The Black Dragon in Alchemy: Symbolism and Inner Transformation

They have indicated with less praising terms: sometimes it is represented as a scaly vessel, sometimes as shadow of the body, sometimes as vampire, sometimes as a black dragon, covered with scales, often covered with red dots, with penetrating, nauseating and toxic odor to which one must cut the head to not remain poisoned by it. When alchemists speak of scales of this black dragon, they say they refer to the fact that this dragon is like covered by a black layer of coarse, hard, leprous impurities that must be freed, because they form like an obstacle for the Alchemist since, being heavy, they prevent him from accessing the higher and subtler spiritual planes and obscure his vision of the clear spiritual light. If the vision of this entity and its transmutation process are treated, outside of alchemical symbols and with a correct interpretation of Christic character, in the 10th Notebook of Archeosophy, the way to operate this interior change in one's soul and make it pass from an egocentric state to a theocentric state is instead described in the 11th Notebook XV of Archeosophy which treats of mystical Ascesis and meditation on the heart. Here then is the reason for the alchemical motto "the old man of yesterday who must become the cherub of tomorrow", or "the Old Man who must become the new". When they refer to the penetrating and nauseating odor they want to suggest an emanation from it of an irrational and ancestral state of terror to which the alchemist must immediately cut the head to not come out terrorized. Franz Hartmann in The Secret of the Great Work identifies this entity, which he calls "Guardian of the Threshold", as the principal matter of the work, identifies it as the means but also the main obstacle in the realization of the Great Work. When the dark fetid spirit is rejected, so much that neither the odor nor the dark color remains, then the body becomes luminous, the soul rejoices with it the spirit - Comario. Eagles of Philalethes. In reality also the preceding operations are sometimes understood as sublimations: "Know that all operations called putrefaction, solution, coagulation, ablution and fixation, consist in sublimation alone" - Arnold of Villanova. The difference between these first sublimations and the successive ones seems however to be the result: in the first the alchemist remains at the black color and thus cannot see the light, while in the second the alchemist manages to rise up to white. Let us try to better understand the meaning of these sublimations which sometimes also go under the name of "production of Silver" or also "flights of Eagles". The idea seems to be very simple: in the image, reported above, there are doves that rise to heaven carrying vials and other doves that descend to earth bringing new vials. The doves or eagles that fly would represent according to some interpreters the spirit which, having freed the fetid spirit from its leprous shells that constituted themselves as obstacle by attaching to it, is ready to free itself in the more ethereal worlds. The spirit, ready to free itself as soon as it is provided with the means, cannot however completely abandon the body, but clothes itself with a habit more suited to its nature, more obedient to its will, and made with the clean and purified particles that it can gather around itself, to use them as new vehicle [...] Then it assumes, coagulating, a blinding white color and its separation from the mass is made easier - Fulcanelli, The Philosophical Dwellings. It therefore seems to understand from the allusions of these alchemists that the purest and already purified parts of this entity of which we spoke previously can as it were rise with the spirit constituting with it a first and partial body and that once re-precipitated they constitute a regenerating ferment for the others left behind. One can find an analogy between these processes and the conjunctions apt to constitute the rebis which -in one of its various meanings- can also be understood as the union of body with spirit (when the two become one thing). This process is detailed by Philalethes in "Experiments on the preparation of the Mercury of the Wise" in which he maintains that one must make seven or nine eagles fly to obtain the characteristic splendor of the sun, but others say that the more numerous the reiterations are, the more the body is tortured therefore split and broken and the more the quintessence present in this body increases in purity and activity. Sometimes alchemists allude to this process when they speak of metallic salt, which is extracted from magnesia (another name for the subject of the wise) "through repeated destructions of it, dissolving and sublimating" (Bernard Trevisano) in such a way that the virtues of the extract purified by sublimations condense, at the end, in a small mass. Coming to practice as state of consciousness, the idea that is transmitted by the texts is that of spiritualizing the body and corporifying the spirit in a single interior movement, that is to immerse in this spiritual state (of prime matter) the corporeal sense. From what is understood from the texts the idea seems to be that of starting from the body, from an organic function, from a corporeal sense and spiritualizing it that is taking contact with those spiritual forces of which it is the product and assimilating them spiritually so that the corporeal function or the corporeal sense is no longer dependent on the body but becomes a faculty proper to the spirit. Subsequently it seems that a return to the body and a consequent resolution of it must then occur. Every flesh born from the earth will be destroyed and then again rendered to the earth; since it was earth before, then the terrestrial salt gives a new generation with the celestial breath of life. Where indeed there was not earth before, the resurrection of our work cannot follow - B. Valentino op.cit. IV key. In this regard it seems useful to us to report a passage from S. de Guaita which seems to also refer to this process when he says: The Truth is that the Sage, to elaborate here below his glorious body, must somehow make return