp. 432-440.
[2]
An excellent overview of alchemy is F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (1951;
reprint, London, 1976). The best exposition of the hermeneutical significance of
the alchemical tradition is Mircea Eliade's The Forge and the Crucible: The
Origins and Structures of Alchemy(Chicago and London, 1978). Also noteworthy
is Françoise Bonardel's Philosophie de l'alchhimie: Grand oeuvre et
modernité (Paris, 1993).
[3]
The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, 2 vols. (London: James Elliot &
Co., 1893). Hereafter cited as Waite.
[4]
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretatıon of Cultures (New York: Basıc Books, Inc.,
1973), pp. 93-94, 95, 114, 118, 123.
[5]
On the multivalence of alchemical language see Carl G. Jung, Mysterium
Coniunctionis: an Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites
in Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull. Bollingen Series, X (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1970, p. 457.
[6]
I explored this contention in depth in "Spiritual Alchemy; Interpreting
Representative Texts and Images" in Gnosis and Hermeticism: From Antiquity to
Modern Times, ed. by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (New York:
State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 147-181.
[7]
Waite, vol. I, p. 12.
[8]
Waite, ibid., pp. 12-13.
[9]
Waite, ibid., p. 12.
[10]
Waite, ibid., p. 31.
[11]
Waite, ibid., p. 14.
[12]
Waite, ibid., p. 77.
[13]
Waite, ibid., p. 75.
[14]
Waite, ibid., p.12.
[15]
Waite, ibid., p. 75.
[16]
Tabula Smaragdina, verse 3.
[17]
Waite, vol. II, pp. 167-168.
[18]
Waite, vol. I, p. 187.
[19]
Waite, vol., I., p. 125.
[20]
Waite, ibid., p. 131. The similarity between the feminine voice in this text
and the one in Proverbs 8: 22-31 should not be overlooked.
[21]
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, trans. W. Trask. (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), p. 90 et passim.
[22]
Waite, ibid., p. 180.
[23]
Tabula Smaragdina, verse 8.
[24]
Waite, vol. II, p. 165.
[25]
Waite, vol. I, pp. 271-306.
[26]
Waite, ibid., pp. 290-291: pp. 285-285.
[27]
See my unpublished paper entitled “Body as Hierophany” (presented at the
annual American Academy of Religions Meetings in Chicago in 1988) on my
website: http://www.ıstanbul-yes-istanbul.co.uk/
[28]
Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull. Bollingen Series, XX (New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968; 1980), p. 293.
[29]
Waite, vol. II, pp. 208-209.
[30]
Waite, ibid., p. 59.
[31]
Waite, ibid., p. 149.
[32]
Waite, ibid., p. 82.
[33]
Quoted from James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1950), pp. 60-72. I discuss the implications of
the Enuma Eliş in “Body as Hierophany,” p.3. See n. 27, supra.
[34]
In my paper on "spiritual alchemy," (supra, n. 4) I provided a detailed
analysis of the stages of the alchemical work and closed by speculating that
perhaps one could find in spiritual alchemy a form of Western tantra. My views
on this have been the subject of controversy in at least one instance. See Dan
Merkur's "Methodology and the Study of Western Spiritual Alchemy"
in Theosophical History VII/2 (April 2000), 53; 61; and 69-70; my "A Response to
Dan Merkur's Methodology and the Study of Western Sprıtual Alchemy”
in Theosophical History VIII/9 (July 2002), 243-249; and Dan Merkur, "More on
Methodology and Alchemy" in Theosophical History VIII/10 (October 2002), 270-
272.
[35]
See for example, Antoine Faivre Access to Western Esotericism (New York:
State University of New York Press, forthcoming 1994); originally published
as Access de l'Esotérisme occidental (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1986); cf.
"Ancient and Medieval Sources of Modern Esoteric Movements," in Modern
Esoteric Spirituality. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, Editors; Karen Voss,
Associate Editor. (New York: Crossroad Continuum, 1992), pp. 1-70.
[36]
Antoine Faivre, "Esotericism," Hidden Truths: Magic, Alchemy, and the Occult,
edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987),
p. 41.
[37]
See Karen-Claire Voss, “Prolegomena to a Transdisciplinary Approach to
Esotericism,” in Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice. Holmes Press, USA,
forthcoming, 2003.
[38]
Ibid.
[39]
Ibid., “The Rockshelf Furthering All That Is: Rediscovering the Sacred in the
21st Century,” Memoire du XXIe siecle. Éditions du Rocher; Paris, forthcoming,
2003.