Paradoxical Christian croziers’ serpent shapes closely resemble the Prudence high relief in Notre Dame, to which Fulcanelli dedicated many lines.
And Armenian Liturgy helps us to make explicit connections between alchemical mercurial serpent iconography and what may seem theological nonsense. Nevertheless erudite enough and not out of place.
Crosses and ringlet iconographies are involved in both Alchemy and Christendom. Usually, old disciplines are an inspiration to newer ones. The contrary is very unlikely to be.
We know the etymology of the name comes from a cross, crozier designating primarily not the object but the person who holds or carries it, that’s to say, the cross-bearer. The Patriarch of Constantinople initially used to bring before him a deacon holding a staff with a Tau on the top. But in this series of two posts, I will present the crozier ending with a strange spiraling ringlet, very often serpent-shaped. Just the specimens many of us find, if not paradoxical, at least out of place. In the medieval ages, theology and liturgy were for both popular and esoteric comprehension. Nowadays, I believe the Christian church has completely lost the awareness of the hermetic origins of its liturgic imaginary.
We have already encountered Crosses (1) as a symbol for sublimation and last fixation. But Ringlets and serpents are foreigners to the popular theology we are used to and allowed to know. The valuable treatise on croziers I’m here mainly going to quote, as well as put pictures on display, namely “Le Baton Pastoral” (the pastoral staff) Paris 1856 by french abbot Barrault and British archaeologist Arthur Martin S.J, unquestionably proves how much distant in time Alchemy had already been from religious as well as scientific cultures back at the first half of the nineteenth century.
Ringlets are ubiquitous hermetic symbols and, of course, subject to the rule of three ( every symbol has at least three meanings). The first sign is an analogy with Circle; that’s to say, with the act of taking Secret Fire to the circumference or being extracted from raw matter, another sense of Circle is the Secret Fire circulation inside the Philosophical Egg (2). The last implication is the multiplication of philosophical matter; that’s to say, our Secret Fire/Sulphur is getting more and more concentrated and less voluminous—quite an undergoing to Fibonacci spirals decreasing law. The particular on the right from Cabala Speculum Artis Naturae by Michelspachers represents an evocative example of this minimizing in size concept.
But we have to set a serpent on our ringlet.
In Fulcanelli & the Antimony of Wises, we have already come up with a similar concept: “… in the corbel bearing the overhang of a second-story beam (at the Manor of Lisieux) we can observe the figure of a winged dragon with its tail curled into a ringlet. The dragon is an image and symbol of the primitive and volatile body, a true and unique subject upon which one must first work”. Here Fulcanelli called it arsenic and gur, but we know he intends our Secret Fire to extract from matter or come from the sky.
But it is not enough; the Armenian liturgy, one of the most ancient datings back from the end of the fourth century, comes to the rescue. The book “The Armenian Liturgy translated into English” was edited and published in the Armenian monastery of San Lazzaro. Venezia 1862, we can find: “The Doctors or Vartabieds have a particular sort of crosier formed of two serpents intermingled ( in original intertwined), at the end of a long rod, the serpent being the emblem of prudence, a virtue indispensable to those who preach the word of God.” And here, for the first time, we find croziers identified with serpents, ringlets, and Prudence.
Of course, we all appreciate Prudence as a pastoral requirement, but that will not meet our thirsty demand for hermetic symbolism. Fulcanelli is once again precious, even if cryptic; on the other hand, he is so worshipped (because he is precious or cryptic?). In his “Mystery of Cathedrals,” Fulcanelli deals with a Notre Dame cathedral emblem representing Prudence’s virtue, to which he adapts to the occasion a quote from Basilius Valentinus Testamentum: “The whole body of the Vitriol (3) must be recognized only as a Mirror of the philosophical Science.
It is a Mirror in which you see our Mercurius, our Sun and Moon, appear and shine… This so familiar and so much despite subject becomes later the Tree of Life, the Elixir or the Philosophers Stone; nature’s masterpiece, aided by human industry”.
The first wife of Zeus was Mètis, the daughter of Okeanos and the personification of reason and intelligence. However, fearing the supreme gods for the birth of a son who could become more powerful than him, he swallowed his wife, who was just then pregnant with Athena, so she was born from the head of her father, which Hephaestus had, for this purpose, split with a hatchet. Mètis, or even wise advice, in poor words, prudence. Athena, Mètis’ daughter, was the goddess of knowledge, wisdom, weaving, craftsmanship, and the noblest aspects of war. The wisdom represented by Athena includes the technical knowledge used in weaving, the art of working metals, and the agricultural, naval, and in general, all the various types of craftsmanship. Mètis is direct knowledge, free from conjecture.
A serpent wounding around a rod is quite a caduceus. It is not a caduceus yet, since the latter presents two serpents, not a single one. The caduceus is a symbol for Solve et Coagula. Thus, our Serpent/Secret Fire /Mercurius has already undergone a fixation. Consequently, two serpents wounding around the alchemical rod stand for Mercurius Philosophorum (4), or a fixed Mercurius. But we know that it can also stand for Mercurius Duplicatus (5). See an Opus Magnum scheme.
In addition, the mirror’s resemblance to an emblem shield is something we will encounter again. But let’s get back to our main topic, croziers, indeed. Mystery of Cathedrals: “… St. Marcellus holds a crozier as short as a gatekeeper’s flag. On his head is a miter decorated with a cross, and, as a superb anachronism, this pupil of Prudence is wearing a beard! A piquant detail is that the dragon in the opposite picture is shown with his jaws sideways on, gnawing the foot of the poor bishop, who, however, appears to worry very little about this… will see there the bishop killing the dragon by touching it with his crozier, as is reported by tradition”.
Dragon is synonymous with the serpent, and to kill is an allegory for sublimation-fixation in eternal material support. But don’t be so sure since the killing allegory is also subjected to the rule of three. Thus it can also represent the dissolving and extracting phase. Bishop is often a symbol for the third salt involved in alchemical marriage or Duplicatus since sometimes the two Mercurius cannot mate alone. The third salt cannot be too different from the two Mercurius Philosophorum he is trying to marry (3); in addition, a beard is a symbol for Mercurius Philosophorum in some alchemical ways. Fulcanelli is always more evocative than explicative. He was a metallurgic poet.
Hesiod tells a very interesting story about the ferule stick: Prometheus escapes keeping the fire of the King of Olympus inside a barrel. We can say that we are satisfied from the point of view of the narrative. Still, one particular disturbs the smoothness of the story: during its run, the Titan whirls the barrel to prevent the fire from going out, and the barrel is not simple but a ” ferrule “. The conservation occurs precisely in the hollow of a ferule, a stick that will become the emblem of the power of the Catholic pontiff and the bishops. εν κοιλω ναρθηκι in the hollow of a ferule.
We are now ready to afford the crucial treatise by abbot Barrault and Arthur Martin (4) to appreciate quite all symbolism involved in croziers, bishops, ringlets, and serpents:
“The first form of Crozier known and found in roman catacombs, the character represented in gold foil is the bishop Amachius, but we can not be sure that the staff is bent on crozier since it could also be the inaugural roman lituus.
Under the name of crozier is designated the baculus (staff) worn by church dignitaries as a sign of spiritual power. But it is not to be confused with the rod of honor or other clubs only showing a temporal power”.
