Frazer’s Two Laws of Magic and the Sun Stone

If we analyze the principles of thought on which Magic is based, it will be found that they have something in common with some keys of Alchemy. But surprisingly, also with the quantum entanglement law. And, given that Greek mythology seems to unite these two disciplines, we can also say that the mysterious chain of births of the Phoenix follows similar mechanisms. Indeed, in these two axioms, we also find much of the Neoplatonic philosophy of Damascius and Iamblichus.

The third chapter of the short edition of “The Golden Bough” by James G. Frazer, 1922, is dedicated to sympathetic Magic. “Powder of Sympathy” is an already heard term in sixteenth-seventeenth-century alchemical treatises.

Paraphrasing Canseliet (1), one could say there isn’t other magic than Alchemy, and there is no other Alchemy than magic. The great French alchemist, a pupil of Fulcanelli, probably did not know that some axioms of quantum physics would provide a “modern” basis for alchemical physics just as Alchemy had been in ancient times the physical basis of the mythology of the middle sea. Frazer’s Two Laws have always seemed poetic and unreal (although one wonders how many people would be willing to give a real explanation to unreality).

Canseliet’s actual sentence was much more cautious and evocative: “ there is only a Magic… ” preferring not to put the phrase to a conclusion by inserting the three dots. But more than Canseliet, James Frazer to enlighten the concept for us to understand, let’s reveal Frazer’s few lines right away:

The two Principles of Magic

From Frazer:

Magic is based on principles of thought which will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed…

… For the same principles which the magician applies in his art practice are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law and a fallacious conduct guide; it is a false science and an abortive art…

… The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second, he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these branches of magic, the term Homoeopathic is preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests if it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too narrowly…

Then he finally states the laws in their lapidary essentiality:

The first is “The like produces like”.

The second is “Things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed”.

In today’s state of physics…

Einstein tried to counter quantum entanglement to the last: he seemed to him not very mathematical. Very likely, he could have immediately recognized a certain familiarity between those disturbing modern laws of probability and the archaic laws of magic. In contrast, a Renaissance hermetic eclectic, such as Agrippa, for example, would have been thrilled to hear about the strange behavior of the electrons, which perhaps arrive before leaving. And he would have almost fainted hearing Louis de Broglie’s musings on memory-exchange techniques between particles.

Seen from an alchemist’s point of view.

These two principles, or laws, can be applied to Alchemy and, what’s more, to our Secret Fire secret working. But Frazer, unaware of that, miss every possibility of going deeper into it. And as a matter of fact, Magic itself lost any possibility of having a rational direction when it deviated so far from Alchemy. Frazer and the magic workers had a dim idea of the alchemical Secret Fire. The first one, just after his initial assertions, runs along with the following lines:

And that’s magic, of course. Not Alchemy.

Then Frazer goes on to differentiate into theoretical and practical magic. Ultimately, he said that magicians try to imitate Nature. But both the author and Magic seem to stop here. But his reducing the principles of Magic mainly into two helped us greatly. Let’s examine the first.

“The like produces like”, which is also the foundation of Homeopathy to a certain extent. In fact, Frazer called this law homeopathic. in fact, in Homeopathy, a principle producing an effect can remove that effect. Let’s rewrite the sentence more understandably: an alchemist should use alike to produce the like.

Alchemy’s primary purpose: the Reincrudation

That’s the Alchemy’s primary purpose, representing the Reincrudation theory: a metal, or/and a person, are reduced to Mercurius/Secret Fire. And this miracle is caused by the same Mercurius/Secret Fire in its dissolving action. Secret Fire can reduce to Secret Fire. The Seed of metals, the Mother of all metals, reduces and produces other Seeds and Mothers of metals. Chaos was reduced to another Chaos, perhaps always the same, due to the indetermination of Chaos/Mercurius (1).

For the rule of three, by which a symbol may stand for at least three different concepts, one can argue that a Sulphur can produce another Sulphur. It is said that “ Only gold can generate another gold, ” but this gold is philosophical. That’s to say, is gold reduced to its first Matter, even without using a single molecule of our noble yellow metal inside? And if it is true that in Alchemy, only the male does generate, while the female “opens”, so a Sulfur, that’s to say, a more cooked Mercurius, can undoubtedly produce another Sulphur.

If the first principle was relatively easy to be understood, the same could not be said of the second, which seems to open more than one alchemical scenario. But I don’t mean to establish theories I have never explored and should take for granted. Thus I will not write as the confident Sendivogius: “. . . this natural world is only an image and material copy of a heavenly and spiritual pattern; that the very existence of this world is based upon the reality of its celestial archetype… ”, which is very poetic and quite everyone from the deep of our heart wishes to be true. So I will not talk of cosmogonies, whose, to be honest, I have never seen the evidence, apart from my book reading and talking of things I only must have faith in.

But I will tell you of Stars, the Sun, the Moon, Secret Fire buried in the deep of the earth, and Mercurius Philosophorum made by alchemists. Which, with good likelihood, may all own to the same original thing before becoming Stars, Sun, Moon, Secret Fire, and Mercurius Philosophorum.

According to the second principle of magic, we must admit that some things have been separated from the same original thing. We know that the impalpable Secret Fire dwelling in our molecules is the same as the Sun. As well as recognizing a kind of “Breathing” within the Sun and Earth. So might a little piece of Secret Fire from the Sun, once separated and arrived on Earth, behave as the bulk of Secret Fire remained in the Sun? And what about a piece of Stars? Is a piece of Secret Fire once left the Sun still “feeling” as if it was the whole Sun? And conversely, is the Sun, in turn, “feeling” as if it was a tiny vapor in the deep of the Earth?

Anyone who has seen a Mercurius Philosophorum can confidentially answer yes to all those questions. For example, you must think of all the celestial, weather, and timing requirements we must observe to conclude our works (2). Not to mention the very “behavior” of this little piece of Sun, and Stars, we have the lucky chance to observe.

Alexandre Toussaint Limojon de Saint Didier discusses that aspect in his Triomphe Hermétique 1699. He says there is a real “chemistry”, or physics as we nowadays could say, between the Sun, Moon, and the Secret Fire in the deep of the Earth. Among the scarce engravings in his books, one is dedicated to this phenomenon which I will assign a whole article. For now, be aware that the second principle on the magic of James Frazer might be as accurate as the first.

Frazer himself was very conscious and intrigued by this second law and, as was one of his habits to hidden concepts for the reader to discover, someone decided to put an evocative image of a mistletoe plant on the third edition of “ The Golden Bough” (image on the top). Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that grows on apple trees and oaks and releases a gluing substance. An excellent allegory of our Secret Fire “gluing” matter from a little parasitic alchemical plant once belonging to a major one.

The Phoenix chain of births

Hyginus in his fables tells us the gods resurrected Aesculapius under the name of Asclepius. Too bad that Asclepius had only some analogy with Aesculapius. Erudite Ovid, Octavian Augustus’ librarian, says that every living being has its origin in others. The only one to be born by reproducing itself is a bird that the Assyrians call phoenix. Rising from the ashes of its father… not of itself, but its father. As we are our father’s son, we are not our younger father. You belong to the same family, but we are different. And, like all children, we only have some similarity to our father. Plato said that the soul loves to establishe relationships between antithetical things, to compare the past and the present with the future.

Ultimately, a different phoenix is always born from its ashes, never the same phoenix that has died.

Eugène Canseliet, an essay on Nicolas Melchior of Hermanstadt on catholic celebrations.