Years ago and far away there lived a Rich Man with his three sons. One day his house burned down, which came as a terrible shock because he only had four others. What if another should burn down? What would then become of his sons’ fortune? And so he called them to him and told them they all had to go out and get jobs. The first became a soldier, the second a blacksmith and the third a barber. Each went off to ply their trade.
The Rich Man then went to see the Priest, unnerved by his loss and with conscience inexplicably pricked, as though he had tempted this fate. The Priest reminded him that he had become rich at the expense of others and would likely go to hell. Doubly un-nerved the Rich Man went back to his empty house and sat out his days with this new fire under his chair, contemplating his situation.
On his death bed he called his three sons to see him one last time. Three large bags of gold sat on the dresser. ‘Well my sons, my time has come. Before I die let me hear what you have accomplished so I may apportion your inheritance accordingly.’
The soldier stepped forward,’ I am the greatest of the king’s men,’ he said proudly. ‘I have fought in great wars and can wield my silver sword with such speed as to keep the rain from my head.’
Then the Blacksmith, ‘I am the greatest Smith in the land, why, I shod a coach of four horses without them even stopping in the yard.’
And the Barber, ‘I am so skilled with a razor I shaved a rabbit as it hopped along without a single nick.’
‘Well,’ chuckled the Rich Man as he tucked the bags of gold back into the dresser, ‘you have all the skill to make your own fortune and thus have no need of mine. Now call the Priest, for all this gold shall be given to the poor.’
One way of understanding ancient stories is to see them as amplifications and embellishments of collective situations in the objective psyche. Since this is the express purpose of alchemy it shouldn’t surprise us to see alchemical motifs cropping up in folk tales on a regular basis. This is useful because it gives otherwise overwhelmingly complex symbolism a sense of coherent narrative.
One of the most mind bending figures to grasp in the alchemical lexicon, not to mention up close and personal, is Mercurius. He has so many names and attributes it just gets confusing. Having a story to show how Mercurius operates can help to clear the mental fog a little.
Our story begins with a soul in crisis. The Rich man has been struck a great blow by fate. His house has burned down. His structure suddenly got eaten up somehow. He’s concerned about his sons’ legacy but so too has his conscience been aroused. He knows the fire is somehow an expression of something to do with him. This fire seems to have such a quality of divine intervention to it his first response is rush off to the Priest.
Our Rich Man finds himself in much the same situation as Job from the Old Testament. Here Job faces the dual nature of God, the ancient God who still likes to play dice with his Dark Brother and visit terrible shite on humans just to see what they do with it.
For his part, the Rich Man is compelled to realize the limits of his well padded personality to provide itself with meaning. Not only his wealth, but also his personal virtues and accomplishments cannot give more than ephemeral happiness. He has achieved all his personal goals but cannot enjoy them because he has no relatedness. Moreover, his wealth is ill-gotten. He has become inflated. Such an attitude, ‘beckons the Raven’s claw.’
In Irish mythology this aspect of Mercurius as divine fire is told in a story about a lonely Crofter who decides to use an ancient standing stone in his field as a door lintel. He is about to strike at the base of the stone with his pick axe when suddenly he has a flash of inspiration that his house is about to burn down. He runs back but its still in one piece so he returns to the field with greater resolve and once again swings his pick. Again, the sudden vision of flames consuming his croft so, once more, he legs it home, to find all is well…
The Crofter has had enough of all this nonsense by now and feels like a fool with all this running up and down so he swings his pick like a hero, gauges out the stone, heaves it into his barrow and trundles happily home… though, it is no more… having been razed to the ground.
Natural calamities are often experienced as a message from the gods with the essential feature being that the recipient and their attitude are transformed in the process. Mercurius, winged messenger, is all too often also experienced as a destructive and consuming fire., whether as the flames of some passion which sabotage intentions or as the baptism by fire of untoward events without which we would continue in the existential rut we find ourselves.
The cure for such ennui is an encounter with the Unconscious though the way this often happens is like being swallowed up by something. The sudden reappraisal of the ego’s place in the grander scheme of things, is disorienting, dissolving. It seems unfair. You have fulfilled the requirements of developing a golden and shiny personality with bags of success and suddenly you can’t get out of bed in the morning.
I dreamed I was taking a stroll on a sunny day. Suddenly I round the bend in the lane and there is a twelve foot tall Yeti who lumbers over to me, grabs me, throws me over his shoulder and takes off at high speed, leaping the hedgerows as though they were not there…
suddenly the rules are different. Your shiny golden self is captive.
Can you imagine being the first person to have both the curiosity and the means to put gold and mercury together…. watching with incredulous horror as the gold, the symbol of personal worth and worldly value aurum vulgaris, is eaten up and obliterated by otherworldly Mercury?
Yet this crisis does galvanize the Rich Man. He rouses his indolent and undifferentiated sons, sending them out into the world. He then goes off to see the Priest a less elemental personification of Mercurius, in a now slightly more benevolent form, who takes the time to spell out the link between house-fire and hell-fire..
‘since the ignis mercurialis was also connected with the fires of hell CW13 ¶ 256
Suddenly there’s a lot more at stake. The Rich Man goes home to think about things. He gives his sons jobs and sends them out into the world, dis-identifying from the personality and its various shenanigans. In the process, Mercurius becomes more benevolent still, ultimately manifesting within the Rich Man himself as the trickster’s fire of inspiration, which then transforms and redeems him.
‘Go, sweep out the chambers of your heart. When you depart out, He will enter in. In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauty.’ Shabastari.
Our story echoes the Vedic idea that the gods show us the face we show to them. If we pursue our personal goals with impunity we arouse the Ire of Mercurius. When the Gods are taken seriously the personality flourishes and fulfills its potential, eventually becoming a vessel for wisdom and relatedness.
