Dogma and Ritual of High Magic Part II - Eliphas Levi 1896

The Mastery of The Sun

We come now to that number which is attributed in the Tarot to the Sign of the Sun. The denary of Pythagoras and the triad multiplied by itself represent wisdom in its application to the Absolute. It is with the Absolute therefore that we are concerned here. To discover such Absolute in the infinite, the indefinite and the finite, is the Great Work of the sages, that which is termed by Hermes the Work of the Sun. To find the immovable foundations of true religious faith, of philosophical truth and of metallic transmutation, here is the whole secret of Hermes and here the Philosophical Stone. This Stone is both one and manifold: it is decomposed by analysis and recomposed by synthesis. In analysis it is a powder, the alchemical powder of projection; before analysis and in synthesis it is a stone. The Philosophical Stone, say the masters, must not be exposed to the air, nor to the eyes of the profane; it must be kept in concealment and preserved carefully in the most secret receptacle of the laboratory, the key of the place being always carried upon the person.

He who possesses the Great Arcanum is truly king and is indeed above any king, for he is inaccessible to all fears and to all vain hopes. In any malady of soul and body, a single fragment broken from the precious Stone, a single grain of the divine powder are more than sufficient for their cure. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” as the Master said.

Salt, Sulphur and Mercury are only accessory elements and passive instruments of the great enterprise. Everything depends, as we have said, upon the interior magnes of Paracelsus. The work consists entirely in Projection, and Projection is accomplished perfectly by the effective and realizable intelligence of a single word. There is but one important operation, and that is Sublimation, which is nothing less, according to Geber, than the elevation of the dry substance by means of fire, with adherence to its proper vessel. Whosoever would acquire understanding of the Great Word and possess the Great Arcanum, after studying the principles of our “Doctrine”, should read the Hermetic philosophers carefully, and he will doubtless attain initiation, as others have attained it; but for the key of their allegories he must take the one dogma of Hermes, contained in the “Emerald Table”, while to classify the knowledge and direct operation he must follow the order indicated in the kabalistic alphabet of the Tarot, of which an absolute and complete explanation will be given in the last chapter of this work.

Among the rare and priceless treatises which contain the mysteries of the Great Arcanum, the “Chemical Pathway or Manual” of Paracelsus must be placed in the first rank, as comprising all the mysteries of demonstrative physics and the most secret Kabalah. This unique manuscript is preserved in the Vatican Library; a copy was transcribed by Sendivogius and was used by Baron Tschoudy when composing the Hermetic Catechism contained in his work entitled The Blazing Star. This catechism, which we point out to instructed Kabalists as a substitute for the incomparable treatise of Paracelsus, expounds all the essential principles of the Great Work in a form so clear and complete that a person must be absolutely wanting in the quality of occult comprehension if he fail in attaining the absolute truth by its study. We shall now give a succinct analysis of this work, together with a few words of commentary.

Raymond Lully, one of the grand and sublime masters of science, says that before we can make gold we must have gold. Out of nothing we can make nothing; wealth is not created absolutely: it is increased and multiplied. Hence let aspirants to knowledge understand and realize that neither miracles nor jugglers’ feats are demanded of the adept. Hermetic Science, like all real sciences, is mathematically demonstrable. Even its material results are as exact as a well-worked equation. Hermetic gold is not only a true doctrine, a shadowless light, truth unalloyed with falsehood; it is also material, actual, pure gold, the most precious which can be found in the veins of the earth; but the Living Gold, Living Sulphur, or true Fire of the Philosopher, must be sought in the House of Mercury. This fire feeds on air; to express its attractive and expansive power, a better comparison is impossible than that of lightning, which primally is a dry and terrestrial exhalation united to humid vapour, and afterwards, assuming an igneous nature, in virtue of its exaltation, acts on its inherent humidity, which it attracts and transmutes into its own nature, when it falls rapidly to earth, where it is drawn by a fixed nature similar to its own. These words, enigmatic in form but clear in essence, express openly what the philosophers understand by their Mercury fructified by Sulphur, which becomes the master and regenerator of Salt. It is AZOTH, universal magnesia, the Great Magical Agent, the Astral Light, the light of life, fertilized by animic force, by intellectual energy, which they compare to Sulphur on account of its affinities with Divine Fire. As to Salt, it is absolute matter. All that is material contains Salt, and all Salt can be converted into pure gold by the combined action of Sulphur and Mercury, which at times act with swiftness that transmutation can take place in an instant or in an hour, without labour for the operator and almost without expense. At other times, when the tendencies of the atmospheric media are adverse, the operation requires several days, months, and occasionally even years.

As we have said, there are two palmary natural laws - two essential laws -which, balanced against another, produce the universal equilibrium of things. These are fixity and motion, analogous to truth and discovery in philosophy, and in absolute conception to necessity and liberty, which are the very essence of God. The Hermetic philosophers give the name of fixed to all that is ponderable, to all that tends by its nature towards central rest and immobility. Whatsoever obeys more naturally and readily the law of motion, they term volatile; and they compose their Stone by analysis, that is, the volatilization of the fixed; then by synthesis, that is, the fixation of the volatile, which they effect by applying to the fixed -called their Salt-Sulphurated Mercury or light of life, directed and rendered omnipotent by a secret operation. They become masters in this manner of all Nature, and their Stone is found wherever there is Salt, which is the equivalent to saying that no substance is foreign to the Great Work and that even the most apparently contemptible and vile matters can be changed into gold, which is true in this sense, as we have said, that all contain the fundamental Salt, represented in our emblems by the cubic stone itself, as may be seen in the symbolic and universal frontispiece to the KEYS of Basil Valentine. To know how to extract from all matter the pure Salt which is concealed in it is to possess the secret of the Stone. It is therefore a saline stone, which the Od, or universal Astral Light, decomposes or recomposes. It is one and many, for it can be dissolved and incorporated with other substances, like ordinary salt. Obtained by analysis, it may be termed the UNIVERSAL SUBLIMATE; recovered by the synthetic way, it is the veritable PANACEA of the ancients, for it cures all diseases, whether of soul or body, and is termed in an eminent manner the Medicine of all Nature. When, by means of absolute initiation, we can dispose of the forces of the Universal Agent, this Stone is always to our hand, for its extraction is then a simple and easy operation, far different from projection or metallic realization. The Stone in its sublimated state must not be exposed to the air, which might dissolve it and spoil its virtue. Moreover, to inhale its exhalations is not devoid of danger. The wise man more readily conserves it in the natural envelopes, knowing that he can extract it by a single effort of his will and by a single application of the Universal Agent to the envelopes, which Kaba-lists term shells. To express hieroglyphically this law of prudence, the sages ascribed to their Mercury, personified in Egypt as Hermanubis, a dog's head, and to their Sulphur, represented by the Baphomet of the Temple or Prince of the Sabbath, that goat's head which brought such odium upon the occult associations of the middle ages.

For the mineral work, the First Matter is exclusively mineral, but it is not a metal. It is a metallized salt. This Matter is called vegetable because it resembles a fruit, and animal because it produces a kind of milk and blood. It contains within itself the fire by which it must be dissolved.