Alchemical Emblems

[Nungali]

It's only my guess, but I think Nungali is objecting to the planetary associations of the two squares, the square of four in Durer's work is usually associated with Jupiter and the warm, moist sanguine humor, while the square of three is associated with Saturn and the cold, dry melancholic humor.  He could be pointing out part of the antidote to melancholic humor, but since there is only one, there are no others to compare and see if he continued the theme of looking to the curing or balancing humor.  Maybe the symbol of the balance has something to do with that idea, or it  could simply be Saturn's exaltation in Libra.  The humors do appear in a few other Durer works, but not the magic squares.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Taomeow]

Nope ? 

 

I said my take on it .

 

I do know about Durer and magic squares.

 

Just my opinion , is all. Automatic ignorance should not be assumed .

 

"Nope" in the sense I wanted to find out the meaning of things he painted. not the things you think he should have painted.    The Western interpretation of the "square of Saturn" is curious but the OP specified the time period and the Western not Eastern symbology he's after.  Whereas the square you proposed is a left-hand-path-oriented Luoshu which is at least 6 thousand years old and decisively not Western, so I had to go with "nope." 

[Nungali]

Very well then , I shall change your original question from

 

" I would like to hear the take of our venerable Western alchemists on this one: "

 

to

 

" I wanted to find out the meaning of things he painted. "

 

Which of course, ultimately rests with Durer. But the  other symbolism within the  work is interesting.  Aside from the square looking out of place in the whole  arrangement of the work , I note several symbols that stand out.

 

(and by the way, I am not coming from an eastern perspective, I have only looked into magic squares from the western esoteric perspective, although I have seen forms of them from China and India )

 

The whole arrangement seems Saturnian ; we have a 'brooding'  angel  in contemplation with an assistant cherub taking notes. About are scattered tools ,  things that create structure and form out of raw materials ( a quality Saturn gives ) , an hourglass ( a symbol related to Saturn) is above the angel and scales ( another  such symbol - via Libra ) is above the cherub.

 

The background banner and title also link to Saturn (see Donald's post above ) .

 

What I am curious about is the stone block;   a cube with opposite corners removed lying on the ground ?   (And is that a stone mill wheel the cherub is sitting on ? )   Now a dressed stone can be symbol of Saturn ,   ( as opposed to the stones earlier form and symbolism as a 'rough ashler' ) ; order structure form and discipline have created a specific function.

 

But why the cut off corners ?   Has it fallen from the building,  (somewhere up that ladder) , that is perhaps under construction ? or is it about to be lifted into place to fit into a complex joint ?

 

Yes .... a shame Mr Durer didn't  do the other humours for comparisons   ( but I have always thought this one was somewhat disjointed , the composition doesn't seem to fit together  and is awkward )

 

I do like his work

 

I used to own a huge copy of a book full of his etchings -  illustrating the Old Testament stories, western 'Fairy tales' and Dante's works .

[Eques Peregrinus]

Let's separate this image in a background and a foreground, it seems appropriate.

 

On the background:

 

The background itself can be divided in the sky and the earth.

 

In the sky, there is a point from which multiple rays seems to emerge, to pass though a rainbow, and eventually reach the foreground.

 

The earth part of the background is mostly a spread of water, with a coast constituted by savage nature, but also cities. The nearest city in the background can only be viewed though the ladder.

 

An other element of the background (but far nearer than the other elements) is the bat (or a kind of winged rat) spreading its wings to display a name: "MELENCOLIA § I".

 

 

On the foreground:

 

In this scene we have 3 characters:

 

The most noticeable is a large angel holding a compass in its right hand reposed on a book and holding its* face with its left hand. Its face is in the shadows, light comes from behind it and the angel is looking slightly at its right (the truncated cube). At its belt, 6 keys are hanging, and a purse which is posed on the floor. It is also crowned by a wreath.

 

The second is a small angel its attention is on a tablet on which it is writing. It is sitting on a carpet placed on a grinding wheel.

 

The last character is a sleeping dog, next to the large angel and in front of the small one.

 

There are two volumes, a cube truncated on 2 of its corners and a sphere.

 

There are also multiple tools on the floor: 4 nails, a saw, a plane, a ruler, pincers (partially hidden by the angel's robe), an hammer (behind the dog), a kind of weight (behind the sphere) and one I do not recognise (in front of the sphere, next to the plane). Behind the truncated cube, there also are pincers and a crucible in use.

 

On the building wall, are the famous magic square (by the way the date of the engraving is also hidden in it), a scale, an hourglass, a sundial and a bell. The rope used to ring the bell goes outside the picture.

 

Next to where the angel sits, the date (1514 AD) is engraved

 

A ladder with 6 steps is placed against the building.

 

 

Now, let's try to interpret it. But before reading this, I urge you to meditate on your own on this image and to reach your own conclusions, to avoid tainting your understanding with my speculations.

 

The multiple rays come from a single point where nothing is drawn, no Sun, no moon, just an empty point. Then the rays reach a rainbow and continues further. I suppose this is a reference to the virtues coming from the divinity (air the ain sof) represented by nothing and passing through each planetary spheres symbolised by the rainbow, before reaching the earth.

 

The title of the picture is also interesting. It is not being carried by angels, or standing in the air or simply being displayed close to the date of the painting (that you can see next to the large angel, on the step where it is sitting). But the artist decided to displayed it on the wings of a bat (which looks much more like a flying rat), which is much more sympathetic to earth than birds or angels, but not as much as being engraved into stone, like the date. This push me to think the bat in the sky is a important element. Due to the position of the bat, with its back toward the rays' source, I suppose that the rat is carrying it from there.

 

I prefer to view the polyhedron as a truncated cube because according to Plato, the tetrahedron is associated to fire, the octahedron to air, the icosahedron to water and the hexahedron to earth. Also in the scale of 4, there are 4 temperaments; choleric, associated to fire, sanguine to air, phlegmatic to water and melancholic to earth. There is therefore a stronger connection to earth if this volume is considered as a truncated cube.

 

Because of the tools on the ground, I suppose the truncated cube is an unfinished piece. In neo-platonic philosophy, there is a first matter which is completely void of qualities, the hyle. And the virtues birth in the mind of God to be infused into hyle with the help of the Soul of the World and the planets. (Agrippa speak much about it, his De Occulta Philosophia Libre Tres is definitely worth reading).

 

The angel is working to complete it by shaping the sphere (God is one, and perfect, since the sphere is the most perfect volume a sphere can be used to symbolise something divine) to make an un-truncated cube a virtue infused in matter. 

 

This image is therefore a meditation on the manifestation of the divine virtue into matter. The scales with 6 bars and the magic square reinforce this idea (because the World was constructed in 6 days).

 

* Change the pronoun accordingly to the sex of the angel.

 

[Michael Sternbach]

The planes of the "cube" are actually pentagons. Not sure what it means, but it must be significant. For one thing, five is the number of Man.

 

 

 

"Meditate about this I will." Yoda

[Taomeow]

Regarding the truncated cube, this may be of interest:

 

[Taoist Texts]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/dec/03/durers-polyhedron-5-theories-that-explain-melencolias-crazy-cube

[Eques Peregrinus]

Let's try this one. The title page of the Mutus Liber. This whole book is constituted by engravings, with almost no text. Therefore, the only way to understand it is by meditating over them.

 

 

The full title is:

 

Mutus Liber, in quo tamen tota Philosophia hermetica, figuris hieroglyphicis depingitur, ter optimo maximo Deo misericordi consecratus, solis que filiis artis dedicatus, authore cujus nomen est Altus.

 

Which can be translated to:

 

The Mute Book in which are still all hermetic philosophy, portrayed in hieroglyphic images, consecrated to the trice most great merciful God, dedicated only to the sons of the art, its author's name is Altus.

 

Source of the picture: http://www.e-rara.ch/cgj/content/titleinfo/1350330

[Michael Sternbach]

 

Let's try this one. The title page of the Mutus Liber. This whole book is constituted by engravings, with almost no text. Therefore, the only way to understand it is by meditating over them.

 

 

The full title is:

 

Mutus Liber, in quo tamen tota Philosophia hermetica, figuris hieroglyphicis depingitur, ter optimo maximo Deo misericordi consecratus, solis que filiis artis dedicatus, authore cujus nomen est Altus.

 

Which can be translated to:

 

The Mute Book in which are still all hermetic philosophy, portrayed in hieroglyphic images, consecrated to the trice most great merciful God, dedicated only to the sons of the art, its author's name is Altus.

 

Source of the picture: http://www.e-rara.ch/cgj/content/titleinfo/1350330

 

Thank you so much, dear fellow Swiss alchemist, for bringing to our attention one of the most important and revealing iconographical works of alchemy! The Mutus Liber was one of the first books I looked at when I started studying this occult science some 20 years ago, and it remains one of my favourites to this day. While most of its illustrations go into technical details of the Great Work, this first one summarizes the metaphysical foundations which it rests on.

 

The curious combinations of numbers and letters seen at the bottom are biblical references, but they are written in reverse (the alchemists loved to pose riddles    - this one is comparatively easy to solve). The first couple of these is directly related to the symbolism on this picture.

 

Genesis 28:11, 12

 

¹¹ When he [Jacob] reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. ¹² He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

 

Here we have Jacob sleeping while resting his head on a stone. Sleep is often a reference to the spiritually unawakened state that the average human spends their life in. This brings to mind the man on the bottom level in Thomas Vaughn's picture we looked at earlier. The stone is of special significance in alchemy's allegorical language: It refers to the physical body as the grave of the soul in the Gnostic sense. On the level of the practical work in the laboratory, it is the secret matter that needs to be "awakened" and activated in order to ultimately be transformed into the Philosopher's Stone.

 

The wake up call is provided by the angels blowing trumpets. These are the influences that are leading the aspiring alchemist beyond the boundaries of the physical world; they are "opening up the stone" to the influences of the Moon and the further celestial bodies.

 

The planetary spheres are the realm of the anima mundi, the Soul of the World, whereas Earth or the sublunar sphere are considered the body of the world in the ancient cosmology. Synonymous with the Soul of the World is Mercury, as distinct from the planet, the liquid metal, and the deity by the same name; however, the alchemical Mercury shares with the latter that it is an intermediary between the world of humans and the world of the Divine. Likewise, the angels traditionally act as the messengers between the two, so they are definitely mercurial in nature, ascending and descending on Jacob's Ladder as shown on plate one.

 

Alchemical symbolism is notoriously ambiguous and has lead many a follower of the art into a maze; this is not always intended, but often a consequence of its admirable capturing of multidimensional intricacies that tend to blow the linear mind. So take it from me that the alchemical Mercury is actually linked to the Moon, and to the Heavenly Water that serves to dissolve the Stone (which belongs to the alchemical principle called Salt) at an early stage of the Great Work. This must be a gradual process of opening and closing, thus avoiding the danger of "drowning" the Stone - and the practitioner's consciousness - in this celestial water.

 

Now we have already gained a glimpse of what the Dew means which is the subject of the subsequent biblical citations. It plays an important role in the following plates of the Mute Book. I will let them stand without comment, for the time being.

 

Genesis 27:28, 39

 

²⁸ May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness — an abundance of grain and new wine.

 

Genesis 27:39

 

³⁹ His father Isaac answered him, “Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s richness, away from the dew of heaven above.

 

Deuteronomy 33:18

 

¹⁸ About Zebulun he said: “Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out, and you, Issachar, in your tents.

 

Deuteronomy 33:28

 

So Israel will live in safety; Jacob will dwell secure in a land of grain and new wine, where the heavens drop dew.

 

Now much like the five grapes in Vaughn's illustration, we see five bushes above Jacob's head. One of them looks kind of weighed down, this is a reference to the Fifth Element, the Quintessence, inherent in Man and the physical world, but unfolding only in the celestial realm - unless activated in the alchemical work. The other four bushes represent the four elements of the sublunary world; mind you that one of the bushes appears elongated, reminding us that one element (sometimes Fire, sometimes Earth) is distinct from the others (another expression of the so-called 3+1 rule, for those of you who are familiar with this).

 

From the hazardous thorny branches that are forming this "star gate", gorgeous roses grow. Flowers in general are open receivers for the celestial influences. A reason that the rose was chosen here is the fact that it has five petals - another refernce to the five elements and the celestial sphere. However, those roses are growing downwards, thus bringing the Quintessence down, right into the world of matter - the ultimate aim of the alchemical art.

 

[FraterUFA]

Very nice suggestion, EP. This is not a work that I am as familiar with so I welcome the opportunity to get more acquainted with it.

 

As Michael pointed out, the diagram depicts a "wake up call" for man. The angels are descending from the subtle realms and making an effort to rouse us from our slumber. We ordinarily come closest to spiritual consciousness when we dream... but even then, we are usually capable of exercising no personal volition and merely experience the internalized forms of our physical consciousness.

 

The image depicts not one, but two angels, and thus implies cooperation... a chain of beings extending their hands from sublime heights down almost to our level. The angels have no ability to wake a man who does not wish to be woken from the mechanical routine of everyday life.

 

Michael summed up the diagram nicely so there isn't much to add from a purely internal perspective. However, I will add that each internal interpretation has a corresponding outer (lab) interpretation as well. For instance, the Biblical quotes about dew and grain are enigmatic to an extreme, yet they are clear from a lab perspective.

 

The next image offers one of at least two possible interpretations, the first being that of the alchemical "dew":

 

 

In the upper half is shown the alchemical dew held by two angels. Above it, we find the Sun, emblem of fire. Within it, we find the Sun and the Moon under the arms of Neptune (water).

 

The corresponding lab work is shown in the bottom half of the image ("As above, so below"). We encounter a typical difficulty of emblematic descriptions of the work, that of determining the exact process is being depicted (there are at least three possibilities that I can see). In this first possible interpretation, the dew is contained within a digestion furnace. Below that is a funnel, symbolizing purification. And below that is a small flame, the alchemist's first degree of heat. Tending to the operation are the classic alchemical embodiments of man's physical consciousness: Ruach and Nephesch, corresponding to the divine consciousness of Neschamah and Chiah shown above. Note that Nephesch is nearly touching Neschamah's foot, while there is a greater division depicted between Ruach and Chiah.

 

Now there is another interpretation, perhaps a more obvious one. Instead of dew, we are being shown a special type of Hermetically sealed flask with the three principles contained within it. If this is the case, then it represents the latter half of the work.

 

It is not uncommon in these old texts for the plates to be intentionally placed out of order, so this is a possibility. Perhaps we will find out which as we continue to investigate the remaining images. Right now, I am leaning towards the first interpretation due to a couple of curious details as well as the quotes which Michael shared previously. There could be other interpretations I haven't considered as well.

 

I rather enjoy this image as it masterfully depicts both physical and spiritual processes occurring simultaneously. The author of this work did not experience the same division between inner and outer that we are indoctrinated into as moderns.

 

UFA

[Eques Peregrinus]

Great discussion!

 

About the title page, I would add these two elements which indicate also a spiritual evolution.

 

There are 10 stars in the sky, all of them are above the rose tree branches.

 

There is a cloud at the top right of the picture, the Moon is visible inside it. This is the last crescent before the new Moon.

 

 

I suppose the author put that cloud there to separate the sky in which are the stars and the sky in which is th moon, the same way the rose tree branches separate the sky that is below them and the sky which is above.

 

There are 10 Sephiroth, but 10 can also be interpreted as a return to unity (because 10 points form the tetractys). That and the ladder reaching it push me to interpret the sky in which are the stars as the intellectual world, that is beyond the celestial and natural world (at least if we follow Agrippa's model).

 

The sky with the Moon, is separated by a cloud, it should be interpreted in an other manner. I interpret it as a temporal indication. That scene is happening just before the Sabbath. Today the Sabbath take place every Saturday, but originally it took place at the 7, 14, 21 and 28th day of the Moon cycle, that is at the new Moon, at the first quarter, at the full Moon and at the last quarter.

 

The beginning of the Shabbath holds the most important Christian Mystery. Which is also directly relates to this ladder.

 

 

Now about the second engraving:

 

There is a neat separation between the top and the bottom of the picture, but there is a sealed vessel or a water drop in the center of both sub-figures. As FratherUFA said "As above so below".

 

On the flask above, three characters, a small man crowned by the Sun at the left, a small woman crowned by the Moon at the right, separating them, a man with a trident is sitting on a pile of rocks with what appears to be skulls at his feet.

 

The right foot of the left angel seems to cross the border between the top and bottom part of the picture.

 

The strange furnace seems like a tower, I do not know if this is important.

 

Some curtains are placed on the back of the room which has also no windows (contrary to the following depictions of the room where there appears windows either square or rounded).

 

The two characters at the bottom, male and female seems to be praying.

 

 

This interpretation is more difficult, I admit I am lacking in practical alchemy.

 

The characters crowned by the Moon and by the Sun are separated, that symbolism reminds me about the Devil card.

 

While the curtains reminds me about Pythagoras teaching its new students behind a curtain. This is a metaphor, Pythagoras was teaching them mysteries, which could not be clearly understood by reason alone. Only when the students gained wisdom, they could understood him clearly, at that time they crossed the curtain. That concept is similar to Plato's cave, or the idea of hell in the renaissance. And we are back to the Devil card.

[!nverse]

It's a shame this thread died out, it has immense value.

 

I had a large book of European alchemical engravings once - but a witch stole it.

[Nungali]

It could be revamped , depending on the posts .

 

Now, what would a witch want to use alchemy for ?

 

They could just do 'candle magic'