Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Part II Synthesis: A More Esoteric Consideration of the Hermetic Art and its Mysteries

Part II turns from Alchemy seen “from without” to its inward centre (II.1 ¶3). Its central claim is that the subject, matter, vessel and operator of the Hermetic Art is man himself: “Man then, shall we conclude at length, is the true laboratory of the Hermetic art” (II.1 ¶30). Atwood then identifies this Art with the Theurgy of the ancient Mysteries (II.2 ¶3) and follows the initiate through purification, a descent into darkness, a willed death of the soul’s bond to the body, and an ascent to a formless inner Light and union with the First. She closes by calling this “consummation of the Mysteries” “the ground of the Hermetic philosophy” (II.4 ¶52), and a “Vital Experiment” whose by-products are the elixir and gold (II.4 ¶58).

How the argument unfolds

Of the True Subject of the Hermetic Art and its Concealed Root clears the ground. Atwood argues that modern chemistry shares nothing with Alchemy “beyond the borrowed terms” (II.1 ¶5), and that the pseudo-alchemists failed through ignorance of “that internal fire and vessel of the adepts” (II.1 ¶6). The ancients concealed the vessel above all, “a divine secret” in Maria’s words (II.1 ¶8, n1). Through a chain of authorities she reports with approval (the Moorish philosopher, Agrippa, Sendivogius, Geber, Albertus Magnus, Ripley, Aliphili), she argues that man, as microcosm, is the one subject containing all (II.1 ¶9–15). She describes, after Boehme and “a modern exponent,” a course of colours from black through white to red (II.1 ¶23–24), and calls it “the process of working with the Vital Spirit” (II.1 ¶25). Self-Knowledge, she concludes, is “at the root of all Alchemical tradition” (II.1 ¶30). She grounds this in a latent faculty of Wisdom or Intellect (II.1 ¶33–39), and ends: “Wisdom was the offspring of a vital experiment into nature, by certain arts and media producing the central efficient into conscious being” (II.1 ¶52). Since the Initiated were silent on the means, she proposes to “descend into ourselves” (II.1 ¶53).

Of the Mysteries takes up that search through the rites. Atwood holds that the Mysteries were real, their object “Ontological Wisdom” and the rites “really efficacious to procure it” (II.2 ¶4). She sets them beside modern Mesmerism, which works “in the same material and with similar instruments” but without the ancients’ principles: mesmerists take “the Universal Medium” in its natural state, while the ancients separated the Vital Spirit from the “defilements and imaginative impressures” of birth (II.2 ¶7–8). The imaginative Spirit must be purified, a slow process needing consent, for “Will is the greatest part of purgation” (II.2 ¶13). Atwood then names the subject: the Mundane Spirit, the mesmeric agent, “the Common Soul,” and the alchemists’ “thing indifferent, abject, and exposed in all hands” (II.2 ¶17–18). This passive “middle substance,” “in turn agent and patient,” becomes the Stone when “solved and resolved, and wisely manipulated” (II.2 ¶25–26).

The Mysteries Continued follows the deeper initiation. Entrancing the senses dissolves the “sensible medium”; the concealed next step was “to translate the consciousness underneath this medium by obscuration, towards the Central Source” (II.3 ¶5). This leads into Hades, “a state of vital submersion” (II.3 ¶7), the “Black Saturn of the adepts” (II.3 ¶18), where “the imaginative spirit” makes apparitions “as in dreams, only more intense” (II.3 ¶22). The purified will must hold “a motive purely rational” against the deeper sphere’s temptations (II.3 ¶9). Atwood reads the Rosicrucian mountain letter as an allegory of this stage (II.3 ¶31–33). A record preserved by Stoboeus likens the Grand Mysteries to death; Porphyry’s second death, “peculiar to philosophers,” is the “happy gate of blackness,” the “head of Hermes’ crow,” in which the “sensual compact” is dissolved “all without destruction to the mortal body” (II.3 ¶37). Beyond it, in Psellus’s “Introspection,” the initiate “sees the Divine Light itself without any form or figure” (II.3 ¶46), the “internal spiritual Sun” and the Prester, “the Fire Spirit of Life” (II.3 ¶52, ¶54).

The Mysteries Concluded carries the initiate upward. Elysium is a state “which transcends this corporeal life and generation” (II.4 ¶3), and of this meadow of Divine Ideas the alchemists “call it their garden” (II.4 ¶9). When “the central magnet moves to the ascent,” “a liberation is effected through agony, as it were of death,” and the soul passes “into the elysian light” (II.4 ¶19). The grades run “telete precedes muesis, and muesis, epopteia,” ending at “the Paternal port” (II.4 ¶23). Union comes “by divine Media, and not a mere conception of the mind” (II.4 ¶31): “without the Pontic Medium, without Theurgic assistance we are unable to transcend the consciousness of this life” (II.4 ¶49). The final vision knows God “in Identity” (II.4 ¶42). Atwood then returns the argument to Alchemy: the light was “the Light of Life” (II.4 ¶56), and the elixir and gold are “vital products” of the Vital Experiment (II.4 ¶58).

What this Part contributes to the Work

Decoding keys (stated in the chapter pages unless marked):

  • Matter / subject — man’s own life: “This matter, O king, is extracted from thee” (II.1 ¶8); the “thing indifferent, abject” is the Common Soul (II.2 ¶17–18). Its seat in “the vital spirit of the arterial blood” (II.1 ¶21) is an interpretation.
  • Vessel — within man (interpreted, II.1 ¶6); man is “the true laboratory” (II.1 ¶30). At the higher stage, “the cleansed Augean, the already prepared medial receptacle of the newborn light” (II.4 ¶9).
  • vulgar Matter → Mercury of the Philosophers — the subject defiled, then washed and dissolved (II.2 ¶16).
  • Sphinx / solve — the unpurified imaginative Spirit, which one must “solve, that is comprehend” (II.2 ¶15).
  • king — in Sendivogius, the soul at man’s centre (II.1 ¶10).
  • Hermetic luminaries / Sun and Moon philosophical — agent and patient (II.2 ¶26).
  • Sulfur — “Light of Reason … that Sulfur of adepts” (II.3 ¶30).
  • earth hiding the Stone — “our dark divulsed chaotic life from sense”; its unpurified moisture is “the Purgatory of the wise” (II.3 ¶29).
  • head of Hermes’ crow / gate of blackness — the soul’s willed dissolution of her bond to the body (II.3 ¶37); in II.1 ¶23 the same phrase marks the black opening state of the colour course.
  • Hades / Black Saturn — consciousness submerged beneath sense (II.3 ¶7, ¶18).
  • Proserpine — “that lapsed soul of ours”; golden bough — the penetrating intellect (II.3 ¶11).
  • garden — the meadow of Divine Ideas (II.4 ¶9).
  • Sal Sepientum et Mercurius Philosophorum — the awakened total Reason (II.4 ¶39).
  • Prester — “the Fire Spirit of Life” (II.3 ¶54); the “internal spiritual Sun,” the Saturnian Salt (II.3 ¶52).

Agent. The chapters name several: “the Invisible Mercury” (II.1 ¶21); the subject itself as “agent and patient” (II.2 ¶26); the re-entering Light of Reason (II.3 ¶30); and at the summit the Synthemata, which “perform by themselves their proper work” (II.4 ¶31). How these relate is not settled in the text.

Operator. He must quit vice (II.1 ¶14), consent by will (II.2 ¶13), hold “a motive purely rational” (II.3 ¶9), and have “labored rationally” (II.2 ¶29); yet his purity counts only among the “concauses” (II.4 ¶31).

Stages and signs. Read together (interpreted): dissolution of the sensible medium (II.3 ¶5); revealment of the Medial Life, then Purificative Rites (II.2 ¶20); descent through Hades and its images, passed unmoved (II.3 ¶22); blackness and the death of the natal bond, where corruption “is a signal of Art” (II.3 ¶37); the formless Light, which “will not deceive” (II.3 ¶46); the colours’ return in Elysium (II.4 ¶9, interpreted); ascent to the Paternal Port (II.4 ¶23). The alchemical colour course of II.1 (black, white, red; II.1 ¶23–24) runs alongside this; the chapter pages do not map the two onto each other.

Impediment. Sense and its images: light cut off “through the gates of sense” (II.1 ¶49); “imaginative impressures” (II.2 ¶8); “converted to externals, we desert our best life unconsciously” (II.4 ¶9).

Result. Wisdom made conscious (II.1 ¶52); the Stone (II.2 ¶25); the Prester placed “in the most supreme Ether,” “no longer a Consuming Fire,” as reported from “our doctors” (II.3 ¶56); union “in Identity” (II.4 ¶42).

Threads carried forward

  • The art of vital administration and the vessel are named but unexplained (II.1 ¶8).
  • Whether the three principles, “attraction, repulsion, and circulation,” restate salt, mercury and sulfur is left open (II.1 ¶14); so is the identity of the true rector (II.1 ¶21).
  • Latex and the immediate efficient are undefined (II.1 ¶47).
  • Whether “the medium” of II.2 ¶8 is the Universal Medium or the Vital Spirit is unresolved.
  • Aquaster and Fire World are passed without definition (II.3 ¶16, ¶41).
  • What the Golden Branch stands for in II.4 ¶7 is not said.
  • The circulatory confine (II.4 ¶39) and the Pontic Medium (II.4 ¶49) are unexplained, and whether the Pontic Medium and Theurgic assistance are one requisite or two is left open.
  • The practical means of the Vital Experiment, on which the Initiated were silent (II.1 ¶53), remain to be sought.