The story of Hercules’ theft of the apples in the Garden of the Hesperides necessarily also reminds us of the story, even more commonly alluded to by alchemical writers, of Jason and the golden fleece. This story is commonly considered to be one of the most explicit mythological expressions of the alchemical process and objective. I will only briefly summarize it: Hermes had sent a winged ram, Chrysomallus, to rescue Phrixus and Helle from their wicked stepmother. Helle fell into the sea and was drowned, but Phrixus made it safely to Colchis, and in thanks sacrificed the ram to Zeus. He gave the fleece of the ram to the king, Aeetes, who put it under a dragon’s guard in a garden sacred to the god Ares (Mars). Later, the king’s daughter, the famous Medea, using divine magic, helped Jason and his crew of 50 Argonauts slay the dragon and steal the fleece. This last woolly substance is taken by all the great authors to symbolize the culmination of the Great Work.

The astrological significance of Ares is important. Many writers emphasize that the work must begin under the sign of Aries—astrologically, the Spring—and standing also for the planet Mars and the metal it rules, iron. And there are other things that rams and their mates symbolize—consider them all carefully. The dragons that guard the golden fleece, as well as the golden apples of the Hesperides, reward consideration too. “Dragon” comes, as Fulcanelli reminds us, from the Greek word derkesthai meaning looking or glancing, or “eyes always open.” It is sometimes said that a dragon is awake while it is sleeping.

It is traditional to place lions, not dragons, as guardians of our courts and other edifices of the Law, and this practice descends from the ancient practice of using lion statues to guard temples. Horapollo, an ancient exegete of the esoteric glyphs of the Egyptians, explains why: The Egyptians believed that lions, like dragons, are awake when they are asleep, and asleep when they are awake. Consider then what dragons and lions may have to do with rams, let the relationship simmer in your mind, and you will be rewarded.

“Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” (Aldous Huxley)

In thinking about Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, we should consider not just the story of the race of Hippomenes and Atalanta, but also how Venus obtained the golden apples in the first place.

Retrieving the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, at the Western end of the earth, was one of the labors of Hercules. Hesperides comes from hesperios [fem. of Gr. hesperis, meaning ‘of the evening’ or ‘western’]. Hesperis is Venus in its appearance as the Evening Star. (Hesta, in Greek, became the Roman deity Vesta, from which we also get vesper, meaning evening, and vespers, the sixth of the seven canonical hours and the prayers said in the early evening–but I digress.) The garden was guarded over by nymphs (the Hesperides themselves) and by a dragon, Ladon. Dragons are omnipresent in our Art. This one, Ladon, connects to latona, mother of Apollo and Diana and cabalistically equivalent to latten or brass. This is the theme of emblem XI: “Whiten Latona and Burn Your Books.” It should also be noted, for what it may be worth, that Latona also resembles Latin, the literary language of the ancient world and the language in which most European alchemical texts (including this one) were penned.

If we divide the name of the garden differently, we arrive at hes+perides: hes- may remind us of haes, L. haeserare, “to hold fast” (as in hesitate). And perides may relate to pyrite—i.e., fool’s gold, a form of iron. Could it be that the “golden apples” aren’t true gold, but rather some false gold merely meant to capture Atalanta’s desire? The English word “fool” actually has an alchemical origin, by the way: It comes from the Latin word follis, which means “bellows.” The very definition of a misguided alchemist was a “puffer,” someone who wasted his life with his bellows, stoking a fire, slavishly, literal-(letter-al)-mindedly, following the instructions in his books.

Iron pyrite, or Iron sulfide, takes a metallic crystalline form, and was used in firearms of the period Maier was writing because it sparks when struck against a flint. Pyrite was also sometimes used to mean flint because it was believed that the fire was inside of this stone. Flint had other uses near to the heart of our Art, however: A ‘touchstone’ is a hard piece of flint used to test the purity of gold or silver. The streak left by the metal when scratched across its surface was compared with that of a standard alloy. The origins of flint are mythologically attributed to Mercury, and can also be found in Ovid. The story makes an irresistible digression:

While he was thinking only of his love, and comforting himself with his reedpipes, his cattle, unguarded, so the story goes, strayed into the fields of Pylos. There Maia’s son, Mercury, espied them, and by his cunning drove them off and hid them in the woods. No one had noticed the theft, except one old man, well-known in the neighborhood, whom everyone called Battus. His duty was to patrol the glades and grassy meadows of wealthy Neleus, keeping watch over his herds of pedigree mares. Mercury was afraid of Battus, and so he led him aside and said coaxingly: ‘Whoever you are, my friend, if anyone should happen to ask for these herds, say that you haven’t seen them. Here is a sleek cow, as a reward for doing me this favour.’ The other took the cow he gave him, and replied: ‘Go on your way, you are quite safe.’—and pointing to a stone, he added: ‘Sooner will that stone tell of your theft than I.’ Jove’s son pretended to depart; but later he returned in a different guise, and spoke in a different voice. ‘Herdsman,’ he said, ‘if you have seen any cattle passing this way, help me, and do not be party to a theft by keeping silent. In return you will have a bull and its mate for yourself.’ Now when the reward was doubled, the old man was tempted. ‘You will find them at the bottom of those hills’—and in fact, that was where they were. Mercury laughed. ‘You rogue,’ he said. ‘You would betray me to my face? Actually betray me to myself?’ and he turned the faithless heart to hard flint, the stone which even today is called ‘touchstone.’ The innocent rock still bears the stigma of that shameful deed of long ago.

So, there is perides and pur … and if you are at all getting the hang of cabala certain other possibilities will no doubt have occurred to you. But file those away in the back of your mind and return your attention to me, your teacher and guide, for one more minute, because I want to impart to you one last observation. It may be worth noting that Hesperides sounds very much like experiment, the very method of the Art we are considering. Most dictionaries will assert that experiment comes from L. experire, “to try or test”—of which we may take the touchstone as a model—but the real root will be obvious even to a schoolchild: Ex-, as anybody knows, means “from,” and peri means “near” or “around.” The same two roots form the basis of experience.

Here it is useful to remember what every alchemical writer says about the First Matter chosen for the subsequent transformation into the Philosopher’s Stone: It is something that is all around us, close at hand, and thus cheap, or even despised by the majority of people.

The loveliest alchemical text of the whole 17th Century is Atalanta Fugiens, literally “Atalanta Fleeing,” by Michael Maier. The title refers to the story, told by Ovid, about the race between the beautiful fleet-footed virgin Atalanta and her would-be suitor Hippomenes. The frontispiece of the book depicts various scenes from this story, and the 50 emblems and commentaries in the book all relate in various ways to the Hermetic themes it symbolizes. It seems to me that it might be helpful to you, reading at home and no doubt bewildered by the baroque symbolism of Maier’s masterpiece, for me to initiate you into certain of its themes.

The main story is this: Atalanta, the fastest in the land, didn’t want to marry but was pressured to do so by her father. She agreed to a race with her suitors—whoever could beat her would win her hand, but whoever didn’t would die. To help him win the prize, Venus provided Hippomenes with three golden apples. During the race, he threw down the apples one by one, and each time Atalanta was distracted enough by them, bending to pick each one up, that he was able to surge ahead and crossed the finish line first. He thus won the race and married his prize.

On the surface, it is a nice story to tell children, but on another level much of the alchemical method is symbolically expressed or alluded to by its imagery. Most crucially, there is the fundamental dualism between fast and slow, or volatile and fixed. This opposition is central to Alchemy and to Hermetic philosophy generally, and Maier regarded it as so important that he made it central to his own (self-designed) coat of arms: An eagle attempts to fly upward but is kept from doing so by a crawling toad to which it is chained. (Meditate on that chain, and you can go far in our Art. I will say no more about this.)

Atalanta herself obviously indicates something fast and quick (like quicksilver or vulgar mercury) and also elusive—something that flees and so must, via some operation involving real or figurative gold, be detained or slowed. This problem, fixing the volatile, necessarily calls to mind the question of Time. All the great writers are concerned with Time, timing, and different qualities of unfolding. All writers emphasize, for example, the great care and patience to be taken in the hermetic work. Patience implies slowness, sluggishness, detaining, and waiting. Why should ‘great care and patience’ be part of the hermetic picture at all? Such a requirement, which seems at first most obvious and unworthy of consideration, because it strikes us as so familiar and universal—found in every initiatory tradition, every philosophical tradition—is actually a very mysterious point. The nature of the ‘great care and patience’ should be reflected on, thought about, because such thought may help reveal the identity of the matter we are concerned with.

Our subject, without the help of “Hermetic patience” (quite different from vulgar patience), could literally flee our grasp. What are other things besides Time that behave like Atalanta, and that it would be worthwhile to detain or fix? What on earth requires such great care and patience, subordinating ourselves or submitting ourselves to it? All the great philosophers have warned of this difficulty of beginning the work: the beginning requires knowing the identity of the first matter, the despised/overlooked substance upon which all subsequent transformations are performed.

It is also apparent that this allegory concerns the role of gold in the alchemical work, but not in the way we might expect. All the great writers agree that gold is not simply an end product of the work but is also a necessary ingredient, as something that needs to be given to Mercury in order to fix it or hold it in place. Yet we must be cautious, and not merely think of the apples as common gold. Common (or “vulgar”) gold is often disparaged by alchemical writers. Fulcanelli, for example, called gold the gaudy slut of metals.

Fulcanelli seduced generations of would-be adepts with the etymological games so beloved of the French, which he called cabala. Fulcanelli’s cabala derived, he said, not from the Jewish Kabbalah but from the similar-sounding Latin word caballus, for “horse,” sharing thereby a close connection with the science and art of chivalry. I am not above imitating Fulcanelli’s amusing method, if it will shed some light on Maier’s work.

How better than to consider the name of the ancient hero whom our legend concerns. On one level it can be linked to hip-, a decline or depression or throwing down, plus pom, apple or fruit. But Fulcanelli would go on to insist that there is no contradiction to say that the word may yet be parsed a second way: Hippomenes contains the prefix hippo, the Greek word for “horse,” plus menes, mens, or “mind.”

But there is something else again: Hippomenes is closely similar to hypomnema, a Greek word that meant “note” or “reminder”—a supporter or foundation (hypo-) of memory (mnema). Consider memory, then, and reflect on why (and how) the gifts of Venus may be an aid to it, in fixing the volatile mercury. In this connection, and with just a little cleverness, you might just find the meaning of Emblem VI: “Sow your gold in the white foliate earth.”

But I have already written too much.

I went into the village to buy a paper and mushrooms, and returned sometime later to find the kitchen floor strewn with, of all things, egg shells. The pan still in the sink told me F— had made herself an omelette for her lunch. Instead of discarding the shells, she had opted to leave them for me in a kind vivid but, I must say, annoying and somewhat smelly tableau on the floor. It seemed, in fact, like she had collected a whole week’s worth of egg shells so that she could impede my progress in this manner.

As I cleaned this mess, I felt as though I was Atalanta, having to stoop to pick each fragment up, just so I could proceed through the kitchen, on the way to my library.

F—‘s eggshell display was actually a joke, one that only an Adept such as myself might get. Yet it struck me, as I deposited the last of the remains in the rubbish bin, that one of the greatest sources of ignorance and misunderstanding concerning our Art is this business of symbolism and concealment. It occurred to me: What if I could explain this joke just enough that an interested student of Hermetic philosophy could perhaps see some of its meaning? Were I successful, the student might then go the rest of the way toward his own proper laughter, on his (or her!) own two feet. So here goes.

Many an alchemical writer has utilized the symbol of the egg. Our Art, like the process unfolding inside an egg, requires darkness, warmth, and quiet—obscurity and silence, in other words. The calcinous shell protects the inner environment—the mercurial albumen and the sulfurous yolk.

If the threefold nature of the egg is like our Art, the tiny embryo hidden deep within is akin to the process of understanding. At first it is microscopically small – a state that could be called confusion, or even foolishness. Yet if the embryo is also humble and persistent, this “foolish” body slowly grows, assimilating the sulfurous matter and the mercurial medium in which it is suspended; this body is itself the synthesis of these two principles. Countless commentaries deal with this process of bringing the original sulfur and mercury into perfect balance, so I will not touch on that here. Suffice it to say that, through this process, the chick gradually exhausts also the space allotted to it, and arrives at its ‘final destination.’

That is to say, with nowhere else to go, the chick finally sees the shell, illuminated from behind, and breaks through. In this, its moment of birth, the chick, our ‘completed understanding,’ pokes its head out and gazes down and sees the shell, which, because there is no sulfur or mercury anymore, is all that’s left of “where it came from.” This is a true and correct perception.

Now, let’s pause a moment. Great delicacy is required here, if we are not to take this object lesson on eggs as merely some cliché about darkness and light. We are not talking about Plato’s cave, about the “reality of the world outside,” nor are we indicating the “esoteric secrets concealed from the view of the masses.” Both formulations make me shudder in annoyance and boredom.

Many a would-be hermetic philosopher goes astray because he neglects to remember that our Hermes is “thrice great.” The central issue is not mercury and sulfur (any more than we are concerned with the world either inside or outside the egg). The—I won’t say “greatest mystery” but perhaps final destination of alchemical inquiry—is Salt. The Salt is identical in many ways to the eggshell in our allegory. Looking around with new eyes, casting aside the veil of illusion, seeing the light, is the effect that happens after you have seen (which means, correctly identified) the Salt.

Although I really shouldn’t say more, here is a further clue. To truly understand Salt, consider the proper order of things, and then consider that order in reverse. Remember what all the masters hint at about Time, and you will know that we willingly give over our ordinary consciousness of nature and matter to a delusion fomented by our parents. Being able to envision a process in reverse gives you important clues to its true nature and direction.

When we subject a substance, vegetable or mineral, to the fire, it decomposes rapidly into a volatile component and an earthy residue. Understood on this mundane level, the salt is, as it were, the leftover. Any process of volatilization achieves a similar result, and we need not look solely to the laboratory for examples, for it can be seen all around us. Some consider alchemy a hastening of the work of the seed. Yet in some ways it is a reversal, a transposition of temporal sequence, accomplished through what may appear to the uninitiated to be a falsification of the ordinary process.

Consider a meal, the bones left on the plate, the dried residue in the glass, the peel or seeds of a lemon. While not true salts in a chemical sense, these things, so beloved of the Flemish and Dutch painters, express the hermetic function of Salt. Now, picture the process backwards, putting flesh back on the bone, even going back to the still-alive fish or hog in the barnyard. A glass as it is being blown.

Saturn spits up a stone on Mt. Helicon, yet consider: He first had to swallow it, in ignorance, when it was substituted for his True Son. There are, needless to say, important and instructive parallels here with Abraham and the ram in the thicket, in the story of that great test of faith that foreshadowed the coming of Christ. One of these stones began, the other completed, the alchemical process. What, indeed, are fossils, according to the followers of Ussher, but things salted in the ground to test our faith in the true recency of Genesis? Youth, Salt. Meditate on these matters, and you may come to a better understanding of what Fulcanelli hinted at about “primitive chiliasm.” (And I need not repeat the importance of the ram, under whose sign all our work begins.)

All this is what the eggshells F— left scattered on the kitchen floor pointed toward: You must look down before you look up. As above, so below. The Salt has a way of confusing us about before and after, the proper sequence of things. Even now, I sense, you are confused and ashamed of your confusion. I can only recommend that you keep silent about your confusion, and pray.