This is not unrelated to what has been said in the Livrc dc la miscricnrdc (CMA, 3:182): "for the subtilizacion some employ external procedures and others penetrating procedures.’’
293
7 Among the methods indicated by the Creek alchemists to obtain the Mercury, those that proceed by desulfurization (iK&cieiv) of cinnabar (sulfur of mercury, whose Ted color expresses here, in the familiar symbolism, the active and intellectual qualities ot the ordinary personality), or by heating rhe metals with Vinegar (dissolvent), constitute the wet path. Those, on the other hand, who resort ro preparations of nitre— vixpeXaiov— belong to the other path. (The purifying power of niter 0 is indicated in Jeremiah 2:22).
294
7Introduction to BPC, cxi. Cf. Pernety. Dicrinnnzirc, 34; equivalent to rhe double Mercury, the hassem of the Arabs, symbolic alloy of Cold and Silver, which is where we are directed to begin.
295
Cf. Introduzionc alia magia, 2:352ft.; 3:1Ht. The correspondences established by the esoteric Hindu teaching between the seven virtues and rhe. seven passions and the seven centers ol life-like those be.twe.cn other groups of moral qualities, positive and negative, and the currents (nadi) running out of each of them—may serve to provide a basis for the practical development of these ideas.
The Dry Path an cl the Wet Path
