Vulcan of the alchemists

The Swiss physician/alchemist Paracelsus introduced the mythological figure of Vulcan as the patron deity of alchemy and as symbolic of the hermetic art. To Paracelsus Vulcan was synonymous with both the alchemist/physician’s manipulation of fire, heating and distilling of nature’s properties for medicine, and the transforming power and creative potential locked within Man , the greater invisible Man or anthropos, slumbering within .

Alchemy is an art and Vulcan (the governor of fire) is the artist in it: he who is Vulcan has the power of the art…All things have been created in an unfinished state, nothing is finished, but Vulcan must bring all things to their completion. Everything is at first created in its prima material, its original stuff; whereupon Vulcan comes, and develops it into its final substance….God created iron but not that which is to be made of it. He enjoined fire, and Vulcan, who is the lord of fire, to do the rest….From this it follows that iron must be cleansed of its dross before it can be forged. This process is alchemy; its founder is the smith Vulcan. What is accomplished by fire is alchemy-whether in the furnace or in the kitchen stove. And he who governs fire is Vulcan, even if he be a cook or a man who tends the stove.

(from Jolande Jacobi ed Paracelsus Selected Writings 1951 Princeton)

The Elizabethan scientist Francis Bacon was however skeptical of alchemy’s enlistment of the Roman deity as symbolic of true scientific enquiry and exlaimed in The Advancement of Learning (1605)

However, Paracelsian alchemists such as Gerard Dorn, Van Helmont and Arthur Dee, each acknowledged the Roman god of forge and furnace as symbolic of the art. Van Helmont specifically described alchemy as Vulcan’s art,whilst Arthur Dee in his Arca Arcarnum wrote –

though I am constrained to die and be buried nevertheless Vulcan carefully gives me birth.

The Roman god and Paracelsian deity associated with alchemy Vulcan is cited no less than three times by Arthur Dee's Norwich assocate Sir Thomas Browne in his 1658 Discourse The Garden of Cyrus. Firstly, in its very opening lines-

That Vulcan gave arows unto Apollo and Diana according to gentile theology in the work of the fourth day may pass for no blind apprehension of the creation of the Sun and Moon.

Secondly within context of the Classical Greek myth in which Vulcan makes and casts an invisible network in order to ensnare Venus his wife in flagrante delicato with her lover Mars, humorously stating

''As for that famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and Venus, and caused that inextinguishable laugh in heaven; since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it;

The Classical myth of Venus and Mars trapped by Vulcan’s cunning invention is also a lesser-known example of the ‘fixing’ and union of the opposites in the alchemical opus.

And finally at the very apotheosis of the literary-alchemical opus in which the mystical scientist delivers his three factors for determining truth- here Vulcan represents the demi-urge or ‘higher man’ who not unlike the Gnostics, ‘Man of Light’ , uses his craftmanship and skills to aid , enlighten and liberate the Spiritual Man within.

Flat and Flexible truths are beat out by every hammer, but Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour.

In modern times the Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung interpreted Vulcan as one who-

'kindles the fiery wheel of the essence in the soul when it 'breaks off' from God; whence come desire and sin, which are the “wrath of God”. CW 12 215 .

The alchemists adoption of the mythic figure of Vulcan may be interpreted on several levels. At the lowest scale of interpretation Vulcan represents the cunning amoral demi-urge who blindly gains power over Nature without integrity; mundane level as an anticipation of the nascent Industrial Revolution for the Industrial revolution was made through the Vulcan-like activities of the extraction of coal from mines to fuel colossal Furnaces to manufacture Steel and Iron on a gigantic scale . The general ‘busyness’ of the Protestant work-ethic and Industrialised Western society, is also strongly reflected in this archetypal figure.

At a higher level of interpretation Vulcan is transformed to become an inspired apostle, the visionary capable of releasing Mankind from the bonds of unknowingness and darkness .

The transforming power of Vulcan the ‘higher man’ and anthropos figure of the alchemists has devolved into the negative aspects of a demi-urge figure representing none other than technological man who divorced from God, forges his own destiny independent of Religion, Divine Love or theological considerations.