Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts Part 5

Etymologically it is here to be noted that the verb mahlen (grind), iterative form of mohen (mow), originally had a meaning of moving oneself forwards and backwards. Mulieren or mahlen (grind), _molere_, ???e?? for coire (cf. Anthropophyteia, VIII, p. 14).

There are numerous stories where the mill appears as the place of love adventures. The "old woman's mill" also is familiar; old women go in and come out young. They are, as it were, ground over in the magic mill. The idea of recreation in the womb lies at the bottom of it, just as in the vulgar expression, "La.s.sen sie sich umvogeln."

In a legend of the Transylvanian Gypsies, "there came again an old woman to the king and said: 'Give me a piece of bread, for seven times already has the sun gone down without my having eaten anything!' The King replied: 'Good, but I will first have meal ground for you,' and he called his servants and had the old woman sawn into pieces. Then the old woman's sawn up body changed into a good Urme (fairy) and she soared up into the air...." (H. V. Wlislocki, Marchen u. Sagen d. transylv. Zigeuner.)

A dream: "I came into a mill and into ever narrower apartments till finally I had no more s.p.a.ce. I was terribly anxious and awoke in terror."

A birth phantasy or uterus phantasy.

Another dream (Stekel, Spr. d. Tr., p. 398 f.): "I came through a crack between two boards out of the 'wheel room.' The walls dripped with water.

Right before me is a brook in which stands a rickety, black piano. I use it to cross over the brook, as I am running away. Behind me is a crowd of men. In front of them all is my uncle. He encourages them to pursue me and roars and yells. The men have mountain sticks, which they occasionally throw at me. The road goes through the verdure up and down hill. The path is strewn with coal cinders and therefore black. I had to struggle terribly to gain any ground. I had to push myself to move forwards. Often I seemed as though grown to the ground and the pursuers came ever nearer.

Suddenly I am able to fly. I fly into a mill through the window. In it is a s.p.a.ce with board walls; on the opposite wall is a large crank. I sit on the handle, hold on to it with my hands, and fly up. When the crank is up I press it down with my weight, and so set the mill in motion. While so engaged I am quite naked. I look like a cupid. I beg the miller to let me stay here, promising to move the mill in the manner indicated. He sent me away and I have to fly out of another window again. Outside there comes along the 'Flying Post.' I place myself in front near the driver. I was soon requested to pay, but I have only three h.e.l.ler with me. So the conductor says to me, 'Well, if you can't pay, then you must put up with our sweaty feet.' Now, as if by command, all the pa.s.sengers in the coach drew off a shoe and each held a sweaty foot in front of my nose."

This dream, too (beside other things), contains a womb phantasy, wheel room, mill, s.p.a.ce with wet walls-the womb. The dreamer is followed by a crowd; just as our wanderer is met by a crowd; the elders. This dream, which will still further occupy our attention, I shall call the "Flying Post."

Let us return to the parable. The mill of Section 11 is the womb. The wanderer strives for the most intimate union with his mother; his striving, to do better than his father culminates in his procreating himself, the son, again and better.

He will quite fill up his mother-be the father in full. Of course the phantasy does not progress without psychic obstructions. The anxious pa.s.sage over the narrow plank manifests it.

We have here the familiar obstructions to movement and in a form indeed that recalls the dangerous path on the wall. The pa.s.sage over the water is also a death symbol. We have not only the anxiety about death caused by the moral conflict, but we have also to remember that the pa.s.sage into the uterus is a pa.s.sage to the beyond. The water is the Water of Death (stygian waters) and of Life. In narrower sense it is also seminal fluid and the amniotic liquor. It is overdetermined as indeed all symbols are.

The water bears the death color = black. In the Flying Post dream a black road appears. The dreamer has conflicts like those of the wanderer.

The old miller who will give no information is the father. Of course he will not let him have his mother, and he gives him no information as to the mill work or the procreative activity. The wheels are, on the one hand, the organs that grind out the child (producing the child like meal), and on the other hand they are the ten commandments whose mundane administration is the duty of the father, by means of strict education and punishment. In pa.s.sing over the plank, the wanderer places himself above the ten commandments and above the privileges of the father. The wanderer always extricates himself successfully from the difficulties. The anxiety is soon done away with, and the fulfillment phase supervenes. It is only a faint echo of the paternal commandments when the elders (immediately after the episode, Section 11) hold out before him the letter from the faculty.

At bottom, in retaining their authority, they do indeed go against his own wishes (also a typical artifice of the dream technique).

I have already discussed the letter episode sufficiently (as also Sections 12 and 13), so I need say no more about the incest wish there expressed.

The bridal pair were put (Section 14) into their crystal prison. We have been looking for the rea.s.sembling of the dismembered; it takes place before our eyes, the white and red parts, bones and blood, are indeed bridegroom and bride. The prison is the skin or the receptacle in which, as in myths, the revivification takes place. Not in the sense of the revivification of the annihilated father, but a recreation (improvement) that the son accomplishes, although the creative force as such remains the same. The son "marries and mills" (vermahlt und vermehlt) with his mother, for the crystal container is again the same as the mill; the uterus. Even the amniotic fluid and the nutritive liquid for the ftus are present, and the wanderer remakes himself into a splendid king. He can really do it better than his father. The dream carries the wish fulfillment to the uttermost limits.

Let us examine the process somewhat more in detail. The wanderer, by virtue of a dissociation, has a twofold existence, once as a youth in the inside of the gla.s.s sphere, and once outside in his former guise. Outside and inside he is united with his mother as husband and as developing child. He there embraces his "sister" (image of his mother renewed with him as it were) as Osiris does his sister Isis. And in addition to this the infantile s.e.xual components of exhibitionism find satisfaction, for whose gratification the covering of the procreation mystery is made of gla.s.s. The s.e.xual influence of the wanderer on the kettle (uterus) is symbolically indicated by the fire task allotted to him. The fire is one of the most frequent love symbols in dreams. Language also is wont to speak of the fire of love, of the consuming flames of pa.s.sion, of ardent desires, etc. Customs, in particular marriage customs, show a similar symbolism. That the wanderer is charged with a duty, and explicitly commanded to do what he is willing to do without orders, is again the already mentioned cunning device of the dream technique to bring together the incompatible. It seems almost humorous when the prison is locked with the seal of the right honorable faculty; I recall to you the expression "sealing" (petschieren); the sealing is an applying of the father's p.e.n.i.s.

In the place of father we find, of course, the officiating wanderer. The sealing means, however, the shutting up of the seed of life that is placed in the mother. It is also said that the pair, after the confinement in the prison, can be given no more nourishment; and that the food with which they are provided comes exclusively from the water of the mill. That refers to the intrauterine nourishment, to which nothing, of course, can be supplied but the water of the mill so familiar to us.

The precious vessel that the wanderer guards is surrounded by strong walls; it is inaccessible to the others; he alone may approach with his fire. It is winter. That is not merely a rationalizing (pretext of commonplace argument) of the firing, but a token of death entering into the uterus. The amorous pair in the prison dissolve and perish, even rot (Section 15). I must mention incidentally, for the understanding of this version, that at the time of the writing of the parable the process of impregnation was a.s.sociated with the idea of the "decaying" or "rotting"

of the s.e.m.e.n. The womb is compared to the earth in which the kernel of grain "decays."

The decaying which precedes the arising of the new being is connected with a great inundation. Mythically, a deluge is actually accustomed to introduce a (improved) creation. A proper myth can hardly dispense with the idea of a primal flood. I would, in pa.s.sing, note that the present phase of the parable corresponds mythologically to the motive of being swallowed, the later release from the prison is the spitting forth (from the jaws of the monster), the return from the underworld. The dismemberment motive of the cosmogonies is usually a.s.sociated with a deluge motive. In the description of the flood in the parable there are, moreover, included some traits of the biblical narrative, e.g., the forty days and the rainbow. This, be it remarked in pa.s.sing, had appeared before; it is a sign of a covenant. It binds heaven and earth, man and woman. The flood originates in the falling of tears; it arises also from the body of the woman; it refers to the well known highly significant water. Stekel has arranged for dreams the so-called symbolic parallels, according to which all secretions and excretions may symbolically represent each other. On the presupposition that marks of similarity are not conceived in a strict sense, the following comparisons may be drawn: Mucus = blood = pus = urine = stools = s.e.m.e.n = milk = sweat = tears = spirit = air = [breath = flatus] = speech = money = poison. That in this comparison both souls and tears appear is particularly interesting; the living or procreating principle appears as soul in the form of clouds.

These are formed from water, the Water of Life. The dew that comes from it impregnates the earth.

As we have now reached the excreta, I should like to remind the reader of the foul and stinking bodies that in the parable lie in liquid (Section 15) on which falls a warmer rain. The parable psychoa.n.a.lytically regarded, is the result of a regression leading us into infantile thinking and feeling; we have seen it clearly enough in the comparison with the myths.

And here it is to be noticed how great an interest children take in the process of defecation. I should not have considered this worthy of notice, did not the hermetic symbolism, as we shall see later, actually use in parallel cases the expressions "fimus," "urina puerorum," etc., in quite an unmistakable manner. In any case it is worth remembering that out of dung and urine, things that decompose malodorously and repulsively, fresh life arises. This agrees with the infantile theory of procreation, that babies are brought forth as the residue of a.s.similation; we are to observe, however, still other interrelations that will be encountered later. A series of mythological parallels may be cited. I shall rest satisfied with referring to the droll story, "Der Dumme Hans." Stupid Jack loads manure (faeces, sewage) into a cart and goes with it to a manor; there he tells them he comes from the _Moorish_ land (from the country of the blacks) and carries in his barrel the _Water of Life_. When any one opens the barrel without permission, Stupid Jack represented himself as having turned the water of life into sewage. He repeated the little trick with his _dead_ grandmother whom he sewed up in black cloths and gave out as a wonderfully beautiful princess who was lying in a hundred years'

sleep. Again, as he expected, the covering was raised by an unbidden hand and John lamented, that, on account of the interference, instead of the princess, whom he wanted to take to the King, a disgusting corpse had been magically subst.i.tuted. He succeeded in being recompensed with a _good deal_ of money. [Jos. Haltrich, Deut. Volksmed. d. Siebenburg, II, p.

224.]

Inasmuch as the wanderer of our parable finds himself not outside but inside of the receptacle, he is as if in a bath. I note incidentally that writings a.n.a.logous to the parable expressly mention a bath in a similar place, as the parable also does (Sec. 15). In dreams the image of bathing frequently appears to occur as a womb or birth phantasy.

At the end of the 14th section, as the inmates of the prison die, his certain ruin stands before the wanderer's eyes-again a faint echo of his relation to the bridegroom.

We have already for a long time thoroughly familiarized ourselves with the thought that in the crystal prison the revivification of the dismembered comes to pa.s.s. Whoever has the slightest doubt of it, can find it most beautifully shown in the beginning of Section 15. The author of the parable even mentions Medea and aeson. I need add nothing more concerning the talents of the Colchian sorceress in the art of dissection and rejuvenation.

In Section 18, "the sun s.h.i.+nes very bright, and the day becomes warmer than before and the dog days are at hand." Soon after (Sec. 19) the king is released from prison. It was before the winter (Sec. 14), but after that season, when the sun "s.h.i.+nes very warm" (Sec. 11), consequently well advanced into autumn. Let us choose for the purpose a middle point between the departing summer and the approaching winter, about the end of October, and bear in mind that the dog-days come in August, so that at the end of July they are in waiting, then we find for the time spent in the receptacle nine months-the time of human gestation.

The newborn (Sec. 20) is naturally-thirsty. What shall he be fed with if not with the water from the mill? And the water makes him grow and thrive.

Two royal personages stand before us in splendor and magnificence. The wanderer has created for himself new parents (the father-king is, of course, also himself) corresponding to the family romance of neurotics, a phantasy romance, that like a ghost stalks even in the mental life of healthy persons. It is a wish phantasy that culminates in its most outspoken form in the conviction that one really springs from royal or distinguished stock and has merely been found by the actual parents who do not fit. They conceal his true origin. The day will come, however, when he will be restored to the n.o.ble station which belongs to him by right. Here belong in brief, those unrestrained wish phantasies which, no matter in what concrete form, diversify the navely outlined content. They arise from dissatisfaction with surroundings and afford the most agreeable contrasts to straitened circ.u.mstances or poverty. In the parable especially, the King (in his father character) is attractively portrayed.

At first the "lofty appearance" (Sec. 19) of the severe father amazes the wanderer, then it turns out, however, that the king (ideal father) is friendly, gracious and meek, and we are a.s.sured that "nothing graces exalted persons as much as these virtues." And then he leads the wanderer into his kingdom and allows him to enjoy all the merely earthly treasures.

There takes place, so to speak, a universal gratification of all wishes.

Mythologically we should expect that the hero thrown up from the underworld, should have brought with him the drink of knowledge. This is actually the case, as he has indeed gained the thing whose const.i.tution is metaphorically worked out in the whole story, that is, the philosopher's stone. The wanderer is a true soma robber.

Let us hark back to the next to last section. Here, near the end of the dream, the King becomes sleepy. The real sleeper already feels the approaching awakening and would like to sleep longer (to phantasy). But he pretends that the king is sleepy, thus throwing the burden from his own shoulders. And to this experience is soon attached a symbol of waking: the wanderer, the dreamer of the parable, is taken to another land, indeed into a bright land. He wakes from his dreams with a pious echo of his wish fulfillment on his lips ... "to which end help us, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen." It is quite prosaic to conclude this melodious finale by means of the formula "threshold symbolism."

To sum up in a few words what the parable contains from the psychoa.n.a.lytic point of view, and to do this without becoming too general in suggesting as its results the universal fulfillment of all wishes, I should put it thus: the wanderer in his phantasy removes and improves the father, wins the mother, procreates himself with her, enjoys her love even in the womb and satisfies besides his infantile curiosity while observing procreative process from the outside. He becomes King and attains power and magnificence, even superhuman abilities.

Possibly one may be surprised at so much absurdity. One should reflect, however, that those unconscious t.i.tanic powers of imagination that, from the innermost recesses of the soul set in motion the blindly creating dream phantasy, can only wish and do nothing but wish. They do not bother about whether the wishes are sensible or absurd. Critical power does not belong to them. This is the task of logical thinking as we consciously exercise it, inasmuch as we observe the wishes rising from the darkness and compare and weigh them according to teleological standards. The unconsciously impelling affective life, however, desires blindly, and troubles itself about nothing else.

Section II.

Alchemy.

The tradition of craftsmans.h.i.+p in metallurgy, an art that was practiced from the earliest times, was during the speculative period of human culture, saturated with philosophy. Especially was this the case in Egypt, where metallurgy, as the source of royal riches and especially the methods of gold mining and extraction, were guarded as a royal secret. In the h.e.l.lenistic period the art of metal working, knowledge of which has spread abroad and in which the interest had been raised to almost scientific character, was penetrated by the philosophical theories of the Greeks: the element and atom ideas of the nature-philosophers and of Plato and of Aristotle, and the religious views of the neoplatonists. The magic of the orient was amalgamated with it, Christian elements were added-in brief, the content of the chemistry of that time, which mainly had metallurgy as its starting point, took a vital part in the hybrid thought of syncretism in the first centuries after Christ.

As the chemical science (in alchemy, alkimia, al is the Arabic article prefixed to the Greek ??e?a) has come to us from the Arabs (Syrians, Jews, etc.) it was long believed that it had an Arabian origin. Yet it was found later that the Arabs, while they added much of their own to it, still were but the preservers of Greek-h.e.l.lenistic knowledge and we are convinced that the alchemists were right when they indicated in their traditions the legendary Egyptian Hermes as their ancestor. This legendary personage is really the Egyptian G.o.d Thoth, who was identified with Hermes in the time of the Ptolemies. He was honored as the Lord of the highest wisdom and it was a favorite practice to a.s.sign to him the authors.h.i.+p of philosophical and especially of theological works. Hermes' congregations were formed to practice the cult, and they had their special Hermes literature.(2) In later times the divine, regal, Hermes figure was reduced to that of a magician. When I speak, in what follows, of the hermetic writings I mean (following the above mentioned traditions) the alchemic writings, with, however, a qualification which will be mentioned later.

The idea of the production of gold was so dominant in alchemy that it was actually spoken of as the gold maker's art. It meant the ability to make gold out of baser material, particularly out of other metals. The belief in it and in the trans.m.u.tability of matter was by no means absurd, but rather it must be counted as a phase in the development of human thought.

As yet unacquainted with the modern doctrine of unchangeable elements they could draw no other conclusion from the changes in matter which they daily witnessed. If they prepared gold from ores or alloys, they thought they had "made" it. By a.n.a.logy with color changes (which they produced in fabrics, gla.s.s, etc.) they could suppose that they had colored (tinctured) the baser metals into gold.

Under philosophical influences the doctrine arose that metals, like human beings, had body and soul, the soul being regarded as a finer form of corporeality. They said that the soul or primitive stuff (prima materia) was common to all metals, and in order to trans.m.u.te one metal into another they had to produce a tincture of its soul. In Egypt lead, under the name Osiris, was thought to be the primitive base of metals; later when the still more plastic quicksilver (mercury) was discovered, they regarded this as the soul of metals. They thought they had to fix this volatile soul by some medium in order to get a precious metal, silver, gold.

That problematic medium, which was to serve to tincture or trans.m.u.te the baser metal or its mercury to silver or gold, was called the Philosopher's stone. It had the power to make the sick (base) metal well (precious).

Here came in the idea of a universal medicine. Alchemy desired indeed to produce in the Philosopher's Stone a panacea that should free mankind of all sufferings and make men young.

It will not be superfluous to mention here, that the so-called materials, substances, concepts, are found employed in the treatises of the alchemists in a more comprehensive sense, we can even say with more lofty implications, the more the author in question leans to philosophical speculation. The authors who indulged the loftiest flights were indeed most treasured by the alchemists and prized as the greatest masters. With them the concept mercury, as element concept, is actually separated from that of common quicksilver. On this level of speculation, quicksilver (Hg.) is no longer considered as a primal element, but as a suprasensible principle to which only the name of quicksilver, mercury, is loaned. It is emphasized that the _mercurius philosophorum_ may not be subst.i.tuted for common quicksilver. Similar trans.m.u.tations are effected by the concept of a primal element specially separated from mercury. Prima materia is the cause of all objects. Also the material from which the philosopher's stone is produced is in later times called the prima materia, accordingly in a certain sense, the raw material (materia cruda) for its production. But I antic.i.p.ate; this belongs properly to the occidental flouris.h.i.+ng period of the alchemy of scholasticism.

A very significant and ancient idea in alchemy is that of sprouting and procreation. Metals grow like plants, and reproduce like animals. We are a.s.sured by the adepts (those who had found it, viz., the panacea) in the Greek-Egyptian period and also later, that gold begets gold as the corn does corn, and man, man. The practice connected with this idea consists in putting some gold in the mixture that is to be trans.m.u.ted. The gold dissolves like a seed in it and is to produce the fruit, gold. The gold ingredient was also conceived as a ferment, which permeates the whole mixture like a leaven, and, as it were, made it ferment into gold.

Furthermore, the tincturing matter was conceived as male and the matter to be colored as female. Keeping in view the symbol of the corn and seed, we see that the matter into which the seed was put becomes earth and mother, in which it will germinate in order to come to fruition.

In this connection belongs also the ancient alchemic symbol of the philosopher's egg. This symbol is compared to the "Egyptian stone," and the dragon, which bites its tail; consequently the procreation symbol is compared to an eternity or cycle symbol. The "Egyptian stone" is, however, the philosopher's stone or, by metonomy, the great work (magnum opus) of its manufacture. The egg is the World Egg that recurs in so many world cosmogonies. The grand mastery refers usually and mainly to thoughts of world creation. The egg-shaped receptacle in which the master work was to be accomplished was also known as the "philosophical egg" in which the great masterpiece is produced. This vessel was sealed with the magic seal of Hermes; therefore hermetically sealed.

A wider theoretical conception, originating with the Arabs, is the doctrine of the two principles. They were retained in the subsequent developments and further expanded. Ibn Sina [Avicenna, 980-ca. 1037]

taught that every metal consisted of mercury and sulphur. Naturally they do not refer to the ordinary quicksilver and ordinary sulphur.

From the Arabs alchemy came to the occident and spread extraordinarily.

Among prominent authors the following may be selected: Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, Arnold of Villanova, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lully, etc.