The stars and the sun may not act in unison, but in competition with each other.

It’s strange for us today to know that, at certain times of the year and day, the alchemists’ stellar ocean could actually circumvent the sun’s influence on Earth. Were it not for ancient knowledge, it would have been easy to imagine day and night as two separate realms: during the day, the blinding sun ruled, while at night, a blanket of stars completed the earth. This is the first alchemical axiom, the basis and foundation of all operations.

The second axiom is based on the moon’s inclusion in this competition: during the day, the sun prevents the stellar Spiritus Mundi from approaching the Earth and leaves it hovering in the upper atmosphere. At night, thanks to the moon, stellar influences can descend to penetrate the most inaccessible recesses of the Earth’s crust. It is well known that ancient agricultural calendars indicated stellar cycles rather than the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

The third alchemical axiom concerns the non-division of heaven and earth, in fact the alchemists grouped all the movements of the cosmos and the earth’s core in a “philosophical sea”. From this concept comes the definition of “alchemical machine or world machine” which appears so scandalous and inappropriate to spiritualists.

Take Care, Alchemist, not to cut the ties.

For alchemists there were no clear boundaries between objects, but a continuum so dense that it could be cut with a knife, although invisible, ethereal and formless. The main concept is that the life principle or soul is itself windy or is carried by the wind. The languages we speak are ultimately languages of the air. Ultimately, air is moved by that which has the property of moving. Dust, nourishment of life, primary matter and bridge between different densities. For the ancients,  the peculiar airborne alchemical “humidity” was not caused by terrestrial waters but by the proximity of the moon. In fact, the “space” between the moon and the earth was called “air“. While the upper part was called the aether. The latter has very little to do with the modern conception: in fact, it is closer to fire than to a void.

Water, in all its forms, is originally shaken. And this causes its perpetuity.

It cannot be interrupted, nor can it originate in the middle. If this happened, no one could call it water any longer. From the fast roar of waves, to the slow and imperceptible rustle of a puddle, it was shaken at the origin. And the shaking continues in its midst. From here, the ancient ritual of libations. The role of water in Alchemy is to return the spirit to its earth. Once contaminated by water, earth acquires the property of “flowing”, and, consequently, it takes on the solvent function of water. The whole operation is called “returning the spirits to the earth”.

Yet, Earth is the secret refuge and the “storehouse” of the stars.

Alchemists knew very well that the earth was not the center of the cosmos. But they also believed that the center of the earth was the
receptacle of stellar influences. This made the earth their alchemical “stove”, their athanor, the place where the sidereal Spiritus Mundi was embodied, the place where everything met. Ultimately, the place where everything became “terrestrially adapted”. Alchemical earth is supreme, not because it is made of earth or stone, but because it “repeats” the universe. The alchemist’s quintessential earth is Mercurius, which can emerge from many alchemical paths. It is said that stellar influences are stored there.

Ultimately, only the Earth, or what exists in the world of living things, can unite heaven, sky, and earth, since the earth contains the sky. In fact, for alchemists, it is from matter that we manage to “grasp” the spirit. However, with the strange circumstance that only the sky can continually generate the Earth.

The alchemist’s task is to amplify the weak cosmic fire from heavens, to skies, and to earth.

Greek mythology charges Hephaestus with the task of increasing the intensity of Zeus’s feeble cosmic fire. Are we talking about fire as a principle or ordinary fire, the kind that burns, so to speak? If alchemical works are accomplished through burning fire, it is because we need to generate changes in the state of matter, thus bringing to the surface the spirit of the world, the Spiritus Mundi. As for the other fire, that produced by the “seed” of time, we only know that it is the “carrier” of information, uncontrollable and growing, symbolically represented by ordinary fire. Although it is called a “spark”, it needs to be “swollen” by the moon and amplified on earth.