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Thirty-Five
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rn the wet path of hermetism the repetition of sexual symbols occurs too frequently not to suggest a cer­tain foundation to the suspicion chat this tradition must also have possessed knowledge about another type of "corrosive waters” related to the power of disintegration that a woman exercises over a man when she unites with him in Love and the sexual act. As could be said of soma, so in this respect, it could be said that the "Woman’' of the Philosophers (symbol of the life-force), after a certain point, had ceased to be "known"; whereupon the terrestrial woman was substituted as a means of returning to the Life-force, by way of the dizzying ecstasy that eros can produce between two sexual beings.
Hence the idea of certain "operations using two vessels," to which we enig­matically allude in alchemy. The two vessels may also be interpreted as the bodies of two persons of different sex, which contain separately the two hermetic principles that in other alchemical practices are prepared together within a single being: the active and the passive, the golden force against the captivating and sympathetic wet force that "dissolves" the former in its own "enclosure.” So it would be possible to give a concrete interpretation, alongside the symbolic one, to such expressions as: "Our coporeal gold is as though dead before it unites with its
mace. Only then is the secret, interior Sulfur developed,"¹ and; "With the Sulfur of Venus, the inner Sulfur of man is rectified, reinforced and wholly perfected.”^{345 346 347} On this plane the phases of the rapture produced by the extraction, then by the arrest and fixation, which we have already seen in the symbols of cutting the wings of the Dragon at the height of its flight into the ether and the felling of the Bull at the end of his raging stampede, can be recognized behind the expressions of an alchemico-qabalistic text where the lance of Phineas appears (Numbers, 25:8), which "transfixed them in the moment of their union and in locis genitalibus, to the solar 0 Israelite and the lunar C Midianite . . . This biting fang, or power of Iron, acting on the Materia, purges it of all filth. The Israelite © is here no other than $ the masculine Sulfur [in its vulgar state); and by Midianite C we must understand V the Dry Water [here perhaps alluding to the mopping up of the superfluous moistures’ which by corresponding preparation the woman must have consummated in her sensitivity and faculty of sensation) duly mixed with the ore or red marcasite. The spear of Phineas not only cuts down the male Sulfur $ , but also mortally wounds the C, his female, and both die mixing their blood in a single procreation [supernatural rather than physical). Then the wonders of Phineas [who represents the operator) commence to manifest themselves.”²
The De pharmaco catbolico also mentions the extraction of the hot solar Mercury from the Ore of Venus by means of Tartarus (equivalent of chaos, the dissolving power of such symbolic combustions) and Sal Ammoniac, whose virtue of contraction, in contrast to the former, could have the same meaning as the aforesaid "lancing.”³⁴⁸ And if the hermetic texts frequently speak of a death that is the consequence of the coniimccio, of the "joining,” perhaps it also refers to the trauma that can occur at rhe height of the embrace and orgasm if subjected to a deliberate control.
In realiry, the lif e-force itself is eminently hidden in the energy of generation and here it is a matter of surprising it, arresting it, and taking possession of it at the moment it is turning to the procreation of another being. It appears naked, so to speak, in a nonindividuated state, which cannot transmit l.sclf from one being to another, if, for a moment, it does not pass through the free and undifferentiated stage. But this stage, in itself, is the "poisonous" aspect of Mercury, the state that kills. Thus it is possible to encounter in the sexual act a condition analogous to that in which, under the guise of an active death, the initiation is completed. Hence the sense of the double aspect of Love and Death in certain ancient dein'es.- Venus, as Libitina, is also a goddess of death-we read in a Roman inscription dedicated to Priapus: morn's et vitae'locus.⁵
The convergence of the various meanings is finally complete in the Hindu notion of kundalini, which is, at the same time, the Goddess and the "serpent power," the force chat has produced the organization of the body and continues to sustain it, the root of sex, the power manifested in death and separation, and the power used by the. yogis to cross "the threshold of Brahma” and break onto the "Royal Path.”⁶
In the alchemical texts we may find other allusions to the use of die power in man that manifests itself as sexuality: especially in the more or less direct references to Saturnal and Ammoniacal Sulfur that lies sleeping in the inferior seat T* (see page S3), and corresponds tonhe "Father”(Gichtel); and Infernal Niter ® that is a "fiery magical key,” an adversarial and destructive power for the other Sulfur, the exterior one (Depharmaco catholico). But when a similar power is found throughout a work, it is no longer the wet padi, even though it still has some of chose qualities, but it is now a path that, on the contrary, could be called ultra dry, inasmuch as it leads direcrly to the final "red” stage, jumping over all the intermediate phases, striking the Materia directly with the fiery lightning bolt contained in the interior of the tellurian and saturnine being, the same that brought down the Titans.
TItis is an extremely dangerous path! Geber calls it the "balance of Fire,” and considers it "extraordinarily difficult and perilous,” "a royal operation, prompt and quick,’’ but the sages reserve it only for princes, alluding to the presupposition of an exceptional qualification and natural ’'dignity.”⁷ Of the four ways that we are told

3.