Symbols ana a

Forty-Two
Ct>€ RCO UUORK:
ReCURD CO CARCb
/ / B e have taken somewhat longer with these ob-
B servations because up to a certain point, what is true of the working of the White is also true of the Red. In fact, the distinction between these two phases (corresponding to the terms "small” and "great medicine”) is simply one of incensicy; they are two successive moments in the same process of "fixation.” If the first labor is assigned to the Moon, certainly, as we have seen, the masculine Sun also plays a part. To arrive at the red all that needs to be done is to increase the Fire, which is now no longer united with the body by the Water, but directly, arriving by virtue of its nature at a depth the previous work had not touched: where the "limestone,” the "almighty giant’’⁴¹⁵ lies sleeping.
If we stop at the White Work we are reunited with Life, but Life that has a certain given form, subject to a kind of internal law that arises at once and which when followed, achieves its purpose but is not its own origin; much as one who having in his head a thought or feeling could represent or write about it freely but could not claim he was himself its creator.
When we spoke of the quadripartition of the human being (page 46), we saw that
it is not in its vital energies themselves that the order of the body lies but, more deeply, in its mineral!ty, in its telluric, determined, unanimous essentiality, over which the laws of the physical world (Earth element) dominate, and not laws of biology or psychology. This aspect of the body is the first basis of its form and individuation. And behind chat are hidden the primordial powers of all form and individualization. But when by increasing the Fire the clean, clear, life-bestowing water is reabsorbed, we come into contact with this region no longer via the ^ energies, but through the individuating ^ actions. In this way a new solve is obtained and a corresponding coagula imposed; and that is what constitutes the Red Work.
The ego is transformed by these actions, and is these actions—the "Fires of Saturn,'' the Gods of the "Golden Age’’—to the point of reducing completely one s own individualization to that function of "nature which is dominated by itself’’ and corporeality to something that expresses nothing better than this same domina­tion. It is to this stage that we attribute the purple, the sceptre, the crown, and all the other symbolic elements of royalty and empire. For only here is the regenera­tion complete. On the other hand, in this Wbrk—in the coaguia to which we refer— the supreme energy of the spirit is obliged to manifest: an idea clearly expressed in the formula of the Emerald Tablet that says the Telesma, "strong strength of all strength,” is complete in its power only when it has been "converted into Earth,”^{416 417}And the Greek texts concur when they represent the third phase after the ntgredo and the albedo as the true reanimation of the Fire- ava^convpcooig—and the resurrection of the dead.-
Characteristically, teachings of every tradition agree that we must not stop with the "White’' Work. "The white elixir is not the ultimate perfection, because it still lacks the Fire⁴¹⁸ element as resurrection of the primordial Fire thirsting for the telluricity of the Body "In the philosophic Saturn resides the authentic resurrection and the truly inseparable life,’’ it is said elsewhere ⁴¹⁹ "Tire Earth found at the bottom of the cup (that is, the body, as that which remains after removing the subtle principles] is the Gold mine of the Philosophers, the Fire of Nature and the Fire of Heaven,”⁴²⁰ whence we can return to the different quotations already annotated (see p. 68ff.) about the richness of the scum, ashes, dregs, and other residues of earth, where in reality the "titan'’ hides, the "consummated act,” the "Diadem of the King,” the true Gold of the Philosphers, etc.
Here again, by the act of awakening and being awakened at the same time (the deep powers produce a transfiguration of the principle that has awakened them, in which, in the final analysis, they still participate), the mineral body, so to speak, returns the ego to the consciousness of its primordial and absolute act, of which the body expresses petrification, the neutralized state, sleep, and the mute state of dark slavery.^{421 422 423} The Silver then is transmuted into Gold, not only as life and "light” ^ (since spirit and body now form a single thing), but also as pure ego 0.
The Greek literature speaks of a virility, or Arsenic, prepared with Egyp­tian niter (niter 0 again, indicates the specifically masculine qualification of the spiritual energy—while the "Egypt’’ in these doctrines is often the equiva­lent of a symbol for the body and of such a force 0 as is produced in the body) and they teach how to extract the divine water— Qsia u5ara -from such substance, in which the spirits (then) take corporeal form: elevating themselves as divine or sulfurous mysteries—feta pvovf\piazs celestial bodies—ovpavia (jcttpaza—and redescending "to the darker depths of the infernal, of Hades" (technically it is the inferior site ^<Y\ of which we spoke on page 46, the organic correspondence of the "will” principle), and there they meet with the crude masses of "our Earth,” that "Ethiopia," equivalent to the Lead and the Saturn of the later texts; they are rhe dead— veKpoig—who are reanimated— OvTJTOC Ep\f/DXOVVtCtt~2.ad by alteration and transformation— aXXoicocn^ fCOCl pExafiohi]—rectified, so that the black Earth produces precious stones, divine bodies—Beta a(bpaza^s Speaking comprehensively there is an "essential men­struum that washes the Earth and is raised to a quintessence in which the sulfurous thunderbolt in one instant penetrates the bodies and destroys the excrements.
Let us see what Eliphas Levi has to say: "The power that proceeds from the gold is comparable to lightning that, at first, is a dry terrestrial exhalation united with the humid vapor but then, when exalted, takes on a fiery quality and acts on the humidity inherent to it, attracting it and agitating it in its own nature, until it precipitates dizzyingly to Earth, where a fixed nature similar to its own [corresponding to the "projection’¹ of the primordial act that has determined the essentiality of the physical form] attracts it,”^{424 425} Synesius says that with the ''descent" the airy substance begins to coagulate whereupon the Fire Devourer appears, from which proceeds the destruction of the humidity, that is, the root of the waters, the ultimate calcination and fixation.¹¹ The philosophic basilisk—says Crollius^{426 427}--in the guise of a thunderbolt instantly penetrates and destroys the "imperfect metals." Now we have repeatedly referred to the correspondence of such a bolt with that by which the "titans” were struck. We need only add that the "imperfection of the metals" means specifically debility and insufficiency (the "incurable disease of privation") with regard to the total action: that of identify­ing oneself with the original power in order to be reintegrated super naturally—but to avoid being "fulminated.” Such is the perfection of the Opus Magnum or Great Work.
just as there has been a "trial by Water” and a "trial by the Void,” so in the new experience we can expect a "trial by Eire,” more risky but to no different purpose. But in the first trial the separation of the vital principle from the denser body combination that kept it immobilized did not affect the combination itself, which went on existing and kept the seals of individuality. But now these seals have been broken and we pass beyond the absolutely undifferentiated point, beyond the point from which every individuating act successively has taken origin, but that as such can likewise serve as the central point oi the "great dissolution” and, to tell the truth, not only with regard to the human condition or to some other particular state conditioned by this or any other "world,” but in general. Every awakening demands an act of mastery (the repetition of a primordial act of control) so that the revived Fires do not act destructively.
According to some texts both operations, the white and the red, blend into one another to some extent.¹³ In any case, only when the consciousness has been "subtilized” so that the ego learns a mode of being that is no longer supported by the corporeal and rs able to perceive the forces directly and not
by the sensations or emotions of the body, only then can one hope to reach the depth of the Earth and there find no limits, but the beginning of the awakening of a higher wave in an absolute self-union, a resurrection without residue.'⁴ The separate phases are always: first, the tincture. that is, the infu­sion of © or A into then penetration, realised by means of which is introduced into the forms animated by it; and finally, fixation, in the full manifestation of the primordial forces contained in such forms.'^{1 14} See Livrz de HI Habir (CMA, 3:107): "The soul cannot tint the body, if one has not extracted the spirit hidden within it; then Body is left without Soul (the dross or scum), during which we possess a spiritual nature whose gross and terrestrial parrs have been eliminated. When this has been made subtle and spiritual, it is in condition to receive die tincture that is introduced into the Body and tints it.” Geber, Surnnva (BCC1:537): "The dissoludon takes place with die help of the subtle, airy, caustic Waters free of all sediment. It fias been fabricated by rendering more subtle the things that are not fusible or penetrable [/us/oncm ncc ingressionem habent) that possess very useful fixed essences, which would be lost without this operation, ’’ Cf. Arnold of Villanova, Thesaurus (in BCC, 1:665): "Nisi corpora fiunr incorpnrea nihil operamini” [Unless the bodies are made incorporeal your work comes to naught)
^1-5 The three powers of the xenon or Projecdon Fbwder: pa^rj, sicrKpicng, k&to%ov, according to rbe Greek alchemists (CAG, 2:205). The alchemical idea expressed by the symbol of the "grain of incombustible Sulfur" has its correspondence in that other symbol of the "tiny bone,’’ called luz, from which, according to Agrfppa (Dc uccuita philosophic, 1.20), "as plant grows from seed, the body is regrown in die resurrection and which has the virtue, moreover, of not having been destroyed by the fire.”