A Survey of Alchemical and Hermetic Symbolism

Abstract

FOR the reader interested in symbolism there can be no more profitable study than the alchemical texts which emanated from western Europe during and immediately after the Renaissance. Apart from the conventional signs derived from earlier texts, they contain a wealth of complex pictorial representations intended to symbolize the methods and aims of the so-called Hermetic Art in such a fashion that the traditional secrets were concealed from all but initiates. Today, when knowledge is more widely spread, the apparent meanings of the ideas and processes are more easily recognizable by anyone conversant with the fields from which the were drawn. The danger arising from their interpretation would now appear to have been slight, at any rate, fram a practical point of view, for the materials and the methods suggested are themselves sufficiently ambiguous or unreal to be considered in any but an esoteric sense; beneath the mask of there lay still hidden the true nature and the methods of alchemy. The purpose of the present study, however, is not to consider the interpretation of the alchemical process, but rather to decide how alchemical and Hermetic symbols fit into a scheme, or classification, which may be derived from a consideration of symbolism in general. This must, naturally, take cognizance of the sources and of the mechanisms by which the are derived from these sources, though to do this fully would require considerably more space than is available here. In the main, information relating to sources and selection processes will be limited to references to the more important works which may be conveniently consulted.