certain imitation, proclaim and express all the truth they disclose to us through fire, revealing everything hidden. When theory opens the way, and reason and judgment intervene, we see vividly everything above nature and concealed even within the [inner chamber?], just as objects placed before a mirror faithfully return their images and appearances to our eyes. Once we have dispelled the shadows obscuring the truth in this table, what prevents it from presenting itself before us? The fable represents the maiden Hesione ready to be devoured by a sea monster, whom Perseus delivers after killing the dragon. Here we see nature’s first principles, no longer raw and unprepared as in the first tables, but skillfully worked according to art and formed into Mercury, or nature’s white sulfur. By Mercury we understand that ancient, horrible, seven-headed dragon emerging unharmed from flame rather than from the sea’s bosom; for the ancients maintain

that it originates in fire and water. Its seven heads are the seven metals contained in this mercurial water; its seven horns represent the power to dissolve metals, for horns symbolize power and strength and have been given to animals as defensive weapons. Finally, we call its nature of making gold and silver its seven golden horns. At this stage it contains gold’s sulfur and tinctures and gilds what it touches, which appears colored and is naturally of silver. Its tail, drawing a third part of heaven down to earth, signifies the celestial powers of stars and planets that this mercurial water draws to earth; the water is represented by the pointed tail with its many folds and coils. The sulfur of the Sun and Moon—or under the Sun and Moon, which are the parents of all the stars—is said to contain the powers of the whole world.

We have made its volatility sufficiently known by the wings, and likewise, through the angel striking the dragon with an arrow, the sharp and volitive power of our fire

or natural spirit, which pierces and penetrates like a lance and sword, sufficiently discussed in its place. For the figure of the angel upon a cloud, armed with an arrow and shield, amply expresses what we said in the preceding sections about the saber, pike, or sword of Perseus, Hercules, Mercury, Mars, Pallas, and Cadmus. The river that this monster vomits against the maiden to sweep her away is our glorious water, whose admirable power surpasses all the world’s other waters. It has the strength to draw the King and his daughter to itself without their being able to draw it to them.

By the pregnant Virgin with eagle-feathered wings, surrounded by the Sun, with the Moon beneath her feet and a crown of stars upon her head, one may understand nature’s precious white sulfur because of its correspondence with this virgin. For this pure, uncorrupted earth of mercurial water, or sulfur, is impregnated with the Sun’s pure, incorruptible germinative spirit, which is gold

The Radiant Woman



A winged woman in a radiant enclosure, accompanied by celestial and serpent imagery. Scan 201.

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rises to the top of the alembic in the form of a volatile, highly spiritual earth. The ancients represent it as an eagle with its white wings spread, and call it a virgin bearing within her womb and adorned with white eagle feathers. Although very white, because of the solar spirit of gold with which it is pregnant, it tinctures with gold’s color; for this reason it is represented surrounded by the Sun. The Moon is likewise placed beneath its feet for a reason not very different, as though it were emerging from the river that this monstrous serpent vomits. For the water remaining after sublimation is wholly silvery and purely lunar and mercurial: it tinctures metals silver and resembles talc and diamonds. By its crown of twelve stars we understand the spirits of the six other stars and metals with which it is adorned, for the crown is always understood as a royal ornament. The serpent you see before this virgin about to give birth, ready to

spring upon her fruit and devour it represents the continuation of the entire work. The serpent poised to devour her fruit is the remaining mercurial water, in which the sulfur discussed above must be dissolved, corrupted, drunk in repeated imbibitions, and multiplied. This is why the dear child appears to be devoured by the serpent, emerges from its mother’s chaste, pure womb, and is called the philosophers’ sulfur or stone.

To avoid prolixity, however, although infinitely many things could be said in explaining this figure, we reserve them for another time, according to the order we must maintain in this work. We must now explain why Saint John presents us with a virgin who is impure and corrupt instead of chaste, pure, and unstained: the reason is evident.

In this creation of sulfur occurring through corruption, nature’s first white sulfur, acting as the male, lies with Venus, its spouse and sister, and thus through this

illicit intercourse and these unreasonable, forced embraces, it is represented as full of the abomination and filth of its fornication. Among Hermes’ disciples you see nothing more frequently than the intercourse of brother with sister, father with daughter-in-law, or mistress with slave, although these marriages are illicit. Indeed, it would be a great crime, impossible to punish sufficiently, if these things were taken literally and interpreted in any sense other than that of natural philosophy. What, finally, do her mantle and tawny clothing tending toward purple, brocaded with gold thread and enriched with pearls and diamonds glittering on every side, signify except the power of this water or earth to tincture imperfect metals gold, and its nature that changes crystal into precious stones and enlarges small pearls? Thus the great, kings, princes, and many others, seized with admiration, pursue this rich treasure of the Golden Fleece with deep veneration and religious devotion, like dogs that

bark while gazing at the Moon?

Those who have tasted natural philosophy and chemistry only with the tips of their lips will not reach the goal at one stroke. Its riches are granted only to those who, through extraordinary labor and profound meditation, like Hercules the first founder, have overthrown the innumerable monsters of sloth, idleness, license, and rashness, and so forth, and have brought back, as he did, the red lion’s spoils and the club. Those who relish the poets’ fables will not regard them as tales invented for amusement. Beneath the fable’s apparent fiction lie hidden mysteries of nature, so that they may not be seen by everyone although they are before everyone’s eyes. Is anything, I ask you, farther removed from falsehood than what is before our eyes?

Thus we must examine as precisely as possible what these figures of the Apocalypse signify and how their natural applications bear upon divine mysteries. For a woman to become pregnant

through her spouse’s embraces is nothing beyond nature’s capacity or cause for astonishment. But for a virgin to give birth without lying with a spouse and without being corrupted has hitherto exceeded all human understanding. That she remains a virgin before, during, and after childbirth, without any corruption of her virginity, would terrify even angels if they did not know the secrets of so great a mystery imprinted upon created things. If a Christian must believe that she was exempt from our first parents’ stain, should not all mortals be seized with admiration? Even the celestial intelligences would find it difficult to assent, were it not absurd to insist obstinately that this grace, granted to perceptible things, had been refused to the Almighty’s mother. No chemist doubts that our mercurial spirit, the figure of the Mother of God, was generated from parents defiled by the filth and original corruption of the elements, so that one can hardly believe a substance

so pure and chaste could issue from a root so impure and spoiled. Since the Mother of God herself is uncorrupted, bears the glorious name and title of Mother of God, and, enlightened by the Holy Spirit’s divine light and sheltered beneath his shadow, is now pregnant with the incarnate Word, it follows that her blood is pure, her flesh holy, and her womb sacred like her child’s. She rises to so high a degree of holiness, purity, and virginity that she has almost become a God-woman and a virgin Christ, although this cannot be expressed and is inconceivable to the human mind. If we turn our eyes again to the figures of our natural philosophy, this divine specimen of the divine miracle will be found in our physical stone. For the Sun’s body—the body of incorruptible gold—dissolved in the pure spirit of our incorruptible mercury becomes a mercurial, volatile species; in the same manner the mercurial species itself changes into a fixed, permanent substance of gold. Thus through this intimate