Vulcan: the Metals

May is a month dedicated to Maia (feminine polarity) and to Vulcan (male polarity): about this topic I have already written some considerations here and here.

These two forces are linked to the underground fire, but, as I have wirtten in those posts, they show very relevant differences. Having already written some information about Maia, I would like to make some reflections about Vulcan (whose main festival is however celebrated in August). It is important to remind that this is a very complex Divine Force about which I will make just some brief consideration: Vulcan involves many esoteric, theurgical and alchemy aspects which cannot be discussed here also for the extreme complexity of the topic impossible to be analyzed in few words (requiring a deep esoteric knowledge and language)

I would like however to highlight that, once again, I'm discussing about a relevant expressions of a Traditional Knowledge: it is not a question of "religion", in a profane sense, or a myth, as a sort of fairtale, about an "old lame man". Vulcan represents a precise declination of the Being, the Nature, the Universe.

As already said, Vulcan describes the sacralization of the Underground Fire, a "tepor" hidden in the Deep of the Earth. Unlike Maia, Vulcan is strctly connected to the metals as secret divine concealed symbols of the Earth and the Spirit, to metallurgy (the knowledge of the metals' manipulation, forging and shaping), to the "know how".

Tradition represents Vulcan as a muscle man (The Force of Fire) wearing a dark blue hat (pileus). This is the symbol of the fact that Vulcan is an underground fire descending from the Sky, a remote Fire coming from the more remote deep parts of the Sky. Nonetheless, Vulcan is a Lame God using a wood stick as a support: this is because, even if deriving form the Celestial Fire and being generated by the Celestial Fire, the Terrestrial Fire is less intese: it depends on the Matter. Unlike the Celestial Fire, Vulcan needs air to be lighted, he can be extinguished, he always needs something to be fueled. The Terrestrial Fire for example must be fueled by wood: this is the reason why Vulcan has a wooden stick a a support.

Vulcan is thrown on Earth by Jupiter through a thunder.

The hat (pileus) evidences also the fact that Vulcan, with his tools of the Allegorical Art, is a Maker-God: artisan, blacksmith, forger, goldsmith and great expert of the secrets of the metals concealed in the underground stones.  

The knowledge of the metals and their secrets, the knowledge of metallurgy (thanks also to well defined allegorical tools - i.e. the hammer or the anvil), are clear links to the Traditional Science very similar to the Building Art, the Art of manipulation and use of the stones (i.e. the cornerstones) to create sacred Buildings.

Being a traditional Science, the Vulcan Knowledge shows a cosmological, iniziatic and symbolic value connected to the physical features of the metals (as astral and divine fecundation in the gremium matris terrae) and to their manipulation. The most relevant example of this Knowledge is Alchemy and its complex Science, Art and symbology related to the transmutation of the metals, the research of the transfiguring sings and powers hidden in the metals towards the palingenesis. Similarly, the metals are critical components in the Corpus Hermeticum and in the Emerald Tablet.

The metals are focal elements in the  Science of Correspondence and the Science of Signatures or those Traditional Sciences aimed to identify those signs and corrispondences linking the Worlds from Macrocosm to Microcosm. In particular, the metals are parts of the seven divine correspondences among the different levels of the Being connecting numbers, colors, metals, musical notes, planets, Gods/Goddesses, etc. I just remind that the Roman Temple was built over a base composed of seven steps each of which related to these correspondences. It's important to remind also the peculiarity of the site of the Volcanal in Rome.

These energies show a correlation expressed also by the metal, in particular by some metals. The Ages of the Mankind are also expressed into Metal Terms: Iron Age, Bronze Age, Golden Age. The use of these terms however may show a complex symbology going well behind the conventional meaning of the common use; it expresses a link between Time Cycles and a precise Metal (and its symbolic value) rather than a simple historical phases of mankind.

Some precise expressions of the status of the conscience are related to the metals/planets/Deities according to the spiral path of the palingenesis. 

• Saturn-lead-black: rational intelligence
• Moon-Diana-silver-white: life energies
• Jupiter-bronze-blue: external conscience-vis agendi-will
• Mercury-mercury-orange: infraconscious energy of the subtle, invisible, psychic intellect
• Mars-iron-red: ardor, animosity
• Venus-copper-green: love
• Sun-Apollo-Gold: solar conscience

It can be reported also the ermetic classification (freeing from the darkness and metals' transmutation):

• Lead-Saturn-Black
• Tin-Jupiter-Grey
• Silver-Moon-White
• Iron-Mars-Rust
• Copper-Venus-Red/Yellow
• Purple-Gold-Sun-Red

The metals' manipulation, in the myth of Vulcan, drives to the distinction between coarse (natural) and wrought metals, noble and base metals. The wrought metals, manipulated by Vulcan with his Art's Tools (i. e. Gold or Iron to forge swords or shields) are referred to an operation based on a secret and ermetic knowledge and work. Vulcan doesn't discover the metals and thier properties: he forges the metals with his fire in his workshop-smithy, in his furnace.

Coarse metals are a symbolic expression of a "petrifying" of cosmic energies which, being hidden in the deep underground, are covered by Darkness, materiality, "terrestriality". The metals' forging, and their sublimation-transformation in noble metals - in Gold (not the common, profane gold), represents a symbolical "purification" and "refining" or freeing a man/woman from the "Matter", the Darkness, the "Tomb of the Living Entity". This Fire-Vulcan is therefore an ermetic Fire, a Fire capable to extract, to shape, modifying and curving the Matter, capable to turn, even in spiritual terms, a coarse and concealed metal into a sword.

The corresponding links between metals, Deities and energy centres and organs in the human body are a further epressions of these relations. The Vulcan Knowledge describes a process according to which the energies of a Deity, hidded underground, are manifested in a metal thus consacrated to this Deity. Similarly these energies are concealed into the Centres (the Seven Centres of Life) and in the main organs of the body with a symbolic connections to some well-identified metals.

For this reason, the presence of certain metals on the body (or inside the boy) is not a casual event: at a very superficial level, the presence of these metals on the body and their contact with the body, implies a symbolic action with the Deities connected to these metals, sometimes stimulating in other circumstances hampering the flowing of the energies inside the body. In other cases they can awake sleeping forces inside the body or blocking them at all. The Vulcanic Knowledge thus involves a convergence between physics and theology, physiological and mystical factors: necklaces, rings or bracelets for example are not mere "nick-nacks" having just an aestetic value, but they can trasmit and translate a precise symbology connected to the divine value of the metal -or stone- they bring.

 

On the base of this Vulcanic Knowledge, it could be better to have an adequate awareness also of these issues.