Failing to rise above the field of experimental findings, we have ceased to understand the ancient authors which were based on rational laws of all existence. Their theories about nature and secrecy of its operations appear to us as childish vain; thus the Hermetic Philosophy is in our eyes a tissue of dreams, like alchemy seems definitively relegated to the burial of dead science.  But a particular cause was mainly motivated strikes discredit the doctrines popular in the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century: we lost the key to the language used to express them.The way we talk nowadays is quite different. It was not known previously to serve us our claims rigorously precise terms: approximations would suffice, because the simple truth is fatally inexpressible. The ideal of True will be imprisoned in any form. As a result, a certain kind, every word is a lie, since only imperfectly expresses the idea that it should be translated. The intimacy of thought, its basic spirit is elusive, it is a divinity that escapes continually and agrees that at most times be reflected in the images. As Moses, to whom Jehovah was not able to show that back. 

Figurative language had to be used whenever it came to take shape transcendental notions. This is not a whim. Pure thought comes to us veiled; but her veil is transparent to discern who knows.

Hermeticism is for thinkers that innate vocation grows any further. The universal laws of generation, conservation and transformation of beings can only be represented by patterns including a superficial mind can not grasp the scope. Also the teaching of sages remains unintelligible to which stops outside the meaning of words; but it is for everyone to learn by himself, drawing three words of the Gospel:

Ask the Light and you will receive;
Seek truth and you will find;
Knock on the door of the Temple and the door will be opened.

THE TRADITION  

Faith and Philosophy. – Gnosis. – Hermeticism. The slaves of the letter. – The contemporary occultism.

Alexandria was once the intellectual capital of the ancient world. Famous schools are attracted sages of all nations: the East and West met in this cosmopolitan center that put in contact Phoenicia, Chaldea, Persia and India with classical Greece, Rome and Gaul . All these countries brought the religious and scientific traditions before the throne of the Ptolemies. Hellenized Jews translated their Bible, which was first made available to the Gentiles by the so-called Septuagint. The Babylonian Berosus produced a similar úuvre by recording everything he knew about his homeland. Valuable lessons were thus collected from all quarters and compared. We tried to coordinate in a philosophical synthesis which, while remaining unfortunately only the state of Nien draft nonetheless exerted a powerful influence on the development of Christianity. 

It was initially recruited from sincere people, but little light. The early Christians were ardent spirits hit the vices of their time they intended to fix. In their secret meetings, they seemed to conspire against the established institutions: they feared them as wild revolutionaries, enemies of all social hierarchy. They proclaimed men equal before one God, and admit a supernatural revelation, made accessible to all by faith. Any independent search for truth became their reprehensible eyes, as well as the arts and sciences of the pagans.

To these men of action tightly disciplined, these advocates of democratic equality thrust into the field of intelligence, opposed much harmless dreamers. They called themselves gnostics and pretended initiated into the mysteries of the ancient hierophants. Cultivating knowledge accessible only to the elite minds they boasted of having the most hidden secrets of nature; also, on occasion, they showed theurgists and therapists. The Christians were in their eyes dangerously fanatical ignorant they despised rudeness; meanwhile, they indulged in subtle speculations without managing to agree on a uniform doctrine. Every follower of Gnosis aspired to become direct confidant of divinity and, therefore, did not believe in himself. Gnosticism is thus divided into a multitude of sects giving the show a complete intellectual anarchy. 

Gnostic Christians and necessarily had to fight. The fight lasted but the victory was a foregone discipline and many. Become great, the Christian party triumphed definitively upon the conversion of Constantine. Now implacable toward his adversaries, he outlawed all that was connected to the old cults and especially persecuted the followers of Gnosis.

Hounded as heretics, they had to hide their doctrines under the guise thicker veils.

Thus were born the secret or occult, an ingenious symbolism hidden from prying curiosity. One of these is alchemy, art metallic transmutations, which served as a frame to a whole vast system of allegories. We designed the mystical metallurgical, modeled on those operations that nature does in living beings. Deep Life Science hidunder special symbols; she tried to solve the most perplexing puzzles and sought the foundations of the Universal Medicine. 

It was to remedy all ills, both those of the mind and soul than those of the body, moreover, it was for him to heal social ills as the infirmities of isolated individuals.

All these benefits were related to the preparation of the Elixir of Life and the famous Philosopher’s Stone. The followers were seeking a way to ensure that all beings unalterable health and put man free from all miseries. To this end, they proposed to lead everything to the degree of perfection of which it is capable; it is what they called turn lead into gold. They practiced the Great Art, Art par excellence, or Art of ancient priestly and royal insiders; in their capacity as priests, they interpreted the laws of universal harmony, they applied as kings. 

Such grand designs are popping too narrow skulls. All alchemists were not men of genius: greed aroused gold diggers closed at any esoteric;they took at face value, so their extravagances were soon no bounds.

While vulgar blowers indulged in this incoherent kitchen which freed later if modern chemistry, philosophers worthy of the name, friends of the intrinsic wisdom, cared for “separate the subtle from the gross with delicacy and a rare prudence “, as recommended by the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: rejecting the dross from the dead letter they retained the quickening spirit of the teaching of teachers.  Butthe public has been confused with the wise fools He bloc rejects everything that is not in its most immediate significance or has not received the stamp of the pontiffs who captured his confidence. 

However, among our contemporaries, some adventurous spirits dared to enter the catacombs of lost traditions. The way was opened by Eliphas Levi (Abbe Constant A.-L.), of which Mr Stanislas de Guaita in its tests cursed Sciences and Serpent of Genesis reveals the most brilliant disciple.

This research has extreme importance of the therapeutic point of view occult. They have appreciate treaties Alchemy, which decrypts again, despite their figurative style to excess.

THREE PRINCIPLES  

The light. – Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. – The Azoth of the Sages. – The Binary and conciliation.

Hermeticism first traces the origin of all things to radiation which starts simultaneously from everywhere: it is the infinite Light, AOR Ensoph the Kabbalists (Alchemical theories were summarized with remarkable clarity in 1864, for the first Dr. Ch. Vauréal in his Essay on history ferments, doctoral thesis which then caused a sensation within the Faculty of Medicine of Paris). 

This creative light emanating from a center that is located nowhere, but that each be found in himself.

Considered in its omnipresent unit, center is the source of all existence, of all thought and all life. 

It manifests itself in beings as the focus of their expansive energy, which seems to refer to an internal fire, which would be maintained by what the alchemists call their SULPHUR.

But Central ardor for each result to be a refraction him to ambient light, crack is eager to penetrate the body and represents the influences on them from outside.  Thus the Light-Principle is manifested in relation to beings as two opposite aspects: it converges to the center under the MERCURY name, and it radiates from this radical home as sulphurous fumes.

Mercury therefore refers to what goes and what comes out at Sulphur; but input and output assume a stable container which is what remains, i.e., the SALT.

All that is relatively fixed results from a balance struck between the expansion and sulphurous mercurial compression. Salt is a bright condensation produced by the interference of two opposite radiation; it is the receptacle that seeps mercurial mind to excite the sultry heat. 

In all that can be seen as a distinction exists of necessity Sulphur, Mercury and Salt; for one can not imagine anything that would have its own substance (salt), to be simultaneously subject to internal influences (Sulphur) and external (Mercury).

Considered in its universality, as spread everywhere ether that penetrates all things, Mercury takes the name of Azoth of the Sages. That’s when the divine breath (Ruach Elohim) that Genesis shows us moving on the face of the waters, which are represented by the Salt.  Originally all lies in Ashdod; but by the operation of the divine Spirit the Word is incarnated in an immaculate Virgin, who gave birth to the Redeemer. This is none other than the Will harmonized particularly with the General Will; Sulphur is allied to Mercury in a perfectly purified salt.  This alliance allows individuality to conquer the fullness of being, of life and thought; because individuals do exist, live and think only insofar as they manage to assimilate líêtre life and thinking of the community to which they belong. We are nothing by ourselves: everything comes from the great All. Man must therefore seek to unite closely to the permanent source of all things. 

But the intimacy of a similar union depends on the degree of purity which is worn Salt. This explains the importance attached to the purifications of all time, who still hold today a prominent place in ritualism of Freemasonry.

The predominance of Sulphur exalts individual initiative and results in manly qualities energy, enthusiasm, courage, boldness, pride, taste of command. It grows to create, invent; it encourages the movement, action, and door to give rather than to receive; also the man is based there unless the woman on the receptive faith: he prefers to develop his own ideas rather than to assimilate those of others.

Mercury develops instead the feminine virtues: gentle, quiet, shy, caution, modesty, resignation, obedience. It does not make inventive, but it gives the ability to understand, to guess and feel delicately; it is more like the rest, especially that of the mind; absorbed in reverie and vagrancy imagination.

As for salt, it creates balance, weight, stability; it is the middle one conciliator rightly took as the key symbol of wisdom.