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Once its "location" and meaning have been established, we must return to the importance of conferring an active character on the experience. It is necessary to recover the magical heroic sense hidden in the symbolism, according to which the Divine Water is represented by a Virgin, who is the Mother with respect to that which is reborn¹ out of her by "immaculate conception" (autogenesis, spiritual endogenesis), and simultaneously the Wife of this her own son who, serving as the male, possesses and impregnates her.
According to another allegory in the literature, while the mother engenders the son, the son engenders the mother, that is, his act accompanies, creatively and exactly, the entire process—provided this is always in accordance with "the rules of the Art,’’ This generation of the Mother purifies her (what purifies is also purified), and at the same time it transforms the "Whore of Babylon”^{365 366} into a virgin.
Here we have the "fixating” action that the reborn Gold, almost by its sheer

presence, exercises over the evoked power. If it has not been dissipated, the power is relieved of its desire nature and its "viscosity,” by which it had been attracted and enslaved by everything (symbol of the whore). It is then reduced to "aqua permanent” (Eternal Water). This is the result of the "philosophical incest.” "The True Mercury,” so says one text, "does not work alone, but must be fixed by Arsenic," that is by the Masculine.³⁶⁷ On his part Ostanes says that Mercury "used in the trial of souls,” "transformed into ethereal spirit [liberated or extracted) is launched into the upper hemisphere; descends and reascends avoiding the action of die Fire [equivalent to the Masculine or Arsenic) until upon its fugitive movement being stopped, it reaches the state of wisdom. First, it is difficult to retain it and it is mortal”;^{368 369 370} but in the Greek enigma of the "four syllables and nine letters,” knowledge of which confers wisdom, the key is, apasvuedv, Arsenic, equivalent to the fire avoided by the "Virgin,” the "fleeing demon,” which must be restrained.
Here the hermetic exegesis of classical mythology also intervenes: recall the labor of Hercules in which he conquers Achelous, son of Earth and Ocean, who has assumed the form of a river. Della Riviera explains that in allegory this is die resistance necessary to oppose the waters attempting to sweep away the Earth (that is, individualization, speaking generally) via the wet element still hidden in the substance, which causes the latter to try to dissolve itself. "But the hero battling pyronomically [that is, opposing the Fire state of the Spirit), finally overcomes the powerful flow of the stream, keeping it to the destined Earth [which here expresses the supernatural form of individualization).”'¹
In the same way, on the Porta Magica of Rome we read Aqua torrentum convenes in petr&m (You will converr the water of the torrents into stone—Trans.). Surely not standing alone is another inscription that announces that Our Son who was dead, lives, and the king has returned from the Fire (after having conquered the water) and enjoys the occult mating: Filius noszer morzuus viviz rex ab igne redit ct coniugo gaudez occuizof And again in Della Riviera: "Our Firmament is congealed Water in the likeness of the crystal which the Heroes are accustomed to call Dry Water or skinny water.” Finatly, the same concept of active congelation is also ingeniously related to the two "magical Angels”---now interpreted as the primordial forms in which the cosmic waters have been fixed—according to the formula: ANtico GELO [an Italian pun: literally "ancient ice,” and thence angelo or "angel”)³⁷¹

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The expression, already used in the Greek texts for the hermetic worker, "Lord the Spirit,” 0t3/lct^ nvsvpi&rov\ is found again in Basil Valentine, for whom man was ’’made Lord of this spirit [the mineral, required in the Work) to set it apart as something new, that is, a new world, having the power of fire.’’³⁷² The meanings as well as the expressions converge once again in the entire tradition. This is known as the hermetic "Coniunctio in White,” Incest, and Dominion over Life.

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sleep not just in the symbolic sense, but in fact. The nocturnal state of sleep can be considered that dark­ness that has to be thinned out of the Materia so that the inner Light can begin to shine, Apuleius’s "Sun shining in the middle of the night.” So it is that every night we naturally attain the "separatum" that the philosophers are seeking. As we have said before, we must actively work to witness it, as if we ourselves were the cause of its coming about, instead of falling into reduced and weakened states of consciousness.
Now perhaps we can understand these words of the Corpus Hcrmccicum: "The sleeping of the body became the lucidity vrjy/tg of die soul; when my eyes were closed they saw the Truth”; and also: "You can leave yourself without sleeping, just as they who, although sleeping and dreaming, arc not asleep.’’^{373 374} This explicit reference is of capital importance. It is an esoteric traditional teaching that there is a similarity between the mystery initiation—as partial catharsis with respect to death—and sleep that temporarily liberates the soul from the body by means of a separation that does indeed result in death if carried beyond a certain point.¹’ The

hermetic "diaphanum” is the Light that appears in the night for those who with dosed eyes attain, while still in life, the state of death,³⁷⁵ Once again, this Light is the ethereal and intelligible light of Mercury, which according to correspondences already mentioned, begins to shine in the symbolic "heart.”
We have previously emphasized the white character attributed by a Hindu text to the garment of the ’’Spirit consisting of knowledge” when, "once the conscious­ness has appropriated the vital spirits, it resides during the course of sleep in the ethereal space of the heart,”³⁷⁶ And the correspondence is too precise to leave any doubt about the recognition, also in this case, of one of the "constants” of the symbology and primordial initiatic science. We might also include the Pauline reference to the heart that watches while the ego sleeps and, especially the t olio wing quotation from the Qabalah: "When a person goes to his bed, his consciousness abandons him and goes up. But if every soul leaves the sleeper, not all rise to behold the countenance of the King . . . [the Soul] passes through numerous regions jumping from place to place. In its journey it places itself in contact with impure powers that constantly surround the sacred regions. If the soul is contaminated by impurities, it mixes with them and remains with them during the entire night. Other souls ascend to the higher regions, and even beyond them to contemplate the glory of the King and visit his palaces. ... A man whose soul teaches this supreme region every night can be assured that he will participate in the future life,” which, mind you, is not as some decrepit survival, but as immor­tality in the highest sense.^{377 378} Nothing less is the promise of initiation.
To arrive at the Light after the alchemical "black” means to possess the capacity to complete this "voyage” consciously entering thus into the supernatural vigil. "That which is night for creatures, is the time of awakening for the man who has dominion over himself, and the awakening of all beings is night for the Sage of penetrating mind”; it is in these Oriental terms⁵ that it is possible to express the conquest implicit in the realization of the white Work. We might also recall the battle of Jacob, who, once he was alone, engaged victoriously in battle against the Angel, or "Man,” for the whole night, overcoming and resisting him until the dawn, whereupon he came to see the face of God without dying.³⁷⁹ The hermetic

content of this myth is evident, even aside from the fact that the "Angel” is, not without reason, one of the secret names chosen by the hermetic masters to signify "the volatile matter of their Stone.”³⁸⁰
It has been said, besides, that alchemy repeats the theme of revelations concern­ing the Great Work obtained from the perspective of visions during dreams, the magical sleep, and analogous states; that is to say that they are allusions to a partial illumination dram adzed by fantasy and propitiated by a certain support of the waking consciousness when, in a natural way, the "separation” is attained once the eyes of the body have been closed.