Styrken

Symboler i Styrken

Tarotkortet Styrken etter Rider-Waite

 

I Tarotkortet Styrken møter vi kraftfulle alkymistiske symboler.

Kortet hos Case er knyttet til den hebraiske bokstaven Thet som betyr slange. Selve bokstaven antyder en slange som biter seg selv i halen.

Dette leder tanken hen på OUROBOROS, slangen (eller dragen) som biter seg selv i halen. 

Et dyr former en sirkel. Symbolinnholdet er evig tilbakekomst, en syklisk gjentagelse, død og oppstandelse. 

I den alkymistiske symbolverden er Ouroboros symbol for en i seg selv sluttet prosess som gjentar seg og som gjennom oppvarming, avkjøling og kondensering av en væske skal foredle substansene. 

Slik omtaler Adam McLean denne slangen:

One symbol of the stone was that of the Ouroboros, the snake holding its tail. As we begin the work, we are all rather unformed (the 'Massa Confusa' or confused mass is a good image) and often victims at the mercy of the sway of polarities in the soul, psychic energies that constantly shift from one pole to another, from joy to despair, from overbearing positivity to deep melancholy and negativity, from light to dark, energy to inertia. Our consciousness naturally follows the cycle of wakefulness and sleep, reflecting the cycle of day and night and the Seasons in Nature. This duality becomes reflected in many of our inner experiences. The snake often was used as a symbol for duality - its long drawn out body separating the polarities of head and tail. Sometimes the figure of a winged dragon was used here in place of the snake, in order to close the circle with the dragon at the beginning of the work. When the snake or dragon seized its tail it united the polarities into a circle, a symbol to the alchemists for achieving solidity amongst the dualistic energies of the soul forces. The creation of the Philosophers'stone, was the formation of solid inner ground upon which the alchemical philosophers could build their personalities, and experience the full potentiality of being human.

Thus alchemists could pursue their cycle of inner transformation as embarking on a journey in which they met with archetypal animal figures. The steps on their journey were paralleled in their experiments in their flasks, and the detailed images of processes of change were worked together with the animal archetypes of that stage into a mandala-like picture which they used as the basis for their meditations

 

Løven er et symbol for makt, råe naturkrefter, det dyriske og også det maskuline. I alkymien er løven dels et symbol for urstoffet svovel (sulphur), dels - som rød løve - symbol for "de vises sten". 

 Fra Rosarium Philosophorum, emblem 17

En grønn løve derimot står for et sterkt løsningsmiddel. 

Slik omtaler Adam McLean The Green Lion:

Nitric acid when mixed with the acid derived from common salt, hydrochloric acid, produced aqua regia, a greenish tinged liquid that could dissolve even the noble metal gold. The Green Lion devouring the sun is a famous image in alchemy being depicted in many manuscripts and engravings, and can be thought of as aqua regia dissolving the solar gold and forming a solution which could readily tinge metals with gold.

To other alchemists who worked primarily with vegetable matter and processes, rather than the mineral work, the Green Lion was an image of the green raw energy of nature, "the green fuse which drives the flower" as Dylan Thomas elegantly expressed it in one of his poems. Here the Green Lion which devours the sun is the green pigment chlorophyll. The green leaves of the plant are formed out of the energy of sunlight. Alchemists often attempted to create living processes in their flasks and looked especially for precipitates or crystallisations which resembled leaves or plant forms. The Green Lion here could be a plant sap extract which was often the prima materia for their alchemical work.

Vi ser dermed en DUALITET her:

Både slangen og løven kan oppfattes bade som utgangspunkt, prima materia - og som sluttresultatet av det store arbeidet: De Vises Sten. Vi minnes også at slangen kan oppfattes som det onde OG som et symbol for visdom: som fristeren og som frelseren. Løven kan være våre skyggesider, det materialet som vi har så lett for å forkaste, men som vi må arbeide med for å fullføre Verket, men den kan også være selve sluttresultatet.

 

 

Fra Michael Maiers Atalanta fugiens, emblem 16