Michael Maier and the Atalanta Fugiens (Emblem 15): The King, the Queen, and the Golden Work
In the 17th century, the German physician and alchemist Michael Maier articulated a vision of the alchemical process so visual and "Highly Systematic" that it remains the definitive multimedia manual for the Western tradition: his Atalanta Fugiens . Within the fifteenth emblem— "Sicut adamas in ferro, sic Rex in muliere" (As the diamond in iron, so is the King in the woman)—Maier establishes the fundamental Syntax of Sovereignty —the ability of the purified spirit to anchor the absolute light of the Divine Mind through the absolute union of the Solar King and the Lunar Queen . This represents the state of Rubedo (the redness) where the spirit is permanently anchored and "fixed" within the terrestrial matrix. To understand the fifteenth 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" due to the influence of the planetary...