ABSTRACT
Within the flower itself there grows the gnawing canker: Where honey is, there gall, where swelling breast, the chancre.80
elements into one. This synthesis is described in the myth of Isis, "who collected the scattered limbs of his body and bathed them with her tears and laid them in a secret grave beneath the bank of the Nile." 85 The cognomen of Isis was χημεία, the Black One.86 Apuleius stresses the blackness of her robe (palla nigcrrima, 'robe of deepest black'),87 and since ancient times she was reputed to possess the elixir of life 88 as well as being adept in sundry magical arts.89 She was also called the Old One,90 and she was rated a pupil of Hermes,91 or even his daughter.92 She appears as a teacher of alchemy in the treatise "Isis the Prophetess to her Son Horus." 93 She is mentioned in the role of a whore in Epiphanius, where she is said to have prostituted herself in Tyre.94 She signifies earth, according to Firmicus Maternus,95 and was equated with Sophia.96 She is μνριωννμοτ, 'thousand-named', the vessel and the matter (χώρα καϊ νλη) of good and evil.97 She is the moon.98 An inscription invokes her as "the One, who art All." " She is named σωτ€ΐρα, the redemptrix.100 In
Athenagoras she is "the nature of the Aeon, whence all things grew and by which all things are." 101
*5 All these statements apply just as well to the prima materia in its feminine aspect: it is the moon, the mother of all things, the vessel, it consists of opposites, has a thousand names, is an old woman and a whore, as Mater Alchimia it is wisdom and teaches wisdom, it contains the elixir of life in potentia and is the mother of the Saviour and of the filius Macrocosmi, it is the earth and the serpent hidden in the earth, the blackness and the dew and the miraculous water which brings together all that is divided. The water is therefore called "mother," "my mother who is my enemy," but who also "gathers together all my divided and scattered limbs." 102 The Turba says (Sermo LIX):
Nevertheless the Philosophers have put to death the woman who slays her husbands, for the body of that woman is full of weapons and poison. Let a grave be dug for that dragon, and let that woman be buried with him, he being chained fast to that woman; and the more he winds and coils himself about her, the more will he be cut to pieces by the female weapons which are fashioned in the body of the woman. And when he sees that he is mingled with the limbs of the woman, he will be certain of death, and will be changed wholly into blood. But when the Philosophers see him changed into blood, they leave him a few days in the sun, until his softness is consumed, and the blood dries, and they find that poison. What then appears, is the hidden wind.103
