I had an old posts on aspects that quite honestly I hate now that I look back on it, so I’m making a new one.
Firstly, aspects are made when two planets or points are a certain amount of degrees away from each other. As in, the aspect itself is not a physical thing, but a measurement of an angle between planets that shows a dynamic between them. Aspects don’t have to be exact and rarely they are, they can actually be a few degrees off which is called an orb. Chart calculators such as those on astro.com automatically have their aspect orb set up to 10˚ but you can change the settings to be exact or even up to 15˚. But most astrologers use no more than 10˚ and often times they will use a maximum orb lower than that. The smaller the orb, the stronger the aspect. But that’s not the only way you can tell how strong an aspect is. Aspects are also categorized into separating and applying aspects. Separating aspects in the natal chart are aspects that have been exact just before you were born, and applying aspects are ones that became exact after you were born. It is extremely rare that someone would be born with an aspect completely exact (as in 0˚00′). And of course with applying and separating aspects, the faster moving planet is the deciding factor as to if it’s applying or separating, also make sure to check if this planet is in retrograde to make sure of the status of this aspect. Applying aspects are generally considered to be stronger than separating aspects in the natal chart. Especially because they can be exact in your progressed chart.
Of course there are many kind of aspects, some stronger than others. The stronger aspects are major aspects, they include the conjunction, opposition, trine, and square. Arguably conjunctions are the strongest and oppositions are a close second, although trines and squares are still both quite strong in the chart.
So, starting with conjunctions these aspects are exact when two planets are 0˚ away from each other. This aspect helps join or fuse the qualities of the two planets or points together. They make a bond between the two planets. Conjunctions are generally thought of as a neutral aspect, and it can either have a more disharmonious or harmonious effect on someone depending on a) what planets are involved and b) how much the person has developed the aspect. Conjunctions are widely regarded as the strongest aspect and thus more astrologers are likely to use a larger orb with it. If your only conjunctions have a really wide orb then you may find that oppositions feel stronger to you.
On that note, oppositions, while being considered a strong aspect alongside conjunctions are quite different that the former aspect. Instead of bonding the two planetary energies, this aspect puts them against each other. There is a push and pull between them but they’re still strongly connected. Oppositions are just that, two planets opposite each other in the chart as in it is exact with two planets 180˚ away from one another. This aspect is generally considered disharmonious, and one of the most disharmonious aspects. But with enough development of an opposition it is possibly to use this push and pull to get the planetary energies to work together.
Next, there are trines. Trines are formed when two planets are 120˚ away from each other. Not as strong as the conjunction or opposition but still quite strong. These two planet’s energies work together to enrich each other. This aspect can been seen as some sort of “cosmic gift” placed in the chart. A lot of trines can indicate a lot of positive karma. This aspect is usually easy and helpful for someone without needing any development, but can also cause apathy and laziness in a person if it has too much presence because of it’s calm nature. But overall it is seen as a very harmonious aspect, and arguably the most harmonious aspect.
Finally, the last of the major aspects is the square. And as each angle in a square is 90˚, this aspect is exact when two planets are 90˚ away from each other. This has about the same strength as a trine. This aspect has a lot of tension and is often very disharmonious, and can cause conflict due to mutually exclusive desires and needs from the uncooperative planets. These as[pects can cause a lot of pressure but it can be worked with and at it’s best it can be very motivational for a person and can help with growth. A lot of squares can indicate having a lot of negative karma.
Besides the major aspects, there are also minor aspects. But before I get to those there are two aspects which astrologers disagree on if they are major or minor. Thus I think of them in their own in-between category. These two aspects are the sextile and the quincunx or inconjunct.
The sextile is when two planets are 60˚ away form each other. This is a very harmonious aspect and the two planets help to inspire each other. This aspect creates motivation and excitement. But it’s also a halved and thus weaker version of a trine, as in this gift is less present than that of the trine. And it does contain a slight bit of square-like tension which can especially be seen in the aspect pattern of a yod (will be discussed later). This aspect may aslo show some area of talent in a person’s life, but they may miss some opportunities with this due to lack of pressure to.
Then there is the quincunx, also known as the inconjunct. This aspect if exact when two points are 150˚ away from each other. This aspect is generally seen as neutral. This is because it is an aspect that holds a lot of potential but is hard to release. It is difficult to release since the two planets are often in signs of both differing and inharmonious elements and modalities which makes this potential hard to adjust to. This difficulty to adjust to can cause some tension, and there is also no promise that the potential of this aspect will be tapped into, but it can be very rewarding if it is.
Now, for the minor aspects. These aspects generally don’t stand alone to show something in the natal chart but rather stand to support something that is already shown otherwise in the natal chart and are thus very useful to interpreting a chart accurately. But these aspects generally include a much smaller orb and often must be exact or less than a 1˚ or 2˚ orb in my opinion. Minor aspects include quintile, bi-quintile, semi-sextile, semi-square, sesqui-square, semi-quintile, nonile, septile, and to even less importance than those semi-octile, squile, squine. tri-decile, and quindecile.
Quintiles are a harmonious aspect with an angle of 72˚. Quintiles can help indicate talent in the chart, as well as aspiration and ambition in certain areas. These often assist in showing talents already seen in the chart but these help pick out the talents that will be most worked at, and often these are more focused on artistic talents.
Bi-quintiles are also harmonious aspects such as a quintile and as the name states they are double the angle of a quintile so 144˚. These aspects mostly help to serve quintiles, but with even more of a focus on the arts. It can also help one become more aware of their quintiles.
Semi-sextiles are half of a sextile so 30˚ and is somewhat harmonious. It shows a potential that is hard to reach due to the complete difference in the signs of the two planets. This creates somewhat of a positive connection between two planets that otherwise would be difficult interacting with one another due to being in neighboring signs.
Semi-squares are just half of a square aka 45˚ and is seen as somewhat disharmonious. This aspect causes unapparent tension that can thus be hard to address and work on. This are tensions most people would rather ignore, maybe something you’d address momentarily but never reach a long-term solution for.
Sesqui-squares or otherwise known as sesquiquadrates are a square and a half so 135˚ and are somewhat disharmonious. Just like the square this causes conflicts and some tension, and possibly more apparent than the semi-square but even easier to suppress. This aspect if also very stubborn and indicates an issue that is very hard to work on.
Semi-quintiles or a decile is 1/10 of the circle of the natal chart as in a 36˚ angle. This is very similar to but much weaker than a quintile. But it also includes a bit of tension, although this is really hard to address both the talents and tension of this aspect and is most definitely just supporting something already shown in the chart.
Noniles or also known as noviles have a 40˚ angle. This aspect is somewhat harmonious and help make an idea, or make an already thought of idea in the natal chart a reality. It can also indicate a beginning of a new phase. One can barely notice this though and it requires a great deal of sensitivity and observation in order to.
Septiles have an angle of 51˚26′ and are a harmonious aspect. This can help show spirituality or religion in the chart. Many of these can help show what someone experiences and feels on a deeper level. It can also help show wisdom gained.
Semi-octiles are exact with an angle of 22.5˚ and is slightly harmonious. Not much else is known about this aspect and it has very little meaning in the horoscope.
Squiles have an angle of 75˚ and there isn’t much information on the specific of this aspect, but it is good to look at it in progressions to see if it seems to support anything else shown.
Squines have an angle of 105˚ and just like the Squile there is little to no information on it, but it is useful for progressions.
Tri-deciles are three times a decile as in 108˚ and is harmonious. It has a unique energies that complements any gifts shown in the chart. It symbolizes a divine motherly energy. And it can help show something that needs to be fulfilled.
Quindeciles have a 165˚ angle and are disharmonious. It can help support where in the chart one can become obsessive over something to the point of irrationality. It can show compulsivity and some sort of separation from reality.
Aspects can form aspect pattern. These have their own meaning and can be very important in the chart. Aspect patterns include a grand trine, grand cross, grand sextile, T-square, mystic rectangle, yod, and kite. Not everyone has an aspect pattern, and some are more common than other.
Grand trines are created when three planets are trine each other to form the shape of an equilateral triangle. This is a very harmonious aspect pattern and can increase the influence of the trines, as well as usually gives the person some sort of gift or talent. Nicknamed the “triangle of grace” quite appropriately. But, like the trine this aspect pattern can lead to some apathy or lack of motivation or care. This has a calming feeling to it but it’s talents may not be used if ignored due to lethargy.
Grand sextiles are formed when six planets are around the chart in sextile to one another which creates the shape of a hexagram. It is a very harmonious aspect pattern. This may also look like two grand trines upside down from each other. This is a rare aspect pattern and it strengthens the sextiles to make them more like a major aspect. Unlike a grand trine this pattern helps motivate and invited productivity.
T-squares are formed when two planets are opposite each other and square a third planet, this is a disharmonious aspect pattern. I’ve found this to be a very common aspect pattern, but many of them in one chart can indicate a lot of karma. The tension of the opposition in addition to the tension of the squares is all channeled through the squared planet. This is very intense and is nearly impossible to ignore. But T-squares, if worked with, can offer a lot of growth and help make you a stronger, better person.
A grand cross also called a grand square is created when four planets are square each other giving the shape of a square. Another way ot think of it is two T-squares forming a whole square. This can be disharmonious due to challenges and the stubborn nature it can cause. If these challenges are overcome, however, it can really help with stability. Often times these challenges may be triggered by transits.
Mystic rectangles are formed when two pairs planets form an opposition to each other and then each pair on each side also forms a sextile, creating the image of a rectangle. This is a harmonious aspect pattern and helps one figure out and deal with their oppositions. It helps the sextiles and trine work together to channel their harmonious energy through the oppositions.
Yods are formed when two planets are sextile each other and then both quincunx a third. This is a rare and disharmonious aspect pattern. It creates a desire to do something powerful or important (thus nicknames the “finger of god”) but it often doesn’t lead the person in the right direction to do so. This aspect pattern intensifies the quincunx and makes it act more like a major aspect. Yods can be thought of as channeling the worst of the sextile through the apex. This is a very stressful aspect to have and is very hard to ignore.
Finally, kites are formed when a grand trine has a fourth planet opposite one of the ends and sextile the other two. This is harmonious but like the grand trine can cause a lack of motivation. Although there is a great ease in the flow of energy between these planets. This aspect pattern helps encourage constructive ways of expressing the grand trine.
There are a few other things related to aspects that I might as well note…
Such as it being very favorable when a planet is conjunct the sun within 0′17˚ and it strengthens it, this is called cazimi. On the other hand a conjunction to the sun can be seen as combust if in the same sign and within 8° 30’ which can weaken it. Beyond combustion, yet within 17˚ of the sun is considered under the sun’s beams which still weakens a planet but not to the same extent as a combustion.
Aspects can occur outside of the signs they were suppose to, for example if a planet is near the end of one sign and another planet near the beginning of another they could form a trine but not in the same element. This is called dissociate aspect.
There are also parallels and contraparallels. This is working with the declinations of planets. Parallels are when two planets are of the same declination and the interpretation of this is considered similar to a conjunction, although probably not as strong. A contraparallel is when two planets have the same degrees of declination but are on opposite hemispheres. This is interpreted similarly to an opposition but is less potent in the chart.
If you are new to numerology, please see the earlier articles in the archive – for a menu of the detailed information behind this.
Sometimes it is helpful to access the link between numerology and
astrology, to call on the additional symbolic vocabulary which
astrologers have developed to a very sophisticated level.
If we are working in pure number – for the story told by numbers, or
for their manifold interrelationships, or even working with dates – we
can use the astrological linkages (see below) directly. However, if we
are working with words or names then we have an intermediate step to go
through.
The astrological vocabulary of numerology was brought in by the
Romans, and further developed in mediaeval times. So we have to work
with the number-values of letters which traditional European numerology
has used since Roman times:
1 is the value of A, I, J, Q, and Y
2 is the value of B, K, and R
3 is the value of C, G, L, and S
4 is the value of D, M, and T
5 is the value of E, H, N, and X
6 is the value of U, V, and W
7 is the value of O, and Z
8 is the value of F, and P
No modern letters are evaluated at 9
This is very different from the “normal” sequential values used by
modern numerology. It actually arose out of the letter sequence of the
pre-roman Etruscan alphabet. The Romans kept the old values when
working in Latin, and modern letters such as J, U, W, and Y were fitted
in later as they arose. So it looks a bit of a mess now, but a lot of
powerful people have been energising it for over 2,000 years. You may
sometimes find this called the “Chaldean System”, but the Chaldeans
wrote in cuneiform characters, so that name does not really stand up.
If we were to use the astrology with the much easier direct
letter-values which are normal in modern numerology, we would usually
get complete rubbish in the interpretation. Please stay with the
Aura-Soma Equilibrium Bottles as your deep vocabulary when working with
sequential modern letter-values.
The astrological linkages are:
ZERO was a concept unknown in Europe until about 1300, so it has no
old attributions, but has latterly been associated with the element
aether, and by some people with the planet Pluto.
ONE has positive polarity, and is associated with the fire element and the cardinal quality. It is ruled by the Sun.
TWO has negative polarity, and is associated with the water element and the fixed quality. It is ruled by the Moon.
THREE has positive polarity, and is associated with the air element and the mutable quality. It is ruled by Jupiter.
FOUR has negative polarity, and is associated with the earth element
and the cardinal quality. In Roman times it was ruled by Saturn, but
the Mediaeval revision (see below) gave it to the Sun, now in modern
times it is ruled by Uranus.
FIVE has positive polarity, and is associated with the air element and the fixed quality. It is ruled by Mercury.
SIX has negative polarity, and is associated with the air element and the mutable quality. It is ruled Venus.
SEVEN has positive polarity, and is associated with the water element
and the cardinal quality. In Roman times it was ruled by Jupiter, but
the Mediaeval revision (see below) gave it to the Moon, now in modern
times it is ruled by Neptune.
EIGHT has negative polarity, and is associated with the earth element and the fixed quality. It is ruled by Saturn.
NINE has positive polarity, and is associated with mutable quality.
It is ruled by Mars. Its elemental attribution is less clear.
Originally it was given the fire element, but the Mediaeval revision
suggested that it related to all elements, and some more recent
authorities associate it with aether.
The Mediaeval Revision
In Mediaeval times they thought that it was unfair that Saturn and
Jupiter should have two numbers each (although that can be traced back
to Chaldean astrology); so they decided that the “two great luminaries” –
the Sun and Moon – should have two numbers each and ordinary planets
only one. Likewise the fire element was identified as unfairly having
three numbers rather than two, so they associated the NINE with “all”
elements.
Identifying the Signs which will be revealed
Aries is positive cardinal fire
Taurus is negative fixed earth
Gemini is positive mutable air
Cancer is negative cardinal water
Leo is positive fixed fire
Virgo is negative mutable earth
Libra is positive cardinal air
Scorpio is negative fixed water
Sagittarius is positive mutable fire
Capricorn is negative cardinal earth
Aquarius is positive fixed air
Pisces is negative mutable water
In analyses, the elements and qualities are more important than the
polarities, as it is possible to have a result showing such as “negative
cardinal air” – a combination which does not exist in a real sign. In
such cases we would ignore the polarity.
How can we use this?
Let’s try an example of finding the astrological vibrations in the name of “Fred Smith”:
FRED SMITH
8254 34145
using the traditional letter-values.
First we count the occurrences of each factor:
Positive has 4 occurrences, from 5, 3, 1, and 5
Negative has 5, from 8, 2, 4, 4, and 4
Fire has 2 occurrences, from 3 and 1
Air has 2 from the two fives
Water has 1 from the single 2
Earth has 4 from the 8 and three 4s
Cardinal has 4 from the 1 and three 4s
Fixed has 3 from the 2 and two 5s
Mutable has 1 from the single 3
Sun has 1 occurrence
Moon 1
Jupiter 1
Uranus 3
Mercury 2
Venus <none>
Neptune <none>
Saturn 1
Mars <never occurs on an individual letter>
The total value of “Fred Smith” is 36, which reduces to (3+6=) 9, so the overall ruler is Mars.
Within the detail above, we have Negative slightly greater than
Positive, Earth out-ranking the other elements, Cardinal out-ranking the
other qualities, and Uranus (followed by Mercury) out-ranking other
planets.
Result
The Cardinal Earth sign in astrology is Capricorn, and it happens to be negative. So the dominant astrology is of Uranus in Capricorn. This could be refined to be seen as a Uranus-Mercury conjunction in Capricorn, with Uranus the stronger.
So words and names and pure number carry astrological influences.
Their vibration resonate to a harmonic in sympathy with normal planetary
astrology. If you are doing a personal reading, this enables you to
use numerology and astrology together. If you are working with the
symbolism of pure number, the astrology will bring out additional subtle
tones.
Details when using traditional letter-values
Accents
Umlaut = 5
Circumflex = 3
Cedilla = 3
Other accents = 0
Double letter ß = 10
The rationale here is that the umlaut represents a missing letter
“e”, and circumflexes or cedillas represent a missing letter “s”.
Whilst “ß” now represents “ss”, it originally represented “sz”. Other
accents are pronunciation indicators only.
Abbreviations
Spell out all abbreviations: including
“&” becomes “and”, or “et”, or “und”, etc.
“@” becomes “at”, or “à”, or “zu/bei” etc.
“U.N.” becomes “United Nations”
Extra information on number, unrelated to the use of astrology
Every individual rises again in the very form which his Work
(in the alchemical sense) has fixed in the secret (esoteric) depth of
himself.
— SHAIKH AHMAD AHSA’I —
S I N C E P A R A C E L S U S (1493-1541), salt has played a role
in alchemy as the physical “body” which remains after combustion, the
corporeal substance that survives death to reinaugurate new life. It was
both ‘corruption and preservation against corruption’ (Dorn); both the
‘last agent of corruption’ and the ‘first agent in generation’ (Steeb). As such, the alchemical salt functions as the fulcrum of death and
revivification. The idea that the agent, instrument and patient of the
alchemical process are not separate entities but aspects of one reality
prefigures the significance accorded in this study to ‘the Hermetic
problem of salt’. Just as in chemistry a salt may be defined as the
product of an acid and a base, alchemically, salt is the integral
resolution to the primordial polarities embodied in the mineral symbolique of cinnabar (HgS), the salt of
sulphur and mercury. In the alchemy of René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz
(1887-1961), salt forms the equilibrium between an active function
(sulphur, divinity, peras) and its passive resistance (mercurial substance, prima materia, the apeiron),
aspects which are latently present in the primordial (pre-polarised)
unity, but crystallised into physical existence as “salt”. With
Schwaller’s concept, one is dealing with a juncture of the metaphysical
and proto-physical. As will be seen, however, this also inheres in the
body as a fulcrum point of death and palingenesis.
Leap, Salve, Balsam
‘Salt arises from the purest sources, the sun and the sea’. —Pythagoras
In
order to understand the nature of alchemical salt one must first
understand the nature of common salt. In doing this, however, it is soon
realised that salt is anything but common; like many everyday things,
salt is so familiar that its singular peculiarity is taken for granted.
Visser, in an extraordinary study of the elements of an ordinary meal,
aptly encapsulates the cultural purview of salt in the following words:
Salt
is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves,
desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for
thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to
labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic
meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its
links with experience of the sacred.
European languages derive their word ‘salt’ from Proto-Indo-European *sāl- (*sēl-) reflected directly in Latin as sal, ‘salt, salt water, brine; intellectual savour, wit’, Greek hals, ‘salt, sea’ (cf. Welsh halen) and in Proto-Germanic as *saltom (Old English sealt, Gothic salt, German Salz). In addition to its mineral referent, sal also gives rise to a number of cognates that help crystallise its further semantic and symbolic nuances. Saltus, saltum, ‘leap’, derives from the verb salio, ‘leap, jump, leap sexually’, whence Saliī,
‘priests of Mars’ from the ‘primitive rites (practically universal) of
dancing or leaping for the encouragement of crops’; saltāre, ‘dance’, salmo, ‘salmon’ (leaping fish), (in)sultāre, (‘insult’, literally ‘leap on, in’; figuratively, ‘taunt, provoke, move to action’), all from Indo-European *sēl-, ‘move forth, start up or out’, whence Greek ἁλλομαι, άλτo, ἁλμα (hallomai, halto, halma), ‘leap’; Sanskrit ucchalati (*ud-sal-),
‘starts up’. Importantly for the alchemical conception, alongside
‘leap’ one finds the meanings at the root of English ‘salve’ (balm,
balsam), derived from Indo-European *sel-p-, *sel-bh-, and giving rise to Cyprian elphos (butter), Gothic salbōn, Old English sealfian; in Latin: salus, ‘soundness, health, safety’; salūbris, ‘wholesome, healthy’; salūtāre, ‘keep safe, wish health, salute’; salvus, ‘safe, sound’; salvēre, ‘be in good health’; salvē, ‘hail!’; cf. also *sēl-eu-; Avestan huarva, ‘whole, uninjured’; Sanskrit sarva-, sarvatāti, ‘soundness’ and Greek ὁλοειται, ὁλος (holoeitai, holos), ‘whole’. These meanings are further connected to solidus, sollus, sōlor, with an ultimate sense of ‘gathering, compacting’, hence ‘solidity’.
In
addition to its salvific, balsamic and holistic aspect, which must be
regarded as the meaning most central to the alchemical perception, the
significance of salt as both ‘leap’ and ‘solidity’ must also be
recognised as integral. In particular, it pertains to Schwaller’s
conception of salt as the fixed imperishable nucleus (solidus)
regarded as the hidden mechanism underpinning the ontological ‘leaps’ or
mutations of visible evolution (contra the Aristotelian dictum, natura non facit saltum,
‘nature does not proceed by a leap’). For Schwaller, the seemingly
disconnected leaps of biological mutation are in fact bound by a hidden
harmony grounded in the saline alchemical nucleus.
Although it is
the intention of this study to explore the deeper meaning of salt in the
work of Schwaller de Lubicz—alchemically configured as the determiner
of an entity’s form—a number of studies have pointed to the crucial role
of salt as a significant shaper of civilisation. Perhaps the
earliest point of departure for this is the fact that salt only rises to
especial prominence with the emergence of an agricultural economy. Salt
intake, initially bound to blood and meat, had to be supplemented.
Comments Darby:
When man first learnt
the use of salt is enshrouded in the mists of the remotest past.
Parallel to the Ancient Greek’s ignorance of the seasoning, the original
Indo-Europeans and the Sanskrit speaking peoples had no word for it.
This apparent lack of salt-craving in early people could have been a
result of their reliance on raw or roasted meat. Later, when with the
invention of boiling the sodium content of meat was reduced, and when
the shift to an agricultural economy introduced vegetables in increasing
amounts, sodium chloride became a basic need to provide an adequate
sodium intake and, more important still, to counterbalance the high
potassium content of plants.
Commodity histories show that
salt was not always the easily available resource it is today; it had to
be striven for; it required effort and ingenuity (perhaps even wit).
It created trade and war; it was used as pay and exploited as a tax.
Nor did salt have the current stigma of being an unhealthy excess (a
problem symptomatic of modern surfeit). Quite to the contrary, salt
was typically a sign of privilege and prestige. ‘Salt like speech is
essentially semiotic’, Adshead remarks; ‘As such it could convey a
variety of meanings, of which the clearest in early times was social
distance: high cooking, low cooking, above and below the salt’. Considerations such as these help contextualise many of the ancient
values surrounding salt, some of which have become proverbial. In the New Testament,
for instance, but also elsewhere, the sharing of salt (often with bread
at a table), represented a deep bond of trust, of communal solidarity,
while the spilling of it was considered a grave faux pas.
Indeed, if salt was as freely available for liberal exploitation as it
is today, such ethical and social implications would scarcely carry any
weight at all.
Most of salt’s social meanings reflect its deepest functional value as a preservative. Just
as salt keeps the integrity of plants and meats intact, so salt was
seen to keep the integrity of a body of people together. As a prestige
substance that could preserve food through the death of winter and bind
people in communal solidarity, salt was highly regarded; during Roman
times, salt even became a form of currency, whence our word ‘salary’
(from Latin salārium, ‘salt money’) after the Roman habit of
paying soldiers in pieces of compressed salt (hence the phrase: ‘to be
worth one’s salt’). Because of its integrating character, salt
bridges opposites. Paradoxically, however, the more one attempts to pin
salt down in a strictly rational manner, the more the contradictions it
embodies abound.
‘There are totally different opinions concerning
salt’, writes Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE), who preserves a number of
contemporary beliefs, including the view that salt possesses not only
preservative qualities, but animating and even generative power:
Some
include salt with the most important spices and healing materials,
calling it the real ‘soul of life’, and it is supposed to possess such
nourishing and enlivening powers that mice if they lick salt at once
become pregnant.
Consider also
whether this other property of salt is not divine too […] As the soul,
our most divine element, preserves life by preventing dissolution of the
body, just so salt, controls and checks the process of decay. This is
why some Stoics say that the sow at birth is dead flesh, but that the
soul is implanted in it later, like salt, to preserve it […] Ships
carrying salt breed an infinite number of rats because, according to
some authorities, the female conceives without coition by licking salt.
The connection of salt to the soul, a balsam to the body,
will be explored in more detail when the alchemical contexts of salinity
are examined. Its fertilising, generative power, on the other hand,
bears obvious comparison to salt’s known capacity to stimulate the
growth of the earth—a leavening function extended to the role of the
Apostles in the Christian Gospels: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth’.
And yet too much salt will make the earth sterile.
In ancient
times, offerings to the gods were made with salt among the Israelites:
‘with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt’, but without salt
among the Greeks: ‘mindful to this day of the earlier customs, they
roast in the flame the entrails in honour of the gods without adding
salt’. The Egyptian priests favoured rock salt in sacrifices as
purer than sea salt; and yet ‘one of the things forbidden to them
is to set salt upon a table’; they ‘abstain completely from salt as
a point of religion, even eating their bread unsalted’. Although
the Egyptians ‘never brought salt to the table’, Pythagoras, who
according to the doxographic traditions studied in the Egyptian temples,
tells us that:
It should be brought to
the table to remind us of what is right; for salt preserves whatever it
finds, and it arises from the purest sources, the sun and the sea.
The understanding of salt as a product of sun and sea, i.e. of fire and water, ouranos and oceanos,
touches on its broader esoteric and cosmological implications, not all
of which were peculiar to Pythagoras. These aspects become central
in alchemy, where, as will be seen, salt acts as the earthly ligature
between fire (sun) and water (sea), the arcane substance whose patent
ambiguities stem from its role as embodiment and juncture of opposites:
purity and impurity, eros and enmity, wetness and desiccation, fertility
and sterility, love and strife. One thing that the present discussion
of the mythological and historical aspects of salt hopes to emphasise is
that none of these ideas are really born of speculation or abstraction;
rather, they are all intimately linked to the basic phenomenology of
the substance itself.
Above all, salt is ambiguous. While some of
these ambiguities may be attributed to the unevenness of the sources,
and while some points of contradiction may be cleared up upon closer
examination (the negative Egyptian views on salt, for instance, mainly
seem to apply to times of ritual fasting), this does not eclipse the
overarching sense that salt, by its very nature, defies strict
definition.
From
numerous ancient sources describing the nature of salt, one arrives at
the view that salt’s piquant effect was seen to extend beyond the
sensation on the tongue. Salt stimulated not only the appetite but
desire in general. And because desire polarises the religious
impulse more than anything else—a path of liberation to some, a
hindrance to others—it is understandable why the Egyptians, according to
Plutarch, ‘make it a point of religion to abstain completely from
salt’. Equally, one can understand how salt, as an aphrodisiac, was
connected specifically to the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess of desire par excellence. As Plutarch notes, the stimulating nature of eroticism evoked by the feminine is expressed using the very language of salt:
For
this reason perhaps, feminine beauty is called ‘salty’ and ‘piquant’
when it is not passive, nor unyielding, but has charm and
provocativeness. I imagine that the poets called Aphrodite ‘born of
brine’ […] by way of alluding to the generative property of salt.
Plutarch
is referring to a tradition preserved by Hesiod, which will be looked
at presently, but before the origin of the ‘brine-born’ goddess is
examined, it is worth noting that our own language still preserves this
deep association between salt and provocative beauty. Latin sal
lies, phonetically and semantically, at the root of words such as salsa
and sauce (both meaning ‘salted’), whence the deep connection between
sexuality and food implicit in the habit of referring to provocative
objects of desire as ‘saucy’ or ‘sassy’ (both derivations of sal). And so the most stimulating flavours—the saltiest, those that make us salivate—are the ones most readily appropriated to express our desire.
The ancient etymology of Aphrodite as ‘brine-born’ (from aphros, ‘sea-spume’) is deeply mired not only in desire but also enmity, the twin impulses that Empedocles would call ‘Love and Strife’ (Philotēs kai Neikos). Aphrodite, one learns, is born from the primordial patricide (and perhaps a crime of passion). Hesiod’s Theogony
tells us how the goddess Gaia (Earth), the unwilling recipient of the
lusts of Ouranos (Heaven), incites the children born of this union
against their hated father. Not without Oedipal implications, Cronus
rises surreptitiously against his progenitor and, with a sickle of
jagged flint, severs his father’s genitals:
And
so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the
land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long
time: and a white foam (aphros) spread around them from the
immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden. […] Her gods and men call
Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess […] because she grew amid the
foam.
As will be seen, these two primordial impulses prove
pivotal to the alchemical function of salt that is met in Schwaller—the
determiner of all affinities and aversions. And if Aphrodite is
connected to salt’s desire-provoking aspect, it will come as no surprise
to find that her ultimate counterpart was associated with just the
opposite: war and strife. As is well known, Aphrodite is paired with
Ares among the Greeks (as Venus is to Mars among the Romans), but the
origins of her cult are intimately bound to Ancient Near Eastern
origins; [33] moreover, in her Phoenician incarnation
(Astarte), she embodies not only eros and sexuality, but war and strife.
Presumably because of these traits, the Egyptian texts of the early
Eighteenth Dynasty saw fit to partner her with their own untamed
transgressor god, Seth-Typhon—a divinity who, like Aphrodite, was
associated specifically with sea-salt and sea-spume (aphros).
Typhon’s Spume
Tomb of Typhon, Tarquinia, first century BCE.
‘Sea’,
writes Heraclitus, ‘is the most pure and the most polluted water; for
fishes it is drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and
deleterious’. For the Egyptians, anything connected with the sea
was, in general, evaluated negatively. Sea-salt in particular was
regarded as impure, the ‘spume’ or ‘foam’ of Typhon (ἀφρος τυφωνις, aphros typhōnis). Plutarch explains this by the fact that the Nile’s pure waters run
down from their source and empty into the unpalatable, salty
Mediterranean. This natural phenomenon takes on cosmological
ramifications: because of the southern origin of the life-giving Nilotic
waters, south became the direction associated with the generative
source of all existence; north on the other hand—culminating in the Nile
delta where the river is swallowed by the sea—was regarded as the realm
in which the pure, living waters were annihilated by the impure, salty
waters. Comments Plutarch:
For this
reason the priests keep themselves aloof from the sea, and call salt the
‘spume of Typhon’, and one of the things forbidden to them is to set
salt upon a table; also they do not speak to pilots; because these men
make use of the sea, and gain their livelihood from the sea […] This is
the reason why they eschew fish.
While sea salt was avoided,
salt in rock form was considered quite pure: Egyptian priests were known
to access mines of rock salt from the desert Oasis of Siwa. Arrian, the third century BCE historian, remarks:
There
are natural salts in this district, to be obtained by digging; some of
these salts are taken by the priests of Amon going to Egypt. For
whenever they are going towards Egypt, they pack salt into baskets woven
of palm leaves and take them as a present to the king or someone else.
Both Egyptians and others who are particular about religious observance,
use this salt in their sacrifices as being purer than the sea-salts.
Thus, like the arid red desert and the fertile Nilotic soil,
the briny sea was contrasted with the fresh waters of the Nile to oppose
the foreign with the familiar, the impure with the pure, and,
ultimately, the Sethian with the Osirian. So too, sea salt and rock
salt.
The deeper implications of the Typhonian nature of seawater emerge in the Greek Magical Papyri
where the Egyptian deity Seth-Typhon is found taking on many of the
epithets typically accorded by the Greeks to Poseidon: ‘mover of the
seas great depths’; ‘boiler of waves’; ‘shaker of rocks’; ‘wall
trembler’, etc.—all intimating the vast, destructive powers deriving
from the ocean’s primal depths. This numinous power must be understood
as the potency underpinning the materia magica prescribed in
the invocations to Seth-Typhon, where, among other things, one finds the
presence of seashells or seawater in Typhonian rituals. One does
not have to look far before one realises that magic employing shells
from the salt-sea forms part of a wider genre within the magical
papyri—spells that have the explicit aim of effecting intense sexual
attraction. The role of Typhon in such spells is clear: he is invoked to
effect an affinity so strong that the person upon whom this agonistic
and erotic magic is used will suffer psychophysical punishments (e.g.
insomnia: ‘give her the punishments’; ‘bitter and pressing necessity’,
etc.) until their desire for the magician is physically consummated.
Interestingly, the premiere substance sympathetic to
Seth-Typhon was iron: the metal most drastically corrupted by salt.
Moreover, iron and salt-water are the primary constituents of human
blood, a microcosmic recapitulation of the primordial salt ocean
(mythologically conceived: the cosmogonic waters; evolutionarily
conceived: the marine origin of species). Blood is the symbol par excellence
for intense passion, and its two poles are love and war, a fact which
precisely explains Seth-Typhon’s overwhelming functions in the magical
papyri: eros and enmity. Again, it is no surprise that intense sexual
attraction (desire, affinity, union) and intense hatred (repulsion,
aversion, separation) evoke Empedocles’ principles of ‘Love and
Strife’—the very functions governing the unification and separation of
the four elements. Moreover, the connection of Seth with redness, blood,
eros, war and the like equates with everything that the Indian sages
placed under the rubric of rajas, the excited passions, which,
as has been seen, are distinctly associated with the stimulating power
of salt. Be that as it may, the same divine energeia fed
and informed the functions of the Greek and Roman war gods, Ares and
Mars, both of whom take the association with iron in the scale of
planetary metals, as did Seth-Typhon among the Egyptians.
Seth is not only connected to salt, but to the power of the bull’s thigh,
the instrument by which the gods are ritually killed and revivified.
Here the connection of Seth to the power of the thigh suggests the
pivotal role played by this god in the quintessentially alchemical
process of death and rebirth, of slaying and nourishment. This theme
will be reiterated more than once in the course of this study, and it
should be pointed out that any deliberations on this myth are intended
as so many historical and phenomenological “circumambulations” around
the deep resonances generated by de Lubicz’s emphasis on the role of the
fixed femoral salt in palingenesis.
In the middle ages, the meaning of the term ‘salt’ was widened to
include substances that were seen to resemble common salt (e.g. in
appearance, solubility and so forth). Chemically speaking, a salt
is a neutralisation reaction between an acid and a base. The two have a
natural affinity for each other, one seeking to gain an electron (the
acid), the other seeking to lose one (the base). When this occurs, the
product is a salt. While more complex chemical definitions of salt can
be given, this one, advanced by Guillaume Francois Rouelle in 1744,
allows one to perceive the broader principles that motivated the
alchemists to select salt as the mineral image of the interaction of
sulphur and mercury (cinnabar, HgS, a salt in the chemical sense formed
from sulphur and mercury). As Mark Kurlansky points out:
It
turned out that salt was once a microcosm for one of the oldest
concepts of nature and the order of the universe. From the fourth
century BC Chinese belief in the forces of yin and yang, to most of the
worlds religions, to modern science, to the basic principles of cooking,
there has always been a belief that two opposing forces find
completion—one receiving a missing part and the other shedding an extra
one. A salt is a small but perfect thing.
More precise
chemical definitions specify that a salt is an electrically neutral
ionic compound. Here, the same principle of perfect equipoise between
opposing energies prevails. Ions are atoms or molecules whose net
electrical charge is either positive or negative: either the protons
dominate to produce an ion with a positive electric charge (an anion,
from Greek ana-, ‘up’), or the electrons dominate to produce an ion with a negative electric charge (a cation, from Greek kata-,
‘down’). When anions and cations bond to form an ionic compound whose
electric charges are in equilibrium, they neutralise and the result is
called a salt.
The chemical definition opens up the conception of
salt beyond that of mere sodium chloride. Chemically, the coloured
oxides and other reactions of metals—of especial significance to the
alchemical perception—are often salts (the metal itself taking the role
of base; oxygen the acid). Alchemically, or at least
proto-chemically, because the reactions of metals were coloured, they
were important signifiers of the metal’s nature, often seen as an index
of its spirit or tincture (ios, ‘tincture, violet/purple’). The
seven planetary metals were often signified by their coloured salts or
oxides: e.g. lead is white; iron, red (rust); copper is blue/green;
silver is black. Gold remains pure (unreacting) but its tincture was
identified with royal purple (seen in the red-purple colour of colloidal
gold, gold salts, ruby glass etc.)
Although
the purview of hieratic alchemy was far wider than mere
proto-chemistry, chemical and technical processes were undeniably
integral to the alchemists’ savoir-faire. As such it is no
surprise to find salts of various kinds figuring in the earliest strata
of alchemical writings, East and West. In the Greek “proto-chemical”
texts that Marcellin Berthelot brought together under the rubric of
alchemy, several different salts are distinguished and listed in the
registers alongside the lists of planetary metals and other chemically
significant minerals. In addition to salt (halas), one finds common salt (halas koinon) and sal ammoniak (halas amoniakon). More importantly, however, is the significant prefiguration of the tria prima and tetrastoicheia (four
element) relationship that is found in Olympiodorus (late fifth century
CE). Olympiodorus depicts an ouroboric serpent to which some
important symbolic nuances are added. In addition to the usual henadic
(unitary) symbolism of this ancient motif, the text displays its serpent
with four feet and three ears. The glosses to the image inform us that
‘the four feet are the tetrasōmia’ (the four elemental bodies) while the three ears are ‘volatile spirits’ (aithalai).
As will be seen in the balance of this study, this relationship of
unity to duality, duality to trinity, and trinity to quaternary is
pivotal to the Hermetic physics that Schwaller would attempt to convey
in terms of an alchemical Farbenlehre (cf. the Pythagorean tetraktys).
The
four elemental bodies have been interpreted as lead, copper, tin and
iron, (Pb, Cu, Sn, Fe), while the three sublimed vapours have been
identified with sulphur, mercury and arsenic (S, Hg, As). Although
salt is not included in this depiction, what is significant is that here
one finds the exact framework in which salt would later be situated as
one of the three principles (tria prima: sulphur, mercury, salt) alongside the four Empedoclean elements (tetrastoicheia:
fire, air, water, earth); here salt may be seen to replace arsenic due
to its more integral relationship to sulphur and mercury in the form of
cinnabar (mercuric sulphide, HgS): the salt of mercury and
sulphur. In regards to the metaphysical and cosmological nuances of the
symbolism, it may be noted that the three ears are outside the circle
while the four legs are inside, a fact that coheres with the view of the
trinity as creative and therefore standing outside of creation, while
the four elements, being created, are circumscribed within (cf. the
distinction in Neoplatonism between hypercosmic and encosmic forces, or
in Eastern Orthodox theology between uncreated and created energies). The distinct relation of salt to the body and the elements may
account for the cross-like sign it takes in the Greek manuscripts.
In
Arabic alchemy, salt figures most prominently in an alchemical text
that became influential in the West via its Latin translation: The Book of Alums and Salts (Arabic: al qawl fīl ‘l-milh, ‘a tradition on salt’; Latin: Liber de aluminibus et salibus). This text appears to be a practical handbook describing various
substances and operations, such as alum, different kinds of salt
(including the use of alkaline and ammoniac salts), the preparation of
arsenic for laboratory use, the comparison of arsenic and sulphur, as
well as the features of silver, tin, lead, iron, copper and glass.
Contrary to the habit of many scholars of alchemy to attribute the
sulphur-mercury-salt theory to Paracelsus, the triad in fact emerged as
an alchemical motif before Paracelsus.
As both Eberly and Haage inform us, it was Abu Bakr Muhammad Zakariyya
Ar-Razi (d. 925) who added the third principle of salt to the
primordial alchemical principles (sulphur and mercury) inherited from
Greek antiquity (implicit in the exhalation theory of metallogenesis),
and already existing in Jabir’s system. This and related traditions
must be recognised as clear precursors to Paracelsus’s conception of
the tria prima. Comments Eberly:
Razi
had an extremely well equipped laboratory and followed all of the
essentials of Jabir’s systems. In one area in particular, he expanded
upon Jabir’s theory. Razi added a third principle, philosophically
representing Spirit [Sulphur] as Mind, and Mercury as Soul, while adding
Salt as the principle of crystallization or body. […] Razi’s
descriptions of alchemical processes were closely studied and put into
practice by later European alchemists including Nicolas Flamel and
Paracelsus.
In the earliest strata of medieval hermetic texts, such as the Turba Philosophorum and Rosarium Philosophorum, salt is already accorded an abundance of alchemical significations. In the Turba, salt water and sea water are synonyms for the aqua permanens. In the Rosarium, Senior
tell us that mercurius is made from salt: ‘First comes the ash, then
comes the salt, and from that salt by diverse operations the Mercury of
the Philosophers’. Arnaldus de Villanova (1235?-1313) reveals that
‘Whoever possesses the salt that can be melted, and the oil that cannot
be burned, may praise God’. (The idea of salt in connection to an
oil that cannot be burned will be seen to persist in de Lubicz’s
alchemical texts). Salt is both the ‘root of the art’ and ‘the soap of
the sages’ (sapo sapientum) and is described as ‘bitter’ (sal amarum). Perhaps the most interesting signification in the Rosarium,
in light of the role salt would take as the pivot of death and
revivification, is the description of salt as ‘the key that closes and
opens’.
Here one begins to meet the same duality of function
that gives salt its inherent ambiguity. However, its identification with
the function of a key (clavis) helps considerably in conceiving salt with more clarity. The Gloria Mundi
would later reveal that salt ‘becomes impure and pure of itself, it
dissolves and coagulates itself, or, as the sages say, locks and unlocks
itself’. Here one gains a good intimation of the function that
salt would be later accorded in the traditions that emerge in Schwaller.
Perhaps the most concise encapsulation, in relation to the idea of salt
as the pivot of death and palingenesis, is Johan Christoph Steeb’s
remark that sal sit ultimum in corruptione, sed & primum in generatione, ‘salt is the last in corruption and the first in generation’.
A child of metallurgy and the
traditional crafts, alchemy cannot be easily separated from the concrete
aspect of existence any more than it can be separated from the
transcendent. Indeed, both become interfusible, interdependent and
interchangeable. If alchemy appears elusive, it is precisely because it
cuts across categories ordinarily seen as mutually exclusive. For this
reason, alchemy may be better approached not so much as a fixed domain
of activity, but as a nondualprocess. Indeed, its sphere of operation is better comprehended as existing betweendomains, or better yet, as the medium in
which more ‘fixed’ domains proceed. Like the fusible nature of metals,
this medium may be regarded as the ‘substance’ from which fixed forms
‘solidify’, and into which they ‘dissolve’. As such, it is the conditio sine qua non for
transmutation and dissolution, for converting one form into another,
and for dissolving and abrogating the familiar boundaries or borders
between apparently fixed states.
One
explicit example of this is the fact that the key object of the western
alchemical quest itself—the philosopher’s stone or ‘universal medicine’
(the perfecting agent par excellence)— is also, literally, a universal poison. In the Greek alchemical manuscripts, the expression is given as katholikon pharmakon. The word katholikonmeans ‘universal, whole’, while pharmakon,
a very ambiguous word, means not only ‘medicine’, but also ‘poison’,
and ‘magical philtre’. According to the mercurial Jacques Derrida (who
perhaps understood ambivalence better than anyone):
this
‘medicine’, this philter, which acts as both remedy and poison, already
introduces itself into the body of the discourse with all its
ambivalence. This charm, this spellbinding virtue, this power of
fascination, can be—alternately or simultaneously—beneficent or
maleficent’.
‘If the pharmakon is
ambivalent’ continues Derrida, ‘it is because it constitutes the medium
in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links
them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over into
the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside, memory/forgetfulness,
speech/writing, etc.)’ Thus, in conjunction with its ability for transformation, the (universal) pharmakon is also a medium for cosmic enantiodromia.
This
capacity for fluid interweaving between different states of existence
is perhaps most eloquently expressed within alchemical tradition proper
by the seventeenth century Sufi, Muhzin Fayz Kāshānī, who described a
process in which ‘spirits are corporealised and bodies spiritualised’, a
process that, according to Henry Corbin, takes place in an
ontologically real, yet liminal, zone—the mundus imaginalis—which Corbin defined precisely as a juncture between the eternal and the transient, the intelligible and the sensible: the intermonde or intermediary realm par excellence. Importantly,
Corbin’s phraseology is not only drawn from Persian and Arabic mystical
texts (which deeply tinctured the alchemy of the time), it is also
consonant with other, earlier Islamicate alchemical sources, such as
the Kitab Sirr al-Asrar(Latin: Secretum Secretorum), whose Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald
Tablet) famously states: ‘that which is above is like that which is
below, and that which is below is like that which is above, to perform
the miracles of the one thing’. This formula, which is further ascribed to [pseudo] Apollonius of Tyana’s Book of the Secret of Creation, orBook of Causes (Kitāb Sirr al-ḫalīqa, or Kitāb al-῾ilal), bears a still deeper identity to the hieratic art as practiced by the Neoplatonic theurgists. According to Proclus,
the
theurguists established their sacred knowledge after observing that all
things were in all things from the sympathy that exists between all
phenomena and between them and their invisible causes, and being amazed
by that they saw the lowest things in the highest and the highest in the
lowest.
In
the alchemical purview, the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ aspects of existence
are ultimately reciprocal and interdependent expressions of a deeper,
more inclusive reality. Thus, to separate alchemy into a purely material
and a purely spiritual aspect in a mutually exclusive fashion, without
recognising their fundamental complementarity, is to miss the greater
flux between the volatile and the fixed with which alchemy is almost
invariably concerned. As a hieratic art, the alchemical vision of
reality encompasses all levels of existence within the holarchical monad, and as such engages the
world—including the world of duality, which is subsumed in the greater
whole—as a nondual reality: a simultaneously abstract and concrete
integrum.
In speaking of
alchemy as a nondual process it is important to understand just what is
meant when the term ‘nondual’ is used. The word itself is a formal
translation of the Sanskrit word advaita (a- + dvaita, ‘not dual’), and
is used to indicate an epistemology in which both ‘seer’ and ‘seen’ are
experienced not as separate entities but as a unity, a single act of
being in which both the subject and object of experience become agent
and patient of one divine act. While nondualism forms the basis of three
of the broadest currents in eastern metaphysics (Buddhism, Taoism and
Vedānta), it is also expressed explicitly or implicitly in the western
philosophical canon by figures such as Plotinus, Eckhart, Böhme, Blake,
Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead and Bohm, to
name but a few. Despite this, the idea of nondualism has not been
readily understood or accepted in the west, and this is because western
constructions of reality, especially after Decartes and Kant, are based
precisely upon a strict affirmation of mind-matter or subject-object
dualism. At the root of the matter lie two fundamentally different ways
of experiencing the world. One is the ‘everyday’ experience available to
everyone; the other proceeds from a metaphysical experience
theoretically available to, but not necessarily attained by, everyone.
Although dualism and nondualism describe two different experiences of
the world, it is not simply a recapitulation of the materialist-idealist
divide (which is simply another dualism). As David Loy remarks:
none
of these three [Buddhism, Taoism, Vedānta] denies the dualistic
‘relative’ world that we are familiar with and presuppose as ‘common
sense’: the world as a collection of discrete objects, interacting
causally in space and time. Their claim is rather than there is another,
nondual way of experiencing the world, and that this other mode of
experience is actually more veridical and superior to the dualistic mode
we usually take for granted. The difference between such nondualistic
approaches and the contemporary Western one (which, given its global
influence, can hardly be labelled Western any more) is that the latter
has constructed its metaphysics on the basis of dualistic experience
only, whereas the former acknowledges the deep significance of nondual
experience by constructing its metaphysical categories according to what
it reveals.
What
is proposed, therefore, is to begin to understand certain forms of
alchemy as an expression of a nondual experience of (and engagement
with) the world, not only with regard to the dualities of spirit and
matter, but also their corollaries: subjective experience and objective
experiment. As Prussian poet and Kulturphilosoph Jean Gebser
observes with regard to the structures of consciousness that underpin
entire modalities of civilisation, nondualistic or aperspectival
epistemologies do not exclude but integrate more perspectivally-bound epistemologies within a diaphanous whole. [ What
this means is that apparent dualities are not ultimate; rather, they
are relative expressions of a deeper reality that is ultimately free
from the limitations of dualism and opposition. It means that one can
see all things in the ‘ultimate’ reality, and reciprocally, the
‘ultimate’ reality in all things. It is to see, with Blake, ‘a World in a
Grain of Sand’ and ‘Eternity in an hour’. According
to this view, one eventually fails to distinguish between the ultimate
and the relative in a rigidly dualistic way, abandoning the attribution
of any inherent ontological primacy to one or the other. Because there
is no longer any essential contradiction or opposition
perceived to exist between them, so-called ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’
realities become co-present, interdependent expressions of a deeper,
‘existentiating’ field of being. What
is more, according to the ancient epistemology ‘like knows like’, the
nondual, aperspectival or integral nature of reality, in both its
relative and ultimate expressions, can only be known by the nondual,
aperspectival or integralconsciousness. It is in this sense that alchemy, in its more profound sense, necessitates a metaphysics of perception.
Occult Aspects 