Multiform and multi-names Eros with mortal Psyche. Together, they shape a new alchemical body, a nightly butterfly with strange and unexpected flight plans.
In Greek mythology, there is little agreement about Eros’s origin. Unknown in Homeric times, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, Eros is “the love which softens hearts”, the young God with the fructifying influence he is responsible for the formation of beings and things. It is he who “brings harmony to chaos”, and in so doing, permits life to develop. These terms are only symbolic. I do not want here to go into the highly complex and confusing analysis of the first philosophical principles, which Neo-Platonists and Orphics have extensively discussed. They deal with terms such as One, Archetype, Chaos, Egg, Ether, Phanes, Eros, and Love in a highly allegorical sense, but which cannot ultimately fail to result in something related to physics. We are now talking about minerals, and there is no guarantee of no connection.
Eros represents the force of attraction that causes beings to come together. In later periods, and this was the most widespread tradition, he was considered to be Aphrodite’s (or Venus’s) son. As to his father, the ancients hesitated between Ares, Hermes, and Zeus.
Very often, we hear of Love or “Amor” in Alchemy. Of course, nothing of anthropological value but laboratory concerns and something more. In Starkey’s “Pyrotechnie & Volatilization of Alkalis 2” we can find: “Alkalis and Essential Oils kiss each other by bonds of Love”, that’s to say the solution mixture comes to a cream consistency. For a seventeenth-century chemist, this was the evidence of an intimate and never-back union. But we are obliged to take for granted that alchemical Love or Eros, like quite every symbol and allegory, stands for at least three different concepts, this being our nasty rule of three. Eros and Psyche allegory is not an exception. And the alchemical body, too, cannot be an exception. If we have at least three Eros or “ force of attraction which causes beings to come together” and at least three Psyche or Soul or determined Seed or fixed or Sun or Man or Redness or Sulfur, we can apply the same rule to our alchemical body. In fact, how many alchemical bodies are allowed in Alchemy? The chemical mentioned above, love example, is just the first step of a more and more ethereal stair.
Let’s check Mythology: “Psyche (in Greek, the word means “soul”) was a princess of such remarkable beauty that Aphrodite/Venus herself was jealous of her. So she asked her son Eros to punish this audacious mortal. Shortly afterward, an oracle commanded Psyche’s father, under threat of terrifying calamities, to conduct his daughter to the summit of a mountain where she would become the marrying prey of a monster. But suddenly, she felt gently lifted in the arms of Zephyrus, who carried her to a magnificent palace. When night fell, Psyche, a mysterious being, joined her in the darkness, explaining that he was the husband for whom she was destined. She could not see his features, but his voice was soft and his conversation full of tenderness. Before the return of dawn, the strange visitor disappeared, first making Psyche swear never to attempt to see his face.
Despite the oddness of the adventure, Psyche has not discontented with her new life; in the palace, nothing she could desire was lacking except the constant presence of her delightful husband, who only came to visit her during the dark hours of the night. Her happiness could have continued in this way had not her sisters sown the seeds of suspicion in her heart. “If your husband,” they said, “is afraid to let you see his face, it is because he must be a monster.” One night Psyche, despite her promise, lighted a lamp and held it above the mysterious face. Instead of a fearful monster, she beheld the most charming person in the world, Eros himself. He awakened at once, reproached Psyche for her lack of faith, and immediately vanished.
The palace disappeared at the same time. Psyche considered suicide and threw herself into a nearby river, but the waters bore her gently to the opposite bank. From then on, she was pursued by Aphrodite’s anger and submitted to a series of terrible ordeals. She succeeded, however, in overcoming them one by one, thanks to mysterious assistance. She even had to descend into the underworld. Finally, touched by the repentance of his unhappy spouse, whom he had never ceased to love and protect, Eros went to Zeus and implored permission for Psyche to rejoin him. Zeus consented and conferred immortality on Psyche, and Aphrodite/Venus forgot her rancor. ” (1) More or less, this is what mythology provides.
We have been taught that every raw matter body or Materia Tertia is composed of a corpse, a Secret Fire/Spirit of Life/Mercurius/Eros/Moon to give life to the corpse, and a Secret Fire/Soul/Sulphur/Psyche being the glue fastening a material corpse to life. Masonic hermeticism ties Eros and Psyche’s concepts to the struggling body and mind dichotomy. Nevertheless, freemasons further admit that Souls must have learned to wound around their immortal principle since they have been inside a body. Giving a divine verisimilitude to the immortal principle. Nothing is easier for a Christian to identify this principle with God. But we alchemists, and would be, are a bit sophisticated and find this statement lacking science. So I would ask: “any Soul wounding around the same God or independent pieces of God”? Since Christianity cannot allow multiple pieces of God, church fathers allow for a unique piece towards it all Souls should direct. In comparison, Alchemy is about Souls keeping their individuality. A Soul, by definition, cannot but be individual.
But where can Psyche possibly draw life and substantiality? Apparently, from the same couple as Eros. And we should intend our alchemical body to be formed by these two. But let’s proceed with systematic order. Or at least, I’m trying since nothing is more refractory to order than symbolism. First, why do we have a male actor applying for a female role? In poor words, why Eros/Mercurius is usurping a role traditionally entrusted to females? No usurpation at all. We can notice that in Renaissance Hypnerotomachia, the Poliphili characters’ sex is inverted: Polia girl is acting as Eros and Poliphilo boy as Psyche (2). Secret Fire has no sex, indeed. But reproductive capacities.
Or the power to awaken another sleeping Secret Fire. Romans called it “De Potentia ad Acto” or from potential to act. Is Eros awakening Psyche in the same way Polia is awakening Poliphilo? The answer cannot be affirmative.
Psyche is our definite Soul/Sulphur, while Eros is indefinite Mercurius/Spirit of life. That’s why Eros prohibits Psyche from looking at his face: he doesn’t have an individual face.