The Secret Fire and The Dew of the Philosophers

THE SECRET FIRE AND THE DEW OF THE PHILOSOPHERS

Patrick Riviere

Without an authentic "Spiritualisation of Matter", one cannot truly claim to approach Alchemy. The major problem for the alchemist therefore consists in capturing the cosmic energy or "Spiritus Mundi" (the Aether or the Azoth of the Philosophers) to animate the "chosen matter" and then transcend it.

It is the whole thorny question of the "Secret Fire" which is evoked here, even though some, obviously more "disciples of Gurdjieff" than of Fulcanelli (1), claim that the Secret Fire does not in fact correspond only to a subtle and particular state of being, to an exaltation of the soul, in a way!...

These pseudo-spiritualists, moreover "metallurgists" and become goldsmiths in the art of individuals, offer a "perverse trompe-l'oeil" easily removable thanks to the obvious absence of any canonical preparation of the Secret Salt Fire used at all times. by the Alchemist worthy of the name, authentic "Philosophus per Ignem"...

This "Spiritual Fire" has caused much ink to flow; certain Hermetic Philosophers and not the least having spent a large part of their life in search of it. He is the agent that animates everything: the spiritual vital energy, in short. Here is what the wise Eudoxe (in "Le Triomphe Hermétique" by AT Limojon de St Didier) states bluntly about him:

Pontanus copied it and showed that he had erred two hundred times because he did not know this fire, before he had read and understood Artephius: this mysterious fire is natural, because it is of the same nature as philosophical matter; the artist nevertheless prepares both."

Pyrophile:

What you have just told me increases my curiosity more than it satisfies it. Do not condemn me for the earnest prayers I am making to you, for wanting to clarify more about such an important point, that unless you have knowledge of it, it is in vain to pretend to work; one finds oneself stopped immediately after the first step one has taken in the practice of the work.

Eudoxus:

The Sages have been no less reserved concerning their fire than concerning their matter; so that it is not in my power to add anything to what I have just told you about it. I therefore refer you to Artephius and Pontanus. Consider only with application, that this natural fire is nevertheless an artful invention of the artist, that it is proper to calcine, dissolve and sublimate the stone of the Philosophers and that there is only this kind of fire in the world, capable of producing such an effect. Consider this fire to be of the nature of lime, and in no way foreign to the subject of Philosophy. Consider finally by what means Geber teaches to make the sublimations required for this art: Sydera Veneris and Corniculatae Dianae tibi propitia funto."

In the same treaty, it is not also specified that "... nature, from the beginning of Spring, to renew itself and put all the seeds which are within the earth, in the movement which is proper to vegetation, impregnates all the air which surrounds the Earth, with a mobile and fermentative spirit, which draws its origin from the father of nature; it is properly a subtle nitre which makes the fertility of the earth of which it is the soul and whom the Cosmopolitan calls the "salt- peter of the philosophers".

The same Cosmopolitan had also written: "There is in the air an invisible and secret substance of life"

Later, in a work held in very high esteem by the Adept Fulcanelli, although emanating only from the pen of a doctor-spagyrist: D. Copponay de Grimaldy who related in his "Posthumous Works" (Cf. P Rivière: "Alchimie & Spagyrie : du Grand Oeuvre à la Médecine de Paracelse" éd. de Neustrie) his "iatrochemical" (medical) experiments, were very appreciable elements regarding the process of "magnetization of the spiritus mundi". Here are some more than eloquent excerpts:

"In agreeing that all that the Philosophers say sublime about Nitre is true, it must be at the same time agreed that they hear of an aerial Nitre, which is drawn into salt whiter than snow, by the force rays of the Sun and the Moon , by a magnet which attracts the invisible spirit; this is the magnesia of the Philosophers..."

"...you will have your vitriolic earth duly prepared and magnetized. Your magnet thus prepared, you must have a tin instrument like a funnel which you must put half full of your magnet and expose to the air in the way that It is necessary to place and accommodate your funnel in such a way that it is sheltered from the insults of the weather, and consequently from the rain, in the time of the equinoxes, putting it for example at a window, the collar or pipe in inside the room , at the window on the eastern side. You will adapt a container there which you will lute at the joints, after a while, one will have more than two pints of universal spirit..." / Biblioth. Arsenal 8S 12057/

For the "Science lover", these last sentences will not fail to evoke "the Leyden jar" and the work of Wilhelm Reich (deceased in 1957) concerning the "orgone" energy accumulators (universal energy baptized thus by Reich) (1) using metal enclosures and pipes. We will come back to this point a little later. Let us just remember for the moment what our good Master of Savignies taught, with regard to this mysterious "universal spirit": "The solar radiation dissipates it, the heat volatilizes it, the clouds intercept it, the wind disperses it and prevents it from settling, but, on the other hand, the lunar radiations favor and exalt it.

If, indeed, in the vegetable kingdom, the Dew is used in the liquid state, the alchemist must extract from it by artifice the energy fixed in a "Volatile Salt" in its first state, before it ends after "maturation" by rushing for its use in the Mineral Work. This primordial part but, quite indispensable, constitutes in truth the "Hors d'Oeuvre". A second Salt will also combine with the first, in perfect complementarity, thus concretizing the whole of the "Secret Fire" which will open the "matter" during the First Work, allowing the "emerald" to appear such as we saw it ourselves, without any archemical subterfuge, superfluous in this case,(cf. text and hors-texte of Alchimie et Spagyrie ... Il op. already quoted).

The magnetization of the "spiritus mundi" and the use of the precious fondant, under the appearance of these two salts (of a similar nature) therefore constitutes the key to the Major Arcanum of the "Secret Fire", veiled in a sibylline way by the former authors, with the exception of the anonymous author of the "Mutus Liber" or Silent Book of Alchemy, which was made literally "speaking" thanks to the charitable and enlightening comments made by Eugène Canseliet (ed. JJ Pauvert, recently reissued at suggest).

This phase of making the Salts is carefully described, by the menu, in plates I - IV - IX - XII - V - VI - VII. If boards IV - IX and XII apply to the harvest of the astral influx, which the researcher wonders notwithstanding, as to the presence and the nature of these two animals: Aries and Taurus, which do not designate probably not only the two zodiacal months of Spring! On plate XII, Hermès definitively seizes the precious liquor of which he is so fond, but what substance does he veil under this so robust aspect?

Mutus Liber - Plate IV

On Plate V, the young woman can be seen handing a curious "coagulum" to a "moody" Vulcan who is holding an inanimate child to her bosom. This "coagulum" will reappear in later phases on plates VI and VII. Its nature and the interest of its presence certainly does not escape the Child of Sapience who remembers that the controversial Wilhelm Reich advocated the use of "flaky bodies" to attract and retain "universal energy ("the 'Orgone', see above)

It is truly already, in this primordial "Hors d'Oeuvre" the allusion to the "Fire-Water" or "Water-Fire" of the Adepts, that Fulcanelli's baphometic ring perfectly symbolized by its graphics. (cf. our work: "On the paths of the Grail" text and inset devoted to the Baphomet Templar). Let us remember if it were necessary that the dishes welcoming the cosmic energy (plates IX and XII of the mutus Liber") form a triangle pointing upwards, an obvious symbol of the fire element!

About this sidereal radiation at the origin of the philosopher's pontic water, this extract from "Hermetic Recreations" removes all superfluous ambiguity:

"Everyone knows today that the light that the moon sends us is only a borrowing from that of the sun, with which the light of the other stars comes to mingle. The moon is therefore the receptacle or common focus whose all the philosophers have heard of it; it is the source of their living water. If therefore you wish to reduce the rays of the sun to water, choose the moment when the moon transmits them to us abundantly, that is to say when it is that it is approaching its fullness ; by this means you will have the igneous water of the rays of the sun and the moon in its greatest strength..."
Didn't Virgil evoke in "the Bucolics": "the moon, pourer of dew..."!

Moreover, according to Macrobius, "Ros" did not designate the mythological god, son of "Air and the Moon" ("rosis" meaning vigor and health).

It is also the "Hermetic Rose" that the poets Jehan de Meung and Guillaume de Lorris immortalized in their "Roman de la Rose" ... by homophony: the Roman de la "Rosée"!

All the sacred texts never ceased to praise this precious liquor and to celebrate its virtues, such as the Bible: Gen.XXVII 28-39; Gen.XXVIII.11-12; Deut-XXXIII-13-28. (these biblical references being mentioned upside down on the first plate of the "Mutus Liber"). The Dew has no allegorical value here. It constitutes the Arcanum in itself. Thus, we can also read in "Proverbs":

"It is by Wisdom that the Eternal founded the Earth. It is by Intelligence that he established the Heavens. It is by Knowledge that the depths are opened; and that the clouds distill the DEW...

How authentically alchemical were also the concerns of the famous Hercule Savinien by Cyrano Bergerac - immortalized by Edmond Rostand - the poet whose mind wandered so often "in the moon", according to the established expression! Here is an excerpt of the most characteristic, taken from "From the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun":

"I had tied around me a number of vials full of dew, on which the Sun darted its rays so violently, that the heat which attracted them, as it does the largest clouds, raised me so high, that finally II found myself above the middle region, but as this attraction made me rise too quickly, and instead of approaching the Moon, as I claimed, it seemed to me further away than at my department; I broke several of my phials, until I felt that my gravity overcame the attraction, and that I descended again towards the earth. by the time I had left it must have been midnight. I recognized that the Sun was then at the highest point of the horizon, and that it was there at noon."

How close are we also here to the old game entitled: "the flying eggs", which Jacques de Fontenay claimed in 1616, that it consisted of emptying eggs, filling them with dew before then resealing them:

"We put them in blue (sparkling) rays
Of a burning sun that draws them
After he melted the wax
Who closes the dew..."

In his work: "The Observatory of Knowledge serving weakened eyes ("Conspieillium notitiae inserviens oculis aegris"), Eucharius Cygnaeus did not hesitate to qualify the members of the Fraternity Rose + Croix: "the Brothers of the Dew + Cooked", without mentioning the reasons, arguing that it was impossible to examine this denomination without disclosing very big secrets!

Moreover, he was not the only one; we have explained this elsewhere (cf. review "The Other World" N° 114 and 115). Let us simply add the additional testimony provided by Jean Laurent Mosheim in his "Ancient and Modern Ecclesiastical History of Institutions" by claiming that the initials RC did not mean "Rose" and "Cross". but applied to the words "Dew" and "Cross": "illud nomen compositum est non, quod multi sibi persuadent, ex Rosa et Crux, verum ex vocabulis Ros et Crux."

"INR I"

"Igne Nitrium Roris Invenitur" (through Fire Nitre and Dew are discovered)…

Ratings

(1) What calumnies are not still addressed to this eminent scientist, whose official work was crowned with success by the Academy of Sciences, at the end of the last century

(2) Wilhelm Reich: "The Orgone Energy Accumulator" its scientific and medical use.