Symbols ana a

Bachnten, Urrdlgion, 1:263.

The hermetic expression "royal path” is found again precisely in these traditions. Cf Haiha-yoga- pnuiipika, 3.2-3 (commentary): "Franasya qunya pa.da.vi tadui rajapa thayace.”

Geber, Livre de la royaute, CMA. .3:126, 131. On the contrary, "balance," which is acquired by the synthesis nf the balances of Water and Fire, is recommended: "if the balance of Water is united to that

CU lx rmetic 1^-oyal ^An:t

about in Andreae, this is the one by which "no man reaches the palace of the King,’’ that it is "impossible because it consumes and can only be suitable for incorruptible bodies.”⁸
Perhaps it is the same thing as the direct and fiery awakening of kundalini, according to tantric Hatha-Yoga, only preceded by a single "heroic” preparation— vira-krama—without "mortification” or "solution in the white,” that is to say. without passing through the middle part of the. breast (see page 82). The general danger of death -death not simply as a physical fact that confronts the initiate is maximal here;⁹ it is said in the hermetic Rosarium"Nonnulliperierunt in opere nostrum. ”
As an attenuation of this method we can mention, finally, still another path of a certain "androgynous” style, both dry and wet at the same time, which refers to the heroic initiations in the strictest sense, related to the ancient sacred meaning of war, to the ancient assimilation of the warrior with the initiate, to the mors tciumphalis as "the path to heaven,” etc. A transporting and violent force is awakened, an eros similar to the frenetic and orgiastic forms of the wet path—but along with that is added the metallic quality of Iron or Mars.
The heroic impulse offers, technically, the same possibilities as the mystical impulse, the orgiastic ecstasy and the subtle mortif ication of hermetic asceticism, but only when the Mars element, by elimination of the earthly, watery, and combustible dross, has been prepared to the point of nearing the Gold of Sun quality, and when the same impulse is so intense that it can carry itself beyond the closure constituted by the virile hardness and beyond the individual limit as well.
Also by the same path, however, one can come to "break the enchantment that
holds the Gold body in bondage and would impede it from exercising its masculine
functions” without having to follow the method according to which "the Fire is
worked most gently and tempered from beginning to end,” but following that
other method in which a " violent Fire similar to the Fire used for the multiplica'­- - if) .,
tions is necessary. ^{349 350}