Take the body from that which has a body and give a body to that which has no body
Turba philosophorum
If you tell me that we don’t aim so high, I will tell you that… perhaps our humility as ancient iatrochemists puts us on the safe side, beyond the dangerous river of theurgy. Nevertheless, we cannot fail to aspire to know where sacred art could go.
The much-reviled Jollivet-Castellot told us about the Mercurius Philosophorum: “C’est la force vibratoire, universelle, le fluide sonique”, it is the vibratory, universal force, the sonic fluid. But Castellot was the one who said things to our face and we didn’t believe him: because “He didn’t get his hands dirty with dust!”.
However, the most imaginative of us suddenly remembered that Kunrath used the symbolism of obelisks erected on ground and sea to explain the interaction of Macrocosm and Microcosm; Sonne von Osten stated that alchemical matter was born like thunder and left similar seeds behind; Daniel Cramer created complicated contraptions made of obelisks, dolphins, turtles, and dodecahedrons; Michael Maier organized a complex system of baroque musical fugues.
Until Canseliet dared to show us his diary of the last cooking in the week of weeks, and his pupil Atoréne certified that it was not a joke.
In his chapter on great cooking, the great French alchemist expresses his thoughts on the vibrational character of the Spiritus Mundi and how it retains the noises of the earth: “The strong force of every force” that Hermes indicated in his Tablet, collects and holds the movements and noises of the earth, the gestures, and voices of all beings of Nature; it is the same which endowed the priestly Egypt of the Pharaohs with considerable and ordinarily unexplained means of action. Here the scholar must remember the observation that Fulcanelli made regarding the whiskers of the small domestic feline, usually so calumniated... the Spiritus Mundi, the cosmos spirit, which takes charge of the total conservation of everyone’s thoughts and deeds on earth.“
After so many years, we can’t help but conclude that this aspect of Mercurius, this flowing force, which takes on a wheel of colors in the humid path, or whistles, hisses, cracks, and snaps in the dry one, is what the ancient alchemists generically defined with the name “nature”. And those of the Baroque age called it “Ars Musicae”, the art of music. Not only it concerns everything that happened in the last cooking, but very likely represents the very sacred art machine. To such an extent, what is defined as “Windrose or Compass” often hides this aspect of Alchemy.
That dangerous – for many, only poetic – sentence from the Turba Philosophorum leads us directly to the law of the world, a real sacrifice and it is mutual. The interpenetration between heaven and earth is obtained if something is made into a resonator. Just what becomes the philosophical egg at the end of the last cooking, turning into the resonator par excellence.
But I can’t help but wonder one thing: the Celtic Druids laughed when Iulius Caesar tried to take away their theurgic power by razing the sacred groves. It is no longer a secret that the trees of definite forests resound on specific nights of the year. So, are the forest or the sound more indispensable? What does the alchemical miracle of the Last Cooking produce? And, above all, what remains of the alchemist’s supreme work then?
To reduce to the very core: is the Philosophers’ Stone for once, or is it forever?
The musical whistles emitted by the egg: Canseliet, the Art of Music & Weight
The apprentice explains the master’s work: Atorène: Fire and Weights in Canseliet’s Last Cooking.
Everyone knew it. Despite the wait, the egg always went broke: Hieronymus Bosch and the Concert in the Egg
The Egg construction and comparison with Flamel’s: Canseliet & the Details of the Last Cooking
Myths and legends about egg suspension: Piero della Francesca and the Philosophical Pendent Egg.
The apprentice provides a course to understand Zarlino’s musical scale: Atorène, Music Theory Course for Alchemists. Part 1, Atorène, Music Theory Course for Alchemists. Part 2
The geometry of Pythagorean music according to a hermetic mathematician: The Pythagorean Acoustic: Geometry & Music of Sirens
Prime numbers and the law of Tetraktys, always for the same mathematician: The Pythagorean Acoustics Based on Tetraktys
The astronomical alignment on May 21first: The Secret Night Chant of a Stradivarius Tree