Daily Meditation: Thursday, April 16, 2009

It is not earth but water that symbolically represents …

04/16/2009

It is not earth but water that symbolically represents matter, and alchemists speak of a substance they define as a water that doesn’t make things wet, the philosopher’s water, which has to be heated by fire. Many have interpreted this fire and this substance as the fire of the sun and the substance of the moon. This is why Hermes Trismegistus says with regard to the philosopher’s stone, ‘The sun is its father, the moon is its mother…’ – in other words, fire (spirit) is its father, and water (matter) is its mother. For just as the sun rules fire and man, so the moon rules the waters and woman. And since gold is linked to the sun and silver to the moon, this also explains the important place these two metals have in alchemical treatises. Disciples of an initiatic school are also alchem­ists: they work according to the same principles, but they transpose the sun and the moon, fire and matter, gold and silver into the psychic, spiritual domain. The two principles, fire and water, are wisdom and love: by working with these two principles they obtain the philosopher’s stone, the force that promotes action.