Originally Posted by
Fulcanelli
Under the biblical tradition of the first man’s Fall, the philosophers, with their customary skill, hid a secret of alchemical nature. Clearly we owe to this fact the existence of the representations of Adam and Eve that we discovered on a few old Renaissance dwellings, and it enables us to explain them. One of those, clearly representative of this intention, will serve as an example for our study. This philosopher’s dwelling located in Le Mans displays, on the second floor, a bas-relief representing Adam, his arm raised to gather the fruit of the tree of knowledge, while Eve is drawing the branch towards hi, with a rope. Both of them are holding phylacteries, attributes meant to express the fact that the two characters have an occult meaning, different from that of Genesis. This motif, worn badly by weathering ---only the larger masses have been spared ---is circumscribed by a crown of foliage, flowers, and fruit, hieroglyphs of a fecund, fertile nature, of abundance and production. To the right and above we can notice among the leprous foliated moldings the image of the sun, while on the left appears that of the moon. The two hermetic stars come to emphasize and further specify the scientific quality and the secular expression of the subject borrowed from the Holy Scripture (Plate X).
Let us notice, in passing, that the secular scenes of the temptation conform themselves to that of religious iconographies. Adam and Eve are always represented, separated by the trunk of the tree of Paradise. In the majority of cases, the snake, coiled around the trunk, is figured with a human head; it appears in this way on the Gothic bas-relief of the ancient Fountain Saint-Maclou, in the church o the same name in Rouen, and on another large tableau decorating a wall of the socalled ‘house of Adam and Eve’, in Montferrand (Puy-de-Dome), which seems to date back to the end of the 14th or the beginnings of the 15th century. On the stalls of Saint-Bernard-de-Comminges (Haute-Garonne), the reptile uncovers its breasted bust, with a woman’s arms and head. The snake of Vitre also exhibits a woman’s head, sculpted on the fourcentered arch of a lovely 15th century door on rue Notre-Dame (Plate XI). On the other hand, the group of the tabernacle of the Cathedral of Valladolid in Spain, made of pure silver remains realistic: the snake is represented in its normal shape and holds an apple in its wide-open mouth, between its fangs.
Adamus, Latin for Adam, means made of red earth; it is the first being of nature, the only one among human creatures who was endowed with the two natures of the androgyne. We can therefore regard him, from the hermetic viewpoint, as the basic matter joined to spirit in the very unity of the created substance, immortal and everlasting. According to the Mosaic tradition, as soon as God gave birth to woman by individualizing, into two distinct and separate bodies, these natures that had been primitively associated in one single body, the first Adam had to withdraw, specifying himself by losing his original constitution and becoming the second Adam, imperfect and mortal. The Adam princeps ---the first Adam ---of whom we have never found any figuration anywhere, is called by the Greeks (Adamos) or (Adamas), a word meaning, on the earthly plane, the hardest of steel, used for (Adamastos), that is to say, indomitable, and still virgin [from the roots , primitive not, and (damao), to tame], which characterizes quite well the profound nature of the first heavenly man and of the first earthly body as being solitary and not subject to the yoke of marriage. But what about this steel called (adamas) about which the philosophers say so much? Plato, in Timaeus, gives us the following explanation.
"Of all the waters which we have called fusible, that which has the most tenuous and the most equal parts, which is the most dense, this unique type with a bright, shining yellow color; the most precious of goods, gold in short, has formed by filtration through stone. The knot of gold having become very hard and black because of its density, is called adamas. Another body, close to gold on account of the smallness of its parts but which shows several species, whose density is lower than that of gold, which contains a weak alloy of very tenuous earth, rendering it harder than gold, and which is also lighter, owing to the pores dug in its mass, is one of these brilliant and condensed water called bronze. When the portion of the earth it contains becomes separated through the agency of time, it becomes visible of itself and it is given the name rust".
The text by the great initiate teaches the distinction of the two successive personalities of the symbolic Adam, which are described in their proper mineral expression of steel and bronze. And the body close to the substance named adamas ---knot or sulphur of gold ---is the second Adam, considered in the organic kingdom as the true father of all men, and in the mineral kingdom as the agent and procreator of the metallic and geologic individuals constituting it.
Thus we learn that sulphur and mercury, generating principles of metals, were originally one and the same matter; for only later did they acquire their specific individuality and retain it in the compounds proceeding from their union. Although this individuality is maintained by a powerful cohesion, art can nevertheless break it and isolate sulphur and mercury in the form specific to them. Sulphur, the active principle, is symbolically designated by the second Adam and mercury, the passive element, by his wife Eve. The latter element or mercury, regarded as the most important, is also the most difficult to obtain in the practice of the Work. Its usefulness is such that the science itself owes its name, hence hermetic philosophy is based on the perfect knowledge of Mercury, in Greek (Hermes). This is being expressed on the bas-relief which accompanies and borders the panel of Adam and Eve on the house of Le Mans. There we can see Bacchus as a child, holding the thrysus, his left hand hiding the opening of a pot, and standing on the lid of a large vase decorated with garlands. Bacchus, emblematic divinity of the mercury of the sages, incarnates a secret meaning similar to that of Eve, mother of the living. In Greece, all Bacchants were called, Eva, a word which has for its root, Evius, a nickname for Bacchus. As for the vessels destined to contain the philosophers’ wine or mercury, they are eloquent enough by themselves to spare us the explanation of their esoteric meaning.
This explanation, albeit logical and complying to the doctrine, is nevertheless insufficient to provide the rationale for certain experimental idiosyncrasies and some obscure points of practice. Indubitably the artist could not pretend to acquire the original matter, that is to say, the first Adam, "formed of red earth"; and the subject of the sages itself, qualified "first matter of the art", is quite removed from the inherent simplicity of the second Adam. Nevertheless, this subject is properly the mother of the Work, just as Eve is the mother of men. It is she who endows the bodies which she bears, or more exactly which she reincrudates, with vitality, vegetativeness, and the possibility of mutation. We shall go further and say for those who already have some smattering of science, that the mother common to all alchemical metals does not enter in substance into the Great Work, although, without her, it is impossible to produce or undertake anything. As a matter of fact, through her intervention, common metals, true and only agents of the stone, are turned into philosophical metals; through her, they are dissolved and purified; in her, they can repossess their lost activity and from having been dead come alive again; she is the earth that nourishes them, makes them grow, fructify, and allows them to multiply; finally, by returning to the motherly womb which had once upon a time formed them and given birth to them, they are reborn, recovering the primitive faculties which human activity had taken away from them. Eve and Bacchus symbolize this philosophical and natural substance --- yet not the first in the sense of unity or universality ---commonly known by the name of Hermes or Mercury. We know, on the other hand, that the winged messenger of the gods was the intermediary between the powers of Mount Olympus, and played in mythology a role analogous to that of mercury in the hermetic work. Hence, we understand more clearly the special nature of its action, and why it does not remain with the bodies which it has diluted, purged, and animated. We can also grasp in which way it is appropriate to understand Basil Valentine when he affirms that metals (4) are creatures twice born from mercury, children of the one and only mother, produced and generated by her. Further we can conceive more clearly where the stumbling-block lies which the philosophers have thrown across our paths when they assert in common agreement that mercury is the unique, sole matter of the Work, whereas the necessary reactions are only provoked by it, which they said either by metaphor or by considering it from a specific viewpoint.
It is also useful to learn that, if we need the cist of Cybele, Ceres, or Bacchus, it is because it contains a mysterious body which is the embryo of our stone; if we need a vase, it is to place the body therein, and everyone knows that, without suitable earth, any seed would become useless. Consequently, we cannot do without a vessel, although that which is contained is infinitely more precious than the container, the latter being destined sooner or later to be separated from the former. Water in and of itself has no shape, although it is liable of espousing them all and of taking that of the container which contains it. This is the reason for our vessel and for its necessity and why philosophers have repeatedly recommended it as the indispensable vehicle, the necessary excipient of our bodies. And this truth finds its justification in the image of the infant Bacchus standing on the lid of a hermetic vessel.
Of the preceding, it is especially important to remember that metals, liquefied and dissociated by mercury, recover the vegetative power they possessed at the time of their appearance on the physical plane. The dissolving agent plays for them the part of a genuine Fountain of Youth. It separates the heterogeneous impurities brought in from the mineral deposits, takes away from them the infirmities contracted throughout the centuries; it reanimates them, gives them new vigor and rejuvenates them. It is the way common metals are reincrudated; that is, put back in a state close to their original state, and from then on they are known as living or philosophical metals. Since they reassume, upon contact with their mother, their original faculties, we can assert that they became close to what she is and have taken a nature similar to hers. On the other hand, as a result of this conformity of complexion, they are obviously incapable of engendering new bodies with their mother, the latter having only a renewing rather than a generating power. Hence we must conclude that the mercury of which we speak and which has for symbol the Eve of the Mosaic Eden, is not the one to which the sages have assigned the role of matrix, of receptacle, the vase, suitable for the reincrudated metal, called sulphur, sun of the philosophers, metallic seed and father of the stone.
Do not be mistaken; there lies the Gordian Knot of the Work, the one that beginners must try to untie if they do not want to be stopped short at the beginning of practice. Hence another mother exists, daughter of the first, whom the masters with an intention easy to guess, have also called mercury. And the differentiation of these two mercuries, one the agent of renewal, the other of procreation, constitutes the most difficult study that the science has reserved for the neophyte.
The "water" that is supposed to be condensed with this system never actually touches metal. It only condenses in the last receiver F.
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