2. The Alchemical Popess: the female adept, Maris Prophetess, initiator, guide, and Juno, Queen over the metals.
.Here are a few examples of the Popess, first from the PMB (Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo) deck, done for the Sforza of Milan in the 1450s or early 1460s; then the Geoffrey, Lyon 1558, and finally the Noblet of c. 1650 Paris. Typical features are the three-tired tiara, similar to the Pope's, and the book she holds. Geoffrey has her holding a key; the Pope holds a similar key.
I
compared the alchemist to the Bateleur/Magician. In alchemical texts
there is sometimes as well a female figure in the laboratory with him,
called the soror mystica. O'Neill in Tarot Symbolism
(p. 276) compares her to the tarot PopessO'Neill says that her role would
have been to read from the old alchemical books while the alchemist
conducted his experiments. That is prompted by the book that we see in the Popess's hands. But when we look at early alchemical imagery, we see more than that. Sometimes she is an equal participant in alchemical experiments, as in the Mutus Liber of 1677.
In the 16th century manuscript Alchemia, she has a key, as in the Geoffrey; that could represent a book, but it could also mark her out as someone who holds secrets and is a guide through locked doors. There is a similar masculine figure, who may or may not be the alchemist. It might be a masculine guide of the same mystical quality as the soror.
In alchemical works we also see among famous alchemical adepts of the past female figures, not many, but some. Probably the most famous was Maria Prophetess, said to be the sister of Moses, also known as Miriam. She is said to have invented the double boiler, as a method of heating substances gently without boiling or burning them. Even today in France a double boilers is called a Bain Marie, Bath of Mary. The image below is from Michael Maier's Symbolae aurae mensae of 1617.
Another feminine figure corresponding to the Popess can be seen in the manuscript known as Apostolica
Vaticana, Cod. Pal. Lat. 1066. Hans Liebeschutz, who did the definitive
work on this text, dated it to c. 1420. I gave one illumination from
this work in connection with the Fool. Here is the illustration (on f.
227r of the manuscript). (1)
The
accompanying text gives no clue as to what this lady is doing here with
her pots. You will notice that she and
the man stand in front of a group of pots containing different ingredients, rather like the Bateleur/ alchemist at his table. The man is stabbing a creature with many eyes; that identifies him as Mercury slaying Argus. Argus was guarding the nymph
Io for Juno, and Jupiter lusted after her. So he told Mercury to kill Argus.
Mercury did the deed by lulling Argus to sleep with music, when he
closed all 100 of his eyes. De Rola relates it to alchemy, saying "It
was Argus’ eyes that went to decorate the peacock’s tail." The
"peacock's tail" was an important stage in the alchemical work, when
various colors appeared. (2)
De Rola does not mention that the
text which this illumination purportedly illustrates is not alchemical,
but rather a moralizing Christian account of the Greco-Roman gods, in
the style of a similar account by Fulgentius, from the time when the
Roman Empire was Christian. There is no mention of alchemy. For that
reason the art historians do not consider it an alchemical manuscript.
However its illustrations have important details not addressed in the
text, which led de Rola to classify them as alchemical. The lady with
the pots would seem to be one. Also, the alchemical interpretations of Greco-Roman myths that Conti gives in his Mythologies fit some of the pictures here, as we have already seen in connection with the Fool. Here is one thing Conti repeats about the alchemical interpretation of Juno (Conti's Mythologies, ed. DiMatteo p. 81).:
She [Juno] is the Queen of the gods because she controls, dissovles, joins, separates, and constrains the metals, which are named after the various gods.
When
I look elsewhere in this manuscript 1066, moreover, I see another connection
between the Popess and some of its female figures. Here I am again
following a suggestion of O'Neill's, as he sees the corresponding image
in alchemy as "the feminine side of spiritual power" (p. 76). A
striking example is the first or second one in the book (on f. 218r),
illustrating the fall of Phaeton. I reproduce the black and white
reproduction provided by de Rola in
Alchemy the Secret Art, 1973. (Here again I am in debt to O'Neill, without whose reference I would not have known about de Rola's book.)
At
the bottom, the dead Phaeton is helped out of the river and laid into
his tomb by a mysterious lady or perhaps two. These could be his sisters, who in the
myth bewail his death. Fulgentius, the ancient text that the manuscript
is commenting on, said:
There
is nothing here corresponding to the illustration. I have never seen a
Phaeton helped out of the water like that and then helped into a tomb.
It is reminiscent of both alchemical entombment and the tarot Judgment
card. What is depicted corresponds well to the alchemical operations of
heating to a gas, then condensing into a liquid, then letting sit in a
sealed container. In mythology, the goddess Iris is sometimes described as helping people go to the land of the dead. In Virgil's Aeneid, she helps separate Dido's soul from her dead body so she can go to Tartarus. Iris was a servant of Juno's, hence could be seen as an aspect of Juno herself.
Similar women appear in later illustrations in
the manuscript, all as though helping to initiate the male figure into
a new phase of development. Here are the early examples.
In
this example (on f. 222v), the goddess represented I would take to be Juno,
with Neptune. De Rola says it is Iris, personification of the rainbow,
but I don't see a rainbow. The chicken-like creatures on the left are
the harpies, whom the text says served Neptune. But what is the lady
doing? Surely she more than bringing the rain. In vat. palat. lat.
1066, there is a verse that goes with this picture. It is not part of
the main text, but more like a caption.
Cornutus,
opibus exutus, Arpiis adiutus, statura levatus et mole gravatus,
canicie delbatus, sale coronatus, tridente sceptrizatus, Stigi
maritatus.
My stab at a translation: "Horned, exuding
riches, harpy-served, stature inclined and sickly grave,
...trident-sceptered, married to Styx."
I have never heard
before that Styx (yes, she was a goddess) was married to Neptune.
Wikipedia has her married to Pallas. The verse says, "sickly grave" and
"married to Styx." Styx was the name of the river separating the
underworld from its entrances. So both are references to death. The
Harpies were birdlike deities that snatched food from the hungry as a
form of torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy). Dante put them in Hell to torture the suicides; in that late way they might be associated with death, too.
The
next time we see a ram-headed king, he is surrounded by black eagles,
in alchemy signs of the nigredo or blackness (f. 224v).
According to de Rola, the eagles in the illustration signify repeated
cycles of death and purification, as opposed to the bade of the Empire.
He says:
Here again, the king is about
to meet his doom... The eight eagles symbolize repeated sublimations.
In his left hand the king holds the orb, which is a hieroglyph of the
name of the subject, corresponding to the celestial sign of Aries. In
this sense the death alluded to is a fixation of the volatile, whereby
Water becomes Earth.
In sublimation, a substance
boils out into the upper part of a flask, where it cools and condenses
in solid form on the side, an apt image of death and rebirth.
But how do we know that such a repeated alchemical process has anything to do with the illustration? The manuscript text merely says that he is
Jupiter, surrounded by his birds, the eagles. The lady, sitting at the
bottom with a goat, is not mentioned.
Researching these eagles further, I came across
an article called "Religious Symbolism in Medieval Islamic and
Christian Alchemy," by Italo Ronca. It is an attempt to explicate a
well known alchemical emblem that appeared as the frontispiece to
editions of the works of the Arabic alchemist Ibn Umayl, known in the
West as Senior, i.e. "the Elder."
According to Ronca, the picture
represents the text's account of what the alchemist reported seeing in
a temple known as the "Prison of Joseph." I will discuss the man in the
picture later on, n the section on the Pope card. Right now, I am
concerned with the eagles.The man holds a sacred tablet; it is also
described in the
text, identifying ten things that correspond to the nine eagles plus
the earth. (3)
Ronca shows a similar illustration in the
Aurora Consurgens of c. 1400. His is in black and white. Since the original was in color, I will reproduce that one, (Roob,
Alchemy and Mysticism p. 362). One of the hieroglyphs in the book is the same; the other substitutes flasks for the sun and moon
In my own researches, I found another such illustration in the Dresden copy of the
Heilege Dreifalatigheit, c. 1420. In both of these illustrations, there are nine eagles. (4)
According
to Ronca, the eagles correspond to the
Egyptian vulture goddess Neckh(e)bet. Let me add, so as to connect this
discussion with the one in my section on the Empress, that
the vulture is the mother-goddess; Isis's kite, which eats small live
animals as well as carrion, is a near relative. (When it was known that Isis was a kite is another question; Plutarch, the main text about Isis in the Renaissance, says she changed into a sparrow). The vulture is a symbol
of transformation, specifically of the resurrection of the dead; for it
is the habit of vultures to eat carrion and transform it into their own
living matter.
The nine eagles in the Arabic text--ten in the
frontispiece, or eight in the c. 1420 manuscript--signify, Ronca says,
"the cyclical operations of sublimation and distillation ending in
fixation" (p. 107). It would seem that de Rola's interpretation of the
c. 1420 illumination is justified.
It is not merely nine deaths and rebirths. Hopefully, there is progress. The
Theology of Arithmetic, a work whose thinking has many correspondences with the images for the number cards of the Sola-Busca tarot of c. 1491, says of the Ennedad, i.e. the number nine
They used to call it 'Hephaestus,' because the way up to it is, as it were, by smelting and evaporation. (p. 106)
Nine, of the 10 numbers dealt with in this work, is almost the highest. It is the ninth, perhaps also corresponding to the 9th of 10 heavens in the medieval cosmos.
Haephestus
is of course the metal-worker of the gods, and a patron saint to
alchemists. In relation to the numbers, Waterfield, the translator,
speculates that
perhaps the image is
supposed to suggest that "smelting" is the fusion of monads into the
sequence of numbers, but the monad is not exhausted--some part of it
"evaporates," in the sense that it can continue the sequence. (p. 106)
"Smelting
and evaporating" is also the way of alchemy. Smelting there is the
dissolution of solids into a liquid, followed by evaporation into
sealed upper chambers and condensation as a solid again. It is now
associated with the number 9.
Correspondingly, the Sola-Busca tarot deck, c. 1491,
gives us another version of the scene with nine eagles, this time with
nine discs. The deaths are now shown in a way that explicitly reflects the
alchemical procedure (
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sola-Busca_gallery):. As we have seen in the Introduction, this is one of serveral cards in the Sola-Busca that appear to relate to alchemy,
Further association to death is seen in
a later illumination of the series in Ms. Vat. Pal. Lat. 1066 (f. 230r), a lady is seen in armor
and bearing the shield of the Medusa; to gaze upon this shield meant
that one would be turned to stone. The goddess with the Medusa shield
is Athena, a name confirmed by the owl next to her, which is another of
her attributes. It, too, meant death, but it also, in ad much as it is
with the goddess of wisdom, suggests wisdom. The king looks fearful. It
is another scene of death, or symbolic initiation.
I found a comparable image in a clearly alchemical work, the Dresden copy of the Buch der Heilegen Dreifaltigkeit , from the same era as our illustrations. I get this from http://www.handschriftencensus.de/14918.
It was German, but a copy was owned by the father of the duchess of
Mantua, a friend of Bianca Maria Visconti, as "Huck" on THF has pointed
out to me (viewtopic.php?f=23&t=383&start=80#p9708). It shows a queen as the death-bringing serpent of the Garden of Eden. It also represents a stage of the work.
In the Marseille tarot, there is
also a succession of female figures, in what could be initiatory roles.
There is the lady holding the scales in the Justice card, the lady with
the jars in Temperance, the hermaphroditic Devil, the lady on the Star
card, and finally the lady on the World card. These figures appear on
the cards from their earliest known examples. There is also the Lover
card, which has an older lady standing next to a youthful male-female
pair. When I get to that card, I will show you a similar illustration
in Vat. Palat. Lat. 1066.
In Vat. Palat. Lat. 1066, the lady is
variously associated in the text with Juno, Athena, Persephone, and Rhea. We saw her
depiction as Rhea at the end of the discussion of the Fool card, where
she sits next to her husband, who is castrated as a result of her treachery in
allowing Jupiter to grow to maturity. All of these goddesses could be
considered as playing initiatory roles: Juno with Hercules, Athena with
Odysseus, Rhea with Dionysus and her own husband. Persephone was one of
the two goddesses (along with her mother Demeter) presiding at the
Eleusinian Myteries. In Conti's alchemical interpretations, these would all seem to be reduced to Juno. If considered as different manifestation of the
same female initiator, she becomes quite similar to the dominatrix of
the Dionysian Mysteries and the succession of female images, starting
with the Popess, in the Marseille tarot.
Since Ms.
1066 illustrates both the gods and an alchemical sequence somewhat like
that of the tarot, it is starting to qualify as an important
transitional document for the tarot. We will see that it contains
numerous figures that eventually, more than the gods, entered into the
tarot: the virtues, fortune, a charioteer, opened tombs, and a lady
that appears at crucial intervals in the story.
References, Alchemical Popess
1. I have devoted one thread on the Tarot History Forum, Researcher's Study, to this manuscript, http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=655#p9742, where I go into much more detail. Hans Liebeschütz's study is Fulgentius Metaforalis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Antiken Mythologie im Mittelalter, Leipzig 1926.
2. This and following images come from Stanislas Kosslowski de Rola's Alchemy: the Secret Art, 1973. The ones in color all come from de Rola. The ones later of Sapiencia is from Liebeschütz. Argus: de Rola, comments to his plate 60.
3.. Ronca's essay is pp. 95-116 of
Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, ed. by Antoine Faivre & Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1995.
4.
http://www.handschriftencensus.de/14918.
Otherwise
in this section I have integrated my references into the text, as they
are mostly to websites; that will making it easier for people reading
this to interrupt their reading by clicking on the reference and then
returning directly to the text.
3. The Alchemical Empress: Eve/Venus, the fertile one, Sulphur in Salt, Empress-to-be
Alchemically
the imagery of Empress and Emperor is usually put at the end of the sequence,
symbolizing the end product of the alchemical process, as below, from a manuscript in Jung's collection published in his book
Psychology and Alchemy.
In the
Rosarium imagery, the Empress at the end appears as a hermaphrodite. On the left is the 1550 woodcut. The image on the right is earlier, from the
Heilege Dreifaltigkeit of the early 15th century.
Near the
beginning, what corresponds are the King and Queen,
usually together. They are almost always shown wearing the ordinary
crowns of kings or dukes, as opposed to the ones topped with a cross
worn by emperors and empresses. They are usually shown with pictures of
the sun and moon next to them. So they are Sol and Luna, Apollo and
Diana. Many are 17th century or later. Earlier ones include those in the illuminated
Splendor Solis Augsburg 1532-35, the woodcut
Rosarium Philosophorum of Frankfurt 1550, the woodcut
Artis aurifrae of Basel 1572, and the woodcut
Pandora of Basel 1582. Below is Emblem 4 of the 1550
Rosarium.
Sometimes the Queen holds the stalk of a plant instead of a scepter (
Philosophia Reformata 1622, 1st series, emblem 24,
http://www.hermetik.ch/eidolon/bilder/druck/1622%20Mylius_Philosophia/pages/Mylius1622_24.htm); and sometimes an eagle (1st series, 7,
http://www.hermetik.ch/eidolon/bilder/druck/1622%20Mylius_Philosophia/pages/Mylius1622_07.htm). The stalk of wheat connects her to Isis and Demeter. The eagle connects her to the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. It is the royal bird.
With a few exceptions, the images are all variants on the
Rosarium
series, in which they are shown first clothed, then naked, then in
coitus, then combined in one body in a watery tomb, which nonetheless
undergoes a
conceptio (emblem 7,
http://www.labyrinthdesigners.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/rosarium_7.jpg);
then it is raised on high in one body with wings, taken back to the
tomb with the wings, and then raised on high again. I think all of
these variations on the
Rosarium apply more to the Lover card than to the Emperor and Empress, as the latter are shown by themselves.
That most of these illustrations derive from the
Rosarium
or are of the same era, suggests a 15th century origin or before, as
that text existed in manuscript early in the century. The King and
Queen as Sol and Luna or Sulphur and Mercury are—along with the
dragon--among the earliest personifications in the alchemical
literature.
Given that the alchemical imagery came first, could
we say that the tarot Emperor and Empress derive from them? I do not
know the answer. There is no necessity for them to have
done so. The tarot antecedents are the manuscript and heraldic
representations of actual or typical Holy Roman Emperors and Empresses.
The alchemical illustrations derive from the same sources. But why say
that one derives from the other?
I can think of only one
argument in favor of saying that the tarot Empress and Emperor derive
from the alchemical. Both sequences represent la transformative process
by which one attains the immortal state. Both have royal personages
near the beginning, with the imagery of secular authority. The tarot
designers may have borrowed from the alchemical in choosing just these
figures. It depends on what other figures then follow, and whether they
have been borrowed as well.
But on the face of it, the two pairs
have a different symbolic function. The tarot pair seem merely
represent secular authority—authority in the material realm--worthy of
honor, gratitude, respect and fear. The Empress is not Everywoman, or
the feminine side of Everyman. The alchemical pair, I think, in part
represent humanity in general in a state bound to materiality. The
“Ripley Scrowle” of 1588 shows Sol and Luna in the typical bath of the
Rosarium series, but also at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge. A female serpent-woman hangs from the upper branches of the tree.
The
King and Queen, in the early stages of the Work, are simply Adam and
Eve both as lords of the earth and its slaves. It is a condition from
which the Work can help free them. It is like in the fairy tales, where
the king is under enchantment as a frog, a fox, or a wild man. It is
materiality that enchants us. There is something similar between the
tarot story and the alchemical one, in that both have to do with the
liberation of humanity from materiality. But the tarot Emperor and
Empress are not the alchemical Adam and Eve.
In other respects,
the tarot Empress, as symbolizing nature and motherly nurturing, has
her alchemical counterpart in numerous illustrations. (And here we must
forget about influence, except in the sense that the meaning of either,
in the milieu in which they were both produced, affects that of the
other.) One example is in Emblem XXXV of Maier's
Atalanta Fugiens (image taken from Wikimedia Commons):
I will quote what Robert O'Neill says about the lady on the left (
Tarot Symbolism p. 179):
Here
the figure is seated, suckling her son, seated in a field of that which
symbolizes her fertility. Thus, both the Tarot card and the alchemical
emblemata infer that the Empress is Cybele or Demeter, the earth
goddess, the goddess of wheat.
There is a clear
reference to Ceres/Demeter in this emblem, and also a similarity to the
tarot Empress, on whose fertility the stability of the realm depends.
The motto that Maier attaches to this image explains what is happening
on the other side of the emblem:
As Ceres made Triptolemus—and Thetis made Achilles—able to stay in the fire, so the Artist makes the Stone.
De Rola explains (
Golden Game,
p. 102) that Triptolemus is Ceres’ foster-son, and she puts him at
night in the fire so as to make him immortal. Sea-goddess Thetis does
the same with the body of Achilles after his death, putting him on the
pyre on Leuke, the White Island.
This episode, putting a foster-son in the fire, has its parallel in the story of Isis as related by Plutarch. (
Isis and Osiris sect. XVI at
http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html).
The queen whose son Isis was charged with nursing (met in Isis’s search
for Osiris’s body) found her out, thought that Isis was killing her
son, and he lost his chance. The alchemists, reflecting their time,
showed the beneficial aspects of each in their emblems.. For example,
here is the frontispiece to Balduinus’s
Aurum superius & inferius aurae superioris & inferioris hermeticum, Amsterdam 1675:
On
the bottom left we see Ceres with her grain. Opposite her is Isis,
holding a ship. She was the protector of sailors. Apuleius’s Roman-era
Golden Ass
famously included a procession to the sea by the devotees of Isis. Both
goddesses are exemplars of the Empress's role in providing for her
subjects' material well being. At the top of the Frontispiece are
Neptune and Apollo. Neptune's assistance is required by the ships, and
Apollo's by the crops.
Above are three Empress cards. First is the Cary
Sheet Empress in the middle. Her virginal youth and freshness seem to
me to reflect the new empress of the 1490s, Bianca Maria Sforza. With her are the Noblet, c. 1650,
and Conver, c. 1760. What I notice on all these cards, as opposed to
the Cary-Yale and PMB, is that the back of the chair looks like a pair
of wings. This could be a reference to Isis, who was described as
taking the form of a bird, a sparrow in Plutarch but in actuality, in Roman Egypt, a vulture or more specifically the small virtue known in English as a kite. I do not know whether this
identification was known at the time or not; I can't find it in
Plutarch or Diodorus. At very much the same time and place as the Cary
Sheet is assumed to have been done, there is Leonardo's childhood
memory, in his diary, of being attacked by a kite ("nibbio,"
notoriously once mistranslated as "vulture") in his crib; but whether
the bird's relationship to Isis was known, I don't know. Freud's
analysis of the memory as a maternal image, despite the mistranslation,
may not be off the mark. The vulture clearly was seen as a maternal
image during this time, and the kite is just a particular kind of small
vulture, which eats small live animals as well as carrion.
One
association between Isis and the vulture might have been as equal
representations of nature. Isis was seen as a personification of
nature. This line has been developed by Hadot in his
The Veil of isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature (in Google books). First there was the famous statue supposedly of Isis at Sais reported by Plutarch (
http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Isis.html,
sect. IX), with the motto "“I am all that hath been, and is, and shall
be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.” There was also the
Roman philosopher Macrobius:
Isis is the earth or
beneath the sun. This is why the goddess's entire body bristles with a
multitude of breasts placed close to one another [as in the case of
Artemis of Ephesis], because all things are nourished by earth or by
nature." Saturnalia I, 20, 18.)
Hadot says that this text was cited by Cartari in his
Images of the Gods of the Ancients,
1556. Another popular source was Apuleius, who imagined Isis speaking
to his hero, "I come to you, Lucius, I mother of all nature, mistress
of all the elements." (
Metamorphoses XI, 5).
Then
in the Renaissance explications of hieroglyphs, nature is associated
with the vulture. Leon Alberti says, in his treatise on architecture,
"The Egyptians employed the following sign language: a god was
represented by an eye, nature by a vulture...". His source was a text
by the Roman general Ammianus. Then in 1499 the anonymous
Hypnerotomachia (
Strife of Love in a Dream)
also implies that a vulture represented nature, in its translation of a
"hieroglyphic" inscription that the protagonist Porphilo sees. It
shows, for its second image, an altar with 'on its face, the images of
an eye and a vulture" (Godwin translation, p. 41). The second phrase of
the "translation" reads "...to the god of nature..." Below I have
reproduced the first line of the hieroglyphs and put under it the first
line of what the novel says is their translation into Latin. The first
hieroglyph is translated as "from your labors"; the second is "god of
nature" followed by "freely" and "sacrifice" (the urn). The word order,
of course, follows that of ordinary Latin.
After that, Ripa's image of nature (
Nova Iconologia, Padua 1611 edition, image 222) is of a naked woman holding a bird. It is on her left side, like the Empress's shield.
Ripa says, in the first English translation:
She
is naked, to denote the Principle of Nature, that is active or Form,
and passive or Matter. The turgid Breasts denote the Form, because it
maintains created Things; the Vultur, a ravenous Fowl, the Matter;
which being alter'd and moved by the Form, destroys all corruptible
Bodies. (http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/Ripa/Images/ripa056a.htm)
In such manner the vulture is associated with nature, and thence to Isis, Hadot hypothesizes, and I agree.Likewise the Emprss might be associated with nature, although in her destructive aspect, as devourer and transformer of flesh, she might better relate to the Popess as alchemical agent of the passage from life to death and back again.
In the pages of ms. vat. palat. at. 1066, there are personifications
of Sapiencia, Latin for wisdom (f. 235v)., in a nurturing role. Below we see a lady on the
left holding a book. That is clearly to say that wisdom may be found in
such places. In holding a book, she resembles the Popess. On the right
side, a lady wearing a crown gives her breasts to two bearded men. She
is again Wisdom, offering her nourishment to those who dedicate
themselves to her.
This last illustration is clearly inspired by an image in the Splendor Solis, c. 1400,
The
borrowing of this image tends to confirm the alchemical nature of the
illuminations to ms. vat. lat. 1066. Here the goddess is Sapienca, or
Sophia in Greek, the well-known "wisdom of God" of the Hebrew
wisdom-literature, who in 2 says (Proverbs 8:22) "the Lord possessed me
in the beginning of his ways."
These figures seem to be examples of the Empress in her role as spiritual nurturer, or again of the Popess as bestower of wisdom. I could give more examples, equally ambiguous but I will
stop here. Maternal, protective, nurturing female figures, often with
crowns, and drawing on some of the same mythological traditions, are
common in both alchemy and the historical tarot.
4. The alchemical Emperor: Adam/Mars, the potent one, Sulphur.
Above are three tarot emperors: the Cary-Yale is the oldest, second quarter of the 15th century; then the PMB, midcentury, and finally the Noblet, c. 1650. Unlike the PMB Empress, the emperor doesn't have any green. His domain is the mind rather than nature. Howeverthe Noblet is more ambiguous, since he is in nature In all of these, the eagle is the dominant characteristic, the symbol of empire.
For the alchemical equivalent, I will go back to the c.
1420 manuscript Vat. Palat. 1066, which I cited earlier in connection
with the Fool and the Batleur. Let us look at f. 224v, de Rola's plate
59. The illustration this time is purportedly of the god Jupiter, which for
de Rola, and after him O'Neill, is an alchemical image.
O'Neill compares this image to the Emperor card:
...the
King is shown in royal state, much as he appears in early hand-painted
Tarots and is even surrounded by black eagles which frequently appear
on the shield of the Emperor card.
On the Emperor card, of course, there is only one eagle, symbolizing the Empire. That there are eight eagles on the illustration says that viewed from the perspective of alchemy, this figure will die and be reborn eight times.
At the beginning, the figures that will become Emperor and Empress are primitive figures. They are Adam and Eve in the Garden, and their experience of authority is that of a figure that gives rules. They then find out that if you do what it tells you not to do, you will suffer for it. As a figure more powerful than the pre-initiated individual, then, the alchemical King and tarot
Emperor might represent external temporal authority, which all subjects must
obey. Similarly the Pope represents external spiritual authority, which
all Christians are bound to obey. To internalize their authority is to
be a good citizen and Christian, and to triumph like the Charioteer.
Yet the charioteer is merely mortal; later in the tarot sequence comes
Death, and after that more long-lasting representatives of authority:
the Devil and the Angel of the Last Judgment, certainly, and also the
Star, as the “morning star” symbolizing Christ in the second coming. To
internalize the authority of that Star, for whom the Angel speaks, is
to die and be reborn, and to go from King to alchemical King of
Kings--who sometimes, in alchemy, wears the papal tiara.
What
corresponds to the tarot Empress and Emperor in alchemy is mainly, however, the King and
the Queen at the beginning of the work. The alchemical King and Queen,
with their crowned heads, remain throughout the alchemical sequence, in
new and sometimes strange forms (in particular, hermaphrodites), until
perhaps at the end transforming to Emperor and Empress. What
corresponds to the alchemical King and Queen later in the tarot
sequence is shown clearly in the Marseille images. One place we see
crowned heads is in the Death card, sticking up out of the ground.
There are also the two figures on the Maison-Dieu card; those blobs
next to their heads look a lot like crowns, perhaps Arabic or Egyptian
ones. Their shape is brought out in Flornoy's restoration. And then,
once the crowns have fallen off, there are the two figures on the
Judgment card, on either side of the middle.
Acually,
there are several sets of two figures without crowns, as though
representing two people in process of transformation. There are the
acolytes on the Pope card, the two women on the Lover card, the two
horses on the Chariot card, the two imps in the Devil card, the two
figures in the Sun carrd. We might also include the two sides of the
scales on the Justice card and the two jugs in Temperance. Perhaps the
alchemical King and Queen correspond to all these pairs, existing
within the subject contemplating them. They appear first as powerful
authority figures requiring obedience and respect, and later as the
subject himself or herself in various roles, including ones not of this
world.
So in this interpretation, the eagle on the shield would
be a token of the purifying ups and downs yet to come in the soul of
the sovereign personality, as he tries to maintain and extend his
authority in a world larger than his.
There is one other
alchemical association to the card that is worth mentioning, I think,
and that is the significance of the crossed legs, in the Marseille
versions. In Christian and Roman terms, we have seen, it meant the
attitude of detachment necessary for good judgment. In alchemy, the
crossed legs gives the figure a resemblance to the alchemical sign for
Sulphur (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sulfur_symbol_2.svg):
Sulphur is of course the basic masculine element of alchemy, associated with Sol in the unpurified state.It is very combustible, easily bursting into fire. The symbol is appropriate for the immature masuline ego.
5, The Alchemical Pope.: male adept, initiator, guide, masculine Mercury, Hermes Trismegistus/Imhotep, Jove.
Here are some tarot Pope cards, from the 15th to the 17th century: first the Sforza, c. 1455, the d'Este, c. 1475, then the Geoffrey, 1557, and finally the Noblet. The main thing they have in commonis the gesture of authority, either blessing or admonishing. There is also a conical hat which is often a three-tiered crown.
Like the Noblet but much earlier, c. 1460, is the so-called Charles VI Pope, from somewhere between Florence and Ferrara.
Another
similar figure would be Hermes Trismegistus, whose headgear in 1476 was
so like that of the Charles VI pope (below, repeating a combination
shown earlier). In other words, it is the authoritative master of
alchemy, who writes the books and inspires the one reading to
persevere. The
two acolytes on the Pope card then correspond to the admirers in the
alchemical illustration, reduced to two; or they are the two admirers
of Trismegistus below.
Also,
in the earlier section on the Bateleur, I showed an alchemical
illustration of the alchemist in his laboratory with two assistants
below him, as in the Pope card. Here is the image again, from 1477 England.
Along these same lines, both the male alchemist and the soror (or female
alchemist) are given keys in a 15th century illumination. I would
expect the keys to be colored gold and silver, to match the sun and
moon signs above them, and the Pope's gold and silver keys as well.
Those doing alchemical experiments had their own psychopomp in the laboratory, the
elusive “Mercury of the philosophers,” who was no less severe than the
Popes (starting with the antipope John XXII but continued after him)
who issued bulls forbidding their work. This "Mercurius" demanded all
the alchemists’ money to buy materials for his experiments. It
subjected the alchemist to the danger of poisons and explosions. It was
unrelenting in its demand for careful study of old texts and then
meticulous observation and recording of experimental results.
Another way in which a pope-like figure appears in alchemy is as a figure from the past, a famous alchemist, who now appears to show us something. There are a couple of series of illustrations of this type, one with 12 such figures, another with hundreds. Here is one of the 12:
Similarly, popes from the past remind us of the ancient lineage and also of important teachings from them or their time.
In connection with Hermes Trismegistus, there is a relationship between alchemical imagery and ancient Egypt that surprised me when I saw it. One
of the oldest European depictions was in the frontispieces of
alchemical works attributed all or in part to "Senior" i.e. "the
Elder," an alchemist known to the Arabs as Ibn Umayl. For the West, the
one pictured was Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary sage of Egypt and
founder of alchemy. He is the "Hermes" for whom the term "Hermetic"
applies. Here is one way that the image appeared (from Mangetus,
Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, 1702, as reproduced in Jung's
Psychology and Alchemy fig. 128, p. 249).
I
already discussed this picture in relation to the Popess and the Emperor. Now I want to focus on the man in the picture. Again my reference is "Religious Symbolism in
Medieval Islamic and Christian Alchemy," by Italo Ronca (pp. 95-116 of
Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion,
ed.
Antoine Faivre & Wouter J. Hanegraaff). Ronca referred the picture
to represents the text's account of what the alchemist
reported seeing in a temple known as the "Prison of Joseph," a
temple near Memphis identified by modern archeologists as that of the
legendary physician and healer Imhotep, later deified by the Greeks as
Aesclepius. Ronca also showed another illustration in the same manner,
in the
Aurora Consurgens of c. 1400. One of the hieroglyphs in the book is the same; the other substitutes flasks for the sun and moon.
Finally, we saw the Dresden copy of the
Heilege Dreifalatigheit, c. 1420 (
http://www.handschriftencensus.de/14918). In both of these illustrations, there are nine eagles. (2)
Now look at the central figure in this
picture, the wise man, theHermes Trismegistus of alchemy, or Imhotep as Ronca characterizes him. I thought it might be interesting
to compare the image with actual statues from similar temples in
ancient Egypt. Below, the
Heilege Dreifaltigkeit
image is on the far right, to images from the Internet of Imhotep in
the middle, then a picture I took myself at the San Antonio Museum of
Art, identified only as a "scribe". I took it mainly because of the
ears.. It seems to me that there is a clear resemblance, especialy with
the ears sticking out and the faces of the two on the right. The hats
are also similar..
In this instance itwould appear to be as
De Gebelin said: an image from ancient Egypt is on our card,
transmitted via the Arabs and a German alchemical manuscript, a copy of
which was owned by the father of Barbara of Brandenburg, who as
Marchesa of Mantua was a close personal friend of Bianca Maria Visconti
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_Marg ... g-Kulmbach).
For
the Egyptians, as Ronca says, the image would have been Imhotep,
architect of the first pyramid and legendary healer, identified by the
Greeks with Aesclepius. In alchemy he is the wise old man in possession
of the way to the elixir, i.e. eternal life.
In
the 17th century, there was often an older, bearded figure with wings
who stood by the alchemist as though directing him in his work. As
spiritual guides, these figures correspond to the Pope card. They appear in Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata1622, 1st series, emblems 5, 11, 20, and 21 (at http://www.hermetik.ch/eidolon/bilder/druck/1622%20Mylius_Philosophia/pages/Mylius1622_48.htm).The example below is emblem 21 of the Mylius.
There are also emblems 11, 12, 13, and 15 of Lambsprinck’s De lapide philosophica 1625 (http://www.rubaphilos.com/study.htm). The example below is emblem 11:
A quote from the accompanying poem will exemplify what is going on (http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/hm1/hm113.htm)::
The Guide addresses the Son in these words:
Come hither! I will conduct thee everywhere,
To the summit of the loftiest mountain,
That thou mayest understand all wisdom,...
However
the Pope on the tarot card was never given wings. That honor sometimes
accrued to the Hermit. Below we see him on a sheet of printed cards probably from Bologna in the early 16th century. The model here is found in engravings of Petrarch's Triumphs, where he represents Time, which, as the saying goes, flies.
Other cards with winged male figures are Cupid, the Devil, and the Angel of Judgment. There are also wings occasionally on the female figures representing the virtues of Temperance and Justice. Because of the lack of wings on the Pope, I am inclined to think that he is not intended as a personal guide, but has delegated that role to someone else. On the cards from Geoffrey on, he seems to be looking to our right, even when he has two acolytes below him. After that, the "Chosson" card added an arm reaching behind the two figures; the arm blends in with the acolyte's robe, but the hand is rather obvious..
The Conver of 1761 went one step further, turning another fold into a knife. That is easier to see if we put the Conver card next to a modern redaction by Camoin and Jodorowsky that highlights the knife.
The unseen figure, like the female spirit guide in the alchemical series, sems prepared to sacrifice one of the acolytes later on. You might think it would be for transgressions of discipline during the initiation; but actually, I think it is something else. The hand is of a priest, and the knife will be part of a reenactment of the death and transformation of Christ, something priests did every day in the Mass. But that is l;aer in the sequence.
Figures with the three-tiered tiara characteristic of the Pope occasionally appear in alchemy. An example is the in the Splendor Solis of 1532-1535. It says of the renewed king, emblem 7 of a series of 22:
He was crowned with three costly crowns, one of iron, another of silver, and the third of pure gold (Henderson and Sherwood, Transformation in the Psyche: The Symbolic Alchemy of the Splendor Solis, p. 73)
And here he is. I have omitted the borders of the illumination so as to focus on what is relevant here. See http://www.hermetics.org/solis/solis7.html.
Here
the dying king in the background is shown miraculously revived in the
foreground. The “morning star,” as the text calls it, shines in the
heavens next to the sun. (This illumination, if it were in the tarot
sequence, would be around the place of the Star card.) The iron crown
probably represents temporal rulership, as iron is associated with
Mars. The silver crown represents spiritual rulership, attained in the
albedo or whitening stage of the work. The gold crown is what is
attained at the end of the work, in which spirit has descended into a
purified body. It is the spiritual rulership over material things, such
as by transmutation of metals and of physical health via the elixir.
It
seems to me likely that here alchemy was following the lead of the
tarot in representing figures with the triple crown. (The triple crown
itself, however, may have been older, if it was used to indicate the
three realms of rulership possessed by Hermes Trismegistus. However I
do not see it in alchemy prior to its use in the tarot card.)
Figures
at the end of the alchemical sequence sometimes have two heads, one
with a crown indicative of temporal rulership and the other one closer
to a bishop's headgear, with a cross painted on it. O'Neill observes of
such images (Tarot Symbolism p. 277):
In alchemical symbolism, it is difficult to separate the Emperor and
the Pope. Together, they represent the material and spiritual aspects
of the King.
One example he refers us to is the following, from Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, plate 6.
This
figure probably appears at the end of the alchemical sequence. On the
right below is another, from a 1678 work attributed to Edward Kelly.
Adam McLean, describing this picture, says (http://www.alchemywebsite.com/s_kelly.html)
Emblem 14.
Jupiter sits on a throne holding out his staff or sceptre in his left
hand. Upon his head he wears a triple crown. At his feet are small
symbols of Sun and Moon while beside him stands the alchemist. Kneeling
at his feet are Saturn, Sun and Mars on the left and Mercury, Venus and
Luna or Moon on the right.
Giving this king a triple
crown means , I think, that the goal, the "renewed king," is not simply
spiritual, or simply a renewal of his temporal power, but a spiritual
enfusion into matter. It is also not a combination of temporal and
spiritual authority. The Renaissance Popes did have such double
authority in central Italy, which continued until Napoleon. However the
alchemists had in mind more of a magical authority over matter, in
transmutation and healing, than merely combining the functions of
temporal and spiritual ruler.
I will sum up this section. In
14th-15th century alchemy, figures comparable to the Pope appear early
in the sequence, even as their frontispiece, as past masters, people
who guide the alchemist through their books and inspire them to keep
trying. In the 17th century we see winged versions as spirit-guides
during the work. We also see the triple tiara signifying the result,
the renewed king; its three levels represent temporal authority,
spiritual authority, and authority over matter enfused with spirit.
But the Pope in the tarot sequence, given his position as number 5, is also spiritual authority in an insitutional hierarchy. He is defined by his position as the head administrator of the insittution in a particular time and place. It seems likely—unless it is pure
accident--that the designer of the alchemical illumination wanted to
compare the alchemist to a priest or higher clergyman, putting both in
company with their acolytes. To those familiar with the Devil card, the
alchemist could also be compared to the Devil and his demons. However the alchemist is not only an institutional authority; he gets his authority from having gone through the process that the acolytes wish to go through. The Pope similarly is a someone who has been transformed by his spiritual life and is now introducng others to the opportunity to have their own spiritual experiences within the insittutional structure. In that way the alchemical adept and the Pope are comparable figures, shown in similar ways in apparently unrelated contexts, 1477 England and 1460s Italy.
But whereas the comparable female figure in alchemy is a personal guide for the alchemist through the steps of his initiation, the comparable figure in alchemy is not the one with the books sitting at a table, but rather a winged figure more comparable to the Old Man in early tarot.
