A crowned bird in Ripley Scroll and seven feathers. We will see why only a skillful artist can pluck the alchemical bird King.
In Ripley Scroll, our attention is focused on the feathers rather than the flying general attitude we are used to seeing in alchemical images. Some of us may remember Michael Maier sadly announcing he could pluck just a few feathers from the alchemical duck. Not correctly to be identified with a generic failed task. But a precise alchemical phase.
Before analyzing the image, let’s say immediately that the feathers, the plumage, especially of a goose, generally speaking, symbolize the Air element. More ineffable element than the Water element, which stands for “everything that flows”. The alchemical air is a repeater of some celestial influence.
A white bird occupies this section in the middle of the Ripley Scroll Yale. It is just before the final red nutritional phase. We are in the Main Work (see an Opus Magnum scheme). And this nutritional phase is white.
We can see from the top: a dark cloud, a golden Sun, a golden rain, on a white-crowned bird with golden wings standing on a dark globe with seven feathers. That’s all.
Let’s try to understand what this dark cloud may be and where possible comes from. We are in work’s second part, so our Mercurius Philosophorum has already been achieved. The female and male lions are above and before in the entire image. And some additional Secret Fire will officiate their marriage (1). The Dissolving Green Lion and the Dissolved Red Lion. So they get married, and then they … begin to putrefy together.
The dark cloud is this putrefactive stage, indeed. Not the first of our work, but the most delicate putrefaction. Because it will then be fed on raining Mercurius (2), now we are waiting for the colors. The cloud starts to color dark grey, and the mass increases (3).
After the black comes the grey, and then the whiteness will fade the grey till a snowy white replaces the grey. The Sun represents it, and the opposite of the element Water, which is bound to fall to the bottom.
Then the white, if everything is fine (4), will be replaced by an orangish white and a red. And a black again. At every turn, a mercurial golden rain is required to feed and wash our mass or embryo (5). Our future King.
Why a symbolic bird? Because the final result of our first part has been a white dove ( the first white), now, in this phase, it can act as an eagle because of the lifting power.
This lifting power will bring a rotation of colors. Six times we will see the rotation of black, white, and red. Till a definitive seventh perfect red. But why do we appoint feathers for this purpose? Because it is an ancient way of saying. I pasted here an excerpt from my previous article, Rodanius and the Rotations of Elements part 2, which will explain better than my words: ” … certainly from this White the whole art of Alchemy is performed, and because of that, it is a kind of molting ( shed old feathers), which one who wants to operate must mainly know.”
To shed old feathers or transmute colors ( in Greek mythology, the feather was also a symbol of beam light). If our First Matter/Materia Prima has a significant amount of Secret Fire inside, our white bird will spontaneously shed its feathers, providing mercurial nourishment. But if like most paths, our first matter is not so powerful, we will have to cook and carefully operate. Hence we will have to try to pluck feather by feather carefully. And hope for the feathers to be easy to be pulled out.
Between the image in this article and the image in footnote 1, we can see a Sun and a Moon. They symbolize our tools. That’s to say, the Solve et Coagula through the Elements. The Sun stands for the fixative Elements and the Moon for the volatile ones (6). The Sun lifts, and the Moon makes fall. By continuing passages of states, the feathers continuously fall, and the alchemical bird will change in color. There are three colored balls inside the Sun, and the Moon is colored in the same series of black-white-red. Till a permanent redness. A dragon.
To be continued at Ripley Scroll: the Soul Drinks only Blood.
- See also Atalanta Fugiens and Mercurius Duplicatus ;
- See also Hortulus Hermeticus and two Starry Goats ;
- See also Kamala Jnana, from Black to White ;
- See also Hortulus Hermeticus, beware of the Red Laton ;
- See also Dom Pernety, Laton & Putrefaction ;
- See also Rodanius and the Rotation of Elements 2 ;