The Five Chapters

In Hermetic philosophy, before any differentiation of form can manifest, there exists a primordial substance. Prima Materia has neither name nor quality of its own. It is the formless, the inert and confused matter, which carries within itself, in potential, all forms and virtues. The authors affirm that it lies before the eyes of all, despised by the vulgar, who see in it only dust.

The Axis Mundi, or the Axis of the World, is one of the most universal symbolic and cosmological concepts in human history. Present in nearly all mythological, religious and esoteric traditions, this notion designates the central point of junction that links the different planes of the universe: Heaven (the divine, the celestial), Earth (the human and manifest world) and the Underworld (the infernal realms, the depths of the unconscious).

Far from a mere festive disguise, the traditional mask is an ontological operator. It is not ​Effacement of the “self” and sacred possession: In sub-Saharan Africa (Dogons, Baoulés), in the Americas (Hopi, Inuit), or in Greek and Shinto sacred theatre (Nō), putting on the mask is equivalent to a temporary death of the individual. The officiant ceases to be himself in order to become the receptacle of an ancestor, a god, or a nature spirit. Bearer of the soul, a window onto the other and their individuality.

In alchemical symbolism, the association of water and fire represents the union of opposites (the reconciliation of contraries, or coniunctio). In appearance, these two elements are mutually exclusive: water extinguishes fire, and fire vaporizes water. Yet Aqua Ignis transcends this apparent contradiction. It is neither the ordinary water of springs, nor the visible fire that consumes wood in the hearth. It is a paradoxical agent, a “water” that burns and a “fire” that moistens. Adepts often called it the fire against nature or the fire of the sages, for it acts without visible flame, effecting a gentle digestion and a dissolution of the philosophical matter.

This sovereign eye is the central point, the primordial unity from which all things arise and into which all things flow back. A gateway to the Source, the gaze we cast upon the world invites us to perceive the interdependence of a One consciousness with each of its manifestations. It is the bridge toward the acceptance of all that is, of the impermanence of phenomena leading to serenity before the emptiness of all things.