Ten

SALT AND THE CROSS

In a Greek alchemical text we read "One becomes Two and Two become Three; and by means of the Third, the Fourth achieves Unity. Thus the two create nothing but One.¹ The thoughts already expressed about the hermetic quality— and —lead us to the understanding of the "Third."

If as we have suggested the law of "desire" and of self-absorption is expressed by the descending direction of the symbol for water , everything in the "one thing" that is on the contrary oriented toward the principle of the Sun can be expressed by the ascending opposite direction, that is, flame: whence the alchemical sign of Fire.²

But there is an even more schematic symbolism. The passive water nature of the feminine principle as compared to the masculine can be expressed by a horizontal line , which conveys the idea of "lying flat"; whereas the rising direction of fire can be expressed by the vertical , which comprises both the idea of virility and of stability—ὁ στάς, "that which is standing." The "two" that become "three" are the two in their joining. And ideographically, that can be expressed by the cross , equivalent from this point of view to the seal of Solomon (overlapping of and ). Having said this, we can proceed with the hermetico-alchemical symbolism.

The point of intersection, which is the "third" represented by the cross, can have a double meaning: first the point of the "fall" and neutralization; second, the active synthesis of both as male and female powers creatively united.

The first case defines the hermetic idea of the fixed (as opposed to volatile) taken in a negative sense. This is the state of petrification, arrest, suspension, and stagnation devoid of life. It is the "body" element in the widest sense where the Gold, although present, is as restricted in its power as the opposite principle to which it has reacted. It is the negative side of individuation with roots in a state of contrast between the two: the "two enemies," the two dragons that devour one another in turn, the eagle fighting the serpent, etc., according to the variations of the ciphered language. It is that which we find in the ideogram of salt , "materia prima" qualified in the sense of stagnation as indicated by the horizontal. In its more generally accepted sense, salt expresses the physical state or world interpreted as a state or world in which the "corpses" of invisible battles, of cosmic interferences between powers are precipitated.³ Here the body is equivalent to "sepulchre" and "prison," the symbolic rock to which Prometheus has been chained in order to purge the unfortunate failure of the titanic audacity—equivalent to the act of possession, to the primordial individuation that did violence to the "goddess."

Adding to the "Third" the Two that have engendered it, we obtain the metaphysical Triad, the hermetic notion that proceeds from the traditional general teaching: Sun, Moon, and Earth—world of pure spiritual virility, world of plasmic forces and becoming, and world of bodies—and, sub specie interioritatis, three corresponding conditions of the spirit. Three crowned serpents or three serpents rising from three hearts express the triad of Basil Valentine; the three ears and three "vapors"—αἰθαλαι—of Ouroboros; three serpents that emerge from the cup that the androgyne holds in one hand, while with the other she squeezes a single serpent, in the Rosarium philosophorum and in the Viatorum spagiricum; a serpent with three heads in the German edition of the Crede mihi of Norton; and thus we have established the provenance of the triple dignity of the first master of this tradition, Hermes Trismegistus.