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ATALANTA
FUGIENS - Michael Maier Titles of the Fugues: 1. The wind has carried
it in his belly 2. Its nurse is the earth 3. Go to the woman washing sheets,
and do thou likewise 4. Join brother to sister and hand them the cup of love
5. Put a toad to the breasts of a woman, and nurse it; the woman may die,
but the toad grows big from the milk 6. Sow your gold in the white foliated
earth 7. There is a chick, flying up from its nest, that falls back into the
nest again 8. Take the egg and pierce it with a fiery sword 9. Lock the
tree with the old man in a bedewed house, and by eating of its fruit he will become
young 10. Give fire to fire, Mercury to Mercury, and it is enough for you 11.
Make Latona white and tear up the books 12. The stone that Saturn vomited
up, after having devoured it in place of his son, Jupiter, has been placed on
Helicon as a monumneet for mortals 13. The Ore of the Philosophers is dropsical,
and needs to be washed seven times in the river, just as the leper Naaman in the
Jordan 14. This is the dragon devouring its own tail 15. Let the work
of the potter, consisting of the dry and the wet, teach you 16. This lion
has no feathers; the other has 17. A fourfold wheel rules this fiery work
18. Fire loves to make fire, but not to make gold, as gold does 19. If
you kill one of the four, all will be dead immediately 20. Nature teaches
nature to overcome the fire 21. Make a circle around man and woman, then a
square, now a triangle; make a circle, and you will have the Philosophers' Stone
22. When you have the white lead, do the women's work, that is, cook 23.
Gold rains down, as Pallas is born on Rhodes, and the Sun lies with Venus 24.
The wolf devoured the king, and when burned, it returned him to life. 25.
The dragon will not die, unless it be killed by its brother and sister, who are
Sol and Luna 26. The fruit of human wisdom is the Tree of Life 27. He
who tries to enter the Philosophic Rose-garden without a key is like a man wanting
to walk without feet | |
28. The king is bathed, sitting in a steam-bath, and is freed from black bile
by Pharut 29. Like the salamander, the stone lives in the fire 30. The
Sun needs the Moon, as the cock needs the hen 31. The king swims in the sea,
crying with a loud voice: 'He who rescues me shall have a mighty reward!' 32.
As coral grows under water and hardens in the air, so does the stone 33. The
hermaphrodite, like a corpse, lying in the dark, needs fire 34. He is conceived
in the bath and born in the air, but when he is made red he steps over the waters35.
As Ceres accustomed Triptolemus to stay in the fire, and Thetis Achilles, so the
master does to the stone 36. The stone is projected onto the land, and exalted
in the moutains, and lives in the air, and feeds in the river, that is, Mercury
37. Three things suffice for the mastery: white smoke, that is, water; the
green lion, that is the Ore of Hermes; and foetid water 38. The Rebis, like
the hermaphrodite, is born from two mountains, those of Mercury and Venus 39.
Oedipus, having overcome the Sphinz and murdered Laius his father, takes his mother
to wife. 40. From two waters make one, and it will be the water of holiness
41. Adonis is slain by a boar, and as Venus runs up, she tinctures the roses
with her blood 42. For him versed in chemistry, let Nature, Reason, Experience
and Reading be his guide, staff, spectacles and lamp 43. Hear the garrulous
vulture, who in no wise deceives you 44. Typhon kills Osiris by trickery,
and scatters his members far and wide, but the renowned Isis collects them 45.
The Sun and its shadow complete the work 46. Two eagles meet, one from the
East, the other from the West 47. The wolf coming from the East and the dog
coming from the West have bitten each other 48. The king, sick from drinking
the waters, is cured by the physicians and regains his health 49. The Philosophic
Child acknowledges three fathers, like Orion 50. The dragon kills the woman,
and she him, and together they are soaked in blood |