It is said that sun-moon-earth have a symbolic correspondence in the tripartite division of man into soul, intellect and body. Can we also apply this doctrine to the Alchemy of metals?
Roughly, alchemists say that the sun provides a “spark”, which they call soul or sulfur; the moon provides a so-called moist layer for this spark, which they call Mercurius. The earth, intuitively, is the place where what alchemists call the “celestial pair” gathers in an even more tangible form, that’s to say the body/salt.
The tripartite division into soul, intellect and body as scalar progression is a typically Neoplatonic idea, which was subsequently adopted by Christianity. In fact, it’s comforting, as it eliminates the dramatic nature of the conflict between the transience of the body and the eternity of the soul, introducing a mediating factor.
From an alchemist’s perspective, the real comfort lies not so much in working with metals, but in relying on the mediation factor that so frightens philosophers of the duality of body and spirit. Ultimately, alchemical work is performed precisely on the medium between the two, which introduces the dynamic principle of change.
So, also from an alchemical point of view, the medium in the sun-moon-earth triad eliminates the immobility inherent in every state of antagonism – in our case, the definitive death of the body and the immortality of the soul – and introduces the dynamic principle of change.
Not only, the medium in the sun-moon-earth triad introduces the dynamic principle of change, but, as said above, it is the only factor upon which the alchemist can reasonably operate.
What is this medium in Alchemy?
We already mentioned, it is Mercurius, which not only represents the moon but, in many cases, is the astronomical moon itself.
To simply put, what does this medium factor consist of?
In simple terms, the medium, or exchange factor, must have an average consistency between the spark and the body, therefore, it can only be what the Greeks called pneuma/ochema/ and theosophists portray as astral body. Alchemists know it as the fish’s bladder or alchemical light. All things already said, but Repetita Iuvant.
I can imagine the unifying function of a human’s astral body, but how can we imagine the function for a metal?
The alchemists’ Mercurius dissolves, therefore unites. It swells, therefore unites. I admit that the metaphor I will use below will be highly unpoetic, but the operation of the middle body is alchemically similar to a molecular glue. In fact, alchemists, who manage to be even more crude and realistic than chemists, call their Mercurius even “glue”.
A glue has nothing to do with an astral body…
An astral body has everything to do with glue, as it is analogous to a molecular glue mechanism of action. Furtherly, we can comparate the middle world/pneuma/Mercurius/Moon to a chain.
A glue that forms chains?
Absolutely, the Moon can be imagined as a “chain” that unites the Sun and the Earth. Or rather, more specifically, the Moon represents the point of contact between the solar ring and the Earth’s ring. Mercurius does the same.
Thus, do you mean a lunar chain?
Let’s let Iamblichus speak: the middle world of the moon is not a delimited field but a swarming and scaling of entities.
How can we apply the fate of a metal to that of a person?
Let’s try to replace the word metal with person and repeat the concept above: so, a person’s destiny is reabsorbed into the great cycle of nature, participating in the transformation of matter, as an incessant process of exchange takes place between the sun, the moon, and the earth. What has changed?
The concept of nature has changed. Can the nature of a metal be analogous to the nature of a person?
You chose the right word: analogous. And this also applies to nature. Although it is difficult to understand how much this adjective also applies to nature, since the word nature is a very ambiguous concept philosophically. Now, as an alchemist, I’ll say something no philosopher likes: for an alchemist, the nature of things is reached at the completion of the eighth musical note in the Last Cooking. Is nature a response through sound, then? Musicologists say so. Nevertheless, I understand that even substituting the term “sound” for “wavelength” is too crude for a philosopher to accept.
It goes without saying that the moon occupies the middle position in the sun-moon-earth triad. But, astronomically speaking, doesn’t this cause lunar eclipses?
The Moon’s role, in astronomy as in Alchemy, is that of a reflector. Therefore, an eclipse would be an impediment of the role of reflector.
In the sixth canto of the Iliad, Virgil describes the moon occupying the central place in the triad. In the moon, the soul separates from the intellect, depriving itself of its individual imprint; and at the end of this slow secretion it remains as pure matter, available to assume a new form in an equally new body, when the spark of a new intellect falls from the sun.
Does this triad hold true from an astronomical perspective as well?
The Sun-Moon-Earth triad is the receptacle of the cosmic “philosophical sea”—a concept we will explore in greater depth in the dedicated sections. Suffice it to say for now that the Moon reflects stellar influences and casts them down upon the Earth at night. The Sun, conversely, possesses a unique power within the substance of the atmosphere: in its “royal” aspect, it seeks to supplant the stars and “silence” them, while in its role as “Guardian of the Threshold”, it delineates and opens the boundary between the cosmos and the lunar-terrestrial realm.
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