Formicida
I'm trying to get my head around this expression and how it relates to these cards, and it isn't working.
DuQuette states that the Lovers represents "solve" while Art is "coagula." Crowley doesn't say this outright. He does say, of the Lovers, "The subject of this card is Analysis, followed by Synthesis." The syntax isn't entirely clear to me; he could be saying either that the Lovers represents both of these phases, or that the Lovers is Analysis, with some other card (Art, I should think) being Synthesis. The latter interpretation seems to be more in line with what I understand of what the alchemists meant by "solve et coagula."
But why did they mean that, anyway? My knowledge of alchemy is minimal, and though I'm trying to remedy that I haven't gotten this far yet. (And google isn't helping at the moment). What I can speculate is heavily tinted by modern chemistry, which I know much more about. I have a hard time understanding dissolution as a process of analysis. To me, it's taking two substances and mixing them to make one substance--which seems to have more to do with synthesis. Whereas coagulation could be thought of as the reverse--taking one substance and dividing it into (some of) its component parts. This seems to be pretty thoroughly the opposite of what anyone else means by these things--so what am I missing? What lens do I need to be looking at this through?
And is this all going to make these cards come clear? Please?
DuQuette states that the Lovers represents "solve" while Art is "coagula." Crowley doesn't say this outright. He does say, of the Lovers, "The subject of this card is Analysis, followed by Synthesis." The syntax isn't entirely clear to me; he could be saying either that the Lovers represents both of these phases, or that the Lovers is Analysis, with some other card (Art, I should think) being Synthesis. The latter interpretation seems to be more in line with what I understand of what the alchemists meant by "solve et coagula."
But why did they mean that, anyway? My knowledge of alchemy is minimal, and though I'm trying to remedy that I haven't gotten this far yet. (And google isn't helping at the moment). What I can speculate is heavily tinted by modern chemistry, which I know much more about. I have a hard time understanding dissolution as a process of analysis. To me, it's taking two substances and mixing them to make one substance--which seems to have more to do with synthesis. Whereas coagulation could be thought of as the reverse--taking one substance and dividing it into (some of) its component parts. This seems to be pretty thoroughly the opposite of what anyone else means by these things--so what am I missing? What lens do I need to be looking at this through?
And is this all going to make these cards come clear? Please?