Light Broken Trough the Prism of Life:

Ren Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt

Aaron Cheak

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at

Te University of Queensland in December
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
Declaration by author

Tis thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously

published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in
the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that
I have included in my thesis.
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statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, signifcant technical procedures,
professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in
my thesis. Te content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the
commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a
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Acknowledgements

Research for this thesis was undertaken with the invaluable assistance of the
Bibliotheque Nationale Strasbourg, the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica
(Amsterdam), the Basel Universittsbibliothek, the Mnchen Universittsbibliothek,
the Saint Moritz Dokumentationsbibliothek, and the Australian Postgraduate Award
Scholarship.

Tanks are due frst and foremost to my immediate family for their undying support:
My parents, Bob and Lyn Cheak; Natalie Rivire, Morgana Rivire-Cheak and Anna-
Marie Cheak.

Secondly, a very special thanks must be given to the friends, mentors, co-conspirators
and kindred spirits whose genuine interest in and support for my work played a crucial
role: Conan Fitzpatrick, Alison Grenfell, Raenold Parkin, Timothy Johannesson, Rod
Blackhirst, John Dotson, Robert Lawlor, Mick Neal, Leon D. Wild, Nikolas and
Zeena Schreck, Michael and Kate Lujan, Sabrina Dalla Valle, Caroline Hme, Leon
Marvell, Andrea Gallant, David Zuckerman, Zenobia Frost, Anya Smirnova, Jade
Gillam, Trey Spruance, Kris Hendrickson-Testanier, Buster Virata, William Kiesel,
Gwendolyn Toynton, Michael A. Putman, Mirco Mannucci, Dan Mellamphy, Kim
Lai, Darren Anthony Win, Andrea Chaos, Paul Scarpari, Rik Danenberg, Jeannie
Radclife, Ischel Bianco and anyone Ive forgotten.

Finally, for a variety of diferent reasons, thanks are also due to: Richard Hutch,
Hereward Tilton, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter Hanegraaf, Melanie hlenbach,
Michaela Boenke, Daniel Burnham, Denis Crozet, Tom Cheetham, Merril J.
Fernando, Sonny Crockett, Martin Crotty, Rick Strelan, Jodie Caruana, Serena Bagley,
Sara Nedderman, Janine Rivire, Dorothy Rivire, Serge Rivire, G. Huber, and
Paulette from the Eze-sur-mer Post Ofce.

Keywords
ren schwaller de lubicz, alchemy, nondualism, salt, colour theory, ontological
mutation.

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifcations (ANZSRC)

Religion and Religious Studies not elsewhere classifed %
History and Philosophy of Specifc Fields not elsewhere classifed %
Abstract

Te life and work of the Alsatian hermeticist and Egyptosophist, Ren-Adolphe

Schwaller de Lubicz () attests to the continued presence of a distinctly
nondual current of alchemical precept and practice in which material transmutation
and spiritual transmutation are not separate nor merely coincidental endeavours but
two indispensably linked sides of the same coin. Te link, for Schwaller, was perceived
as a juncture of meta-physical and proto-physical forces, a process conceived in terms
of an alchemical salt (a neutralisation reaction between an acid and a base). Tis
thesis demonstrates that Lubiczian alchemy, by centring on the esoteric formation of
all bodies, to include the hidden nucleus of continuity between metallurgical,
biological and spiritual corporeality, speaks directly to the perception of alchemy as a
nondual, operative-spiritual process.
Before examining Schwallers work proper, part one of this thesis deals with
methodological and historiographical considerations at some length. I begin by
detailing the hermetic problem of salt through cultural-historical, mythographical,
chemical and alchemical lenses in order to introduce the phenomenon of salt as an
abstract concretion resulting from polarised opposites (acid and base, fre and water,
sun and sea, sulphur and mercury, etc.) Te juncture of opposing principles perceived
in the hermetic problem of salt anticipates the methodological discussion, which
examines the dichotomy between history and phenomenology, along with the
materialist and metaphysical sympathies of these methodologies. Form mirroring
content, the method employed in this thesis seeks to establish a neutralisation
reaction between such extremes, encompassing both empirical-historical and eidetic-
phenomenological approaches. Te guiding model for this synthesis is the Heraclitean
palintonos harmoni (counter-stretched harmony), in which inherently opposed
tensions are viewed as integral rather than antithetical to the deeper vitality of the
whole. Following from this, the broader argument of this thesis is based upon the
perception that the modern academic caricature of alchemy as either operative
(reducible to chemical explanations) or spiritual (reducible to psychological
explanations) is in many respects a false dichotomy. In support of a more integrative
premise, detailed examples are adduced from both eastern and western branches of
alchemy (i) to argue for the revision of rigidly dualistic biases within the
historiography of alchemy and (ii) to lend support to the adoption of a more nuanced
critical apparatus that is able to come to terms with nondualistic currents within the
plurality of alchemies. Upon these premises, the life and work of Schwaller de Lubicz
is turned to as a modern exemplar of this nondual current in alchemy.
Part two of this thesis focuses on Schwaller de Lubiczs life and work, his colour
theory, and his alchemy. Trough a detailed bio-bibliographical survey, the keys to
Schwallers intellectual development are presented and situated within their relevant
contexts. I examine his artistic, Teosophical, socio-political, initiatic, alchemical and
Egyptological milieus. As a student of Matisse, Schwaller had a life-long interest in
colour and light. For this reason, the colour phenomenon is presented as a guiding
thread for the dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy in general and the manipulation of
salt in particular. Te colour theory is examined with reference to Newtons Opticks,
Goethes Farbenlehre and ultimately to the operative work on stained glass that
Schwaller undertook with Jean-Julien Champagne (alias Fulcanelli).
Te work on colour, metals and stained glass is for Schwaller a propadeutic for
understanding the process by which spirit (light, colour) transforms the bodies in
which it is incarnated (matter, substance). Ultimately, the hermetic problem of salt is
seen to centre directly upon the mineral register of an entitys consciousness
(palingenetic memory); because this imperishable register of consciousness is also the
determiner of an entitys form, salt is consequently regarded as the mechanism of
evolution, resurrection and palingenesis. Te deeper dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy
thus concerns the role of this fxed nucleus in the formation of bodies, from mineral
to human. In particular, I examine the principles of Schwallers metallurgical alchemy
in order to understand how the spirit of metals acts as a fery metallic seed (sulphur)
that coagulates a nutritive substance (mercury) into a bodily form (salt). Tis
understanding is applied to the stained-glass work. I then look at his meta-biological
alchemy, in which it is not the genetic seed but the palingenetic mineral salt that forms
the determining principle in the biological entitys evolution. In essence, Schwallers
hermetic problem of salt is understood as the fulcrum not only of individual
immortality, but also of the qualitative mutations (leaps) between kingdoms and
species. More specifcally, the kingdoms of nature are seen to emerge alchemically
through qualitative exaltations induced by the divine seed-ferment (sulphur) upon
the primordial materia (mercury) giving rise to a neutral centre of gravity: the saline
magnetic nucleus or styptic coagulating force, the spiritual locus of physical form.
In the fnal analysis, Schwallers alchemy is quintessentially nondual in the sense
that it encompasses both operative and spiritual processes. Tese are not separate but
deeply interrelated realities. Trough the idea of salt, Schwaller ofers a holarchical
explanation for the continuities between mineralogical, biological and spiritual bodies,
and thus a theory for the material mechanism by which consciousness transforms
phenomenal form. To approach this kind of alchemy as exclusively chemical or
psychological is thus completely inadequate and reinforces the necessity for a nondual
critical apparatus.
 Table of Contents

THE HERMETIC PROBLEM OF SALT................................................................................ 15

1. Introduction.......................................................................................................16
Thesis Statement.....................................................................................................22
Contribution and Significance.............................................................................. 22
Sources for the Study of de Lubicz.....................................................................24
Salt: Linguistic, Mythographic and Chemical Perspectives.............................. 26
Leap, Salve, Balsam................................................................................................ 26
Brine-Born Aphrodite........................................................................................... 31
Typhons Spume......................................................................................................32
Between Acid and Alkali....................................................................................... 35
Alchemical Salt.............................................................................................. 36
Salt in Alchemy before Paracelsus....................................................................... 36
Paracelsus Balsam and the Tria Prima................................................................40
Sal Philosophorum................................................................................................. 42
Salt in Schwallers Alchemy............................................................................ 45
Sulphur, Mercury and Salt..................................................................................... 45
Salt and the Fire of the Earth.............................................................................. 49
A Nondual Spiritual Alchemy...............................................................................51
Spiritual Corporifcation................................................................................52
Alchemy and the Resurrection Body...................................................................53
2. Methodology...................................................................................................... 56
Prelude.......................................................................................................... 57
Philosophy and Phenomenology ................................................................... 59
Emmanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel....................................59
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger............................................................ 63
The Phenomenology of Religion........................................................................ 67
Phenomenology versus History........................................................................... 69
The Phenomenology of Henry Corbin.............................................................. 71
Knowledge by Presence........................................................................................ 74
Corbins Philosophy of History........................................................................... 77
Corbins Concept of Esotericism........................................................................ 78
Academic Approaches to Western Esotericism................................................ 83
Antoine Faivre: Esotericism as a forme de pense ....................................84
Wouter Hanegraaff: The Empirical Method...................................................... 88
Esotericism as a Polemical Category................................................................... 92
Against Heresies..................................................................................................... 94
Esotericism as a Diskursfeld.................................................................................99
Te Approach Taken in this Tesis............................................................... 102
Modes of Access to Schwaller de Lubicz.........................................................103
Premises for a Nondual Alchemy...................................................................... 104
Nondualistic Conceptual Apparatus................................................................. 105
3. Historiographical Considerations: Nondual Currents in Eastern and Western
Alchemies......................................................................................................... 107
 Issues in the Study and Interpretation of Alchemy........................................108
Alchemy: Issues of Teory and Defnition.................................................... 112
Al-Kmiy.............................................................................................................. 112
Etymologies...........................................................................................................113
The Inner and Outer Elixirs (Nei Tan, Wei Tan)............................................ 115
Rasayana.................................................................................................................119
Black Earth................................................................................................. 122
The Pupil of the Eye........................................................................................... 124
The Perfect Black................................................................................................. 127
Melansis............................................................................................................... 128
Alchemy as Teurgy, Alchemy as Tantra....................................................... 131
Penetration, Baptism, Redemption....................................................................132
Apotheosis and Demiurgy.................................................................................. 135
Poison and Penetration........................................................................................137
Divine Animation of Matter........................................................................ 139
The House of Gold and the Unity of Hieratic and Artisanal Techn........139
The Opening of the Mouth................................................................................142
The Thigh and Palingenesis................................................................................143
Resonances of Telestic Art................................................................................. 151
Corbin on Jaldak................................................................................................ 156
Te Origins and Nature of European Alchemy.............................................159
Rehabilitating the Book of Nature (Alchemy as Naturphilosophie)...........165

LIGHT BROKEN THROUGH THE PRISM OF LIFE............................................................... 169

4. Schwaller de Lubicz: Life and Work.................................................................. 170

Seven Year Cycles................................................................................................. 171
Ren Aor Schwaller de Lubicz......................................................................173
Early Years in Paris: ..................................................................... 176
Matisse....................................................................................................................177
The Parisian Alchemical Revival and Fulcanelli.............................................. 180
Theosophy, Arithmosophy, Spagyrics............................................................... 183
The Veilleurs......................................................................................................... 188
The Name de Lubicz ......................................................................................204
Suhalia and the Call of Fire: ........................................................ 209
The Name Aor ............................................................................................... 210
La Doctrine........................................................................................................... 212
LHomme Rouge and the Metaphysics of Eros..............................................214
Alchemical References in Adam LHomme Rouge........................................216
Plan-de-Grasse and Palma de Majorca: ........................................226
Pharaonic Symbolique at Luxor: .................................................. 230
Temple as Anthropocosmos...............................................................................231
The Milieu at Luxor............................................................................................. 234
The War between Egyptologists and Symbolists............................................ 235
La Symbolique and lIntelligence du Coeur..................................................... 240
Amenemopet at Luxor........................................................................................ 243
Number and Neter...................................................................................... 244
Nothing Marks the Spirit more than Numbers............................................. 248
 Return to France: ........................................................................ 250
The Temple of Man.............................................................................................252
Final Years: .................................................................................. 254
Left and Right....................................................................................................... 257
Final Words........................................................................................................... 260
5. Alchemical Farbenlehre: Schwallers Esoteric Colour Teory..............................263
Fulcanellis Colour Manuscript...........................................................................264
Precedents for Interpretation............................................................................. 266
Teoretical Background to Schwallers Farbenlehre....................................... 268
Newtons Colour Theory.................................................................................... 270
Newtons Alchemy............................................................................................... 272
Goethes Farbenlehre........................................................................................... 274
Yellow and Blue as Urphnomene.....................................................................277
A Note on Goethes Colour Terminology....................................................... 282
Colour as the Body of Light.............................................................................. 285
Cylianis Herms Dvoil.................................................................................... 287
Cosmological, Soteriological and Metallurgical Alchemy in Cyliani.............289
Te Evolution of Schwallers Farbenlehre..................................................... 292
Colour Theory in La Doctrine........................................................................... 293
The Philosophy of the Third......................................................................... 302
Colour Theory in Harmonie, Analogies, Fonctions et Facteurs ..............305
Colour Theory in Le Temple de lHomme...................................................... 314
Colour Theory in Al-Kemi................................................................................. 318
Summary................................................................................................................ 320
6. Ontological Mutation....................................................................................... 327
Te Two Ways............................................................................................. 328
Prcis of the Process: Metallic Evolution........................................................ 329
Prcis of the Process: Biological Evolution.....................................................330
Metallurgical Evolution: Seed and Matrix of the Seven Metals......................331
Revivification of the Metal................................................................................. 332
Separation of the Fixed from the Volatile........................................................338
Cleansing the Body...............................................................................................343
Rejoining the Fixed to the Volatile.................................................................... 344
Glass Stained in the Mass with the Volatile Spirit of Metals......................347
Biological Evolution: Te Fixed Salt in the Femur........................................ 355
Qualitative Exaltation.......................................................................................... 356
Teratological Proliferation...................................................................................360
The Thigh and Palingenesis................................................................................363
Marrow, Semen, Fluid..........................................................................................368
Femur as Generative Power................................................................................ 370
Bones, Water, Salt................................................................................................. 372
Spiritual Concretion.................................................................................... 376
Styptic Coagulating Force................................................................................... 376
Electromagnetism and the Spherical Spiral......................................................381
Meditations on the Inconceivable......................................................................384
Leaps and Concretions of the Spirit................................................................. 387
7. Conclusion....................................................................................................... 390
Solving the Hermetic Problem of Salt......................................................... 390
 Alchemy as Nondual Process............................................................................. 391
Schwaller de Lubicz: Leben and Sophos.......................................................... 392
Ontological Mutation...........................................................................................396
The Dissolution and Union of Seed and Fruit............................................... 397
8. Bibliography.....................................................................................................399

APPENDICES............................................................................................................. 422

Appendix : Translations............................................................................. 423

Notes on Hermeticism........................................................................................ 423
Elements of the Cornerstone that was Lacking at Babel..............................445
The Purpose of Life and the Problem of Knowledge..................................450
The Philosophy of the Third............................................................................. 457
Harmony, Analogies, Functions and Factors................................................... 460
Notes on Atomism...............................................................................................463
At Luxor, the Cold War is Declared between Symbolists and Historians...466
Appendix : Violet and Gold....................................................................... 472
Appendix : Luxor TempleOpet of the South........................................... 474
The Opet Festival................................................................................................. 474
The Goddess Opet...............................................................................................478
The Royal Ka........................................................................................................ 479
The Path Up and the Path Down...................................................................... 481
 Illustration Index
Ouroboros, Paris MS. fol. .......................................................................... 37
Signs for Salt, Column Two, Lines -.................................................................. 38
Relationship between Tria Prima and Tetrastoicheia .................................................50
Epistemological Orientations to Religion................................................................. 95
Mouth-Opening Ritual, Scenes , and .......................................................144
Ursur Major as (i) Adze and (ii) Foreleg of a Bull....................................................144
Te Khepesh Scimitar............................................................................................ 144
Dionysus Born from the Tigh of Zeus.................................................................. 150
Letter, Milosz to Schwaller, January ............................................................ 206
Te young Schwaller, shortly after receiving the title de Lubicz ()................208
Revel, Champagne, Allainguillaume, Milosz...........................................................209
Ren Aor Schwaller de Lubicz Suhalia, c. ...................................................223
Haus Suhalia, St. Moritz, Switzerland.................................................................... 224
Sunset at St. Moritz: View from Suhalia................................................................. 224
Aor et Isha............................................................................................................. 225
Isha et Aor............................................................................................................. 226
Aor et Isha, ............................................................................................ 230
Ka-Mut-Tef, Tomb of Ramses IX........................................................................... 232
Harmonic Decompositon of Royal and Human Biometrics....................................234
Alexandre Varille................................................................................................... 240
Neter Hieroglyph. Cubit Hieroglyph.................................................................. 247
Ren Schwaller de Lubicz and Andr VandenBroeck..............................................259
Newtons Colour-Mixing Wheel, Modelled After Descartes.................................... 273
Goethes Farbenkreis (Colour Wheel) Showing Complementary Colours................277
Louis Bertrand Castels diagram..................................................................... 279
Te Phenomenon of Chromatic Aberration:.......................................................... 285
Light and Dark Spectra, from Goethes Farbenlehre................................................285
Cause, Resistance, Vibration.................................................................................. 298
Elements as Triangles............................................................................................. 306
Double Natures of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt........................................................ 308
Principial and Elemental Colour Correspondences Placed around a Triangle...........309
Traditional Paradigm of Qualities and Elements..................................................... 312
Principles, Qualities, Elements............................................................................... 313
Polarities of the Light and Dark Spectra................................................................. 318
Relationship between Principles and elements as Tetractys, (Showing Derivation of
Tria Prima from Polarised Unity)........................................................................... 322
Colour triads: Sulphur, Mercury and Salt............................................................... 324
Colour Triad: Stone............................................................................................... 325
Te Wet and Dry Ways.......................................................................................... 326
Stone as Pentad..................................................................................................... 326
Te Old, Dry Tree................................................................................................. 338
Flame, Skeleton, Tree............................................................................................. 338
Hieroglyphs for (i) skht and (ii) akht......................................................................343
Basil Valentine, Clef I............................................................................................ 343
Bas Reliefs from the Botanical Garden of Tutmose III.......................................363
Instances of Teratological Proliferation................................................................... 363
Arms of Isia (Eze-sur-mer, Cte dAzure, France)................................................... 368
Paralleliped Contracted into Octahedron; Cylinder into Sphere..............................377
Convergence-Divergence Confguration.................................................................384
Loxodrome............................................................................................................ 386
Parker Spiral.......................................................................................................... 386
Procession Routes of the Opet festival: Karnak and Luxor (After Bell) ...................475
Views of Luxor Temple.......................................................................................... 476
 Abbreviations

Al-Kemi VANDENBROECK, ANDR. Al-Kemi : Hermetic, Occult, Political, and

Private Aspects of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Inner
Traditions/Lindisfarne Press Uroboros Series v. . Rochester,
Vt.: Lindisfarne Press, 8.
Aor SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ, ISHA. Aor: Sa vieson oeuvre. Paris: La
Colombe, .
CAAG BERTHELOT, MARCELLIN and C. E. RUELLE. Collection des anciens
alchimistes grecs. vols. Paris: Georges Steinheil, 888-88.
DGWE HANEGRAAFF, WOUTER J. ed. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western
Esotericism, Leiden: Brill, .
DK DIELS, HERMANNand WALTHER KRANZ, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker:
Griechisch und deutsch, . verb. Auf. Berlin: Weidmannsche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, .
JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
KGA NIETZSCHE, F. W. Werke : Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Colli and
Montinari. Berlin: De Gruyter, .
L HELCK, WOLFGANG and EBERHARDT OTTO, eds. Lexikon der
gyptologie.Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, .
Luvre au rouge DUFOUR-KOWALSKI, EMMANUEL. Schwaller de Lubicz: Luvre au rouge,
Lausanne: LAge dHomme, .
LSJ LIDDELL, HENRY GEORGE, ROBERT SCOTT, HENRY STUART JONES, RODERICK
MCKENZIE, and ERIC ARTHUR BARBER. A Greek-English Lexicon.
Rev. and augm. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 8.
PGM BETZ, HANS DIETER, ed. Te Greek Magical Papyri in Translation,
Including the Demotic Spells. nd ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, .
PT FAULKNER, R. O. ed. Te Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, .
Qute alchimique DUFOUR-KOWALSKI, EMMANUEL. La Qute alchimique de R. A. Schwaller
de Lubicz: Confrences . Milan: Arch, .
Roi SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ, R. A. Le Roi de la thocratie pharaonique.
Collection Homo Sapiens. Paris: Flammarion, .
Temple SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ, R. A. Le Temple de lhomme: Apet du Sud
Louxor. vols. Paris: Charactres, (Reprint Dervy,
, vols).
WS ERMAN,ADOLF and HERMANN GRAPOW, eds. Wrterbuch der gyptische
Sprache. Bnder. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, .
ZS Zeitschrift fr gyptische Sprache.
ZPE Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
 Preface

Tis thesis originally began as a much wider project whose aim was to examine the
broad question of apotheosis as a process of ontological mutation. A dual emphasis
was placed on the Bewutwerdungsphnomenologie of German Kulturphilosoph Jean
Gebser and the hermetic philosophy of Alsatian gyptosoph, Ren Adolphe Schwaller
de Lubicz. During the course of the project, the research and its methodology grew
beyond the limits of a PhD thesis and, as a compromise, a decision was made to
temporarily circumscribe the broader project by presenting the Schwaller and alchemy
based material as a stand-alone thesis. What is presented here is thus a historical-
biographical study of Schwaller de Lubicz focusing on his hermetic and alchemical
thought. Aspects of the original, broader project have surfaced by way of numerous
conference papers given between and , some of which are now beginning to
emerge in publications.

Te title of this thesis is taken from a passage in Schwallers work, LAppel du feu
(Te Call of Fire): tu es lumire, mais lumire brise travers le prisme de la vie (you
are light, but light broken through the prism of life). Tis serves not only as a
metaphor for the biographical study of de Lubicz undertaken in this thesis, but also as
a reference to the specifc role of his Farbenlehre (colour theory) in his alchemical
uvre. Te imperative to comprehend the living relationship between the invisible and
the visible aspects of existence was, for Schwaller, most emblematically manifested in
the phenomenon of light and colour. In regarding the colour phenomenon not only as
a body or act of light (per Goethe), but as a crucial signature of the hermetic
process that acts through all things, Schwaller conveys the nature of existence in terms
of a juncture of metaphysical and physical forces. Like the interaction of light and
darkness in Goethean theory, two opposed forces (light and darkness; sulphur and
mercury; acid and base) interact and neutralise to constitute the phenomenal world
(colour; cinnabar; salt).
Applique ton travail les principes vrais et ton progrs sera ta
rcompense, non lapprciation de se semblables. Lorsque le
fruit de ton travail est mr, renie-le, car cest lefort et la
conscience acquise qui ont valeur relle et non lobjet
matrialis. Applique lacquise de ta conscience louvrage dun
nouveau but. Nest-ce pas qu travers tes incarnations tu ne
cesses de faireinconsciemment? Fais-le consciemment en
cette vie, afn de progresser plus vite. Ainsi tu appliqueras dans
son vrai sens le principe de la rvolution constante .

R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Verbe Nature 8

 PART I

T H E H E R M E T I C P R O B L E M O F S A LT
 I

INTRODUCTION

Every individual rises again in the very form which his Work (in the alchemical sense) has fxed
in the secret (esoteric) depth of himself.1
Shaikh Ahmad Ahs

Te enigma that lies at the very heart of this thesis crystallised around a remark made
by the Alsatian alchemist and gyptosoph,2 Ren-Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (-
): Te Hermetic problem of our particular moment is Salt.3 Ren Schwaller, who
received the chivalric title de Lubicz in from the Lithuanian poet and diplomat,
Oskar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz, is in many respects the epitome of what Kocku von
Stuckrad has called a multilayered religious identity.4 From Alsace to Egypt,
Schwallers esoteric quest took him through a number of diverse roles: artist, social
1 Commentary on the Hikma al-arshya, , ; Henry CORBIN, Spiritual Body and
Celestial Earth (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ), -.
2 Backformed from gyptosophie (gypt, Egypt + sophos, wisdom, wisdom of Egypt),
modeled after Philosoph, Philosophie; Teosoph, Teosophie, etc.; see Erik HORNUNG, Das
geheime Wissen der gypter und sein Einfu auf das Abendland (C. H. Beck, Mnchen,
; Deutscher Taschenbuch, ), : Bereits in der Antike wurde eine Meinung
begrndet, die das Land am Nil als Quelle aller Weisheit und als Hort hermetischen
Wissens sieht. Damit begann eine Tradition, die bis heute reicht und die ich als
gyptosophie bezeichnen mchte.
3 Andr VANDENBROECK, Al-Kemi: Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R. A.
Schwaller de Lubicz (Rochester, Vt.: Lindisfarne Press, ), (emphasis mine): Te
Hermetic problem of our particular moment is Salt, but we have no good and complete
texts from that point of view; we have good texts from the point of view of Sulphur and
Mercury, but the shift in emphasis on the problem of Salt is recent, since around the turn
of the century, and in direct relationship with post-Newtonian physics and the crisis in
Darwinism.
4 Kocku von STUCKRAD, Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge (trans.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, London: Equinox, ), -8.


revolutionary, chemical engineer, spagyrical researcher, hermetic philosopher, neo-

pythagorean mathematician, and Egyptologist. However, the stable form uniting these
shifting facets is his vocation as alchemist. Te central focus of Schwallers alchemy,
and thus the central point underlying the diferent aspects of his esoteric vision, is the
alchemical concept of salt. Tis he conceived as a kind of Hegelian concrete universal
(konkretes Allgemeine): a cosmic juncture of abstraction and concretion, of the
universal and the particular, of the metaphysical and the proto-physical.5
In the language of western alchemy, salt embodies the ligature between the
primordial polarities, sulphur and mercury, mineral theophanies which, together with
salt, represent the three formative metaphysical principles that create the phenomenal
world.6 Just as sulphur and mercury react to form a salt (cinnabar; mercuric sulphide),
so too, for Schwaller, do meta-physical and proto-physical forces react to form the
concrete world of visible, physical reality. Whereas sulphur was traditionally seen to
impart soul, and mercury spirit, salt imparted but also embodied the principle of
fxedness and solidity. Salt was conceived as the bedrock of physical existence, both the
immutable principle and corruptible body of any phenomenon. According to this
schematic, salt is both the formative force and physical product, noumenon and
phenomenon, straddling the realms of eternity and transience. Te meaning of the
hermetic problem of salt thus inheres in its role as juncture between metaphysical and
physical realities. Tis, it is argued, cuts to the very core of the conception of matter in
alchemy, irreversibly complicating the dualistic notions of spiritual versus material
so central to empirical-historical dichotomisation. Comments de Lubicz:

with the notion of salt, we are reaching a point that represents the limit of rational
and irrational, where metaphysics and physics meet; it is a moment that can only
be described as transcendent, yet it must remain inseparable from the concrete. It
is not something that can be explained. But it can be shown, yet there is no
guarantee that even when shown, you will see. For actually, the entire universe and
every detail of it is such a juncture of transcendency with concreteness. So why
dont you see it right here and now?7

For Schwaller, the Hermetic problem of Salt hinges upon a metaphysics of

perception, and germane to this perception is the observation that the mineral kingdom

5 Cf. Glenn Alexander MAGEE, Te Hegel Dictionary (London: Continuum, ), -.

6 While sulphur and mercury have an alchemical history extending into antiquity, the
addition of saltforming the tria primais usually attributed to Paraclesus (
C E ). Te deeper roots of the concept, however, remain to be examined in the course of this
thesis. On Paracelsus and the tria prima, see in particular Andrew WEEKS, Paracelsus
(Teophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, -): Essential Teoretical Writings (Leiden:
Brill, 8), -, ; Walter PAGEL, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine
in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger, ), .
7 Al-Kemi, -.

17


is a spiritual presence. Te mineral kingdom, the most material of all phenomena,

was for Schwaller the maternal, nourishing matrix of metallic life (the womb of
metallogenesis), as well as the paternal foundation for biological life (the skeleton of
biological genesis). As such, the most enduring part of the animate bodythe
incorruptible mineral ashes of the bones that endure the death of the entity to survive
all putrefaction and combustionwere seen to contain the agent of all
transmutations. Tese alkaline salts, mythically identifed with the phoenix that rises
from its ashes and the alchemical salamander that lives in fre and feeds on fre, were
regarded as the key not only to individual immortality, but also to the qualitative
mutations (leaps) between kingdoms and species.8
With unusual specifcity, Schwaller held that the human femur contains an
incorruptible nucleus upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness
could be permanently inscribed. Te fxed salt, which compared to the chromosome
is extremely fxed or even indestructible, 9 was seen by Schwaller as more permanent
than DNA and accorded a key role in his esoteric theory of evolution (genesis).
Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able
to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the salt
located in the femur is the precise mechanism by which individual characteristicsthe
vital modes of consciousnessare able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the
death of the individual. Tis salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of
rebirth (palingenesis). Within the wider framework of Schwallers cosmologyin
which material genesis is conceived as the visible index of the evolution of
consciousnessthe alchemical salt forms the magnet that draws primordial matter
through the existential vehicles of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms
towards the ultima materia (or telos) of spiritual concretion. As such it formed the
hidden linkthe invisible bond in th e chain of continuityin the otherwise
apparently discontinuous process in which the generation and corruption of evolving
forms is situated.
8 On the alchemical salamander, cf. FULCANELLI, Le Mystre des Cathdrales et linterprtation
sotrique des symboles hermtiques du grand uvre (Paris: Socit Nouvelle des ditions
Pauvert, ), : la Salamandre qui vit dans le feu et se nourrit du feu ; Ce lzard
fabuleux ne dsigne pas autre chose que le sel central, incombustible et fxe, qui garde sa
nature jusque dans les cendres des mtaux calcins, et que les Anciens ont nomm Semence
mtallique. Dans la violence de laction igne, les portions adjustibles du corps se
dtruisent; seules les parties pures, inaltrables, rsistent et, quoique trs fxes, peuvent
sextraire par lixiviation; Sworder, trans., : Tis fabulous lizard stands for nothing else
but the incombustible and fxed central salt, which preserves its nature even in the ashes of
the calcinated metals and which the ancients called metallic seed. Te parts of the body
which can be burnt are destroyed in the violence of the igneous process; only the pure,
unalterable parts resist and, although they are very fxed, they can be extracted by
percolation.
9 Ren SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ, Le Temple de lhomme, I, /I, : Le sel fxe, qui est trs fxe
ou mme indestructible par rapport au chromosome.

18


As will be seen, salt for Schwaller acts as a centre of gravity, a point of

densifcation which condenses primordial, unformed energy into solid materiality to
form a core or nucleus that evokes, in proportionate reaction to the force of
densifcation, a force of energetic expansion. Tese two directions of forceone
inward and contractive; one outward and expansiveshare a common centre, a nexus
of centripetal and centrifugal activity. Simultaneously, these two forces constitute a
unifed whole that exists as a balance or neutralisation of the two energies. Tis bi-fold
energy is refected in all kingdoms in the dense inner and soft outer levels of all bodies:
the nucleus versus electron cloud of the atom (mineral); the trunk or stem versus the
leaves (vegetable); and the bones versus the organs and fesh (animal). 10 Te salt in the
femur is thus the primordial link in the chain of being.
To the strictly positivist consciousness, this position may appear strange. However,
it is suggested that the logic that operates at root of the motifsalt, thighbone,
palingenesisis not only consistent with an entire complex of ancient initiatory
symbolism, but ultimately that through this, a deeper consciousnesswith its own
epistemologyis implicated in the esoteric perception of reality. In order to
understand this on its own terms, rather than reduce it to the perspectives of positivist
science, eforts to see beyond our own dualistic logic must be made.
It is the intention of this thesis to demonstrate that what Corbin says of Jaldak
and Islamic alchemyi.e. that alchemy is a hieratic art whose spiritual fnality was no
less than the creation of an immortal corpus resurrectionisapplies equally to the
alchemy of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and that, by understanding the esotericism of
Schwaller in this sense, one may be granted an insight not only into some of the more
profound currents of twentieth century alchemy and hermeticism, but, through an
exposure to Schwaller de Lubiczs clavis hermeneutica, one may in fact gain a deeper
understanding of the defning characteristics of alchemy itself (or at the very least,
those of a distinct current within the plurality of alchemies in general). 11 In brief, the
aims of alchemy, as integrally conceived by Jaldak or de Lubicz, possess a fundamental
theological directive and in a very specifc sense form a hieratic ars or techn (art,
science, technique); whether practised on sensible species or on the human soul, the
aim of this hieratik techn is to liberate the consciousness of an entity by rendering its
bodyits vehicle of expressionincreasingly immortal. In a general sense, then, this
thesis addresses itself to a series of defnitional issues in the historiography of alchemy
and hermeticism. Availing itself of an interdisciplinary critical apparatus, Schwaller de
Lubicz is taken as an object of empirical-historical and philosophical study, but also as

10 As such, each kingdom, in its own way, refects the essential mysterium of the
phenomenon of the suni.e., a juncture of gravity and light in perfect equipoise.
Moreover, the symbolic image of the sun used in hermetic and alchemical texts (a central
point within a circle), perfectly encapsulates the phenomenon by representing it as centre
and circumference.
11 Henry CORBIN, Le Livre des sept Statues dApollonios de Tyane, comment par
Jaldak, Alchimie comme art hiratique, ed. Pierre Lory (Paris: LHerne, ), -.

19


a guide to understanding alchemy phenomenologically, i.e. from the perspective of a

modern, practising, spiritual and laboratory alchemist.
In a general sense, the method employed in this thesis is itself a juncture of the
more dense and the more expansive methodologies ofered by the academy (e.g.
empirical history and phenomenology); these are engaged in order to provide a
double mode of access to the principle underpinning the alchemical sal
philosophorum: the fxed yet elusive nexus in which abstraction and concretion cohere
as an irrevocable unity. Schwaller provides a fnite point of access to this principle, and
through him one begins to understand how the alchemical salt is able to be conceived
not only as the key to the dynamics of metallurgical and biological evolution, but also
as the pivot of two ways within the physical aspect of the hermetic opusla voie
humide (the wet way) and la voie sche (the dry way)which in turn mirror the two
paths of liberation in the uvres spiritual aspectpalingenesis (metempsychosis) and
resurrection (creation of a spiritual corpus). By studying the history and
phenomenology of the alchemical salt in the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, this thesis
ultimately seeks to consolidate a nondualistic approach to the conception of alchemy
in which the physical, laboratory or operative aspect of the work was not merely a
stage for psychological projection ( la Jung), nor a mystifcation or obfuscation of
merely chemical techniques ( la Principe and Newman), but rather a process that
engages deeply with the principles by which consciousness is incarnated in various
bodies, from mineral to human (to include the hidden harmony underpinning
mutations between kingdoms).12
In a more concrete sense, this thesis seeks to provide biographical, philosophical
and phenomenological modes of access to Schwallers life and work. In doing so, it
seeks not merely to situate, contextualise and explain, but also to elucidate, interpret
and understand the esoteric precepts and practices that inform de Lubiczs alchemy. In
presenting a circumscribed study of the alchemy of Schwaller de Lubicz, however, this
study also makes a broader point. Te simultaneously operative and spiritual nature of
Lubiczian alchemy highlights an important but neglected current within western
alchemy generally. Tis current, which I have termed nondual, only comes into
proper focus once both eastern and western alchemical currents are taken into
account.13 Tis requires a broader historiographic purview than is usually accorded to

12 On the hidden harmony, cf. fragment of HERACLITUS (Hyppolytus, Ref. IX, , ): Te

unapparent connection [harmoni] is stronger than the apparent; G. S. KIRK, J. E. RAVEN,
and M. SCHOFIELD, Te Presocratic Philosophers, Second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ), .
13 In order to emphasise the idea that material and spiritual aspects of alchemy are not
necessarily separate endeavours, I have termed this current of alchemy nondual. Tis
term is employed to help establish a conceptual apparatus capable of emphasising the
simultaneity of physical and metaphysical concerns. It should be emphasised that the
purpose of ofering such a nondualistic critical apparatus is not to engage in sweeping
universalistic claims about western or eastern alchemies, but rather to ofer a descriptive

20


studies of alchemy by scholars of western esotericism. Te broader, nondual current of

alchemy, of which Lubiczian alchemy is a modern representative, may be seen to have
its most explicit points of reference within the alchemical traditions of the east. It takes
its obvious points of departure from Chinese, Indian and Tibetan alchemy, where
operations on material bodies form a propadeutic to the formation of a divine body.
Here, the more operative aims (e.g. metallurgical transmutation, macrobiotics,
iatrochemistry) are subsumed within the context of a deeper spiritual imperative:
liberation in life (jivanmukti).14 While it would be a gross mistake to suggest that
Lubiczian alchemy is identical with eastern alchemies (or that eastern alchemies
themselves are essentially identical), the point that I wish to emphasise here is that
both eastern alchemies and Lubiczian alchemy both necessitate a more integrative
conceptual apparatus in which metallurgical, biological and spiritual process of
transmutation can be regarded not as separate currents to be isolated, but as intimately
related aspects of a nondualistic whole.
It must also be added that premises for a nondualistic alchemy are also equally, if
less explicitly, present in western and middle eastern alchemical traditions. Schwallers
alchemy, I suggest, should be situated and understood within the broader contexts
provided by these currents of alchemy. Hence, before approaching Schwallers work
proper, this thesis ofers a detailed survey of both eastern and western alchemies; in
doing so, it seeks to furnish sufcient evidence for alchemy as a nondual process.
Te structure of this thesis will proceed as follows. First, the balance of this
chapter will circumambulate the problem of salt from the perspectives of philology,
mythography, chemistry, and alchemy in order to sufciently crystallise the idea that
salt is not merely a hermetic problem but also a problem worthy of academic
attention. Te next two chapters comprising the frst part of this thesis will be
concerned with methodological issues in the study of religion and esotericism in
general, and historiographical considerations in the study of alchemy in particular.
Upon these bases, the second part of this thesis will then turn to the life and work of
de Lubicz proper. Te three substantial chapters of part two will focus on (i) a detailed
biographical and bibliographical survey of Schwaller de Lubiczs life and work; (ii) an
examination of his colour theory (along with its intellectual-historical foundations in
Newton and Goethes theories) as a symbolic, visual model for the dynamics of
alchemical transmutation; and (iii) the dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy proper,
focusing on Schwallers precepts and practices within the domains of metallurgical,

vantage that is better positioned to perceive and articulate those cases in which the
operative and spiritual aims are integrated within a greater conceptual unity.
14 Properly speaking, nondual or integral alchemies are, in fact, ultimately spiritual, but it is a
spirituality that encompasses rather than denies the practical or operative aspects of
alchemy. Just as the One in Neoplatonic metaphysics encompasses the many (but the
many does not encompass the one), so too do the nondual or integral expressions of
alchemy integrate the operative and experimental aspects of alchemy; the purely operative
alchemies, however, do not necessarily encompass the spiritual alchemies.

21


biological and spiritual transmutation, and how these are understood as three broad
modalities within a nondual process of ontological mutation.

Tesis Statement

Te life and work of the Alsatian hermeticist and Egyptosophist, Ren-Adolphe

Schwaller de Lubicz () attests to the continued presence of a distinctly
nondual current of alchemical precept and practice in which material transmutation
and spiritual transmutation are not separate nor merely coincidental endeavours but
two indispensably linked sides of the same coin. Te link, for Schwaller, was perceived
as a juncture of meta-physical and proto-physical forces, a process conceived in terms
of an alchemical salt (a neutralisation reaction between an acid and a base). Tis
thesis demonstrates that Lubiczian alchemy, by centring on the esoteric formation of
all bodies, to include the hidden nucleus of continuity between metallurgical,
biological and spiritual corporeality, speaks directly to the perception of alchemy as a
nondual, operative-spiritual process.

Contribution and Signifcance

Apart from possessing an arguably profound inherent interest, a few remarks are
necessary on why de Lubicz has been chosen as the focus of this study. Beyond the fact
that Schwaller is often regarded as a giant in modern philosophical esotericism, and
beyond the fact that the study of his work has been sorely neglected in the English
academic literature on alchemy and esotericism, de Lubicz is especially pertinent as a
focus for demonstrating the nondual premise of this thesis because he is one of the
most recent and important representatives of this current in alchemy in the West. Te
relative historical proximity of Schwaller has the advantage of making him more
comprehensible in so far as the shifts in culture and consciousness that separate our
own era from those that precede it is not so pronounced; obviously, the further back
one goes, especially with esoteric and alchemical fgures, the more difcult it is to truly
understand where a given writer is coming from, much less what they are actually
saying. In regards to the idea of salt, it should be pointed out that Schwaller was
deeply cognisant of contemporary quantum physical, chemical and biological theories
(his ofcial profession was chemical engineer); because of this, his insistence on an
operational and spiritual alchemy becomes all the more revealing because he was not
undertaking alchemy as a quantitative science, but as a hieratik techn. By examining
his work on salt, which he constantly compared to a nucleus, an especially deep insight
is gained into just what it is that distinguishes operative spiritual alchemy from
processes that can be reduced to quantitative science.

22


Historically speaking, by presenting a contextualised study of a highly important

but sorely neglected fgure of twentieth century esotericism, the most immediate value
of this thesis lies in bringing to light the life and work of a fgure whose project is vital
to the understanding of alchemy and many other currents of esotericism in twentieth
century Europe. Te frst contribution of this thesis is thus to the biography and
history of de Lubicz, and in so far as a detailed academic study of his life and work has
yet to appear in English, our study is unique.15
In terms of sources, too, it should be noted that all the primary and, wherever
possible, many of the secondary sources used in this thesis are drawn upon in their
original languages; to aid the reader, however, copious, extended translations of many
of the most pertinent of these primary and secondary texts have been ofered by way of
course. Tis is intended not only to give insight into the fascinating esoteric world of
de Lubicz, but to make thereby many of the most important sources for the study of
de Lubicz available to English readers for the frst time.
In terms of the sociology of esotericism, Schwallers connections to well-known
fgures such as Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau and Andr Breton (among others) are
touched upon; but more specifcally to infuential alchemists such as Fulcanelli (alias
Jean-Julien Champagne) and other fgures from the Parisian alchemical revival. Tis
alchemical milieu and the infuence it has had on a distinctly operative yet spiritual
alchemyand continues to have on contemporary alchemy and parachemistry 16 into
the twenty-frst century (especially via fgures such as Eugne Canseliet, Jean Dubois,
Albert Riedel/Frater Albertus, and their many students), continues to make the fgure
of Schwaller de Lubicz a signifcant key to understanding the persistence of the
phenomenon of alchemy in a supposed age of science.
In terms of intellectual history, the most important traditions that inform
Schwallers nondual concept of salt, his alchemical colour theory, and the dynamics of
his hermetic physics are elaborated. Trough this it is hoped that the nature of

15 Some short but insightful introductory studies of de Lubiczs life and work have appeared
in the English translations of Schwallers works. Tese include: Christopher BAMFORD,
Introduction, A Study of Numbers: A Guide to the Constant Creation of the Universe, trans.
Robert Lawlor (Rochester, Vermount: Inner Traditions, ), -; Deborah LAWLOR, R.
A. Schwaller de Lubicz and Nature Word, Nature Word, trans. Deborah Lawlor
(Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, ), -; By far the most extensive study of de
Lubiczs thought in English so far is that of John Anthony WEST, Te Serpent in the Sky
(); Although not an academic study, West produces a cogently argued and thoroughly
referenced work focusing on Schwallers Egyptological ideas. Wests aim is to revive de
Lubiczs symbolist methodology and his book is distinctly embroiled in an extension of the
same polemics that Schwaller himself was involved in throughout his Egyptological work.
Te details of this polemic are addressed in chapter four under the rubric: Te War
between Symbolists and Egyptologists.
16 Te prefx para- (from Greek para- beside, near, from, against, contrary to, cf. Sanskrit
para beyond, ultimate) indicates a current of chemistry beyond or beside that of ordinary
chemistry.

23


Lubiczian alchemy, along with its connections to an admittedly bewildering complex

of neopythagorean, Egyptosophical and hermetic philosophy, are clarifed. From a
methodological point of view, it is hoped that the present thesis has contributed to the
conceptual apparatus in the historiography of alchemy by providing theoretical
reference points that are able to come to terms with (i) alchemy as a contemporary
hieratik techn, (ii) the perception of reality as a nondual process, (iii) the centrality of
salt as a metaphysical corporifying principle, and (iv) the hidden continuity between
metallurgical, biological and spiritual corporeality.
Finally, the philosophical signifcance of this thesis must be seen to lie in the
phenomenological method of Schwaller de Lubicz himself, in whom one fnds an
epistemology and an ontology of great subtlety and sophistication; a philosophy to
which mere academic historicism would not do justice unless it was able to come to
terms with the deeper metaphysics of perception that underpins Schwaller de Lubiczs
entire uvre. For this reason, this thesis also hopes to contribute an eidetic, empathic
engagement with de Lubicz in order to come to a proper hermeneutic understanding
(Verstehen) of his alchemical Weltanschauung.

Sources for the Study of de Lubicz

De Lubiczs original writings are all in French, and appeared from the early s
through to the early s (with some posthumous works surfacing intermittently
after ). Save for the small text, Les Nombres, none of the works published by
Schwaller before have appeared in English translation. In , copies of de
Lubiczs principle untranslated texts were secured from the Bibliothque Nationale
Strasbourg, the Basel Universittsbibliothek, and the Bibliotheca Philosophica
Hermetica in Amsterdam. Since then, study of de Lubiczs collected uvre has been
undertaken by the present researcher, to include translation of signifcant portions of
this material. In , Dufour-Kowalski released his two editions of selections from de
Lubiczs writings with important critical apparatus; the same year, two volumes of
unpublished notes were released with no critical apparatus. Tis new material
signifcantly increased the primary sources available to the researcher. Te chief
primary and secondary sources for the study of de Lubicz are detailed in the
bibliography, and contextualised in chapter four.
Te frst source for the biography of Schwaller is that of his wife: Isha Schwaller de
Lubicz, Aor: R. A. Schwaller de Lubiczsa vie, son oeuvre.17 Ishas biography appeared
shortly after her husbands death (December , ). Brief surveys of Schwallers life
and/or work are contained in Pierre Mariel, Dictionnaire des sciences occultes en
occident,18 and more recently, Jean-Pierre Laurants entry, Schwaller de Lubicz, in the

17 Henceforth Aor (Paris: La Colombe, ).

18 Paris: Culture Art Loisir, , -.

24


Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism.19 Useful introductory materials have also
been furnished for the English translations of Schwallers works, in particular: Nature
Word, Numbers, and Te Temple in Man. Recently, Erik Sabls La vie et luvre de R.
A. Schwaller de Lubicz has provided an attempt to situate Schwallers life and work in
terms of his consistent emphasis on the esoteric laws of genesis, which are discernible
from his earliest writings to his last.20 However, the best critical apparatus to date has
been provided in by Emmanuel Dufour-Kowalskis two compilations of
Schwallers material: Schwaller de Lubicz: Luvre au rouge and La Qute alchimique de
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz: Confrences -.21 Dufour-Kowalski avails himself of
the signifcant documentary evidence preserved in the Ta Meri Archives, Schwallers
Nachlass. Tis body of material seems to have passed to Dufour-Kowalskis care after
previously being tended by Olivier Robichon and Trese Collet.
A particularly important source for this study is Andr VandenBroecks memoir,
Al-Kemi: Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz,22
in which the author describes eighteen months he spent in more or less daily contact
with Schwaller in (shortly before Schwallers death). Herein, VandenBroeck
recounts their fascinating philosophical dialogues in great detail, providing much
important information; he also makes some genuinely startling claims (most notably,
Schwallers crucial connection with the work of Fulcanelli). In many respects, part of
the task of this thesis has been to pursue in more detail, with scholarly rigour, many of
the points that VandenBroeck broaches from the point of view of a personal memoir.
Especially germane to this thesis are his discussions of Schwallers hermetic philosophy,
his relationship with Fulcanelli, his alchemical colour theory, and the centrality of the
fxed salt to Schwallers entire uvre.
With respect to questions of source criticism, it is important to mention that
VandenBroecks account presents highly detailed, verbatim accounts of their complex
philosophical dialogues. Although he made notes at the time, which he later feshed
out, the feat of memory required for the memoir is formidable. On this,
VandenBroeck himself remarks: I have a painters memory for moments and a
musicians memory for tone (rather than a storytellers for duration), and although
twenty-fve years have passed and it is difcult to defne the complexity of my frst
reaction, I do know exactly what was said and in what spirit.23 Te research presented
in this thesis corroborates the authenticity of VandenBroecks account on many points
of detail, and for this reason it is to be regarded as a highly reliable source vital to the
study of de Lubiczs life and work.

19 Ed. Hanegraaf et al. (Leiden: Brill, ), -.

20 Paris: Dervy, 2003.
21 Lausanne: LAge dHomme, (henceforth Luvre au Rouge); Milan: Arch, ,
(henceforth La Qute Alchimique).
22 Rochester, Vt.: Lindisfarne Press, (henceforth Al-Kemi).
23 Al-Kemi, .

25


Salt: Linguistic, Mythographic and Chemical Perspectives

Heaven knows a civilised life is impossible without salt and so necessary is this basic substance
that its name is applied metaphorically even to intense mental pleasures. We call them sales
[wit] But the clearest proof of its importance is that no sacrifce is carried out without the
mola salsa.
Pliny24

Since Paracelsus (-), salt has played a role in alchemy as the physical body
which remains after combustion, the corporeal substance that survives death to
reinaugurate new life. It was both corruption and preservation against corruption
(Dorn); both the last agent of corruption and the frst agent in generation (Steeb). 25
As such, the alchemical salt functions as the fulcrum of death and revivifcation. Te
idea that the agent, instrument and patient of the alchemical process are not separate
entities but aspects of one reality prefgures the signifcance accorded in this thesis to
the hermetic problem of salt. Just as in chemistry a salt may be defned as the product
of an acid and a base, alchemically, salt is the integral resolution to the primordial
polarities embodied in the mineral symbolique of cinnabar (HgS), the salt of sulphur
and mercury. In the alchemy of Schwaller de Lubicz, salt forms the equilibrium
between an active function (sulphur, divinity, peiras) and its passive resistance
(mercurial substance, prima materia, the apeiron), aspects which are latently present in
the primordial (pre-polarised) unity, but crystallised into physical existence as salt.
With Schwallers concept, one is dealing with a juncture of the metaphysical and
proto-physical. As will be seen, however, this also inheres in the body as a fulcrum
point of death and palingenesis.

Leap, Salve, Balsam

In order to understand the nature of alchemical salt one must frst understand the
nature of common salt. In doing this, however, it is soon realised that salt is anything
but common; like many everyday things, salt is so familiar that its singular peculiarity

24 Naturalis Historia, XXXI, XLI; cf. PLUTARCH, Moralia, Table Talk, IV, , .
25 Gerhard DORN (f. -), Speculativae philosophiae, gradus septem vel decem
continens, in Teatrum Chemicum (Strassbourg: -), ; Johan Christoph STEEB,
Coelum Sephiroticum Hebraeorum (Mainz, ), : sal sit ultimum in corruptione, sed &
primum in generatione; De Lubicz reformulates the bivalence of the alchemical salt in
terms of a ligature of concreteness and abstraction.

26


is taken for granted. Visser, in an extraordinary study of the elements of an ordinary

meal, aptly encapsulates the cultural purview of salt in the following words:

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves,
desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of
years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but
also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. Te contradictions it
embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred.26

European languages derive their word salt from Proto-Indo-European *sl- (*sl-)
refected directly in Latin as sal, salt, salt water, brine; intellectual savour, wit, Greek
hals, salt, sea (cf. Welsh halen) and in Proto-Germanic as *saltom (Old English sealt,
Gothic salt, German Salz). In addition to its mineral referent, sal also gives rise to a
number of cognates that help crystallise its further semantic and symbolic nuances.
Saltus, saltum, leap, derives from the verb salio, leap, jump, leap sexually, whence
Sali, priests of Mars from the primitive rites (practically universal) of dancing or
leaping for the encouragement of crops; 27 saltre, dance, salmo, salmon (leaping
fsh), (in)sultre, (insult, literally leap on, in; fguratively, taunt, provoke, move to
action), all from Indo-European *sl-, move forth, start up or out, whence Greek
, o, (hallomai, halto, halma), leap; Sanskrit ucchalati (*ud-sal-),
starts up.28 Importantly for the alchemical conception, alongside leap one fnds the
meanings at the root of English salve (balm, balsam), derived from Indo-European
*sel-p-, *sel-bh-, and giving rise to Cyprian elphos (butter), Gothic salbn, Old English
sealfan; in Latin: salus, soundness, health, safety; salbris, wholesome, healthy;
saltre, keep safe, wish health, salute; salvus, safe, sound; salvre, be in good health;
salv, hail!; cf. also *sl-eu-; Avestan huarva, whole, uninjured; Sanskrit sarva-,
sarvatti, soundness and Greek , (holoeitai, holos), whole. Tese
meanings are further connected to solidus, sollus, slor, with an ultimate sense of
gathering, compacting, hence solidity.29
In addition to its salvifc, balsamic and holistic aspect, which must be regarded as
the meaning most central to the alchemical perception, the signifcance of salt as both
leap and solidity must also be recognised as integral. In particular, it pertains to
Schwallers conception of salt as the fxed imperishable nucleus (solidus) regarded as the
hidden mechanism underpinning the ontological leaps or mutations of visible
evolution (contra the Aristotelian dicta, natura non facit saltum, nature does not

26 Margaret VISSER, Much Depends on Dinner: Te Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure
and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal (Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and
Stewart, ), .
27 T. G. TUCKER, Etymological Dictionary of Latin (Chicago: Ares, ), .
28 TUCKER, .
29 TUCKER, .

27


proceed by a leap).30 For Schwaller, the seemingly disconnected leaps of biological

mutation are in fact bound by a hidden harmony grounded in the saline alchemical
nucleus.
Although it is the intention of this thesis to explore the deeper meaning of salt in
Schwaller de Lubiczalchemically confgured as the determiner of an entitys forma
number of studies have pointed to the crucial role of salt as a signifcant shaper of
civilisation.31 Perhaps the earliest point of departure for this is the fact that salt only
rises to especial prominence with the emergence of an agricultural economy. Salt
intake, initially bound to blood and meat, had to be supplemented. 32 Comments
Darby:

When man frst learnt the use of salt is enshrouded in the mists of the remotest
past. Parallel to the Ancient Greeks ignorance of the seasoning, the original Indo-
Europeans and the Sanskrit speaking peoples had no word for it. Tis apparent
lack of salt-craving in early people could have been a result of their reliance on raw
or roasted meat. Later, when with the invention of boiling the sodium content of
meat was reduced, and when the shift to an agricultural economy introduced
vegetables in increasing amounts, sodium chloride became a basic need to provide
an adequate sodium intake and, more important still, to counterbalance the high
potassium content of plants.33

Commodity histories show that salt was not always the easily available resource it
is today; it had to be striven for; it required efort and ingenuity (perhaps even wit). It
created trade and war; it was used as pay and exploited as a tax. Nor did salt have the
current stigma of being an unhealthy excess (a problem symptomatic of modern
surfeit).34 Quite to the contrary, salt was typically a sign of privilege and prestige. Salt

30 Although attributed to Aristotle, the phrase natura non facit saltum comes from Carl
Linnaeuss Philosophia Botanica (); Linnaeuss expression itself is a Latin rendering of
a French expression from the preface to Gottfried Leibnizs Nouveaux essais sur
l'entendement humain (): La nature ne fait jamais des sauts (nature never makes a
leap); it continues in the idea of phyletic gradualism versus punctuated equilibrium in
evolutionary theory.
31 Victor HEHN, Das Salz: Eine kulturhistorische Studie (Berlin, ); Matthias Jacob
SCHLEIDEN, Das Salz: Seine Geschichte, seine Symbolik und seine Bedeutung im
Menschenleben: Eine monographische Skizze (Leipzig, ; Weinheim, ); Jean-Franois
BERGIER, Une histoire du sel (Fribourg: Ofce du Livre, ); S. A. M. ADSHEAD, Salt and
Civilizaton (New York: St. Martins, ); Pierre LASZLO, Salt: Grain of Life, trans. Mary
Beth MADER (New York, = Chemins et savoirs du sel, ); Mark KURLANSKY, Salt: A
World History (London: Vintage, ).
32 VISSER, .
33 William J. DARBY, Paul GHALIOUNGUI, Louis GRIVETTI, Food: Te Gift of Osiris (London:
Academic Press, ) I, , though cf. evidence and remarks at .
34 Cf. MENEELY et al. () cited in DARBY et al., Food: Te Gift of Osiris, I, .

28


like speech is essentially semiotic, Adshead remarks; As such it could convey a variety
of meanings, of which the clearest in early times was social distance: high cooking, low
cooking, above and below the salt.35 Considerations such as these help contextualise
many of the ancient values surrounding salt, some of which have become proverbial.
In the New Testament, for instance, but also elsewhere, the sharing of salt (often with
bread at a table), represented a deep bond of trust, of communal solidarity, while the
spilling of it was considered a grave faux pas.36 Indeed, if salt was as freely available for
liberal exploitation as it is today, such ethical and social implications would scarcely
carry any weight at all.
Most of salts social meanings refect its deepest functional value as a preservative.
Just as salt keeps the integrity of plants and meats intact, so salt was seen to keep the
integrity of a body of people together. As a prestige substance that could preserve food
through the death of winter and bind people in communal solidarity, salt was highly
regarded; during Roman times, salt even became a form of currency, whence our word
salary (from Latin salrium, salt money) after the Roman habit of paying soldiers in
pieces of compressed salt (hence the phrase: to be worth ones salt). 37 Because of its
integrating character, salt bridges opposites. Paradoxically, however, the more one
attempts to pin salt down in a strictly rational manner, the more the contradictions it
embodies abound.
Tere are totally diferent opinions concerning salt, writes Plutarch (c.
38
C E ), who preserves a number of contemporary beliefs, including the view that salt
possesses not only preservative qualities, but animating and even generative power:

Some include salt with the most important spices and healing materials, calling it
the real soul of life, and it is supposed to possess such nourishing and enlivening
powers that mice if they lick salt at once become pregnant. 39

Consider also whether this other property of salt is not divine too [] As the soul,
our most divine element, preserves life by preventing dissolution of the body, just
so salt, controls and checks the process of decay. Tis is why some Stoics say that
the sow at birth is dead fesh, but that the soul is implanted in it later, like salt, to
preserve it [] Ships carrying salt breed an infnite number of rats because,

35 Cf. ADSHEAD, Salt and Civilization, .

36 DARBY et al., Food: Te Gift of Osiris, I, ; cf. Michael LATTKE, Salze der Freundschaft in
Mk c, Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft, (); VISSER, .
37 PLINY, Nat. Hist., XXXI, , ; the Codex Justiniani, lib., XXXIX, IV, , makes it illicit to sell
to the enemy the whetstone to sharpen iron; as well as iron, wheat or salt.
38 PLUTARCH, Table Talk, IV () ; V () ; trans. Edmund O von LIPPMAN, Chemical and
Technical References in Plutarch, Ambix .- (): .
39 PLUTARCH, Table Talk, IV () ; V () ; (LIPPMAN, ).

29


according to some authorities, the female conceives without coition by licking salt.
40

Te connection of salt to the soul, a balsam to the body, will be explored in more
detail when the alchemical contexts of salinity are examined. Its fertilising, generative
power, on the other hand, bears obvious comparison to salts known capacity to
stimulate the growth of the eartha leavening function extended to the role of the
Apostles in the Christian Gospels: Ye are the salt of the earth. 41 And yet too much salt
will make the earth sterile.
In ancient times, oferings to the gods were made with salt among the Israelites:
with all thine oferings thou shalt ofer salt, 42 but without salt among the Greeks:
mindful to this day of the earlier customs, they roast in the fame the entrails in
honour of the gods without adding salt. 43 Te Egyptian priests favoured rock salt in
sacrifces as purer than sea salt; 44 and yet one of the things forbidden to them is to set
salt upon a table;45 they abstain completely from salt as a point of religion, even
eating their bread unsalted.46 Although the Egyptians never brought salt to the table,
Pythagoras, who according to the doxographic traditions studied in the Egyptian
temples, tells us that:

It should be brought to the table to remind us of what is right; for salt preserves
whatever it fnds, and it arises from the purest sources, the sun and the sea.47

Te understanding of salt as a product of sun and sea, i.e. of fre and water,
ouranos and oceanos, touches on its broader esoteric and cosmological implications, not
all of which were peculiar to Pythagoras. 48 Tese aspects become central in alchemy,
where, as will be seen, salt acts as the earthly ligature between fre (sun) and water
(sea), the arcane substance whose patent ambiguities stem from its role as embodiment

40 PLUTARCH, Table Talk IV, , .

41 Luke :; Mark :; Matthew :.
42 Leviticus :; cf. Ezekiel :; Ezra :, -; :; Homeric poems do not mention the
addition of salt in sacrifces; cf. the explanation in ATHENAEUS, Deipnos., XIV, , ;
DARBY et al., Food: Te Gift of Osiris, I, .
43 ATHENAEUS, Deipnos., XIV, , .
44 Egyptian: hmat, Coptic: hmou; Rolf GUNDLACH, Salz, Lexikon der gyptologie , cols -
; Rock salt deposits known in Siwa: PLINY, Nat. Hist., XXXI, ; STRABO I, , , ch. ;
ARRIAN, Anabasis Alexandri, III, , -; HERODOTUS IV, -.
45 PLUTARCH, Iside et Osiride, , .
46 PLUTARCH, Table Talk IV, , -.
47 DIOGENES LAERTUS, VIII, .
48 Cf. TACITUS, Annals, XIII, , remarking on the Hermunduri and the Chatti: It is they
think through the bounties of divine power, that in that river and in these forests salt is
produced not as in other countries by the drying up of an overfow of the sea [] but by a
combination of two opposite elements, fre and water.

30


and juncture of opposites: purity and impurity, eros and enmity, wetness and
desiccation, fertility and sterility, love and strife. One thing that the present discussion
of the mythological and historical aspects of salt hopes to emphasise is that none of
these ideas are really born of speculation or abstraction; rather, they are all intimately
linked to the basic phenomenology of the substance itself.
Above all, salt is ambiguous. While some of these ambiguities may be attributed to
the unevenness of the sources, and while some points of contradiction may be cleared
up upon closer examination (the negative Egyptian views on salt, for instance, mainly
seem to apply to times of ritual fasting), this does not eclipse the overarching sense
that salt, by its very nature, defes strict defnition.

Brine-Born Aphrodite

From numerous ancient sources describing the nature of salt, one arrives at the view
that salts piquant efect was seen to extend beyond the sensation on the tongue. 49 Salt
stimulated not only the appetite but desire in general. 50 And because desire polarises
the religious impulse more than anything elsea path of liberation to some, a
hindrance to othersit is understandable why the Egyptians, according to Plutarch,
make it a point of religion to abstain completely from salt. 51 Equally, one can
understand how salt, as an aphrodisiac, was connected specifcally to the cult of
Aphrodite, the goddess of desire par excellence. As Plutarch notes, the stimulating
nature of eroticism evoked by the feminine is expressed using the very language of salt:

For this reason perhaps, feminine beauty is called salty and piquant when it is
not passive, nor unyielding, but has charm and provocativeness. I imagine that the
poets called Aphrodite born of brine [] by way of alluding to the generative
property of salt.52

Plutarch is referring to a tradition preserved by Hesiod, which will be looked at

presently, but before the origin of the brine-born goddess is examined, it is worth
noting that our own language still preserves this deep association between salt and
provocative beauty. Latin sal lies, phonetically and semantically, at the root of words
such as salsa and sauce (both meaning salted), whence the deep connection between
sexuality and food implicit in the habit of referring to provocative objects of desire as

49 Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, for instance, both prescribe salt as a digestive
stimulant.
50 PLUTARCH, Iside et Osiride, , : [Te Egyptian priests] use no salt with their food
duringtheir periods of holy living, [because salt] by sharpening their appetite, makes them
more inclined to drinking and eating.
51 PLUTARCH, Table Talk IV, , -.
52 PLUTARCH, Table Talk, IV, , -.

31


saucy or sassy (both derivations of sal). And so the most stimulating favoursthe
saltiest, those that that make us salivateare the ones most readily appropriated to
express our desire.
Te ancient etymology of Aphrodite as brine-born (from aphros, sea-spume) is
deeply mired not only in desire but also enmity, the twin impulses that Empedocles
would call Love and Strife (Philots kai Neikos).53 Aphrodite, one learns, is born from
the primordial patricide (and perhaps a crime of passion). Hesiods Teogony tells us
how the goddess Gaia (Earth), the unwilling recipient of the lusts of Ouranos
(Heaven), incites the children born of this union against their hated father. Not
without Oedipal implications, Cronus rises surreptitiously against his progenitor and,
with a sickle of jagged fint, severs his fathers genitals:

And so soon as he had cut of the members with fint and cast them from the land
into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white
foam (aphros) spread around them from the immortal fesh, and in it there grew a
maiden. [] Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and the foam-born goddess []
because she grew amid the foam.54

As will be seen, these two primordial impulses prove pivotal to the alchemical
function of salt that is met in Schwallerthe determiner of all afnities and aversions.
And if Aphrodite is connected to salts desire-provoking aspect, it will come as no
surprise to fnd that her ultimate counterpart was associated with just the opposite:
war and strife. As is well known, Aphrodite is paired with Ares among the Greeks (as
Venus is to Mars among the Romans), but the origins of her cult are intimately bound
to Ancient Near Eastern origins;55 moreover, in her Phoenician incarnation (Astarte),
she embodies not only eros and sexuality, but war and strife. Presumably because of
these traits, the Egyptian texts of the early Eighteenth Dynasty saw ft to partner her
with their own untamed transgressor god, Seth-Typhona divinity who, like
Aphrodite, was associated specifcally with sea-salt and sea-spume (aphros).56

Typhons Spume

Sea, writes Heraclitus, is the most pure and the most polluted water; for fshes it is
drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and deleterious.57 For the

53 EMPEDOCLES, fragment (SIMPLICIUS, in Phys. 8, ); KIRK, RAVEN, SCHOFIELD, 8.

54 Teogony, -; H.G. EVELYN-WHITE, trans. Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle,
Homerica, Loeb Classical Library Volume (London: William Heinemann, ).
55 Aphrodite took the bi-name Cypris from the island Cyrprus, the ancient cult centre of the
Sumerian goddess Ishtar (= Inanna = Astarte).
56 Te Confict of Horus and Seth.
57 HERACLITUS, fragment (= Hippolytus Ref. IX, .);

32


Egyptians, anything connected with the sea was, in general, evaluated negatively. Sea-
salt in particular was regarded as impure, the spume or foam of Typhon (
, aphros typhnis).58 Plutarch explains this by the fact that the Niles pure
waters run down from their source and empty into the unpalatable, salty
Mediterranean.59 Tis natural phenomenon takes on cosmological ramifcations:
because of the southern origin of the life-giving Nilotic waters, south became the
direction associated with the generative source of all existence; north on the other
handculminating in the Nile delta where the river is swallowed by the seawas
regarded as the realm in which the pure, living waters were annihilated by the impure,
salty waters. Comments Plutarch:

For this reason the priests keep themselves aloof from the sea, and call salt the
spume of Typhon, and one of the things forbidden to them is to set salt upon a
table; also they do not speak to pilots; because these men make use of the sea, and
gain their livelihood from the sea [] Tis is the reason why they eschew fsh.60

While sea salt was avoided, salt in rock form was considered quite pure: Egyptian
priests were known to access mines of rock salt from the desert Oasis of Siwa. 61 Arrian,
the third century B C E historian, remarks:

Tere are natural salts in this district, to be obtained by digging; some of these
salts are taken by the priests of Amon going to Egypt. For whenever they are going
towards Egypt, they pack salt into baskets woven of palm leaves and take them as
a present to the king or someone else. Both Egyptians and others who are
particular about religious observance, use this salt in their sacrifces as being purer
than the sea-salts.62

Tus, like the arid red desert and the fertile nilotic soil, the briny sea was
contrasted with the fresh waters of the Nile to oppose the foreign with the familiar, the
impure with the pure, and, ultimately, the Sethian with the Osirian. So too, sea salt
and rock salt.
Te deeper implications of the Typhonian nature of seawater emerge in the Greek
Magical Papyri where the Egyptian deity Seth-Typhon is found taking on many of the
epithets typically accorded by the Greeks to Poseidon: mover of the seas great depths;
, , . trans.
KIRK-RAVEN-SCHOFIELD, .
58 PLUTARCH, De Iside et Osiride, ch. ().
59 PLUTARCH, De Iside et Osiride, ch. ().
60 PLUTARCH, De Iside et Osiride, ch. (), with further remarks and citations in DARBY, et
al., Food: Te Gift of Osiris, I, .
61 Notably, Siwa was the locus of the Egyptian oracle that afrmed Alexander the Great as
Son of Zeus-Amun.
62 ARRIAN, Anabasis Alexandri III, . -.

33


boiler of waves; shaker of rocks; wall trembler, etc.all intimating the vast,
destructive powers deriving from the oceans primal depths. Tis numinous power
must be understood as the potency underpinning the materia magica prescribed in the
invocations to Seth-Typhon, where, among other things, one fnds the presence of
seashells or seawater in Typhonian rituals.63 One does not have to look far before one
realises that magic employing shells from the salt-sea forms part of a wider genre
within the magical papyrispells that have the explicit aim of efecting intense sexual
attraction. Te role of Typhon in such spells is clear: he is invoked to efect an afnity
so strong that the person upon whom this agonistic and erotic magic is used will sufer
psychophysical punishments (e.g. insomnia: give her the punishments; bitter and
pressing necessity, etc.) until their desire for the magician is physically consummated.
64

Interestingly, the premiere substance sympathetic to Seth-Typhon was iron: the

metal most drastically corrupted by salt. Moreover, iron and salt-water are the primary
constituents of human blood, a microcosmic recapitulation of the primordial salt
ocean (mythologically conceived: the cosmogonic waters; evolutionarily conceived: the
marine origin of species). Blood is the symbol par excellence for intense passion, and its
two poles are love and war, a fact which precisely explains Seth-Typhons
overwhelming functions in the magical papyri: eros and enmity. Again, it is no surprise
that intense sexual attraction (desire, afnity, union) and intense hatred (repulsion,
aversion, separation) evoke Empedocles principles of Love and Strifethe functions
governing the unifcation and separation of the four elements. Moreover, the
connection of Seth with redness, blood, eros, war and the like equates with everything
that the Indian sages placed under the rubric of rajas, the excited passions, which, as
has been seen, are distinctly associated with the stimulating power of salt. 65 Be that as
it may, the same divine energeia fed and informed the functions of the Greek and
Roman war gods, Ares and Mars, both of whom take the association with iron in the
scale of planetary metals, as did Seth-Typhon among the Egyptians.
Seth is not only connected to salt, but to the power of the bulls thigh, the
instrument by which the gods are ritually killed and revivifed. Here the connection of
Seth to the power of the thigh suggests the pivotal role played by this god in the
quintessentially alchemical process of death and rebirth, of slaying and nourishment.
Tis theme will be reiterated more than once in the course of this thesis, and it should
be pointed out that any deliberations on this mythologeme are intended as so many
historical and phenomenological circumambulations around the deep resonances
generated by de Lubiczs emphasis on the role of the fxed femoral salt in palingenesis.

63 PGM VII. -; PGM VII. -.

64 Cf. Homeric Hymn to Poseidon (hymn ); Orphic Hymn to Poseidon (hymn ); AELIAN, On
Animals, . ; PGM, passim (spells to Typhon).
65 In the Rig Veda, cf. Rudra, the red one.

34


Between Acid and Alkali

In the middle ages, the meaning of the term salt was widened to include substances
that were seen to resemble common salt (e.g. in appearance, solubility and so forth). 66
Chemically speaking, a salt is a neutralisation reaction between an acid and a base. Te
two have a natural afnity for each other, one seeking to gain an electron (the acid),
the other seeking to lose one (the base). When this occurs, the product is a salt. While
more complex chemical defnitions of salt can be given, this one, advanced by
Guillaume Francois Rouelle in ,67 allows one to perceive the broader principles
that motivated the alchemists to select salt as the mineral image of the interaction of
sulphur and mercury (cinnabar, HgS, a salt in the chemical sense formed from sulphur
and mercury). As Mark Kurlansky points out:

It turned out that salt was once a microcosm for one of the oldest concepts of
nature and the order of the universe. From the fourth century B.C. Chinese belief
in the forces of yin and yang, to most of the worlds religions, to modern science,
to the basic principles of cooking, there has always been a belief that two opposing
forces fnd completionone receiving a missing part and the other shedding an
extra one. A salt is a small but perfect thing.68

More precise chemical defnitions specify that a salt is an electrically neutral ionic
compound. Here, the same principle of perfect equipoise between opposing energies
prevails. Ions are atoms or molecules whose net electrical charge is either positive or
negative: either the protons dominate to produce an ion with a positive electric charge
(an anion, from Greek ana-, up), or the electrons dominate to produce an ion with a
negative electric charge (a cation, from Greek kata-, down). When anions and cations

66 F. Sherwood TAYLOR, Inorganic and Teoretical Chemistry (London: William Heineman,

), .
67 William B. JENSEN, Te origin of the term base, Te Journal of Chemical Education 8, 8
(): ; Mark KURLANSKY, Salt: A World History (London: Vintage, ), . Cf.
the contemporary defnition in N. LEMERY, Cours de chymie (ed. Teodore Baron
d'Henouville, Paris, ; reprinted ), -: Te acid is always a solvent, when it is
put in large enough quantity on the matter which we wish to dissolve; but it always makes
a Coagulum, when as it is in too small a quantity its points have got stuck in the pores of
the matter, and are far from having the strength to separate it in order to comeout of it;
this is what is seen when we pour some spirit of vitriol on liquor of salt of tartar; for if we
put on only what is necessary to penetrate the salt, the acid points remain as if sheathed
and they weigh down the body, which is why a coagulation and precipitation occur; but if
we add to the liquor as much again of the spirit of vitriol as we had put on to it, or more,
the Coagulum will disappear, because the little bodies, which when assembled together
were holding up the acid and preventing its movements, will be separated and dissolved by
the acid which has become stronger.
68 KURLANSKY, Salt, .

35


bond to form an ionic compound whose electric charges are in equilibrium, they
neutralise and the result is called a salt.
Te chemical defnition opens up the conception of salt beyond that of mere
sodium chloride. Chemically, the coloured oxides and other reactions of metalsof
especial signifcance to the alchemical perceptionare often salts (the metal itself
taking the role of base; oxygen the acid).69 Alchemically, or at least proto-chemically,
because the reactions of metals were coloured, they were important signifers of the
metals nature, often seen as an index of its spirit or tincture (ios, tincture,
violet/purple). Te seven planetary metals were often signifed by their coloured salts
or oxides: e.g. lead is white; iron, red (rust); copper is blue/green; silver is black. Gold
remains pure (unreacting) but its tincture was identifed with royal purple (seen in the
red-purple colour of colloidal gold, gold dust, ruby glass etc.)

Alchemical Salt

Salt in Alchemy before Paracelsus

Although the purview of hieratic alchemy was far wider than mere proto-chemistry,
chemical and technical processes were undeniably integral to the alchemists savoir-
faire. As such it is no surprise to fnd salts of various kinds fguring in the earliest strata
of alchemical writings, east and west. In the Greek proto-chemical texts that
Marcellin Berthelot brought together under the rubric of alchemy, several diferent
salts are distinguished and listed in the registers alongside the lists of planetary metals
and other chemically signifcant minerals. In addition to salt (halas), one fnds
common salt (halas koinon) and sal ammoniak (halas amoniakon).70 More importantly,
however, is the signifcant prefguration of the tria prima and tetrastoicheia (four
element) relationship that is found in Olympiodorus (late ffth century C E ).71
Olympiodorus depicts an ouroboric serpent to which some important symbolic
nuances are added (Illustration 1). In addition to the usual henadic (unitary)
symbolism of this ancient motif, the text displays its serpent with four feet and three
ears. Te glosses to the image inform us that the four feet are the tetrasmia (the four
elemental bodies) while the three ears are volatile spirits (aithalai). As will be seen in
the balance of this thesis, this relationship of unity to duality, duality to trinity, and
trinity to quaternary is pivotal to the hermetic physics that Schwaller would attempt to
convey in terms of an alchemical Farbenlehre (cf. the Pythagorean tetraktys).
69 Here, metal provides the cation; oxygen the anion.
70 BERTHELOT, CAAG, -. Note also alums (styptikon).
71 Paris MS. fol. .

36


ILLUSTRATION 1: OUROBOROS, PARIS MS. FOL.

One serpent (ophis), two natures or poisons (in: fxed and
volatile); three ears (the three volatile spirits); four legs
(tetrasma: the four bodies or elements).

Te four elemental bodies have been interpreted as lead, copper, tin and iron, (Pb,
Cu, Sn, Fe), while the three sublimed vapours have been identifed with sulphur,
mercury and arsenic (S, Hg, As). 72 Although salt is not included in this depiction,
what is signifcant is that here one fnds the exact framework in which salt would later
be situated as one of the three principles (tria prima: sulphur, mercury, salt) alongside
the four Empedoclean elements (tetrastoicheia: fre, air, water, earth); here salt may be
seen to replace arsenic due to its more integral relationship to sulphur and mercury in
the form of cinnabar (mercuric sulphide, HgS): the salt of mercury and sulphur. In
regards to the metaphysical and cosmological nuances of the symbolism, it may be
noted that the three ears are outside the circle while the four legs are inside, a fact that
coheres with the view of the trinity as creative and therefore standing outside of
creation, while the four elements, being created, are circumscribed within (cf. the
distinction in Neoplatonism between hypercosmic and encosmic forces, or in Eastern
Orthodox theology between uncreated and created energies). 73 Te distinct relation of
salt to the body and the elements may account for the cross-like sign it takes in the
Greek manuscripts (Illustration 2).

72 Joseph NEEDHAM, Lu GWEI-DJEN, Nathan SIVIN, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. . pt.
: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus and Teory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ), .
73 It should be noted that the trinitarian conception mentioned here precedes Christian
theology; it is notably signifcant in Egyptian theology and Pythagorean metaphysics.

37


ILLUSTRATION 2: SIGNS FOR SALT, COLUMN TWO, LINES -

Marcellin BERTHELOT, Introduction ltude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen ge I, .

In Arabic alchemy, salt fgures most prominently in an alchemical text that

became infuential in the West via its Latin translation: Te Book of Alums and Salts

38


(Arabic: al qawl fl l-milh, a tradition on salt; Latin: Liber de aluminibus et salibus).74

Tis text appears to be a practical handbook describing various substances and
operations, such as alum, diferent kinds of salt (including the use of alkaline and
ammoniac salts), the preparation of arsenic for laboratory use, the comparison of
arsenic and sulphur, as well as the features of silver, tin, lead, iron, copper and glass. 75
Contrary to the habit of many scholars of alchemy to attribute the sulphur-mercury-
salt theory to Paracelsus, the triad in fact emerged as an alchemical motif before
Paracelsus. As both Eberly and Haage inform us, it was Abu Bakr Muhammad
Zakariyya Ar-Razi (d. )76 who added the third principle of salt to the primordial
alchemical principles (sulphur and mercury) inherited from Greek antiquity (implicit
in the exhalation theory of metallogenesis), and already existing in Jabirs system. 77
Tis and related traditions must be recognised as clear precursors to Paracelsuss
conception of the tria prima. Comments Eberly:

Razi had an extremely well equipped laboratory and followed all of the essentials
of Jabirs systems. In one area in particular, he expanded upon Jabirs theory. Razi
added a third principle, philosophically representing Spirit [Sulphur] as Mind, and
Mercury as Soul, while adding Salt as the principle of crystallization or body. []
Razis descriptions of alchemical processes were closely studied and put into
practice by later European alchemists including Nicolas Flamel and Paracelsus.78

In the earliest strata of medieval hermetic texts, such as the Turba Philosophorum
and Rosarium Philosophorum, salt is already accorded an abundance of alchemical
signifcations.79 In the Turba, salt water and sea water are synonyms for the aqua
permanens.80 In the Rosarium, Senior tell us that mercurius is made from salt: First
comes the ash, then comes the salt, and from that salt by diverse operations the
Mercury of the Philosophers.81 Arnaldus de Villanova (?-) reveals that

74 J. RUSKA, Das Buch der Alaune und Salze: Ein Grundwerk der sptlateinischen Alchemie
(Berlin: Verlag Chemie, ).
75 Gabriele FERRARIO, Origins and Transmission of the Liber de aluminibus et salibus, in
Lawrence M. PRINCIPE, ed., Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and
Early Modern Chemistry (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, ), .
76 Ar-Razi, as EBERLY points out, must not be confused with other well-known Razis, such as
Najm al-Din Razi; one must also be cognisant of the fact that the name bore more than
one western transliteration (e.g. Rhazes and Rhasis).
77 John EBERLY, Al-Kimia: Te Mystical Islamic Essence of the Sacred Art of Alchemy (Hillsdale,
NY: Sophia Perennis, ), -; Bernard D. HAAGE, Alchemy II: Antiquityth
Century, DGWE, .
78 EBERLY, Al-Kimia, .
79 Cf. texts adduced in JUNG, Mysterium Conjunctionis, in Te Collected Works of C. G. Jung.
(trans. R. F. C. Hull, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), f.
80 JUNG, Mysterium, .
81 Rosarium philosophorum, Art. Aurif., II, .

39


Whoever possesses the salt that can be melted, and the oil that cannot be burned, may
praise God.82 (Te idea of salt in connection to an oil that cannot be burned will be
seen to persist in de Lubiczs alchemical texts). Salt is both the root of the art and the
soap of the sages (sapo sapientum) and is described as bitter (sal amarum).83 Perhaps
the most interesting signifcation in the Rosarium, in light of the role salt would take as
the pivot of death and revivifcation, is the description of salt as the key that closes
and opens.84
Here one begins to meet the same duality of function that gives salt its inherent
ambiguity. However, its identifcation with the function of a key (clavis) helps
considerably in conceiving salt with more clarity. Te Gloria Mundi would later reveal
that salt becomes impure and pure of itself, it dissolves and coagulates itself, or, as the
sages say, locks and unlocks itself . 85 Here one gains a good intimation of the function
that salt would be later accorded in the traditions that emerge in Schwaller. Perhaps
the most concise encapsulation, in relation to the idea of salt as the pivot of death and
palingenesis, is Johan Christoph Steebs remark that sal sit ultimum in corruptione, sed
& primum in generatione, salt is the last in corruption and the frst in generation.86

Paracelsus Balsam and the Tria Prima

As has been mentioned, the keynote of alchemical precept and praxis pertaining to salt
was struck by Teophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, alias Paracelsus ().
Although it is important to recognise that the essential structure of the tria prima was
already in place before Paracelsus (indeed, it is inherent to the composition of
cinnabar), it is undeniable that the triad of sulphur, mercury and salt is raised by
Paracelsus to a previously unparalleled prominence.
Of course, Paracelsus was hardly one to follow ancient authorities merely at their
word. Indeed, it is imperative to recognise from the start that Paracelsus learnt much
of his knowledge about minerals directly from the mines. While Paracelsus travelled
widely, he lived and worked chiefy in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. If
anywhere is to be regarded as Paracelsus country, it is the Alpine regions of Salzburg
and its surrounds. Now, Salzburg, as its name (salt mountain) attests, has long been
the chief source of sodium for the surrounding regions: that is to say, rock salt, mined
from the mountains, not sea salt. To this day in Austria and southern Germany
common table salt is sold in an iodised form (Jodsalz) because its rock form, which is

82 Ros. phil., .
83 Ros. phil., : the root of the art is the soap of the sages. On salt as soap (and also bitter),
cf. the Egyptian use of natron.
84 Ros. phil., . JUNG points in this connection to the Aurora Consurgens, , where the
bride calls herself the key (clavicula).
85 Gloria mundi, Museum Hermeticum, (= WAITE, I, ); JUNG, Mysterium, .
86 Joh. Christophi STEEB, Coelum Sephiroticum Hebreaorum, .

40


pure sodium, lacks the benefcial impurities that accrue to sea salt (iodine being an
essential nutritional mineral).
In Paracelsus writings, the tria prima are often compared to the three aspects that
are present during the process of combustion (i.e. fre, smoke, ash): Whatever burns is
sulphur, whatever is humid is mercury, and that which is the balsam of these two is
salt.87 Paracelsians also employed the tria prima to represent the composition of the
human microcosm: spirit (mercury), soul (sulphur) and body (salt), and this
correlation was extended to some extent to the Christian trinity: father (sulphur), holy
spirit (mercury), son (salt).88 In this manner, states Paracelsus, in three things, all has
been created [] namely, in salt, in sulphur, and in liquid. In these three things all
things are contained, whether sensate or insensate [] So too you understand that in
the same manner that man is created [in the image of the triune God], so too all
creatures are created in the number of the Trinity, in the number three.89
Given the foregoing, it is tempting to oversimplify the meaning of salt as the
physical body, but if this were the case, if salt was merely representative of
corporeality, any mineral could have served the function of body. It does not answer
the question: why salt? One key to answering this questionwhile also avoiding the
narrow bind of oversimplifcationlies in Schwallers observation that salt is the
foundation and support of the body and the guardian of form.90 Tis is underscored
by the fact that Paracelsus describes salt as a balsam:

God, in his goodness and greatness, willed that man should be led by Nature to
such a state of necessity as to be unable to live naturally without natural Salt.
Hence its necessity in all foods. Salt is the balsam of Nature, which drives away
the corruption of the warm Sulphur with the moist Mercury, out of which two
ingredients man is by nature compacted. Now, since it is necessary that these
prime constituents should be nourished with something like themselves, it follows
as a matter of course that man must use ardent foods for the sustenance of his
internal Sulphur; moist foods for nourishing the Mercury, and salted foods for
keeping the Salt in a faculty for building up the body. Its power for conservation is
chiefy seen in the fact that it keeps dead fesh for a very long time from decay;
hence it is easy to guess that it will still more preserve living fesh.91

87 WAITE ed., I, -.
88 Cf. PARACELSUS, Concerning the Nature of Tings (WAITE ed. I, ): For Mercury is the
spirit, Sulphur is the soul, and Salt is the body.
89 PARACELSUS, Teologische und religionsphilosophische Schriften, ed. Kurt GOLDAMMER
(Wiesbaden and Stuttgart: Steiner, ), .
90 Temple I, ; Al-Kemi, . Emphasis added.
91 PARACELSUS, Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, ed. A. E. Waite (Edmonds, WA: Te
Alchemical Press, ), = Te Economy of Minerals, Ch. : Concerning the Virtues and
Properties of Salts in Alchemy and in Medicine.

41


Moreover, in German, Balsam possesses the meaning of something that heals or

preserves, and it is easy to see how this balsamic function is specifc to salt, a substance
which is still used widely to preserve the fesh of plants and animals. Indeed, salt is a
salve (from Latin sal), and it is worth noting in this connection that Balsam forms the
German word for mummifcation (Balsamierung, em-balm-ing), and that one of the
main substances used by the Egyptians for preserving their mummies was a salt
(natron), which served as an anhydrous (drying) agent, desiccating the fesh and
therefore preventing putrefaction. 92 Once again, the function of salt it to preserve, and
yet at the same time, salt also corrodes or is corrosion.93

Sal Philosophorum

Quite apart from common table salt, or any other purely chemical salt for that matter,
the medieval alchemists refer to the Salt of the Philosophers or Salt of the Sages (Sal
Sapientie). One thing that distinguishes what is often designated as our Salti.e.
philosophical saltfrom common chemical salts is the fact that it is seen to possess
the ability to preserve not plants but metals. Basil Valentine, in Key IV of his Zwlf
Schlssel, states:

Just as salt is the great preserver of all things and protects them from putrefaction,
so too is the salt of our magistry a protector of metals from annihilation and
corruption. However, if their balsamtheir embodied saline spirit (eingeleibter
Salz-Geist)were to die, withering away from nature like a body which perishes
and is no longer fruitful, then the spirit of metals will depart, leaving through
natural death an empty, dead husk from which no life can ever rise again.94

92 Natron was used in Egypt for its cleansing properties and imported by the Greeks for the
same purpose. See Robert K. RITNER, Innovations and Adaptations in Ancient Egyptian
Medicine, JNES , (), -, at p. with n. ; Warren DAWSON, A Strange
Drug, Aegyptus , , -.
93 Te corrupting reaction to oxygen that often forms the salts of metals is usually poisonous;
its colour, however, was considered the fower of the metal; the specifc colour of this
fower was understood as a vital signature of the metals spirit.
94 Basil VALENTINE, Zwlf Schlel, ed. TANCKIUS, vol. II, -: Gleich wie das Saltz ist eine
Erhalterin aller Ding / und bewahret fr der Fule / Also ist das Saltz unserer Meister auch
ein Schutz der Metallen / da sie nicht knnen gar zu nichte gemacht und verderbet
werden / da nicht wieder etwas darau werden solte / es sterbe dann ihr Balsam / und
eingeleibter Saltz-Geist von Natur ab / als denn wer der Leib todt / und knte nichts
fruchtbarliches weiter darau gemacht werden / Denn die Geister der Metallen werden
abgewichen / und nur durch natrliches Absterben eine leere todte Wohnung verlassen /
darinnen kein Leben wieder zu bringen.

42


Once again, through its dual naturepreserving and corruptinga fundamental

ambivalence adheres to the reality embodied in salt. And yet, the key to salt resides in
its ultimately integrating function. It is the clavis which binds and unbinds, preserves
and corrupts. It itself does not undergo the process which it enacts, embodies or
disembodies. Importantly, however, as one learns from Schwaller, salt acts as the
permanent mineral memory of this eternal process of generation and corruption.
Perhaps the most interesting and infuential synthesis of esoteric theological and
cosmological ideas on salt are those that crystallise in the tradition of Jacob Boehme,
where salt emerges as a spiritual-material integrum central to a trinitarian theosophia.
Here one learns that earthly or material salt recapitulates a heavenly potency called by
Boehme salliter; this heavenly salt is an explosive force of light and fre likened to
gunpowder (sal-nitre, cf. Paracelsus terrestrial lightning).95 For Boehme, this heavenly
and earthly salt are indicated by the two halves of the conventional salt symbol,
which resemble two hemispheres, one turned upon the other (one giving and the
other receiving). Tese theories reach a magnifcent depth of expression in Georg
von Wellings Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Teosophicum (). Welling (),
an alchemist for whom the books of theology and nature were thoroughly
complementary, worked as a director of mining in the town of Baden-Durlach (a
position that allowed him to explore his extensive knowledge and passion for both the
practicalities and the mysteries of geology). His monumental Opus Mago-
Cabbalisticum explores how the rich relationship of salt as fre/air/sulphur on one
hand, and water/earth/mercury on the other, is played out in all its intricacies to
convey the mysterious dynamic of the fre-water juncture embodied in heavenly and
earthly salt (Welling uses the Hebrew term for heaven, schemajim, literally, fre-water
alongside the superimposed alchemical triangles of fre and water to form the Star of
David). In his initial chapters, Welling describes the common symbol of salt as a
cubical fgure and thus the fgure of an earthly body; its form is diaphanous or
transparent, like glass; it is malleable and fuid and all bodies penetrate it with ease.
Its taste is sour or acidic and a little astringent; it is of a desiccating nature and
character; moreover, it is cooling and yet in its interior there is a natural or genuine
fre.96

95 Lawrence M. PRINCIPE and Andrew WEEKS, Jacob Boehmes Divine Substance Salitter: Its
Nature, Origin, and Relationship to Seventeenth Century Scientifc Teories, Te British
Journal for the History of Science, , (): -; PARACELSUS (Waite ed.), I, .
96 Georg von WELLING, Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Teosophicum: Der Ursprung, Natur,
Eigenschaften und Gebrauch des Saltzes, Schwefels und Mercurii, Andre Aufage (Frankfurt
und Leipzig: in der Fleischerischen Buchhandlung, ), (I, ), (II, ): Droben
ist . gesagt worden, da des gemeinen [Salz] Figur () sey cubisch, die da ist eine Figur
der irdischen Crper, und diese Eigenschaft habe es im Durchstreichen der Erde
bekommen. In eben demselben . wird gesagt, () seine Form sey diaphan oder
durchscheinend, gleich dem Glas. () Das es sey gssig und fssig, und alle Crper ganz
leichte durchgehe. () Sein Geschmack seye sauer, und ein wenig zusammenziehend; () Es

43


As Magee has demonstrated, hermetic infuences in general, and Paracelsian and

Boehmian ideas in particular, fed into and informed the work of G. W. F. Hegel.
According to an ancient and general opinion, writes Hegel, each body consists of four
elements. In more recent times, Paracelsus has regarded them as being composed of
mercury or fuidity, sulphur or oil, and salt, which Jacob Bhme called the great triad.
To this, Hegel adds: It should not be overlooked [] that in their essence they
contain and express the determinations of the Concept. According to Magee, this
admission is highly signifcant, for Hegel is saying that if the alchemical language of
Paracelsus, Bhme, and others is considered in a nonliteral way, its inner content is, in
essence, identical to his system (i.e. the determinations of the Concept).97
Interestingly, despite Boehmes known infuence on mainstream academic
philosophers such as Schelling and Hegel, it is Nietzsches Zarathustra that emerges
from the modern German academic tradition with the most abiding insights into the
phenomenon of salt. Curiously, although it possesses no apparent connections to
esoteric or alchemical discourse, Zarathustra as a whole is nevertheless pervaded with a
pronounced hermetic ambiance; somehow, Nietzsches remarks on salt penetrate right
to the heart of its mysterium. At the end of book three, Zarathustra not only speaks of
salt as binding opposites, but also connects this to a desire for eternity which cannot
be satisfed through simple procreation:

If ever I drunk a full draught from that vessel of foaming spice, in which all things
are well-blent:
If ever my hand fused the nearest to the farthest, fre to spirit, desire to sufering
and the worst to the best:
If I myself were a grain of that redeeming salt that makes all things in the vessel
well-blent:
for there is a salt that binds good with evil; for even the most evil is worthy to
be a spice for the fnal over-foaming
O how should I not be rutting after eternity and after the conjugal ring of rings
the ring of recurrence!
Never have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, for it would be this
woman that I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
For I love you, O eternity! 98

sey austrocknender Natur und Eigenschaft; () Khlend; Und () da es in seinem

Innersten sey ein wesentliches Feuer.
97 Glenn Alexander MAGEE, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, ), , citing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL, Philosophy of Nature, = M.
J. PETRY, trans. Hegels Philosophy of Nature, vols. (London: George Allen and Unwin,
), vol. , ; cf. also MAGEE, Hegel Dictionary, 8-.
98 NIETZSCHE, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Die sieben Siegel, = KSA, ): Wenn ich je vollen
Zuges trank aus jenem schumenden Wrz- und Mischkruge, in dem alle Dinge gut
gemischt sind: Wenn meine Hand je Fernstes zum Nchsten goss und Feuer zu Geist und

44


Salt as the redeeming juncture of opposites is framed by Nietzsche in terms that

evoke the themes of autonomous morality expressed in his Jenseits von Gut und Bsen.
Running deeper, however, is the surprising link that Nietzsche makes between salt and
a desire for eternity that cannot be met through procreation; here one recognises not
only the Indo-European path of the fathers versus the path of the gods, but also the
two paths in alchemy known as la voie humide and la voie schethe wet and the dry
ways. Nietzsche taps directly into the crux of the human uvre. Genetic continuity, i.e.
continuity of and through the species, does not satisfy the souls desire for eternity;
only the desire that is fxed in the salt, deep in the bones, has the capacity to survive
biological generation and corruption. Nietzsches love for eternity expresses the same
reality that Schwaller articulated in terms of the saline nucleus in the femur: the path
of eternity, palingenesis and resurrection, hinges not on the chromosomes but upon a
fxed mineral salt.

Salt in Schwallers Alchemy

Unity manifests itself as Trinity. It is the creatrix of form, but still not form itself; form
emerges through movement, that is, Time and Space.99
Schwaller de Lubicz

Sulphur, Mercury and Salt

Schwallers understanding of the tria prima as the creatrix of form is essentially

consonant with the trinitarian conceptions of Egyptian (and later Pythagorean)
cosmogonic theology. Here, the creators divine hypostasesHu, Sia and Heka
manifest as the extra- or hyper-cosmic forces that exist before creation; they are the
forces necessary to the establishment of creation rather than creation per se. Tis may
be compared to the identical conception that emerges in Iamblichean theurgy, which
distinguishes between hypercosmic and encosmic divinities, or the same essential
Lust zu Leid und Schlimmstes zum Gtigsten: Wenn ich selber ein Korn bin von jenem
erlsenden Salze, welches macht, dass alle Dinge im Mischkruge gut sich mischen:
denn es giebt ein Salz, das Gutes mit Bsem bindet; und auch das Bseste ist zum Wrzen
wrdig und zum letzten berschumen: Oh wie sollte ich nicht nach der Ewigkeit
brnstig sein und nach dem hochzeitlichen Ring der Ringe, dem Ring der
Wiederkunft? Nie noch fand ich das Weib, von dem ich Kinder mochte, sei denn dieses
Weib, das ich lieb: denn ich liebe dich, oh Ewigkeit! De nn i ch li ebe dich , oh
Ewig k e it !
99 SCHWALLER, Le monde de la trinit, Notes et Propos indits I, : LUnit se manifeste
comme Trinit. Celle-ci est cratrice de la forme, mais non encore forme elle-mme,
laquelle va apparatre par le mouvement, cest--dire Temps dans lEspace.

45


principles as carried through into the trinitarian theology of Eastern Orthodoxy, which
distinguishes between uncreated and created energies. Beyond these general point of
orientation, Schwallers hermetic metaphysics accorded the tria prima some very
specifc characteristics:

Te Trinity, that is to say the Tree Principles, is the basis of all reasoning, and this
is why in the whole series of genesis it is necessary to have all [three] to establish
the foundational Triad that will be[come] the particular Triad. It includes frst of
all an abstract or nourishing datum, secondly a datum of measure, rhythmisation
and fxation, and fnally, a datum which is concrete or fxed like seed. Tis is what
the hermetic philosophers have transcribed, concretely and symbolically, by
Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, playing on the metallic appearance in which metallic
Mercury plays the role of nutritive substance, Sulphur the coagulant of this
Mercury, and Salt the fxed product of this function. In general, everything in
nature, being a formed Species, will be Salt. Everything that coagulates a
nourishing substance will be Sulphur or of the nature of Sulphur, from the
chromosome to the curdling of milk. Everything that is coagulable will be
Mercury, whatever its form.100

Te image of coagulationwith Sulphur as the coagulating agent, Mercury as the

coagulated substance, and Salt as the resulting formis used repeatedly by Schwaller.
101
Te formal articulation of this idea, as published in his mature uvre, connects the
motif to the embryological process:

In biology, the great mystery is the existence, in all living beings, of albumin or
albuminoid (proteinaceous) matter. One of the albuminoid substances is
coagulable by heat (the white of the egg is of this type), another is not. Te

100 SCHWALLER, Le monde de la trinit, Notes et propos indits I, -: La Trinit , cest--dire

les Trois Principes, sont la base de tout raisonnement, cest pourquoi dans toute chane de
gense il faut avant tout tablir la Triade de base qui sera le Triade particulire. Elle
comprend toujours dabord une donne abstraite ou nourricire, une donne de mesure,
de rhythmisation, de fxation et, fnalement, une donne concrte ou fxe comme
semence. Cest ce que les philosophes hermtiques ont transcrit concrtement,
symboliquement, par Mercure, Soufre et Sel, jouant sur lapparence mtallique o le
Mercure mtallique joue le rle du substance nourricire, le Soufre tant coagulant de ce
Mercure, le Sel est le produit fxe de cette fonction. En gnralisant: tout dans la Nature
tant Espce forme, sera Sel: tout ce qui coagule une nourriture sera Soufre ou de nature
de Soufre, depuis le chromosome jusquau caill du lait. Tout ce qui es coagulable sera
Mercure, quelle que soit sa forme.
101 On the development of the idea of salt as neutralisation reaction between an acid and a
base in chemistry and alchemy, see the numerous texts and contexts cited in A. M.
DUNCAN, Styles of Language and Modes of Chemical Tought, Ambix , (): passim
(-).

46


albuminoid substance carrying the spermatozoa is of this latter type. Te

albuminoid sperm cannot be coagulated because it carries the spermatozoa that
coagulate the albuminoid substance of the female ovum. As soon as one
spermatozoon has penetrated the ovum, this ovum coagulates on its surface, thus
preventing any further penetration: fertilisation has occurred. (In reality, this
impenetrability is not caused by a material obstacle, the solid shell, but by the fact
that the two equal energetic polarities repel one another). Te spermatozoon
therefore plays the role of a vital coagulating fre just as common fre coagulates
the feminine albumin. Tis is the action of a masculine fre in a cold, passive,
feminine environment. Here also, there are always material carriers for these
energies, but they manifest the existence of an energy with an active male aspect
and a passive female aspect that undergoes or submits to it. Ordinary fre brutally
coagulates the white of an egg, but the spermatozoon coagulates it gently by
specifying it into the embryo of its species. Tis image shows that the potentiality
of the seed passes to a defned efect through the coagulation of a passive
substance, similar to the action of an acid liquid in an alkaline liquid, which forms
a specifed salt. Now the sperm is no more acid than the male albumin, but it
plays in the animal kingdom [animalement] the same role as acid; ordinary fre is
neither male nor acid and yet it has a type of male and acid action. Tis and other
considerations incline the philosopher to speak of an Activity that is positive, acid
and coagulating, without material carrier, and of a Passivity, a substance that is
negative, alkaline, and coagulable, also without material carrier. From their
interaction results the initial, not-yet-specifed coagulation, the threefold Unity,
which is also called the Creative Logos (Word, Verbe) because the Logos, as
speech, only signifes the name, that is, the defnition of the specifcity of things.

102 Temple I, -/I, : En biologie le grand mystre est lexistence, chez tout tre vivant, de
lalbumine ou des matires albuminodes (protniques). Lune des substances
albuminodes est coagulable la chaleur (le blanc duf en est le type), lautre ne lest pas.
Le type de cette dernire est la substance albuminode portant le spermatozoaire. Le
sperme albumonode ne peut pas tre coagulable puisquil porte le spermatozoaire
coagulant la substance albumonode de lovule fminin. Ds quun des spermatozodes a
pntr lovule, celui-ci se coagule sa surface et empche toute autre pntration: la
fcondation a eu lieu. [Cette impntrabilit nest pas en ralit provoque par un obstacle
matriel, la coque solide, mais par le fait que deux polarits nergtiques gales se
repoussent.] Le spermatozoaire joue donc le rle dun feu coagulant vital comme le feu
vulgaire coagule lalbumine fminine. Cest laction dun feu masculin en un milieu passif,
froid, fminin. Il y a toujours encore, ici, des porteurs matriels de ces nergies, mais ils
manifestent lexistence dune nergie laspect mle actif, et dun aspect fminin passif qui
subit. Le feu ordinaire coagule brutalement le blanc duf, mais le spermatozoaire le
coagule doucement en le spcifant en embryon de son espce. Ceci est une image qui
montre que la virtualit de la semence passe lefet dfni travers la coagulation dune
substance passive, semblable laction dun liquide acide en un liquide alcalin formant
un sel dfni. Or le spermatozoaire, pas plus que lalbumine mle, nest acide, mais il joue

47


To salt as the mean term between the agent and patient of coagulation, he
occasionally adds other revealing expressions, such as the following:

In geometry, in a triangle, the given line is Mercury, the Angles are Sulphur, and
the resultant triangle is Salt.103

Whereas here, Schwaller identifes Salt with a datum or given which is fxed like
seed (une donne concrte ou fxe comme semence), elsewhere he identifes the active,
sulphuric function with that of the seed (semence). What this means is that the neutral
saline product, once formed, then acts in the sulphuric capacity of a seed and ferment,
but also foundation:

It can only be a matter of an active Fire, that is, of a seminal intensity, like the
fre of pepper, for example, or better: the fre of either an organic or a
catalysing ferment. Te character of all the ferments, i.e. the seeds, is to determine
into Time and Space a form of nourishmentin principle without form; clearly,
therefore, it plays a coagulating role. Te coagulation of all bloods is precisely
their fxation into the form of the species of the coagulating seed, the coagulation
being, as in other cases, a transformation of an aquatic element into a terrestrial or
solid element, without desiccation and without addition or diminution of the
component parts.104

animalement le mme rle; le feu ordinaire nest ni mle ni acide, il est pourtant le type de
laction mle et acide. Ceci, et dautres considrations, incitent le philosophe parler dune
Activit positive, acide, coagulante, sans porteur matriel, et dune Passivit, substance
ngative, alcaline, coagulable, galement sans caractre matriel. De leur interaction rsulte
le premire coagulation encore non spcife, lUnit ternaire, aussi appele le Verbe
crateur parce que le Verbe, en tant que parole, ne signife que le Nom, cest--dire la
dfnition de la spcifcit des choses (trans. modifed).
103 SCHWALLER, Le monde de la trinit, Notes et propos indits I, : En gomtrie, dans un
triangle, la ligne donne est Mercure, les Angles sont Soufre, le triangle qui en rsulte est
Sel.
104 SCHWALLER, La semence, Notes et propos indits I, : Il ne peut alors sagir que dun Feu
actif, cest--dire dune intensit sminale, comme le feu du poivre, par exemple, ou
bien le feu dun ferment organique, ou bien dune ferment catalyseur. Le caractre de
tous les ferments, cest--dire des semences, tant de dterminer en Temps et Espace une
nourritureen principe sans forme, cest donc nettement un rle coagulant. La
coagulation de tous le sangs tant prcisment leur fxation en forme de lespce de la
semence coagulante, la coagulation tant, par ailleurs, un changement dun lment
aquatique en lment terrestre ou solide, sans desschement, sans addition ou diminution
de composants.

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In the identifcation of both sulphur and salt as semence, one discerns a specifc
coherence of opposites that, in elemental terms, is described by the expression Fire of
the Earth. Te salt is described in the passage quoted above as a seed (semence). Tis
seed becomes seed again through the process of tree and fruit (growth, ferment,
coagulation). It is at once a beginning and a fnality (prima and ultima materia). Te
reality described is non-dual. Beginning and end partake of something that is not
describable by an exclusively linear causality; and yet it is seen to grow or develop
along a defnite line or path of cause and efect; at the same time it partakes of a
cyclic or self-returning character; and yet, for Schwaller, it is not the circle but the
spherical spiral that provides the true image of its reality: a vision which encompasses a
punctillar centre, a process of cyclic departure and return from this centre (oscillation),
as well as linear development, all of which are merely partial descriptors of a more
encompassing, and yet more mysterious, reality-process. Te fundamental coherence
of this vision to the Bewutwerdungsphnomenologie of Jean Gebser ()
consolidates the signifcance of Schwallers perception for the ontology of the
primordial unity which is at once duality and trinity. For Gebser, consciousness
manifests through point-like (vital-magical), polar-cyclic (mythic-psychological) and
rectilinear (mental-rational) ontologies, each being a visible crystallisation of the ever-
present, invisible and originary ontology which unfolds itself not according to
exclusively unitary, cyclic or linear modalities of time and space, but according to its
own innate integrum.
Tus there is no contradiction in fnding the presence of fery sulphur in the
desiccating dryness of the salt, for it is precisely in the one substance that the sulphuric
seed (active function) and saline seed (fxed kernel) cohere. Te fxed, concrete seed-
form (itself a coagulation of mercury by sulphur) contains the active sulphuric
functions (the coagulating rhythms) which it will impose upon the nutritive mercurial
substance (unformed matter). One nature, as a Graeco-Egyptian alchemical formula
puts it, acts upon itself .

Salt and the Fire of the Earth

Among the various perspectives that have been surveyed on the nature and the
principles inherent to salt, it is perhaps the Pythagorean statementsalt is born from
the purest sources, the sun and the seathat pertains most directly to the deeper
meaning of Schwallers hermetic phenomenology. Salt for Schwaller was placed in a
septennial relationship comprising the tria prima and the four elements (Illustration
). Elementally, salt was situated by Schwaller at the end of a progression beginning
with fre and air and ending in water and earth. Fire and air form a triad with sulphur;
air and water form a triad with mercury; water and earth form a triad with salt. But
salt was also understood to join the end of this progression to a new beginning, to a
new fre/sulphur, exactly as the octave recapitulates the primordial tonos in musical

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harmony. For Schwaller, it was precisely this juncture of abstract and concrete (fre
and earth) that was identifed with the formation of the philosophers stone (or at least
the key to the formation of the philosophers stone):

ILLUSTRATION 3: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRIA PRIMA AND TETRASTOICHEIA

Trinity (Sulphur-Mercury-Salt) begets quaternary (Fire-Air-Water-Earth). Te juncture of
Fire and Earth (abstract and concrete) is the means by which the end of the series is
linked to its beginning. Diagram after Schwaller and VandenBroeck.

In this confguration (which prefgures the discussion of de Lubiczs colour theory

that will be undertaken in chapter fve), one begin to see the hermetic problem of
salt, i.e. its mysterium. Salt partakes of something that stands between water and fre
(Pythagoras purest sources) in a way that is intimately related to earth, to which it
imparts its dryness. Here one fnds an imbroglio that suggests at once an element and
a principle. Its connection to fre is felt in the hermetic associations of the elements
(the sulphuric triad, fre and air, is characterised by heat; the mercurial triad, air and
water, is characterised by humidity or wetness, while the saline triad, water and earth,
is characterised by dryness: thus the desiccating quality of salt can only come from fre).
Vissers remarks, once again, prove cogent and penetrating:

Salt, once isolated, is white and glittering. It is the opposite of wet. You win it by
freeing it from water with the help of fre and the sun, and it dries out fesh.
Eating salt causes thirst. Dryness, in the pre-Socratic cosmic system which still
informs our imagery, is always connected with fre, heat, and light.105

105 VISSER, .

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Tus, inherent to salt is an equal participation in fre, sulphur and heat (+) and
water, mercury, and wetness (), such that it may be analogised with a chemical
neutralisation reaction in which the positive and negative values become electrically
equalised. Tis neutral condition is for Schwaller the very ground of being in which we
are existentially and phenomenologically situated (everything in nature, being a
formed Species, will be Salt). Tus, to see existencereality as we know itas a
neutralisation reaction between an active sulphuric function (divinity, logos, eidos) and
passive mercurial substance (prima materia), to perceive the coagulating sulphur and
the nourishing mercury through the cinnabar of all things, this is to fnd the
philosophers stone. It is fundamentally, for Schwaller, a metaphysics of perception.

A Nondual Spiritual Alchemy

In sum, Schwallers alchemy is a non-dual spiritual alchemy. What is meant by this is

that Lubiczian alchemy is not a dualistic spiritual alchemy that dismisses the physical
or physiological aspects of the alchemical tradition as somehow inferior or irrelevant to
the purely spiritual aspects of the alchemical purview. In other words, it is not an
alchemy that can be subsumed under the dualistic spiritual interpretation of Atwood
(which became largely normative in esoteric circles throughout the Nineteenth and
Twentieth centuries) or the psychological interpretation of Silberer and Jung, which
views the material aspect of alchemy as merely a screen for the projection of the
souls archetypal dramaturgy. Schwallers alchemy grows from the milieu of Parisian
alchemists surrounding Fulcanelli, who were deeply immersed in the practical,
laboratory aspects of the work, but who were ultimately seeking the verifcation not of
material but spiritual processes. Te Parisian alchemists of the fn-de-sicle and the
early Twentieth century looked not to Atwood (et al.), but to the texts of Basil
Valentine, Nicolas Flamel, and later, Cyliani, as exemplars of the alchemical tradition.
For Schwaller, these seemingly bewildering texts not only masked a distinct laboratory
process (a fact that has been increasingly recognised by scholars through specifc
studies of Early Modern alchemists such Newton and Philalethes), but ran deeper still:
behind the operative process and the physical manipulations, these texts preserved
(and required) a method of perception based on struggle and breakthrough that
mirrored the perceptual efort necessitated in the reading of the symbolic language of
nature herself (hence the importance of the idea of the liber naturae, the book of
nature along with its signatura). It was precisely this efort to think according to a
deeper symbolic imperative that gave Schwaller the clavis hermeneutica to the text of
the Pharaonic temple. While scholars see the idea of a monolithic esoteric, hermetic or
alchemical tradition as historically problematic, merely an identity construct,
Schwaller saw the breakthrough to the perception of an actual ontological reality that
eludes a purely quantitative epistemology as the true test of a hermetic adept. For
Schwaller, the perception of this reality, at once abstract and concrete, the very

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bedrock of existence, at once material and spiritual, did not need a historical
transmission because it was ever-present, therefore perennially available to human
perception. To discover this ontological bedrock was equivalent to fnding the
stone, which was seen more as the process underpinning and embodied in materiality
per sethe mineral kingdom being regarded as the frst material manifestation of spirit
than as a peculiar piece of isolatable matter. For Schwaller it was this fundamental
mode of reality-apperception, rather than rigid points of technical or doctrinal
exegesis, that formed the true hidden current of continuity within the hermetic
tradition, indelibly marking all good texts and adepts. But it also had a material
application or proof, and this formed the experimentum crucis (and here it should be
noted that the term experimentum, in Latin as in French, means both experiment and
experience). Alchemy for Schwaller thus centred on a metaphysics of perception but
also a material proof that this perception was germane to the very structure of matter
and existence as we known it.

Spiritual Corporifcation

Te thing that is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable. Te thing that is sown is
contemptible, but what is raised is glorious. Te thing that is sown is weak, but what is raised is
powerful. When it is sown it embodies the soul (psyche), when it is raised it embodies the spirit
(pneuma).
I Corinthians :-.

Having surveyed the ambivalent yet ultimately integrating symbolism of salt, we are
now in a position to understand the hermetic application of this principle to the aims
of hieratic alchemy: the transmutation of the physical corpus into an immortal
resurrection body: an act of spiritual concretion in which the body is spiritualised and
the spirit corporifed. Te deeper valences of alchemy thus unfold as both a material
and a spiritual process and, as will be explored in the following chapter, become
comprehensible as a form of theurgic apotheosis. As the words of the sixth century
Syrian theurgist, Iamblichus, make clear, the decidedly anagogic nature of the divine
energies (theon ergon) emerge as central to the metaphysics of perception:

[T]he presence of the Gods gives us health of body, virtue of soul and purity of
mind. In short, it elevates everything in us to its proper principle. It annihilates
what is cold and destructive in us, it increases our heat and causes it to become
more powerful and dominant. It makes everything in the soul consonant with the
Nous [mind, consciousness]; it causes a light to shine with intelligible harmony,

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and it reveals the incorporeal as corporeal to the eyes of the soul by means of the
eyes of the body.106

Alchemy and the Resurrection Body

Te idea of the fxed alchemical salt fnds its most signifcant forebears in the concept
of the corpus resurrectionis.107 In this respect, Schwaller is one of the few modern
(Western) alchemists to possess what Corbin, in reference to Jaldak, called a very
lucid consciousness of the spiritual fnality and of the esoteric sense of the alchemical
operation accomplished on sensible species. 108 Tis spiritual fnality, in the
metaphysical purview of Islamic illuminationist theosophy, is no less than the creation
of a resurrection body (corpus resurrectionis). In Schwallers alchemy one sees very
clearly that all the intensifcations made on material species occur through an
inscription on the entitys indestructible nucleus (alchemically, a mineral salt); because
this nucleus is the foundation of the body, the more intensifcations it experiences, the
more its essential (primordial but also future) body will approach the perfect
equilibrium of an indestructible (and paradoxically, incorporeal) physical vehicle until
the point is reached where, ultimately, luminous consciousness itself becomes its own
perfect body. Tus, the abstract and the concrete, the volatile and the fxed, are
ultimately conjoined through a process of intensifcation registered permanently in the
beings incorruptible aspectthe salt in the bones or ashes (cf. the Hebrew luz or os
sacrum).
What is the nature of this spiritual body? In a remark by Saint Gregory the
Sinaite, the spiritual body is equated with the process of thesis (deifcation) and thus
becomes amenable to a theurgical interpretation:

Te incorruptible body will be earthly, but without moisture and coarseness,

having been unutterably changed from animate to spiritual, so that it will be both
of the dust and heavenly. Just as it was created in the beginning, so also will it arise,
that it may be conformable to the image of the Son of Man by entire participation in
deifcation.109

106 IAMBLICHUS, De Mysteriis, , -.; trans. SHAW, .

107 Cf., most notably, the resurrection theology of the Gospel of Paul, the Shaikh school in
Iranian Sufsm, and the diamond body of Vajrayana Buddhism.
108 Henry CORBIN, Le Livre des sept Statues dApollonios de Tyane, comment par
Jaldak, Alchimie comme art hiratique, ed. Pierre Lory (Paris: LHerne, ), -: Ses
nombreux ouvrages se signalent par sa conscience trs lucide de la fnalit spirituelle et du
sens sotrique de lopration alchimique accomplie sur des espces sensibles .
109 Saint GREGORY THE SINAITE, Chapters on Commandments and Dogmas, trans. Seraphim
ROSE, Genesis, Creation and Early Man (= Philokalia, Russian, vol. ; English, vol. ).

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Te matter of the spiritual body is clearly nondual (both of dust and heavenly).
Robert Avens, in a preface to a discussion of Corbin and Swedenborgs contributions
to the understanding of the spiritual body, helps situate the deeper meaning that
pertains to the matter of the resurrection body:

It seems clear, then, that whatever Paul might have meant by the expression
spiritual body, he did not mean that the resurrected bodies were numerically
identical with the earthly bodiesa view that was advocated by most writers for
the Western or Latin church. Te crucial question in all speculations of this kind
has to do with Pauls treatment of matter. We are naturally perplexed with the
notion of a body that is composed of a material other than physical matter.
Probably the best that can be said on this score is that Paul had chosen a middle
course between, on the one hand, a crassly materialistic doctrine of physical
resurrection (reanimation of a corpse) and, on the other hand, a dualistic doctrine
of the liberation of the soul from the body.110

Tus, the resurrection body, like the alchemical salt, forms a paradoxical ligature
between abstract and concrete, metaphysical and physical, spirit and body. While
orthodox theologians such as Seraphim Rose draw on this and other passages to
emphasise the Patristic doctrine that the body of Adam, the body that one will return
to in resurrection, was (and is) diferent to ones current, corruptible body, the ultimate
nature of the matter of the resurrection body must remain a mystery. In this respect,
Gregory of Nyssas remarks, from a treatise entitled On the Soul and Resurrection
may perhaps be taken as fnal:

Te true explanation of all these questions is stored up in the treasure-houses of

Wisdom, and will not come to the light until that moment when we shall be
taught the mystery of Resurrection by the reality of it. [] to embrace it in a
defnition, we will say that the Resurrection is the reconstitution of our nature in
its original form.111

Te original form he refers to is, of course, the Adamic, i.e. adamantine body, with
obvious parallels to the Indo-Tibetan vajra (diamond) body. As Rose emphasises, the
only thing that is certain is that the resurrection body will be diferent from its current,
i.e. corruptible, form. As to whether it is spirit or matter, or a nondual state that
embraces yet supersedes both (per Corbins mundus imaginalis, which spiritualises
bodies and embodies spirit), it is perhaps best to remain apophatic.

110 Robert AVENS, Re-Visioning Resurrection: St. Paul and Swedenborg, Journal of Religion
and Health , (): -.
111 GREGORY of NYSSA, On the Soul and Resurrection; Nicene & Post Nicene Fathers V: Gregory
of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc. .

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As C. F. D. Moule notes, however, the somewhat ambiguous relationship between

the mortal and incorruptible bodies may well inhere in the fact that transmutation
between them was possible: for Moule, the Pauline resurrection theology was perhaps
wholly novel and derived directly from his experience of Christnamely, that matter
is to be used but transformed in the process of obedient surrender to the will of God.
Matter is not illusory, continues Moule; it is not to be shunned and escaped from,
nor yet exactly destined to be annihilated [] Rather, matter is to be transformed into
that which transcends it.112 Tese remarks approach the essence of the (nondual)
alchemical uvre in a way that confrms what one may call its theurgic and perhaps
even tantric sense insofar as it recognises and embraces the body and matter as a vehicles
or foundations for liberation. In short, macrocosmically and microcosmically, material
substance is to be transformed into a spiritual vehicle and instrument.

112 C. F. D. MOULE, St. Paul and Dualism: Te Pauline Conception of Resurrection, New
Testament Studies , (): ; cf. also P. W. GOOCH, On the Disembodied Resurrected
Persons: A Study in the Logic of Christian Eschatology, Religious Studies , -.

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