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THE PHALLIC ELEMENT IN ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE Bygone Beliefs | ||
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THE PHALLIC ELEMENT IN ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE
THE problem of alchemy presents many aspects to our view, but, to my mind, the most fundamental of these is psychological, or, perhaps I should say, epistemological. It has been said that the proper study of mankind is man; and to study man we must study the beliefs of man. Now so long as we neglect great tracts of such beliefs, because they have been, or appear to have been, superseded, so long will our study be incomplete and ineffectual. And this, let me add, is no mere excuse for the study of alchemy, no mere afterthought put forward in justification of a predilection, but a plain statement of fact that renders this study an imperative need. There are other questions of interest—of very great interest— concerning alchemy: questions, for instance, as to the scope and validity of its doctrines; but we ought not to allow their fascination and promise to distract our attention from the fundamental problem, whose solution is essential to their elucidation.
In the preceding essay on "The Quest of the Philosopher's Stone," which was written from the standpoint I have sketched in the foregoing words,
It has, for instance, been maintained[132] that the assimilation of alchemical doctrines concerning the metals to those of mysticism concerning the soul was an event late in the history of alchemy, and was undertaken in the interests of the latter doctrines. Now we know that certain mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did borrow from the alchemists much of their terminology with which to discourse of spiritual mysteries—JACOB BOEHME, HENRY KHUNRATH, and perhaps THOMAS VAUGHAN, may be mentioned as the most prominent cases in point. But how was this possible if it were not, as I have suggested, the repayment, in a sense, of a sort of philological debt? Transmutation was an admirable vehicle of language for describing the
The wonderful fabric of alchemical doctrine was not woven in a day, and as it passed from loom to loom, from Byzantium to Syria, from Syria to Arabia, from Arabia to Spain and Latin Europe, so its pattern changed; but it was always woven a priori, in the belief that that which is below is as that which is above. In its final form, I think, it is distinctly Christian.
In the Turba Philosophorum, the oldest known work of Latin alchemy—a work which, claiming to be of Greek origin, whilst not that, is certainly Greek in spirit,—we frequently come across statements of a decidedly mystical character. "The regimen," we read, "is greater than is perceived by reason, except through divine inspiration."[133] Copper, it is insisted upon again and again, has a soul as well as a body; and the Art, we are told, is to be defined as "the liquefaction of the body and the separation of the soul from the body, seeing that copper, like a man, has a soul and a body."[134] Moreover, other doctrines are here propounded which, although not so obviously of a mystical character, have been traced to mystical sources in the preceding excursion. There is, for instance, the doctrine of purification by means of putrefaction, this process being likened
In view of these quotations, the alliance (shall I say?) between alchemy and mysticism cannot be asserted to be of late origin. And we shall find similar statements if we go further back in time. To give but one example: "Among the earliest authorities," writes Mr WAITE, "the Book of Crates says that copper, like man, has a spirit, soul, and body," the term "copper" being symbolical and applying to a stage in the alchemical work. But nowhere in the Turba do we meet with the concept of the Philosopher's Stone as the medicine of the metals, a concept characteristic of Latin alchemy, and, to quote Mr WAITE again, "it does not appear that the conception of the Philosopher's Stone as a medicine of metals and of men was familiar to Greek alchemy;"[137]
All this seems to me very strongly to support my view of the origin of alchemy, which requires a specifically Christian mysticism only for this specific concept of the Philosopher's Stone in its fully-fledged form. At any rate, the development of alchemical doctrine can be seen to have proceeded concomitantly with the development of mystical philosophy and theology. Those who are not prepared here to see effect and cause may be asked not only to formulate some other hypothesis in explanation of the origin of alchemy, but also to explain this fact of concomitant development.
From the standpoint of the transcendental theory of alchemy it has been urged "that the language of mystical theology seemed to be hardly so suitable to the exposition [as I maintain] or concealment of chemical theories, as the language of a definite and generally credited branch of science was suited to the expression of a veiled and symbolical process such as the regeneration of man."[138] But such a statement is only possible with respect to the latest days of alchemy, when there was a science of chemistry, definite and generally credited. The science of chemistry, it must be remembered, had no growth separate from alchemy, but evolved therefrom. Of the days before this evolution had been accomplished, it would be in closer accord with the facts to say that theology, including the doctrine of man's regeneration, was in the position of "a definite and generally credited branch of science," whereas chemical phenomena were veiled in deepest mystery and tinged with
Another recent writer on the subject, my friend the late Mr ABDUL-ALI, has remarked that "he thought that, in the mind of the alchemist at least, there was something more than analogy between metallic and psychic transformations, and that the whole subject might well be assigned to the doctrinal category of ineffable and transcendent Oneness. This Oneness comprehended all—soul and body, spirit and matter, mystic visions and waking life— and the sharp metaphysical distinction between the mental and the non-mental realms, so prominent during the history of philosophy, was not regarded by these early investigators in the sphere of nature. There was the sentiment, perhaps only dimly experienced, that not only the law, but the substance of the Universe, was one; that mind was everywhere in contact with its own kindred; and that metallic transmutation would, somehow, so to speak, signalise and seal a hidden transmutation of the soul."[139]
I am to a large extent in agreement with this view. Mr ABDUL-ALI quarrels with the term "analogy," and, if it is held to imply any merely superficial resemblance, it certainly is not adequate to my own needs, though I know not what other
In describing the realm of spirit as ex hypothesi known, that of Nature unknown, to the alchemists, I have made one important omission, and that, if I may use the name of a science to denominate a complex of crude facts, is the realm of physiology, which, falling within that of Nature, must yet be classed as ex hypothesi known. But to elucidate this point some further considerations are necessary touching the general nature of knowledge. Now, facts may be roughly classed, according to their obviousness and frequency of occurrence, into four groups. There are, first of all, facts which are so obvious, to put it paradoxically, that they escape notice; and these facts are the commonest and most frequent in their occurrence. I think it is Mr CHESTERTON who has said that, looking at a forest one cannot see the trees because of the forest; and, in The Innocence of Father Brown, he has a good story ("The Invisible Man") illustrating the point, in which a man renders himself invisible by dressing up in a postman's uniform. At any rate, we know that when a
Of the second class of facts—those common and obvious facts which the primitive mind accepts at face-value and uses as the basis of its explanations of such things as seem to it to stand in need of explanation—one could hardly find a better instance than sex. The universality of sex, and the intermittent character of its phenomena, are both responsible for this. Indeed, the attitude of mind I have referred to is not restricted to primitive man; how many people to-day, for instance, just accept sex as a fact, pleasant or unpleasant according to their predilections, never querying, or feeling the need to query, its why and wherefore? It is by no means surprising, that when man first felt the need of satisfying himself as to the origin of the universe, he should have done so by a theory founded on what he knew of his own generation. Indeed, as I queried on a former occasion, what other source of explanation was open to him? Of what other form of origin was he aware? Seeing Nature springing to life at the kiss of the sun, what more natural than that she should be regarded as the divine Mother, who bears fruits because impregnated by the Sun-God? It is not difficult to understand, therefore, why primitive man paid divine honours to the organs of sex in man and woman, or to such things as he considered symbolical of them—that is to say, to understand
The Aruntas of Australia, I believe, when discovered by Europeans, had not yet observed the connection between sexual intercourse and birth. They believed that conception was occasioned by the woman passing near a churinga—a peculiarly shaped piece of wood or stone, in which a spirit-child was concealed, which entered into her. But archæological research having established the fact that phallicism has, at one time or another, been common to nearly all races, it seems probable that the Arunta tribe represents a deviation from the normal line of mental evolution. At any rate, an isolated phenomenon, such as this, cannot be held to controvert the view that regards phallicism as in this normal line. Nor was the attitude of mind that not only accepts sex at face-value as an obvious fact, but uses the concept of it to explain other facts, a merely transitory one. We may, indeed, not difficultly trace it throughout the history of alchemy, giving rise to what I may term "The Phallic Element in Alchemical Doctrine".
In aiming to establish this, I may be thought to be endeavouring to establish a counter-thesis to that of the preceding essay on alchemy, but, in virtue of the alchemists' belief in the mystical unity of all things, in the analogical or correspondential relationship of all parts of the universe to each other, the mystical and the phallic views of the origin of alchemy are complementary, not antagonistic. Indeed, the assumption that the metals are the symbols of man
As concerns Greek alchemy, I shall content myself with a passage from a work On the Sacred Art, attributed to OLYMPIODORUS (sixth century A.D.), followed by some quotations from and references to the Turba. In the former work it is stated on the authority of HORUS that "The proper end of the whole art is to obtain the semen of the male secretly, seeing that all things are male and female. Hence [we read further] Horus says in a certain place: Join the male and the female, and you will find that which is sought; as a fact, without this process of re-union, nothing can succeed, for Nature
The use of the mystical symbols of death (putrefaction) and resurrection or rebirth to represent the consummation of the alchemical work, and that of the phallic symbols of the conjunction of the sexes and the development of the fœtus, both of which we have found in the Turba, are current throughout the course of Latin alchemy. In The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz, that extraordinary document of what is called "Rosicrucianism"—a symbolic romance of considerable ability, whoever its author
It is when we come to an examination of the ideas at the root of, and associated with, the alchemical concept of "principles," that we find some difficulty in harmonising the two series of symbols—the mystical and the phallic. In one place in the Turba we are directed "to take quicksilver, in which is the male potency or strength";[148] and this concept of mercury as male is quite in accord with the mystical origin I have assigned in the preceding excursion to the doctrine of the alchemical principles. I have shown, I think, that salt, sulphur, and mercury are the analogues ex hypothesi of the body, soul (affection and volition), and spirit (intelligence or understand-
When the alchemists described an element or principle as male or female, they meant what they said, as I have already intimated, to the extent, at least, of firmly believing that seed was produced by the two metallic sexes. By their union metals were thought to be produced in the womb of the earth; and mines were shut in order that by the birth and growth of new metal the impoverished veins might be replenished. In this way, too, was the magnum opus, the generation of the Philosopher's Stone—in species gold, but purer than the purest—to be accomplished. To conjoin that which Nature supplied, to foster the growth and development of that which was thereby produced; such was the task of the alchemist. "For there are Vegetables," says BERNARD of TRÉVISAN in his Answer to Thomas of Bononia, "but Sensitives more especially, which for the most part beget their like, by the Seeds of the Male and Female for the most part concurring and conmixt by copulation; which work of Nature the Philosophick Art imitates in the generation of gold."[154]
Mercury, as I have said, was commonly regarded as the seed of the metals, or as especially the female seed, there being two seeds, one the male, according to BERNARD, more ripe, perfect and active, the other the female. "more immature and in a sort passive[155] ". . . our Philosophick Art," he says in another place, following a description of the generation of man, " . . . is like this procreation of Man; for as in Mercury (of which Gold is by Nature generated in Mineral Vessels) a natural conjunction
The most philosophic account of metallic seed is that, perhaps, of the mysterious adept "EIRENÆUS PHILALETHES," who distinguishes between it and mercury in a rather interesting manner. He writes: "Seed is the means of generic propagation given to all perfect things here below; it is the perfection of each body; and anybody that has no seed must be regarded as imperfect. Hence there can be no doubt that there is such a thing as metallic seed.... All metallic seed is the seed of gold; for gold is the intention of Nature in regard to all metals. If the base metals are not gold, it is only through some accidental hindrance; they are-all potentially gold. But, of course, this seed of gold is most easily obtainable from well-matured gold itself.... Remember that I am now speaking of metallic seed, and not of
To say that "PHILALETHES' " seed resembles the
modern electron is, perhaps, to draw a rather fanciful
analogy, since the electron is a very precise idea, the
PLATE 22.
[Description: FIG. 43.
Symbolic Alchemical Design illustrating the Conjunction of Brother and
Sister, from MICHAEL MATER'S Atalanta Fugiens (1617).
(By permission of the British Museum. Photo by Donald Macbeth,
London.)]
According to "PHILALETHES," the extraction of the seed is a very difficult process, accomplishable, however, by the aid of mercury—the water homogeneous therewith. Mercury, again, is the form of the seed thereby obtained. He writes: "When the sperm hidden in the body of gold is brought out by means of our Art, it appears under the form of Mercury, whence it is exalted into the quintessence which is first white, and then, by means of continuous coction, becomes red." And again: "There is a womb into which the gold (if placed therein) will, of its own accord, emit its seed, until it is debilitated and dies, and by its death is renewed into a most glorious King, who thenceforward receives power to deliver all his brethren from the fear of death."[160]
The fifteenth-century alchemist THOMAS NORTON was peculiar in his views, inasmuch as he denied that metals have seed. He writes: "Nature never multiplies anything, except in either one or the other of these two ways: either by decay, which we call putrefaction, or, in the case of animate creatures, by propagation. In the case of metals there can be no propagation, though our Stone exhibits something
His theory of the origin of the metals is astral rather than phallic. "The only efficient cause of metals," he says, "is the mineral virtue, which is not found in every kind of earth, but only in certain places and chosen mines, into which the celestial sphere pours its rays in a straight direction year by year, and according to the arrangement of the metallic substance in these places, this or that metal is gradually formed."[162]
In view of the astrological symbolism of these
metals, that gold should be masculine, silver feminine,
does not surprise us, because the idea of the masculinity
of the sun and the femininity of the moon
is a bit of phallicism that still remains with us. It
was by the marriage of gold and silver that very
many alchemists considered that the magnum opus
was to be achieved. Writes BERNARD of TRÉVISAN:
"The subject of this admired Science [alchemy] is
Sol and Luna, or rather Male and Female, the Male
is hot and dry, the Female cold and moyst." The
aim of the work, he tells us, is the extraction of the
spirit of gold, which alone can enter into bodies and
tinge them. Both Sol and Luna are absolutely
necessary, and "whoever . . . shall think that a
Tincture can be made without these two Bodyes,
PLATE 23.
[Description:
FIG. 44.
Symbolic Alchemical Design illustrating Lactation, from MAIER'S
Atalanta Fugiens.
(By permission of the British Museum. Photo by Donald Macbeth,
London.)]
KELLY has teaching to the same effect, the Mercury of the Philosophers being for him the menstruum or medium wherein the copulation of Gold with Silver is to be accomplished. Mercury, in fact, seems to have been everything and to have been capable of effecting everything in the eyes of the alchemists. Concerning gold and silver, KELLY writes: "Only one metal, viz. gold, is absolutely perfect and mature. Hence it is called the perfect male body. . . Silver is less bounded by aqueous immaturity than the rest of the metals, though it may indeed be regarded as to a certain extent impure, still its water is already covered with the congealing vesture of its earth, and it thus tends to perfection. This condition is the reason why silver is everywhere called by the Sages the perfect female body." And later he writes: "In short, our whole Magistery consists in the union of the male and female, or active and passive, elements through the mediation of our metallic water and a proper degree of heat. Now, the male and female are two metallic bodies, and this I will again prove by irrefragable quotations from the Sages." Some of the quotations will be given: "Avicenna: `Purify husband and wife separately, in order that they may unite more intimately; for if you do not purify them, they cannot love each other. By conjunction of the two natures you get a clear and lucid nature, which, when it ascends, becomes bright and serviceable.' . . . Senior: `I, the Sun, am hot
PLATE 24.
[Description: FIG. 45 Symbolic Alchemical Design illustrating the Conjunction of Gold and Silver (or Sun and Moon), from MAIER'S Atalanta Fugiens. (By permission of the British Museum. Photo by Donald Macbeth, London.)]Concerning the nature of gold, there is a discussion in The Answer of BERNARDUS TREVISANUS to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononia, with which I shall close my consideration of the present aspect of the subject. Its interest for us lies in the arguments which are used and held to be valid. "Besides, you say that Gold, as most think, is nothing else than Quick-silver coagulated naturally by the force of Sulphur; yet so, that nothing of the Sulphur which generated the Gold, cloth remain in the substance of the Gold: as
In conclusion, I wish to say something of the rôle of sex in spiritual alchemy. But in doing this I am venturing outside the original field of inquiry of this essay and making a by no means necessary addition to my thesis; and I am anxious that what follows should be understood as such, so that no confusion as to the issues may arise.
In the great alchemical collection of J. J. MANGET,
there is a curious work (originally published in 1677),
entitled Mutus Liber, which consists entirely of
plates, without letterpress. Its interest for us in
our present concern is that the alchemist, from the
commencement of the work until its achievement, is
PLATE 25.
[Description: FIG. 46. Symbolic Alchemical Design from Mutus Liber (1677).]
PLATE 26.
[Description: FIG. 47. Symbolic Alchemical Design illustrating the Work of Woman, from MAIER'S Atalanta Fugiens. (By permission of the British Museum. Photo by Donald Macbeth, London.)]So far Mr WAITE, whose impressive words I have quoted at some length; and he has given us a fuller account of the theory as found in the Zohar in his valuable work on The Secret Doctrine in Israel (1913). The Zohar regards marriage and the performance of the sexual function in marriage as of supreme importance, and this not merely because marriage symbolises a divine union, unless that expression is held to include all that logically follows from the fact, but because, as it seems, the sexual act in marriage may, in fact, become a ritual of transcendental magic.
At least three varieties of opinion can be traced from the view of sex we have under consideration, as to the nature of the perfect man, and hence of the most adequate symbol for transmutation. According to one, and this appears to have been JACOB BOEHME'S view, the perfect man is conceived of as non-sexual, the male and female elements united in him having, as it were, neutralised each other. According to another, he is pictured as a hermaphroditic being, a concept we frequently come across in alchemical literature. It plays a prominent part in MAIER'S book Atalanta Fugiens, to which reference has already been made. MAIER'S hermaphrodite has two heads, one male, one female, but only one body, one pair of arms, and one pair of legs. The two sexual organs, which are placed side by side, are delineated in the illustrations with considerable care,
The third view of perfection, to which these remarks naturally lead, is that which sees it typified in marriage. The mystic-philosopher SWEDENBORG has some exceedingly suggestive things to say on the matter in his extraordinary work on Conjugial Love, which, curiously enough, seem largely to have escaped the notice of students of these high mysteries.
SWEDENBORG'S heaven is a sexual heaven, because
for him sex is primarily a spiritual fact, and only
secondarily, and because of what it is primarily, a
physical fact; and salvation is hardly possible,
according to him, apart from a genuine marriage
(whether achieved here or hereafter). Man and
woman are considered as complementary beings,
and it is only through the union of one man with
PLATE 27.
[Description: FIG. 48.
Symbolic Alchemical Design, Hermaphrodite, from MAIER'S Atalanta
Fugiens.
(By permission of the British Museum. Photo by Donald Macbeth, London.)]
A learned Japanese speaks with approval of Idealism as a "dream where sensuousness and spirituality find themselves to be blood brothers or sisters.".[172] It is a statement which involves either the grossest and most dangerous error, or the profoundest truth, according to the understanding of it. Woman is a road whereby man travels either to God or the devil. The problem of sex is a far deeper problem than appears at first sight, involving mysteries both the direst and most holy. It is by no means a fantastic hypothesis that the inmost mystery of what a certain school of mystics calls "the Secret Tradition" was a sexual one. At any rate, the fact that some of those, at least, to whom alchemy connoted a mystical process, were alive to the profound spiritual significance of sex, renders of double interest what they have to intimate of the achievement of the Magnum Opus in man.
See, for example, Mr A. E. WAITE'S paper, "The Canon of Criticism in respect of Alchemical Literature," The Journal of the Alchemical Society, vol. i. (1913), pp. 17-30.
The Turba Philosophorum, or Assembly of the Sages (trans. by A. E. WAITE), p. 101, cf. pp. 27 and 197.
Vide a rather frivolous review of my Alchemy: Ancient and Modern in The Outlook for 14th January 1911.
EDWARD KELLY: The Humid Path. (See The Alchemical Writings of EDWARD KELLY, edited by A. E. WAITE, 1893, pp. 59-60.)
"The reverence as well as the worship paid to the phallus,
in early and primitive days, had nothing in it which partook
of indecency; all ideas connected with it were of a reverential
and religious kind....
"The indecent ideas attached to the representation of the
phallus were, though it seems a paradox to say so, the results
of a more advanced civilization verging towards its decline,
as we have evidence at Rome and Pompeii....
"To the primitive man [the reproductive force which pervades
all nature] was the most mysterious of all manifestations.
The visible physical powers of nature—the sun, the sky,
the storm—naturally claimed his reverence, but to him the
generative power was the most mysterious of all powers. In
the vegetable world, the live seed placed in the ground, and
hence germinating, sprouting up, and becoming a beautiful
and umbrageous tree, was a mystery. In the animal world,
as the cause of all life, by which all beings came into existence,
this power was a mystery. In the view of primitive man
generation was the action of the Deity itself. It was the
mode in which He brought all things into existence, the sun,
the moon, the stars, the world, man were generated by Him.
To the productive power man was deeply indebted, for to it
he owed the harvests and the flocks which supported his life;
hence it naturally became an object of reverence and worship.
"Primitive man wants some object to worship, for an
abstract idea is beyond his comprehension, hence a visible
representation of the generative Deity was made, with the
organs contributing to generation most prominent, and hence
the organ itself became a symbol of the power."—H, M.
WESTROPP: Primitive Symbolism as Illustrated in Phallic
Worship, or the Reproductive Principle (1885), pp. 47, 48, and 57.
See Mr WAITE'S The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887) for translation and discussion as to origin and significance. The work was first published (in German) at Strassburg in 1616.
BERNARD, Earl of TRÉVISAN: A Treatise of the Philosopher's Stone, 1683. (See Collectanea Chymica: A Collection of Ten Several Treatises in Chymistry, 1684, p. 92.)
EDWARD KELLY: The Stone of the Philosophers. (See The Alchemical Writings of EDWARD KELLY, edited by A. E. WAITE, 1893, pp. 9 and 11 to 13.)
The Answer of BERNARDUS TREVISANUS, to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononira, Physician to K. Charles the 8th. (See JOHN FREDERICK HOUPREGHT: Aurifontina Chymica, 1680, p. 208.)
One Hundred and Fourteen Experiments and Cures of the Famous Physitian THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS. Whereunto is added . . . certain Secrets of ISAAC HOLLANDUS, concerning the Vegetall and Animal Work (1652), pp. 29 and 30.
EIRENÆUS PHILALETHES: The Metamorphosis of Metals. (See The Hermetic Museum, vol. ii. pp. 238-240.)
EIRENÆUS PHILALETHES: The Metamorphosis of Metals. (See The Hermetic Museum, vol. ii. pp. 241 and 244.)
EDWARD KELLY: The Stone of the Philosophers, Op. cit., pp 13, 14, 33, 35, 36, 38-40, and 47.
A E. WAITE: "Woman and the Hermetic Mystery," The Occult Review (June 1912), vol. xv. pp. 325 and 326.
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THE PHALLIC ELEMENT IN ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE Bygone Beliefs | ||