Nicolas Flamel

“Fix the volatile Mercury” and "Tend the Philosophers’ Garden”

This plate illustrates two of the “hieroglyphic” pictures that Nicolas Flamel says he found in the mysterious Book of Abraham the Jew, the book that (in Flamel’s account) set him on the path to the philosophers’ stone. In the German 1751 compendium (Des berühmten Philosophi Nicolai Flamelli chymische Werke), the plate is inserted inside Die Erklärung der hieroglyphischen Figuren… (“The explanation of the hieroglyphic figures”)

To the left is Mercury (Hermes), holding the caduceus. To the right is Saturn or Time, rushing at Mercury and aiming to cut off his feet. Flamel describes this scene exactly in the Introduction to his book: on the fourth leaf he saw “a young man with wings at his ankles … the god Mercury,” and “against him there came … a great old man, who upon his head had an hour-glass … with a scythe … with which … he would have cut off the feet of Mercury.” The dramatic gesture of cutting Mercury’s feet is a symbolical way of saying “halt" or "fix Mercury” - the first great task of the Work. As As Silberer Herbert said, "They (the alchemists) thought they had to fix this volatile soul (Mercury) by some medium in order to get a precious metal, silver, gold." The lower half portrays the Philosophers’ Garden. At its center is an old hollow oak twined by a rosebush bearing white and red blossoms. At the oak’s foot a clear, silvery fountain springs and sinks back into the earth. Around the beds figures dig, prune, and lay down curved boards or channels. Flamel again gives this description for the “fifth leaf”: “a fair rose-tree flowered in the midst of a sweet garden, climbing up against a hollow oak; at the foot whereof boiled a fountain of most white water, which ran headlong down into the depths, notwithstanding it first passed among the hands of infinite people which digged in the earth seeking for it; but because they were blind, none of them knew it, except here and there one which considered the weight.” The point that Flamel is trying to make is that most seekers look in the right place, but they do so with the wrong understanding. It’s has to do with lacking the philosophical understanding or the correct frame of reference - the right “weight” or “context” that’s necessary for proper insight. Without understanding what the "garden", the vessel and the "fountain" represent inwardly, we mistakenly look for external sources.