Herbert Silberer

“ The fact that modern chemical science is sprung from the hermetic works,—as the only branch at present clearly visible and comprehensible of this misty tree of knowledge,—has had for result that in looking back we have received a false impression. Chemical specialists have made researches in the hermetic art and have been caught just as completely in the tangle of its hieroglyphics as were the blind seekers of gold before them. The hermetic art, or alchemy in the wider sense, is not exclusively limited to gold making or even to primitive chemistry. ”

“ In so far as the solicitous person refuses the requests made of her and for reasons of necessity thrusts the child out into the world, or in so far as any other obstacles (demands of life) stand in the way of the gratification of the lazy, “feed me” state of mind, like the angel with the flaming sword before the entrance to paradise, so far the obstructing power appears as the type of the “terrible” mother, a picture whose terribleness is yet intensified by the working of the incest conflict. In this aspect therefore the otherwise beloved mother is a hostile personality. ”

“ What is this mysterious mercury, susceptible to evolution, lying in mankind, common to all, but differently worked out? Hitchcock answers, conscience. Conscience is not equally “pure” with all men, and not equally developed; the difficulty of discovering it, of which the alchemists tell, is the difficulty of arousing it in the heart of man for the heart's improvement and elevation. The starting point in the education of man is indeed to awaken in his heart an enduring, permanent sense of the absolutely right, and the consistent purpose of adhering to this sense. ”

“ It comes from the powerful attraction for us of that world which is opened to us through introversion. We descend there to whet our arms for fresh battles, but we lay them down; for we feel ourselves embraced by soft caressing arms that invite us to linger, to dream enchanting dreams. ”

“ In order to carry on the work of the universal structure with advantage the Master must enter into the closest union of the will with God. No longer a slave in anything he is the more a master of all, the more his will works in harmony with the one that rules the universe. “Placed between the abstract and the concrete, between the creative intelligence and the objective creation, man thus conceived, appears like the mediator par excellence, or the veritable Demiurge of the gnostics.” ”

“ The topmost psychic stratum of the dream reveals itself as an earthquake reminiscence. “Earth” leads to the idea of “Mother Earth.” The tree sinking into it, is the tree of life, the phallus. The rectangular space is the bedroom, the marriage bed. ”

“ Introversion is no child's play. It leads to abysses, by which we may be swallowed up past recall. Whoever submits to introversion arrives at a point where two ways part; and there he must come to a decision, than which a more difficult one cannot be conceived. The symbol of the abyss, of the parting of the ways, both were clearly contained in our parable. The occurrence of the similar motive in myths and fairy tales is familiar. ”

“ He is as good as dead or mortally ill; if the libido succeeds however in tearing itself loose again and of pressing on to the world above, then a miracle is revealed; this subterranean journey has become a fountain of youth for it, and from its apparent death there arises a new productiveness. This train of thought is very beautifully contained in an Indian myth: Once on a time Vishnu absorbed in rapture (introversion) bore in this sleep Brahma, who enthroned on a lotus flower, arose from Vishnu's navel and was carrying the Vedas, eagerly reading them. ”

“ This dream, too (beside other things) , contains a womb phantasy, wheel room, mill, space with wet walls—the womb. The dreamer is followed by a crowd; just as our wanderer is met by a crowd; the elders. This dream, which will still further occupy our attention, I shall call the “Flying Post.”
Let us return to the parable. The mill of Section 11 is the womb. The wanderer strives for the most intimate union with his mother; his striving, to do better than his father culminates in his procreating himself, the son, again and better. ”

“ The spiritual refuse that psychoanalysis uncovers is like the manure on which our cultivated fruits thrive. The dark titanic impulses are the raw material from which in every man, the work of civilization forms an ethical character. Where there is a strong light there are deep shadows. ”

“ In alchemy, to which I wish now to return, the mythical and the individual images meet in the most vivid way, without destroying each other.
In regard to the high ethical aspirations of alchemy, [pg 378] we understand that as a mystic art it preserves those attributes of a royal art which it seems to have had at first merely as gold making and magic. In fact what art may more justly be called royal than that of the perfection of mankind, that art which turns the dependent into the independent, the slave into a master? ”

“ This, then, as I could easily observe, not a little pleased me, especially as I saw her arise in surpassingly costly garments whose like was never seen on earth, and with a precious crown decked with bright diamonds; and also heard her speak. “Hear ye children of men and perceive ye that are born of women, that the most high power can set up kings and can remove kings. He makes rich and poor, according to his will. He kills and makes again to live.” ”

“ We exalt not the outspoken word of the wisdom of God, but only the animal will to selfishness and egoism which is departed from God, which honors itself as a false God of its own and may not believe or trust God (as the Antichrist who has placed himself in God's stead) ; and we teach on the contrary that the man of the Antichrist's image shall wholly die so that he may be born in Christ of a new life and will, which new will has power in the perfect word of nature with divine eyes to see all the miracles of God, both in nature and creature, in the perfect wisdom. ”

“ As soon as they perceived the slightest warmth they embraced each other so tenderly that the like will not soon be seen, and stayed so hot that the young bridegroom's heart in his body dissolved for ardent love, also his whole body almost melted in his beloved's arms and fell apart. ”

“ The wanderer is a true soma robber.
Let us hark back to the next to last section. Here, near the end of the dream, the King becomes sleepy. The real sleeper already feels the approaching awakening and would like to sleep longer (to phantasy) . But he pretends that the king is sleepy, thus throwing the burden from his own shoulders. And to this experience is soon attached a symbol of waking: the wanderer, the dreamer of the parable, is taken to another land, indeed into a bright land. He wakes from his dreams with a pious echo of his wish fulfillment on his lips ... ”

“ For this purpose alone has the soul come into the world, to learn and experience; but it is like a man that comes to a place to become acquainted with it and know its conditions, but then gives up the learning, inquiring and collecting of information, and diverts his spirit by reaching after luxury and the enjoyment of other things, and in so doing forgets to acquire that which he was to strive for. ”

“ The snake with its tail in its mouth is the cycle of the libido, the always rolling wheel of life, of procreation, which always procreates itself, and of the creation of the world. The same cycle is represented by a god who holds his phallus in his mouth, and so (in accordance with infantile and primitive theory) constantly impregnates himself. The serpent is good and also evil. Whoever breaks through the ring frees himself from the wheel of compulsion, raises himself above good and evil, in order to put in its place later a mystical union [Hieros Gamos] . ”

“ For by art they received their life, through art they received body, flesh, bone and blood, through art were they born. Therefore the art was embodied and born in them and they had to learn it from no one, but one must learn from them. ”

“ Just as from the dead primordial being the sacrificed bull, Mithra, sprouts life and vegetation, so in the dream of Omicron, a tree grows out of the belly of the dead bear. In mythology many trees grow out of graves, that in some way reincarnate the creative or life principle of the dead. It is an interesting fact that the world, or especially an improved new edition of the world, comes from the body of a dying being. Some one kills this being and so causes an improved creation. (According to Stucken, incidentally, all myths are creation myths.) ”

“ In dreams this piece of ancient humanity works on in us, for it is the germ from which the higher reason developed and in every man still develops. The dream takes us back into remote conditions of human culture and puts in our hand the means of understanding it better. The dream thought is now so easy because, during the enormous duration of the evolution of mankind we have been so well trained in just this form of cheap, phantastic explanation by the first agreeable fancy. ”

“ Now we read that it is not common for man to love and pursue the good and the true because it is the good and true; but we call that good which we desire and there lies the great mistake of life. From all which we may see that vast consequences follow from the choice of an object of desire, which as we have said, may as easily be an eternal as a transient one. ”

“ I tell thee, my child, that the same mercury is as good as the mercury extracted from gold in all operations.” [Herein lies, according to H. A., an allusion to the fact that all men are essentially of one nature, inasmuch as the image of God dwells in them all.]
“All these strange parables, in which the philosophers have spoken of a stone, a moon, a stove, a vessel, all of that is Saturn [i.e., all of that is spoken of mankind] for you may add nothing foreign, outside of what springs from himself. There is none so poor in this world that he cannot operate and promote this work. ”

“ We leave the paths of everyday life, in order to rove in the jungle of phantasy. If we remember rightly, the wanderer used the same metaphor at the beginning of his narrative. He comes upon a thicket in the woods, loses the usual path.... He, too, speaks figuratively. Have we almost unaware, in making his symbolism our own, partially drawn away the veil from his mystery? ”

“ Masturbation is of inestimable importance psychologically. One is guarded from fate, since there is no sexual need of submitting to any one, life and its difficulties. With masturbation one has in his hands the great magic. He needs only to imagine and in addition to masturbate and he possesses all the pleasures of the world and is under no compulsion to conquer the world of his desire through hard work and struggle with reality. ”

“ Now the generation of the homunculus is not to be forgotten. For there is something in it, notwithstanding that it has till now been kept in mystery and concealed, and that not a little doubt and question there was among some of the old philosophers, whether it was possible for art and nature that a man should be born outside a woman's body and a natural mother. ”

“ The metallic subject must be gently dissolved in its own natural water (conscience) , not with powerful media, not with corroding acids, which the foolish employ in order to reach the goal in a hurry, for by such means he either spoils the materia or produces a merely superficial action. Senseless asceticism and the like are just as objectionable as the impetuous enthusiasm (which we called straw fire here) . The ethical work of alchemy as of common life is a sublimation; it is important that the materia takes up at any time only as much as it can sublimate. ”

“ Robert Fischer describes freemasonry as a society of men who have set themselves the severe task of a wise life and labor as the most difficult task, of self-knowledge, self-mastery and self-improvement,—tasks that are not finished in this life but only through death prepare us for the stage where the true consummation begins. ”

“ That magic power of man which is operative outside of him lies, as it were, hidden in the inner life of mankind. It sleeps and rules absolutely without being wakened, yet daily as if in a drunken stupor within us.... Therefore we should pray to God, who can be honored only in the spirit, that is, in the inmost soul of man. Hence I say the art of the Cabala requires of the soul that magic yet natural power shall, as it were, after sleep has been driven away, be placed in the keeping of the soul. ”

“ To the rich poetical genius it is revealed preeminently in the activity of his imagination; to the philosophical understanding as the scheme of a harmonious system. It sinks into the depths of the soul of the religious, and exalts the strong constructive will like a divine power. And so the divine is honored differently by each one. ”

“ So all religions are degenerate in which one chooses as a libido symbol the unconcealed sexual act, and therefore also a religion must degenerate, in which gold, this object of inordinate desire, is used as a symbol.
What impels the seeker, that is, the man who actually deserves the name, in masonry and in alchemy, is clearly manifested as a certain dissatisfaction. The seeker is not satisfied with what he actually learns in the degrees, he expects more, wants to have more exhaustive information, wants to know when the “real” will be finally shown. ”

“ Dreams are then, as Freud's results show, always wish phantasies. [I give here only exposition, not criticism. My later application of psychoanalysis will show what reservations I make concerning Freud's doctrines.] In them wishes, strivings, impulses work themselves out, rising to the surface from the depths of the soul. When they come in waking life, wish phantasies are sometimes called castles in the air. In dreams we have the fulfillment of wishes that are not or cannot be fulfilled. ”

“ The same came to Jesus by night [introversion] and said unto him, ‘Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ”

“ The homunculus motive would likewise have to be regarded in a new light. I have said that the mystic was his own father; he creates a new man (himself) out of himself with a merely symbolic mother, therefore with peculiar self-mastery, without the coöperation of any parents. That means the same thing as the artificial creation of a man. We recognize therefore the anagogic significance of the homunculus, the idea of which we found closely interwoven with alchemy in general. This connection also has not escaped Jung, though he takes it one-sidedly and draws a too far-reaching conclusion. ”