Michael Maier and the Atalanta Fugiens (Emblem 31): The King in the Alchemical Sea
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 record of the Chemical Dissolution : his Atalanta Fugiens . Within the thirty-first emblem— "Rex natans in mari, clamans alta voce: Qui me liberabit, ingens praemium accipiet" (The King swimming in the sea, crying with a loud voice: He who will deliver me, shall receive a huge reward)—Maier establishes the fundamental Syntax of Solutio —the ability of the purified spirit to anchor the absolute light of the Divine Mind through the systematic "Liquefaction" of the sovereign intellect. This represents the state of Alchemical Dissolution where the spirit is "trapped" within the dense mists of material necessity. To understand the thirty-first emblem is to confront the law of Geometric Reciprocity . The King in the sea teaches that the universe is a tiered architecture...