Chaplet Perilous: Three Things
Men of the West, I bid thee, remember who thou art
I’m behind on my reading and writing, shocking I know. Deadlines man, I love deadlines. I love the sound they make when they go crack! Right over your head. Like being shot at and missed. Anyway, please enjoy this offering. Or not, as you like it.
I was once asked to give my thoughts on the three-fold, tripartite conception of reality. Of what relation there may be between matter, form, and spirit and salt, mercury, and sulphur. No seriously. This is a real thing that happened to me. Bro, trust me bro. Well I wrote this then and gave a little talk, and now I give it to you.
The First place to look for support in this tripartite model of reality is scripture. First Thessalonians, Chapter 5 for starters, verses 23 and 24:
23 And may the God of peace himself sanctify you in all things: that your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He is faithful who hath called you, who also will do it.
These two verses, seemingly two throwaway lines in the concluding final blessings of Saint Paul’s first Epistle letter to the Thessalonians actually form Saint Paul’s most complete philosophical description of anthropology — what man is and what parts is he constituted of. In other Epistles and writings, the language is more popular, exoteric shall we say. The Apostles usually speak of the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ man, the ‘body’ and the ‘spirit’. But here Saint Paul gives us a three fold breakdown of man: Spirit, and Soul, and Body.
Of particular interest here are the words Saint Paul uses. Spirit-Pneuma, Soul-Psyke, and Body-Soma. Let’s take these in reverse order, from most concrete and easily explained to the most subtle and difficult to pin down.
Body, Soma, Flesh, Matter. The things of science! the things you can see, touch, taste, smell, measure, count, quantify and dissect. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” I don’t think I need to belabour the point dear readers, you get the idea.
Soul, Psyke, Mind, Form. This is where we start to reach murky waters. For many of you dear Readers, have long held the Soul to be something it is not, I know I have. The soul is not a ‘ghost in a machine’ like the glowing blue wraith of a dead Jedi. You are not a soul in a body, let alone a mind trapped in a meat prison like the transhumans would have you believe. The Soul is Part of the Body, linked to it, the Soul is the Platonic Form of the Body, the Aristotelian Essence of the body. You are your body, and your mind is the subtle part thereof. Specifically the conscience human mind, the thing we experience as thought and the I, the thinker that experiences thinking, is the Rational Soul from whence come intellect, affection, and the will; as opposed to the unconscious irrational human mind, which is the Animal or Appetitive Soul, whence come the passionate urges that must be tamed and harnessed to live a virtuous life.
Finally then, we come to Spirit — Pneuma, Breath, Wind, Warmth, Vital Heat, Grace, Secret Fire etc. The highest, most subtle, hidden, mysterious part of man. The Principle of Life breathed into the nostrils of Adam, bringing dead clay to life. The same breath that moved upon the face of the waters. Breath of God, Ruach Elohim, Holy Spirit. Now do you understand what is meant by ‘let us make mankind in our image and likeness?’ It is by the spirit that we comprehend godly things, that our conscience guides us, that intuition warns us. And it is by the Spirit, if purified by divine grace and made Holy, that we are saved, that we are healed, that fallen human nature is made a member again of super-nature.
Just as man is a threefold hylomorphic unity of matter, form, and spirit, so to is the world of which man is a part. Which should hardly be a surprise at this point. It is true that the Western Hermetic Alchemists speak in terms of ‘Salt’, ‘Mercury’, and ‘Sulphur’ as prime material principles —the reagents — that give rise to the four cardinal elements.
And it should not surprise us that the Hermetic alchemists found a trinity of reagent substances for their experiments. Everywhere we look we see trinities.
The Atom: the atom consists of three parts, protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Matter: solid, liquid, and gas.
Space: length, width, and depth.
Time: past, present, and future.
Family: the family consists of a man, woman, and children.
The sun emits three types of rays alpha, beta, and gamma.These rays are classified as light, heat and actinic rays. The sun emits light rays that can be seen but not felt, heat rays which can be felt yet not seen and actinic rays which can not be seen or felt.
There are three basic elements in the soil which cause plants to grow; nitrogen, phosphorous and potash.
Colours: There are three primary colour pigments from which all other colours are derived, red, yellow and blue.
Blood: solids consist of three main cells, platelets, red cells and white cells.
Human capability is thought, word and deed.
And it is also true that many of these men gave allegorical explanations of the meaning of these symbols whereby these elements correspond to body, mind, and spirit.
The first mention of mercury and sulphur as base alchemical elements come from an Arab writer named Jabir, often Westernised to Geber, who wrote in the late 8th century. His works contains one of the earliest known versions of the sulphur-mercury theory of ‘metals’, to be understood as states of reality, which include actual materials.
His pairing of sulphur and mercury strongly corresponds to the male-female polarity already present in Western thought.
Sulphur is the active and male principle, possessing the ability to create change. It bears the qualities of hot and dry, the same as the element of fire; Sulphur’s colour is yellow/gold and therefore it is associated with the sun, as the male principle always is in traditional Western thought. With Fire and the Sun that shines, Maleness and Sulphur are also associated with the Sky that rains upon the Earth and fertilises her (stop snickering). And finally, Sulphur corresponds to the Mind that directs the body.
Mercury is the passive female principle. While sulphur causes change, it needs something to actually shape and change in order to accomplish anything. The relationship is also commonly compared to the planting of a seed: the plant springs from the seed, but only if there is earth to nourish it. The earth equates to the passive female principle. Mercury is also known as quicksilver because it is one of the very few metals to be liquid at room temperature. Thus, it can easily be shaped by outside forces. It is silver in colour, and silver is associated with woman and the moon, while gold is associated with the sun and man. Mercury possesses the qualities of cold and moist, the same qualities ascribed to the element of water. These traits are opposite those of sulphur. Finally, Mercury is associated with the Spirit. Why? Because another name of the Spirit is ‘Holy Wisdom’ and in Greek, the Holy wisdom is known as ‘Sophia’.
In alchemical illustrations, the red king and the white queen also sometimes represent sulphur and mercury.
Sulphur and mercury are described as originating from the same original substance; one might even be described as the opposite gender of the other — for example, sulphur can be seen as the male aspect of mercury, and vice-versa. What does that remind me of?
Salt then is the substance of physicality. Of the Body. It starts out as coarse and impure. Through alchemical processes, salt is broken down by dissolving; it's purified and eventually reformed into pure salt, the result of the interactions between mercury and sulphur.
Thus, the purpose of alchemy is to strip down the self to nothingness, leaving everything bare to be scrutinised. By gaining self-knowledge about one's nature and one's relation to God, the soul is reformed, the impurities expunged, and it is united into a pure and undivided thing.
And herein lies the danger dear readers, the prideful error of Pelagius that man can, through his self-will alone, achieve a glorified, grace-filled, sanctified state. That he does not sacraments. Does not need mediation. Does not need priests. Does not need confession, penance, and absolution. Does not need to eat the body and drink the blood of Our Lord that his life might live in them.
It must be remembered that Rosicrucianism comes directly out of a Hermetic Alchemy cross-pollinated with Kabbalah. And that from Rosicrucianism comes the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion that sundered Christendom apart into early modern states and paved the for the collective suicide of the Twentieth Century Abattoir.
But then if you’ve been reading along with the Esoteric Histories you know that.
🙏❤️🔥🙏 you are astonishing! This is really REALLY good.