Symbols ana a

Nineteen
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rom all that has been said up to this point we can now ■ define the full intent of the hermetic enterprise in the W following way:
It is possible to cause consciousness to pass from an individualized state (which is the condition of the body = ego 0 as "vulgar Gold") to a nonindividualized, unshaped state (Waters, Solvents, Mercury, etc.). The symbols of this process are liquefaction, fusion, dissolution, solution, separation, and so on.¹⁸⁵ It is also possible to confront this transformation in two distinct ways: actively or passively as dominator or dominated, either according to £ or to C.
This alternative underscores the main differences between mysticism and initia­tion. In the first case a kind of indiscriminate, ecstatic nondifference appears as the goal, the point of arrival, and salvation. In the second case, conversely, the goal is a state in which an individualizing power, the same. 0 principle already manifested in the human body as the "I" hidden in the shadows, is reborn and reaffirmed.
In order to confirm definitely that the spirit of the hermetic achievement corresponds fully to this second possibility an examination of the group of allegories in the literature that is concerned with symbolic connections between Mother and Son, Feminine and Masculine, will be. decisive. We shall begin with the
maxim of Philalethes that "the fixed becomes volatile for a while in order to acquire a nobler quality the better to fix the same volatile again.”¹⁸⁶ In this case the "volatile”—equivalent to Mother, Woman, the Waters, the Moon, etc.—signifies the Spiritus Mundi, the universal life-force. The "fixed”—which is the Son, the Male, Fire, Sun, Red Stone, etc.- on the other hand, signifies the ego, the person­ality, the Soul.¹⁸⁷
Tn general it is the unanimous opinion of all the hermetic philosophers that a "mortification” must intervene.- a dissolving in the Waters, a disappearance into the Mother’s womb that devours or kills the son, a domination of the Female over the Male, of the Moon over the Sun, the volatile over the fixed, and so on; but all that is simply a provisional condition for returning potentiality to the son, to enable him to reaffirm himself again over what has previously dominated and "dissolved” him, to make himself "more perfect and greater than his parents.”
And it is here that dTspagnet says, "The Female at first is stronger than the Male and dominates him, in order to transmute him into her own nature. But then the Male recovers his vigor and in turn gains ascendancy, dominates the Female and makes her like himself/’¹⁸⁸ And the Turba philosopborum.- "The Mother engenders the Son and the Son engenders the Mother and kills her.”¹⁸⁹ In other texts we encounter analogous expressions.- "When I find myself in the arms of my Mother, united with her substance, I control her, 1 detain her and fix her,”¹⁹⁰ "The Water or Mercury is the Mother who is taken and sealed within the womb of the Son, that is, of the Sun, which came forth from this Water.’’¹⁹¹ The Female must first be allowed to surmount the Male, and then the Male the Female. ”¹⁹² And Flame! adds, "Once the infant [created by the Art] becomes strong and robust, to the point where it can do battle against Water and Fire [the force must be understood as that which manifests in the awakenings of ^ and <£; see further, pages 113-114 and 168-169], it will insert into its own belly the Mother that had given it birth";¹⁹³ and so forth.
Of particular importance are the forms of this cycle of allegories wherein the Mother—primary substance of every metal or individual being—becomes the wife of her son. These forms speak clearly to us about the role and meaning attributed by the hermetic tradition to the masculine dignity of the one who seeks realization. But the other forms of the. allegory are also interesting, those that show us what the expression of the mystico-religious or pantheistic solution in the symbol of relationships against nature can be: the states in which the universal power- substance, the "One Life," dominates the personality are equivalent to the Woman who possesses the Man, the Son who returns to the womb of his Mother, the servant raised over his master, "Superior to him m all ways,"¹⁹⁴ and so on.
In hermetism these states do not consitute anything more than passing phases; immediately afterward the correct relations, those sanctioned by nature (after the solve, after the "contact," the coagula), are established. For all that, they confirm in so many ways the affirmative and "magic” spirit of hermetism, for whomever follows the work.
Still, the central question has not been sufficiently addressed. This "fixing” of the Female or possessing of the Mother by every creature in order to return to "Nature that takes joy in itself” to "Nature dominated by itself," which is peculiar to the male, may it not express, in the final analysis—as the equivalent symbol of the theft of the Tree of Life does—the same act of personalization, whose result, as we have seen, is the Body? And will we not find ourselves then in a vicious circle? In fact, the texts consider the body to be the center of vulgar life shrouded in darkness and death, something that must be overcome; yet the body returns to present itself as a necessary result of the coagufa which, paradoxically, is the terminus of the Opus Magnus. It cannot be the. same thing. Obviously corporeality cannot mean the same thing in the one case as it does in the other, and so the problem is to determine where the difference lies.