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or this problem as well, we shall find the best key in a ■ previously cited text from the Corpus Hermedcum to W the. adventure of the one who wishes to go beyond the seven circles of necessity (see chapter 14).
What justifies the prior negative expressions, from a myst i co -soteriological coloration that we encounter in the hermetic tradition, is not so much the fact of "individuation” or "body” per se—that is to say the qualification and organization of what is undifferentiated and indistinct, as the work of an active principle, ^ or or O or T, reacting on the Mercurial Moistness and coagulating in an image, sign of its power—but a distinct relationship to individuation and the body Such a relationship will be that which corresponds to a state of "love”—in the sense of "identification” and "amalgamation” (that is, in the same sense as the power, which according to Hindu teaching, "thirst” and "desire” have)—precisely with regard to the body and individuation. Such a state is one in which the Waters penetrate the solar principle with a "superfluous moisture” to injure it, intoxicate it, darken it, and carry it away. They lead it to submersion and absorption into that which already has received the impression of the form of its dominion, to attach itself to it and no longer distinguish itself, degenerating from its own nature, and participat­ing in everything and through everything of its nature. It converts itself, so to speak, into the. image of itself, an image that, as such, suffers the condition of the thing in which it is manifested. Such a development immediately presents itself to
us internally in the myth of Narcissus. Narcissus is lured to "death" in the "Waters" by an awakened passion for his own image reflected in these same waters, and this "death" is the substance of that which men who are bound by desire to the world of bodies and becoming call life.
In the introduction (see pages 11-12) we quoted a gnostic text in which we recognize these same symbols: in the intermediate stage, prior to his reintegration, it is said of Primordial Man that "He stands upright here below, having been engendered by the image [reflection) in the current of the Waters.’’ In a similar text we read, "Recast in watery form, it [the soul) suffers ... as the slave of Death."¹ We have seen finally that Water, either as itself or as Mercury is in a certain sense understood in hermetism as hunger, desire, or burning thirst. And it is clear that the myth of Narcissus also forms part of the hermetic tradition, and we have pointed out the metaphysical meaning that it contains. The Corpus Hermeticum (1.12-15) speaks of "a form of marvelous beauty in which all the energies of the seven powers were united with the divine form." There is an allusion to a vision of this form in the Water and in the Shadow over the Earth, and a love that is manifested in "Nature"; we are told how the same Primordial Man "upon perceiv­ing in the water the reflection of his own form, was seized by desire for it and wanted to possess it. The act followed the desire and so irrational form was conceived. Nature possessed herself of her lover, embracing him tightly, and they were united in mutual love.” Hence the "fall,” the origin of the "sleep,” the submission to the tyranny of cosmic law—appovicc—on the part of whomever was placed under it by dint of his own nature (see page 54). It is precisely to this situation that we referred when we spoke of the bewitchment of the terrestrial;^{195 196 197} petrification, transformation of the energies into passions and sensations, "Metal- ness,” the veil of "darkness” and "leprosy,” the state of silence or the "vulgar” state of profound powers and principles in man, external conciousness tied down to the physical world through the brain, etc.
"Man,” says Boehme,⁵ "died to the divine celestial essence (about which he speaks elsewhere as the 'noble Gold of celestial corporeality’], because the inner desire, having arisen trom the fiery center¹⁹⁸ . , . inclined toward external temporal birth. So in man the divine essence, or inner corporeality, is converted into death.” The same author then speaks of the alchemical symbolism of Saturn, to which we shall return presently and says that the body from that time on remains in Saturn, clad in miserable rags; the Golden Child is hidden by Saturn behind a black cape. It is the "tomb of Osiris,” the body turned into the Sepulchre of the Living. The primordial violence done to the Tree constitutes the corporeality in a transcenden­tal sense, according to which the body is identified or associated with Sulfur, Fire, and divine Gold. The symbol of transcendental man refers to that: he is the Absolute Individual. But when the passion of the Primordial Waters rises again, arresting the process, then he is Attis, the "ear of com cut while yet green"; it is premature death, the mutilation that causes Attis to be sterile—dcKapnog. This is the mystery of the body in which man is found here on earth. The angels fell not because they wanted to possess "women,” but because they had "desired” them: it was the burning, fiery desire, imprisoned in Adam, according to Gichtel,¹⁹⁹ which deprived him of his spouse Sophia, that is to say, which separated him from Life and power.²⁰⁰
The difficulty then, is explained: In hermecism it is never a question of sepa­rating from the Body in order to escape (the "spirits" must not flee, the soul must not escape into the Air, etc.), but of separating in order to reestablish a causal and dominating relationship of the solar principle, free of passion, with that to which it has given form and which is now offered to it in its greater nonhuman powers so that it can itself undergo a rebirth. From this is derived, in hermetism, a "transcendental realism” wherein the reversal of values peculiar to the mystical language acquires a different and very special sense.
In the "image generated by the Waters” Primordial Man "stands on his own feet,” but this is nothing more than spectral support. Once identifying himself with his body, man finds himself defined by it. All his faculties of watchfulness, instead of looking ahead of the body are looking back on it. And this is why only exterior reflections arise from everything he comes into contact with, From this point of view, Boehme rightly says "in that faltering Angel,” man, the body engenders che soul- the flesh, despite not being spirit, is the mother of the spirit.⁷ It is a question here of the Soul and Spirit of the "dead” and regarding which—from the modern, materialist point of view—is the truer.
The ''spirituality” oi "psychological man” is nonessential, contingent, and there are only too many circumstances that speak to us of this contingency, of the dependency of the "superior faculties” and individual consciousness itself on che body. The body is truly the root and origin of the soul and its faculties, but without producing them directly; the situation is almost analogous to a drum that without producing the sound itself, is the necessary condition for the sound to be mani­fested. And so also life, consciousness and self-consciousness cannot be manifested in man except through corporeal reality.
Occultly and hermetically considered, this reality is the place in which the. metals that seem noble but are vile, in which the elements that seem alive but are really dead and sterile and disdained by the wise, are found in their true nature- primordial corporeality—except for a certain impurity, darkness, and moistness, which it is possible to get rid of.
Such is the key to all those alchemical expressions that proclaim through symbols the superiority of the Body and present it as the true materia of the work and the vein of the -Gold. This is the reason that the De pharmaco cachollco exhorts the alchemist not to fly off into che heavens but to search here below, in the humus, in "Earth.” Here is where the Stone addresses the personifications of the vulgar faculties: "Thou art not that Gold of which the philosophers speak, on the contrary, that Gold is hidden within me. . . , Thy soul [that is, the living principle] constantly resides in me, and is more stable and fixed than it could ever be in thee . . . without me it is not possible to make perfect Gold and Silver . . . nor could ye elevate yourselves beyond the state in which Nature has put you.”⁸
And Zacharias says: "The Body has a greater power than that of the two brothers we call Soul and Spirit,” and adds that when "what was hidden is ^{201 202}
revealed/’ the Body has the power to fixate and reduce the Soul to the Soul’s nature, "wherein it is to be made into Gold.”⁹ "It is necessary to animate the dead body and resuscitate it," says Albertus Magnus,¹⁰ "in order to multiply its power to the infinite. ” There are so any possible quotations in the same spirit that we would have difficulty choosing among them.¹¹ "Osiris is Lead and Sulfur”-'Ompig £fioXvfiSoQ kcci Osiov, says an Alexandrine text.¹² Black Lead-the fallen body— called the "tomb of Osiris,” is associated besides with the Egg that is the ev to 7tav. It is fixed in the "spheres of Fire” and attracts a new soul to itself. And in this, say the texts, consists the Great Mystery G

9.