Dearest reader friends:
I am pleased to send you a very interesting engraving entitled…
…SPECVLVM VRENS
─‘BURNING MIRROR’─
Before entering into the wonderful details of this engraving, I want to refer to the words of the Venerable Adept Fulcanelli, who in his work THE DWELLINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS tells us things like these:
“No subject of meditation seems to be more profitable to the philosopher; nothing solicits more the exercise of his thought. Fire surrounds us and bathes us from everywhere; it comes to us through air, water, and even the earth, which are its preserving agents and different vehicles; we encounter it in everything to which we come near; we feel its action within us for the entire duration of our earthly existence. Our birth is the result of its incarnation; our life, the effect of its dynamism; our death the consequence of its disappearance. Prometheus steals fire from heaven to animate the man who he had, like God, formed from the mud of the earth. Vulcan creates Pandora the first woman to whom Minerva gives movement by insufflating into her the vital fire. A simple mortal, the sculptor Pygmalion, desiring to marry his own work, implores Venus to animate, by means of the celestial fire, his statue of Galatea. But to try to discover the nature and essence of fire is to try to discover God, whose real presence is always revealed in a fiery manifestation. The burning bush (Ex. 3:2), and Mount Sinai “altogether on a smoke” during the speaking of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 19:18) are two manifestations whereby God appeared to Moses. And it is in the shape of a being of jasper, of a flaming color, seated on an incandescent and flashing throne that St John describes the Master of the Universe (Rev. 4: 3, 5). “Our God is a consuming fire”, writes St Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews 12:29. It is, then, not without reason that all religions have considered fire as the clearest image and the most expressive emblem of divinity. “One of the most ancient symbols” said Pluche, “as it became universal, is the fire that was perpetually maintained in the place where the different peoples used to assemble. Nothing was more appropriate to give them a tangible idea of the power, beauty, purity, and eternity of the being that they had come to adore.” […]
But what we must take into account above all, giving it priority in the science that interests us, is the high purifying virtue that fire possesses. Pure principle par excellence and physical manifestation of purity itself, it thus points out its spiritual origin and reveals its divine filiation. This rather singular proof is that the Greek word pur, which is used to designate fire, presents exactly the pronunciation of the French qualifier pur ─pure─. Likewise, the Hermetic philosophers, uniting the nominative with the genitive, created the term pur-puroç, the fire of the fire, or, phonetically, the pure of the pure, and considered the purple and the French pourpre ─purple─ as the seal of absolute perfection in the very color of the philosopher’s stone.”
Having said the above, let us now describe a series of sentences written in Latin that in themselves explain our illustration to us, let us see:
Flamma volat, micat aethra, fugam cape, conflagrat orbis. Translation: ‘The flame flies, the ether shines, fleetingly the world is inflamed to such an extent that all things are full of mirrors that vomit fire.’
Here the sun king is pointed out to us, which sends its igneous rays to manifest itself everywhere and in all creation. That is why we see reflected in the different mirrors of our engraving the igneous element, here, there and everywhere…
Then we have this other phrase: Urens specvlvm concavum. Translation: ‘Concave burning mirror’.
All created things become concave mirrors to receive, precisely, the flames of the ardent element.
Now let us look at this sentence: Archimedes specvlvm hostile naves incendit. Translation: ‘Archimedes sets fire to enemy ships with a mirror’.
This sentence brings us the image that fire manifests itself physically or hermetically. It can be used in military or spiritual matters. Let us remember that Archimedes was an Initiate, and therefore he once expressed the following: “Give me a lever and I will move the world.” The world has not understood this sentence. The lever to which Archimedes referred is the Arcanum A.Z.F., present in our Gnostic studies; that is the force that can orient or disorient humanity.
Here is one more Latin phrase: Transparens specvlvm vstulans. Translation: ‘Transparent burning mirror’.
To our companions we must say that the previous phrase, referring to a burning mirror, means that it is a concave mirror that, placed facing the sun, reflects its rays and gathers them in a point called focus, producing a heat capable of burning, melting and even making the bodies placed there volatilize. This is the power of fire in all its manifestations.
Let us now observe this Latin phrase: Puer ab vrticis ictus et vstulatus. Translation: ‘Child wounded and burned by nettles.’
In our engraving there is a child surrounded by nettles and raising his hands in pain. The sentence that derives from this phrase refers to the child, to the fact that innocence can be a victim of the nettle. This plant can burn and hurt, and is closely related to sexuality in hermetic studies.
Here is another of our Latin phrases linked to this engraving: Basiliscus visu necans. Translation: ‘The basilisk killing with his gaze’.
Let us remember that all alchemists speak in their treatises referring to the basilisk as a very dangerous creature for the lovers of transmutatory art. The basilisk, dear reader, alludes to fornication, and, obviously, this is the chief danger to all who set out to obtain THEIR PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. The basilisk had a reputation for hypnotizing its victims and then killing or destroying them, that is, disrupting all laboratory work and ruining it. That is what lust coupled with fornication produce, they hypnotize the masses to drive them into the abyss. In our illustration, this animal throws an igneous ray that paralyzes a young boy or infant, symbol of the humanoids of our world.
Look now at this other Latin sentence: Impudicae mulieris oculi nequissima vrentia specula. Translation: ‘The eyes of an impudent woman, most dissolute burning mirrors’.
There is no doubt, patient reader, that it is true when Gnosis tells us that the gaze of an impudent woman is like the gaze of the Greek Medusa, capable of petrifying men. This sentence reaffirms to all of us the need to be in the remembrance of ourselves so as not to be victims of the fascination that the gazes of those souls that we can describe as lost can exert on us. Someone once said that, indeed the eyes are the windows to the soul…..
We arrive, in this way, at the end of our phrases and sentences, adding for you the last of them: Cor viri impudicae obtutu, et daemonis halitu, concrematur. Translation: ‘A man’s heart is burned by the glance of the impudent woman and the breath of a demon.’
If we look at our engraving we will see an image in which we can see the heart of a human being ─a man─ being burned by the lit fire that erupts from the gaze of an ─impudent─ woman, aided by a demon ─a lustful psychological aggregate─. Certainly, esteemed reader, fornication DESTROYS OUR TRUE FEELINGS and causes us to fall into the destruction of our values. All this is possible when we identify ourselves with lustful scenes and, above all, when we confuse LOVE WITH DESIRE, something that has become very common in our agonizing days of the present KALI-YUGA. To ward off this misfortune, the only way out that we human beings have is CRITICAL AND PROFOUND SELF-OBSERVATION. We need to observe ourselves in our thoughts, feelings and actions.
In closing, I send you some sentences that deserve our reflection:
“The man who likes to have the most fun in prosperity is the one who will suffer the most in adversity.”
Horacio
“The chief teacher of men in the actions of life is misfortune.”
Lycurgus
“The height of unhappiness is to fear something when nothing is expected.”
Seneca
“Everyone is as unhappy as they think they are.”
G. Leopardi
“Man is not unhappy as long as he is not unjust.”
Democritus
POST COITUM OMNE ANIMAL TRISTE.
─‘After the coitus, every animal is sad’─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
