“our fire is a common fire, and our furnace a common furnace. And though some of my predecessors have left it in writing that our fire is not common fire, I may tell you that it was only one of their devices for hiding the mysteries of our Art. For the material is common, and its treatment consists chiefly in the proper adjustment of the heat to which it is exposed.” - Basil Valentine Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine
"THIS woodcut from The 12 Keys of Basil Valentine (1602) shows the four grades of fire with which alchemists worked: Elementary Fire (flames from the furnace), Celestial Fire (sun in the heavens), Central Fire of digestion and aging (lion eating a snake), and the Secret Fire of mind and inspiration (Mercury cipher between red and white roses).”
“order that must be kept in the steps of the fire; it must be strong in the Solution, mediocre in the Sublimation, moderate in the Putrification, a little greater when the Work is white, and strong in the red.” - Georgius Aurach de Argentina. Donum Dei
- The heavenly fire
- The central fire
- The fountain of nature
- The secret fire
- The invisible and most secret occult fire of the philosophers
- The general fire
“Alchemy is sometimes summarised as the art of working with fire, as this is the most transformative element which breaks down the external forms and purifies the essence. With the human body as the external athanor, we can feel the effects of fire such as energy flows and subtle rushes in our various bodies. By learning how these are aroused and regulated, the alchemist can control the opus through the various operations. When the fire comes from below, it is referred to as the light of nature, the central fire, the telluric fire or the power of the dragon. There is a movement or aspiration upwards and we can increase its intensity with bellows. When fire, like inspiration, comes from above, it is called the light of grace, the heavenly fire or the divine will. When the two unite in the mystery of the dew, the secret philosophical fire is awakened. The direction and flow of the fires are expressed through the winged rod of Hermes with the two serpents. They are simultaneously the watery fire and the fiery water, the sun and the moon, the forces of life and death, solve & coagula and the waxing and waning that fluctuate and interact.”
- Alchemy: The Divine Work, Tommy Westlund & Katarina Falkenberg
“The principle of fire, when triply magnified, reveals its initiatory hierarchy: the first flame is the ignis naturalis—corporeal combustion tied to putrefaction and calcination, where gross matter yields its ashes. The second is ignis spiritualis, the fire of volatility and ascent, which volatilizes fixity and initiates separation of the subtle from the dense—here, mercury becomes winged. The third, rarest, is ignis divinus—the fire that does not burn but illuminates, the invisible heat within the alchemist’s soul that transmutes through recognition rather than reaction. These three fires do not act in sequence but in recursive unity, forming a vertical axis of sublimation: the athanor of the world, the athanor of the body, and the athanor of the intellect. To master fire is not to wield it, but to endure its transfiguration without recoil.” —Mystic E.B.
Atalanta Fugiens: Emblem 17
Epigram 17.
Consult with Nature, and four orbs acquire, Excited with a soft internal fire: The first and lowest Vulcan does declare, Hermes the next, the third is Luna's Sphere, Phebus the fourth is yours and Natures fire. By these young Students may to truth aspire.
Discourse 17.
The Philosophers have in many places made mention of four sorts of fire necessary to the natural work, namely Lully, the Author of Scala, Ripley, and many others: and to this end Raymund speaking of fires (Says Scala) You must note, that here are contrary operations: because as the fire against nature dissolves the Spirit of a fixed body into the water of a cloud, and binds the body of a volatile spirit into a congealed earth, so contrariwise the fire of nature congeals the dissolved spirit of a fixed body into a globous earth, and resolves the fixed body of a volatile Spirit by fire against nature, not into the water of a cloud, but into Philosophical water. Ripley speaks more clearly of these fires in gate 3. thus: There are four sorts of fires, which you ought to know, the natural, unnatural, fire against nature, and elemental, which kindles wood: These fires we use, and no more. Fire against nature ought to excruciate bodies, that is the dragon, as I tell you, violently burning, as the fire of hell. The fire of nature is the third menstruum, that fire is naturally in every thing: Occasioned fire we call unnatural, as the heat of ashes and baths to putrefy: Without these fires you can bring nothing to putrefaction, whereby your matter may be separated, that it may at once be proportioned for a new conjunction: Make therefore a fire within in your glass, which can burn bodies more effectually, than elemental fire: these are their sayings. They are indeed called fires, because they have a fiery virtue, the natural in coagulating, the unnatural in dissolving, the fire against nature in corrupting, the elemental in administering the first heat and motion: And there is a concatenated order observed in them, that the Second may be incited by the first, the third by the second, the fourth by the third and first together to action, so as that one is the agent, and the other the patient, and the same both agent and patient in different respect: That which is observed in iron rings or pillars held together by a Magnet, and joined by mutual contact, the same in these fires: for the elemental does like the Magnet emit its virtue though the second and third even to the fourth, and joins one to another by mutual operations, and causes them to stick together, till internal action be effected amongst the uppermost: The first is elemental fire indeed and name, the second is air or airy, the third watery or of a Lunar nature, the fourth earthy: It is needless to say any thing of the first, because it is known to every mans eye and touch: The three other are dragons, menstruums, waters, Sulphurs, and Mercuries: Dragons, because being participants of venenosity, they devour serpents of their own kind, frett and alter, that is, dissolve and coagulate bodies incorporated and mixed with them: They are called Menstruums, because the Philosophical infant is produced from them, and nourished therewith even to its nativity: Lully in his book of the Quintessence, dist. 3. has two Menstruums, the vegetable, and mineral, Ripley in his Preface of the gates has three, which are really one and do agree: for the generation of the infant is made of them altogether, and a white water preceeds the birth of it, which is not of the substance but superfluity of the infant, and therefore to be separated: They are waters, because in fire they Show a watery nature, that is, flowing and liquidity, which agrees with water: Manifest it is that the properties of waters are different and wonderful, whereof some do petrify, being coagulated into very hard stones fit for building: Very like these are the Philosophers mineral waters, which do condense, and turn into a stony consistence: They are also called Sulphurs because of the virtue of Sulphur, which they comprehend in them, for the Sulphur of nature is mixed and made one with the other Sulphur, and the two Sulphurs are dissolved by one, and one is separated from two, and the Sulphurs are preserved and contained by Sulphurs, as Yximidius in Turba says: Now what Sulphurs are Dardaris there declares in these words: Sulphurs are Souls hidden in the four elements, which being extracted by art do naturally contain one another and are joined together: if you can by water govern and purify well that which is hidden in the belly of Sulphur, that hidden thing meeting with its own nature rejoices, even as water with its like. I will now tell you (Says Mosius also) what it is: the first indeed, which is fiery Argent vive, the second, the body compounded in it, and the third is the water of Sulphur, by which the first is washed, and dilacerated, and governed, till the work be accomplished: That which is said of Sulphurs, the same may be understood of so many Mercuries: For this says the same Mosius afterwards: Argent vive Cambar is the Magnesia, but Argent vive or Auripigment is that Sulphur which ascends from a mixed compound: But I will omit the inference of more testimonies, they being infinite and obvious to every man: These four fires are included as it were in Spheres and orbs, that is, every one has a particular center, from which or to which their motion tends, but nevertheless they are kept so bound together partly by nature, partly by art, that one can operate little or nothing without another, yea the action of one is the passion of another, and on the contrary . . . . . . .