Michael Maier

1.01 - THE OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[2] The opposites and their symbols are so common in the texts that it is superfluous to cite evidence from the sources. On the other hand, in view of the ambiguity of the alchemists language, which is tam ethice quam physice (as much ethical as physical), it is worth while to go rather more closely into the manner in which the texts treat of the opposites. Very often the masculine-feminine opposition is personified as King and Queen (in the Rosarium philosophorum also as Emperor and Empress), or as servus (slave) or vir rubeus (red man) and mulier candida (white woman);5 in the Visio Arislei they appear as Gabricus (or Thabritius) and Beya, the Kings son and daughter.6 Theriomorphic symbols are equally common and are often found in the illustrations.7 I would mention the eagle and toad (the eagle flying through the air and the toad crawling on the ground), which are the emblem of Avicenna in Michael Maier,8 the eagle representing Luna or Juno, Venus, Beya, who is fugitive and winged like the eagle, which flies up to the clouds and receives the rays of the sun in his eyes. The toad is the opposite of air, it is a contrary element, namely earth, whereon alone it moves by slow steps, and does not trust itself to another element. Its head is very heavy and gazes at the earth. For this reason it denotes the philosophic earth, which cannot fly [i.e., cannot be sublimated], as it is firm and solid. Upon it as a foundation the golden house9 is to be built. Were it not for the earth in our work the air would fly away, neither would the fire have its nourishment, nor the water its vessel.10
[3] Another favourite theriomorphic image is that of the two birds or two dragons, one of them winged, the other wingless. This allegory comes from an ancient text, De Chemia Senioris antiquissimi philosophi libellus.11 The wingless bird or dragon prevents the other from flying. They stand for Sol and Luna, brother and sister, who are united by means of the art.12 In Lambspringks Symbols13 they appear as the astrological Fishes which, swimming in opposite directions, symbolize the spirit / soul polarity. The water they swim in is mare nostrum (our sea) and is interpreted as the body.14 The fishes are without bones and cortex.15 From them is produced a mare immensum, which is the aqua permanens (permanent water). Another symbol is the stag and unicorn meeting in the forest.16 The stag signifies the soul, the unicorn spirit, and the forest the body. The next two pictures in Lambspringks Symbols show the lion and lioness,17 or the wolf and dog, the latter two fighting; they too symbolize soul and spirit. In Figure VII the opposites are symbolized by two birds in a wood, one fledged, the other unfledged. Whereas in the earlier pictures the conflict seems to be between spirit and soul, the two birds signify the conflict between spirit and body, and in Figure VIII the two birds fighting do in fact represent that conflict, as the caption shows. The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the hylical body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit.

1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
wealth of instructive examples. For our purposes, a glimpse into Michael Maier's
Symbola aureae mensae (1617) would suffice.

1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[14] The terms son of the widow and children of the widow appear to be of Manichaean origin. The Manichaeans themselves were called children of the widow.69 The orphan referred to by Hermes must therefore have for his counterpart a vidua (widow) as the prima materia. For this there are synonyms such as mater, matrix, Venus, regina, femina, virgo, puella praegnans, virgin in the centre of the earth,70 Luna,71 meretrix (whore), vetula (old woman), more specifically vetula extenuata (enfeebled, exhausted),72 Mater Alchimia, who is dropsical in the lower limbs and paralysed from the knees down,73 and finally virago. All these synonyms allude to the virginal or maternal quality of the prima materia, which exists without a man74 and yet is the matter of all things.75 Above all, the prima materia is the mother of the lapis, the filius philosophorum. Michael Maier76 mentions the treatise of an anonymous author Delphinas, which he dates to some time before 1447.77 He stresses that this author insisted particularly on the mother-son incest. Maier even constructs a genealogical tree showing the origin of the seven metals. At the top of the tree is the lapis. Its father is Gabritius, who in turn was born of Isis and Osiris. After the death of Osiris Isis married their son Gabritius;78 she is identified with Beya the widow marries her son. The widow appears here as the classical figure of the mourning Isis. To this event Maier devotes a special Epithalamium in Honour of the Nuptials of the Mother Beya and Her Son Gabritius.79 But this marriage, which was begun with the expression of great joyfulness, ended in the bitterness of mourning, says Maier, adding the verses:
Within the flower itself there grows the gnawing canker:

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
characteristic presumptions of the alchemist Michael Maier:
The sun, by its many millions of revolutions, spins the gold into the earth. Little by little the sun has

1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
stands for the arcane substance; in Michael Maier 148 it signifies
"the purity or homogeneity of the essence." It is the "punctum
--
144 This idea reappears in alchemy in numerous variations. Cf. Michael Maier,
Symbola aureae mensae, p. 380, and Scrutinium chymicum, Emblema XXXI:

1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
alchemy. In the Scrutinium chymicum (1687) of Michael Maier
(1568-1622), there is a picture 80 of the four elements as four
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From Michael Maier, Scrutinium chymicum (1687)
THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF
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According to Michael Maier, the gold, another synonym for the
self, comes from the opius circulatorium of the sun. This circle is

2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[51] These paradoxes culminate in an allegedly ancient monument, an epitaph said to have been found in Bologna, known as the Aelia-Laelia-Crispis Inscription. It was appropriated by the alchemists, who claimed, in the words of Michael Maier, that it was set up by an artificer of old to the honour of God and in praise of the chymic art.122 I will first give the text of this highly remarkable inscription:
D. M.
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[56] It seems that the first report of the Aelia-Laelia inscription appeared in the treatise of a certain Marius L. Michael Angelus, of Venice, in the year 1548, and as early as 1683125 Caesar Malvasius126 had collected no less than forty-five127 attempts at interpretation. In alchemical literature, the treatise of the physician Nicholas Barnaud, of Crest (Dauphin), who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century, has been preserved. He gave an alchemical interpretation of the inscription in, it appears, 1597.128 To begin with, I shall keep to his interpretation and that of the learned Michael Maier.
[57] Maier maintains that Aelia and Laelia represent two persons who are united in a single subject, named Crispis. Barnaud calls Aelia solar, presumably a derivation from

3.00 - Introduction, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
Rosicrucian work by Michael Maier.]
ix

3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[117] Generally Sol is regarded as the masculine and active half of Mercurius, a supraordinate concept whose psychology I have discussed in a separate study.34 Since, in his alchemical form, Mercurius does not exist in reality, he must be an unconscious projection, and because he is an absolutely fundamental concept in alchemy he must signify the unconscious itself. He is by his very nature the unconscious, where nothing can be differentiated; but, as a spiritus vegetativus (living spirit), he is an active principle and so must always appear in reality in differentiated form. He is therefore fittingly called duplex, both active and passive. The ascending, active part of him is called Sol, and it is only through this that the passive part can be perceived. The passive part therefore bears the name of Luna, because she borrows her light from the sun.35 Mercurius demonstrably corresponds to the cosmic Nous of the classical philosophers. The human mind is a derivative of this and so, likewise, is the diurnal life of the psyche, which we call consciousness.36 Consciousness requires as its necessary counterpart a dark, latent, non-manifest side, the unconscious, whose presence can be known only by the light of consciousness.37 Just as the day-star rises out of the nocturnal sea, so, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, consciousness is born of unconsciousness and sinks back every night to this primal condition. This duality of our psychic life is the prototype and archetype of the Sol-Luna symbolism. So much did the alchemist sense the duality of his unconscious assumptions that, in the face of all astronomical evidence, he equipped the sun with a shadow: The sun and its shadow bring the work to perfection.38 Michael Maier, from whom this saying is taken, avoids the onus of explanation by substituting the shadow of the earth for the shadow of the sun in the forty-fifth discourse of his Scrutinium. Evidently he could not wholly shut his eyes to astronomical reality. But then he cites the classical saying of Hermes: Son, extract from the ray its shadow,39 thus giving us clearly to understand that the shadow is contained in the suns rays and hence could be extracted from them (whatever that might mean). Closely related to this saying is the alchemical idea of a black sun, often mentioned in the literature.40 This notion is supported by the self-evident fact that without light there is no shadow, so that, in a sense, the shadow too is emitted by the sun. For this physics requires a dark object interposed between the sun and the observer, a condition that does not apply to the alchemical Sol, since occasionally it appears as black itself. It contains both light and darkness. For what, in the end, asks Maier, is this sun without a shadow? The same as a bell without a clapper. While Sol is the most precious thing, its shadow is res vilissima or quid vilius alga (more worthless than seaweed). The antinomian thinking of alchemy counters every position with a negation and vice versa. Outwardly they are bodily things, but inwardly they are spiritual, says Senior.41 This view is true of all alchemical qualities, and each thing bears in itself its opposite.42
[118] To the alchemical way of thinking the shadow is no mere privatio lucis; just as the bell and its clapper are of a tangible substantiality, so too are light and shadow. Only thus can the saying of Hermes be understood. In its entirety it runs: Son, extract from the ray its shadow, and the corruption that arises from the mists which gather about it, befoul it and veil its light; for it is consumed by necessity and by its redness.43 Here the shadow is thought of quite concretely; it is a mist that is capable not only of obscuring the sun but of befouling it (coinquinarea strong expression). The redness (rubedo) of the suns light is a reference to the red sulphur in it, the active burning principle, destructive in its effects. In man the natural sulphur, Dorn says, is identical with an elemental fire which is the cause of corruption, and this fire is enkindled by an invisible sun unknown to many, that is, the sun of the Philosophers. The natural sulphur tends to revert to its first nature, so that the body becomes sulphurous and fitted to receive the fire that corrupts man back to his first essence.44 The sun is evidently an instrument in the physiological and psychological drama of return to the prima materia, the death that must be undergone if man is to get back to the original condition of the simple elements and attain the incorrupt nature of the pre-worldly paradise. For Dorn this process was spiritual and moral as well as physical.

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[287] In his quest for wholeness so far, Michael Maier, besides crossing three continents and travelling in three directions, has discovered a statue of Mercurius pointing the way to paradise; he has glimpsed paradise from afar, he has found the animal soul and the sibylline anima, who now counsels him to journey to the seven mouths of the Nile (Ostia Nili), in order to seek for Mercurius. The continuation of his pilgrimage recalls the flight of the phoenix from Arabia, where it lives, to Egypt, where it dies and arises anew. We may therefore expect that something similar will befall the author. We are not told anything of his crossing of the Red Sea and of his recapitulation, in the reverse direction, of the miraculous wanderings of the children of Israel. We do, however, soon learn that something like a rebirth mystery is to take place, because Maier compares the seven mouths of the Nile to the seven planets. He first reaches the Canopic Gate, the western mouth of the delta, where he finds Saturn domiciled. Of the remaining planets we can recognize only Mars with certainty, as the description of the cities where the others dwell is not very clear. Amid innumerable hazards he traverses the seven regions without meeting Mercurius. He does not find him even in his own city. Finally he has to turn back and retrace his steps until he reaches the Canopic Gate, where this time he finds Mercurius. Although he learns from him all sorts of secrets, he fails to find the phoenix. Later, he will return again in order to discover the panacea. In his Epigramma ad Phoenicem he begs the wonderful bird to give the wise man its feathers,532 and in his epigram to the Medicina Phoeniciae he rates it above riches and gold, and he who does not think so is not a man but a beast.533
[288] The experience of the fourth quarter, the region of fire (i.e., the inferior function), is described by Maier as an ascent and descent through the seven planetary spheres. Even if the peregrination up to this point was not an allegory of the opus alchymicum, from now on it certainly is. The opus is atransitus, a
--
[297] Returning now to Michael Maiers journey to the seven mouths of the Nile, which signify the seven planets, we bring to this theme a deepened understanding of what the alchemists meant by ascent and descent. It was the freeing of the soul from the shackles of darkness, or unconsciousness; its ascent to heaven, the widening of consciousness; and finally its return to earth, to hard reality, in the form of the tincture or healing drink, endowed with the powers of the Above. What this means psychologically could be seen very clearly from the Hypnerotomachia565 were its meaning not overlaid by a mass of ornate detail. It should therefore be pointed out that the whole first part of the book is a description of the dreamers ascent to a world of gods and heroes, of his initiation into a Venus mystery, followed by the illumination and semi-apotheosis of Poliphilo and his Polia. In the second, smaller part this leads to disenchantment and the cooling off of the lovers, culminating in the knowledge that it was all only a dream. It is a descent to earth, to the reality of daily life, and it is not altogether clear whether the hero managed to preserve in secret the nature of the heavenly centre which he acquired by the ascent.566 One rather doubts it. Nevertheless, his exciting adventure has left us a psychological document which is a perfect example of the course and the symbolism of the individuation process. The spirit, if not the language, of alchemy breathes through it and sheds light even on the darkest enigmas and riddles of the Masters.567
[298] Maiers journey through the planetary houses begins with Saturn, who is the coldest, heaviest, and most distant of the planets, the maleficus and abode of evil, the mysterious and sinister Senex (Old Man), and from there he ascends to the region of the sun, to look for the Boy Mercurius, the longed-for and long-sought goal of the adept. It is an ascent ever nearer to the sun, from darkness and cold to light and warmth, from old age to youth, from death to rebirth. But he has to go back along the way he came, for Mercurius is not to be found in the region of the sun but at the point from which he originally started. This sounds very psychological, and in fact life never goes forward except at the place where it has come to a standstill.568 The sought-for Mercurius is the spiritus vegetativus, a living spirit, whose nature it is to run through all the houses of the planets, i.e., the entire Zodiac. We could just as well say through the entire horoscope, or, since the horoscope is the chronometric equivalent of individual character, through all the characterological components of the personality. Individual character is, on the old view, the curse or blessing which the gods bestowed on the child at its birth in the form of favourable or unfavourable astrological aspects. The horoscope is like the chirographum, the handwriting of the ordinances against us . . . which Christ blotted out; and he took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. And after having disarmed the principalities and powers he made a show of them openly, and triumphed over them.569
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[300] I shall not go more closely here into the transitus through the planetary houses;573 it is sufficient to know that Michael Maier, like Mercurius, passes through them on his mystic journey.574 This journey is reminiscent of the voyage of the hero, one motif of which becomes evident in the archetypal meeting at the critical place (the ford) with the Ortus, its head showing the four colours. There are other motifs too. Where there is a monster a beautiful maiden is not far away, for they have, as we know, a secret understanding so that the one is seldom found without the other. The sibyl, the guide of souls, shows the hero the way to Mercurius, who in this case is Hermes Trismegistus, the supreme mystagogue.
[301] In the Shepherd of Hermas it is related that the hero, while travelling along the Via Campana, met a monster resembling a dragon of the sea (

4.05 - THE DARK SIDE OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[465] The kings decline, as we saw, was due to imperfection or sickness. In the Cantilena his sickness was sterility. The figure of the sterile king may perhaps come from the Arisleus Vision,275 where the King of the Sea rules over an unfruitful country, although he himself is not sterile. Usually the king is connected in some way with the world of darkness. Thus, in the Introitus, he is at first the secret, infernal fire,276 but as the reborn puellus regius (kingly boy) he is an allegory of Christ. In Michael Maier the king is dead and yet imprisoned alive in the depths of the sea, whence he calls for help.277 The following story of the king is from Trismosins Splendor solis:
The old Philosophers declared they saw a Fog rise, and pass over the whole face of the earth, they also saw the impetuosity of the Sea, and the streams over the face of the earth, and how these same became foul and stinking in the darkness. They further saw the king of the Earth sink, and heard him cry out with eager voice,278 Whoever saves me shall live and reign with me for ever in my brightness on my royal throne, and Night enveloped all things. The day after, they saw over the King an apparent Morning Star, and the light of Day clear up the darkness, and bright Sunlight pierce through the clouds, with manifold coloured rays of brilliant brightness, and a sweet perfume from the earth, and the Sun shining clear. Herewith was completed the Time when the King of the Earth was released and renewed, well apparelled, and quite handsome, surprising with his beauty the Sun and Moon. He was crowned with three costly crowns, the one of Iron, the other of Silver, and the third of pure Gold. They saw in his right hand a Sceptre with Seven Stars, all of which gave a golden Splendour [etc., etc.].279

5.02 - THE STATUE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[560] The statue has a somewhat different significance in the treatise of Senior,50 who speaks of the water that is extracted from the hearts of statues. Senior is identical with the Arabian alchemist Ibn Umail al-Tamimi. He is reported to have opened tombs and sarcophagi in Egypt and to have removed the mummies.51 Mummies were supposed to possess medicinal virtues, and for this reason bits of corpses had long been mentioned in European pharmacy under the name of mumia.52 It is possible that mumia was also used for alchemical purposes. It is mentioned in Khunrath as synonymous with the prima materia.53 In Paracelsus, who may have been Khunraths source for this, Mumia balsamita has something to do with the elixir, and is even called the physical life-principle itself.54 Seniors statues may well have been Egyptian sarcophagi, which as we know were portrait-statues. In the same treatise there is a description of a statue (of Hermes Trismegistus) in an underground chapel. Senior says: I shall now make known to you what that wise man who made the statue has hidden in that house; in it he has described that whole science, as it were, in the figure, and taught his wisdom in the stone, and revealed it to the discerning. Michael Maier comments: That is the statue from whose heart the water is extracted. He also mentions that a stone statue which pronounced oracles was dedicated to Hermes in Achaia Pharis.
[561] In Raymond Lully (Ramon Llull) there is an oil that is extracted from the heart of statues, and moreover by the washing of water and the drying of fire.55 This is an extremely paradoxical operation in which the oil evidently serves as a mediating and uniting agent.

5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[637] As the prima materia is also called lead and Saturn, we should mention that the Sabbath is co-ordinated with Yesod, as is the letter Teth,314 which stands under the influence of Shabtai (Saturn). In the same way that Mercurius, as a volatile substance, is named the bird, goose, chick of Hermes, swan, eagle, vulture, and phoenix, Yesod (as well as Tifereth) is called pullus avis315 also penna, ala (feather, wing).316 Feathers and wings play a role in alchemy too: the eagle that devours its own feathers or wings,317 and the feathers of the phoenix in Michael Maier.318 The idea of the bird eating its own feathers is a variant of the uroboros, which in turn is connected with Leviathan. Leviathan and the great dragon are names for both Yesod and Tifereth.319
[638] Yesod is as a part to the whole, and the whole is Tifereth, who is named the sun.320 The feet of the Apocalyptic Son of Man, glowing as if in the fire, may have a connection with Malchuth, since the feet are the organ that touches the earth. The earth, Malchuth, is Yesods footstool.321 Malchuth is also the furnace, the place destined for the cooking and decoction of the influence sent down to her by her husb and for the nourishment of the hosts.322

6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[742] Since earliest times, therefore, men have had recourse in such situations to artificial aids, ritual actions such as dances, sacrifices, identification with ancestral spirits, etc., in the obvious attempt to conjure up or reawaken those deeper layers of the psyche which the light of reason and the power of the will can never reach, and to bring them back to memory. For this purpose they used mythological or archetypal ideas which expressed the unconscious. So it has remained to the present time, when the day of the believer begins and ends with prayer, that is, with a rite dentre et de sortie. This exercise fulfils its purpose pretty well. If it did not, it would long since have fallen into disuse. If ever it lost its efficacy to any great extent, it was always in individuals or social groups for whom the archetypal ideas have become ineffective. Though such ideas or reprsentations collectives are always true in so far as they express the unconscious archetype, their verbal and pictorial form is greatly influenced by the spirit of the age. If this changes, whether by contact with understand why the alchemists called their nigredo melancholia, a black blacker than black, night, an affliction of the soul, confusion, etc., or, more pointedly, the black raven. For us the raven seems only a funny allegory, but for the medieval adept it was, as we have said, a well-known allegory of the devil.216 Correctly assessing the psychic danger in which he stood, it was therefore of the utmost importance for him to have a favourable familiar as a helper in his work, and at the same time to devote himself diligently to the spiritual exercise of prayer; all this in order to meet effectively the consequences of the collision between his consciousness and the darkness of the shadow. Even for modern psychology the confrontation with the shadow is not a harmless affair, and for this reason it is often circumvented with cunning and caution. Rather than face ones own darkness, one contents oneself with the illusion of ones civic rectitude. Certainly most of the alchemists handled their nigredo in the retort without knowing what it was they were dealing with. But it is equally certain that adepts like Morienus, Dorn, Michael Maier, and others knew in their way what they were doing. It was this knowledge, and not their greed for gold, that kept them labouring at the apparently hopeless opus, for which they sacrificed their money, their goods, and their life.
[743] Their spirit was their own belief in the lighta spirit which drew the soul to itself from its imprisonment in the body; but the soul brought with it the darkness of the chthonic spirit, the unconscious. The separation was so important because the dark deeds of the soul had to be checked. The unio mentalis signified, therefore, an extension of consciousness and the governance of the souls motions by the spirit of truth. But since the soul made the body to live and was the principle of all realization, the philosophers could not but see that after the separation the body and its world were dead.217 They therefore called this state the grave, corruption, mortification, and so on, and the problem then arose of reanimation, that is, of reuniting the soul with the inanimate body. Had they brought about this reanimation in a direct way, the soul would simply have snapped back a foreign and possibly more advanced civilization, or through an expansion of consciousness brought about by new discoveries and new knowledge, then the rite loses its meaning and degenerates into mere superstition. Examples of this on a grand scale are the extinction of the ancient Egyptian civilization and the dying out of the gods of Greece and Rome. A similar phenomenon can be observed in China today.

6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
40 Michael Maier (Symbola aureae mensae, 1617, p. 380) says: "The true antimony
of the Philosophers lies hidden in the deep sea, like the son of the King."
--
74 Michael Maier, De circulo physico quadrato (1616), ch. I.
76 Christ in medieval alchemy. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part III, ch. 5.
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carbuncle gathered into itself" (from Michael Maier's exposition of the theory
of Thomas Aquinas, in Symbola anreae mensae, p. 377). "I found a certain

APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
Scrutinium Chymicum , by Michael Maier. ::: One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. ::: One of the best essays written in recent years.

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
which Michael Maier (Symbola aurea mensae, Frankfurt, 1617) considers to be, along with
the globe surmounted with the cross, specific symbols of the style of the celebrated Adept.
--
regulus of antimony, and the true and only stibium of Michael Maier and all the Adepts. As
for mineral stibnite, it possesses none of the required qualities, and whatever the manner in

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