According to alchemists, the “extraction of the macrocosmic seed” can only occur through a scalar series. But of what? Of souls or bodies?
It would be too simplistic and misleading to say that in their work alchemists extract a scalar series of souls, obviously in the form of “matter”.
Why would that be misleading?
Because alchemists say they extract the soul through, and by means of, the spirit. That’s a semantics adapted to recall the sequence of the works. So impossible to discern given the numerous paths, with their respective different starting raw materials, that the distinction between “spirit” and “soul” becomes artificial. To the point that alchemists, to avoid confusion, apply a differentiation based on the time of “birth” and material consistency: the spirit is extracted first, which then extracts the soul. Mercurius extracts Sulfur. But these are enigmas designed to mask and encrypt the simplicity of the works.
So how can I act and distinguish between spirit and soul?
Simply leave these terms aside. Better yet, don’t even think about it. I repeat, Westerners are children of the soul-body dichotomy, where the spirit is philosophically difficult to place and understand. We don’t get the complexity and sophistication of the soul series of ancient Egyptian culture. The confusion stems from the Greco-Roman Neoplatonists, who began to contradict each other over the definitions of soul, spirit, and body. Given that Plato was difficult to understand in plain language. However, I did not mean to focus in vain on W. Maxwell’s Magnetic Medicine. Indeed, his series of twenty conclusions are of very ancient origin. One of these represents the foundation of all alchemical doctrine. One of these represents the foundation of all alchemical doctrine, and we find it in Plotinus’ Enneads, IV 7: “It is the body that is in the soul, not the soul in the body” . This Plotinus’s saying – which is also a reinterpretation of Plato’s thought – exemplifies, and introduces, the concept of “magnetism” in Alchemy.
Which part is magnetic: the soul or the body?
The magnetic, “binding” element is the spirit—known in Alchemy as Mercurius.
Can we interpret Mercurius as the nous, or intellect, of the metals?
No. Don’t even try. Besides, it wouldn’t make the slightest sense. Mercurius is “merely” the third element in the middle, the primary object of alchemical work through the demolition of the structure of raw matter. The main property of the Mercurius is to attract and be attracted by the stellar Mercurius; the second is the ability to extract from itself a metallic soul, called “Sulfur”; the third aspect is the “cooking” part of Mercurius, which is in fact what does everything. Bear in mind that Mercurius is indeed the third entity—the binding agent, the cook, the magnet—but the alchemist’s true final product, or the philosophical egg (possessing the wholeness of body, spirit, and soul), must in turn serve as an intermediary entity between the cosmic body-spirit-soul and the alchemist’s own body-spirit-soul.
Why all this complication?
Because, ultimately, the philosophical egg should enter the field of the higher soul. It must “engage” with it, entering the “private channel”. For this to happen, it is necessary to seek the intercession of the third entity in a scalar series of third entities. Through transmutations that take place “before the eyes and ears of the alchemist”.
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