According to Barrault, above on the left the ivory crozier of Bishop Hervée of Troyes is hard to understand how the sacrificial victim of the snake can not be a lamb but a lion instead, the king of the forest. The lion symbol applied for the rule of three, by which every symbol may stands for at least three different concepts, so in this case if we do not want to provide the aforementioned explication, we know that a lion is also a symbol for metallic gold or king of metals. Our serpent/Water which cannot moist hands is dissolving and then incrudating metallic gold.
Above on the right the sacrificial victim lion or lamb disappears but remains a snake that takes shape of dragon since throws flames from its throat. Barrault said this crozier of the time of Philippe-Auguste (1180-1223) located in the museum of Amiens, puts on display the hopeless lack of domestication and cultivation of serpent-nature-evil. For us it is simply a rendition of our serpent-Secret Fire by which we can perform our Main Work.
For the series of snakes devouring flowers, according to Barrault and Martin, one can suppose serpent-dragon to be finally tamed, so that eats flowers. Croziers below shown are no longer about a snake devouring a flowers but flowers in the same glaze. The authors explain that with the legend of the stick rod Aaron becoming a flowering branch.
The first on the left above belonged to Cardinal de Bonal, museum of Lyon. In the middle the crozier belonged to Saint Hildesheim Bernward is also very interesting for the matter of composition in an alloy of aluminum, which still preserves one thousand years after a white splendor. The decoration of the knob of the shaft has gryphons ( which we can see in the right picture below), very difficult theological symbols to locate indeed.
If we enlarge the flower crozier above on the right, from Abbey de Saint Maurice en Valais, and look closely it shows another apparently out of place gryphon on the knob of the shaft. White alloy, flowers and gryphons are all symbols for the same Mercurius/Virgin’s Milk.
The snake sometimes takes on different heads, as we can observe on these two above enamel specimens. The first enamel crozier on the left, belonged to abbot of Saint Wast in Arras in 13th century, has a lion’s head. According to authors here snake has disappeared and gives way to a real lion on the end of a leafed branch. So the hopeless beast is in a middle way to turn into a flower, or the beast is in its way to redention. Lion being less wild and single minded than serpent. The same explication for the dog headed enamel crozier of the twelfth century in Biblioteque Imperial. I agree to Barrault in giving a similar explication for both lions and dogs. But, in my opinion they stand for volatile becoming fixed.
In the series of angels with spears is all too easy, for our authors, to say that the serpent was finally defeated. In hermetic symbolism this serpent iconography is the same but slightly different from the aforementioned, since it represents Primitive Mercurius, then turned into an Angel/Mercurius Philosophorum to pierce or dissolve our dragon, or metallic matter in its incrudating way. Pay attention that in some dry metallurgic ways spears may have a similar but not identical meaning.
Concerning the pictures above, always in our Barrault and Martin opinions, we finally have the complete symbol of victory upon evil: the serpent is defeated and become the guardian of the treasures of heaven. On the left the ivory specimen on the “Le Baton Pastoral” from abbey d’Estival 15th. On the right an enamel crozier belonged to the Bishop of Bethlehem and dating to Baldwin the second (12th).
An hermetic explication for those croziers can be directly provide by Sychardus, bishop of Cremona, who wrote at the end of the twelfth century that the crozier was a symbol for eternal life or immortality: “ Moyses ex mandato Domini virgam habuit, qua terribilia fecit in coelo, in terra et in mari: quia cibum de coelo potum de terra produxit, et gregem ad terram fluentem lacte et melle minavit. ……Hic ergo baculus ex osse et ligno conficitur, quae cristalina vel aurata sphaerula conjunguntur; os superius recurvatur, lignum inferius ferro acuitur, modice tamen retunditur; os et lignum arte rasii poliuntur……aliquando in curvatura Cape ponitur, quoniam ad Dominum conversis vita aeterna promittitur”. Translation: “By God Moyses was assigned the stick, which produced awesome things in earth, sky and sea, which supplied food from sky and drinking from earth, and sustained the flock in earth with milk and honey in large quantity……. thus this stick out of wood and bones made, which is connected with golden and crystal sphaerula (little sphere), the superior bone is curved, the inferior wood sharpened by means of iron, nevertheless slightly rounded; the bone and wood with art smoothed….finally put in the curvature, when turned towards God we are promised eternal life”. Capis has two meanings: 1.capis, vase-amphora with capide at ablative; 2. Capis, personal very rare name, with Cape at ablative. In both cases a very strange and interesting sentence.
As far as “curvature” is concerned: In the end of their book Abbot Barrault and archaeologist Martin present and find no explication for some 11th century outlandish iron croziers. Below on the left is the crozier belonged to bishop Termondus of Affinghen, while the right one to abbot Guillome the second. They designate the original hermetic ringlet, which I have already talked about in the previous Croziers & Ringlets of Serpent 1. Definitely the last part of our alchemical works. But this is only a part of Secret Fire job, whose flux seems to coil like a serpent.