Brief physical explanation of the labors of Hercules, according to their hermetic philosophical meaning

1. The serpents Juno sends to Hercules in his cradle, for him to strangle in his first combat: this signifies what the practitioner must undertake first in the work. It is the mortification of the mercurial or vitriolic serpent through sublimation. For in this operation, as in the caduceus, they strangle and mortify one another by devouring each other, so that, once the venom has been removed, the sovereign medicine and finest theriac may be made from them.

2. The second combat is against the lion of the forest of Nemea, a creature of monstrous size. After defeating it in single combat, Hercules removes its skin, which he wears as an ornament or royal cloak. The skin of this red lion, called the red stag by

some, is a certain red or reddish, sandy earth. It is the cloak or covering in which our solar spirit—the true Hercules—is clothed and which he wears as an ornament. From this earth a vegetable water of very powerful virtue is drawn; he uses it like a club to overthrow an infinity of monsters and perform many splendid deeds.

3. Hercules, now clothed, overcomes the Hydra, which swarmed with heads and serpents, using a torch and saber in the forest of Lerna. This third combat, or third operation, is the most dangerous of all. Strength and effort are needed to kill the Hydra—that is, mercury, which proliferates in heads, or in the seven metals represented by these heads. For however mercury or the seven metals have been prepared, they can nevertheless be reduced to their first form. Iron and fire must be used: that is, the practitioner needs sulfur of Mars and fire, without which one cannot dissolve and overcome the different colors succeeding one another in the work. These are taken as the seven heads and compared to the seven metals: black to Saturn, red

to Mars, white to Jupiter, green to Venus, blue to the Moon, and lemon color to gold. They have been dispersed only by means of fire and sulfur.

4. On Mount Erymanthus he captures a boar that lays everything waste: it is the one that killed Adonis. By the boar we must understand the philosophers' vinegar, which dissolves Adonis—that is, Venus's son or sulfur. He brings it alive to King Eurystheus, signifying the living, reigning and fixed sulfur of the philosophers, which is our King. He brings it after its corruption and death—that is, we dissolve it.

Chemistry makes clear enough the meaning of the fable depicting his combat against the Stymphalian birds. By shooting arrows he drives them from Lake Stymphalus, or the island of Mars, to the island of Enyée. These birds signify the vapors or spirits that flutter about every side of the vessel during corruption. They are said to darken the sky through their great number because, during this period of corruption, the Sun darkens and is corrupted, until our Hercules has coagulated them with his arrows, which are the spirits

that fix, and has driven them back to the island of Enyée, a fertile land filled with every good thing. Lake Stymphalus represents matter dissolved through corruption into black, foul-smelling water.

5. On Mount Menelas he outruns and kills a stag with bronze feet and golden antlers. This stag is the figure of fixed gold water, whose gold-making spirit, signified by the golden antlers, acquires such great volatility and spirituality that it escapes more readily than volatile mercury. This is why he is said to chase it at a run and arrest it. By the stag's bronze feet is understood the laton of the Sages, as we shall show at greater length in its proper place.

What do we understand by the four horses of Diomedes, king of Thrace, which gorged themselves on the flesh and blood of his guests, if not the four eminent faculties and qualities of the elements, feeding on the metallic spirits they hold as though imprisoned? Diomedes represents this mercury of the philosophers. He is most cruel and barbarous and gives his guests' flesh to his horses to devour—that is, the purified substance of sulfur and mercury—to

feed his horses, that is, to be sucked up and devoured by the qualities of the elements.

7. The greatest, yet least bloody, of all Hercules' victories was the one he won over Antaeus, the Libyan giant and son of the earth, whom no one could defeat. Whenever his strength failed, he immediately gained new strength merely by touching his mother, and thus always withdrew from combat unsubdued. Having finally overcome him by lifting him from the ground, Hercules strangled him. Since the preparations for this victory—or, so to speak, this operation—require Hercules' labor to complete it, our Antaeus, who is fixed gold sulfur or the son of the earth (the emblem), must be sublimed into the air, that is, to the summit of the alembic's head. Otherwise he cannot be defeated—that is, reduced to quintessence—so that he may convert metals through tincture and penetration and become the sovereign medicine.

8. The raging bull that devastates almost the whole of Crete should be understood in the same way as the boar of Erymanthus

but Pasiphae's monstrous intercourse with the bull, from which the Minotaur was born, reveals the union of matter's vegetative spirit with its body. For they participate in one another: in spirit through Pasiphae's soul, and in body through the bull.

Hercules wins the victory over Achelous, the most renowned of all rivers. Let us examine what our natural philosopher means by this. Achelous possesses such great power and such a property that he takes different forms; when one is destroyed, he changes into another, confronting Hercules with fresh labors and dangers. The river's different courses, which cause it to be said that he takes different forms, show us matter's different operations, its different forms, and the different colors it assumes, succeeding one another throughout the work. Let us therefore dwell no longer upon explaining it.

The lineage of Atlas and his brothers contains the entire secret of the vessel, furnace and fire. Atlas was the son of Japeth, who was the son of Heaven and Earth and married

the nymph Asia. From this marriage was born Atlas—that is, the greatest mineral spirit of all—Hesperus, that is, the vegetative spirit, and Prometheus, who denotes celestial fire. We say that from this multiplicity of fires arises the universal corruption of things, which contains all the secrets or mysteries of this art, as we shall explain in its proper place.

11. What, finally, do Geryon with his triple body, Cerberus with his three mouths, and the Sphinx in three forms, overcome by Hercules, mean in chemical philosophy? To untie this Gordian knot, we understand the threefold substance of things: water or sulfur, salt or mercury, which in every generation must be destroyed through corruption by a successive movement. For Mercury's corruption is sulfur's soul and generation; conversely, sulfur's death and corruption consist in Mercury's life, just as we say that salt's generation is the overthrow of the mercurial soul and sulfur.

12. Finally, the combat against the Centaurs, the victory won over them, and the stables of Augeas, cleaned by Hercules,

explain no small number of things to us; indeed, by the admission of all philosophers, beneath the bonds of fable they contain what is most sublime in this art. By the Centaurs whom Ixion begot upon a cloud substituted for Juno, we understand the double nature of Mercury and sulfur, namely the pure and impure. Bodies participating in these are called imperfect and would never be useful in this art unless first purified by our Hercules. King Augeas's stables have been filled with the dung of a thousand oxen for thirty years; Hercules empties them in three days. We should expect nothing pure and homogeneous from the impure substances of the Elements. Far from it: we should count only upon something imperfect, monstrous and corruptible, represented by the Centaur. Thus, before all else, the pure spirit of our mercury must be separated from the very black, moist and corruptible substances it received in its generation, when changed into vapor or converted into atoms, which are Apollo's cows. It must be purified completely, without which it will not become sulfur of a pure and fixed nature. To accomplish this difficult work, however, Achelous is needed

to wash and cleanse this blackness from the laton or sulfur. If this labor of Hercules is neglected, every effort becomes useless; all the trouble, care and exertion one undertakes achieve nothing. Hercules defeats Cygnus in a stubborn duel and overcomes him again after he has been changed into a white bird. This means that here is the greatest and final combat, a labor surpassing all others, needed to finish the work. For once white sulfur has been converted into red, nothing remains but profound repose and perfect joy. It is then that Hercules has killed the eagle devouring Prometheus's ever-renewing liver as he lay bound upon the Caucasus, and that he brought Alcestis back from the underworld. The wife of King Admetus, she suffered death in her husband's place to free him from death and prolong his life by several years. But Hercules brought her back from the underworld after overthrowing all its monsters. Alcestis is our mercurial water, which did not hesitate to die in place of her husband—that is, her sulfur. Now, however, Hercules has recalled her from the prisons of death and hell to another, new and better life. This caused Virgil to say: ‘It is easy to descend into the underworld; black Pluto's gate stands open night and