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To prove that one was an initiate – that is, a son of Poseidon – one had to know how to dive.

Neptune/Poseidon represents NON-form, the place where one becomes lost. The danger inherent in the initiatory test of immersion lies in the uncertainty surrounding the true composition and consistency of Poseidon’s seas. Poseidon of the beautiful horses is also Poseidon, the shaker of earthquakes. Poseidon is also known for being sensitive to the slightest breath of wind. His vagueness was poetically translated into anger, and he was often attributed with vengeance on those who had to cross dangerous seas. So much so that among his many epithets was Poseidon, the creator of shipwrecks. Ulysses was its most famous victim. As were the Argonauts, after all. The first was aided by Hermes; the second, Jason, by Hera. And both by Athena.

Even if you want to, you can’t take the goddess of inscrutable details off.

Compared to Hephaestus’ wonders, Athena’s Palladium was even one category higher: the goddess had molded an ancient form of herself by making it fall directly from the sky. She also seemed to instill in artists the power to interact with the model they were inspired by, like a game of reciprocal reflections. Legend has it that Phidias had inserted the image of his face onto the shield of Athena Parthenos with an invisible device, so perfectly that if anyone wanted to detach the image of the author, he would necessarily have to destroy the integrity of the entire artifact. Argô ship is another well-known simulacra of Greek mythology: thanks to a beam in the middle of the bow, taken from a Dodona’s oak, the Argô ship shows herself as a good navigator. Gifted with nautical sense, she knows the route ahead of time. The vessel’s animalistic vitality was indispensable to the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.

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That’s what images are: emerging in another place.

Alchemists call Venus the appearance of whiteness in the second, main work. It is not known how appropriately, perhaps taking as inspiration one of the aspects of the motherless goddess born from the generative foam of Ouranos – he, so ancient as not even to be considered a divinity, but a source. Not all aspects of Greek Aphrodite can be adapted to the Roman Venus. But the “seed” aspect seems to be common to both. The deity of love took advantage of Poseidon to float on him and be transported everywhere. In her realm of union lie similarities and analogies. In the realm of war, differences and disharmonies. The necessary destruction of unity creates the “many”. There is a way to recognize each other: true love always has an image of itself in the other. Even if only similar or analogous.

Aphrodite’s children, like Cupid, have the task of reunification.

In Alchemy, the binder is called “Secret Fire”, and is the only element and medium of transmutation. It is also known as the “third between the two”. In Theurgy it is defined as “light that comes from itself or, better, from the source”. Love and strife are both necessary conditions for the existence of a cosmos and of mortals. In Alchemy, love and strife, exert upon the four elements, love causing them to unite or come together, and strife driving them apart. In fragment DK 31 B 17, presocratic Empedocles formulates the core of the cosmic cycles with these words: …“at one time through Love all coming together into one, at another in turn each carried apart by the hatred of Strife.“ Ultimately, both in Alchemy and Theurgy, the activity of Love creates, from originally simple elements, various higher, more complex organisms and all other things, whereas Strife effects their decomposition, causing elements to revert to their original pure state. Alchemists trivialize this process—in addition to oversimplifying it—by defining Mercurius and Sulfur/Anima as perpetually seeking each other. However, alchemists overlook the fact that their soul/sulfur is extracted from, and by, Mercurius. Maybe, they likely planned to convey, through their laboratory vocabulary, the mystery of the perpetual struggle between what unites and what separates/dissolves.

Seven breaks the chain.

Seventh, the geometric form of the Pythagorean numbers, could be considered as a pause, an element of discontinuity in the continuous chain of being, and perhaps an antidote to the principle of the incessant metamorphosis that reduced everything, as Pythagoras says in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to a wandering and precarious image: Cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago, everything flows and everything has wandering shapes. That said, In Alchemy there are recurring numbers such as 3, 7, and 12 – which, coincidentally, are also the recurring numbers of the Chronos/Kronos cycles. These numbers/cycles represent the phases and phase ruptures. Seven, in particular, is the number of repetitions essential for a transmutation. For example, the repetition of seven sublimations brings out the Mercurius or Spirit of the World trapped in the raw matter.