Thursday 14 November 2013

The Watery Beast, Leviathan; and Alchemical Rubedo as a Bloody Sacrifice!

 
The Leviathan, brooding  in the primordial
waters of consciousness.
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How to Catch a Monster?!
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I caught a Serpent by the tail,
and pulled her from the Sea.
But when I saw her size and motion,
I turned and tried to flee!
~
But Beast was hungry too,
and wouldn't let me go!
Caught me by her pull;
her violent undertow!
~
Now I'm consumed whole;
consummated as her feast!
Pregnant with new meaning,
I wait to be released.
~
Blackening to white,
God's Creature on me dines.
Reddening to gold,
she sublimates sublime.
~
Dragon births her Pearl,
born of a Monstrum wise.
Reconciles the opposites;
unearths her unearthly Child!
~
"Jonah (Oannes), linked to the Roman god Janus, is clearly a serpent deity. Today, the beast that swallowed him is described as a whale, but in fact the Bible describes it as a 'large fish' in a context that recalls the Leviathan, the great serpent associated with kundalini, the Earth power and underlying force of the universe. The fish and the serpent have been interchangeable for centuries." Gardiner, The Serpent Grail.
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Rubedo, the final stage in the alchemical process, and the reddening of consciousness, is preceded by Albedo (whitening) and Nigredo (blackening). "Jesus was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light." (Matthew 17:2).
Go trans-figure!?
http://www.sacopts.org.au/Portals/0/Users/013/13/13/jonah-and-whale.jpg  
Jonah and the serpent Fish sent by God;
with the scroll of the one "Word" made manifest,
and its Solar meaning, digested and understood.
~
The myth of Jonah goes basically thus:
"He sailed for Tarshish to flee the Lord."
"The Lord sent a great wind on the sea."
"Jonah fell into a deep sleep."
During the storm he was sacrificed as "an innocent man" to appease the wrathful God.
"But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and nights."
Jonah's prayer in part:
"You hurled me into the deep,
and the currents swirled about me.
You brought my life up from the pit.
When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord.
Those that cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
But I will sacrifice to you.
Salvation comes from the Lord."
~
"And the Lord commanded the fish,
and it vomited Jonah onto dry land."
The journey of the Shaman through the fiery belly of the Beast is a universal motif.
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http://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/attachments/anything-about-alfa-romeos-alfabb-com/93745d1203887630-what-do-you-know-about-biscione-visconti.jpg
The Biscione Serpent.
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"The Hebrew root word of Leviathan means 'to cleave' or 'to divide,' an allusion to the division in consciousness, which is itself seen as the root of human ignorance." Gardiner. But the spirits of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire eventually recombine as a fifth elemental essence divine, Wine, the holy blood of new life.
"Quintessence is a thing that is spiritual, penetrating, tinging, and incorruptible, which emerges anew from the four elements when they are bound to each other." Isaac Newton.
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The daimonic Welsh Dragon. The
red, watery Beast sprouts wings.
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"I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast." Rev.
I guess it is a function of the goddess to conceive and rebirth. The mytho-logical Meaning of the immaculate concept of the one "Word" made manifest is known to her. The meaning of love is known to those who are inside her passion. The watery and fiery blood of sacrifice reddens my mind with fusion. The con-fusion of good and evil divides the mind.
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"The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life." Jesus admits to suicide!... (John 10:17)... sheds the old skin for the divine shine.
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Alchemical "Rubedo" dawns on my psyche as a winged and feminine creature. Green consciousness sublimates sublime by devouring solar energy: black (depression) to white (schizophrenia) to red (spiritual suicide/sacrifice). Then the alchemical process is hermetically sealed with Gold, the crowning of nature.
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The green Lion eventually digests the diffracted colours/qualities of consciousness, transcending its lower nature, and trans-figuring out the higher Meaning of Light.
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Image result for alchemical green lion 
The alchemical Green Lion devours the sun.
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My interpretation of this enigmatic emblem goes:
green consciousness tries to digest the higher meaning and
energy of the symbolic Sun; but, being green, he makes a meal of it, 
spilling the holy blood or holy wine down to Earth, where 
it seeds as the immanent Spirit divine, made manifest 
in the prism of life in diversity, and begins the alchemical
and gestational journey back to the Heavens, water into Wine!
The up-pointing tail indicates the way home to the completion 
of the circulatory process of alchemical distillation.
( To see the recovery of the fallen Spirit, link to my post: 
Rubedo coagulates into the "Carbuncle of the Sun." )
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Rubedo: the Lion catches its prey!
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Alchemical Rubedo
more deeply reddens in my mind.
I am become a blood sacrifice
to Dionysus!
Holy Wine refines,
from circumcision to crucifixion,
birth to death inclined.
The Sun, from black to white,
then to red, fuses
golden in my psyche.
Serpent puts on Lion's face,
green turned Gold refined. 
~

Chnoubis, the gnostic sun-god and monstrum,
whose archetypal and quantum function is to reconcile
the play of opposites into singularity.
~

Ouroboros.
My depiction of the alchemical processes
of nigredo, albedo/cauda pavonis, rubedo,
and the birth of the Stone/Pearl/Wavicle.
The serpentine sublimation of the spirit results
in the solarization of consciousness.
~
"That which is above is as that which is below.
Its father is the Sun; its mother the Moon.
The Wind bears it in its belly; the Earth nurtures it.
This is the process."
(the Emerald Tablet) 
In the crown-sealed alembic, the three birds represent Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo. The diffracted light/life of consciousness sublimates sublime through the trans-figuring out of the One Word made flesh. Its mytho-logical Meaning is extracted as Quintessence, the Holy Wine or Nectar of the Gods, hermetically and safely sealed in the vessel of the Son.
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Spirits reacting in a bottle! The Raven, Dove, and
Phoenix are ths spirit-birds of transformation. The
Red Phoenix (fireBird) consumes itself and gives 
birth to itSelf as the Lapis.
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I am finally sealed safe in the danger-zone of conscious volatility, safe-guarded and safely conducted by the superVision of my lord, Mercury.
~
Alchemical pictures from
Adam Mclean's alchemy
website.
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http://www.levity.com/alchemy/images/ss18.jpg 
"Luna gives birth to the Red King,
the sum of all perfection, the Stone
itself, whose golden orb and sceptre,
robe of royal purple and golden aura
proclaim his absolute majesty."
Francis Melville.
* 
 The dragon symbolizes the visionary experience of the alchemist as he works in his laboratory and "theorizes." The dragon in itself is a monstrum--a symbol combining the chthonic principle of the serpent and the aerial principle of the bird.
The dragon is probably the oldest documented pictorial symbol in alchemy. It appears as the tail-eater in the Codex Mercurius of the tenth or eleventh century, as the One, the All. Time and again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail. It is therefore called circulare (circular) or rota (wheel). Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work; he is the prima materia. 
As dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again as the lapis. He is the play of colors in the cauda pavonis (linked, see 1.4 The Peacock's Tail) and the division into four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison yet healing draught--a symbol uniting all opposites.

From: spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com 

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