tirsdag 6. desember 2011

Keiseren og sulfur

The Emperor is fiery and sulphur 


 
This time I will write in English as I found most references to this topic on different English websites. You could of course take the trouble yourself, but just to help you a little along the way: It is said that the Emperor is fiery The fiery Emperor in this case both could mean inflammable, or refer to the Emperor’s temperament, or to the alchemical principle: sulphur. It is this last issue I want to focus on.


 
Inside gold is the alchemical Sun. Inside the Sun is an active substance, sulfur. Sometimes alchemists equal sulfur with the Sun. Sulfur is the spirit of life. Sulfur is of a twofold nature. White sulfur is the heavenly or secret fire, the divine spark in man, the philosopher’s stone. Red sulfur is the infernal fire inside the body, the earth, the mixture; it is the rough stone (sulfur crudum, sulfur vulgare). Red sulfur and white sulfur are actually one and the same. The alchemists speak of red sulfur at the beginning of the Great Work, while white sulfur is the purified red sulfur, at the end of the Great Work. In general sulfur is the symbol for the omnipresent spirit of life.
 
The Mighty Father makes the laws that bind
The elements, the plants, and every kind 
Of beast - but people too. 
He strives to feed 
The folk,
defending them by word and deed. 
Observe the judgements fathered by his mind! 

 ----------
"If you direct your heart
onto one point,
nothing will be impossible".
Buddha.   

 ----------
"Man is a thinker.
He is that what he thinks.
When he thinks fire
he is fire.
When he thinks war,he will create war.
Everything depends
if his entire imagination will be an entire sun,
that is,
that he will imagine himself completely
that what he wants."   
Paracelsus  

------ 
The Emperor does not, like the Empress, flow with nature; his fiery spirit leads him to impose his will on nature and to force her to conform to his artificial standards of order. As a consequence he is fundamentally alienated from the dark, Titanic forces of nature, and therefore vulnerable to their attack. 
-------- 
Sulfur or sulphur  is the chemical element that has the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is an abundant, tasteless, multivalent non-metal. Sulfur, in its native form, is a yellow crystalline solid. In nature, it can be found as the pure element or as sulfide and sulfate minerals. It is an essential element for life and is found in two amino acids, cysteine and methionine. Its commercial uses are primarily in fertilizers, but it is also widely used in gunpowder, matches, insecticides and fungicides. Elemental sulfur crystals are commonly sought after by mineral collectors for their brightly colored polyhedron shapes.
Sulfur is an essential component of all living cells. 
 
Sulfur (Sanskrit, sulvari; Latin sulfur or sulpur) was known in ancient times, and is referred to in the Biblical Pentateuch (Genesis) as brimstone.  Assyrian texts dated around 700-600 BC refer to it as the "product of the riverside", where deposits could be found. In the 9th century BC, Homer mentioned "pest-averting sulphur". In 424 BC, the tribe of Bootier destroyed a city's walls using a burning mixture of coal, sulphur, and tar.  Chinese Daoists were interested in sulfur's flammability and its reactivity with certain metals, yet its earliest practical uses were found in traditional Chinese medicine. Around the 12th century, the Chinese, probably, discovered gun powder (a mixture of potassium nitrate, KNO3, carbon, and sulphur). 
Sulphur is one of the elements which has an alchemical symbol. Alchemy is an ancient pursuit concerned with, for instance, the transformation of other metals into gold. Alchemists knew that mercury can be fixed with sulphur.


Rider-Waite's The Emperor
 

Ingen kommentarer:

Legg inn en kommentar