Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts

by Herbert Silberer

And the like in many places in the Bhagavad-Gita.

Now the end is perhaps the fruit of this obedience. It may be that the steady preservation of the inward unity, which regards with composure all external vicissitudes, leads man finally to some special experience, by which a seal of confirmation is set [pg 339] upon what was first a mere trust in the ultimate blessing of rectitude (H. A., p. 128). The hermetic philosophers would have the conscience known as the Way or as the base of the work, but with regard to the peculiar wonder work of alchemy (transmutation) they place the chief value on love; it effects the transformation of the subject into the object loved (H. A., p. 132).

Arabi: “It is a fundamental principle of love that thou becomest the real essence of the beloved (God) in that thou givest up thy individuality and disappearest in him. Blessedness is the abiding place of the divine and holy joy.” (Horten, Myst., I, p. 9.)

Similarly we find in the yoga primers that the spirit, by sinking into an object of perception, becomes identical with the object. The object need not be the very highest, but a gradation is possible. Arabi, too, recognizes a gradation of objects, as they correspond, as correlates of sinking or surrender, to the different mystical states. [Colors, etc., of alchemy.] Two passages of Arabi may be quoted: “My heart is eligible for every form [of the religious cult]; for it is said that the heart (root: kalaba = overturn, to alter oneself) is so called from its continual changing.” It changes in accordance with the various (divine) influences that it feels, according to the various states of the mystical illumination. This variation of experiences is a result of the variation of the divine appearances, which occur in its inmost spirit. The law of religion (theology) [pg 340] speaks of this phenomenon as the changing and metamorphizing in the forms (of living and being). Gazelles are the objects of the mystic's love. In one of his poems he says: “And surrender yourselves to play in the manner of lovely maidens with buxom breasts and enjoy the luxuriant willows in the manner of the female gazelles.” In his commentary on this passage he says: “ ‘Play’ denotes the various states of the mystic, to which he is advanced when he passes from one divine name to another.” (Horten, Myst., I, pp. 11, 13, ff.)

It is the ethical ideal of the mystic, more and more to put off the limited ego, and to take on in its place the qualities of God, in order to become God.

When with Arabi the theme of an ode is “Through asceticism, fervent yearning after God and patience in suffering, man becomes God or acquires divine nature” (Horten, Myst., I, p. 16), then this goal is identical with that of the alchemistic transmutation; the base metal acquires (after purification, refining, etc.) by virtue of the tincturing with the Philosopher's Stone the nature of gold, i.e., the divine nature.

But patient effort is requisite. Precipitancy is as great an evil as inactivity. It is, to use the language of the alchemists, just as bad to scorch the tender blossoms by a forced and hasty fire (that in spite of its intensity may be merely a straw fire), as to let go out the fire which should be continuously kept alight, and to let grow cold the materia. The process of distillation is to be accomplished slowly, [pg 341] so that the spirits may not escape. That which rises as steam through the “heating” in the “receptacle” (i.e., in man) is the soul rising into the higher regions. Distilling like rain drops [destillare = drop down], it brings each time to the thirsting materia a divine gain. But this process is not to be overdone, for the thirsting earth must be gently instilled with the heavenly moisture of the water of life: the process of “imbibition.”

The metallic subject must be gently dissolved in its own natural water (conscience), not with powerful media, not with corroding acids, which the foolish employ in order to reach the goal in a hurry, for by such means he either spoils the materia or produces a merely superficial action. Senseless asceticism and the like are just as objectionable as the impetuous enthusiasm (which we called straw fire here). The ethical work of alchemy as of common life is a sublimation; it is important that the materia takes up at any time only as much as it can sublimate. We may also conceive it in this way. The materia is to be moistened only with the water that it can utilize after the solution has taken place (i.e., keep in enduring form, absorb into their nature). Compare in this connection the words of Count Bernhard von Trevis: “I tell you assuredly that no water dissolves any metallic spices by a natural solution, save that which abides with them in matter and form, and which the metals themselves, being dissolved, can recongeal.” (H. A., pp. 189 ff.)

The passage “slowly and quite judiciously” of the Smaragdine tablet will now be fully appreciated.

The desired completion or oneness should be a state of the soul, a condition of being, not of knowing. The means that lead to it presuppose in the neophyte something analogous to religious faith, and because the conditions of the mastery appear to the neophyte to contradict nature or each other, the mystical experiences that are derived from it are called “supernatural.” The “supernatural” is, however, only an appearance, which results when we conceive nature too narrowly, as when we see in her merely the totality of bodies. If we mean by nature the possibility of life and activity, then that which appears supernatural must be counted as nature. The expressions natural and supernatural are but means of the thinking judgment, they are preliminaries which have a certain justification but only so long as they are an expression for a stage of knowledge. The initially supernatural resolves itself in nature, or better, Nature is raised to divinity. If the natural and the supernatural are symbolized, the one being described as sulphur and the other as mercury, then the disciples of philosophy, under the obligation to think things and not merely names, are finally brought, during the process of search, to a recognition of the inseparableness of both in a third something which may be called sun; but as all three are recognized as inseparably one, the termini can change places until finally an inner illumination takes place. “Those that have never had this experience [pg 343] are apt to decry it as imaginary, but those who enter into it know that they have entered into a higher life, or feel themselves enabled to look upon things from a higher point of view. To use what may seem to be a misapplication of language: it is a supernatural birth, naturally entered upon.” (H. A., p. 229.) When the alchemists speak of philosophical mercury and philosophical gold, they mean something in man and something in God that finally turns out to be the One. “By this symbolism the alchemists escape the difficulty of treating the subject in ordinary language. The learner must always return to nature and her possibilities for the sense of the derived symbols, and to it the hermetic masters also continually direct him.” (H. A., pp. 232 ff.) If the true light has risen in the hearts of the seekers, kindled from within (although apparently by a miracle from without) “the sulphur and mercury become one, or are seen to be the same, differing only in a certain relation; somewhat as the known and the unknown (and the conscious and the unconscious) are but one, the unknown decreasing as the known increases, and vice versa.” (H. A., p. 235.)