Death

Vas hermeticum, fountain, and sea have here become sarcophagus and tomb. King and queen are dead and have melted into a single being with two heads. The feast of life is followed by the funereal threnody. Just as Gabricus dies after becoming united with his sister, and the son-lover always comes to an early end after consummating the hierosgamos with the mother-goddess of the Near East, so, after the coniunctio oppositorum, deathlike stillness reigns. When the opposites unite, all energy ceases: there is no more flow. The waterfall has plunged to its full depth in that torrent of nuptial joy and longing; now only a stagnant pool remains, without wave or current. So at least it appears, looked at from the outside. As the legend tells us, the picture represents the putrefactio, the corruption, the decay of a once living creature. Yet the picture is also entitled “Conceptio.” The text says: “Corruptio unius generatio est alterius”—the corruption of one is the generation of the other, ¹ an indication that this death is an interim stage to be followed by a new life. No new life can arise, says the alchemists, without the death of the old. They liken the art to the work of the sower, who buries the grain in the earth: it dies only to waken to new life. ² Thus with their mortificatio, interfectio, putrefactio, combustio, incineralio, calcinatio, etc., they are imitating the work of nature. Similarly they liken their labours to human mortality, without which the new and eternal life cannot be attained. ³