Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Beating of the Alchemical Metronome

At the beginning of his dream, Poliphilo has a vision of the entire moving Alchemy machine: fourteen discordant dancers taking origin from their opposite.

Every man is connected with a woman but untied to her. Every smiling face turns into a crying face.  But every simile restarts from a dissimilar. Like night and day. Summer and Winter. Sun and Moon. Philosophical time needs rhythm and pace, while alchemical time demands strict proportions.

One of the best-known engravings from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is undoubtedly that of the enigmatic bi-faced group of dancers. We are still in the incipit of the first book. When walking out of the dark forest, having been drinking at the river, Poliphilo enters the huge pyramid to see some wonders. After a winged horse with putti and two squared stone pillars, he can glaze at a group of men and women with two faces. One smiling, the other crying. He was dancing in two oscillating semi-circles, not in a round.

From the quaint (even for a venetian) form of neo-latin in which Hypnerotomachia Poliphili has been written: ” … sul lato destro da poscia coelate erano alcune figure di homini & di damigelle chorigianti, cum due facie per uno. Quella dinanti ridibonda, la posteriora lachrymosa… On the right side were some presences of dancing young men and young ladies, each with two faces. The front one is smiling; the back one is crying. And in the round, they were dancing, holding my arms, a man with man and woman with a woman—a man’s arm under a woman’s, and the other arm over the woman’s one. And so holding, they move in that way, one by one. That is always one happy face as opposed to the sad face of the previous. There were seven and seven of them, so perfectly carved of ancient sculpture, with living movements and flying garments. They didn’t burden the artist with any other inaccuracy than not giving them voice and tears. The dance, as mentioned earlier, was shaped in two semi-circles and an interposed partition, egregiously scratched.

Under that “hemiale” outline, I saw TEMPUS (Time) inscribed. Then I saw on the other side many adolescents (made by the said artist and the whole uniformly shaped to the above mentioned one, gorgeously waved and the wave by both the figures worn with exquisite vegetation) concentrated on picking flowers among many herbs and shrubs, together “molte facete Nymphe scherciando solatiose, da quelli blandivolegli rapivano” many playfully silent Nymphs took flowers from them. And because of the above mentioned, under the figure, some carved letters saying this unique word” AMISSIO” ( Loss). And they were exact letters, their “crassitudine” (perhaps size) was the ninth part and just a bit more than the diameter of the square.”

Let us immediately try to give a philosophical explanation. I quote from Nuccio D’Anna, Mistero e Profezia the fourth Ecloga of Virgil: … Developing the exegesis of the term trua / trulla that already Varro (De lingua Latina, V, 118) had connected to the “water drainer”, Hermann Diels deduced that the diminutive Trulla could mean “whirlpool” and refer to the intertwining and involutions that usually seem to draw dolphins in their games, which is precisely what Virgil described exactly in the Aeneid. The same particular use is made of the verb amptruare to jump in a circle and, above all redamptruare which belongs to the technical vocabulary of the sacred dance of the ancient college of Salii, whose initiatory characterization is known, as well as the fact that their ritual it centered on a form of warrior dance that was often even assimilated to that of the Curetes, the sacred dancers of the island of Crete. In reality, amptruare and redamptruare can be considered an adaptation and development of the word Truia, precisely with the meaning of describing a special rhythmic circular dance. In a particular framework of semantic extension, they document that the name Truia has preserved its fundamental ritual value and cannot be considered a simple transposition of the city of Troy.

Marco Baistrocchi, in his Il Cerchio Magico mentions the annual Roman sacred rite of the Troiae Lusus, or ritual battle between children of the Roman aristocratic families. On the one hand, older children who had not yet reached the achievement of the toga, that is, before the age of seventeen; on the other, real children even under the age of ten. We know that these were lustral rituals, celebrated to remove negative influences from the city. Examining the etymology of Troy, Baistrocchi derives it from a circular or elliptical context and associates it with the labyrinth symbol. We will explore this aspect in a dedicated article. For the moment, we must understand the reason for the alternation of dancers and, above all, the imbalance of forces in the field: boys against children. The same author hypothesizes that girls played the role of children in ancient times. And since these were rituals to protect or perpetuate the city’s safety, it is assumed that the boys were intended to play the role of defenders of the outside and the girls of protectors of the inside. 

Finally, Greek mythology comes to our aid to shed light on the need for “combat” also understood as a cadenced rhythm. In ancient times, music was composed as an accompaniment to dances, and strokes of picks or fingers on the instrument punctuated the musical motif. Orpheus himself was considered, above all, a master of rhythm. Why did cadenced dance, i.e., rhythm tout court, play such an important role in sacred celebrations? We can answer very briefly and in plain language by bothering the ancient concept that souls run attracted to the rhythm or, as the ancients poetically said, tend to dance to the rhythm.

In my introductory article to the printer and editor Aldus Manutius, I have already said that, in the opinion of many alchemists, this collection of gorgeous engravings and lousy text is a detailed alchemical compendium. In the incipit of Poliphilo’s dream, we have the Alchemy keys and foundations.

So, in Alchemy, the fourteen dancers may represent the cycle of the philosophical sea. Or even the fourteen steps, that’s to say, “seven and seven”,  operations necessary to arrive at the Mercurius Philosophorum (1).

Every man is a fixation, while every woman volatilization. Every man raises, every woman brings down. Every man is Fire and Earth; every woman is Air and Water (2). No matter what chemical substances are inside our vessels, it is the state of the matter. It is significant. Alchemists, and even ancient chemists, to some extent, were uninterested in molecular purity. They were interested in Elements because, in this way, Secret Fire came from power to the act. And is the practical consequence of the actual “abstract” alchemical machine, that of hot and frozen (3).

Nevertheless, more than an Ouroboros rendition (4), here we are before the Caduceus in the sense of Aura Catena Homeri. The image representing the strange dance is to happen inside and outside vessels (5). In the universe, our Secret Fire is also subject to “open” and “close” while wandering around. The opening is female; the closing is male.

Here, precisely, we are watching the intercrossing and succession of the necessary operations. The Solve et Coagula processes mark the alchemical and chemical time like a metronome. We have to count seven of each type of operation. Seven volatilizations, followed by seven fixations. Seven plus seven is fourteen. The representing shape cannot be round but a kind of ciliated eye.

We can start to count from a woman or a man. Every sex holds only the arm of the same sex. Nevertheless, necessarily, the end of a man-fixation turns into a woman-volatilization and creates the condition to reverse and start again. So every smiling face produces, in the end, a crying face. They all form the “Tempus”, the time an alchemist can count.

Of course, Time cannot just be seen as a metronome because these operations require “timing” also. That’s a determined period of Lunation (6) when they are intended to reach the first Mercurius. Another period of Lunation at the beginning of the main work. And a last period during the last cooking. These two kinds of “Times” mark the difference between ancient chemistry and Alchemy.

Poliphilo has described as “hemiale” the “Tempus” image, which causes not a few problems for translators. In most cases, it remained not translated and skipped. It is neither a latin nor a neo-latin word. We know that -aemia (latin), -aimia, haima (greek) means blood, which is unquestionably a red thing. In the last part of the Great Work, there is a matter called “Blood” (7). Is blood meaning this final substance? Or something indicating a”living” substance containing a Soul, since ancient people did believe the Soul/Sulphur contained in the blood?

This word “Tempus” may give meaning to a more difficult-to-understand title for the following engraving. “AMISSIO”, or loss.

This image in the original Hypnerotomachia published by Manutius in 1499, and probably engraved by Mantegna school, is different from the version in “Les Tableau des Riches Inventions” by François Béroalde de Verville, Paris 1600. Probably Béroalde de Verville feared the detail of the flowers was not sufficiently clear in the original versions.  We know that flowers, the product of salts volatilization, make the end and start of each sex of each process of lifting and falling. This term is also found in ancient chemistry treatises: Flowers are a salt sublimation product. But Béroalde failed to understand their handling: are men to offer flowers, as a lifting produces a flower? The following falling process makes the flower not definitive.

What does “Loss” mean? Why a loss, and a loss of what? Perhaps a loss of time? Perhaps an operation with no strict timing rules? To some extent, the product of salt volatilization, once obtained, is obtained. But, is this “Loss” referring to the previous “Tempus, or not? In Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, as we will see, we will often find expressions such as “Loss”, ” Unhappiness”, “And sorrow”. In the previous engraving, we can see an “Equus Infelicitatis” of unhappiness horse.

We know Poliphilo is happy when seeing Polia and unhappy when something detaches him from her. We know that “Love” was generally employed to refer to the forces tying a Spirit of Life/Mercurius and a Soul/Sulphur, in the Italian Academies, which the “Fedeli d’Amore”, or Love Followers, belonged, that was taught.

We know that in the upper part of our vessels, like in the upper part of our skies, Spirits encounter each other. Are flowers the new life being born from this union (8), like a volatile Mercurius can get fixed and becomes Sulphur, that’s to say, the product of a Mercurius fixation in Sulphur, a Salt? (9). But this new life, till the final fixation, will be bound to be not definitive, over and over. In fact, how many of all the bouquets we can see are going to live more than an ephemeral moment? All these flowers are to be dissolved again and again and will fall to the bottom.

The texture must undergo a “Weight” or a measure to lift inside the vessel. Not all consistencies are allowed to be easily lifted. At the end of the chapter, Poliphilo says: ” Et erano eximie littere exacta, la sua crassitudine dalla nona parte, & poco più dil diametro dilla quadratura”, or … and these were exact letters, their size was the ninth part and just a bit more than the diameter of the square.“

“AMISSIO” has seven letters. The dissolvent has to be nine-time the solute. Or, at least…..the transverse measurement of something. Is this square the “Amissio” frame? Béroalde de Verville failed to understand and set an oval frame for his version. In Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the detailed instructions lay in the written part.

1. See also Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit and Secret Iconography of the Wheel ;
2. See also Stoll, the Lacinius Translator on Male and Female ;
3. See also Cesare Ripa & the Hot Frozen Ouroboros World Machine ;
4. See also Codex Marcianus Ouroboros ;
5. See also Kriegsmann/ Sun, Moon, Wind and Earth in Tabula Smaragdina ;
6. See also Santi Pupieni and the Raising Black-New Moon ;
7. See also Ripley Scroll/ the Soul Drinks only Blood ;
8. See also Eros, Psyche & a New Alchemical Body ;
9. See also Basilius Valentinus & Salt, Azoth or Philosophers Gold?