This engraving, patient reader, brings to mind one of the most precious symbols of Alchemy; we refer to the Mercury of the sages.
On this occasion I send you two emblems from the same book: Selectorum emblematum, with the text in Latin and Old French.
To experience the CHRISTIC LOVE we will need to be betrayed ─hence the bag of coins that appears in the Christic garden─, we will need to experience the three nails of the Redeemer’s cross, we will suffer the crown of thorns ─internally speaking─, we will be victims of the insolence of the Ego ─see the whip─, we will have to acquire the Christic will ─marked by the hammer─, etc., etc., etc.
We see in the center of it a winged female figure on an anchor, with a laurel wreath on her head, sowing wheat and pointing to the sky. She is the VIRGIN MOTHER NATURE ─that is why she wears laurels on her head─ and at her feet the ANCHOR that, in addition to allegorizing the three primary forces, represents in Masonry the end of the hermetic work.
I am pleased to send you this engraving entitled: “Speculum sophicum rhodostauroticum” (Mirror of Rosicrucian wisdom). The book was signed with the name Theophilus Schweighardt Constanties.
I am sending you this image of the God Mercury, bas-relief in the Chapel of the Zodiac of the Malatestian Temple in Rimini, Italy. The author is the Italian sculptor Agostino di Duccio (1418-1481).
This precious engraving, dear readers, is a call that this Slovenian Adept has made to all seekers who continue to pretend that the Golden Fleece is a material object, forgetting that it refers to that most sacred part that we call in Gnosis the intimate Christ.
This engraving was made by the Jesuit Ioanne David (1546─1613) and he developed it in the eighth chapter of his book entitled Dvodecim specvla Devm aliqvando videre desideranti concinnata.
Dear readers, this engraving leads us to question our degrees of purity or purification during our journey through the three-dimensional world:
“Specvlvm pvrgativm”, Mirror of Purification
This engraving has a very profound significance for the scholars of Kabbalah and Alchemy, and, obviously, since we by means of Gnosis are scholars of these two sciences, it is clear that all this subject matter concerns us.
