When does fire intervene in the alchemical process? If alchemical fire can be compared with the fire that precedes digestion or gestation, it ought to intervene during the course of the black work, when heat, acting over and against radical, metallic, viscous, oily humidity, produces the nigredo. If we can accept a text like the Dictionnaire mytho-hermétique by Dom Pernety (Paris: Delalain, 1787), we read that
when heat acts on these matters, they are changed first into powder, and oily and gluey water, which rises as a vapor to the top of the vase, then descends again in dew or rain, to the bottom, where it becomes almost as an oily black broth. This is why it has been called Sublimation and Volatilization, Ascension and Descension. The water then coagulating more and more, becomes like black tar, which has caused it to be named fetid and stinking earth, also because it emits a musty odor of sepulchers and tombs. (“La clef de l’oeuvre,” pp. 155–56)
But statements can also be found in the textbooks to the effect that the terms distillation, sublimation, calcination, or digestion, or the terms firing, reverberation, dissolution, descent, and coagulation, are none other than the same “Operation,” carried out in a single vessel, in other words, a firing of the substance. Thus, concludes Pernety,
this Operation must be regarded as unique, but expressed in different terms; and it will be understood that all the following expressions signify the same thing: distil by alembic; separate the soul from the body; burn; calcinate; unite the elements; convert them; change one into the other; corrupt; melt; engender; conceive; bring into the world; exhaust; moisten; wash with fire; beat with the hammer; blacken; putrefy; rubify; dissolve; sublimate; grind; reduce to powder; crush in the mortar; pulverize on marble—and many other similar expressions all mean simply to cook in the same way, until dark red. Care must therefore be taken not to remove the vase from the fire, because if the material cools down, all is lost. (“Règles générales,” pp. 202–6)
But what fire is being described, seeing that different writers speak from time to time about fire of Persia, fire of Egypt, fire of the Indies, elementary fire, natural fire, artificial fire, fire of ashes, fire of sand, fire of filings, fire of fusion, fire of flames, fire against nature, Algir fire, Azothic fire, celestial fire, corrosive fire, fire of matter, lion fire, fire of putrefaction, dragon fire, dung fire, and so forth?
Fire heats the furnace throughout, from the beginning to the red work. But is the word fire also perhaps a metaphor for the red matter that appears in the alchemical process? And here, in fact, according to Pernety, are some of the names given to the red stone: red gum, red oil, ruby, vitriol, ashes of tartar, red body, fruit, red stone, magnesium, red oil, starry stone, red salt, red sulfur, blood, poppy, red wine, red vitriol, cochineal, and also “fire, fire of nature” (“Signes,” pp. 187–89).
Alchemists have therefore always worked with fire, and fire is the basis of alchemical practice. Yet fire itself constitutes one of the most impenetrable mysteries of alchemy. As I have never produced gold, I cannot provide the answer to this problem, and so pass on to another type of fire, another type of alchemy, that of the artist, where fire becomes an instrument of new birth, and artists set themselves up to imitate the gods.
FIRE AS THE ORIGIN OF ART
Plato recounts in Protagoras that once upon a time there were gods, but no mortal creatures . . . and when they were about to bring these creatures to light, they charged Prometheus and Epimetheus to provide and distribute the most appropriate faculties for each race. But Epimetheus asked Prometheus to let him do the distribution himself: “And when I have completed the distribution,” he added, “you shall come and see.” And so, having thus persuaded him, he started the work of distribution. And to some races he gave strength without speed, while the weaker races he equipped with speed.
And to others he gave weapons of defense and attack, while for others, who were defenseless by nature, he devised other faculties to guarantee their safety. To those races that he made small, he gave the capacity to escape using their wings, or to hide underground; whereas to those he made large he gave the possibility of saving themselves with their size. And he distributed all other faculties in this way, so that they balanced each other . . . and when he had provided the various races with the means to avoid mutual destruction, he devised a way for them to defend themselves against the inclemency of the seasons sent by Zeus, covering them with thick hair and leathery skin, sufficient to defend them from coldness and capable of protecting them from hot weather, and such that, when they slept in their lairs, these would serve as natural blankets suitable for each of them.
And some he shod with hoofs; others he gave tough skin and no blood. Then he provided different food for the different races: to some he gave the grass of the land, to others the fruits of trees, to others roots. And he allowed some races to devour other races of animals for food; and he provided that the former would have fewer offspring, and that the offspring of the latter would be numerous, to ensure the preservation of the race.
Now Epimetheus, who was not particularly clever, had failed to notice he had used up all the faculties for the animals: but at this point the human race had still not been provided for, and he did not know what to do with it. While he was in this situation of embarrassment, Prometheus came to see the distribution, and realized that whereas all the other creatures were properly provided for, man was naked, barefoot, homeless, and defenseless . . .
So Prometheus, in this embarrassing situation, not knowing what salvation to devise for man, stole technical wisdom and fire from Hephaestus and Athena (since without fire it was impossible to acquire and use that wisdom) and he gave it to man. (sections 320c–321d)
With the conquest of fire, the arts are born—at least in the Greek sense of technical skills—and thus the dominion of man over nature. What a shame that Plato had not read Lévi-Strauss, and had not also told us that the discovery of fire marked the beginning of cooked food; but cooking is, after all, an art and was therefore included under the platonic notion of techne.
Benvenuto Cellini gives an excellent description of how much fire has to do with the arts in his Life, recounting how he fused his Perseus, covering him in a clay mold and then, with a slow fire, removed the wax from it,
which came out through the many vents that I had made, for the more there are, the better do the molds fill. And when I had finished removing the wax I made a funnel around my Perseus, that is to say around the said mold, of bricks, interlacing one above the other, and I left many spaces through which the fire could the better emerge. Then I began to arrange the wood carefully, and I kept up the fire for two days and two nights continuously; to such purpose that when all the wax had been extracted, and the said mold was afterwards well baked, I immediately began to dig the ditch wherein to bury my mold, with all those skilful methods that this fine art directs us . . .
And holding it very carefully upright, in such a fashion that it hung exactly in the middle of the ditch, I caused it to descend very gently as far as the bottom of the furnace . . .
When I saw it was thoroughly firm, as well as that method of filling it in, together with the placing of those conduit pipes properly in their places . . . I turned to my furnace, which I had made them fill with many lumps of copper and other pieces of bronze. And having piled the one upon the top of the other after the fashion that our profession indicates to us, that is to say raised up, so as to make a way for the flames of the fire, whereby the said metal derives its heat quicker, and by it melts and becomes reduced to liquid, I then happily told them to set light to the said furnace.
And laying on those pieces of pinewood, which from the greasiness of that resin that the pine exudes, and from the fact that my little furnace was so well built, it acted so well that . . . the workshop took fire, and we were afraid lest the roof should fall upon us. From the other side toward the kitchen garden the heaven projected upon me so much water and wind that it cooled my furnace. Combatting this for several hours under these perverse conditions, employing so much more effort than my strong vigor of constitution could possibly sustain, there sprang upon me a sudden fever, the greatest that can possibly be imagined in the world, by reason of which I was forced to take to my bed. (book 2, section 75)
And so, after so much planning, accompanied
