Quadrant Magazine - Fall/Winter 2024

The Dance of Mercurius
Alchemy, Jung, and the Hermetic Tree of Life

by Eva Rider, MA

Originally published in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Quadrant – Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology
The following essay explores the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as seen through an intersection of its Hermetic aspect, Jung’s alchemical psychology, and the fluid dance of Mercurius as transformer and transformed. This androgynous messenger is the beginning and the end of the Great Work of alchemy whose goal is conveying Spirit into Matter.

Introduction

During the course of this investigation, I was presented with some challenges in the examination of the underlying structures of the Trinity, Quaternity, and their relationship to the creative process constituting the alchemical opus. This problem appears in Jung’s explorations and those of the medieval alchemists. It is worth ongoing study and may be understood by meditating on the symbols themselves. The astrological correspondences as well as the those of the basic elements may serve as an aid. The multivalence of Hermes/Mercurius’ role in the transformation process is akin to its original author and source (Hermes Trismegistus) and thus tended to slip and shape shift from my grasp. It is Mercurius who circumscribes the content of this piece and links the above and below. The Great Work leading to the Philosopher’s Stone and Jung’s Individuation process is voluminous and invites more research than can be explored here.

The Tree of Life

It has often been noted that a picture paints a thousand words. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in describing the Tree of life and the alchemical processes that underlie its multivalence. The illustrations depicting these processes are innumerable and even so, deliver us into a deeper masa confusa of chaos than one of condensed clarity. This essay is therefore limited by the exclusion of many of these diagrams. I refer the reader to The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism published by Taschen (Roos, 2005) and to The Alchemy Website of Adam Mclean at www.alchemywebsite.com, for further reflection and study of the images and glyphs.

 

How does the map of the Hermetic Tree of Life and the Dance of Mercurius illustrate Jung’s alchemical psychology?

 “All theory is gray, my friend.
But forever green is the tree of life.”

(Goethe, 1984)

Introduction

During the course of this investigation, I was presented with some challenges in the examination of the underlying structures of the Trinity, Quaternity, and their relationship to the creative process constituting the alchemical opus. This problem appears in Jung’s explorations and those of the medieval alchemists. It is worth ongoing study and may be understood by meditating on the symbols themselves. The astrological correspondences as well as the those of the basic elements may serve as an aid. The multivalence of Hermes/Mercurius’ role in the transformation process is akin to its original author and source (Hermes Trismegistus) and thus tended to slip and shape shift from my grasp. It is Mercurius who circumscribes the content of this piece and links the above and below. The Great Work leading to the Philosopher’s Stone and Jung’s Individuation process is voluminous and invites more research than can be explored here.

The Tree of Life

It has often been noted that a picture paints a thousand words. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in describing the Tree of life and the alchemical processes that underlie its multivalence. The illustrations depicting these processes are innumerable and even so, deliver us into a deeper masa confusa of chaos than one of condensed clarity. This essay is therefore limited by the exclusion of many of these diagrams. I refer the reader to The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism published by Taschen (Roos, 2005) and to The Alchemy Website of Adam Mclean at www.alchemywebsite.com, for further reflection and study of the images and glyphs.

 

How does the map of the Hermetic Tree of Life and the Dance of Mercurius illustrate Jung’s alchemical psychology?

diagram 1 - The Dance of Mercurius
The Tree of Life is an archetype and serves as a blueprint for the underlying patterns of the entire universe. It is a system of correspondences for the alchemical journey of psyche from Spirit into Matter and back again in a descending and ascending pattern. Thus, it is a precise map describing the relationship between a vertical movement of energy that links macrocosm and microcosm and the horizontal opposing poles of positive and negative, masculine and feminine, force and form, yang and yin.
Jung’s psychology encourages us to imagine the psyche/soul as the bridge between spirit and matter. As “psyche” is the Greek translation for soul, I will use it interchangeably in this essay.

The Tree offers us a pictorial scaffold on which to imagine our creative journey towards Individuation or wholeness. Jung’s alchemical work provides a psychological vocabulary to understand these correspondences that link the relationships between the Sephirah on the Tree. The Sephiroth (plural) are symbolized by 10 circles or spheres. They correspond to Planets, elements and the Chakra energy system of Yogic tradition.

Map of the Psyche on the Tree of Life
The Twenty-two Initiatory pathways of the Tarot’s major arcana link these Sephiroth as cosmological planetary energies. Since the Tree of Life is itself an archetype, these correspondences offer us a map by which we can navigate the hidden places of our consciousness in our search for meaning.

Dion Fortune, in The Mystical Qabalah describes it as a glyph, a composite symbol, which is intended to represent the cosmos in its entirety and the soul of man… (Fortune, 2000, p.370) In the ancient Hermetic axiom of Hermes Trismegistus, (mythic Egyptian seer and father of Alchemy, Astrology and Magic), “as above, so below,” was an analogue from The Emerald Tablet illuminating these correspondences as a truth that has persisted throughout the ages.

 

The Structure of the Tree of Life

Entering the structure of the Tree of Life, we see three inherent triangles. These three link four worlds. The archetypal world was called the Supernal triangle, the psychological or philosophical triangle, the imaginal or astral triangle. From this bottom astral triangle hangs a single pendant which represents the fourth world, that of matter, the root of manifestation.

This is Malkuth, the kingdom. The framework of the Tree serves as a comprehensive meditative tool illuminate how divine creative spark is expressed through alchemical processes. Of these, there are seven emanations or planets known to the ancients. They are the two luminaries: the Sun and the Moon and five planets and their corresponding elements, for example., The Sun (Gold), its reflection, the Moon (silver), Saturn (Lead), Jupiter (Tin), Venus (Copper), Mercury (Quicksilver), and the Earth.

Earth contains the quaternity which is comprised of original Fire, Water, Air and Earth. The horizontal and vertical axes of the cross anchor the opposites in time and space, dividing them into four equal parts designating the quaternity.

The ascending path on the Tree of Life, also called the Serpent path.

diagram 3 - The Dance of Mercurius
The reference to the serpent is an apt descriptor of this process; it is one of winding upward toward the light in a serpentine movement. Mercurius, the androgynous messenger of the gods carries the caduceus, symbol of intertwining serpents in motion. The entwined serpents correspond to DNA, kundalini, shakti, the energy coiled at the base of the spine. Our return home, analogous to the coiling and uprising of kundalini energy, is a spiral circumambulation.
An additional image of this spiral journey is the ancient symbol of the ouroborus—a snake eating its own tail. Like a circle, which has no beginning and no end, the ouroborus implies that our beginning is also our end.

Of the ouroboros, Jung (1977) writes,

The ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow… He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia.
(para. 513)

diagram 4 - The Dance of Mercurius
The descending path known as the Lightning flash, see diagram 4, is one of involution, and is imaged as a lightning bolt that moves vertically downward from side to side.

As noted previously, the three triangles depicted on the tree of life represent Cosmos, Psyche and the Astral or subtle body. They manifest in the fourth world of Matter. (diagram of the three triangles of the tree).

The three worlds of archetypal, philosophical and astral are also joined in the psychoid realms. (Raff, 2000). The subtle or astral body is the seat of imagination. When figures arising from the imagination meet the ego self, we experience it as a numinosity in the body/soul.

This allows for a joining of egoic self with the soul self. Raff states:

The transcendent function is the psychological mechanism that unites the opposites and helps bring the self to manifestation. The psyche includes the conscious mind (with the ego at its center) and the unconscious. To affect a junior of opposites, the contents of the unconscious must be joined with the ego to create a third position.
(Raff, 2000, p. 17)

 

The Triangles and the Transcendent Function

There are three coniunctios or conjunctions in alchemy. The first coniunctio arises from the separation of Spirit and Soul from the body. The second coniuncito is the reconnection of Body, Soul, and Spirit which intimates Jung’s description of Individuation or wholeness,

The third coniunctio is Body, Soul, and Spirit now integrated into consciousness and its unification as the one world or Unus Mundus. This describes the metaphoric return to the Garden of Eden.

The term, coniunctio or conjunction refers to the “sacred marriage,” alchemical wedding, or Heirosgamos, a wedding of Sun and Moon, often depicted in alchemical emblems as King and Queen. From their union a transcendent third is born. Here, Mercurius emerges as the divine son or filius philosophoum and lapis philosophorum or philosophical lapis. He is the transformed lead become Gold and the alchemical catalyst itself.

The spark of light from Kether (Crown) yearns to make itself manifest in Malkuth (Kingdom) as Matter longs for Spirit. Mercurius is a shape shifter and thus fluid. In alchemy, mercury is both metal and liquid, therefore the transformer and the transformed.

The path of involution on the Tree of Life is the Lightning flash. The original light descends, igniting the first spark of light and illuminating the quintessence, the mysterious quickening in the universe also attributed to the spirit Mercurius by the alchemists.

The spheres (sephiroth) on the Tree symbolize not only planets from a cosmological perspective but also correspond to alchemical metals. The emanating downward current of lightning would be attributed to Uranus, the Zodiac and to Chokmah, the first sphere on the right as it marks the separation from the original Unity at Kether, the Crown. In Hebrew, Chokmah is translated as (Wisdom) and is the Great Father on the pillar of Mercy.

Directly across from Chokmah, to the left on the feminine pillar of severity is Binah (Understanding). This last, seems confounding at first but is a key. Binah as Great Mother is creator and destroyer of form and is ruled by Saturn, a planet known by the ancients as a malefic as it acts as a constrainer.

From the Supernal triangle, we fall through Daath. Daath is a hidden Sephira which sits behind the Tree on the middle pillar. It represents the abyss and (Knowledge/Gnosis). It is unmanifest and is associated with the planet of death and transformation; Pluto.

Falling into the realm of time and space, we arrive at the Ethical or Philosophical triangle at the center of the tree, which is the world of psyche or soul. It is of significance that the apex of this triangle points downward, reversing and thus mirroring the archetypal, Supernal triangle.

Here, the Tree’s Sephiroth erupts into pure primary colors as we enter the duality of time and space. On the right the Sephirah is Chesed (Mercy) assigned to Jupiter and linked to the element of tin. Its color is blue. It occupies the right pillar of the tree; that of mercy. Its opposite, the fifth Sephirah on the left side of the Tree is Gevurah (Severity) assigned to Mars and the element of iron and the color red. It is notable here that the positive and negative poles of masculine and feminine energies exchange places in the movement of the Caduceus.

Dion Fortune explains:

…it must be remembered that what is positive on the physical plane is negative on the astral plane; it is positive again on the mental plane and negative on the spiritual plane, as is indicated in the twining black and white serpents of the Caduceus of Mercury.
(Fortune, 2000; p. 10)

At last, we arrive at the center of the entire tree of life to the sphere of Tiphareth (Beauty). Tiphareth is assigned to the Sun. Its element is gold, its color is yellow. It is symbolized by a six-pointed star, the Seal of Solomon which joins the triangle of fire and the triangle of water, an intersection revealing the marriage of masculine and feminine, macrocosm and microcosm in perfect balance. Tiphareth is the seat of that which Jung called the Self. Here, at the center, is the Coniunctio, the alchemical wedding.

Descending further towards matter/earth, we arrive at the lowest of the three triangles called the Astral Triangle, the realm of subtle body/psychoid. Here psyche/soma intersect and blend.

In the astral realm, the creative spark appears in the silver ghost like garment of the moon at Yesod Moon), whose element is silver, and color is purple. Yesod reflects the sun at Tiphareth above it. This entire astral triangle encompasses realm of dreams, visions, the imaginal and the subtle body.

As we descend closer to matter, the colors and energies have become increasingly dense.

The sphere on the Tree on the right side is Netzach (Victory), assigned to Venus, its element is copper, and its color is green. It corresponds to imagination and eros. Directly across from Netzach on the pillar of severity, is the sphere of Hod (Splendor). It is assigned to Mercury. Its element is quicksilver, and its color is orange. It is associated with thought and logos.

Thus, the blue of Mercy and the red of Severity combine in purple offering us another key to this vast system of correspondences that is the Tree of Life.
Yesod is located on the middle pillar in direct line from Kether (Crown), Daath (knowledge), Tiphareth (Beauty).

In Yesod the entire Tree of Life is contained and is thus the Foundation. The Moon is a receptacle of the energies that have sprung from the original spark. The energies are now dense enough to interact with the earth and body.

Nowhere is this marvelous system of correspondences better expressed than here in the marriage of Sun and the Moon as described by Tiphareth and Yesod.

“Luna is really the mother of the Sun, which means, psychologically, that the unconscious is pregnant with consciousness and gives birth to it.”
Jung, 1977, para. 219)

The Sun and the Moon unite to create the third, the birth of an entirely new state of consciousness.

It is noteworthy that the symbol for Malkuth at the bottom of the Tree is also the astrological symbol for earth, an equal sided cross encircled. The cross separates the four elements indicating the quaternity of fire, water, air and earth and therefore contains the “above in the below”

The Garden of Eden

One illustrative story is that of western Judeo-Christian biblical origin, the Garden of Eden. The story of the Garden of Eden is the biblical creation myth of the Judeo-Christian world in which the Tree of Life stands at its center. The story begins in a garden of undifferentiated oneness: a quintessential paradise. Adam and Eve enjoy a unity with nature in the original participation mystique, the term C. G. Jung used to describe an undifferentiated merging with nature in the metaphoric womb. In the Garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of polarities; good and evil. This latter Tree is laden with ripe fruit. The Divine Creator instructs Adam and Eve that all is theirs except for the fruit on this latter Tree. If they taste it, they will become mortal, warning of an impending choice to be made.

The serpent Is undoubtedly an emissary of the Creator whose role as tempter leads us into the story. The serpent acts in opposition to the creator and instructs Eve that by eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, she will awaken and become God-like with a knowledge of good and evil. (King James Bible, 2017, Gen 3:3-5).
As a messenger of the Divine, the serpent has been linked to Mercurius, the duplex trickster god and associated with Lillith and Wisdom, Sophia incorporating the hidden feminine.

Humanity’s tale begins with deception, temptation and disobedience. Disobedience, in service to consciousness, contributes to the path leading to individuality and wholeness. Thus, Adam and Eve, are the original Anthropos and their act of disobedience holds the seeds of our destiny in which we may become as gods; should we take on our mantle of responsibility as stewards of the earth.
Our redemption lies in our return, to the Garden, thereby, the kingdom of heaven (Kether) is united with earth (Malkuth).

The etymology of the word ‘matter’ is derived from the Latin “materia” meaning “origin,” “substance,” or “mother.” The word “matrix” also finds its origin in the root mater or womb. (Barnhart & Steinmetz, 1988).

Matter as earth and body is the vessel containing the receptive feminine principle receiving the divine penetration of the Divine light.

Jung, Alchemy and Transformation

The alchemical process of transformation can be likened to that of caterpillar to a butterfly. In the chrysalis process, the caterpillar loses the last of its four skins and undergoes a metamorphosis.

In the alchemical processes of psychological transformation there are seven phases that can be seen to link to the astrological correspondences and elemental metals attributed to the sephiroth on the Tree. These alchemical stages are divided into four phases which point to psychological stages of change and transformation. The first of these is the Nigredo or blackening (death) which is experienced as a dark night of the soul and a disintegration of what has become devoid of spirit. In alchemical art, it is represented by crows or ravens. The second phase is a return of Spirit, Albedo, also referred to as the whitening. This involves the Soul’s unification with lunar light, often depicted as a white dove. A fourth phase called Citrinitas, or the yellowing was later omitted. Citrinitas heralds the return of Solar light and is associated with fermentation. The culmination in the final phase of transformation is called the Rubedo or reddening or Gold. Life is renewed in Matter but in a completely new and vital form.

This transformative cycle repeats many times in a spiral motion that moves through planes of existence. Psychologically, in Nigredo, we experience a burning (fire), a cleansing dissolution (water), a separation (air), self-reflection and a conjunction in which the Spirit and Soul are reunited. This represents the completion of the first coniunctio; Unio Mentalis. The second coniunctio reunites the Spirit, Soul with Body. The third coniunctio depicts the Unus Mundus, the one world, or unification of Spirit, Soul and Matter with the one Whole. We can link the unification of the Unus Mundus symbolically to allude to the return to the Garden; the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The three coniunctios recount the metamorphic process of creative transformation on all planes; spiritual, mental, imaginal and arrive in physical manifestation. This motion of the creative process can be seen arising in the dance signified by the caduceus of Hermes/Mercurius. The caduceus portrays two intertwining snakes, one black and one white that connect and are crowned at the top, here intimating Kether, the crown. The intertwining serpents describe the process of Kundalini, the yogic practice of awakening Shakti, a form of divine feminine energy believed to be located at the base of the spine.

Clearly, the beginning of the work of individuation involves confrontation with the shadow. The awareness of that which is separate and rejected by the ego is the first sign that a disintegration of the old forms of the self has begun, marking the Nigredo phase in the alchemical process. Calcinatio (fire) is the first venture into the Nigredo or dark night of the soul: our world is ‘burning’. Dissolution or Solutio (water) is evidenced at the worldly level by floods and hurricanes; more personally, by tears of sorrow. The phase of Separatio (air) stirs us into self- reflection. We begin to awaken from the long sleep of unconsciousness. The earth begins to speak to us and through us, if we can become conscious of what has been hidden in the long sleep.

Hermes/Mercurius serves as androgynous mediator. As such, Mercurius represents the beginning and the end of the process of endless transformation.
Jung’s life’s work was predicated on the archetypal manifestation of Mercurius and on the Hermetic and alchemical principles. Jung proposes that as the medieval alchemists had no psychological language, they projected their psychological processes onto their alchemical experiments, thus changing their own consciousness in the process.

In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung elaborates on the alchemist’s apprehension of the nature of Mercurius:

When the alchemist speaks of Mercurius, on the face of it he means quicksilver, but inwardly he means the world-creating spirit concealed or imprisoned in matter. The dragon is probably the oldest pictorial symbol in alchemy. It appears as the Ouroboros, the tail-eater, in the Codex Marcianus..Time and again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail. Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work: he is the prima materia, the caput corvi, the nigredo; as dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again in the lapis. He is the play of colours in the cauda pavonis and the division into the four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught – a symbol uniting all the opposites.
(Jung, 1968, para. 404)

As Jung sets forth in this remarkable kaleidoscopic passage, Mercurius is the mysterious essence; involved in all transformational processes on all four planes; spirit, mind, imagination and matter. It would be impossible to grasp the numinosity of the god who is known as Thoth/Hermes/Mercurius through the intellect. It can be known only through the gnosis; the experience of being beckoned by the god.

diagram 6 - The Dance of Mercurius

Diagram 6

The Quaternity and the Quintessence.

The dilemma of the three and the four was one that Jung struggled with as did the medieval alchemists. The attempt to square the circle, while impossible in actuality, is on a symbolic level brings spirit (circle) into matter (square) through the mediating symbol of the (triangle). They are encircled as the spirit is made manifest as the philosopher’s stone.

Jung arrived at an understanding that there is a fourth which describes the quaternity. This missing fourth intimates the hidden feminine substance of matter/earth/body. The quaternity is a manifestation of the processes of the four worlds on the Tree of Life which correspond to the elements of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. These are reconstituted as they manifest in the physical world and in their correspondence in astrology, as seen previously.

The quaternity is the goal and gold of the philosopher’s stone. It is the “cornerstone” in which the spirit Mercurius returns to live in matter. The Spirit in matter then becomes the Quintessence which is also Mercurius. Fire, Water, Air, and Earth is reunited with Spirit. The symbol for the quintessence is the five pointed star.

Through Mercurius, we perceive the movement between the opposites as a dance. This is the dance of force and form, macrocosm and microscosme, masculine and feminine, anima and animus, yang and yin, intertwining and weaving together and apart. Creation dissolves and coagulates again and again.

If the first coniunctio is the awakening that we are soul and spirit separate from body, the second coniunctio joins Spirit, Soul and body, then the third coniunctio is the Unus Mundus; the one world.

The Tree of life is an archetypal map and contains the whole universe. It emcompasses the serpent, ouroboros, caduceus, cross, triangles, quaternity and quintessence. It holds the prima materia in the beginning and the philosopher’s stone. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end are One in a return to Unus Mundus.

Jung as Emissary of Mercurius

Jung sought to create a bridge between the worlds of spirit and matter, connecting the psychological processes that arise in alchemy as his concept of Individuation. Developing the imaginal dialogue he called Active Imagination he entered into the psychoid spaces linking psyche/soma which became the basis of his Analytical psychology. Although his adherence to the principles of empirical scientific observation informed his early work, it is evident that by the end of his life, he was himself a Hermeticist and an alchemist. His research reached into the astral world, and beyond, carrying back the wisdom embedded in dreams.

Because Jung explored religion and culture through dreams, visions and Active imagination, we find elements from Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Gnosticism, and Shamanism embedded in Jungian psychology. The following quotation expresses Jung’s own journey on the evolutionary Serpent path leading up the Tree of Life:

The right way to wholeness is made up…of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is the longissima via not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.
(Jung, 1968, para. 6)

It is clear from his later work and life that Jung was initiated into the wisdom of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung recounts his numinous experience of the garden subsequent to his heart attack in 1944. He refers to the “Garden of Pomegranates”—the Garden of Eden. In Jung’s vision, Malkuth—the Kingdom—was married to Tiphrareth, Beauty. Of the vision, Jung (1989) wrote poignantly:

“It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions”
(p. 294)

Jung’s visions of the Garden and his description of his ecstatic experience recall us back to humanity’s original destiny. In the wedding of Heaven and Earth—in this coniunctio—where the ego surrenders to the Soul, eternal light is made manifest in nature. Creative resolution is the completion of this journey. It is the result and fruition of the imagination. Creation is imagination in motion: never static for in stasis, we die, disintegrate and return in a new form. It is winged Mercurius as fluid essence which is inherent to the very substance of our being. The caduceus he bears is also the ouroboros seen from a different angle as serpent, revolving spirit into matter and back into spirit. This is the mystery of which we are ourselves are a manifestation.

The archetypal world of the Supernal and the instinctual of Matter are as macrocosm to microcosm. This Saturnian contraction allows the formation of the philosopher’s stone. The sparks must be contained, captured, refined, and replicated in a usable form.

Here we see the essential goal of alchemy as transmutation. The discriminatory function of consciousness that brings the divine down into a palpable, usable form produces a narrowing akin to the movement through the birth canal toward its manifestation. New life arises from the old like the snake shedding its skin, or like a bolt of genius striking and reverberating in soul, wedding creative imagination and emotion.

What began as dense carbon at the core of the earth is reawakened and enlivened by the original spark of Love that set creation into motion. The Tree of Life as a map, encompasses all four planes of existence, both invisible and visible. However, it is through the limitation of the subjective lens of psyche that we see the objective world and as such our view is always incomplete. Awakened consciousness is an imaginative re-membering that our source and our root are one. It is ultimately only arrived at through the experience of gnoisi, the numinous ineffable experience of oneness with source.

Ultimately, we begin in Unity with the first spark of life and end in Unity, an alpha and omega of the circulation..we return in the Unus Mundus. This spiral of infinity is expressed by in the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus, guide, of souls, teacher, and scribe of the gods:

To conclude, The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistos speaks for itself, translated below by Isaac Newton, the 17th century renowned alchemist and scientist.

Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracle of one only thing.

And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.

Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.

By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations where of the means is here in this.

Hence I am called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

 

— English translation of the Emerald Tablet by Isaac Newton

References

Barnhart, R. K., & Steinmetz, S. (Eds.). (1988). Barnhardt dictionary of etymology. H.W. Wilson.

Fortune, D. (2000). The Mystical Qabala. York Beach, ME: Weiser/Redwheel.

Goethe, W. Von, (1984). Faust Part 1, Translated by George Madison Priest; The Franklin Library, Oxford University Press. ((Original work published 1854)

Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and alchemy (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In G. Adler & R. F. C. Hall (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 12). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1939)

Jung, C. G. (1977). Mysterium coniunctionis: An inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In R. F. C. Hull, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (2nd ed., Vol. 14). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1956)

Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections (R. Winston & C. Winston, Trans. A. Jaffe Ed.). Random House. (Original work published 1961)

King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)

Newton, Isaac (June 2010). Newman, William R. (ed.). The Chymistry of Isaac Newton

Raff, J. (2000). Jung and the The Alchemical Imagination. Nicholas-Hays Inc.
Roos, A., (2005). The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticisim;Taschen. (Original work published 1996

Trismegistus, Hermes, Corpus Hemeticum, The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus

Artwork
Artwork at the beginning of the work is the sixth woodcut from the series in Basil Valentine’s Azoth (1613), colored by Adam McLean, https://alchemywebsite.com

Diagram 1. Sephirotic tree detail, colored tree of life, 16605431171 (Retrieved from Shutterstock (2022). https://shutterstock.com)

Reclaiming Soul spiral icon in gold

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