Symbols ana a

cbe cubice cuork:
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M M ■ hi ten ess—light, spring, resurrection, life, flow-
■ ering, birth, etc. -hermetically expresses the state of active ecstasy that uplifts the human condition. It regenerates, restores the memory, reintegrates the personality with the noncorporeal srate. "What more can I say, my son ?" reads the Corpus Hermecicum, "Only this: a simple vision [anXo.oxov\ has taken place in me ... 1 have come out of myself and have clothed myself in a body that does not die. I am no longer the same, I have been intellectually born ... I no longer have a color, nor am I tangible or measurable. All of that is now alien to me . . . and I no longer see with physical eyes.^1,1 Tills Is the foundation that we must bear in mind when we encounter the expressions of the enciphered tanguage referring to the experience of Mercury or divine Water and, in particular, the albedo.
"The life-giving Magic Light” drawn from the center of the "Elemental Cross” (seat of the heart, see page 82), the "clearest water" or Mercury, is—according to Della Riviera—"the Spirit of the World Soul" [Archeus] and in this "are all things seminally contained." Tire author then explains that in this "Heaven” there is no "reunion of soul and body”; rather "the body is included in the nature of the soul and is almost die soul itself, extensive, visible , . . light without matter or dimensions.” And he repeats. ³⁶¹
Tliis celestial Mercury is spirit being perfect lucidity . . . nature in itself britliant and transparent, almost diaphanous, and illuminated ... not subject to any alien mixture or any passion; an act of pure intelligence, having an invisible and incorporeal illumination that is the source of this visible light."²
So the conferring of such a principle means transmutation (the first of the alchemical transmutations) and resurrection. "When the White, appears in the. materia of the Great Work, Life has conquered Death, their King has been resus­citated, Earth and Water have been converted into Air, it is the Regime of the Moon and the Son has been born.” Then the Materia has acquired such a degree ■ if fixation that the Fire can no longer destroy it (it is "the stability of the mttitiate," no longer conquerable by death"). "When the artist sees the perfect whiteness, the .hermetic] Philosophers say that the moment of tearing up the books has arrived because at that point they are no longer of any use.
An Arab text asks, "What do we call combustion, transformation, disappear­ance of darkness and production of the incombustible compound? All these terms apply to the compound at the moment of its turning white.”⁴
Artephius speaks of "that which is clear, pure, spiritual and lifted up by the Air," :arther on he speaks of "turning into Air,”⁵ and then of being made alive with Life and made completely spiritual and uncorruptible, as the feeling that marks the sublimation, conjunction and elevation, in which the whole compound is made white.’^,fl "Pure, subtle, brilliant, clear as the dew, diaphanous as unflawed crystal,” these are, for Basil Valentine, equivalent to the qualities of "our Living Silver,” extracted from the best Metal by Spagyric Art, that is, by separation. The Syrian texts refer to it as "matter that turns copper white, white cloud, Water of clarified Sulfur, transparency [Stoy/ig], mystery unveiled.”⁷