
Originally Posted by
Florius Frammel
Here is what the Anonymous of the "12 clefs" (see post #10 of this thread by Weidenfeld) has to say about the first key:
He says B.V. here only specifies the general instructions he already gave in the introduction. It is limited on the presentation of the two principes that form our first matter. Those two principes (King/queen, sulfur/mercury -sometimes called argent vif) form our first matter he calls matière crue (crude matter). The whole work consists in doing a conjunction of those principles.
He talks about antimony too: Mr Salomon in his comment (Steiner here can only guess that Trißmosinus' comment on the Splendor Solis is meant) says the wolf means Antimony. He agrees that Antimony is a part of saturn (like Artephius says), but he doesn't see why it should be regarded as the "sujet" of the god mars neither for etymological nor other reasons (I guess he doesn't know the german word "Spiessglantz") except if he means "our antimony".
He disregards the opinion that here common gold is meant too. It's more about an "universal spirit" he as well calls "wet root matter" (d'Humide radical). He continues saying the wolf is nothing but the "water that wants to come down". The lion is the earth that that needs to be washed and purified.
It goes on a bit in similar ways like this (quite much text), but I'm too lazy to type it all out. I think we can get the idea that this interpretation is in the sense of R+C / Mutus Liber/ (Universal) Spiritus (Mundi)/ Water Work tradition. And this is another reason why I would say (together with the "oxygène oddity) it is written much later than 1700 as those interpretations are typical for the timeframe from the mid 18th century to the end of the 19th century where they interpreted alchemy texts like that. Feel free to share your objections.
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