 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 ] Next Last |
Elsewhere Paracelus writes:
The Elizabethan scientist Francis Bacon was however skeptical of alchemy’s enlistment of the Roman deity as symbolic of true scientific enquiry and exlaimed in The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Abandoning Minerva and wisdom they play court to the sooty smith Vulcan and his pots and pans
However, Paracelsian alchemists such as Gerard Dorn , Jan Baptist van Helmont and Arthur Dee each acknowledged the Roman god of forge and furnace as symbolic of the art. Van Helmont specifically described alchemy as Vulcan's art,whilst Arthur Dee in his Arca Arcarnum wrote:
The Roman god and Paracelsian deity associated with alchemy is cited no less than three times by Arthur Dee's Norwich associate Sir Thomas Browne in The Garden of Cyrus. Its very opening lines-
Secondly within the context of Classical Greek myth in which Vulcan constructs and casts an invisible network in order to ensnare Venus his wife in flagrante delicato with her lover Mars. Browne humorously stating-
The Classical myth of Venus and Mars trapped by Vulcan’s cunning invention is also a lesser-known example of the ‘fixing’ and union of the opposites in the alchemical opus.
And finally at the very apotheosis of the literary-alchemical opus in which he delivers his three factors for determining truth, namely authority, reason and experience; Vulcan here representing the demi-urge or ‘higher man’ who, not unlike the Gnostics, ‘Man of Light’ , uses his craftmanship and skills to aid , enlighten and liberate the Spiritual Man within.
In modern times the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung interpreted Vulcan as one who:
The alchemists adoption of the mythic figure of Vulcan may be interpreted on several levels. At the lowest scale of interpretation Vulcan represents the cunning amoral demi-urge who blindly gains power over Nature without integrity; this mundane level anticipates the nascent Industrial Revolution of the 18th century . The activities of the extraction of coal from mines to fuel colossal Furnaces to manufacture Steel and Iron on a gigantic scale and the development of the railroad and steam-train throughout Europe and North America are both decidedly Vulcan-like activities and in many ways the general ‘busyness’ of the Protestant work-ethic and Industrialised Western society, is strongly reflected in this archetypal figure. At a higher level of interpretation Vulcan is transformed to become an inspired apostle, the visionary capable of releasing Mankind from the bonds of unknowingness and darkness .
The transforming power of Vulcan the ‘higher man’ and anthropos figure of the alchemists has today devolved into the negative aspects of a demi-urge figure; none other than modern technological man, who, divorced from God, forges his own destiny independent of Religion, Divine Love or theological considerations towards a brave new world or utopia.
Source Jolande Jacobi ed. Paracelsus Selected Writings, 1951, Princeton
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|