“Take the body from that which has a body…
… and give a body to that which has no body” – Turba Philosophorum.
From the alchemists’ point of view, it’s not so gruesome. In fact, for them, metals killed in a certain way can germinate again as their forms endure over time in the materials that had made their graves. This belief, known as the Magisterium Corpi, is the foundation of Alchemy and involves the key concept of “Earthly Sky”. In Alchemy, this strange and ineffable “substance” is identified as the receptacle of the memory of metals. Alchemical work on metals is based precisely on the indispensability of the funerary casing. The phase of Nigredo, or blackness, is not unique in the works, but cyclical. This desolation is given the name of Saturn. In Greek mythology, Saturn separates sky from earth by symbolically castrating his father Ouranos with a sickle.
The putrescence of the “corpse” is the most spiritual phase.
Like light, or memory, emerging from darkness.
Placing it to rot under the moon on fine nights—during the preparatory works—or waiting forty days for the first, incomplete emergence of the Spiritus Mundi from the crude matter to definitively emerge from the darkness of the first work, or from the final darkness of the second work, never to return to the earthly condition, all this is aimed solely at allowing the spiritual part to emerge. First roughly, then completely. The coils of the serpent are the most appropriate symbol to define the cooking spiritual “fire”. Everything seems simple in the Alchemy of Metals—or, the Sacrifice of Metals. Defining what memory extraction in Theurgy actually is remains shrouded in mystery. The Neoplatonists spoke of ‘memory’ which abolished becoming and therefore embodied the a-chronic foundation. Before them, the pre-Socratics called him Cronus, the primordial and abstract personification of time. A different aspect from Kronos, the Titan father of Zeus. The Romans made him a deity of the agricultural stellar cycles and called him Saturn.
“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle”.
Saturn was also one of the names of the Pole Star.
Alchemists consider Mercurius, the final product of the first phase of their work, a “miniature star” with all the characteristics to attract real astronomical stars. The quote “And then we went out to see the stars again” – Dante Alighieri, final verse of Canto XXXIV of the Inferno is often used to describe the exit from the infernal phase, or opera in noir, or first labor. The most experienced, or already warned, alchemists, however, know that they will encounter “infernal or black” phases in each successive stages of their works. The periodicity of the blackness comes to an end at a certain point and can signal either the success of our work or total failure and the consequent “extinguishing” of the alchemical matter. Saturn was often worshipped on the same altars as Helios the sun. The gate of the sun was the gateway to the underworld, and Saturn was the guardian of the threshold. He also represented the dream world.
Rotating miniatures imitating the cosmos.
Ancient myths suggest that those space-noise-creating toys render the Aura that surrounds all bodies.
The charm of a spinning top comes from its ungovernability and noise. Their rotation can attract or repel, that is, create or cause it to be absorbed into the bottom from which life emerged. As the spinning toy turned, it produced sounds that seemed to be animal cries, or moans or laughter, from whose interpretation the theurgist could have prophetic visions, even assimilating them to the sound of the celestial spheres. Here we are only hinting at the ancient Philosophy and barely mentioning the triad Apollo-Hecate-Hermes, where Hecate has similarities with the ineffable deity of Aura, and is powerful beyond measure because feared even by Zeus. Her famous spinning top was the instrument with which oracles evoked her.
Pluto brings with him the reluctant Deity.
With turns of pomegranate, Pluto drags you to the nether. That’s to say, to resurrection.
The myth tells us that, to call Persephone, Pluto – lord of the land under the moon – rubs a red pomegranate on himself, turning it around his body three times. It is intriguing to know that, from a theurgical point of view, the Pneuma/Ochêma is said to turn around itself, like a prime mover. From an alchemical, or Métis, perspective, a doubt cannot help but arise: was the pomegranate symbol chosen for its grains or its color? The redness in small doses is, in fact, the nourishment for the final work. In small doses, like grains.