Heaven and earth do not contain me, but the heart of my faithful servant contains Me

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As for the prophets before Muhammad, the vision of Moses was considered still imperfect, for the mystic wants the actual vision of God, not his manifestation through a burning bush.

Abraham, for whom fire turned into a rose garden,

resembles the mystic in his afflictions; Joseph, in his perfect beauty, the mystical beloved after whom the mystic searches. The apocryphal traditions used by the mystics are numerous; such as “Heaven and earth do not contain me, but the heart of my faithful servant contains Me”; and the possibility of a relation between humanity and God is also explained by the traditional idea: “He (God) created Adam in His image.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sufism/Symbolism-in-Sufism

 

Venus gave Hippomenes three golden apples

Atalanta and her suitor Hippomenes that is narrated by Venus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.5
According to the original story,Atalanta and her suitor Hippomenes that is narrated by Venus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.5
According to the original story, Venus gave Hippomenes three golden apples from the garden of
Hesperides to cast before Atalanta during their contest to distract and slow her down; he did as
instructed, thereby winning the race as well as her hand. However it didn’t end well for the two
lovers because they managed to upset Venus, and ended up being transformed into lions as
punishment for ingratitude.
Maier retooled this classical tale about transformations into an elegant audio-visual presentation
of alchemical theory and practice. In Maier’s version of this story, Atalanta, Hippomenes, and the
Golden Apple become the personifications of mercury, sulfur, and salt – the three principal
elements in Paracelsian transmutational alchemy. Maier pushes this trope even further, as his
three-part vocal score (which he calls “fugues”) musically feature the interaction between the
three protagonists/elements. Maier’s characterization of fugue is really a pun on fugere (to flee),
as the music in Atalanta fugiens is composed as a canon in which different vocal parts begin a set
melody in succession. Just as Atalanta (mercury) flees, so runs her musical voice followed by
Hippomenes (sulfur) at a fixed distance; the Golden Apple balances their polyphony with a
plainsong melody apropos of its cast role as the stabilizing alchemical element (salt). Melody and
meter thus allegorize the alchemical interplay between mercury, sulfur, and salt during the
laboratory process of making the philosophers’ stone, understood by contemporaries as the
panacea for restoring perfect health and longevity to humankind. Alchemy was the art of material
transformation by fire, and the process through which the secrets of nature could be revealed from the garden of
Hesperides to cast before Atalanta during their contest to distract and slow her down; he did as
instructed, thereby winning the race as well as her hand. However it didn’t end well for the two
lovers because they managed to upset Venus, and ended up being transformed into lions as
punishment for ingratitude.

Maier retooled this classical tale about transformations into an elegant audio-visual presentation
of alchemical theory and practice. In Maier’s version of this story, Atalanta, Hippomenes, and the
Golden Apple become the personifications of mercury, sulfur, and salt – the three principal
elements in Paracelsian transmutational alchemy. Maier pushes this trope even further, as his
three-part vocal score (which he calls “fugues”) musically feature the interaction between the
three protagonists/elements. Maier’s characterization of fugue is really a pun on fugere (to flee),
as the music in Atalanta fugiens is composed as a canon in which different vocal parts begin a set
melody in succession. Just as Atalanta (mercury) flees, so runs her musical voice followed by
Hippomenes (sulfur) at a fixed distance; the Golden Apple balances their polyphony with a
plainsong melody apropos of its cast role as the stabilizing alchemical element (salt). Melody and
meter thus allegorize the alchemical interplay between mercury, sulfur, and salt during the
laboratory process of making the philosophers’ stone, understood by contemporaries as the
panacea for restoring perfect health and longevity to humankind. Alchemy was the art of material
transformation by fire, and the process through which the secrets of nature could be revealed

4 October 2017
Donna Bilak, Playful Humanism in Atalanta fugiens (1618)
Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University
Work-in-progress pape

 

The theft of the golden apples of Hesperides

Hesiod does not tell the myth about the theft of the golden apples, but it is known from several other sources. Hera commanded Hesperides to guard the apples, and this is what they did with great zeal. They were assisted by Ladon, a dragon with a hundred heads, who stopped everyone approaching the garden.

Nevertheless, the apples were stolen by the hero Heracles, who undertook this at the command of his elder brother Eurystheus.

The Golden Apples of Hesperides

 

Hera’s orchard in the west

The Garden of the Hesperides

The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera‘s orchard in the west, where either a single tree or a grove of immortality-giving golden apples grew. The apples were planted from the fruited branches that Gaia gave to her as a wedding gift when Hera accepted Zeus. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally plucked from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed, dragon, named Ladon, as an additional safeguard.

Although Herakles was only supposed to perform ten labours, Eurystheus discounted those where he was aided or paid, and so two additional labours were given. The first of these (the eleventh overall) was to steal the apples from the garden. Heracles first caught Nereus, the shape-shifting sea god, to learn where the Garden of the Hesperides was located.

In some versions of the tale, Herakles did not know where to travel, and so sought help, being directed to Prometheus to ask, and when reaching Prometheus freed him from his torture as payment. This tale is more usually found in the position of the Erymanthian Boar, since it is associated with Chiron choosing to forgoe immortality and to take Prometheus’ place.

https://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Mythology/en/Hesperides.html

 

Christian allegory, for the Garden of Hesperides

Maier’s title page fuses classical mythology with Christian allegory, for the Garden of Hesperides in which the story of Atalanta is set is a metaphor for the Garden of Eden. Thus, the expulsion of Adam and Eve elides with Cybele’s punishment of Atalanta and Hippomenes. Maier’s Golden Apple is the fulcrum between the Tree of Life in Genesis 3:22-24, and the alchemical Elixir of Life given biblical testimony in Revelation 22:1-2, wherein the arbor vitae’s curative properties, fed by the crystal clear waters of the river that flows from the throne of God, is an archetype for Eden restored. In this way, the Atalanta’s title page articulates a return to a Golden Age, a return to the essence of physical and spiritual perfection through alchemical purification, which Maier and his milieu believed would be ushered in by the successful production of the philosophers’ stone.

So, how did Maier’s retelling of the story of Atalanta, Hippomenes and the Golden Apple work as an alchemical allegory? The answer lies in the Author’s Epigram, which follows the titlepage.

https://atalantachf.omeka.net/…/about/sectionone/firstpage

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Apples of Hesperides by Lowell

Apples of Hesperides

Amy Lowell – 1874-1925

Glinting golden through the trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Through the moon-pierced warp of night

Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,

Swaying to the kissing breeze

Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,

Apples of Hesperides!

Far and lofty yet they glimmer,

Apples of Hesperides!

Blinded by their radiant shimmer,

Pushing forward just for these;

Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,

Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,

Always thinking soon to seize

And possess the golden-glistening

Apples of Hesperides!

Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,

Apples of Hesperides!

Not one missing, still transcendent,

Clustering like a swarm of bees.

Yielding to no man’s desire,

Glowing with a saffron fire,

Splendid, unassailed, the golden

Apples of Hesperides!

 

Alchemical Labour

..”Of the appearance of Hercules in the divine precinct, De Jong writes: “The alchemical process is a labour of Hercules, and thus in the frontispiece Hercules is pictured as the one who reaches the final aim and gathers himself the apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, from the Garden of Beatitude. The apples had come to the earth by the mediation of Venus, and had their salutary effect there by which the process ended back in the Garden of the Hesperides.” Thus both the chthonic and the divine, earth and heaven, are united in the circle of the opus, that circle emblematized by the form of this illustration and in the pattern of the emblems in the book. Hercules conquers the dragon Ladon; that is, he overcomes the darkness of the beginning stages of the opus with its devouring monsters and great traps for the artifex, in order to achieve the philosophical gold, the lapis triunus (see 5Go.568) in which spiritus and anima , sulphur and Mercury, male and female, Hippomenes and Atalanta, are united in the transformed body, the new golden body, represented by the three apples. This is the corpus as transformed matter, the ground or material for the intersection of macrocosm and microcosm, of the self and the ego.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.11673609

 

Alchemical Apples

In this mountain, my son, I think you have seen the royal gardens of the Hesperides; in those gardens the golden and silver roses grow and from there come the purple-coloured apples, the golden and the silver ones, and they bear fruit annually.

The access to this garden, however, is difficult, but the entrance still more difficult and much more difficult is the gathering of the golden or silver apples themselves. For the behaviour of the mountain is of such a nature that nobody is admitted, who has not experienced the wintry cold first. Therefore you also have to approach it in winter, and you must not be intimidated by the cold, for you will scarcely be able to stand the heat prevailing at the entrance. On the top of the mountain you will come upon a very high tower, the guardian of the garden; the tower has two parapets, which are both situated in a blazing fire. He who wants to enter this garden, has to conquer above all the bulls, which blow fire out of their nostrils and has to go through the gate and the fiery parapets.

Greverus

From the Theatrum Chemicum, Volume III, Strassburg, 1613.

 

Apples of Hesperides

Song of Apple-trees, honeysweet and murmurous, Where the swallows flash and shimmer as they thrid the foamwhite maze, Breaths of far-off Avalon are blown to us, come down to us, Avalon of the Heart’s Desire, Avalon of the Hidden Ways! Song of Apple-blossom, when the myriad leaves are gleaming Like undersides of small green waves in foam of shallow seas, One may dream of Avalon, lie dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, Till wandering through dim vales of dusk the stars hang in the trees. Song of Apple-trees, honeysweet and murmurous, When the night-wind fills the branches with a sound of muffled oars, Breaths of far-off Avalon are blown to us, come down to us, Avalon of the Heart’s Desire, Avalon of the Hidden Shores.

by William Sharp (1855 – 1905), as Fiona Macleod, “Song of apple-trees”, appears in The Hour of Beauty, first published 1907

 

Why the Grail?

It’s a Wednesday another day of working from home. Covid has forced many such as myself to become POD people. I have barely left my house in nearly 3 years now. Like many my work place has become toxic. I am just a number to my employer and really have little value. Currently I am refusing to participate in corporate nonsense designed to make me feel happy, while I am literally bullied by management.

Given this I am still actively doing or more accurately attempting magic. Currently I am working the directions in an advanced form. Family life is as usual dreadful, largely ‘because of me.’ So there… merry xmas lmao.

So why the Grail? What is the Grail? It is a a container a VESSEL. The Idea of a Sacred Vessel of curse is very familiar. We find the BECOMING of a sacred vessel a central theme. WHO does the GREAL serve?

So, it is with much Irony I write this but there

We seek the Grail to find the Holy prize. The interior self.

To become a vessel to receive.

TO RECEIVE.

This of course then begs the question what DO WE RECEIVE?

To answer this we must first ask what we seek?

This acceptance then, makes the entire Magic of the Grail one of GIVE and RECEIVE.

This is ALL there is. This deceptively simple teaching is of course for the beginner and the advanced, as all good teachings should be.

https://sangrealttla.webador.com/