The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 191 of 236

The Sixth Day

The next morning the aged warden of the tower, after examining the work performed by the wedding guests in the laboratory and finding it satisfactory, caused ladders, ropes, and large wings to be brought forth, and addressed the assembled “artists” thus: “My dear sons, one of these three things must each of you this day constantly bear about with him.” Lots were cast and to C.R.C., much to his chagrin, fell a heavy ladder. Those who secured wings had them fastened to their backs so cunningly that it was impossible to detect that they were artificial. The aged warden then locked the “artists” in the lower room of the tower, but in a short time a round hole was uncovered in the ceiling and Virgo Lucifera invited all to ascend. Those with wings flew at once through the opening, those with ropes had many difficulties, while C.R.C. with his ladder made reasonable speed. On the second floor the wedding guests, musicians, and Virgo Lucifera gathered about a fountain-like contrivance containing the bodies of the six royal persons.

Virgo Lucifera then placed the if Moor’s head in a kettle-like receptacle in the upper part of the fountain and poured upon it the substances prepared on the previous day in the laboratory. The virgins placed lamps beneath. These substances when they boiled passed out through holes in the sides of the kettle and, falling upon the bodies in the fountain below, dissolved them. The six royal bodies having been reduced thus to a liquid state, a tap was opened in the lower end of the fountain and the fluid drained into an immense golden globe, which, when filled, was of great weight. All but the wedding guests then retired and shortly a hole in the ceiling opened as before and the guests ascended pell-mell to the third floor. Here the globe were suspended by a strong chain. The walls of the apartment were of glass, and mirrors were so arranged that the sun’s rays were concentrated upon the central globe, thus causing it to become very hot. Later the sun’s rays were deflected and the globe permitted to cool, after which it was cut open with a diamond, revealing a beautiful white egg. Carrying this with her, Virgo Lucifera departed.

Insight

The beheaded king and queen whose blood is collected and used to feed an alchemical bird is one of the most consistent images in the Latin alchemical corpus. The decapitation is the dissolutio, the dissolving of the fixed and the volatile back into prime matter; the boiling and circulation are the operations of separation and conjunction; the bird hatched from the substance is the resurrected solar body, the rebis, the philosophical hermaphrodite. Jung read this entire sequence in Psychology and Alchemy (1944) as a symbolic drama of psychic individuation — the death of the old ego pair so that a unified Self can emerge. Whatever one makes of Jung’s psychologizing, the Rosicrucian Wedding clearly intends the operations to be read on at least two registers at once: chemical and spiritual.

The guests, having ascended through another trap door, found