Is there more to Johannes than meets the eye ?

I have been rereading some things on alchemy and looking over what Canopus wrote, I have some more revelations.

The Red King [Rubedo/Gebel/Animus?] and White Queen [Albedo/Miriam/Anima?] are alchemical allegories, and their union represents the process of uniting opposites to create a greater, fully unified product of that union.





This particular image comes from the Rosarium Philosophorum, or the Rosary or the Philosophers. It was published in 1550 and included twenty illustrations.

Gender Divisions:

Western thought has long identified a wide variety of concepts as being masculine or feminine. Fire and air are masculine while earth and water are feminine, for example. The sun is male and the moon is female. These basic ideas and associations can be found in multiple Western schools of thought. So the first and most obvious interpretation is that the Red King represents masculine elements while the White Queen represents female ones. Here they stand on a sun and moon, respectively. In some images, they are also flanked with plants bearing suns and moons on their branches.

The Chemical Marriage:

The union of Red King and White Queen is often called the chemical marriage. In illustrations, it is depicted as courtship and sex. Sometimes they are garbed, as if just starting to be brought together, offering each other flowers. Sometimes they are naked, preparing for consummation of their marriage that will eventually lead to an allegorical offspring, the Rebis (from the Latin res bina, meaning dual or double matter).

Sulfur and Mercury:

Descriptions of alchemical processes often describe the reactions of sulfur and mercury. The Red King is sulfur, the active, volatile and fiery principle, while the White Queen is mercury, the material, passive, fixed principle. Mercury has substance, but is has no definitive form on its own. It needs an active principle to shape it.
The lettering here has the King saying, in Latin, "O Luna, let me be thy husband," reinforcing the marriage imagery. The Queen, however, says "O Sol, I must submit to thee." This would have also been standard sentiment in a Renaissance marriage, but it also reinforces the nature of the passive principle. Activity needs material to take physical form, but passive material needs definition to be anything more than potential.

The Dove:

A person is comprised of three separate components: body, soul and spirit. The body is material and the soul spiritual. Spirit is a sort of bridge that connects the two. Here the dove (a common symbol of the Holy Spirit in Christianity, in comparison to God the Father (soul) and God the Son (body) offers a third rose, attracting both lovers together and acting as a sort of mediator between their contrasting natures.

Alchemical Processes:

The bringing together of the Red King and White Queen is sometimes described as reflecting the processes of both Albedo and Rubedo.


Now. . . How does this all come back to Gebel?

The three alchemical stages preceding Rubedo (Gebel) were:

Nigredo (blackness) which represented putrefication and spiritual death. It is a subjectively experienced process brought about by the subject's painful, growing awareness of his shadow aspects'. It could be described as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development. As individuation unfolds, so 'confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible...nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia'.

Albedo (whiteness/Miriam) which represented purification. The alchemist undertakes a purification in Albedo, which is literally referred to as ablutio – the washing away of impurities. In this process, the subject is divided into two opposing principles to be later coagulated to form a unity of opposites or coincidentia oppositorum during Rubedo.

Citrinitas (yellowness) literally referred to "transmutation of silver into gold" or "yellowing of the lunar consciousness." In alchemical philosophy, Citrinitas stood for the dawning of the "solar light" inherent in one's being, and that the reflective "lunar or soul light" was no longer necessary.; the solar dawn or awakening.

Then Rubedo the fourth and final major stage in their magnum opus. Rubedo signalled alchemical success, and the end of the great work.

But one thing still makes me wonder... The Rebis. After one has gone through the stages of putrefaction (Nigredo) and purification (Albedo), separating opposing qualities, those qualities are united once more in what is sometimes described as the divine hermaphrodite, a reconciliation of spirit and matter, a being of both male and female qualities as indicated by the male and female head within a single body. The sun and moon correspond to the male and female halves, just as the Red King and White Queen are similarly associated. The Rebis image appeared in the work Azoth of the Philosophers by Basil Valentine in 1613. During the 18th century it was suggested that the author of the works attributed to Basil Valentine was Johann Thölde (Johannes!), a salt manufacturer in Germany who lived roughly 1565–1624.

Azoth was considered to be a universal medication or universal solvent sought in alchemy (similar to another alchemical idealized substance, alkahest, that like azoth was the aim, goal and vision of many alchemical works). Its symbol was the Caduceus, and so the term, while originally a term for an occult formula sought by alchemists much like the philosopher's stone, became a poetic word for the element mercury. The word Azoth is also related to the Ain Soph (ultimate substance) of the Kabbalah(Johannes again). In his masterwork The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Manly P. Hall explained this connection: "The universe is surrounded by the sphere of light or stars. Beyond that sphere is Schamayim (שמים), the Hebrew word for 'heaven', who is the Divine Fiery(Gebel) Water(Miriam), the first outflow of the Word of God, the flaming river pouring from the presence of the eternal mind. Schamayim, who is this fiery Androgyne, divides. His Fire becomes Solar fire and his Water becomes Lunar water in our universe. Schamayim is the Universal Mercury or Azoth -- the measureless spirit of life. That original spiritual fiery water comes through Edem ("vapor" in Hebrew) and pours itself into the four main rivers of the four Elements. This comprises the River of Living Water—the Azoth—or fiery mercurial essence, that flows out from the throne of God and Lamb. In this Edem (vaporous essence or mist) is the first or spiritual Earth, the incomprehensible and intangible dust out of which God formed Adam Kadmon, the spiritual body of man, which must become fully revealed through time."

Did Johannes lead the Alchemists to create Gebel and Miriam in their new "cursed" bodies? Johannes must be the one who is Gebel's Origin!