Boehme on the Principle of Fire

"The principle of fire is the root, and it grows in its root. It has in its proprium sour, bitter, fierceness and anguish. And these grow in its proprium in poison and death the anguished stern life, which in itself gives darkness, owing to the drawing in of the harshness. Its properties make sulphur, mercury, and salt; through the fire's property makes not Sul in sulphur, but the will of freedom makes Sul in sulphur, while the principle goes forward."
-- Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)
(thanks to Phil Norfleet for the quote)

Short Dialogue on Alchemical Violence with Edward Butler

@t3dy: A spiritual alchemy reading should get alchemical matter theory right. It does no good to interpolate anachronistic modern spiritualities.

@EPButler: Indeed, perhaps alchemy not grounded in a theory of matter is a contradiction in terms.

@t3dy: But Jung's theory (which is based on a similar attitude in Atwood) argues that alchemical matter theory was nonsense+thus no theory

@EPButler: If alchemical matter theory is nonsense, find a way to read it so it makes sense again: hermeneutical charity. (Same goes, e.g., for ancient physics)

@t3dy: Of course, I do like to explore hermeneutic models that balance charity with *alchemical* violence (properly understood).

@EPButler: Charitable readings are frequently perceived as "violent", where the violence is being done to the conventional interpretation.

Taken from his Twitter archive