Symbols ana a

Twenty-Six
Oeac I) apo cbe
BlACK ULIORK
Once the influence of the physical body on ^ has been suspended, its influence on the psychic and mental principles of the person, having their foundation in is also suspended at the same time. At this moment we come to that crisis to which we referred when we spoke of the symbolism of the seed, which "must die in the Earth, in order to come to fruition." All the common faculties—even the sense of the ego itself—are affected by it. Here appear all the symbols already assigned to philosophical Mercury as a weapon that wounds, stuns, and kills; dissolving water, poison, philosopher's vinegar, viper. Then the nigtedo appears, the "blacker than black" color of putrefaction or hermetic "mortification," sign of the first effective change in the entirety of the symbolical "substance," which passes to the horizon­tal position , corresponding naturally to that which has been struck down.
To explain this experience in general terms without resorting to esoteric teach­ings, the simple fact itself suffices that when the activities of the external waking consciousness in the ordinary person have been reduced, the collective conscious­ness is likewise reduced. Said reduction, in its successive stages, is parallel to the progressive separation of the Mercury principle, which when disengaged, ceases to perceive images from the exterior world. If the normal man is able to orient himself at all without the direct support of these images, he finds himself in a state of reverie, and then in the dream state, in which the energization of the imaginary activity, dissociated from the external senses, is accompanied further by a reduction and emptying of the consciousness of self. When that alienation increases, sleep comes and then consciousness is abolished. Farther beyond lie trance, lethargy, and the cataleptic state. Farther still, when the separation is complete, he enters into a state of apparent death, and finally into the state of the dissociation of the organism no longer held together by the vital force, which is to say: death.
Such is the phenomenology of the "separation’’ and the dissolution when it appears spontaneously, passively and negatively whether in man’s ordinary night or in the great night, or when it is invoked by special substances, such as drugs, anesthetics, and poisons. These are all genuine states and conditions of being.
Now the whole secret of the first phase of the hermetic Opus consists in this: in working in such a way that the consciousness is not reduced and then suspended at the threshold of sleep, but instead can accompany this process through all its phases, in complete awareness, up to a condition equivalent to death. The ”disso­lution” is then made into a living, intense, indelible experience, and this is the alchemical "death,” the "blacker than black,” the entrance into the "tomb of Osiris," the knowledge of the dark land, the realm of Saturn, of which the texts speak.
The sense of the secret operation in the classical mystery initiation chat assured the mutation of nature and immortality is no different.
"Man’s soul at the moment of death," says Plutarch,¹ "experiences the same passion [jidOogj as those who have been initiated in the Great Mysteries; the word corresponding to the word, the deed to the deed [rsXsurav and teXeigOccij.” Initiation is celebrated as a voluntary death and as a gratuitous salvation, according to Apuleius.^{259 260} Boehme would say: "Death is the only way by which the spirit can change form,” specifying that by means of a willing spirit it can traverse the "fiery death, "²⁶¹ The whole difference is that the "philoscphal death”—morsphilosophorum— is active; it is not a question of a body which, upon disintegrating loses its soul, but of a soul so concentrated in its power, that it unmakes the body Porphyry says it in the clearest possible terms, adding that it is not absolutely true that one death follows the other; that is to say that the common death must be followed by liberation and transfiguration (the "spiritualist" theory) or that initiatic death must follow physical death.²⁶² None of this has anything to do with mystico-sentimental states nor with "mortification" in the ascetic or religious sense. It is a question of a state of spirit, but not separable from any real modification of the bonds between the different elements of human wholeness.
But the adventure is not without risks. It can happen that any alteration, the process of which is not completely under one’s control or is influenced, for example, by an ill-timed ego reaction, establishes between said dements ah- normal or fragmentary connections, to which—if the ordeal is not mastered— there cannot less than correspond diminished or abnormal forms of the faculties of awareness. Artephius says that along with the ’’solution” and the "black color,” there is produced a "discontinuity of the parts.” In effect, the disinte­gration of the "composition” or "mixture" of its elements is provoked, with the result that whoever confronts the experience and during the whole time it lasts, is in constant danger of death, or at least in danger of all those disorders (schizo­phrenia, amnesia, stupefaction, confusion, epilepsy) that can result from the re­lentless separation of the vital energies from the organs and bodily functions to which they correspond;²⁶³
When, however, all the changes of state have been carried out and maintained without losing control or consciousness, and the separation has actually been made, the beginnings of the new birth have been set in morion. "The [initiatory] genera­tion is realized when the Materia is in complete dissolution, which [the Philosphers] call putrefaction or blackest black.”²⁶⁴
Among the many references to "mortification” we can cite the words of Basil Valentine’s Azoth, plate 5, the picture wherein we see an old man in decomposition locked up with a raven (the technical alchemical symbol for this state) inside the "philosophical egg" surrounded by Fire, in the act of exhaling two spirits (the subtle principles, "Spirit” and "Soul"): "My surname is Dragon. I am the runaway slave, and they have closed me in a grave in order that I might be rewarded with the royal crown and I can enrich my family , . . My Soul and my Spirit abandon me [these are the two exhaled spirits, the two clouds, one white, the other red, that must be extracted from the Stone], . . . May they not forsake me forever, but let me see the Light of Day again, so that this Hero of Peace,²⁶⁵ whom the world awaits, can come out of me.”²⁶⁶
"The dissociation,” Flamd explains,²⁶⁷ "is called death, destruction and perdi­tion because the natures are changing form: undergoing calcination and denuda­tion.” Other authors speak of a great eclipse of Sun O and MoonC, beyond which chaos obtains,^{268 269} specifying that the black and dark color expresses the state of the body when the soul has been snatched away, necessitating an inva­sion of a "white smoke” (incorporeal aerial state) into it, which multiplies the Waters.¹¹ For the direct "experience'' let us again turn to Boehme: "Being is liberated, or liberates itself from death with an agony experienced in the great anguish of impression [cf. Plutarch’s ndOog), which is rhe mercurial life [lived in a free state); and in this pain, the nitrous terror [the terror is 'that which comes from Mercury or the anguish of death/ while Saltpeter is the principle ot indi­viduation), brightens like lightning. Immediately liberty returns to itself and the being plunges into the dark and austere anguish,”²⁷⁰ corresponding to the color black, which, on the other hand, Synesius calls: "The black Earth, or raven’s head, called dark Shadow: on this, as on a tree trunk, the rest of the Magisterium has its foundation.”²⁷¹
We can say, then, that the power at work in this phase is the same as that which is called forth in the phenomenon of death. It is clearly expressed by an Arab text: "The Dragon, chat produces the various colors [symbols of the successive phases of the Work), is the very one that would have been fatal to your existence and would have separated your Soul from your Body.”^{272 273}Here is a comparison, also found in the esoteric Hindu teachings: Aum is the mancra^ of the serpent power (kundalini) used by the yogins to open the "threshold of Brahma” and to cause to flower the "centers of life” in regeneration—it is also the mantra of Martya, the God of Death, "Be attentive to Mercury drawn from Arsenic—warns The Book of El Habir— because it is an igneous venom that dissolves all things.”²⁷⁴ "The
Mercury burns and kills everything/' is repeated by others,^{275 276} But then we are given the prescription, "To mix the metals in their due proportion with Mercury and to continue until the result is converted into an igneous venom. ”^1H
And again: "the Philosophers called this tincture Sulfur, Salfurs, Consuming Fire, blinding ray, stone of the sling that shatters and destroys the Stone, leaving a permanent scar of the fracture."²⁷⁷