4.5 The relationship between the ego, the Anima, the Self and the anima mundi  

4.5.4 The Seal of Solomon as the anima mundi and as the modern solution of the Axiom of Maria Prophetissa  

 

The Axiom of Maria Prophetissa describes the fourth as follows[1]:  

“…and out of the Third comes One as the Fourth; like this the Two become One.”  

In my interpretation this means: The third – and with it the energy term – is split into an ambivalent twoness that is re-unified in the fourth. Like this in the fourth the original unity has been re-established, and it contains the ambivalence or the bipolarity as well as the threeness. The symbol for such a unity is, as I have mentioned[2], the Seal of Solomon, the two triads unified in one symbol.  

When we look back to the first pictures of the Rosarium, we see that the three flowers are arranged as a double triad – the lily or the Seal of Solomon so important in alchemy and in the mysticism of Nicholas von Flue. This double triad is the looked-for symbol for the world soul, the anima mundi. To create this vegetative symbol was the first goal of the Hermetic alchemical opus and also of Dorneus’ unio corporalis. Thus, the double triad is the fourth as the child of the Holy Wedding, and my modern solution of the Axiom is confirmed.  

As I have already mentioned (see section 3.4), the double triad runs through the whole series of pictures in the Rosarium. We have therefore to consider that the double triad is the prima materia as well as one of the most important goals of the opus, the lapis. Thus, the starting substance and the ending substance are the same. We can interpret this fact on the one hand in the way that the double triad as the fourth is a preconscious fact (the prima materia) we have to become conscious about (the lapis), on the other this structure is the never changing aspect behind two different “substances”. Tantrism knows this property as sthula and suksma, the gross and the subtle aspect of the body and of matter in the universe[3]. The double triad seems therefore to be some sort of an eternal “crystal lattice” inherent in all matter. The Rosarium shows us further that this “crystal lattice” survives the death of the body – being even the background of the new life springing off of the inanimate matter. We can thus conclude that the Seal of Solomon or the alchemical lily are also symbols of the unus mundus, out of which the process of the creatio continua[4] can happen, the latter being the unique spontaneous creation possible after the initial big bang, the creatio ex nihilo.  

As we will see, I call such an observable event the spontaneous inner quantum leap (or “inner radioactive decay”), and it is very likely that such incarnation events are observed by specific humans as UFOs and “ETs” in the outer world as long as the possibility of their observation in one’s own inside is not accepted. Especially in the so-called abduction phenomena the unity of the anima mundi seems to be unconsciously re-established, since in them the division into inner and outer world and into the part and the whole, and also the split of the world into matter and spirit seems to be annihilated.  

These alarming phenomena more and more observed in the sky, seem therefore to be a compensation to the decisive developments in natural science during the 17^th century. In the moment when mathematics entered natural philosophy, the vegetative aspect[5] of the world soul was repressed. Since then natural science believes only in the first aspect of the energy term, in what I call the outer spirit-psyche, i.e., physical energy. More or less 300 years later, during the 20^th century Carl Jung discovered the inner spirit-psyche, the objective psychic energy. In science as well as in depth psychology the vegetative aspect of energy, the matter-psyche, is however non existent. Thus also the process of the transformation of the spirit-psyche into the matter-psyche belonging to the so-called exchange of attributes[6], a necessary process of the unio corporalis and of the Holy Wedding, is repressed. Therefore, the challenge at the beginning of the 21^st century is to find our way back to exactly this repressed aspect of the world soul, i.e., to the matter-psyche, however on a scientifically higher level including the results of Carl Jung’s depth psychology and of modern physics.

[proofread GJS, 11/28/05]

 

part 16