CrystalGeezer
My secret's my enzyme.
Since it’s slow in Morrissey News Tiem and because I’m crazy or whatever, I got to thinking about a specific passage of Life is a Pigsty and how it relates to a very important alchemical process which signifies the “ending” of a great work. Great work goes on all day every day all over the world and in the heavens, but the great work for a particular individual can span almost an entire lifetime. Maybe this says something. I was going to write in my own words a summation, but because I have a toothache and not a lot of patience, I thought I’d quote Titus Burckhardt from his book simply titled Alchemy. Other interesting things to ponder after reading this include Moses’ staff from which he struck the rock that nourished his people with water…not so much actual water but “water of the word” as described by a blogger I read. I know a lot of what I write is logically out there, but it’s not a far stretch to imagine that Morrissey’s words nurture and comfort us in a way that other musicians don‘t exactly; a mixture of humor, profound loneliness, revenge, dreams of another, but mostly, hope.
And I've been shifting gears all along my life
but I'm still the same underneath 2
this you surely knew?
I can't reach you
I can't reach you
I can't reach you anymore
Can you please stop time?
can you stop the pain?
I feel too cold
and now I feel too warm again
can you stop this pain?
can you stop this pain?
even now, in the final hour of my life
I'm falling in love again
When the immutable Divine Act which governs the cosmos, is symbolically represented by a motionless vertical axis, the “course” of Nature, in relation to it, is like a spiral which winds itself around this axis so that with each encirclement it realizes a new plane or degree of existence. This is the primordial symbol of the serpent or dragon, whoch winds itself round the axis of the tree of the world. [TB references Rene Guenon here and a few more times but I won‘t get all technical about it since it‘s just a quick transcription of a long passage.] Almost all the symbols of Nature proceed from the spiral of the circle. The rhythm of the successive “unrollings" and "rollings" of Nature, of the alchemical solve et coagula is represented by the double spiral: [imagine a really curly S on it's side] whose form also lies at the basis of the zoomorphic representations of two serpents or dragons winding themselves in contrary directions round a staff or tree. These correspond to the two complementary phases of nature of nature or the two fundamental forces. This is the ancient heritage of images of nature on which both alchemy, and certain traditions of the East (especially tantrism) draw.
[Burckhardt goes on to discuss ego-consciousness and kundalini but I fear the tl;dr factor might lose some of you so Ima gonna cut to the chase.]
For Alchemy the two forces represented as serpents or dragons are Sulphur and Quicksilver. Their macrocosmic prototype is the two phases - increasing and decreasing - of the sun's annual course, separated from one another by the winter and summer solstices. The connection between the tantric and alchemical symbolisms is obvious: of the two forces Pingala and Ida, which winds themselves round the Merudanda, the first is described as being hot and dry, characterized by the color red, and, like alchemical sulphur, compared with the sun. The second for , Ida, is regarded as being cold and humid, and in its silvery pallor is associated with the moon.
In his book On the Heiroglyphic Figures Nicolas Flamel writes of the mutual relationship of sulphur and quicksilver...these are the serpents which are fixed around the caduceus, of Staff of Mercury, and by means of which Mercury wields his great power and transforms himself as he wills. Whoever kills one, says Haly, also kills the other, for each one of them can only die along with her sister [by means of their death pass over into a new state]...After both have been placed in the "vessel" of the grave [that is to say, the inward, "hermetically sealed" vessel], they begin to bite one another savagely and, on account of their great poison and raging fury, do not let go of each other - unless the cold should deter them - until both, as a result of their dripping poison and deadly wounding, are drenched in blood [for so long as Nature remains "untamed", the opposition of the two forces is manifested in destructive or "poisonous" mode], so that they finally kill one another and drown in their own poison, which, after their death, will transmute them into living and perpetual water [in that they are reunited on a higher level] after they have lost, with their downfall and decompostion, their first, natural forms, in order to acquire a single, new, nobler and better form..." (NF)
This fable supplements the Hermetic myth of the Staff of Hermes. Hermes or Mercury struck with his staff a pair of serpents in combat with one another. The blow tamed the serpents, whoch wound themselves round his staff and conferred on him the theurgic power of 'binding' and 'loosing' This means the transmutation of chaos into cosmos, of conflict into order, through the power of a spiritual act, which both discriminates and unites.
And I've been shifting gears all along my life
but I'm still the same underneath 2
this you surely knew?
I can't reach you
I can't reach you
I can't reach you anymore
Can you please stop time?
can you stop the pain?
I feel too cold
and now I feel too warm again
can you stop this pain?
can you stop this pain?
even now, in the final hour of my life
I'm falling in love again
When the immutable Divine Act which governs the cosmos, is symbolically represented by a motionless vertical axis, the “course” of Nature, in relation to it, is like a spiral which winds itself around this axis so that with each encirclement it realizes a new plane or degree of existence. This is the primordial symbol of the serpent or dragon, whoch winds itself round the axis of the tree of the world. [TB references Rene Guenon here and a few more times but I won‘t get all technical about it since it‘s just a quick transcription of a long passage.] Almost all the symbols of Nature proceed from the spiral of the circle. The rhythm of the successive “unrollings" and "rollings" of Nature, of the alchemical solve et coagula is represented by the double spiral: [imagine a really curly S on it's side] whose form also lies at the basis of the zoomorphic representations of two serpents or dragons winding themselves in contrary directions round a staff or tree. These correspond to the two complementary phases of nature of nature or the two fundamental forces. This is the ancient heritage of images of nature on which both alchemy, and certain traditions of the East (especially tantrism) draw.
[Burckhardt goes on to discuss ego-consciousness and kundalini but I fear the tl;dr factor might lose some of you so Ima gonna cut to the chase.]
For Alchemy the two forces represented as serpents or dragons are Sulphur and Quicksilver. Their macrocosmic prototype is the two phases - increasing and decreasing - of the sun's annual course, separated from one another by the winter and summer solstices. The connection between the tantric and alchemical symbolisms is obvious: of the two forces Pingala and Ida, which winds themselves round the Merudanda, the first is described as being hot and dry, characterized by the color red, and, like alchemical sulphur, compared with the sun. The second for , Ida, is regarded as being cold and humid, and in its silvery pallor is associated with the moon.
In his book On the Heiroglyphic Figures Nicolas Flamel writes of the mutual relationship of sulphur and quicksilver...these are the serpents which are fixed around the caduceus, of Staff of Mercury, and by means of which Mercury wields his great power and transforms himself as he wills. Whoever kills one, says Haly, also kills the other, for each one of them can only die along with her sister [by means of their death pass over into a new state]...After both have been placed in the "vessel" of the grave [that is to say, the inward, "hermetically sealed" vessel], they begin to bite one another savagely and, on account of their great poison and raging fury, do not let go of each other - unless the cold should deter them - until both, as a result of their dripping poison and deadly wounding, are drenched in blood [for so long as Nature remains "untamed", the opposition of the two forces is manifested in destructive or "poisonous" mode], so that they finally kill one another and drown in their own poison, which, after their death, will transmute them into living and perpetual water [in that they are reunited on a higher level] after they have lost, with their downfall and decompostion, their first, natural forms, in order to acquire a single, new, nobler and better form..." (NF)
This fable supplements the Hermetic myth of the Staff of Hermes. Hermes or Mercury struck with his staff a pair of serpents in combat with one another. The blow tamed the serpents, whoch wound themselves round his staff and conferred on him the theurgic power of 'binding' and 'loosing' This means the transmutation of chaos into cosmos, of conflict into order, through the power of a spiritual act, which both discriminates and unites.
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sorry 
