Sun-Moon-Earth, from the Spark to the Body

Roughly, the sun provides a “spark”, which alchemists call soul or sulfur; the moon provides a so-called moist layer for this spark, which they call Mercurius. The earth, intuitively, is the place where what alchemists call the “celestial pair” gathers in an even more tangible form, that’s to say the body/salt.

From an alchemist’s perspective, the real comfort lies not so much in working with metals, but in relying on the mediation factor that so frightens philosophers of the duality of body and spirit. Ultimately, alchemical work is performed precisely on the medium between the two, which introduces the dynamic principle of change.

Not only, the medium in the sun-moon-earth triad introduces the dynamic principle of change, but, as said above, it is the only factor upon which the alchemist can reasonably operate.

We already mentioned, it is Mercurius, which not only represents the moon but, in many cases, is the astronomical moon itself.

In simple terms, the medium, or exchange factor, must have an average consistency between the spark and the body, therefore, it can only be what the Greeks called pneuma/ochema/ and theosophists portray as astral body. Alchemists know it as the fish’s bladder or alchemical light.

The alchemists’ Mercurius dissolves, therefore unites. It swells, therefore unites. I admit that the metaphor I will use below will be highly unpoetic, but the operation of the middle body is alchemically similar to a molecular glue. In fact, alchemists, who manage to be even more crude and realistic than chemists, call their Mercurius even “glue”.

An astral body has everything to do with glue, as it is analogous to a molecular glue mechanism of action. Furtherly, we can comparate the middle world/pneuma/Mercurius/Moon to a chain.

Absolutely, the Moon can be imagined as a “chain” that unites the Sun and the Earth. Or rather, more specifically, the Moon represents the point of contact between the solar ring and the Earth’s ring. Mercurius does the same.

Let’s let Iamblichus speak: the middle world of the moon is not a delimited field but a swarming and scaling of entities.

Let’s try to replace the word metal with person and repeat the concept above: so, a person’s destiny is reabsorbed into the great cycle of nature, participating in the transformation of matter, as an incessant process of exchange takes place between the sun, the moon, and the earth. What has changed?

You chose the right word: analogous. And this also applies to nature. Although it is difficult to understand how much this adjective also applies to nature, since the word nature is a very ambiguous concept philosophically. Now, as an alchemist, I’ll say something no philosopher likes: for an alchemist, the nature of things is reached at the completion of the eighth musical note in the Last Cooking. Is nature a response through sound, then? Musicologists say so. Nevertheless, I understand that even substituting the term “sound” for “wavelength” is too crude for a philosopher to accept.

The Moon’s role, in astronomy as in alchemy, is that of a reflector. Therefore, an eclipse would be an impediment of the role of reflector.

In the sixth canto of the Iliad, Virgil describes the moon occupying the central place in the triad. In the moon, the soul separates from the intellect, depriving itself of its individual imprint; and at the end of this slow secretion it remains as pure matter, available to assume a new form in an equally new body, when the spark of a new intellect falls from the sun.