Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult ArtsSilberer, Herbert
Religion
Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts
Silberer, Herbert
Alchemy; Society of Rosicrucians; Symbolism (Psychology)
The familiar scheme of impulses with its “titanic” substratum, which is
necessarily existent in all men (although it may have been in any
particular case extraordinarily sublimated) comes clearly to view in
individual creations of fancy. It must be found quite typically developed,
however, where a multitude of men (fable making mankind) were interested
in the founding, forming, polishing and elaborating of the symbolic
structure. Such creations have transcended the merely personal. An example
of this kind is the “mythological” science of alchemy. That we are
repelled by the retrograde perspective of the types residing in its
symbols (and which often appear quite nakedly) comes from the fact that in
the critic these primal impulse forms have experienced a strong
repression, and that their re-emergence meets a strong resistance
(morality, taste, etc.).
The much discussed elementary types have therefore insinuated themselves
into the body of the alchemistic hieroglyphics, as mankind, confronted
with the riddles of physico-chemical facts, struggled to express a mastery
of them by means of thought. The typical inventory of powers, as an
apperception mass, so to speak, helped to determine the selection of
symbols. A procedure of determination has taken place here similar to that
we might have noticed in the coincidence of material and functional
symbolism in dreams. Here again appears the heuristic value which the
introduction of the concept of the functional categories had for our
problem.
The possibility of deriving the “titanic” and the “anagogic” from the
alchemistic (often by their authors merely chemically intended) allegories
is now easily explained. We can work it out, because it was already put in
there, even if neither in the extreme form of the “titanic” (i.e., the
retrograde aspect), nor in that of the “anagogic” (the progressive
aspect), but in an indeterminate middle stage of the intro-determination.
What gave opportunity for this play of symbolism was an effort of
intelligence directed toward chemistry. The chemical content in alchemy
is, so to speak, what has been purposely striven for, while the rest came
by accident, yet none the less inevitably. So then natural philosophy
appears to be the carrier, or the stalk on which the titanic and the
anagogic symbolism blossoms. Thus it becomes intelligible how the
alchemistic hieroglyphic aiming chiefly at chemistry, adapted itself
through and through to the hermetic anagogic educational goal, so that at
times and by whole groups, alchemy was used merely as a mystical guide
without any reference to chemistry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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