Efflorescence, or the flowering of metallic SALT gave its name to Cyprus.
Aphrodite Urania, the pure light of the Divine Feminine. Kypria, IS THE SALT OF PYRITE EARTH AS IN COPPER SULPHATE.
Salt of Venus (Old Chem.), blue vitriol; copper sulphate; -- the alchemical symbol and name of copper being Venus.
From numerous ancient sources describing the nature of natural and metallic salts, one arrives at the view that salt’s piquant effect was seen to extend beyond the sensation on the tongue. Salts stimulates not only the appetite but desire in general. Equally, one can understand how salt, as an aphrodisiac, was connected specifically to the cult of Kypris/Aphrodite, the goddess of eternal desire par excellence carried to the island of Cyprus by the western wind 'Zephyrus'.
The ancient esoteric etymology of Aphrodite aside, she was said to be as ‘brine-born’ (from aphros, ‘sea-spume’) which is deeply mired not only in desire but also enmity, the twin impulses that Empedocles called ‘Love and Strife’. Aphrodite, is born from the primordial 'patricide', the resultant of a crime of passion. Hesiod’s formulaic Theogony tells us how the goddess Gaia (Earth), the often unwilling recipient of the lustful, rape of Ouranos, the oppressive (Sky), incites their seventh child Cronus, (born of this 'unholy union') against his 'sky father'. Cronus rises against his progenitor and, with a sickle of jagged flint, severs his genitals, and casts the male generative power' into the surging sea, (Fire, Water). Over time, a white foam, salt (aphros) coagulates around 'them' from the immortal flesh, and in this 'proto-sulphate' a maiden grew. "Her, gods and men call Aphrodite, the foam-born goddess, because she grew amid the foam." I posit that the name/word Kypria in ancient Mycenaean (Linear B) was the alchemists description for copper sulphate, a metalic, naturally processed, salt of earth.
Two primordial impulses prove pivotal to the alchemical function of all salts the determiner of all affinities and aversions. And if Aphrodite is connected to salt’s as desire provoking, then her ultimate counterpart must be associated with the opposite, which is war and strife. Aphrodite is paired with Ares among the Greeks (as Venus is to Mars among the Romans), but we have to keep in mind that the origin of her cult is bound to Ancient Near Eastern. In the Cypriot language, I posit Kyprios, as her designation, the designation of the process, transmutation, metamorphosis. In her Phoenician designation Asi-tar-te, embodies not only eros/passion and love/sensuality. Egyptian texts of the early Eighteenth Dynasty saw fit to partner her with their own untamed transgressor god, Seth-Typhon, a divinity who, like Aphrodite, was associated specifically with sea-salt and sea-spume (aphros).
Although salt is not included in this depiction, what is significant is that here one finds the exact framework in which salt would later be situated as one of the three principles (tria prima: sulphur, mercury, salt) alongside the four Empedoclean elements (tetrastoicheia: fire, air, water, earth); here salt may be seen to replace arsenic due to its more integral relationship to sulphur and mercury in the form of cinnabar (mercuric sulphide, HgS): the salt of mercury and sulphur.
The distinct relation of salt to the body and the elements may account for the cross-like sign it takes in the Greek manuscripts. These forces are necessary to the establishment of creation rather than creation per se. The process after the creation, the flow.
The method to awaken that energy, to activate it, has been hidden in every religion and mystical tradition. In the West, it is most famously known in the tradition we call Alchemy.
The entire tradition of Alchemy is a symbolic presentation of a practical science. Alchemy hides the knowledge of how to elaborate the full potential of the human being, which is hidden in all of our atoms and cells. To do that, we need to know about transmutation.
In every philosophy as well as every spiritual tradition, we talk about basic elements that are material and energetic, but since we know that every manifested thing is a trinity of matter, energy, and Consciousness, then we have to understand that the basic elements are also elements of Consciousness, not just matter and energy. The four primary elements—air, fire, water, earth—make up everything that we are, on every level. The important question we need to answer practically in our lives is how the four elements relate to the fifth element.The fifth element, literally “the quintessence,” relates to the Akash, the ether. In Sanskrit terms, we can also say that it is Kundalini. It is the Prakriti, the root energy that in some religions is symbolized as the Divine Mother.The Divine Mother is that creative force or intelligence in nature that gives life to everything. If we want spiritual life, we need to know our Divine Mother. Her active agent is the quintessence, which is an energy in us. We need that energy to be active, and right now it is not. In us, it is passive, latent, what in science we could call "static, non-kinetic energy."
The word quintessence comes from a root word esse which means: "To be" Sanskrit asmi, Hittite eimi, O.C.S. jesmi, Lith. esmi, Goth. imi, O.E. eom "I am"
The quintessence hidden in the four elements within us is the Being, the light of the Being, that shines through a psychological element. Everything that we are as a psyche is the light of the Being, but in us that light is trapped in corruption. If you want that light to shine pure, you need to break apart the lens and reform it to make it perfect, clean. This is the basic science of Alchemy: to purge the metals and make them pure. We could remove the word metals and instead use crystals or lenses, and it would mean the same thing.
“The water element of the ancient philosophers has been metamorphosed into the hydrogen of modern science; the air has become oxygen; the fire, nitrogen; the earth, carbon.” - Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Trinity, that is to say the Three Principles, is the basis of all reasoning, and this is why in the whole “series of genesis” it is necessary to have all [three] to establish the foundational Triad that will be[come] the particular Triad. The Three Principals include first an abstract or nourishing datum, second a datum of measure, rhythmisation and fixation, and finally, the third a datum which is concrete or fixed like a seed.
This is what the hermetic philosophers have transcribed, concretely and symbolically, by Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, playing on the metallic appearance in which metallic Mercury plays the role of nutritive substance, Sulphur the coagulant of this Mercury, and Salt the fixed product of this function.
In general, everything in nature, being a formed Species, will be Salt. Everything that coagulates a nourishing substance will be Sulphur or of the nature of Sulphur, like say the curdling of milk. Everything that is coagulable will be Mercury, whatever its form.
The image of coagulation, with Sulphur as the coagulating agent, Mercury as the coagulated substance, and Salt as the resulting form is used repeatedly by the true Alchemist Mineralogist, Metalurgist, Numerologist, Philosopher. This motif is also the embryological process which reminds me of the Pythagorean statement that ‘salt is born from the purest sources, the sun and the sea’
The four elemental bodies have been interpreted as lead, copper, tin and iron, (Pb, Cu, Sn, Fe), while the three sublimed vapours have been identified with sulphur, mercury and arsenic (S, Hg, As).
EARTH WATER AIR FIRE AND METALLIC SALTS
Elementally, salt is situated at the end of a progression beginning with fire and air and ending in water and earth. Fire and air form a triad with sulphur; air and water form a triad with mercury; water and earth form a triad with salt.
HEPHAESTUS etymology
| ephemeris | table giving location of celestial body at different specific times |
| ephemeromorph | life form that cannot be classified as animal or vegetable |
| ephemeron | creature that lives for only one day |
| ephemeron | insect that lives for only one day |
| ephestian | domestic |
| ephidrosis | profuse perspiration |
| ephod | Jewish priestly vestment |
Salt of Venus (Old Chem.), blue vitriol; copper sulphate; -- the alchemical symbol and name of copper being Venus.
A Double salt (Chem.), a salt regarded as formed
by the union of two distinct salts, as common alum, potassium aluminium
sulphate.
From numerous ancient sources describing the nature of natural and metallic salts, one arrives at the view that salt’s piquant effect was seen to extend beyond the sensation on the tongue. Salts stimulates not only the appetite but desire in general. Equally, one can understand how salt, as an aphrodisiac, was connected specifically to the cult of Kypris/Aphrodite, the goddess of eternal desire par excellence carried to the island of Cyprus by the western wind 'Zephyrus'.
The ancient esoteric etymology of Aphrodite aside, she was said to be as ‘brine-born’ (from aphros, ‘sea-spume’) which is deeply mired not only in desire but also enmity, the twin impulses that Empedocles called ‘Love and Strife’. Aphrodite, is born from the primordial 'patricide', the resultant of a crime of passion. Hesiod’s formulaic Theogony tells us how the goddess Gaia (Earth), the often unwilling recipient of the lustful, rape of Ouranos, the oppressive (Sky), incites their seventh child Cronus, (born of this 'unholy union') against his 'sky father'. Cronus rises against his progenitor and, with a sickle of jagged flint, severs his genitals, and casts the male generative power' into the surging sea, (Fire, Water). Over time, a white foam, salt (aphros) coagulates around 'them' from the immortal flesh, and in this 'proto-sulphate' a maiden grew. "Her, gods and men call Aphrodite, the foam-born goddess, because she grew amid the foam." I posit that the name/word Kypria in ancient Mycenaean (Linear B) was the alchemists description for copper sulphate, a metalic, naturally processed, salt of earth.
Two primordial impulses prove pivotal to the alchemical function of all salts the determiner of all affinities and aversions. And if Aphrodite is connected to salt’s as desire provoking, then her ultimate counterpart must be associated with the opposite, which is war and strife. Aphrodite is paired with Ares among the Greeks (as Venus is to Mars among the Romans), but we have to keep in mind that the origin of her cult is bound to Ancient Near Eastern. In the Cypriot language, I posit Kyprios, as her designation, the designation of the process, transmutation, metamorphosis. In her Phoenician designation Asi-tar-te, embodies not only eros/passion and love/sensuality. Egyptian texts of the early Eighteenth Dynasty saw fit to partner her with their own untamed transgressor god, Seth-Typhon, a divinity who, like Aphrodite, was associated specifically with sea-salt and sea-spume (aphros).
Although salt is not included in this depiction, what is significant is that here one finds the exact framework in which salt would later be situated as one of the three principles (tria prima: sulphur, mercury, salt) alongside the four Empedoclean elements (tetrastoicheia: fire, air, water, earth); here salt may be seen to replace arsenic due to its more integral relationship to sulphur and mercury in the form of cinnabar (mercuric sulphide, HgS): the salt of mercury and sulphur.
The distinct relation of salt to the body and the elements may account for the cross-like sign it takes in the Greek manuscripts. These forces are necessary to the establishment of creation rather than creation per se. The process after the creation, the flow.
The method to awaken that energy, to activate it, has been hidden in every religion and mystical tradition. In the West, it is most famously known in the tradition we call Alchemy.
The entire tradition of Alchemy is a symbolic presentation of a practical science. Alchemy hides the knowledge of how to elaborate the full potential of the human being, which is hidden in all of our atoms and cells. To do that, we need to know about transmutation.
The word quintessence comes from a root word esse which means: "To be" Sanskrit asmi, Hittite eimi, O.C.S. jesmi, Lith. esmi, Goth. imi, O.E. eom "I am"
The quintessence hidden in the four elements within us is the Being, the light of the Being, that shines through a psychological element. Everything that we are as a psyche is the light of the Being, but in us that light is trapped in corruption. If you want that light to shine pure, you need to break apart the lens and reform it to make it perfect, clean. This is the basic science of Alchemy: to purge the metals and make them pure. We could remove the word metals and instead use crystals or lenses, and it would mean the same thing.
“The water element of the ancient philosophers has been metamorphosed into the hydrogen of modern science; the air has become oxygen; the fire, nitrogen; the earth, carbon.” - Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Trinity, that is to say the Three Principles, is the basis of all reasoning, and this is why in the whole “series of genesis” it is necessary to have all [three] to establish the foundational Triad that will be[come] the particular Triad. The Three Principals include first an abstract or nourishing datum, second a datum of measure, rhythmisation and fixation, and finally, the third a datum which is concrete or fixed like a seed.
This is what the hermetic philosophers have transcribed, concretely and symbolically, by Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, playing on the metallic appearance in which metallic Mercury plays the role of nutritive substance, Sulphur the coagulant of this Mercury, and Salt the fixed product of this function.
In general, everything in nature, being a formed Species, will be Salt. Everything that coagulates a nourishing substance will be Sulphur or of the nature of Sulphur, like say the curdling of milk. Everything that is coagulable will be Mercury, whatever its form.
The image of coagulation, with Sulphur as the coagulating agent, Mercury as the coagulated substance, and Salt as the resulting form is used repeatedly by the true Alchemist Mineralogist, Metalurgist, Numerologist, Philosopher. This motif is also the embryological process which reminds me of the Pythagorean statement that ‘salt is born from the purest sources, the sun and the sea’
The four elemental bodies have been interpreted as lead, copper, tin and iron, (Pb, Cu, Sn, Fe), while the three sublimed vapours have been identified with sulphur, mercury and arsenic (S, Hg, As).
EARTH WATER AIR FIRE AND METALLIC SALTS
Elementally, salt is situated at the end of a progression beginning with fire and air and ending in water and earth. Fire and air form a triad with sulphur; air and water form a triad with mercury; water and earth form a triad with salt.
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