#coniunctio

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

On projection.

[thank you Thea]

[themirrorofsienna]

Wilgefortis: The Crucified Paradox

Among the forgotten legends of Christendom stands Wilgefortis, the crucified woman with a beard. Her image unsettled the faithful because it broke the logic of gender and form. But behind the strangeness shines a profound sigil. Wilgefortis embodies the paradox where the Christian Cross and the Hermetic caduceus meet. She is woman and man, victim and redeemer, grotesque and luminous. The beard that grew upon her face freed her from a forced marriage, but condemned her to death. Crucified like Christ, she became the representation of a union that cannot be confined to moral order. Her body itself turned into a revelation of the coincidentia oppositorum.

To contemplate her is to see Mary and Hermes united. In her flesh the Cross becomes the vessel of Hermes, and Hermes reveals himself as Cross. This is the secret power of her image: the androgynous saint nailed between Heaven and Earth.

More at The Mirror of Sienna.

Fiat Lux.

[arsanimarum]

Chemical Wedding : in alchemy, the joining (coniunctio) of the male elements fire and air (represented by sulphur) and the female elements water and earth (represented by argent vive or quicksilver) in philosophical – mercury – symbolized by gold (King Sol) and silver (Queen Luna) respectively – in the final phase of the magical opus. This is the fusion of opposites which produces the Philosopher’s Stone.

[argentvive]

Chemical Wedding--What Does It Look Like?

Anonymous said:                                                                           

 Hello! Sorry for my ignorance, but what is a chemical wedding/what are the hallmarks of one?

*********************************************************

In the Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, Lyndy Abraham defines chemical wedding as--

one of the central images of the opus alchymicum and a crucial operation in the creation of the philosopher’s stone.  The alchemists were ultimately concerned with the union of substances, the reconciliation of opposites. Through the ‘marriage’ of opposites the goal of the opus, the production of gold and its metaphysical equivalent was obtained. (p. 35)

So that’s the role and importance of the chemical wedding.  Pretty vague, right? But over the centuries the most common imagery has been a man and woman--often King Sol/Sulphur and Queen Luna/Mercury--1. standing together, 2. conjoined, or 3. combined into a hermaphroditic figure. 

Examples:

Standing together (Splendor solis)

Conjoined (Rosarium philosophorum):

The rebis/androgyne/hermaphrodite (Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit):

The central process of alchemy is dissolution and coagulation--you dissolve (solve) and then coagulate (coagula) your raw material.  So it’s pretty common to have your alchemical couple be dissolved somehow--taking a bath, for example--and then coagulated, either by fire or piercing weapons.

A very straightforward chemical wedding is presented in Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, based on Masonic alchemy.  The male and female protagonists,  Tamino and Pamina, go through trials by fire and water together, and are transformed into full members of the Brotherhood.  A chemical wedding results in a transformation of the couple.  

In A Song of Ice and Fire, the only final, permanent chemical wedding so far is that between Jaime and Brienne, which I wrote about here.

https://argentvive.tumblr.com/post/171582701530/jaime-and-brienne-in-the-bath

I hope this shows you that there are lots of ways for an author to portray a chemical wedding in a work of literature.  

[igormag]

Agostino Arrivabene (b. 1967), Coniunctio (diptico), 2016-17. oil on wood, 60 x 50 cm

[argentvive]

Chemical Weddings: John Donne and Jon Snow

I’m currently reading Stanton J. Linden’s Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (1996).  Linden quotes in full the third stanza of Donne’s poem “Canonization” as a particularly vibrant example of the coniunctio (Chemical Wedding).  He even includes this alchemical image from the Rosarium philosophorum (1550)--the same image I’ve posted several times as a likely inspiration for Jon and Daenerys on the boat.

The Male Principle of the Work (Sun) and the Female Principle of the Work (Moon) floating on the Mercurial Sea.

Here’s the stanza from Donne.  It’s written in the first person: Donne is the male lover.

Call us what you will, wee’are made such by love;

Call her one, mee another flye, 

We’are Tapers too, and at our owne cost die, 

And we in us finde the’Eagle and the dove.

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit

By us, we two being one, are it.

So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit.

We dye and rise the same, and prove

Mysterious by this love. 

The phoenix is a symbol for the Red Stone/the Philosopher’s Stone, so Donne is saying that his union with his lover--”we two being one”--has created the Stone. The “neutrall thing” to which “both sexes fit” is the rebis, androgyne, hermaphrodite, as I’ve written before.  To achieve this union, the lovers die--”We dye”--and are resurrected as one being--”rise the same.”

As Linden writes:

This merging, which entails the loss of the lovers’ individual identities, thus embodies a new unified perfection.... (p. 176)

As Stella Revard put it:

The point is that union annihilates the differences between war and peace, male and female, for love makes the two, now become one, indistinguishable in feeling and being. (quoted in Linden, p. 176)

Donne takes the idea of the Chemical Wedding about as far as it can go.  In a story, unlike a poem, the two lovers retain their separate bodies.  What merges, though, are their goals and mission.

Jon and Dany surrender their goals and identities to one another.  First, on Dragonstone, after initially refusing to acknowledge Jon as King in the North, she lets his two declarations of his Kingship stand without contradiction:

1. When Dany, Jon, Tyrion and rest are gathered in the map room debating how to oppose the wights, Jon states “I am a king” and insists on his right to leave.

2. When Jon Is about to leave, he fishes for a compliment from Dany by saying “If I don’t return, at least you won’t have to deal with the King in the North  anymore.”

Jon is the White King to Daenerys’ Red Queen.  

Then, when Jon asks Daenerys to rescue him and his companions Beyond the Wall, she sets off, with all her dragons.  Jon’s thought has become her thought.  Tyrion actually makes a good argument against it, but she can’t hear it anymore.

After the rescue, on the ship at Eastwatch, the merger of their missions is articulated and sealed.  Jon submits to Daenerys as “My Queen” and agrees to her one demand, that he bend the knee.  She submits to Jon’s mission to fight the wights first, to put aside the goal that she has pursued since the first book.  This is an enormous sacrifice for her, one that seems underappreciated by some fans.  

Jon and Daenerys submit to each other and accept each other’s mission.  But Dany’s sacrifice is the greater.  Jon became King in the North almost by accident; it was never his goal in life.  The most he dreamed of was being Lord of Winterfell. Dany has been pursuing the Iron Throne ever since Drogo’s death.  That quest defined her, gave her her identity.  But now--

“We will defeat the Night King.  We will do it together.”

And once their goals and mission have merged, and their thoughts, their feelings and their bodies merge as well.  

And maybe they both will become volatile and fly!

[argentvive]

Where Are Jon and Dany in this Picture?

This engraving from Steffan Michelspacher’s Cabala of 1616 shows the Coniunctio (coition, Chemical Wedding) stage of the alchemical process and includes many of the aspects I’ve been posting about.  

-On the corners are the Four Elements: fire (Ignis), air (Aeris), water (Aquae), and earth (Terrae).

--The large circle portrays the symbols and images of the twelve signs of the Zodiac

--Standing on the mountainside are the Seven Gods and Goddesses who correspond to the seven heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye.  (On the lower right, notice Saturn with his scythe--the inspiration for the Dothraki and their characteristic weapon).  

--The seven steps are labeled with the stages of processing the raw material.

--In the foreground, left, is the alchemist who is following the hare underground. (The hare is a symbol of the prima materia, and in The Little White Horse, Maria and Robin follow Serena the Hare through the roots of a tree in the course of their adventures.  Not to mention the opening scene of Alice in Wonderland, where Alice follows the White Rabbit underground.)

--So where are Jon and Dany?  At the top of the stairs, INSIDE the mountain.  They are naked (purified).  The sun and moon over their heads mark them as the Sulphur and Mercury whose conjunction will create the Philosopher’s Stone. 

--The man in the blindfold?  Just an ignorant man who doesn’t know alchemy.  A bit of 17th century snark, maybe.  

[inthewindtunnel]

Dimitri Berzerk

ft Norms Dom

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Martin Parra EBM Mix

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-EP-