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Once the combination of corporeal and spiritual has been understood as it must be understood—that is, not as two principle parts (though one of them is called spiritual) of a theoretical cosmos exterior to consciousness, but as a living process provided by real experience—we come to another fundamental hermetic teaching: that of imma­nence, the presence of the "marvelous thing" in man, the "livingchaos" in which all possibilities reside. The hermetic texts continually refer to this immanence in the same terms, passing from a cosmico-natural meaning to an inner human meaning. Stone, Water, Mine, Matrix, Egg, Chaos, Dragon, Lead, First Matter, Tree, Spirit, Telesma., Quintessence, Woman, Heaven, Seed, Earth, and so on, are symbols in the hermetic cipher language that refer, often in the same passage, to one continu­ous object and thereby create an enormous difficulty for the inexperienced reader.
The literature is also clear about the ''origin of immanence." The Emerald Tablet’s "Telesma, Father of all things” is complemented by the redoubtable revelation of the Corpus Hermeticum.-¹ "Thou art all in all, composed of all powers.” Morienus, in answer to KingKalid, explains: "Oh, King, I will confess the truth to you. God, for his pleasure, created in you this most wonderful thing,^{75 76} and wherever you go, it will be in you, and you will not be rid of it. . . . You are its mine and storehouse, for it is in you, and to tell the truth, you yourself are the one who receives it and gathers it in. And whoever seeks any other scone in the Teaching will be deceived in his labor."^a Ostanes, in the Arab cext of Kitab eLFogul, says the same: "There is nothing in the world as common as this mysterious thing: it is found in rich and poor, accompanies the traveller and stays with one at home."^{77 78} And he adds: "By God! If it were called by its true name, the ignorant would shout: "Lie!” and the intelligent would be perplexed.” Moreover: "The stone speaks but ye heed it not. It calls to you and ye answer not. O ye sleepers! What deafness stops your ears? What vise grips your heart?”⁷⁹ The Cosmopolite says: "What you're looking for is in front of your eyes; no one can live without it, ail creatures serve it, but few even notice it; and everyone has it in his power. ”⁸⁰ And in the Seven Chapters of Hermes: "I have come to tell ye what ye do not know: the Work is with you and within you: once ye find it in yourselves, where it continuously resides, you will possess it forever right there where ye stand.’’⁸¹
The word heaven, of which it is said in the Gospels, "the kingdom of heaven is within,” is also used for the hirst Principle in the hermctico-alchemical tradition. But for this there is, as we’ve said and will see, another even more frequent and typical symbol; water. The mystical hermetism of Boehme says about it: "This water endures throughout eternity, It reaches every corner of this world and is the Water of Life which penetrates beyond death . . . nowhere is it perceptible or apprehensible {’difficult to contemplate,’ Zosimos said). But it fills everything equally. It is found also in the body of man and when he thirsts for this water and drinks of it, the Light of Life shines in him.”^{82 83} Thus is affirmed once and for all that "man is the center in which everything winds up: the quintessence of the whole universe is locked in him. He participates in the virtues and properties of all individuals.”⁵
But the body being the most concrete expression of the human entity, in hermetism the same cosmic symbols also designate the "mystery” of corporeal­ity—and now we begin better to understand that which is "nearer than any other thing,” which "all have before their eyes and at their fingertips,’’ considered vile by the ignorant and held by the sages as most precious of all. The Buddhist
saying: "This body, a mere eight hands tall, comprises the world, is the. creation of the world, the end of the world and the path that leads to the resolution of the world” strongly complements the Tabula Smaragdina: ' That which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the performance of the miracles of the one thing.” This is expressed in the Greek texts as: "Everything in the macrocosmos, is also in man”^{84 85} and is echoed by Boehme: "The earthly body you inhabit is all one with the totality of the cntlamed body [that is, the body living in the special state of the "fire” of the spirit) of this world.”¹¹ Still another hermetic sentence: "Look, it is a unique thing, having a unique root, of a uniqueness to which nothing exterior to it has been added, but which in the working of the Art, many superfluous things have been removed. ⁸⁶


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This fundamental principle of hermetism, as we shall see, provides various orders of correspondence: real, analogical, "magical.” Certain structures of reality, certain metallic states—conceived as silent astral fecundations in the gremium mains terrae—certain natural phenomena of the urano-planetary world, are con­ceived as ossifications of forces that reveal their secret in corresponding states of the spirit that lie sleeping in the heart of corporeality.
In the Orient they teach that by following the traces left behind in us by the atman we can attain the knowledge of the universe.⁸⁷ Agrippa, paraphrasing Geber, expounds on the same teaching with equal clarity: "No one can excel in the alchemical arc without knowing the principles in himself; and the greater the knowledge of the self, the greater will be the magnetic power attained thereby and the greater the wonders to be realised.’’⁸⁸ " Ambula ab hum" is one of the mottoes of the Commenratio de pharmaco cacholico.
And this "interior way,” this via sacra that begins with the "black hie­ratic stone”—iepariKi) XiBoa pekaiva the "stone that is not a stone” but an "image of the. cosmos”—Kocrpoo piprjTa "our black lead” (all symbols of the human body, from this point of view), and along the course of which will rise up Gods and He roes,^1:5 "heavens and planets,” elemental men, metallic and
sidereal⁸⁹—this path is enigmatically contained in the sigil represented by V.I.TR.l.O.L., explained thus by Basil Valentine: "Visits. Interior a Terrae Rcctilicando Invenks Occukum Lapidem" (pass through the bowels of the earth [earth - "the body”], and by rectifying thou wilt find the hidden stone). Eventually, along that path the knowledge of self and the knowledge of the cosmos intersect and season one another, until they become the one and the same marvelous thing, the true goal of the Great Work, As above, so below, as in spirit, so in nature. Within the human organism, as outside it, are present the Three, the Four, the Seven, the Twelve; Sulfur, Mercury, Salt; Earth, Water, Air, Fire; the Planets; the Zodiac. "The furnace is unique"—affirm the Sons of Hermes enigmatically— "unique the path and unique, as well, the Work,”⁹⁰ "There is but one Nature and one Art. . . . Tire Work is all there is, and beyond it there exist no other truths.”⁹¹ In the Hermetic Triumph it is said that "our Stone” exists, but that it hides itself until the artist can lend a hand to Nature.⁹² The hermetic Art is to illuminate anew the meaning of the analogies by reestablishing the reality of what they represent: self-sufficient and not needing anything but self-sufficiency. To need nothing at all is the "unique thing”⁹³ itself, the "divine” and operative technique,”T£XVT] Osicc, TEXVT} doypcCTiKT).'' The latter, "via the affinity of natures, controls the natures of like substances.”⁹⁴ For that which can be said with the greatest certainty is that "the Work is a third world, like the other two, but with the forces of the macrocosmos and of the microsmos reunited in it.”⁹⁵