Dearest readers: It is with great pleasure that I send you this engraving entitled…
…PERSEVERANTIA
─‘Perseverance’─
This illustration was made by the Flemish engraver Hieronymus Cock (1510-1570), based on a drawing by Frans Floris (1519/20-1570).
This engraving is eminently alchemical, although it seems that the title does not have much transcendence, since more than anything it refers to perseverance as a virtue that we should all possess in all human activities. However, it is said that the transmutatory ars is something that takes our whole life, and to be able to extract its fruits a huge dose of perseverance is necessary, as it is said by the alchemist philosophers of all times. Master Samael himself stated on several occasions that the lazy ones and those lacking in perseverance have nothing to do in our studies, because this science requires a lot of patience and its ally, perseverance.
In the image we can see a lady representing that virtue ─perseverance─, having a large fish on her lap. This creature ─the fish─ symbolized the Mercury of the sages since ancient times. Let us remember, without going too far, that Christians already identified themselves with each other in the times of imperial Rome through a fish that they drew in the sand. With this they avoided being recognized as such by the soldiers of the empire, who had the order to capture them and hand them over to the praetor, who would send them to prison or to be punished with whippings.
Obviously, in those times the fish was also related to the age of Pisces, since the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn took place in 7 BC ─the presumably authentic year of the birth of Christ─. It was thus interpreted that Jesus was the first personification of the cosmic age or the age of the fish. Recent converts to Christianity were designated as pisciculi ─’little fish’─, in connection with theGreek Ichthys. This is how the fish became, along with the bread, the symbol of the Eucharist.
In occultism it is clearly known that Jesus taught the Great Arcanum A.Z.F. to his apostles and to the 70 closest disciples. To the rest of the world, to the multitudes, he spoke in metaphors.
The fish, because it always lived among the waters, was considered as the Mercury of the sages, because it represents the matter that is born from among them. On the other hand, the Greek word Ichthys can be broken down in this way: Iesous Crestos, Hyios Theou, Soter. Translation: ‘Jesus-Christ, Son of God, Savior’.
“Martigny, in his work Dictionnaire des antiquités chretiennes, reproduces, in fact, a curious painting of the catacombs, which represents a fish swimming in the waves and carrying on its back a basket containing some loaves of bread and a red object of elongated shape, which is perhaps a glass full of wine. In order not to dwell further on these paragons, we will limit ourselves to calling the attention of the curious to the basket of Bacchus, called the cist, which was carried by the cystophores in the processions of the bacchanals, and in which ─Fr. Noel tells us─ “everything that was mysterious was enclosed.”
Below is the inset from Martigny’s original book, the text is talking about two burial chambers in the crypt of S. Corneille:
It is important to notify our reader that the fish mentioned above, and which is represented in that catacomb, is a living expression of the alchemical Mercury that is part of the genesic waters of Nature, and this includes the seminal waters of man. The fact that this fish carries a basket on its back containing loaves of bread tells us that only through the transmutation of this Mercury ─or symbolic fish─ can we get a hold of the loaves of wisdom, and only those who have managed to extract from their Mercury the red elixir or red tincture, indicated by the glass of wine that the little fish of our story also carries in the aforementioned basket, can reach full wisdom.
Returning to our engraving, curiously above the lady we see a flying duck, a bird, symbol of the companion element of Mercury ─which is the volatile element of the Great Work─. We are referring to the fixed element: Sulfur. In the conjunction of both elements lies the key to the Great Inner Work.
The image below has the same representation, friends. It also bears the title of PERSEVERANTIA –’perseverance’–. This was made by Hans Collaert the Elder (1525/30-1580) and was published by Hieronymus Cock.
In it we can also see a woman standing, her right arm is carrying a fish, and behind her another bird is also observed ─a duck─. The meaning is the same as we have described in the unveiling we have made of the first illustration. There is only one variant in this other engraving and it is made up of the gestures that the woman makes with her left hand. In those gestures we are shown her fingers, reminding us twice of the number two, thus pointing to the primordial elements of the transmutatory work ─Sulfur and Mercury─.
I add for you some Latin sentences and their respective translation:
From the first engraving:
“Perfer & ob dura. Non si praesente fortuna, similis postmodo sortis eris.”
Translation: ‘Endure, and even if by reason of hard things you were oppressed by the present fate, later on you will not have a similar fate.’
PERSEVERANTIA: ‘Perseverancia’.
Bottom left: FFinue, Frans Floris invented it (1519/20-1570).
Bottom right: H. Cock,executed by Hieronymus Cock (1510-1570).
I will now add a few sentences for our reflection:
“As soon as a man thinks himself incapable of committing the sins of another, he becomes ruthless in judging them. His punishment can then be…… that he commits even greater ones.”
Amado Nervo
“To know sin is the beginning of salvation.”
Seneca
“The great excuse that Eve has in her sin is not having been a mother.”
Noriac
“For the sins that are committed, no one should blame another, but himself.”
Cervantes
“There is a short step from breaking to distorting a commandment.”
Quevedo
THE FISH
Among many archetypes
of great significance,
the Fish is the prototype
of high purification.
Marine hieroglyph
Shrouded in great mysteries
the fish paved the way
to Christian magisterium.
Symbol of the Savior
since the Christian Era,
the fish redeems and heals
the sinner’s soul.
The fish became the key
of the alchemist recipe,
and constituted the key
of the spiritual conquest.
A fish swallowed Jonah,
says the Old Testament,
with it you will recover
of your Temple, the foundation!
PERFER AND OBDURA.
─‘Comply and persevere’─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
