Fire Alchemy

It is too easy to think that the alchemists meant specifically one or the other. In reality they often mix the ordinary fire, the principle of fire, the Athanor and the philosophical fire.

Alchemists took the symbol of fire to indicate something that moved in an uncontrolled and increasing way.

The ancient concept of “amplification” was represented by the ancients by the symbol of fire because like fire it expanded and grew uncontrolled and terrible despite its ineffability.

Greek mythology tells us about Hephaestus – a deity connected with the alchemical furnaces – whose main task is to bring the weak “fire” of Zeus to earth. Just as it was the task of Vesta/Hestia to bring the weak “fire” of Hera, Zeus’ sister/spouse, to earth.

I think it can certainly be said that the task of Alchemy is to amplify the weak fire until it becomes an earthly fire.

Because alchemists define the earth as the hearth/fireplace of the world.

In Construction…

For alchemists, it was not fire that was the origin of winds and vapors, but hearths/fireplaces.

In fact, the fire symbol stands for “bearer of information”.

Easy to understand in Alchemy: the alchemical “cooking” fire par excellence is Mercurius which reduces everything to mercurial fire. In theurgy, perhaps the end of all “information” is to become “information”.

In fact, the alchemical fire, as a spark, must be transported by a vehicle that alchemists describe as watery. To eventually form an “igneous vapor”.

That Hephaestus’ laboratory is in the depths of the sea is even easier to understand for an alchemist: Mercurial fire is water, par excellence (it is, in fact, called “our water“). In Theurgy, after all, fire is information introduced into movement.

In Water Alchemy, we have already mentioned the rites of eternity in the the fifth case of “fire, and water is enough for you”. In this scenario, we understand how the ritual of maintaining the fire in Vesta’s temple involved meeting with water. This annual extinguishing and relighting took place in the spring ceremony.

In ancient times it was a common belief that the only way to rekindle a weak fire was to put it out with water and relight it.

Yes, this ritual, which seems contradictory to us today, had to do with the amplification of the celestial fire that was too weak to reach the earth.

It could be the Mercurius of the stars fallen and trapped in some hidden place; it could be a form of heat, even volcanic; it could be a “sonic” origin; it could be a meeting between water and fire; it could be trapped cosmic particles; it could be an original oscillation; it could represent the wave-particle function of the photon. In short, we do not know what it could really be. The ancients called it fire to highlight its character of uncontrolled growth. See also Alchemy and Modern Physics Particles.

Neither the cooking fire nor the fire element is meant here. It is believed that the flames of the fire not only have a symbolic analogy with the “meandering” movement tendency of the Mercurius (but also of the Spiritus Mundi) but also a physical, laboratory value.

In short, without making too many revelations, the common fire was used as “bait” to attract the Spiritus Mundi nearby. Alchemists said that it could be collected in the form of a peculiar “dew”. See Solar Alchemy.

Of course, no. A complex process of lighting and extinguishing the fire was envisaged. In Alchemy, where there is fire, there is also water.

True. Eudemus of Rhodes, fr. 150: “Pherecydes of Syros says that time from its own seed produces fire… as well as and whiffle (air) and water. And from them, all the gods are born”.