1 From super = ‘above,’ and monere = ‘inspire,’ hence ‘inspired from above.’
2 Not found anywhere else. May be interpreted as the “time of perfection.”
3 A favourite saying of the alchemists, applied to the lapis.
1 See above.
4 For a parallel, cf. Enoch 40 : 2, where God has four faces and is surrounded by the four angels of the Face.
5 The Dream of Poliphilo (ed. Fierz-David), p. 210.
6 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, I, p. 434.
7 Sacred Books of the East, XXVI, p. 91.
8 Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 502ff.
9 “De rebus gestis Imperatoris Henrici VII,” Germaniae Historicorum (ed. Urstisius), II, pp. 63f.
10 Paragranum, p. 105. [Cf. “Paracelsus the Physician,” par. 24.]
11 Fl. 1st cent. A.D.
12 Chronographia, ed. Frick, p. 67.
13 Cf. my “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” and “Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept.”
14 “And so this spirit is extracted and separated from the other spirit, and then the Spagyric has the wine of health.” (“Fragmenta,” ed. Sudhoff, III, p. 305.)
15 The apparent contradiction between the rejection of the gesta Melosines and the assimilation of the anima is due to the fact that the gesta occur in a state of anima possession, for which reason they must be prevented. The anima is thereby forced into the inner world, where she functions as the medium between the ego and the unconscious, as does the persona between the ego and the environment.
16 This recalls the “signs and characters of the planets” in Agrippa, which are imprinted on man at birth as on everything else. But man has, conversely, the faculty of re-approximating himself to the stars: “Potest enim animus noster per imaginationem vel rationem quandam imitatione, ita alicui stellae conformari, ut subito cuiusdam stellae muneribus impleatur. . . . Debemus igitur in quovis opere et rerum applicatione vehementer affectare, imaginari, sperare firmissimeque credere, id enim plurimum erit adiumento . . . animum humanum quando per suas passiones et effectus ad opus aliquod attentissimus fuerit, coniungi ipsum cum stellarum animis, etiam cum intelligentiis: et ita quoque coniunctum causam esse ut mirabilis quaedam virtus operibus ac rebus nostris infundatur, cum quia est in eo rerum omnium apprehensio et potestas, tum quia omnes res habent naturalem obedientiam ad ipsum, et de necessitate efficaciam et movent ad id quod desiderat nimis forti desiderio. Et secundum hoc verificatur artificium characterum, imaginum, incantationum et sermonum, etc. . . . Animus enim noster quando fertur in aliquem magnum excessum alicuius passionis vel virtutis, arripit saepissime ex se ipso horam vel opportunitatem fortiorem, etc. . . . hie est modus per quem invenitur efficacia [operationum].” (For through a certain mental faculty our spirit can thus by imitation be made like to some star, so that it is suddenly filled with the functions of a star. . . . We ought therefore in every work and application of things eagerly to aspire, imagine, hope, and most firmly believe, for that will be a very great help. . . . [De occult, phil., Lib. I, cap. 66.] The human spirit, when through its passions and operations it is highly intent upon any work, should join itself with the spirits of the stars, yea, with their intelligences; and when thus conjoined, be the cause that a certain wonderful virtue is infused into our works and affairs, both because there is in it a grasping of and power over all things, and because all things have a natural and necessarily efficacious obedience to it, and move towards what it desires with an extremely strong desire. And according to this is verified the work of the characters, images, incantations, and words, etc. . . . For when our spirit is moved to any great excess of any passion or virtue, it very often snatches for itself a more effective hour or opportunity, etc. . . . This is the way by which the efficacy [of the operations] is found.) (Lib. I, cap. 67.)
17 Trans. Foxcroft, pp. 126ff.
18 The lower triad, corresponding to the upper Trinity, and consisting of the theriomorphic symbols of the three evangelists. The angel as the fourth symbol occupies a special position, which in the Trinity is assigned to the devil. Reversal of moral values: what is evil above is good below, and vice versa.
19 In the Golden Ass of Apuleius the process of redemption begins at the moment when the hero, who has been changed into an ass because of his dissolute life, succeeds in snatching a bunch of roses from the hand of the priest of Isis, and eating them. Roses are the flowers of Venus. The hero is then initiated into the mysteries of Isis, who, as a mother goddess, corresponds to the Mater Gloriosa in Faust II. It is of interest to note the analogies between the prayer to the Mater Gloriosa at the end of Faust and the prayer to Isis at the end of the Golden Ass:
(Faust II, trans. Wayne, p. 288) |
(Golden Ass) |
O contrite hearts, seek with your eyes |
You are indeed the holy preserver of humankind, |
The visage of salvation; |
Offering amid the evil chances of the unfortunate the kindly protection of a mother, |
Blissful in that gaze, arise |
And no smallest moment that passes is devoid of your favours, |
Through glad regeneration. |
But both by land and by sea you care for men, driving off life’s storms and stretching out to them your saving hand; wherewith you unravel the most tangled webs of fate, and calm the tempests of fortune, and control the varied wanderings of the stars. |
Now may every pulse of good |
Wherefore, poor though I am, I will do what I may as a devotee. |
Virgin, Queen of Motherhood, |
To keep ever hidden in my heart the vision of your divine face and most holy godhead. |
20 Horace, Epist. I. x. 24.
21 Musaeum hermeticum, pp. 73ff. [This sentence has been altered in accordance with the correction given in Psychology and Alchemy, 2nd edn., par. 431, n. 11.—TRANSLATOR.]
22 “For before the sapphire existed, there was no arcanum” (Paragranum, p. 77). De vita longa, ed. Dorn, p. 72: “They are to be referred to the cheyri and the sapphirine flower, i.e., to those two precious stones of the philosophers.” Bodenstein (Onomasticon, p. 64): “The sapphirine material: that liquid in which there is no harmful matter.”
23 Occult. phil., I, cap. 28, p. xxxiv.
24 Carter, Epitheta Deorum, s.v. “Venus.”
25 Ibid.
26 The hermaphroditic Venus was regarded as typifying the coniunctio of Sulphur and Mercurius. Cf. Pernety, Fables égyptiennes et grecques, II, p. 119.
27 Cf. “Psychology and Religion,” p. 60.
28 It could be translated as “you have mentioned not at all.”
29 Lazarello, Crater Hermetis (1505), fol. 32r-v. (As in Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 320.)