Symbols ana a

transformation of said connection by means of well-defined, practical, and neces­sary acts, even though they are essentially interior, constitutes the essential core of the Royal Arr of the hermetic masters. The latter will be directed first of all to the conquest of the principle of immortality, and then to the total stable nature, no longer transitory or deteriorating the elements and functions by which rbe human manifestation is established within the realm of becoming. Flamel says: "Our Work is the conversion and change of one being into another being, as from one thing into another thing, from debility to strength . . . from corporeality to spirituality. ”²⁴⁶ And Hermes adds, "Convert and change the natures, and you will find that which you are seeking."²⁴⁷
All that remains is to study the single operations themselves that technically comprise this Great Work.
Twenty-Five
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sePARACion
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m he testimony of the literature agrees that the first step
in the hermetic Art is the separation. In the ciphered language it is designated by a great number of expres­sions, sometimes with the intention of confusing the profane and sometimes to indicate the various aspects that comprise it. We shall have an opportunity to see for ourselves why terms like separation, dissolution, extraction, preparation of the Mercury of the Sages, preparation of the Corrosive Waters, Death, reduction of the prima materia, washing, coniunctio, denudation, etc., are all equivalent.
We shall establish the technical problem in Sendivogfus’s terms, according to which the arcanum of the Work is contained in the Sulfur of the Philosophers, which, however, is found in a '’darkest prison” whose keys are guarded by Mercury.²⁴⁸ Mercury, in turn, is under the custody of Saturn. In order to understand this we have only to relate such symbols to the meanings of the various entities within man, The task is to emancipate the subtle form of life (Mercury) that unites Soul and Body from Saturn, which is the physical body itself, and which in the process of identification with form attracts and fixes to itself the Mercury in its individual character designated by ^ (as opposed to <£). Among the various meanings of the hermetic allegory. Saturn amputating the feet of Mercury (this is found, for example, in Abraham the Jew) is just this. Mercury is thus converted into an
individualized Mercury, not free to choose his own individuality, but bound and hobbled against the possibility of taking any ocher form of life than that of a particular designated life. This is the sense in which Mercury is under the custody of Saturn.
The bondage of ^ is transmitted to and so the activity that now provides a glimpse of the influence of a higher principle *Y* remains channeled in the pathways of the body and submitted to conditions the latter dictates. This is how the ^,,ego^,, principle, or Sulfur, continues to be controlled as welt, to the point of being permanently housed in the form of a given individuality, that is, the individu­ality of that particular physical body. Mercury then, possesses the keys of this prison, subject to Saturn.²⁴⁹
Hermetically speaking, separation means the extraction of the Mercury from the Body, Once the action of the animal organism on the vital force has been suspended, the other principles are virtually free as welt. For this reason it is said that Mercury is the only key "capable of opening the locked Palace of the King" or as Phtlalethes also says, "breaking the barriers of the Gold."²⁵⁰ Thanks to the separation Mercury is again liberated, returned to the state of vital, unlimited possibility (it is this that is known as "conversion in the First Matter”). And now the internal Sulfur finds the way open to every transcendent activity or transfor­mation.
Such, then, is the blueprint, which a few texts will confirm. And now we are in a position to understand better what it means to "purify and animate the common Mercury” In terms similar to Sendivogius, Pemety speaks to us of a hidden Fire burning inside the natural Fire (this is the deepest stage of the ego force) that is to be reanimated by liberating it from the prison in which it has been locked up; "The Body is the principle of fixation and deprives the other two principles (Spirit and Soul] of volatility (the possibility of freedom that is characteristic of all noncorporeal states]; the Spirit (i.e., Mercury) provides the entrance by opening the Body; and Whter, with the help of the Spirit (by Water, here, we need to understand that which by 'dissolving' the Spirit, returns it to freedom] fetches the Fire from its prison, and is the Sou!.”²⁵¹ The same author says specifically, "The whole secret of Hermetic Philosophy lies in keeping the Mercury pure [so to speak], in the state in which it was found before being mixed with any other metal [before being specialized as life bound necessarily to an individual being]. This is the Mercury-principle, which must be distiguished from vulgar Mercury, which is lifeless outside the Mine [outside the universal possibility now that it has been arrested by Saturn], because its inner Fire is dormant and cannot act [in any supernatural way] if it has not been put into action by the Mercury principle.”²⁵² We have seen that desire is what has bound life to a body in the sense of having "fallen.” And we have also spoken of the traditionally established connection between the desire principle and one of the meanings of the Water symbol. So now we are in a position ro understand what Flamel means when he exhorts us to drain off the Water (Mercury): which means to remove die symbolic humidity which represents the desire-force, " until it has taken root in its own element [reintegration into its original state through the suspension of desire].”²⁵³ Similarly, other authors speak of a preliminary realm of Fire bent on destroying the "superfluous humidity” and seeking the dessication and "calcination” of the whole substance. The Livre de VAlun et du Sd says that the process consists essentially in extracting (from the body) the pernicious humidity and infusing into it, a contrary fiery wetness— humiditas ignea. "Then the Water will be spiritual and have the power to trans­form one Nature into another Nature. "²⁵⁴
Again our system runs straight into Philalethes who speaks of a "Passive sulfur, occurring in Mercury [the ego-force left wanting behind by the vital principle when it is fixated in the Body] which should be active and effective . . . thence it is clearly necessary to introduce a life principle—but of the same nature—which resuscitates the life that is hidden within it and which is as dead at the core.” At this point the Magi "mixed life with Life [that is, after separating the vital principle, they re­united it to its original trunk], moistening the dry, animating the passive by the active, and finally, resuscitating life by means of death.”²⁵⁵
In the next chapter we shall clarify the proper meaning of this "death.” But for now let us note again the complementary symbol of "moistening the dry," which is contrary only in appearance to the draining of the Matter. It is still a question of the desire principle that in one case is considered under the symbolic aspect of Water, of Chaos, of "Nature taking pleasure in itself” and "fascinated by its own elements”; and in the other case, on the contrary, it is taken as the dryness inherent in chirst, as the desiccation and contraction that the impure and devouring Fire produces in the Life principle. This is why it is also prescribed "to irrigate the Earth, rendered dry by the action of the Fire, by means of a Water of the same nature (that is, which has been purified by separation].” Thus the pores of this symbolic Earth are opened, and the "Thief will be obliged to flee with his artifices of iniquity.” Here the "Thief" stands tor the gnostic "counterfeit spirit," the Hindu "ego of the elements," that ego which is but a creature of the body "The Water will be purged in this way of its leprosy and dropsical or superfluous humor (this is the excess of the moist principle over the golden, an excess that constitutes the consuming state oi— leprosy—of desire] by adding the true Sulfur. Thus wilt thou obtain the Fountain of Bernard of Treviso."²⁵⁶
We shall return to this fountain later. In it we can recognize the fans perennls of the classical Mysteries, the fountain of that Water which, evangelically quenches all thirst and confers the Me eternal. But here we now perceive the symbolism of the Two Waters, corresponding to the two regions, that of being and of becoming. This is die life-force as it manifests according to the requirements of one framework or the other. The separation, says Arnold of Villanova,^{257 258} produces the "Divine and Immu­table Whter" (the "permanent ” or "eternal" as opposed to the law of the lower region of changes): an operation that simultaneously is brought into contact with the thawing of the ice to the fluid state of the water, that is, in the alchemical "solution."
Here then is the explanation of the convergence of the various symbols: to sepa­rate from the body means to cause the life-principle (Water or Mercury) to pass on to the unindividuated state; as passage from the "fixed" stage to the "unfixed” there is the "solution”; as liberation of that which the body has locked up, hidden from itself, there is "extraction”; as returning to the original state there is "conversion into the prima materia” and "concocting the Mercury of the Wise”;¹¹ and, finally, coniunctio, when the two states are hypostatized and in the transformation one sees the unifica­tion of the specialized life with the immutable life which, however, is not external to it but stunned and inebriated in the root of the former.