I’ve always understood alchemists as those who worked on the world that is tangible to us humans. Before all those complexities – such as a phantom connection with the archetypal world or memory – there was, above all, work on the body.
The body has always been the designated sacrificial victim. And I already told you what this word symbolically represented: the call of the gods.
“Call of the gods” is a lexicon that can’t even be heard today. Translated for us moderns?
The ancient Greeks used to say that the gods were those who flowed. I will explain to you in another section what was meant by the element Water, that is, “that which flows”.
Does the ancient saying “the moon determines the bodies” have anything to do with the concept of flow?
The alchemists did not have the modern concept of matter separate from spirit, but reasoned in terms of its position in the cosmos. Thus, what we call a “body” today was actually a sublunary “being” for them. All sublunary beings ere under the influence of forces emitted by the stars, incorporeal in themselves, but which inhabit bodies and which act only through bodies.
By “body” therefore they meant something living…
I see you don’t understand me. I’ll briefly extract, and summarize, for you from the Chaldean Oracles: “These forces, which always operate from top to bottom, influence all beings, animate and inanimate.”
Being “possessed” by a force does not necessarily mean being alive.
I said that those forces “operate”, not possess. The difference actually implies movement. In inanimate bodies, they are the principle of all the changes that affect them: growth, maturity, corruption, dissolution – the example given is that of “wood and stones”, but the context suggests that this also applies to plants. So, it is not about inputs given to a robot, but about the possibility of transmutation. But that’s not all, in fact there is an integration with human beings.
Do you mean that inanimate bodies and human beings can interact with each other? Indeed, this could be a real alchemical axiom.
In living beings, their activity is exercised on both the body and the soul. Some of them join the human soul at birth, others unite with it when the appropriate age has arrived. Remember this saying: “Human beings are subject to Fate by virtue of the astral energies that influenced them at the moment of their birth.” This also applies to inanimate bodies, since they too have a moment of birth.
Do you also mean artifacts?
Yes. In fact, the mythological prototype of alchemists is Hephaestus, the blacksmith god. The mythological origins of the Olympian forge find their explanation in the Egyptian deity Ptaph, a figure much more complex and comprehensive than the Greek blacksmith’s imagery.
Tell me, does the theurgic practice of “Opening of the Mouth” have anything to do with this ancient theory about the moment of birth of artifacts?
You’ll ask me a thousand more times. I’ll answer you only as an alchemist. I don’t meddle in practices I know nothing about.
I quote from the Corpus Hermeticum: “The body requires a place. In fact, it would have been impossible for a body to be constituted without a place. Therefore, the place exists for the purpose of the body. In fact, by welcoming the changes of the body, it does not allow the being subject to change to be lost, and this, changing, passes from one condition to another, and is deprived of its mode of being, but not of being a constituted body.”
Still quoting from the Corpus Hermeticum, let me continue: “… and, once transformed into another state it (the place) has the mode of being of that other. The body, in fact, as a body, remains a body, but that particular condition does not remain: the body, therefore, changes only according to that condition. Therefore, place, time and natural movement are in fact incorporeal.”
“Take the body from that which has a body and give a body to that which has no body”. You’ll agree that this is a very pretentious statement. But it sounds much more like Alchemy than all the philosophy we’ve discussed so far…
In fact, it’s not just a saying, but has become a true axiom. Even if it’s difficult for an alchemist to practically explain what Turba Philosophorum meant. We will see in other sections what alchemists mean by “disrobing” of the body and attributing a new body. Obviously, alchemists deal with metals, so you could also cite another equally famous phrase, this time of uncertain attribution: “Metals killed in a certain way can germinate again as their forms endure over time in the materials that had made their graves.”
Belief known as the Magisterium Corpi…
In Latin, Corpi means “of the body”. “Magisterium” is a more complex translation: it doesn’t mean mastery, but rather direction, supervision, and control. The purpose is not theurgic, but rather concerns alchemical works. So, we’re on the safe side. In fact, the gruesome part is only our Nigredo, or Black Work: a cyclical putrescence that liberates the spiritual parts of metals, those in which the “seed” is found. This blackness can certainly be defined as “grave”.
It would be more intuitive to think, then, of the body in the forge, rather than forge-body…
The image – which I would define as archetypal – of the alchemist is that of an individual engaged in the forge, or in the still, depending on the chosen path. However, what distinguishes alchemy from chemistry is precisely the presence of an internal “fire” that cooks the body. And it is the only fire that can completely extract the spiritual parts.
When you talk about spiritual parts, I imagine you mean the gaseous parts that come out due to the heat…
Let’s leave this aside for now. Let’s instead immediately address the consequences of common cooking or oxidation: alchemists don’t limit themselves to chemical transformations, but physical ones. That is, they manage to disarticulate the body, the structure, and transform it into “grave”.
Now I understand why alchemists must abandon the place where they worked…
In reality, the average alchemist has no idea why this forced abandonment occurred. It’s simply tradition. Actually, the body oscillates.
What does it mean for alchemists that the body oscillates?
The oscillation of the body between high and low is everything for alchemists: it is the basis that gives meaning to their work.
Do you mean that the alchemist’s work can be summed up as “high and low”?
When we talk about laboratory work, you’ll see how everything unfolds along this principle. Alchemists call it “fire of nature and fire against nature”.
Returning to philosophy, it seems to me that even in Plotinus’ Enneads we find oscillations of the body’s “high and low.” To be honest, Plotinus here deals with oscillations between the body’s consciousness and simple nature. But here we are moving away from physics.
All so-called Western culture has been based on an extremely simplified soul-body dichotomy. This is the consequence of having been cobbled together by older, and much more sophisticated, cultures – take the ancient Egyptians’ scalar soul series, for example. Well, alchemists predict a scalar series of souls. Not only that, but everything doubles.
I have always thought that Alchemy and Christianity arose in the same era.
Two cultures contradictory and adversarial to each other and at the same time complementary.
it’s a contradiction.
Of course, this is a contradiction, but not for the average Italian. The precursors of what we presently call “Intelligence” originated in pre-imperial Rome. Today, the city of Rome appears like a dazzling millefeuille of eras layered one upon the other, but it was already so two thousand five hundred years ago. Rome appears to destroy, but in reality it preserves and passes on.
I visited Rome as a tourist, and I got the impression that the inhabitants were completely unaware of where they lived.
There’s no need for awareness. Rome is full of ancient stones, marbles, and bricks—indeed, it is ancient stones, marbles, and bricks. And this is a matter for alchemists.
Here I must contradict you about Rome’s open-mindedness, because there has never existed a civilization as averse to Alchemy.
What if the powerful had allowed the production of gold from lead for all the poor? The slow decay of the empire was mainly caused by the slow deterioration of the Roman currency.
We’re digressing from the main topic, which was “Body as a Forge and Place”.
We’re not digressing at all. The origin of coinage is sacred and a direct derivation of sacrificial rites. One aspect of Rome we haven’t mentioned is that it was a civilization based on sacrifice, to the point of becoming its identity. Pay attention, the sacrificial victim is always the body, and with it the place. It is an alchemical tradition to always abandon the places where one has worked.
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