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e have spoken of the active ecstasy in which liberation and transfiguration are exactly balanced by an equal degree of affirmation, in which any giving over to rapture or "combustion” is arrested and frozen. So we can speak of a "fixation'' which is like an experience with­out form. From this, however, there may proceed another kind of experience, which is first set in motion by a descent that completely defines and confirms what is achieved.
The sensation of the body is introduced into the new state, experiencing corporeality as a function of the state of "light,” "day,” "life,” etc.—and, vice versa, that experience becomes a function of the new corporeality. The result, :n a special sense, is what is called the "White Stone”: the first embodiment or projection of the spirit, the resurrection, by which the remaining dark dregs become white and a detached new form arises, abandoning the "sepulchre"; whereupon the consciousness of the body is transported into the full expres­sion of those energies by which the body lives. The hermetic masters, refer­ring to the ancient myth, call this new "body" their Diana and say: "Blessed
i-c the Ac ten ns who succeed in seeing cheir Diana naked,"¹ chat is, seeing her completely, beyond the terrestrialky she had been hiding behind; and thereby they also say that their scone "espouses a celestial nymph, after she has been stripped of her terrestrial form, to become with her a single thing.”^{381 382} This is the first hermetic transmutation: from the Lead or Copper to Silver.
Let us quote in this regard a few words that are characteristic of Gichtel: "In the regeneration we do not receive a new Soul, but do receive a new Body. . . . This Body derives from the Word of God or the heavenly Sophia (symbols equivalent to the heavenly Waters], which appears rising from the holy and inner Fire of Love ... it is spiritual [this body], more subtle than air, similar to the rays of the Sun that penetrate all corpora, and as different from the old body as the brilliant Sun from the dark earth;³⁸³ and though it remain in the old body, is inconceivable and incomprehensible to it. chough at times it is felt.’³⁸⁴ And Artephius says, "Our Bodies are raised up in a white color, over the dissolving Waters, and this whiteness is Lite”; with it "the Soul enters the Body, and this Soul is more subtle than Fire, being the true Quintessence and the Life that asks only to be born and to be stripped of the gross, earthly dregs.”³⁸⁵
From what the literature says, concentrating on the stone we must embody the spirit and spiritualize the body in one and the same act. Silver, the hermetic "White Rose,” first efflorescence of the seed sown in our earth,³⁸⁶ corresponds then to the " astral and radiant body” avyoeidig ij asitoeidEq of Philoponus, to the Homeric aerosome, and, in a certain measure, to the Pauline, but above all Gnostic, "resur­rection body"— offl/ua KvehjiaxiKov. The most "noble” quality of Silver is found in Pelagias’s teaching, according to which the subtilization produced by the Divine Water confers iosis, the active virtue, on the bodies, the general idea being that bodies in the Mercury pass from potential to actual; all this leads us back again to
:he aristotelian and neoplatonic conception according to which every material thing, as such, is nothing more than something sketched out, a projected design that tends to be, but is not, because there can be no "being” in the world of becoming.
The same applies to human embodiment, which in its materialization almost expresses the stoppage and fading of an intellectual power whose complete attain­ment is the "body” of the regenerated ones (first with the white, then with the red), and which is designated also by the term—cratfia reXeiov the perfect body. Tills -_s why the hermetic authors insist that the transmutation is not an alteration but quite the reverse—a perfection, integration, realization, and consummation of something that is imperfect, a multiplication and vivification of the power of that which was "dead.”
The phase of simple fixation of the Waters and that of the extraction of the Diana or Moon can, in practice, be confused with one another. Tills is especially so in the dry path, since on this path, from the beginning, we are dealing with something at once corporeal and noncorporeal, active and passive, that is, of one nature or the other. In any case, the formula—to release the corporeal and to embody the noncorporeal—as we have said, is a recurrent and central theme of the whole tradition. The hermetic masters recognize the difficulty of actively main- raining themselves in a purely noncorporeal state; which is why they say, unani­mously, that the complete fixation is reached by simultaneously making the spirit body and the body spirit.⁷ They admit the necessity of the body as support for the rixation and as antidote against the danger of escape and dissolution.⁸ Even if the sudden repeated "precipitation” had not the power to transmute the materia into oure silver, a cycle of successive sublimations (separations) and precipitations return to the body) all the way to completion would be desirable, in order not to lose contact with that which—although only in the Earth state—possesses in itself, neverthless, the condition for individualization and the seed for the Red Work and the "Diadem of the King.”⁹ As a general precept, there always remains: solvc et soagulzL.
And Potier explains: "If these two words are too brief and unphilosophical
Cf. Livre d Arccphius (BPC, 2:168): "The solution of the body and the coagulation of the spirit take place in one and die same operation.” Cf. also Pernexy, Dicdonnaire, 532.
‘ Livre d'Artephius, BF’C, 2:122, Cf. also from the Syrian texts {CMA, 2:84): "The Water requires perfect bodies, the reason being that after having dissolved them it congeals, fixes and joins with them, .n a white earth”; Flamel (Desir desire, 318): "Tine Mercury is fixed by means of that in which it is contained," that is, the body; and the Turba (§40): "The spirit is not congealed except through the dissolution of the body and the body is not dissolved but through the congelation of the spirit.”
Cf. Zacharias {Philosophic nature!!? des inetaux 532, 534): "It is necessary to be attentive and vigilant mi as not ro miss the right time for the birth of Our Mercurial Water, to unite it with our own body.”
for you, 1 will speak more broadly and comprehensively. Solve is to convert the body of our magnet into pure spirit. Coagula is to make this spirit corpo­real again, according to the precept of the philosopher, who says: "Convert the Body into Spirit and the Spirit into Body. Who understands these things will possess everything and who does not understand them will have noth­ing.’’^{387 388} To the solve corresponds the symbol of the ascent; to the coagula corresponds that of the descent. According to the hermetic literature, the ''de­scent" refers to the Water of Life that restores life to the "dead," and takes them out of their graves. It is the first liberation of the titanic vulture that cried out from the top of the symbolic mountain that he was "the whiteness of the black."
If we were to provide quotations referring to this phase of the Work we would never come to the end of them. All references speak of it; although they seem to say different things, they all say the same thing with diverse and complicated symbols. The expressions appropriate to the White Work, however, are often woven into those peculiar to the Red Work, because the two proceedings run analogously. We shall limit ourselves to two or three examples and refer the reader to the texts in which, if he has acquired intelli­gence, he will gradually be able to orient himself with the help of what we have said up to this point.
In one of his customary graphic analogies, Zosimos speaks of’ the Copper Man, "Chief of the sacrificial priests and himself an object of sacrifice [at the same time]—he who vomits his own flesh and to whom has been given the power over these waters,” and who upon the altar says: "1 have completed the task of descending the fifteen steps into the darkness as well as the task of returning thence to rise into the light. The Sacrificial Priest renews me by casting out the denseness of my body. And so ordained as a priest by means of the compelling power [of the Art], T am become a spirit ... 1 am the one that is [d)v) the priest of the Temple."¹¹ And the Copper Man, in a vision, is transformed into the Silver Man in the splendid form of the god Agathodaimon.³⁸⁹ In technical terms, it is always said in the Greek alchemical texts that from rhe. stone rises a spirit like a cloud that rises up— vstfiikr} diaf5atvet¹³—and :he fixation of this spirit in our Copper produces Silver, k comes down to a matter of projection—imf3aXXsi—on the bodies of the sublimated, (that is, liberated spirits, which makes them unite with the inner nature, or Soul— y/oxfj— :n spiritualized bodies—atbpa rcvsDpazixdy—to the point of taking over the Matter and dominating it, while they are made corporeal and fixed ready to produce Silver and Gold. ¹⁴
An Arab text says more clearly that what is to be fixed in the body, until the "Body and Spirit share a single nature,” is the "vital element,” and that this is the symbolic "tincture" and the "path followed by the prophets, by the saints and by a// philosophers."^{1390 391} Flamel teaches that, on descending, the Na­tures "are transmuted and transformed into Angels'>Angels, that is, they become spiritual and very subtle”;¹⁶ and the De pharmaco catholico describes the transforma­tion that takes place in the organic structure of the body as follows: "Freed M all pollutions and earthly encumbrances, reduced and reconverted into clari- :ied Salt and illuminated soul, this liquid, [because it has been dissolved in water], drinkable Gold will be dissolved in the body or human stomach, and diffused little by little—or invade the body rapidly—until it occupies every member and the entire blood system, in order to exercise [as befits a universal pharmaceutical] a general effectiveness all the way up to the ultimate miracle.”¹⁷
Nor do we wish to omit reference to the hermetic interpretation of the same myth in the Gospels serving as operations of the Royal Art. After the 'iId man has been put up on the cross, he is then placed in the sepulchre nigredo). Awakened to new life after having been hidden in the depths of the Earth, in Hell, he first takes celestial form and then human (ascent and de­scent) with the purpose that in the Pentecost "the Holy Ghost comes down :o impregnate the entire Body and free it from death”:¹⁸ whence the relation­ship with the "birth, from dead flesh, of another celestial and living Body thac knows and comprehends the Light.”³⁹² An analogous exegesis can also be applied to the Old Testament: It is said, for instance, that Moses ascending Mount Sinai after seven days (possible allusion to the purification of rhe seven: see pages 60-61; regarding the symbolism of the "ascension” and the "mount,” see note 10 on page 128), enters the cloud animated by a consuming Fire. Upon descending from it he has a form and "face” that irradiate light.³⁹³ Ac­tually the symbols agree with those of alchemy: for "cloud,” as we know, in the enciphered language, is a frequent name for the product of separation and the texts often say that a Fire is hidden in it; this Fire, apart from the power also designated as "venom,” can also signify the potentiality of the following "red” stage. The radiant form is the "body of life” or Diana, regenerated and liberated. The hermetic exegesis can also be applied to the Flood, which expresses the "dissolution” phase, while the successive retreat from the Wa­ters corresponds to the desiccation that gives way to the fixation of the vola­tile, the coagula. After which, the black raven no longer returns. A white dove instead brings an olive branch, the semper Virens that symbolizes the renewed and everlasting life of the regenerated³⁹⁴ as well as the "peace” to follow. As sigil of the alliance between ^r'Heaven” and "Earth” the seven col­ors of the rainbow that appears in the "cloud” are manifested.^{395 396}
We may also refer to the ascent of Elijah on Mount Horeb, also called the "Mount of the Lord,” which, however, etymologically has a possible relation to desolation, desert, raven, and solitude,²² that is, with the inner states that are manifested in the work of mortification and purification. And it is on Horeb that the manifestation of the Angel of the Lord takes place, in a Flame of Fire, and the revelation of the "1 am that I am.”³⁹⁷ Also, the symbol of
desert returns in the forty days of Jesus' retreat, and in the myth of a thirsty Dionysus, to whom Jupiter appears In the form of a ram ( Y ), the sign that evokes Sulfur or Fire? Fire which in Chaldean is expressed by the same word, Ur, by which the Old Testament refers to the companion of Moses in his retreat (also of forty days), who leads him across the desert to a fountain, in which he quenches his thirst.²'’ The number forty reminds us also of the num- her of hours that Jesus lay in the "sepulchre," and that in the calendar of Catholic feast days, after Carnival follows Ash Wednesday and a period of mortification of forty days, culminating in Easter with the resurrection. Eas­ter is immediately preceded by Palm Sunday, which reveals the well-known vegetable symbolism and is also associated with the symbols of Egg and Lamb, ?r Aries. We have then, again in Aries Y\ the allusion to the power of Fire and "transcendent virility” (fos, virtus, vis, virya, see chapter 24) and at the ^ame time the astrological indication of the correct date for Easter, which tails on the spring equinox, under Aries. But at this moment a new associa­tion of symbols appears to us, now that in spring the Earth and the dead bark ("cortex”) open, and grasses, vegetation, and flowers rise, that is to say, the emergences of the "powers” takes place. Many alchemists for their part— now Olympiodorus, now Rhases, Rudfenus, the Cosmopolite, etc.—say chat the beginning of the work (in the sense of the first positive result) is obtained when the Sun enters Aries; and Pernety^{398 399} informs us of the correspondence rxtween the immaculate Lamb, consecrated at Easter, and the "purified Mat­ter of the philosophers.”
This is one of chose many cases of strange and exact concordance of traditional >vmbols resulting in a kind of illuminating short circuit in the sign of universality
Returning to the practice, it must be noted that the "descent” and the new contact with the corporeal constitute the most propitious condition for the even­tual return of those old resistances that we have discussed, owing to incomplete purification (see page 126ff.). We must be able, if that happens, to repeat the Herculean labor of the Erymanthean boar sent by Diana, which could only be tethered when, after the falling of the white snow, the. animal was obliged to find refuge in a small fruit orchard.
We shall now quote Stephanius once more: "Do battle, Copper! Do battle, Mercury! Unite rhe male with the female. Here is the Copper chat receives rhe red color and the ios of the golden tincture: it is the decomposition of Isis . .. Do battle, Copper! Do battle, Mercury! The Copper is destroyed and deprived of its body by
Mercury and the Mercury remains fixed by virtue of its combination with the Copper.”⁴⁰⁰ This is the battle of the "two natures," of the "Equilibrium of the Water,” which again requires a subtle and sublime art so that the one of the natures does not destroy, by some excess, the other; so that the corporeality and the human form of the ego do not tend to reestablish themselves as a new, if not even stronger prison; or that the spiritual is not transformed into a poison that corporealization can no longer support and use for its transfiguration.⁴⁰¹