[267] Mercurius, following the tradition of Hermes, is many-sided, changeable, and deceitful. Dorn speaks of “that inconstant Mercurius,”1 and another calls him versipellis (changing his skin, shifty).2 He is duplex3 and his main characteristic is duplicity. It is said of him that he “runs round the earth and enjoys equally the company of the good and the wicked.”4 He is “two dragons,”5 the “twin,”6 made of “two natures”7 or “two substances.”8 He is the “giant of twofold substance,” in explanation of which the text9 cites the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, where the sacrament of the Last Supper is instituted. The Christ analogy is thus made plain. The two substances of Mercurius are thought of as dissimilar, sometimes opposed; as the dragon he is “winged and wingless.”10 A parable says: “On this mountain lies an ever-waking dragon, who is called Pantophthalmos, for he is covered with eyes on both sides of his body, before and behind, and he sleeps with some open and some closed.”11 There is the “common and the philosophic” Mercurius;12 he consists of “the dry and earthy, the moist and viscous.”13 Two of his elements are passive, earth and water, and two active, air and fire.14 He is both good and evil.15 The “Aurelia occulta” gives a graphic description of him:16
I am the poison-dripping dragon, who is everywhere and can be cheaply had. That upon which I rest, and that which rests upon me, will be found within me by those who pursue their investigations in accordance with the rules of the Art. My water and fire destroy and put together; from my body you may extract the green lion and the red. But if you do not have exact knowledge of me, you will destroy your five senses with my fire. From my snout there comes a spreading poison that has brought death to many. Therefore you should skilfully separate the coarse from the fine, if you do not wish to suffer utter poverty. I bestow on you the powers of the male and the female, and also those of heaven and of earth. The mysteries of my art must be handled with courage and greatness of mind if you would conquer me by the power17 of fire, for already very many have come to grief, their riches and labour lost. I am the egg of nature, known only to the wise, who in piety and modesty bring forth from me the microcosm, which was prepared for mankind by Almighty God, but given only to the few, while the many long for it in vain, that they may do good to the poor with my treasure and not fasten their souls to the perishable gold. By the philosophers I am named Mercurius; my spouse is the [philosophic] gold; I am the old dragon, found everywhere on the globe of the earth, father and mother, young and old, very strong and very weak, death and resurrection, visible and invisible, hard and soft; I descend into the earth and ascend to the heavens, I am the highest and the lowest, the lightest and the heaviest; often the order of nature is reversed in me, as regards colour, number, weight, and measure; I contain the light of nature; I am dark and light; I come forth from heaven and earth; I am known and yet do not exist at all;18 by virtue of the sun’s rays all colours shine in me, and all metals. I am the carbuncle of the sun, the most noble purified earth, through which you may change copper, iron, tin, and lead into gold.
[268] Because of his united double nature Mercurius is described as hermaphroditic. Sometimes his body is said to be masculine and his soul feminine, sometimes the reverse. The Rosarium philosophorum, for example, has both versions.19 As vulgaris he is the dead masculine body, but as “our” Mercurius he is feminine, spiritual, alive and life-giving.20 He is also called husband and wife,21 bridegroom and bride, or lover and beloved.22 His contrary natures are often called Mercurius sensu strictiori and sulphur, the former being feminine, earth, and Eve, and the latter masculine, water, and Adam.23 In Dorn he is the “true hermaphroditic Adam,”24 and in Khunrath he is “begotten of the hermaphroditic seed of the Macrocosm” as “an immaculate birth from the hermaphroditic matter” (i.e., the prima materia).25 Mylius calls him the “hermaphroditic monster.”26 As Adam he is also the microcosm, or even “the heart of the microcosm,”27 or he has the microcosm “in himself, where are also the four elements and the quinta essentia which they call Heaven.”28 The term coelum for Mercurius does not, as one might think, derive from the firmamentum of Paracelsus, but occurs earlier in Johannes de Rupescissa (fourteenth century).29 The term homo is used as a synonym for “microcosm,” as when Mercurius is named the “Philosophic ambisexual Man.”30 In the very old “Dicta Belini” (Belinus or Balinus is a corruption of Apollonius of Tyana), he is the “man rising from the river,”31 probably a reference to the vision of Ezra.32 In Trismosin’s Splendor solis (sixteenth century) there is an illustration of this.33 The idea itself may go back to the Babylonian teacher of wisdom, Oannes. The designation of Mercurius as the “high man”34 does not fit in badly with such a pedigree. The terms Adam and microcosm occur frequently in the texts,35 but the Abraham le Juif forgery unblushingly calls Mercurius Adam Kadmon.36 As I have discussed this unmistakable continuation of the Gnostic doctrine of the Anthropos elsewhere,37 there is no need for me to go more closely now into this aspect of Mercurius.38 Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize once again that the Anthropos idea coincides with the psychological concept of the self. The atman and purusha doctrine as well as alchemy give clear proofs of this.
[269] Another aspect of the dual nature of Mercurius is his characterization as senex39 and puer.40 The figure of Hermes as an old man, attested by archaeology, brings him into direct relation with Saturn—a relationship which plays a considerable role in alchemy (see infra, pars. 274ff.). Mercurius truly consists of the most extreme opposites; on the one hand he is undoubtedly akin to the godhead, on the other he is found in sewers. Rosinus (Zosimos) even calls him the terminus ani.41 In the Bundahish,42 the anus of Garotman is “like hell on earth.”