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rn Greek alchemy we find the general conditions for the practice to be purity in heart and body as well as righteousness, dispassion, and the absence of greed, envy, and selfishness. "Whoever develops these qualities," says Lippman,¹ "is worthy, and only the worthy becomes a participant in the grace of The Above, whereupon in the deepest recesses of the soul, in true dreaming and visions, his intellect opens to the comprehension of the Great Mystery of the Egyptian Priests—which they communicated only orally (or enigmatically, so as to disarm the demons)—and turns the Sacred Art into child’s play. And Zosimos says: "Repose the body and calm the passions; if you yourself control yourself in this way, you will attract the divine essence to you.”^{296 297} "Be ye pure of women,” a Syrian text teaches, "cleansed of every spiritual and bodily defect and make a vow of good will."²⁹⁸
Others²⁹⁹ demand a wise and penetrating genius, a body in which nothing is lacking to enable one to operate with a sound judgment and subtle, though natural spirit, free of every tortuosity and impediment. In an Alexandrian papyrus one is

put on guard against the demon Ophiochus who " puts obstacles in our path . . , now producing negligence, now fear, now the unexpected, and in some cases punishments and afflictions, with the sole purpose of forcing us to abandon the Work."³⁰⁰ According to Geber,³⁰¹ the obstacles arise either from the natural organic weakness of the operator or from the fact that the "spirit is too full of fantasies and passes easily from one opinion to the opposite; or because he doesn't know exactly what he wants and cannot decide.” The secret chemic language also frequently expresses the duty of creating a perfect balance between all the "recti­fications" (or principles of purified and strengthened being); a balance allowing the attainment of a center in the Self, which is the only place the operation can begin.³⁰²
In modern authors we can find analogous prerequisites: a great physical and intellectual equilibrium; the state of perfect neutrality such balance augurs; a healthy body, without appetites or desires, being at peace with oneself and others and with the things around one; making oneself absolute master of the animal envelope in order to make of it an obedient servant to the psychodynamic authority that must purify itself of every obstacle; to liberate whatever may be necessary.³⁰³
Eliphas Levi repeatedly warns that we must make use of every hour and moment; we must rid the will of any dependency and accustom it to domination; we must become absolute master of the self, learn how to deny the call of pleasure, hunger, and sleep and be unmoved by success or failure. Life must be given over to the will directed by one thought and served by the entire nature to submic in every organ co die spine, and by sympathy to all universal forces corresponding to them. All the faculties and senses must participate in the Work; nothing must be left inactive. The genuine spirit must have secured itself against all danger of hallucination and terror, and so find us purified inwardly and outwardly³⁰⁴ The ancient teaching was that the Art engages the whole man—ars totum requirk hominem. The first condition, says Dorn, is the integration of oneself; "to become one. ” "Never look outside for what you need, until you have made use of the whole of yourself.”³⁰⁵
The alchemists teach that the impurities, in addition to being of Earth (the body), are also due to Fire, and that we must remove, not just the dirt, but the combustible parts from the substances.¹¹ These are the instinctive and impulsive elements of the personality: animosity, irascibility, fiery passion—all the forms of vulgar and impure Sulfur deriving from the hodily nature.^{306 307} We have seen, in fact, that the subtle human form, the body-life mediator between Soul and Body, consists of two elements, one subject to the telluric influences ^, and the other to the sulfurous influences purification requires the neutralisation of both influ­ences, and for that a preparation is necessary that reduces the terrestrial as well as the combustible. For amplification of these ideas we can refer to Geber and Albertus Magnus, who have more fully expressed them, although always in the usual evasive cipher language.³⁰⁸
In general two kinds of impurity, "leprosies,” or infirmities of the "metals” are to he distinguished: one called original, curable only by effective separation (from the condition of the body); and the other elemental and quadripartite, is immediate material for work on the dry path. Negative qualities are to be stabilized within the spirit analogous to the four Elements; and for their treatment is prescribed a kind of conversion from one into the other. The superfluous Water will be dried and activated by the Fire; the (vulgar) Fire weakened to the point of being incapable of combustion or ''viper attacks,” whatever change of state may take place—then it must be congealed and reduced to the subtle and corrosive virtue of

Water;¹⁴ the Earth quality, made "porous” and subtilized, must be converted into Air; finally, the ungraspable, diffused and mobile Air quality must be coagulated and fixed in one solid property like that of Earth,
Geber submits, on this basis, actual details and procedures of value as "medi­cines” for each of the seven metals.¹⁵ There is a whole series of suggestions that indicate adaptations, dispersals, readaptations, and transformations of psychic powers and actions that, correspondingly, the spirit must execute upon itself. The discipline is applied to the senses, the will, and thought, from cop to bottom, in the dry path.
The inner and outer asceticism fortifies and simplifies the ego principle; this greater force, which has been awakened in the center, reacts on thought and imagination, subjugating them, controlling them against all the influences they endure while passing through the lower and dark side of the unconscious. This mental control acts in turn on the sufferings and appetites, tranquilizes the inner­most being, cleansing, brightening, and subtilizing the perceptions. So, through $, the path to the 1 © is opened as far as If no further hindrances or obstacles can be found in the mind, heart, or sensibilities, when every reason for alteration or disturbance has been removed, its action can proceed to the Mercury or life principle immediately after contact with the body ^, and through the isolation of the peripheral sensitivity, attempt to obtain the separation and extraction. Then, beyond the progression of the aforementioned equivalent states in the common man—sleep, dream, and lethargy- at the very last the light will appear.

14. 
    Cf. Livre de El Habir (CMA, 3:105): "How can weakness constrain the strong? This is possible because the weakness is so only in appearance—tested, it proves strong, stronger than anything that appears strong. . . . That which rcsisrs the Fire is strong only in appearance, while the other, which is volatile and seems so weak, is actually the stronger.” We should recall here what Lao-tzu said concerning the analogy with the subtle and invincible virtue ot water.
    
15. 
    Geber, Siinwm, 3, §§1, 5, 9, 10, 12. The seven metals can also be interpreted as symbols of characteristic human types, to each of which is adapted, according to its own nature, a specific medicine and method.
    

121

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m M I e hesitate to mention one of the practices used I in the initiatory schools as the fulcrum for making the potential separation into an actual one. The reason we avoid it is that it is not possible to draw it directly out of the hermetico-alchemical texts, which speak constantly about the regimen of Fire—that is to say the dosage and inner conduction of the spiritual force in the Work—but are silent about the means of accomplishing this. (What might seem to allude to this refers strictly to chemical symbolism and tells us very little.) Mirrors and other objects, however, have served in magic as devices for fixating or neutralizing consciousness and objective perception by means of the visual sense for separation and contact with the ethereal light.³⁰⁹ In Hindu yoga special forms of mental concentration are used, sometimes assisted by symbols or adapted magical formulas. Other schools use different methods, but we must always bear

in mind that all of these are simply aids or stimuli for an act of the spirit.
The fact that $ is the point of departure for the dry path, and that therefore $ manifests in the organism through the respiratory and blood system, will suffice to enable us to glimpse two keys and two points of leverage for those who understand. On the other hand, we already know the importance that respiration (more directly controllable by the ego than the blood system) has in Hindu esotericism, as it did in ancient Egypt: the concentration on the subtle force hidden in the breath (prana), according to the yogic teaching, constitutes a way of achieving and "purifying" the But alchemy itself is not lacking in allusions to this possibility. The Depharmaco catholico, for example, teaches us that Mercury is specifically supported in the lungs by means of the element of Air—which "pervades and penetrates, like the spirit, the other two principles, Salt and Sulfur, that is, Body and Soul, and that it unites both, firmly linked by natural heat”;³¹⁰ after which it is not difficult to understand on what the "Fire” has to act in seeking to undo and alter said union.
Passing to the second key (which in certain methods is a further development of the first), this is acquired by concentrating on the blood, which can be attained by the sense of body heat. In this respect, the hermetic allusions are more frequent in expressions that are to be understood simultaneously as real and symbolical.
The Arab authors have spoken of a "decomposition that by gentle Fire trans­forms the nature into a blood,"³¹¹ And Morienus says: "The perfection of the Mastery consists in taking the united bodies . . . Now it is the blood that principally and strongly binds the bodies; because it vivifies and unites with them.”^{312 313} And Pemety: "The solution, dissolution and resolution are truly all one with subtilization. The means for achieving it according to the Art is a mystery that the Philosophers reveal only to those whom they judge qualified to be initiates. It cannot be realized—they say—except in its own blood'; blood that the same author relates to the "Aqua Nostra, which composes our own bodies.”'^ "In the three solutions of which I speak,” says the Hermetic Triumph,³¹⁴ "Male and Female, Body and Spirit, are no other than the Body and the Blood . . . The solution [in the sense of) the Body in its own blood is the solution of the masculine by the feminine and that of the Body by its Spirit. . . . You will try in vain to make the perfect solution of the body, il you do not return the stream of its own blood back

to it, which is its naLural menstruum, its Woman and its Spirit together, that to which it is united so tightly as to constitute nothing less than one and the same substance."
Dorn⁷ says, "From the pale body we separate with the blood, this Soul, which ls such a prize for us that we consider all bodies vile"; and for Braccesco, the incorruptible and quintessential Materia that we must extract from the corrupted elements is drawn from human bloodr and in the Great Book of Nature, the tinctura microcosmi magi store is explained as "human blood for making the lamp ot life.’’⁹ Finally, in Artephius the " Water that changes Bodies into Spirits, strip­ping them of their corporeal grossness,” the "Sanguinary Stone" and the "power of the Spiritual Blood, without which nothing can be made,” all go together.¹⁰
The symbol of the crossing of the Red Sea, likewise employed in hermetism,¹¹ can be introduced into this same order of allusions: especially if we recall that in some gnostic schools, whose symbols we have drawn parallels with those in henneries on several occasions, it was taught that "to come out of Egypt means to come out of the Body" and "to cross the Red Sea is to cross the Waters of corruption, Waters that are nothing less than Chronos," explaining that "that which Moses calls Red Sea is the Blood," and declaring with authority that "in the blood flashes the flaming sword barring access to the Tree of Life.’’¹⁷
So we come to the idea of an operation and transformation chat is found in the subtle principle of the blood by virtue of the Art, whose sense once more appears ' G. Dorn. Gavis, 3, §14.