Symbols ana a

Twenty-Th ree
ch>e suiord add
cT)e Rose
77 1
MM ■ e know now that "seed” and "vulgar Gold" represent ■ the ordinary personality. This is the "King that is not king," because "standing upright" is precarious in face of the strong forces of the body upon which—after identifying with a particular form and the "Fall" - the law of the hermetic "Rulers of Destiny” goes into effect. This principle, also called "exterior Sulfur,” continues in its way, however, to express the principle of virility; in Boehme’s terms, it is the "property of Mars” united to the "sulfurous furor" in the "elemental [earthly] body." To this can be referred the Iron (= Mars) of the last of Hesiod’s ages and the general ideogram of virility and erect position, created by vertically.
But in the state of the fall we must also consider the instinctive and ardent force of the animal nature transfused into the same soul. This is one of the meanings of the Red Lion, or fiery Dragon, often justly associated with terrestrial man. The hermetic "Kill the living”²³¹ refers as much to this same force as to the Mars element, and to the Gold locked in the prison of the sense of self imposed by the body. To this we must add the metaphor of beating, striking, and knocking down; and the Fire of the Art that acts in this phase takes as symbol whatever instrument is capable of inflicting a wound: sword, spear, scissors, hammer, sickle, etc.
From the state of activity normal to the ordinary waking state, we then pass on to the passive: the masculine t , knocked down as —, which is also one of the Witer (''dissolving”) symbols. This is the sowing of the seed and its "death” in the Barth. We might also observe that the horizontal that cuts the vertical makes a cross with it +, which is why some hermetic authors actually took the Christian crucifixion itself as a symbol for the Work. And the more so since in this there occurs a spearing in the side, that is, in the place where, according to Gichtel, the serpent of the "Spiritus Mundi” imprisons the Sun (ego principle) in its encircling coil; and since the side wound exudes white warer and red blood, which hermeti­cally designate the two successive phases of the Work; and since before his crucifixion, Christ, according to the tradition, suffered insults while dressed in a mocking purple robe,² which Herod replaced with a white robe; and finally, the crucifixion is followed by the "descent to hell,” to the bosom of the Barth, and then the resurrection and ascension.
Out of the negative state , the principle of virility rises anew in a third phase in the form of pure and transcendent activity, capable of inducing a rebirth in all the elements a metaphor for the exaltation, elevation, standing up that can be expressed by a return to verticality I . This same is the ascendent di­rection of the forces of growth in the vegetable kingdom, which—after break­ing the Earth apart—are uplifted to the Sun as grasses and plants.³ The Flower is produced in the Air—when we are in the other "philosophical seasons’’—after the black winter. The ripe fruit of autumn will signify the fixation of the resurrected solar principle.
The Rosicrucian symbol of the Rose that blossoms at the center of the cross (transformation of the interference of the two principles I and from the point of a fall and neutralization to a living and radiant point at the center of the four elements) reveals the whole meaning. On the other hand, it also pertains to hermetism: the Porta Ermetica of Rome leads directly to the "Ad Rosam per Crucem,"⁴ and the Rose or Flower, a symbol also common to ²³² ocher esoteric traditions,³ is encountered in the technical texts of alchemy.⁶
Continuing with the vegetable symbolism, the development of initiation had a characteristic expression in the lotus, a flower whose corolla O opens on a vertical stalk ! that rises up to and above the water level , while its roots have grown out of the abyssal mud of the. Moist Earth,⁷ Thus, together, we get the hieroglyph which in Egyptian hermetism signified "the key of life,” "living,” "to live," with regard to resurrection and immortalization: in a bas-relief of the Twelfth Dynasty the "key of life" is delivered to a king by a goddess, accompanied by the following words: "I give thee life, stability, purity, like Ra [the solar god], eternally/’
We can also cite in the hermetic work Arab alchemical texts concerning this virtue of the stem I , In these is mentioned a "green thing, called myrtle, which grows out in shoots from a base, called "stem of myrtle,’’ and ft is said: "Mix ye the stem with the Stone. . . , Tin's stem will bum the soul and consume the combustible imperfections of the Stone. It liberates it from all corrupting principles; it returns life to the dead; and Fire has no further power over it. "^H Turning to Boehme: "The liberation-quality passes through the astringent quality [by being assimilated by the con traction of the hard Earth], lacerates the body and moves out of the body, outside and over the Earth and thus advances, tenaciously, to the sprouting of a large stalk. . . . The qualities burst into flames on the stalk and enter it:⁹ they generate colors, in accordance with their kind.” Then on the stem a spadix or "bud” appears, "which is a new [state of the] Body in the bud or spathe, similar ^s In Apuleius, one who has degenerated into an animal is restored to his original scare by means of a rose; in Catholicism, Maria, junta Coeli, is called the Rosa Mysriea, in a medieval poem, ft Fiore (Cf.Vafli, ft linguaggio segreco dci Fidcli ft A more [Rome, 1928), 49, 119) there is mention of a kiss ro the rose given with arms forming a cross. In this work of Valli's, (p. 249) is the drawing of Francesco da Barberino, wherein among che personages ascending in pairs (men and women) the seven steps leading to the Androgyne, the first couples are represented as bring stung by arrows, while the last bear roses. And "Amor" in his flight ro the Androgyne, also bears roses. Cf. The Mystery of the Gnu!, and also Charbonneau-Lassay, "Le symbolisme de la rose” in Regnabic, no. 10, (1926).

6. 
   Cf., tor example, B, Treviso, Philosophic dcs mecaux, BPC, 2:428; Zacharias, Philosophic nacurelle dcs meCatix, 530, 537; Livrc dc Crates in CM A, 3:56; Boehme (De signarura, 8, §52; 7, §36; 15, §35): "The outer Body is noth in g more than a dump of brambles in the center of which, however, roses could blossom"; '‘roses that bloom after winter"; "In the same way that che flower rises out of the earth, the image of light rises after death”; "Subjugate the Ego and prosper like a flower in che divine spirit ”, etc.
   
7. 
   In the well-known Hindu mantra, Oin manipadme, "Om, the jewel ill the lotus," the jewel is a mineral symbol that may well be likened to the Philosopher's Stone. Cf. also Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 2.3.6: "The aspect of the incorporeal spirit is like a tongue of fire or like a locus flower, or like a sudden flash of lightning."