Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts

by Herbert Silberer

Figure 3.

Very frequently one finds in the alchemists images of death: grave, coffin, skeleton, etc. Thus in Michael Maier's, Atalanta Fugiens, the Emblema XLIV shows how the king lies with his crown in the coffin which is just opened. On the right stands a man with a turban, on the left two who open the coffin and let his joyful countenance be seen. In the Practica of Basilius Valentinus the illustration of the fourth key shows a coffin, on which stands a skeleton, the illustration of the eighth key (see Fig. 3), a grave from which half emerges a man with upright body and raised hands. [This reproduction [pg 200] and figure I owe to the kindness of Dr. Ludwig Keller and the publications of the Comenius Society.] Two men are shooting at the well known mark, [Symbol: Sol], here represented as a target (a symbol much used in the old lodges), while a third is sowing. (Parable of the sower and the seeds.) The sign is a clever adaptation of the sulphur hieroglyph and is identical with the registry mark of the third degree of the Grand Lodge Indissolubilis. The mark [Symbol: Half circle] on the wall is also a symbol of the academy; it is the half circle, man, to whom the light is imparted and means, when occurring collectively, the fraternity. The evident idea is of representing the exclusive society as enclosing wall. The angel with the trumpet is the angel of the judgment day who awakes the dead. With respect to the birds I refer to Matthew XIII, 4: “And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside and the fowls came and devoured them up.” In the text of Basilius Valentinus, the fourth key, there is mention of the rotting and falling to pieces with which we are familiar. The idea of dismemberment is not infrequently clearly expressed, more clearly than in our parable. Already in the oldest alchemistic manuals one operation is called the grave of Osiris. One of the manuscripts cited by Berthelot (Orig., p. 60) says: “The dragon is the guardian of the temple, sacrifice him, flay him, cut his flesh from his bones and thou wilt find what thou seekest.” The dragon is also called Osiris, with whose son Horus-Harpocrates, the skillful Hermes, is also identified. (Do we need [pg 201] reference to requirements in the 3d degree? J ... left his skin; ... B ... left his flesh...; M ... B..., he lives in the Son.)

Here more clearly than anywhere else we see the masonic symbolism combined with the myth of the first parents or creation myth. No matter where it acts, the myth-making power never seems willing to belie its laws. Also the tree growing out of the grave or the body of the dead ancestor is not wanting. (“... at the graves of our fathers.” “I was accused of a terrible crime.”) It is the acacia whose presence is rationalized apparently for the purpose of forming a sign by which to find again the place of the hastily buried.

An Egyptian fable tells of two brothers. The younger, Bata, was falsely accused by his sister-in-law (as was Joseph by Potiphar's wife). His brother Inpw (Anepu) consequently pursued him. The sun god made a mighty flood that separated the pursuer from the pursued. Bata castrated himself and threw his organ of generation into the water, where it was swallowed by a fish. Bata's heart later in the story is changed into a blossom of an acacia or a cedar. [I naturally lay no stress on the accident that the acacia occurs here. The point is that the tree is a symbol of life.] Bata is reconciled with Inpw and at parting relates to him that a mug of beer is to serve as a symbol of how the brother fares, who is dwelling afar off. If the beer foams he is in danger. Bata's wife has the acacia tree, on which Bata's heart is a blossom, felled, and as a [pg 202] result Bata dies. By means of the mug Inpw learns of Bata's peril and departs to look for his younger brother. Inpw finds the fallen acacia and on it a berry that is the heart of his brother transformed. Bata comes to life again and transforms himself into an ox. His wife has the ox butchered on the pretext of wishing to eat its liver. Two drops of blood fall from the cut throat of the ox upon the ground and are changed into two peach trees. Bata's wife has the two peach trees felled. A chip flies into her mouth. She swallows it and becomes pregnant by it. The child that she bears is the reincarnated Bata. He therefore lives again in his son as the child of a widow.

The second fragment of the Physica et Mystica of Pseudo Democritus, that Berthelot cites (Orig., p. 151) relates that the master died without having initiated Democritus into the secrets of knowledge. Democritus conjured him up out of the underworld. The spirit cried: “So that is the reward I get for what I have done for thee.” To the questions of Democritus he answered, “The books are in the temple.” They were not found. Some time thereafter, on the occasion of a festival, they saw a column crack open, and in the opening they found the books of the master, which contained three mystic axioms: “Nature pleases herself in Nature; Nature triumphs over Nature; Nature governs Nature.”

The quotations show, to be sure, only superficially the interrelation of alchemy and freemasonry. The [pg 203] actual affinity lying behind the symbolism, which, moreover, our examination of the hermetic art has already foreshadowed, will be treated later.

We could also posit a psychological interrelation in the form of an “etiological assumption” according to the terminology of psychoanalysis. It would explain the temporary fusion of alchemistic rosicrucianism with freemasonry. The rosicrucian frenzy would never have occurred—so much I will say—in masonry, if there had been no trend that way. Some emotional cause must have existed for the phenomenon, and as the specter of rosicrucianism stalked especially on the masonic stage, and indeed was dangerous to it alone, this etiological assumption must be such as to furnish an effective factor in masonry itself, only in more discreet and wholesome form. In masonry psychological elements have played a part which if improperly managed might degenerate, as indeed they did when gold- and rose-crossism was grafted on masonry. It appears to me too superficial to explain the movement merely from the external connection of rosicrucianism and the masonic system. Although the observation is quite just, it does not touch the kernel of the matter, the impulse, which only psychology can lay bare. Freemasonry must have felt some affinity with rosicrucianism, something related at the psychical basis of the mode of expression (symbolism, ritual) of both. Only the modes of expression of rosicrucianism are evidently more far reaching or more dangerous in the sense that they (the leadership of loose companions [pg 204] always presupposed) could sooner incite weaker characters to a perverted idea and practice of it.

That rosicrucianism in its better aspect is identical with the higher alchemy, can no longer be doubted by any one after the material here offered. The common psychological element is shown when, as will be done in later parts of this book, we go into the deeper common basis of alchemy and freemasonry. Then first will the sought-for “etiological assumption” attain to its desired clearness. But already this much may be clear: that we have in both domains, structures with a religious content, even though from time to time names are used which will veil these facts. I add now in anticipation a statement whose clear summing up has been reserved for psychoanalysis, namely that the object of religious worship is regularly to be regarded as a symbol of the libido, that psychologic goddess who rules the desires of mankind—and whose prime minister is Eros. [Libido is desire or the tendency toward desire, as it controls our impulsive life. In medical language used mainly for sexual desire, the concept of libido is extended in psychoanalysis (namely by C. G. Jung) to the impelling power of psychic phenomena in general. Libido would therefore be the inner view of what must in objective description be called “psychic energy.” How it could be given this extension of meaning is seen when we know the possibilities of its transformation and sublimation, a matter which will be treated later.] Now if the libido symbol raised up for an ideal is placed too [pg 205] nakedly before the seeker, the danger of misunderstanding and perversion is always present. For he is misled by his instincts to take the symbol verbally, that is, in its original, baser sense and to act accordingly. So all religions are degenerate in which one chooses as a libido symbol the unconcealed sexual act, and therefore also a religion must degenerate, in which gold, this object of inordinate desire, is used as a symbol.

What impels the seeker, that is, the man who actually deserves the name, in masonry and in alchemy, is clearly manifested as a certain dissatisfaction. The seeker is not satisfied with what he actually learns in the degrees, he expects more, wants to have more exhaustive information, wants to know when the “real” will be finally shown. Complaint is made, for example, of the narrowness of the meaning of the degrees of fellowship. Much more important than the objective meaning of any degree is the subjective wealth of the thing to be promoted. The less this is, the less will he “find” even in the degrees, and the less satisfied will he be, in case he succeeds in attaining anything at all. To act here in a compensating way is naturally the task of the persons that induce him. But it is the before mentioned dissatisfaction, too, which causes one to expect wonderful arts from the superiors of the higher degrees; an expectation that gives a fine opportunity for exploitation by swindlers who, of course, have not been lacking in the province of alchemy, exactly as later at a more critical time, in the high degree [pg 206] masonry. Who can exactly determine how great a part may have been played by avarice, ambition, vanity, curiosity, and finally by a not unpraiseworthy emotional hunger?

The speculators who fished in the muddy waters of late rosicrucianism put many desirable things as bait on the hook; as power over the world of spirits, penetration into the most recondite parts of nature's teachings, honor, riches, health, longevity. In one was aroused the hope of one of these aims, in another of another. The belief in gold making was, as already mentioned, still alive at that period. But it was not only the continuance of this conviction that caused belief in the alchemistic secrets of the high degrees, but, as for instance, B. Kopp shows (Alch. II, p. 13) it was a certain metaphysical need of the time.