Night, Daughter of Ocean

Yes, but above her it was Night, the true mother of the gods. But, you are right, dawn is the moment when the stars reign supreme. And, often, this is through the moon.

The Spiritus Mundi is extremely active at night. We’ve already said that during the day, the Spiritus, stirred by the sun, tends to hover in the upper atmosphere. Only at night, with the help of the moon, will it descend toward the Earth’s crust and into the deepest recesses.

Alchemical works are mostly performed at night, apart from some purely chemical refinement work. To get an idea of the best times, we can follow the progress of the fire. Those fortunate enough to have a fireplace or a wood-burning stove know that the fire tends to spontaneously die down around nine/ten o’clock in the evening. If left to themselves, the embers, which appear to be extinguished, will surprisingly resume activity a little before midnight. This is the same time that those who have ghosts in their homes begin to notice activity and noise. Thus, the Spiritus Mundi tends to be most accessible to the alchemist around midnight. Its peak, however, will be an hour before dawn, obviously with the right moon (which is usually a very dark moon).

Precisely the distance of the earth from sunlight. The sun, as we’ll see later, has many advantages for life on Earth but just as many disadvantages if you want to practice Alchemy. We’ll talk about the sun later, but for now it’s enough for you to know that the sun’s distance doesn’t mean there’s a lack of cosmic emissions, but the opposite: at night, stellar emissions reach Earth more easily.

Not exactly, it is the Mercurius made by alchemists that is the true child of the stars.

Grandfather Spiritus Mundi, grandson Mercurius. But, to be truly precise, it would be more indicative to say grandmother Spiritus Mundi and granddaughter Mercurius.

The mother of Mercurius is the black putrescence of raw matter, the Nigredo/black phase, which could not exist if the Spiritus Mundi had not “given birth” to it from the night. But we’ll talk about it when the time is right, now it’s night’s turn. Then, there is the case of the divine night huntresses. In alchemy, a huntress is a symbol of dissolution. Are you familiar with the Universal Solvent? Well, it’s a synonym of Mercurius.

No, alchemists reason on the alternation of hot/cold and sunlight/stellar emissions plus lunar humidity.

Not only are the days of the solar year not all the same, but each day has its own peculiarities. For alchemists, every day is different. And every night too, of course.

You reason with the solar calendar in mind; the alchemist calculates with the ancient stellar calendar. Consequently, the “alchemical day” is the interval between two nights.

Between two start times of work, therefore between two midnights.

Alchemists don’t have a separate calendar; they have our ordinary calendar, and they then love to operate in secrecy. So I strongly doubt that alchemy determined the customs of calculating time. As we’ll see later, the whole thing about new solar cyclic calculation meant abandoning the old agricultural stellar-lunar calendar. This occurred because of the greater accuracy of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. The consequences were devastating, however.

For whom, rather. The ban on the stellar/lunar calendar was equivalent to the ban on all wisdom based on the governance of the stars. From then on, the fear of the night and its population of “demons” began.

Inevitably. But above all we are talking about human proximity to an ultra-lunar world.

The moon is an astronomical object, we can also define it as a quasi-musical instrument. Actually, whoever rules the moon, rules the earth.

It seems obvious to me that the moon and the sun are an indispensable pair. They are not simply for life, but for the transmission of essential elements. The amazing thing is that the real sun-moon couple is a nocturnal, cold and dark couple. In short, it’s not the daytime couple we like to imagine.

At night you can also find water in the desert, if that matters.

An ancient saying holds that the prospector at night is traversed by stars searching for water for him/her deep within the earth.

For the ancients, the cause of the momentary end of the night was not the sun, but the earth. And this is also obvious to modern astronomers: it is the earth that revolves around the sun.

Explain this aspect better.

Well… I can’t find any equivalent in alchemical physics. However, for alchemists there is a night produced by the Earth and a cosmic night, which extends beyond Saturn. And which returns to visit the earth once a year, at the time of the winter solstice. But in alchemy, this period of cosmic night in which the sun momentarily and cyclically re-enters the all-encompassing Ocean, father of Nix/Night, is not a moment of breaking chains… quite the opposite. But I believe I cannot go beyond this. Be careful, theurge, of laying your hand on indefinable chains. For us alchemists, these doors are closed. Luckily. Anyway, There is also something else that alchemists define as “Ocean”, and this is light.

We alchemists have the concept of “black light”, and unpretentiously handle with Hecate as a “binder” between opposites.