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A Further Analysis of the Initial Principle, and its Eduction into Light

Part III, Chapter 2

This chapter follows the Initial Principle from its hidden state, where it is “nothing” to us, to its eduction (drawing forth) into Light, and argues that this same ground is the alchemists’ Matter. Atwood’s main claim is that the Hermetic subject is “the Thing itself, which is our Identity” (III.2 ¶7): it is found not by reasoning about it from outside but by an inward dissolution and return in which the mind passes through darkness and comes back to itself (III.2 ¶16, ¶54–56, ¶66).

The hidden principle and its white light

Atwood opens with the Kabalah. Once manifest, the Zohar calls the Initial Principle Wisdom or the Supreme Crown; before that it is “the Unknown”, described only by negations (III.2 ¶3). Quoting the Zohar, it shows itself by “producing a point”, yet while that point of Light stays “subjective and inseparate” it remains unknown: the Ancient of Days, the White Head (III.2 ¶3). Ben Jocahi pictures it in white, shedding a “dew of light” (III.2 ¶3).

For Atwood this whiteness matters. White contains all colours, so Nature appears white “in the evolution of her Fontal Light”, that is, at her source (III.2 ¶5). Paracelsus explains that all things are white in God’s hand so that there may be “a simple ground of all diversity” on which to recreate (III.2 ¶5). The Lucerna Salis describes the matter whitening to snow under carefully governed fire: the “white work” (III.2 ¶5–6). Only those “who have entered experimentally within to know themselves” recognize this ground; the worldly mind cannot even imagine it (III.2 ¶4).

The Matter is “our Identity”

Atwood identifies this white ground with the old alchemists’ Matter: “no common water, but an unctuous mineral vapour, universally subsisting”. Bodies are to be turned into this vapour, “and this vapour is the Stone” (III.2 ¶7). It first appears in vision “in demoniacal forms” and is known only when “the eye of mind, regardant and purifying, meets its First source”; then fantasy falls away in direct contact with “our Identity” (III.2 ¶7). Its names include Sendivogius’s water “not wetting the hands”, Flos Salis Albi (Flower of White Salt), and the “true magic earth wherein is the recreative fire”, which binds its parts of itself (III.2 ¶7–8).

Quoting Reuchlin, Wisdom hidden in darkness is Ain, “nothing or no entity as respects us”, because we cannot conceive what does not appear; when it shows itself in human apprehension, “dark Aleph” becomes “light Aleph” (III.2 ¶10). Dionysius calls it “caligo divina” (divine darkness, our translation) (III.2 ¶13). Boehme says the first something was a cloud “condensed into water”, the One Thing containing all (III.2 ¶15).

Regeneration and the visionary witnesses

Atwood then makes her key identification: this One Thing “appears to be nothing less or more than that Identity which is made in the regeneration”, by a return into experience “out of the dissolute void of life when artificially induced” (III.2 ¶16). The text does not say here how that void is induced.

She adduces witnesses. Boehme describes a “Tincture” in the Celestial Light, water-like but burning like oil, the source of growth and of human thought, which flies from anything done against nature and can turn iron into gold (III.2 ¶16). Basil Valentine’s allegory of flight, fall and rescue ends with an all-containing water formed into earth, “the first matter of all things” (III.2 ¶19).

Atwood reads that allegory as “the whole metaphysico-chemical analysis of the Universal Subject”: separation, introspection and reunion of the vital elements (III.2 ¶20). What survives the dissolution is the “Identic Salt”, the true seed, which once freed runs “Proteus-like” through colours and forms (III.2 ¶20–22). The changes stop only when Art fixes the Matter in its Final Cause; arresting this “imaginative flux of freed vitality” needs “the whole voluntary force of the central magnet” (III.2 ¶22, ¶24). Whose will this is, the text leaves open.

An adept’s vision of a sealed vessel holding a world in miniature, all from “one only thing”, is to Atwood “the whole Hermetic laboratory” (III.2 ¶25–26). Those who saw the Causal Truth first “passed the turbulent delusions, not of sense only but of the selfhood” and were “proved and reproved” (III.2 ¶28). In “philosophic fermentation” Life is divided into three principles and brought near annihilation, until it “draws a new seed” (III.2 ¶28).

Philosophers who reached the same ground

German metaphysics, Atwood argues, reaches by abstraction what the Rabbis reach by experiment (III.2 ¶29). Hegel’s pure Being “may also in its immediate conception be called non-Being” (III.2 ¶30); Kant, Fichte and Schelling stopped there “without a means of passage to the promised shore”. Yet that limit, “met by contact of the inquiring light within”, is the Absolute Identity (III.2 ¶31). Quoting the Rabbi, creation from nothing means from a non-Being that is “the Cause of causes” (III.2 ¶32).

The Greek sages, Atwood holds, had a hidden method of ascent “through a gradual assimilation” to the Causal Source (III.2 ¶33). Their differing first principles (fire, water, Intellect) name one substance, since “the mind is not without the matter” nor “that matter without the mind” (III.2 ¶35). Their elements were “Celestial Elements”, known only “in the conscious alliance”; Hermes calls this Spirit Quintessence and the Hermetists call their earth “the Earth of the Wise” (III.2 ¶36). Plato’s perfect Whole means the ethereal, “which art once taught them to segregate” from mortal existence (III.2 ¶38).

A summary from Plotinus and Porphyry, which Atwood endorses, argues that a persisting Subject underlies all bodies; artificial corruption shows it; an iron pot resolves into gold, and gold into incorruptible water (III.2 ¶47–48). Of this pure Matter they say “by means of the Theurgic Art it is made manifest” in visions (III.2 ¶49).

The Night of Matter

Our natural consciousness, Atwood says, is cut off from its own essence (III.2 ¶50). Quoting Proclus, to find the One Principle one “must become first assimilated to it” (III.2 ¶50). The Greeks describe Matter only by negations, “a certain Infinity”, known “by a sort of defective or ablative reasoning” (III.2 ¶53). So one must pass through reason, not discard it, into “that obscure oblivion which is the Original of Life” (III.2 ¶54). In this “Night of Matter” intellect feels but no longer understands, until the soul, pained by the void, rallies “about her last deserted Unit” and “becomes into true Being”: “Death is the way of Life” (III.2 ¶55). At the new birth “Light springs forth to manifestation out of the abyssal Darkness”, which God brings forth as First Matter (III.2 ¶56).

Striving defeats this. The First Matter flies from whoever “intently” beholds it; Actaeon was hunted by his own thoughts, while sleeping Endymion received the goddess (III.2 ¶57). Quoting Porphyry, one must rest “in your own Essence” (III.2 ¶59).

The pure passive Matter and the work

The Matter is an “ethereal glass”, passive to intellect as a mirror to images, felt but not known (III.2 ¶60). It is “the Matter so often celebrated by the Alchemists, the Quintessence of Plato, the Water of Thales, the Non-Being of Parmenides, and that Abyss of the Kabalists” (III.2 ¶60). Nature alone cannot free it, being “bound magically”; human aid and “magical solution” are needed (III.2 ¶61). Only Life and “no other Fire but that of Intellect” find it, “by a dissolution of the Vital Spirit” (III.2 ¶62). The art is “solution, sublimation, and fixation”, repeated with long labour (III.2 ¶64). The ass, praised by Agrippa for patience, stands for the self-emptied subject (III.2 ¶64). As the Aspirant leaves the statues for the inner shrine, the mind leaves all images; what remains is “That which is prior to all things, and the First Matter”, and the soul “arrives not at another thing but at itself” (III.2 ¶66).

The Work in this chapter

  • Matter: “our Identity. This is the true Hermetic material” (III.2 ¶7): the operator’s own essential self (stated).
  • Operation: “reprocedure into experience out of the dissolute void of life when artificially induced” (III.2 ¶16): life deliberately dissolved, then returning (interpreted). Also “a dissolution of the Vital Spirit” (III.2 ¶62, stated).
  • Agent: “no other Fire but that of Intellect” (III.2 ¶62): intellect purified at its source (stated). The flux is arrested by “the whole voluntary force of the central magnet” (III.2 ¶24, stated; whose will is open).
  • Stages: separation, introspection, reunion (III.2 ¶20, stated); “solution, sublimation, and fixation” (III.2 ¶64, stated); “Night of Matter” then return to true Being (III.2 ¶55, stated).
  • Signs: “demoniacal forms” at first (III.2 ¶7); Proteus-like colours (III.2 ¶20); dismay and pain at the void (III.2 ¶55) (stated).
  • Operator: has “passed the turbulent delusions, not of sense only but of the selfhood” (III.2 ¶28); receptive like Endymion, not striving (III.2 ¶57, interpreted).
  • Result: Light meeting Light (III.2 ¶28, interpreted); the soul “arrives not at another thing but at itself” (III.2 ¶66, stated).

Terms introduced

  • Initial Principle — the first principle; Wisdom or Supreme Crown once manifest, the Unknown before (III.2 ¶3).
  • Ain — the hidden Wisdom, “nothing or no entity as respects us” (III.2 ¶10).
  • white work — the stage at which the matter becomes snow-white (III.2 ¶5).
  • Matter — the Hermetic subject: a universal vapour, ultimately “our Identity” (III.2 ¶7).
  • Identity — what is made in regeneration out of an induced void of life (III.2 ¶16).
  • Tincture — Boehme’s water-like, oil-burning spirit, source of growth and thought (III.2 ¶16).
  • Identic Salt — the indestructible seed surviving dissolution (III.2 ¶20).
  • central magnet — whose willed force stills the freed flux (III.2 ¶24).
  • philosophic fermentation — Life divided into three principles and brought near annihilation (III.2 ¶28).
  • Celestial Elements — the living elements prior to the common ones (III.2 ¶36).
  • Earth of the Wise — the Hermetists’ earth, set within their heaven (III.2 ¶36).
  • Psychical Quintessence — the separated essence, equal to the whole compound (III.2 ¶44).
  • Theurgic Art — the art by which pure Matter is manifested in visions (III.2 ¶49).
  • Night of Matter — the mind receiving the formless, feeling without understanding (III.2 ¶55).
  • ethereal glass / Passive Nature — the pure, imageless receptive Matter (III.2 ¶60).
  • solution, sublimation, fixation — the three operations of the art (III.2 ¶64).

Authorities cited

Mylius (epigraph, III.2 ¶2); the Zohar and Ben Jocahi, via Franck and Rosenroth, on the Unknown (III.2 ¶3, n1–n4); Revelation and Enoch on whiteness (III.2 ¶4, ¶12); Paracelsus and the Lucerna Salis on whitening and dissolving (III.2 ¶5–6, ¶63); Sendivogius, Van Helmont and Vaughan describing the Matter (III.2 ¶7–8, ¶17, n43); Reuchlin on Ain (III.2 ¶10, ¶24); Dionysius, the Lumen de Lumine and Parmenides on divine darkness (III.2 ¶13–15); Boehme on the One Thing and Tincture (III.2 ¶15–16); Basil Valentine (III.2 ¶19); Hermes on binding the matter (III.2 ¶22); Grasseus’s adept (III.2 ¶25, n26); Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and the Rabbi on non-Being (III.2 ¶30–32); Plato, Aristotle, Proclus, Empedocles and Pythagoras on the ancients’ veiled doctrine (III.2 ¶33–45); Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus on pure Matter and union (III.2 ¶47–59, ¶66); Madathan, Agrippa and Apuleius on dissolution and the ass (III.2 ¶61, ¶64–65).