Symbols ana a

Philosophic nzcurclk dcs me Unix, 4.531, 532.

Composition de compositis, §5.

ⁿ Cf. Cosmopolite, Novum lumen chemicum, 10, 50-51 ■ Livre d'Artcphius, BPC, 2:144. 117; Pernety, Diccionnairc, 354ff.

12. 
    CAG, 2:88.
    
13. 
    Ibid., 98, 192, 169ff.; 93, 95.
    

7S

Twenty-One
SAC URD:
inveRveo qolo
-
■ o bestow on these symbols a more concrete mean­
ing, we have to fall back on the quadripartite divi­sion (discussed on pages 47-49). Magical Lead more exactly corresponds to the terrestrial dement, to the minerality of the body, to that which in the body is obedient to the forces of the mineral kingdom (the skeleton). And that is just where the primordial state of the individual, Osiris, lies sleeping—and Saturn also, who was the king of the Golden Age: the metaphysical kingdom corresponding to the state of being in the absolute sense.¹ And if we remember that the calcareous element is expressed by the skeleton, the correspondences established by certain ancient texts, via pseudo­homonyms, the titanic element, the earth dement, and the calcareous dement are all very interesting. In one anonymous Greek text, Earth appears at the end, and the operation pertaining to it is called the almighty limestone¹ And Agathodaimon adds: "Such is the Word on lime, the omnipotent [or 'titanic — ritavog) lime, the invincible body, the only useful thing. . . . Whoever finds ^{203 204}

it, will triumph over the incurable sickness of poverty—tt)v aviaxov Ttsviav vdaogd But Plutarch informs us pcnia, "privation” or "misery,” is the materia thar "in and by itself is full of need; it is satisfied in full by the Good, ever inclining to it, tending to participate in its nature."^{205 206} Poverty, the "incurable sickness” is then the same state of privation that in "the matter” is the need, "thirst,” the "aqueous form"; and the Good is the actuality of the Absolute Individual bound to the "ominipotent lime,” to the resurrecton and transfigu­ration of the Titans. Once again we return to the same meaning.
Now that said correspondence, has been clarified, let us turn briefly to the myth of Saturn. Saturn also suffered emasculation, after which he hid in Latium but Latium (from latere.) is nothing more than a duplication of the idea of hiding oneself,²⁰⁷ of passing to a state of latency or silence (nonmanitestation),; we have explained the emasculation as the deprivation of the power, which is equivalent to the premature reaping of the corn and the biblical prohibition concerning the Tree of Life. Other possible meanings of the myth might be seen here in an allusion to the transformation of connections that refer to Lead in the sense of a corruptible body which Saturn himself devoured and destroyed.
Thus in alchemy we encounter a duplication: Saturn is the "ancient" and the "divine” (or sulfurous) and at the same time it is inverted Gold— Lead—as the vulgar body;²⁰⁸ it is the father of our Stone and that of the Philosophers²⁰⁹—in which, according to De pharmaco cathoiico, it is manifested as "cosmic spirit” with a "body and spirit-nature comparable to Arsenic,” that is, to the virile power par excellence. Boehme explains that Lead and Gold are produced in Saturn by the same