Symbols ana a

Thirty-Tli ree
oepuOAclons apd eclipses
Co a certain degree, the work of asceticism and purifi­cation is also a condition for the "wet path" by way of ’’preparation." ft so happens that every psychic clement remaining after the "separation" acquires the capacity to transform the most profound powers that manifest themselves. We encounter them polarized according to their nature. So, if the appropriate preparation has not eliminated the dregs of the passions, sensations, inclinations, and irrational complexes tenaciously rooted in the penumbra below consciousness, the result will be an inordinate empowerment of all these elements, which will then be transformed into so many different channels through which will violently course elemental energies never before imagined. Hence the saying: "Fire increases the virtue of the wise and the corruption of the perverse. ”¹ In the field of cognition all vision will be deformed, obscured, or falsified, if not replaced by mere hallucinatory projections of subjective impulses and complexes with repercussions in the organic functions. Every danger chat can overload the circuit with a high voltage that will limit resistance and the capacity for transformation is concentrated in the force field.
AH this must be expected if the "mortification” has been insufficiently rigorous. For this reason, the alchemists exhort us to beware of the rosy and golden colors that may appear after the black but before the white: they indicate a residue of the
i.ivrc de la. clcmcnce. CMA, 3:136.
ego quality (in the negative sense, as human ego in the animal body), that may alter the experience to follow; the true red color (active reaffirmation) must appear after the white, as only in the white can the new condition of existence be reached,²
On this subject Della Riviera says that it could happen that, once the Vulture of the dry and arid Earth³ has obtained a part of the "virgin’s milk reserved for feeding the delicate, newborn infant,” marvels and astonishments take place: "Eclipses, new darkness, furious winds, hurricanes and venemous breezes, which may cause you to think that they are neither infusion of the Soul nor an illumina­tion of the Body, but death and destruction for both.” Only after the heavens return to calm, will the earth depart from night, green and flowering: and the symbolic Child, divested of his many-colored garments, will assume a pure white attire, "symbol of celestial purity”—the albedo—after which will follow the royal purple and imperial sceptre.⁴ Andreae also mentions an unleashed wind and a darkening of the Moon,⁵ and Philalethes points out the malignity of Air (in the no-longer earthly state) and the formation of dark clouds that are cleared by the Waters (purified) up to the lunar whiteness.⁶
The Greek alchemists mention magical conjurations—SaifaovoKXrjcrvai—that they use for paralyzing the demons that might wish to prevent the divine Water from transmuting Copper into Gold/ demons that, aside lrom possible references to effective operations of ceremonial magic, have the same symbolic value as the onrush of unclean animals to drink the blood of the bull struck by Mithras. Only by scaring them off does the miracle of vegecation continue, which said blood causes to spring from the Earth.⁸ In the hermetic interpretation of the classical myths this is the labor that Hercules must fulfill by killing the Harpies, black birds ‘ R. Bacon, Speculum slchimiae, §6; cf. Albertus Magnus (Composition de compositis, §5): "Whiten ye the black earth before adding the fermenrarion [the active, or red, principle) . . . Sow ye your Cold in the White(ned) Earth.”

3. 
   This vulture, hidden in the Earth, char is in the Body, can be compared to the Promethean myth: it is the stolen, or infinite Fire (in hermetism the soul is called Prometheus as often as infinite), converted into the principle of thirst that consumes man in his fall, when he finds himself chained to the rock or Stone that is ’'fixed" in the body, and deprived of the Living Water, The "Vulture that shrieks from the mountaintop” is a frequent allegory in alchemical texts. Symbolically, the mountain expresses the highest state that can be attained while remaining on "Earth,” and rhe Vulrure of the Mountain aspires to fly into the Air and promises the supreme prize to the one who suffers him and restores ro him the "liquor" (dEspagnet).
   
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