bodies
The Sun
Sol, the radiant face
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
a sun with a face, straight and wavy rays; a naked child crowned with flowers rides a white horse and carries a red banner; sunflowers over a garden wall; the Sun as the central motif, the Horse by eyeWaite, 1911 “The characteristic type of humanity has become a little child therein--a child in the sense of simplicity and innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and of Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world.”
The ouroboros is older than alchemy and was borrowed into it. Its earliest surviving appearance is on a shrine in the tomb of Tutankhamun, around 1323 BCE, where two of them enclose the head and feet of the king. It reaches the alchemists through Greco-Egyptian Alexandria, and the earliest alchemical drawing of it we have is in the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, a papyrus of perhaps the third century, where the circle it makes is inscribed hen to pan, one is the all.
What it means inside alchemy is more specific than the pop reading of eternity. It marks a closed system. The work happens in a sealed vessel, nothing enters and nothing leaves, and the matter inside is repeatedly dissolved and recongealed by its own action. The serpent feeding on itself is a picture of that operation, not a picture of infinity. When it is drawn half light and half dark it is making a further claim, that the destroying half and the generating half are one substance.
It is worth being careful about the reading you have probably met. Kekule's dream of the benzene ring, told at a Berlin ceremony in 1890, is often given as evidence that the symbol carries some deep chemical truth. He told it twenty-five years after the fact, at a celebration in his own honour, and historians of chemistry have treated it sceptically ever since.
Contested
Whether the ouroboros in Greco-Egyptian alchemy meant a closed vessel, cyclical time, or the unity of opposites is genuinely unsettled and the sources are thin. The Jungian reading, that it is the undifferentiated self before individuation, is a twentieth-century overlay on the material rather than a claim the alchemists made. Say so on the page.
Where it appears
Across the archive · 15
Plates that carry the symbol, tagged by eye and not yet decoded: first where it is the central motif, then where it plays a secondary part. Each opens in the viewer; the key and the notes come with the entry.
Central motif · 6
Abraxas, a Gnostic PantheosJ. Augustus Knapp, colour plate, 1928a rooster-headed figure in armour, whip raised and shield on the arm, stands in a chariot drawn by four white horses, his legs two serpents; the sun at the upper left, a crescent moon at the upper right, the name ABRAXAS lettered below; the Sun and the Moon as the central motif by Hall's reading of the figure as solar, the Serpent and the Horse by eyeHall, 1928 “The four white horses drawing the chariot of ABRAXAS symbolize the four ethers by means of which the solar power, ABRAXAS, is circulating through all parts of the universe.”
Grand Rosicrucian Alchemical FormulaUncredited, after the Musaeum Hermeticum, colour plate, 1928the Name in a triangle at the heart of the sun; the Triangle and the Divine secondary, by eye
The Apocalyptic WomanAlbrecht Dürer, 1511the woman crowned with stars, radiant with the sun, the crescent moon under her feet, the dragon beneath; pairs with the Flamel Virgin on the crescent, by eyeApocalypse 12:1, “A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
Two Men Contemplating the MoonCaspar David Friedrich, ca. 1825–30two men watch the waxing moon beside a dead oak; by eye
The Moon (XVIII)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a crescent moon with a face in profile set within a full disc, rays and falling drops; a path between two towers; a dog and a wolf howling; a crayfish climbing from a pool; the Moon as the central motifWaite, 1911 “The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown.”
The Sun (XIX)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a sun with a face, straight and wavy rays; a naked child crowned with flowers rides a white horse and carries a red banner; sunflowers over a garden wall; the Sun as the central motif, the Horse by eyeWaite, 1911 “The characteristic type of humanity has become a little child therein--a child in the sense of simplicity and innocence in the sense of wisdom. In that simplicity, he bears the seal of Nature and of Art; in that innocence, he signifies the restored world.”
Secondary motif · 9
The Sun and the Moon over the King and the QueenEdith A. Ibbs, after Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis, 1900 to 1909a queen in blue and a king in red stand on spheres before a landscape; above them a blue moon with a face and a red sun with a face; the king's staff is wound with a serpent; the King and the Queen as the central motif, the Sun and the Moon and the Serpent by eyeCentral motif: the King and the Queen
The Virgin with a Dragon at Her FeetDenis Molinier, after Nicolas Flamel, 1772She stands on a crescent moon; the golden glory behind her is not counted as a sun.Central motif: the Serpent and the Dragon
Alchemical Devices, after the Ripley ScrollWatercolour after George Ripley, date not recordedA radiant sun face in the upper register, by eye.Central motif: the Vessel
The Red King, the Queen and MercuryHand-coloured engraving, maker not recorded, date not recordeda red king with a rayed face stands between a crowned woman in yellow and a figure in green carrying a caduceus; a band of stars above them; a row of small vessels along the ground below; the King and the Queen as the central motif, the Sun and the Moon by eyeCentral motif: the King and the Queen
The Magi Sheltering in a CaveAfter the figures of Abraham the Jew, from Nicolas Flamel, date not recordedSun face top left, moon face top right, by eye.Central motif: the Heavens
God Judging AdamWilliam Blake, ca. 1795an aged God seated in a disc of fire and light points down at Adam, who stands bowed before the flaming horses of the chariot; the Divine as the central motif, the Horse, the Sun and Fire by eyeCentral motif: the Divine
Angel of the Revelation (Book of Revelation, chapter 10)William Blake, ca. 1803–5the mighty angel of Revelation 10 astride sea and land, the sun behind his head, the seven thunders as horsemen; by eyeApocalypse 10:1, “And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head: and his face, as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.”Central motif: the Angel and the Wing
Death (XIII)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909an armoured skeleton on a white horse carries a black banner with a white rose; a king lies fallen with his crown beside him, a child and a maiden kneel, a bishop stands with clasped hands; the sun rises between two towers, a river with a boat behind; Death as the central motif, the Horse, the Sun and the Crown by eyeWaite, 1911 “The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate.”Central motif: Death and the Skull
Temperance (XIV)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a winged angel in white, a sun sign on the brow and a triangle within a square on the breast, pours water between two cups, one foot on the land and one in the pool; irises at the water's edge; a path leads to mountains and a crown of light; the Angel as the central motif, the Vessel, the Triangle, the Sun and the Crown by eyeWaite, 1911 “All the conventional emblems are renounced herein. So also are the conventional meanings, which refer to changes in the seasons, perpetual movement of life and even the combination of ideas.”Central motif: the Angel and the Wing
On the same plate
