MERCURIUS OF MERCURY

Eugène Canseliet, L'Alchimie Expliquée Sur Ses Textes Classiques, Table 1, Preliminary Considerations, p 23.

«The Mercury of Mercury - Mercurius of Mercury – he stands on a sphere with his head covered with a crown overlapped with the astrological metallic sign signifying at the same time the planet and mercury; his wings are open and his arms are horizontally extended.»

The main personage of this image is a winged and crowned naked young man standing on a globe.

Above his head he has a crown and, above this, the spagyrical symbol of mercury, on each of his hands, he is holding a caduceus.

On the side of each caduceus, we can see a bird like a crow that symbolically represents the Putrefaction.

But, the most significant in this image are the spagyrical symbols that the winged and crowned young messenger of Gods that only "per se" represents the philosophical mercury, has inscribed.

In the chest, in first plan, the symbol of the Sun is seen that represents the philosophical sulphur. In the centre of the solar symbol is another complex symbol composed of two important and very enlightening symbols for an experienced alchemist and expert on Philalethes and Flamel path.

The base of this symbol represents a cruciferous globe or either, the spagyrical symbol of our mineral, that by means of the metal, whose symbol is projected for the high one are transformed in the Satúrnia of Flamel that, with the king star will form the solar regulus.

On the extremities of the horizontal line that forms the cross of the cruciferous globe two similar symbols are seen that we aren’t able to distinguish, seeming to us to be the spagyrical symbol of the ammonia salt. Alchemically it does not seem to have any practical sense if the one wasn’t the ammonia salt and the other the nitre or then the sand symbols or the metallic fillings.

The solar regulus, together with the quicksilver whose spagyrical symbol which can be found over the crown of young mercury, will form the philosophical amalgam that later will be distilled nine times as Philalethes describes in the Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of King and Flamel in the Breviary or Will Last Testament.

This philosophical mercury represented by the winged and crowned young, cooked "per se" in a "philosophical egg", or with the Sun in the suitable fire regimes, allows thus, the materialisation of the Work.

In our humble opinion, this is the symbolical representation of the First Tablet of L'Alchimie Expliquée Sur Ses Textes Classiques, Eugène Canseliet.

Rubellus Petrinus