hermeticism & art

An image from Irmgard Hofmann-Barth’s 1990 Egyptian Tarot. The Death card.

It doesn’t look particularly Egyptian but it’s an attractive design. We see the astrological sign for Scorpio at the bottom right, which seems a suitable connection, and the sign for the modern planetary ruler of Scorpio, Pluto (traditionally it’s Mars). While Mars represents war, anger, passion, action..., Pluto represents life, death, and regeneration. 

A rather cheerful skeleton dominates the right side of the card with a long scythe with a blood, red handle. What I like best is the eye-catching group of the three creatures on the left, all linked with Scorpio - at the bottom a red scorpion, color-coordinated with Death’s scythe, in the middle a green serpent, and at the top an Eagle. 

Astronomically these represent two constellations bear Scorpio: Ophiuchus/Serpentarius (Serpent-Bearer) and Aquila (Eagle). They represent the higher octaves of Scorpio, both still dangerous predators, but the serpent is regeneration and wisdom, the eagle the ability to rise above things with higher insight and perception. 

An 18th-century alchemical medallion, possibly a talisman! 

The first image is the front with a monogram consisting of the symbols for Sulphur, Salt and Mercury. I like the imaginative way the solar circle and horizontal crescent moon of the top of the glyph for Mercury allude to the 2 intertwined snakes on Mercury’s Caduceus. Above these 3 Paraclesian principles of matter stands the Sun, Philosophical Gold.

The phrase “Trinum in Uno” (Three in One) reminds us that the 3 principles manifest perfectly in the Philosophers’ Stone (which transmutes base metals into gold). This message is reinforced by the triangle within the flames, which of course relate to the Sun, but also to Alchemy itself, which is sometimes called the Art of Fire. 

The alchemical symbolism continues on the other side of the medallion, but in a figurative way, with a composite of Saturn/Kronos, with his scythe, wooden leg, and large wings leading a surprisingly non-volatile Mercury, on his hands and knees bound to Saturn by a chain.

In the heavens above we see the sun shining down on the scene with the words “Tandem” (at last), “Per Me” (through me). Mercury’s message is “Sine Me Nihil” (without me nothing), which is actually a quote from John 15:5, where Jesus says “I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.” Saturn says “Si Voluero” (if I wished) or perhaps “Si Volvero” (if I should be changed?). 

Another alchemical bird, this time a Pelican, usually shown pecking its breast and feeding its blood to its chicks (which in some accounts are dead and need to be revived). 

The first image connects it with the Moon in the vessel. On a literal laboratory level there is a glass vessel called a Pelican, which you can see in the second image. It’s a distillation vessel with two arms which help with condensation of the spirit and soul that rises with heat to the top of the vessel and then cools, condenses, and falls (like the bird’s blood) down to the residue, the ‘dead’ body (without spirit or soul) lying at the bottom of the vessel.

Any Christian alchemist would recognize the Pelican as a symbol for Christ, whose sacrifice redeemed mankind and whose ‘blood’ was offered during the mystery of the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. Jung was of course aware of this symbolism and quotes from the Tractatus Aureus (Golden Treatise) attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which describes the Pelican as the “true philosophical vessel”, which he interprets psychologically as “make the Hermetic vessel out of your psychic wholeness and pour in it the aqua permanens (Mercury).” For Jung, the adept should inwardly digest and transform themselves, guided by alchemical doctrine.

From Basil Valentine’s Philosophical-Chymical Treatise (1676). 

The sun at the top, with its eyebrows, nose and mouth as the sign for Mercury. The rim of the well bears the words “Fons Benedictus Aquae Vitae” (Blessed Spring of the Water of Life), alluding to Mercury as the source, primal matter, similar to the Fountain image in the Rose-Garden of the Philosophers.

The large circle with concentric rings contain the signs for the four elements at its center: Fire (top), Water (bottom), Air (left) and Earth (right). The inner ring has the words Ars (alchemy), Natura (nature) and Semen (by some understood as Mercury, the ‘seed’ of the Stone, by others as the Fire that purifies Mercury).

In the next ring we read “Solutio Corporis et coagulatio spiritus solo animae fit medio” (Solution of the Body and Coagulation of the Spirit is done by means of the Soul). This refers to one of the most famous sayings in alchemy, “Solve et Coagula” (Dissolve and Coagulate).

The next ring says “Miraculum naturae in subtili perficitur” (The miracle of Nature is perfected in the subtle), “Medium qui invenit totum perficiet” (He who finds the medium will perfect the whole), and “stuerte animum a combustibilibus, et faetentibus” ([separate]? soul from flammable and stinking things).

This is “The Sacred Tree of the Sephiroth” from A.E. Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah (1924), showing the emanation of the Divine Principles through the Four Worlds of Kabbalism from their Hidden Source in Ain Soph. The “Ain Soph” means “without end” or “infinite”, the ineffable, unknowable divinity beyond the comprehension of us finite human beings. Instead we can try to comprehend the emanations of divinity.

By the Four Worlds are meant:

1. Atziluth (Emanation) - Archetypal World

2. Beriah (Creation) - Creative World

3. Yetzirah (Formation) - Formative World

4. Assiah (Action) - Material World (the one we live in)

Waite’s diagram shows a strong influence from the most important work of the traditional Kabbalah, the 13th-century Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of Splendour). Waite explains the full-length human figure represents ‘created or generated intelligence on the male side, from which is produced the female side, originally latent therein.’

So it represents Adam Kadmon (Primordial Man) with the Shekinah located in the lowest of the Sephiroth, Malkuth, that closest to humanity, being ‘the Path of Liberation’ symbolizing ‘the Traditional or Oral Law, through which man returns by realization into Divine Union’.

We see some of the Partzufim or Divine Faces, personifications and family relationships of some of the sephiroth as found in the Zohar: Kether as ‘Macroprosopus’ (The ‘Long Face’ or ‘Extended Countenance’), Chokmah (Wisdom) as ‘Abba’ (Father), Binah (Understanding) as ‘Aima’ (Mother’ and Malkuth (Kingdom) as ‘Nukvah’ (Female), the immanent Shekinah or Feminine Divine Presence within Creation. 

Another image from Basil Valentine’s Tratise on the Great Stone of the Ancients (1626). We see a circular alchemical flask that contains a dragon, its body linked with two overlapping circles. Its inside a downwards triangle and surrounding by three snakes wearing crowns.

There is no clear explanation of its meaning, but it does come after a shrot poem which mentions the triplicity of Body, Soul and Spirit, which are three, but come from one thing, volatile and fixed bound together. 

Like the three snakes in the 9th image from the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, it appears that the three snakes are the 3 principles of matter, body/salt, soul/sulphur, and spirit/mercury. 

The poem mentions the bath prepared by the old dragon, in which he loses his strength and power and states that it is nothing other than a two-fold Mercurius. The vessel itself is the bath (in the Rosarium Philosophorum we see images of a king/sun and queen/moon dissolving in a bath). The downward triangle represents the element water (here “water which does not wet the hands” - Mercury as primal matter and the process of Solution and Washing). The two overlapping circles must signify the double Mercury or Mercurius Duplex. The fact that old dragon loses its strength related to the idea that “the Dragon (mercury) must die with its brother (sun/gold) and sister (moon/silver). 

A rather gross image from Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617). This is Emblem 5 with the motto “Put a Toad to the Woman’s breast, that she may suckle him ‘till she die & he become gross with her milk.”

This is the 9th image from the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine (1602).

These images are from a 1678 Latin edition and 1645 German copy. The top is a cross formed of two human figures, one male (his feet upwards), the other female (her feet downwards). On one level they represent the traditional ingredients - masculine Sulphur and feminine Mercury; but since they are forming a cross, also implied are the four elements, the active masculine Fire and Air and passive, feminine Water and Earth. At their heads and feet are placed four birds that symbolize stages of the alchemical process, beginning with a Raven or Crow at the top (its black color due to calcination or burning), then, moving counter-clockwise, a Swan (white due to solution and washing), a colorful Peacock (sign of the end of putrefaction and continuing fermentation), and finally what could either be a Golden Eagle or Phoenix (for the final preparation of the Philosophers’ Stone).

The accompanying text says: “Saturn, who is called the greatest of the planets... is the chief Key of the whole Art... Although... it has risen to the loftiest height, far above all other luminaries, its feathers must be clipped, and itself brought down to the lowest place, from whence it may once more be raised by putrefaction, and the quickened caused by putrefaction, by which the black is changed to white, and the white to red, until the glorious color of the triumphant King has been attained.” 

In the circles below are three snakes issuing from three hearts, each connecting with another. These seem to be the 3 Paraclesian principles of matter, for the text explains, “This transmutation is begun, continued, and completed with Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt.”

From a manuscript in John Rylands Library, Manchester - a color-coordinated depiction of the planetary deities and their related Zodiac signs.

This is the title page of the Mutus Liber or Silent Book, first published in 1677 and then included in Jean-Jacques Manget’s Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa (Curious Chemical Library, 1702). It is ‘mute’ or ‘silent’ because it contains almost no words. The alchemical operations, notably performed by a man and woman working together, are expressed through the 15 pages of images. I don’t know anyone who can explain the sequence of images with confidence but it is worth taking a close look.

I’m showing versions of the title page, where you see two angels on a ladder, both blowing trumpets, while a man on the ground sleeps. The sleeping figure is Jacob, having his dream as described in Genesis 28:11-12, ‘he took of the stones that lay there, and putting under his head, slept in the same place. And he saw in his sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top thereof touching heaven:  the angels also of God ascending and descending by it.’ The place is Beth-el, meaning ‘House of God’. 

Alchemists of course said the stone Jacob slept on was the Philosopher’s Stone. The title of the book says, ‘The Silent Book in which nevertheless the whole Hermetic Philosophy is depicted with hieroglyphic figures, consecrated to the merciful thrice best and greatest God, and dedicated to the only sons of the art, by the author, whose name is Atlus.’

For some strange reason those three sets of numbers are biblical references written backwards. If you read them from the right you get Gen. 28:11-28, the start of which I gave above; Gen. 27:28-39. The first verse is Isaac’s blessing to his son Jacob, ‘God give thee the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth.’  Readers of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) would recognize this from the title page. The ‘dew of heaven’ was interpreted as Mercury; the ‘fatness of the earth’, Sulphur. 

One of the many intriguing and enigmatic ideas in John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), is how his monadic, all-inclusive hieroglyph contains the glyphs of all the planets of the cosmos, which double as the signs for all the Alchemical metals. He divides these glyphs into two groups:

Those that include the sign of the crescent moon

Those which include the sign for the sun

In the first group we have Saturn, Jupiter, a curious version of Mercury (a horizontal crescent on top of a cross) and the Moon; in the second group, Mars, Venus and the Sun. 

I previously posted Dee’s image of the Philosopher’s Egg, which illustrates these groups: the first in the egg-white; the second in the yolk. It’s not that common to find later images that show this idea, but here is one. It’s the title page of Johannes de Monte Snyder’s Metamorphosis Planetarum (The Metamorphosis of the Planets, 1663). We see a large male figure wearing a triple crown, seated on a sphere, possibly the earth, his arms outstretched towards the Sun on the left and the Moon on the right. His feet rest on two spheres each of which rises a cross. Alchemically, this is the sign for Antimony, a mineral for refining gold and purging the human body. The sphere linked by a sunbeam to the sun contains the glyphs for the Solar group; that linked to a moonbeam contains the Lunar group, with one exception, there is no glyph for Mercury, primal matter. So where is Mercury? Is it the triple-crowned old man, whom I first took to be God, or has Mercury been replaced by the double antimony? Personally I think the 2 Antimony glyphs stand in for the 2 versions of Mercury you can see in the woodcuts from Dee’s book. 

This slightly cute image from the 17th-century ‘Speculum Veritatis’ (Mirror of Truth), shows the god Mercury, with his winged boots and helmet, standing on the Philosophical Egg, from which will be born the mercurial ‘Bird of Hermes’, the Philosopher’s Stone. Inside the egg we see an ouroboros, the serpent being another symbol for Mercury and biting its tail a symbol of circular digestion and distillation.

A thirsty dragon from Leonhard Thurneisser’s Quinta Essentia (Fifth Essence, 1572), at the start of the chapter ‘On the essence of Vitriol’. Vitriol is usually either Copper or Iron Sulphate, the first a bright blue, the other blue-green. These were considered extremely important for transmutation. Blue ‘Copper Water,’ for example, ‘transmuted’ iron into copper, which encouraged the idea that such changes were possible with other metals. A verse above the image says that the dragon bears a fine fruit, for what was fixed is made volatile, the Well of Life has three sources and makes the fleeing firm again. 

Here we can only see two of the three sources labelled ‘Aurum Potabile’ (Drinkable Gold), believed to be a wonder-cure; the other is ‘Oleum Virtutis’ (Oil of Virtue). Sulphuric acid was known then as the Oil of Vitriol and was important in dissolving substances in the laboratory. The dragon is drinking the opiate Laudanum, which Paracelsus was known for using in pills as a curative for things like intestinal pain. Its tail is curled around a tree of tinctures, its trunk a piece of distillation apparatus, the vessel labelled Antimony, a mineral important for both refining gold and a purgative first the human body (makes you puke and poop).

Here we have a painting from the manuscript called ‘Les Vaissaux d’Hermes’ (The Vessels of Hermes) of a white horse lying on its back, with flames rising from its hooves. On its belly sits an alchemical vessel containing a red dragon biting its tail, with 4 white birds stacked on top of it, and the Sun and Moon watching the process.

Frequently alchemical pictures are more appealing than the real practices. This colorful painting basically represents a Venter Equinus (Horse’s Belly, or Bowels), by which is meant burying your alchemical vessel in a bed of fermenting horse dung, which provided a steady, gentle heat for days or weeks, helping the process of digestion. So that pretty white horse is really a warm, smelly pile of manure, the flames from the hooves are steady heat. 

This frontispiece image of the Physica subterranea (Subterranean Nature 1703/1738) of the German physician and alchemist Johann Joachim Becher (1635 - 1682). It’s a curious composite, with a large round, amiable solar face, beneath which a crescent moon, with the characters for Venus and Mercury by his ears, and the character for Mars, here like an inverted Venus rather than the standard circle with an arrow. Above is Saturn on the left and Jupiter on the right. As this is about things underground, it’s clear these should be understood as both the planets in the heavens, alluded to by the words at the top of the image ‘Circulus Aeterni Motus’ (Circular Motion of the Eternal), and the metals plus a few minerals in the earth, here enfolded in the figure’s intestines, the bowels of the earth (top to bottom): 

Iron (the usual circle with an arrow)

Tin

Antimony (circle with an upright cross)

Copper

Sulphur

Lead

Copper (again, although I imagine this should be Quicksilver)

Gold

Immediately above this representation of the Mineral kingdom, we have a few plants representing the Vegetable Kingdom, and at the top a human embryo for the Animal kingdom. 

The Romanian surrealist artist Victor Brauner (1903-1966) created several works inspired by the tarot. This piece, dating from 1947, is called Les Amoureux (The Lovers) or Messagers du nombre (Messengers of the number). It’s a curious choice of title because while it’s a reference to the 6th Arcanum, it’s easy to see that the figures represented are Le Bateleur (Magician) and La Papesse (High Priestess). These are the first and second arcana, indicated by the Hebrew letters above their heads (Aleph = 1) and (Beth = 2). 

The Magician is really impressive with his wand, sword, cup and pentacles, the four suits of the minor arcana, representing the four elements (Fire, Air, Water and Earth). Not only does he have snake curled into a lemniscate (figure 8, shape of infinity; bu here it’s a snake biting its tail so also a symbol of eternity) in his volcano-shaped hair, but also a knot of snakes on his torso.

The High Priestess on the other hand is represented therianthropically as a human body with the head of a bird of prey, probably an Eagle, with fierce, penetrating eyes. In her hand she holds an open book, normally the Torah, but here it shows a pair of scissors. 

To the left of the Magician are 3 words: Liberty, Magic, and Destiny; to the right of the Priestess: Future, Present, Past. The numbers 17 and 13 are a reference to André Breton, who claimed these as his personal numbers (written by hand they look like his initials AB). These also connect, of course, with the Hebrew letters Alpeh and Beth, implying that both the first and second Arcana are facets of Breton’s nature.

In 1944, Breton published ‘Arcane 17′, its title referring to Arcanum 17, The Star, as well as to the 17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Peh, which symbolically relates to the Mouth, connecting with language and poetry. (This is according to the Arcana-Hebrew correspondences of Oswald Wirth).

Another image from Johann Daniel Mylius’ Philosophia Reformata (1622) from a section titled ‘On the theoretical recapitulation of the divine art.’ It’s one of those geometrical, alchemical images, which allude a lot of different ideas in a very compact way. 

Under the celestial Sun and Moon, a man on a Sun (Sulphur) and a woman on a Moon (Mercury) stand on either side of the Earth, which contains a large Triangle, within which are a square and in that a circle. If you’ve read this post about the Geometer in the 21st Emblem from Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1617), some of this will look familiar.

Here is what Mylius has to say: “bodies under the concavity of the orb of the Moon fashioned by the Creator, participate in the four elements, the four natural humors, namely cholera, blood, phlegm and melancholy; in the four complexions: hotness, coldness, moisture, and dryness; in the four principle colors: white, black, yellow, red; in the four tastes: tasteless, sour, sweet, and bitter; in four odors: sweet, fetid, intense, and slight; in two sexes: masculine and feminine; according to their three dimensions, namely height, length and depth. The latter are explained as ‘its height is manifest; [but] its depth is occult; and their width participates as the medium.’”