Michael Maier and the Atalanta Fugiens (Emblem 43): The Vulture on the Mountain
In the 17th century, the German physician and alchemist Michael Maier articulated a vision of the alchemical process so profound and "Highly Systematic" that it remains the definitive record of the Chemical Volatilization : his Atalanta Fugiens . Within the forty-third emblem— "Audi loquacem vulturem, qui de montis vertice clamat: Ego sum albus et niger" (Listen to the loquacious vulture, who cries from the mountain top: I am white and black)—Maier establishes the fundamental Syntax of Paradox —the ability of the purified spirit to anchor the absolute light of the Divine Mind through the absolute union of the Nigredo and the Albedo . This represents the state of Henosis (union) where the subject and the object are fused into a singular, radiant unity. To understand the forty-third emblem is to confront the law of Geometric Reciprocity . Maier teaches that the universe is a tiered architecture of light, currently in a state of "Atmospheric Friction" d...