Symbols ana a

Thirty-Six
cpe peRmecic
plRes
Before concluding these. preliminary remarks about tech­nique and getting on with it, we need to mention some­thing about the Kres employed in the Work by the
hermetic masters.
"Without fire,” it is affirmed, "the Matter is useless and the Philosophical Mercury is a chimera chat lives only in the imagination. It is on the rule of Fire that everything depends.”¹ And we need hardly belabor the fact that this is not vulgar, physical fire,
Crassellame scorns those who "flutter day and night around stupid coal fires." He calls them "singed moths” and adds: "In what kind of flames do you persist? k is not violent coal, or inflammable kindling that the wise use for the hermetic Stone."^{351 352 353} And many other authors mock the "charcoal-burners” and the "puffers”— Pernety would like to possess the. ” voice of Stentor” to denounce them—saying that the hermetic fire is a fire that does not burn, it is a magic fire, an interior fire, subtle and occult. "The Opus is accomplished neither by (vulgar) Fire nor by the hands, but only by means of the inner heat,'^ as with a "rising fever,” as the Turba philosophorum reveals to those who understand.

On the other hand, the hermetic Philosophers recognize various fires, which are to be brought together in the work so that one may help the other. The main difference lies between "natural Fire" and "Fire against nature." Unnatu- -al Fire is the Fire of the hermetic Art referring to the aspect of the "one thing" as the basis on which it is "Nature that dominates itself," "that kills itself” and thus is capable of reacting against the fact of being in order to infuse in it a higher discipline that sustains the fallen and erring natures, "rec­tifying” them."⁴ After which, the two fires—that of the Art, directed by the operator’s will, and that of Nature, which is the vital fire, that is to say the psychophysical fire, by which perhaps it can refer again to the heat of the heart and the blood (in *£)--are united and, as has been said, the one increases, iorcifies, and develops the action in the inner depths of the other. Besides the fire called intermediate, unnatural, and composite, a third is mentioned, the Tire that kills," which recalls the primordial "fixations," that is to say the absolute individualization of the force.
But the first of these fires, if it is not tire of wood, neither is it a simple state of feeling but an "enthusiasm" of the spirit intensely energized, which is concen­trated and reunited in itself, as one that embraces, shelters, nourishes, cooks, and loves." And all of a sudden a special and subtle warmth permeates the whole body
In the Orient they speak precisely of such an inner heat on which meditation is concentrated, a heat that is not just physical or psychic, which is evoked by special practices (for example, that of the breath) that produce special effects and favor the meditation and the awakening of the power contained in the formulas and symbols of initiation."
All of this is proposed as a guide for the interpretation of expressions in the texts that are routinely encountered in great ahundance. We shall limit ourselves to quoting Pernety, for whom "the philosophical Fire is that with which the philoso­phers wash the materia, that is, purify the Mercury"; and the "unnatural Fire," or intermediate," is the "result of the union of the natural Fire and the Fire of the philosophers which is against nature,” This unnatural Fire is the cause of the putrefaction and death of the composition and of the perfect and true philosophical solution"—and to this Fire "against nature” remains the task of "reanimating the ' The two symbols have another meaning. The natural Fire is that which has been specialized and personalized. The Fire against nature, on the otfier hand, is the not yet individualized power of creation and, as such, antithetical to the first: for which we sometimes refer to the Mercury in the free state as the "poisonous” Mercury. Cf. dTspagnet, (Arcanum hermeticae, BCC2, §54): "The Fire against nature is contained in the stinking menstruum, which transforms our stone into a certain poisonous Dragon, powerful and voracious."
Cf A. David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tiber (1932; reprint. 1971), passim; cf. "Psydiische Schulung in Tibet,” in Die Christ liche Weft, nos, 1, 2, 3, (1928), Bacor, Vie dc MHare pa, 157, 196.


143

The Hermetic Fires

hidden Fire in che ocher, liberating it from the prison in which ic has been locked."³⁵⁴
The Dc pharmaco cathohco also concerns itself with the three "hermetic" or "magical" fires., without which the "solution" cannot take place, pointing out by symbols che functioning of each; the text calls one of them "sympathetic” (in sympathy with the other profound and primordial Fire of the telluric entity), and says that it is increased by the careful kindling of the igneity of the metals, but as soon as the ignition occurs one must be sure to corporealize the Soul in order to keep it from dissolving in Air, by the action of such Fire (which returns the various powers to the undifferentiated point).³⁵⁵
And Artephius speaks of the three Fires and calls the first "Fire of the Lamp”— that is, light-Fire, illuminated Fire—"continuous, humid, airy, proportioned”; the second Ls the "Fire of the ashes,” that is, a fire that is sheltered in the interior, analogous to the so-called natural Fire, on which the athanor is placed; finally there is the Fire against nature, "Our Water,” which is related ro the Fountain, and destroys, dissolves, calcinates.³⁵⁶ But often these three Fires are used in the texts as symbols to mean the three phases of the Work.
The operators next call special attention to the Regimen of the Fire that "must maintain itself constantly at the same temperature and never go out.” Nature itself will indicate to the enlightened mind the intensity of the occult Fire.³⁵⁷ The prescriptions, as a rule, are of this type; "Ye must not force the Fire at the beginning of the Work on the Mercury, or it will be volatilised. But once having achieved the fixation, then die Mercury resists the Fire [that is, the "ego” active element can be made to intervene, without running the risk of the "Mercury” consciousness disappearing, and returning to the conditionalities of the body], and resists it all the more for having been in combination with Sulfur.”³⁵⁸ With a slow and patient reheating, with continous, gentle heat, it must be worked until one
obtains the "occult World Spirit" (Arcbeus) locked inside the symbolic Stone.¹¹


145
We shall abstain from further references because they would only lead us into mote complicated mazes of the secret alchemical language. Who now possesses his own trusty thread of Ariadne, can venture farther by himself.^{359 360} The general prescription is always to avoid using violent fires at the beginning, because the purpose is to awaken not the exterior and impure fire (the Red that appears prematurely), but the deep fire, which is at the same time Gold and Sun, enclosed within the body "and is not awakened before the [sense of) body has been dis­solved. ’’ For this purpose one must first have reached the Water and the rebirth in the Water; whereafter the Water is extracted and flees from the violent Fires, which necessarily arc stamped by the impure and terrestrial element of the person. The calm fire, subtle and illuminated, that "cookslittle by little, is that which must be used until the. mortification and the revelation of the Light, unless one may have chosen those particular methods of the aforementioned wet path that so frequently have the drawback of raising the residual and combustible, parts along with the subtle principles.