Abrac
Temperance Image
Thought I'd share some discoveries I ran across concerning Temperance. As usual, Waite's meaning is hidden in plain sight. He says, "It has one foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of the essences." So the nature of the essences are earth and water, plain enough. But what do they symbolize? To answer this question I found some references in two books Waite was associated with. The first The Hermetic Museum which he wrote a Preface for in the 1893 English translation; he also edited this work. The other is Levi's Transcendental Magic, 1896, which Waite translated and edited.
Water and earth represent two principles, the fixed and the volatile. The fixed is self-explanatory, anything fixed or solid. The volatile, as its name suggests, isn't something necessarily explosive, but that which is changeable or fluid. Here are two quotes from The Hermetic Museum:
This one comments on the words of Hermes Tismegistus in the Emerald Tablet:
Here are two from Levi:
and
Levi's "doctrine of individual self-creation" is particularly interesting where Temperance is concerned. Waite makes it very easy to see that the triangle represents the volatile by coloring it orange; it also "rises upward." The square obviously represents the fixed. We can also see the process of "harmonizing" the two and the consequent liberation of consciousness symbolized by the sun—Levi's "self-creation."
Thought I'd share some discoveries I ran across concerning Temperance. As usual, Waite's meaning is hidden in plain sight. He says, "It has one foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of the essences." So the nature of the essences are earth and water, plain enough. But what do they symbolize? To answer this question I found some references in two books Waite was associated with. The first The Hermetic Museum which he wrote a Preface for in the 1893 English translation; he also edited this work. The other is Levi's Transcendental Magic, 1896, which Waite translated and edited.
Water and earth represent two principles, the fixed and the volatile. The fixed is self-explanatory, anything fixed or solid. The volatile, as its name suggests, isn't something necessarily explosive, but that which is changeable or fluid. Here are two quotes from The Hermetic Museum:
"When God had created our first parent Adam, and set him in Paradise, He shewed him two things, namely, earth and water. Earth is fixed and indestructible, water is volatile and vaporous. These two contain the elements of all created things:"
This one comments on the words of Hermes Tismegistus in the Emerald Tablet:
"By the words which follow: 'That which is above is also that which is below,' he describes the Matter of our Art, which, though one, is divided into two things, the volatile water which rises upward, and the earth which lies at the bottom, and becomes fixed. But when the reunion takes place, the body becomes spirit, and the spirit becomes body, the earth is changed into water and becomes volatile, the water is transmuted into body, and becomes fixed. When bodies become spirits, and spirits bodies, your work is finished; for then that which rises upward and that which descends downward become one body."
Here are two from Levi:
"As we have said, there are two palmary [preeminent] natural laws—two essential laws—which, balanced against another, produce the universal equilibrium of things. These are fixity and motion, analogous to truth and discovery in philosophy, and in absolute conception to necessity and liberty, which are the very essence of God. The Hermetic philosophers give the name of fixed to all that is ponderable, to all that tends by its nature towards central rest and immobility. Whatsoever obeys more naturally and readily the law of motion, they term volatile; and they compose their Stone by analysis, that is, the volatilization of the fixed; then by synthesis, that is, the fixation of the volatile . . ."
and
"We may refer our readers also to an admirable treatise attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and entitled 'Minerva Mundi.' It is found only in certain editions of Hermes and contains, in allegories full of profundity and poetry, the doctrine of individual self-creation, or the creative law consequent on the harmony between two forces which are termed fixed and volatile by alchemists . . ."
Levi's "doctrine of individual self-creation" is particularly interesting where Temperance is concerned. Waite makes it very easy to see that the triangle represents the volatile by coloring it orange; it also "rises upward." The square obviously represents the fixed. We can also see the process of "harmonizing" the two and the consequent liberation of consciousness symbolized by the sun—Levi's "self-creation."