MERCURIUS OF MERCURY

Symbology

Eugène Canseliet, L'Alchimie Expliquée Sur Ses Textes Classiques, Paris, 1972 Planche I, p 23.

«The Mercury of Mercury - Mercurius of Mercury - the main figure of this image is a winged nude youth on a sphere representing the world. On top of his head, the youth has a crown. Above the crown is the spagyrical symbol for mercury.

In each one of his hands, the youth holds a caduceus. Beyond the caduceus on each side, we see a bird, like a crow, symbolically representing Putrefaction.

The most significant Emblems in this image are those representing flight showing the crowned youth to be the messenger of the gods. This shows that he represents not only the spagyrical mercury but the mythical mercury as well.

The shield, or plate, on the youth's chest is surrounded by the corona of the sun, representing the philosophical Sulphur. In the centre of the solar emblem, we see a complex symbol composed by two important symbols. These two symbols denote that the philosophic mercury is composed of a hybrid work, being the mythic and spagyric mercury.

The base of this symbol represents a cruciferous globe. This represents the mineral, or spagyrical, mercury. This metal through symbol projection upward is transformed into Flamel's Saturnia, forming the solar regulus with the King star.

In the extremities of the horizontal line that forms the cross of the cruciferous globe, we see two same emblems distinguishable as the spagyrical symbols for ammonium salt.

Alchemicaly, the placement of such advanced spagyric symbols in so inferior a position is problematic, practically. The fact that the symbol is duplicated on either side of the globe may suggest that one be meant to represent ammonium salt and the other the nitre or sand and metallic fillings.

Resonating of the Putrefaction symbolized by the two crows, in extremis.

To achieve the philosophical mercury, or solar regulus in conjunction with the King's star, the spagyrical mercury depicted symbolically above the crown must be distilled nine times as Philalethes describes in The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King and Flamel in the Brèviere or Testament.

This philosophical mercury represented by the winged nude youth, crowned, is then cooked symbolically in a sealed philosophical "egg", or with the Sun in an oven with the respective fire regimes.

In our opinion, this is the symbolical representation of the alchemical work depicted in Plate I correspond to the work of L'Alchimie Expliquée Sur Ses Textes Classiques.