ABSTRACT

Senior this legend seems like a concretization of Senior's saying.59

564 The idea of a precious substance hidden in the "statue" is an old tradition and is particularly true of the statues of Hermes or Mercurius. Pseudo-Dionysius eo says that the pagans made statues (ανδριάντας) of Mercurius and hid in them a simulacrum of the god. In this way they worshipped not the unseemly herm but the image hidden inside.61 Plato is referring to these statues when he makes Alcibiades say that Socrates "bears a strong resemblance to those figures of Silenus. in statuaries' shops, represented holding pipes or flutes; they are hollow inside, and when they are taken apart you see that they contain little figures [αγάλματα] o f g o d s . " e 2

565 It must have appealed very much to the imagination of the alchemists that there were statues of Mercurius with the real god hidden inside. Mercurius was their favourite name for that being who changed himself, during the work, from the prima materia into the perfected lapis Philosophorum. The figure of Adam readily lent itself as a biblical synonym for the alchemical Mercurius, first because he too was androgynous, and second because of his dual aspect as the first and second Adam. The second Adam is Christ, whose mystical androgyny is established in ecclesiastical tradition.631 shall come back to this aspect of Adam later.