591 "For Noah must wash me in the deepest sea, with pain and toil, that my blackness may depart; I must lie here in the deserts among many black serpents, and there is none to pity me; I must be fixed to this black cross, and must be cleansed therefrom with wretchedness and vinegar and made white, that the inwards of my head may be like the sun or Marez, and my heart shine like a carbuncle, and the old Adam come forth again from me. O! Adam Kadmon, how beautiful art thou! And adorned with the rikmah (many-coloured garment) of the King of the world. Like Kedar (The men of Kedar lived in black tents) I am black henceforth; Ah! How long! O come, my Mesech (mixed drink, spiced wine), and disrobe me, that mine inner beauty may be revealed...O that the serpent roused up Eve! To which I must testify with my black colour that clings to me, and that is become mine by the curse of this persuasion, and therefore am I unworthy of all my bothers. O sulamith afflicted within and without, the watchmen of the great city will find thee and wound thee, strip thee of thy garments and smite thee, and take away thy veil...Yet shall I be blest again when I am delivered from the poison brought upon me by the curse, and mine innermost seed and first birth comes forth. For its father is the sun, and its mother the moon. Yea, I know else of no other bridegroom who should love me, because I am so black. Ah! do thou tear down the heavens and melt my mountains! For thou didst crumble the mighty kingdoms of Canaan like dust, and crush them with the brazen serpent of Joshua and offer them up to Algir (fire), that she who is encompassed by many mountains may be freed."
607 [This text from Eleazar, Uraltes Chymisches Werck, 1760] depicts a situation of distress corresponding to the alchemical nigredo: theblackness of guilt has covered the bridal earth as with black paint. The Shulamite comes into the same category as those black goddesses (Isis, Artemis, Parvati, Mary) whose names mean "earth." Eve, like Adam, ate of the tree of knowledge and thereby broke into the realm of divine privileges - "ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." In other words he inadvertently discovered the
possibility of moral consciousness, which until then had been outside man's range. As a result, a
polarity was torn open with momentous consequences. There was a sundering of earth from
heaven, the original Paradise was shut down, the glory of the First Man was extinguished,
Malchuth became a widow, the fiery yang went back aloft, and the damp yin enveloped humanity
with darkness, degenerated through ever-increasing wantonness, and finally swelled into the black
waters of the Deluge, which threatened to drown every living thing but on the other hand could
be understood more hopefully as an ablution of the blackness. Noah, too, appears in a different
light: he is no longer seen as someone running away from the catastrophe but as Lord of the
Waters, the minister of ablution. This operation does not seem to be enough, however, for the
Shulamite promptly gets herself into the opposite kind of pickle - into the dry desert, where, like
the children of Israel, she is menaced by evil in the form of poisonous serpents. This is an allusion
to the tribulations of the Exodus, which in a sense was a repetition of the expulsion from paradise,
since bidding farewell to the fleshpots of Egypt was quite as painful a prospect as the stony
ground from which our first parents had to wrest a living in the sweat of their brows. But even
with this last extremity the goal is not reached, for the shulamite has still to be fixed to a black
cross. The idea of the cross points beyond the simple antithesis to a double antithesis, ie, to a
quaternio...We know that this fastening to a cross denotes a painful state of suspension, or a
tearing asunder in the four directions. The alchemists therefore set themselves the task of
reconciling the warring elements and reducing them to a unity. In our text this state is abolished
when the distressing blackness is washed off with "wretchedness and vinegar." This is an obvious
allusion to the "hyssop and gall" which Christ was given to drink. In the oft-quoted text of Maier,
"wretchedness and vinegar" stand for the melancholia of the nigredo, as contrasted with the "joy
and gladness" of the redeemed state. The washing with wretchedness and vinegar finally brings
about the whitening as well as a solificatio of the "inwards of the head," presumably the brain or
even the soul. We can only interpret this as meaning that the Shulamite experienced a
transformation similar to Parvati's, who, saddened by her blackness, was given a golden skin by
the gods. Here we must emphasize that it is the lapis or the hermaphrodite which, as the god who
is quartered or torn asunder or crucified on the Four, represents and suffers the discord of the
elements, and at the same time brings about the union of the Four and besides that is identical
with the product of the union. The alchemists could not help identifying their Primordial Man with
Christ, for whom our author substitutes Adam Kadmon.
608 Since sun and gold are equivalent concepts in alchemy, the solificatio means that the
"inwards of the head" are transformed into light, or "marez," the precious white earth. The
Shulamite's heart, took, will shine "like a carbuncle." From the time of the Middle Ages the
carbuncle was regarded as a synonym for the lapis. Here the allegory is transparent: as the head is
illuminated, so the heart burns in love.
609 The difference between Parvati and the Shulamite is, therefore, that whereas Parvati is
transformed outwardly the Shulamite is transformed inwardly. Outwardly she remains as black as
ever...Her blackness "clings" to her as if painted on, and one has to disrobe her to bring her "inner
beauty" to light. By the sin of Eve she is plunged, as it were, in ink, in the "tincture," and
blackened, just as in Islamic legend the precious stone that Allah gave Adam was blackened by his
sin. If the poison of the curse is taken from her - which will obviously happen when the Beloved
appears - then her "innermost seed," her "first birth," will come forth. According to the text this
birth can refer only to the appearance of Adam Kadmon. he is the only one who loves her despite
her blackness. But this blackness seems to be rather more than veneer, for it will not come off, it
is merely compensated by here inner illumination and by the beauty of the bridegroom. As the
Shulamite symbolizes the earth in which Adam lay buried, she also has the significance of a
maternal progenitrix. In this capacity the black Isis put together again the limbs of her
dismembered brother-spouse, Osiris. Thus Adam Kadmon appears here in the classic form of the
son-lover, who, in the hierosgamos of sun and moon, reproduces himself in the mother-beloved.
Consequently the Shulamite takes over the ancient role of the hierodule of Ishtar. She is the
sacred harlot (meretrix), which is one of the names the alchemist gave his arcane substance.
611 We have paid due attention to the recalcitrant nature of the Shulamite's blackness. Now it is
significant that the "old Adam" is mentioned at the very moment when the perfect, prelapsarian
Adam, the shinning Primordial Man, is obviously meant. Just as the black Shulamite misses the
final apotheosis, the total albedo, so we lack the necessary confirmation that the first Adam is
changed into the second, who at the same time is the father of the first. We cannot suppress the
suspicion that, just as the blackness will not disappear, so the Old Adam will not finally change.
This may be the deeper reason why the expression "the Old Adam" did not worry the author but,
on the contrary, seemed just right. It is, unfortunately, far truer to say that a change for the better
does not bring a total conversion of darkness into light and of evil into good, but, at the most, is a
compromise in which the better slightly exceeds the worse.
616 Just as lead, which theoretically could become gold, never did so in practice, so the
sober-minded man of our own day looks round in vain for the possibility of final perfection.
Therefore, on an objective view of the facts...he sees himself obliged to lower his pretensions a
little, and instead of striving after the ideal of perfection to content himself with the more
accessible goal of approximate completeness. The progress thereby made does not lead to an
exalted state of spiritualization, but rather to a wise self-limitation and modesty, thus balancing the
disadvantages of the lesser good with the advantage of the lesser evil.
621 The critical point, namely the fact that the transformation is not complete, comes out in the
text itself; the desired perfection is relegated to the future, "that she who is encompassed by many
mountains shall be freed." For this a divine miracle is needed, the crushing and burning of Canaan,
the tearing down of heaven, and the melting of mountains. One can see from these tours de force
the magnitude of the difficulties that have to be overcome before perfection is reached.
622 The reference to the mountains which encompass the Shulamite has a strange parallel is Parviti, whose name means "mountain dweller" and who was deemed the daughter of Himavat (Himalaya). Grieving over her blackness, for which her husband Shiva reproaches her, she left him and withdrew to the solitude of the forest. And in her loneliness and seclusion the Shulamite exclaims:
What shall I say? I am alone among the hidden; nevertheless I rejoice in my heart, because I can
live privily, and refresh myself in myself. But under my blackness I have hidden the fairest green.
623 The state of imperfect transformation, merely hoped for and waited for, does not seem to be
one of torment only, but of positive, if hidden, happiness. It is the state of someone who, in his
wanderings among the mazes to his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which
reconciles him to his apparent loneliness. In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom
and melancholy but an inner partner; more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness
of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth,
holding out the promise of future harvests. It is the alchemical benedicta viriditas, the blessed
greenness, signifying on the one hand the "leprosy of the metals" (verdigris), but on the other the
secret immanenence of the divine spirit of life in all things. "O blessed greenness, which generatest
all things!" cries the author of the Rosarium. "Did not the spirit of the Lord," writes Mylius,
"which is a fiery love, give to the waters when it was borne over them a certain fiery vigour, since
nothing can be generated without heat? God breathed into created things...a certain germination
or greenness, by which all things should multiply...They call all things green, for to be green
means to grow...Therefore this virtue of generation and the preservation of things might be called
the Soul of the World.
624 Green signifies hope and the future, and herein lies the reason for the Shulamite's hidden joy, which otherwise would be difficult to justify. But in alchemy green also means perfection...hence the Shulamite continues:
But I must be like a dove with wings, and I shall come and be free at vesper time, when the
waters of impurity are abated, with a green olive leaf; then is my head of the fairest Asophol
(gold), and my hair curly-gleaming as the moon. And Job says that out of my earth shall come
forth blood. For it is all as fire, shining red Adamah (red earth), mingled with a glowing fire.
Though I am poisonous, black, and hateful without, yet when I am cleansed I shall be the food of
heros; as out of the lion which Samson slew there afterward came forth honey...
625 It is the hope of the dark Shulamite that one day, a "vesper time," probably in the evening of life, she will become like Noah's dove, which, with the olive leaf in its beak, announced the end of the flood and appeared as the sign of God's reconciliation with the children of men. The Song of Songs says: "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stars, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice..." In our text her head will be of gold, like the sun, and her hair like the moon. Indeed, a golden head and "bushy" hair are attributes of the Beloved. She is, in fact, mingled with the Beloved, from which it is evident that the perfect state melts sponsus and sponsa into one figure, the sun-and-moon child. The black Shulamite, well matched by her "bushy locks, black as a raven," becomes the moon, which in this way acquires its "curly-gleaming" hair.