Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts by Herbert Silberer (great book club books txt) 📖

in the form of a master builder (denique sub architecti figura operatur frater ad huius operis perfectionem).... Only for the better carrying out of our building and thereby to attain the rose-red bloom of our cross concealed in the center of our foundation ... we must not take the work superficially, but must dig to the center of the earth, knock and seek.” (Summ. Bon., p. 48; Trans. Katsch, pp. 413 ff.) Just after that he speaks of the three dimensions, height, depth, and [pg 180] breadth. The masonic symbolism is accompanied clearly enough in the “Summum Bonum” by the alchemistic. Notice the knocking and seeking, and what is mentioned in the doctrines about the form of the Lodge. Immediately thereafter is a prolix discussion of the geometric cube.

Frizius and Fludd contribute also a letter supposed to have been sent by rosicrucians to a German candidate. It says, “Since you are such a stone as you desire, and such a work ... cleanse yourself with tears, sublimate yourself with manners and virtues, decorate and color yourself with the sacramental grace, make your soul sublime toward the subtile meditation of heavenly things, and conform yourself to angelic spirits so that you may vivify your moldering body, your vile ashes, and whiten them, and incorruptibly and painlessly gain resurrection through J[esus] C[hrist] O[ur] L[ord].” In another passage: “Be ye transformed, therefore, be ye transmuted from mortal to living philosophic stones.”

In the “Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae” (published in Latin in 1633), are passages like the following: “Indeed every pious and righteous man is a spiritual alchemist.... We understand by that a man who understands not only how to distinguish but with the fire of the divine spirit to separate [spagiric art] the false from the true, vice from virtue, dark from light, the uncleanness of vice from the purity of the spirit emulating God. For only in this way is unclean lead turned into gold.” (P. 75.) “If one now ventures to say that the [pg 181] Word of Christ or the Holy Ghost of wisdom dwells in the microcosmic heaven [i.e., in the soul of man] we should not decry the blind children of the world as godless and abandoned. [But certainly the divine spirit is, as is later averred, the rectangular stone in us, on which we are to build.] This divine spark is, however, continuous and eternal; it is our gold purchasable of Christ.... So it happens in accordance with the teachings of Christ, or the Word become flesh, that if the true alchemists keep on seeking and knocking, they attain to the knowledge of the living fire.” (P. 81.) So again the important knocking and seeking of masonic symbolism, and this indeed, for the purpose of learning to know a fire.

In reference to the really elevating thoughts of the “Summum Bonum,” Katsch, enthusiastic about these ideas, exclaims: “What language, what an unflinching courage, what a dignified humility. Even the most reluctant will not be able to avoid the admission that here quite unexpectedly he has ... met the original and ideal form of freemasonry.”

The comparison of masonry and alchemy remains true even if we work more critically than Katsch, who is accused of many inaccuracies. I recall for instance the later researches of the thorough and far-seeing Dr. Ludwig Keller.

For the illumination of the darkness that has spread over the past of freemasonry, Keller shows us (B. W. and Z., pp. 1, 2) the rich material of symbolism that is offered the diligent student, first of all in the very copious literature, printed matter, [pg 182] and especially in the manuscripts, that is known by the name of Chemistry or Alchemy.

In the symbols of the alchemists, the rosicrucians, the Lodges, etc., “we meet a language that has found acceptance among all occidental peoples in analogous form, not indeed a letter or word language, but a language nevertheless, a token or a symbol language of developed form, which is evident even in the rock temples of the so-called catacombs, once called latomies and loggie. The single images and symbols have something to say only to the person who understands this language. To the man who does not understand it, they say nothing and are not expected to say anything.”

In reference to the symbol and image language, which was comprehensible only to the initiated, we think naturally of the ancient mysteries. The religious societies of the oldest Christians, in the centuries when Christianity belonged in the Roman Empire to the forbidden cults, found a possibility of existence before the law in the form of licensed societies, i.e., as guilds, burial unions, and corporations of all sorts. The primitive Christians were not the only forbidden sects that sought and found this recourse. Under the disguise of schools, trade unions, literary societies, and academies, there existed in the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire, and later inside of the world church, organizations that before the law were secular societies, but in the minds of the initiated were associations of a religious character. Within these associations there appeared very early [pg 183] a well developed system of symbols, which were adopted for the purpose of actually maintaining, through the concealment necessitated by circumstances, their unions and their implements and customs—symbols that they chose as cloaks and that in the circle of the initiated were explained and interpreted according to the teachings of their cult.

Valuable monuments of this symbolism are preserved in the vast rock temples that are found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Sicily, and the Apennine peninsula, in Greece, France, and on the Rhine, and these vaults, which in part also served the early Christians as places of worship, show in their images and records and in their architectural form so close a resemblance that they must be acknowledged as the characteristic of a great religious cult extending over many lands, which has had consistent traditions for the use of such symbols and for the production of these structures.

Many of these symbols, it should be noted in passing, are borrowed from those tokens and implements of the building corporations, which were necessary to the completion of their buildings (Keller, l. c., p. 4). An important part was played even in the early Christian symbolism by the sacred numbers and the figures corresponding to them, a group of educational symbols which we find likewise in the pythagorean and platonic schools. It is known that the symbolical language of the subterranean rock temples, some of which were used by the earliest Christians for their religious worship, are closely [pg 184] connected with the pythagorean and platonic doctrines. From the year 325 A. D. on, every departure from the beliefs of the state church was considered a state offense. So those Christians who retained connection with the ancient philosophic schools were persecuted. In the religious symbol language of the church, the sacred numbers naturally began to disappear from that time. In the writings of Augustine begins the war on the symbolic language, whose use he declared a characteristic of the gnostics. In spite of the suppression the doctrines of the sacred numbers continued through all the centuries in religious use, in quiet but strong currents which flowed beside the state church. The sect names, which were invented by polemic theology for the purpose of characterizing methods that were regarded as imitations of the gnostics, are of the most varied kinds; it may be enough to remember that in all those spiritual currents, that like the old German mysticism, the earlier humanism, the so-called natural philosophy, etc., show a strong influence of platonic thinking, the doctrines of the sacred numbers recur, in a more or less disguised form, but yet clearly recognizable. (Keller, Heil. Zahl., p. 2.)

As the old number symbolism constitutes a part of the hieroglyphics of alchemy, I shall pause a moment to consider them. The use of mathematical and geometrical symbols proceeds from the use of the simplest forms, points and lines, but in all cases where the object is not a representation in the flat but in space, both the points and lines are replaced by [pg 185] plastic forms, i.e., forms of cylinders, spheres, bars, rings, cubes, etc. From this point it was but a short step to the use of trees, leaves, flowers, implements, and other things that showed similarities in form. Pillars are specially noticeable for the symbolism of the ceremonial chamber. In all cases where points and lines occur in images and drawings, pillars are found in the plastic representation of thoughts and symbols. They form the chief element of the organization of cults in academies and museums, and justify the names of colonnade, stoa, portico, and loggia, which occur everywhere; besides the special designation like Οἰκυς αἰονὶος, etc.

For symbolism, too, which served as the characterization of the forms of organization and the building up of the fraternity into degrees, lines were useless, but in place of lines and points are found plastic forms which were at their disposal in carpenters' squares, crossed bars, etc. (Keller, l. c., p. 10.)

As the circle symbolized the all and the eternal or the celestial unity of the all, and the divinity, so the number one, the single line, the staff or the scepter, represented the terrestrial copy of the power, the ruling, guiding, sustaining and protecting force of the personality that had attained freedom on earth.

The sun or gold symbol [Symbol: Sun] corresponds in alchemy to the divine circle and the same circle occurs in other symbols of the art, as in [Symbol: Copper] [Symbol: Mercury], etc.

Duality, the Dyas, represents in contrast to the celestial being the divided terrestrial being that is [pg 186] dominated by the antagonism of things and is only a transitory, imperfect existence; the opposites, fluid and solid, sulphur and mercury, dry and wet, etc.

In the symbol of the trinity, which frequently occurs in the form of a triangle (three points united by three straight lines), is shown how the divided and sensuous nature is led by the higher power of the number 3 to a harmony of powers and to a new unity. The symbol of reason attaining victory over matter becomes visible. A representation of trinity is possible by means of the conventional cross. We can see in it two elements of lines which by their unification or penetration give the third as the point of intersection. More generally the cross is conceived as quinity (fiveness)—i.e., 4+1ness (in alchemy four elements which are collected about the quinta esentia). A cross in which unity splits into duality so that trinity results, is Y, which is called the forked cross. From unity grows duality, that is, nature divides into spirit and matter, into active and passive, necessity and freedom. The divided returns through trinity to unity. In alchemy we have the symbol REBIS, the hermaphrodite with the two heads. The ancient symbol was later conceived, by purposive concealment or by more accidental interpretation, as the letter Y, just as the symbol of the three lines [Symbol: fire] or [Symbol: fire with a line coming out top pointing left] and the like gradually appears to have become an A, as it is found frequently in the catacombs. Keller refers (l. c., p. 14) also especially to the reduplication of the carpenter's square, which is found likewise in the old Latomies (Gk. = [pg 187] quarries) and has the appearance of two intersecting opened circles. I do not need to call attention to the masonic analogue; in alchemy we have here the interpenetration of [Symbol: fire] and [Symbol: Water], i.e., [Symbol: Star of David], which is among others the symbol for the material of the stone. [[Symbol: Fire] and [Symbol: Water] are the symbols for the elements fire and water. Fire and water, however, mean also the famous two opposites, that are symbolized quite as well by warm and cold, red and white, soul and body, sun and moon, man and woman.] With regard to the six points, in alchemy [Symbol: Star of David] is also called chaos in contrast to [Symbol: Star of David], which denotes cosmos, just as alum [Symbol: circle] on account of its lack of a center (God, belief, union), is incomplete beside [Symbol: sol]. In the catacombs the triangle is found also in multiple [five fold] combination, [Symbol: Star of David].

Four lines, somewhat in the form of a rectangle, define the limited space of the terrestrial world with the accessory meaning of the holy precinct, house, temple. In masonry, [Symbol: square] is well known as the lodge. The rectangle is related to the cube. I mention therefore in this place the cubic stone, the mighty masonic symbol,