[273] One of the roots of the peculiar philosophy relating to Mercurius lies in ancient astrology and in the Gnostic doctrine of the archons and aeons, which is derived from it. Between Mercurius and the planet there is a relation of mystical identity due either to contamination or to an actual spiritual identity. In the first case quicksilver is simply the planet Mercury as it appears in the earth (just as gold is simply the sun in the earth);1 in the second, the “spirit” of quicksilver is identical with the planetary spirit. Both spirits individually, or the two as one spirit, were personified and called upon for aid or magically conjured into service as a paredros or “familiar.” Within the alchemical tradition we find directions for such procedures in the Harranite treatise “Clavis maioris sapientiae” of Artefius,2 which agree with descriptions of the invocations mentioned by Dozy and de Goeje.3 There are also references to procedures of this kind in the “Liber Platonis quartorum.”4 Parallel with this is the account according to which Democritus received the secret of the hieroglyphs from the genius of the planet Mercury.5 The spirit Mercurius appears here in the role of a mystagogue, as in the Corpus Hermeticum or the visions of Zosimos. He plays the same role in the remarkable dream-vision recorded in “Aurelia occulta,” where he appears as the Anthropos with a crown of stars.6 As the little star near the sun, he is the child of sun and moon.7 But contrariwise he is also the begetter of his parents;8 or, as the treatise of Wei Po-yang (c. A.D. 142) remarks, the gold (sun) gets its qualities from Mercurius.9 (Owing to the contamination, the astrological myth is always thought of in chemical terms as well.) Because of his half-feminine nature, Mercurius is often identified with the moon10 and Venus.11 As his own divine consort he easily turns into the goddess of love, just as in his role of Hermes he is ithyphallic. But he is also called the “most chaste virgin.”12 The relation of quicksilver to the moon (silver) is obvious enough. Mercurius as the shining and shimmering planet, appearing like Venus close to the sun in the morning or evening sky, is like her a Lucifer, a light-bringer (ϕωσϕóροζ). He heralds, as the morning star does, only much more directly, the coming of the light.
[274] But the most important of all for an interpretation of Mercurius is his relation to Saturn. Mercurius senex is identical with Saturn, and to the earlier alchemists especially, it is not quicksilver, but the lead associated with Saturn, which usually represents the prima materia. In the Arabic text of the Turba13 quicksilver is identical with the “water of the moon and of Saturn.” In the “Dicta Belini” Saturn says: “My spirit is the water that loosens the rigid limbs of my brothers.”14 This refers to the “eternal water” which is just what Mercurius is. Raymund Lully remarks that “a certain oil of a golden colour is extracted from the philosophic lead.”15 In Khunrath Mercurius is the “salt of Saturn,”16 or Saturn is simply Mercurius. Saturn “draws the eternal water.”17 Like Mercurius, Saturn is hermaphroditic.18 Saturn is “an old man on a mountain, and in him the natures are bound with their complement [i.e., the four elements], and all this is in Saturn.”19 The same is said of Mercurius. Saturn is the father and origin of Mercurius, therefore the latter is called “Saturn’s child.”20 Quicksilver comes “from the heart of Saturn or is Saturn,”21 and a “bright water” is extracted from the plant Saturnia, “the most perfect water and flower in the world.”22 This statement of Sir George Ripley, Canon of Bridlington, is a most remarkable parallel to the Gnostic teaching that Kronos (Saturn) is a “power of the colour of water” (ύδατóχρους) which destroys everything, since “water is destruction.”23
[275] Like the planetary spirit of Mercurius, the spirit of Saturn is “very suited to this work.”24 One of the manifestations of Mercurius in the alchemical process of transformation is the lion, now green and now red. Khunrath calls this transformation “luring the lion out of Saturn’s mountain cave.” From ancient times the lion was associated with Saturn.25 Khunrath calls him “the lion of the Catholic tribe,”20 paraphrasing the “lion of the tribe of Judah”—an allegory of Christ.27 He calls Saturn “the lion green and red.”28 In Gnosticism Saturn is the highest archon, the lion-headed Ialdabaoth,29 meaning “child of chaos.” But in alchemy the child of chaos is Mercurius.30
[276] The relation to and identity with Saturn is important because Saturn is not only a maleficus but actually the dwelling-place of the devil himself. Even as the highest archon and demiurge his Gnostic reputation was not the best. According to one Cabalistic source, Beelzebub was associated with him.31 Mylius says that if Mercurius were to be purified, then Lucifer would fall from heaven.32 A contemporary marginal note in a seventeenth-century treatise in my possession explains the term sulphur, the masculine principle of Mercurius,33 as diabolus. If Mercurius is not exactly the Evil One himself, he at least contains him—that is, he is morally neutral, good and evil, or as Khunrath says: “Good with the good, evil with the evil.”34 His nature is more exactly defined, however, if one conceives him as a process that begins with evil and ends with good. A rather deplorable but picturesque poem in Verus Hermes (1620) summarizes the process as follows:
A weakling babe, a greybeard old,
Surnamed the Dragon: me they hold
In darkest dungeon languishing
That I may be reborn a king.
A fiery sword makes me to smart,
Death gnaws my flesh and bones apart.
My soul and spirit fast are sinking,
And leave a poison, black and stinking.
To a black crow am I akin,
Such be the wages of all sin.
In deepest dust I lie alone,
O that the Three would make the One!
O soul, O spirit with me stay,
That I may greet the light of day.
Hero of peace, come forth from me,
Whom the whole world would like to see!
[277] In this poem Mercurius is describing his own transformation, which at the same time signifies the mystic transformation of the artifex; for not only Mercurius but also what happens to him is a projection of the collective unconscious. This, as can easily be seen from what has gone before, is the projection of the individuation process, which, being a natural psychic occurrence, goes on even without the participation of consciousness. But if consciousness participates with some measure of understanding, then the process is accompanied by all the emotions of a religious experience or revelation. As a result of this, Mercurius was identified with Sapientia and the Holy Ghost. It is therefore very probable that those heresies which began with the Euchites, Paulicians, Bogomils, and Cathars, and which developed the concept of the Paraclete very much in the spirit of the founder of Christianity, were continued in alchemy, partly unconsciously and partly under a deliberate disguise.35