Let's Get Digital with the Azoth Mandala

An interesting Western mandala, highly searchable on the Web if you type “Azoth” into a Google images search is the twelfth in the series of 14 plates within a 17th century alchemical picture book called Azoth of the Philosophers. It is traditionally attributed to one Basilius Valentinus, said to be a German monk and alchemist, but it is more likely the product of a chemist named Johann Thölde (1565-1614). Valentinus may simply be a legendary character.

Read more details about Azoth on my other blog.  Another one for the intellectually geekier among you.

I took a fascination with alchemy and this particular image several years ago. In fact, I painted a rough image on a board that I used as an altar table for a few years’ foray into Western Occultism. I recently decided to chuck the old, crudely painted image and make a new, improved digital rendering. I even contacted my friend Johnes Ruta, a fine arts curator who runs the Azoth Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, to ask if I could use his likeness as the bearded man who appears in the center of the original image.

Azoth of the Philosophers 24x24 inch digital print by Dee Rapposelli. Want one? Contact me via my Website.

Azoth is a term in philosophical alchemy that refers to latent, transformational energy. Some say that it is derived from an Arabic word for mercury and others that it stands for A-to-Z—a variation on alpha-omega.

The original mandala presumably was a meditation on alchemical laboratory processes as well as a meditation on the transmutation from death and decay to numinous perfection.

The image consists of a 7-pointed star, representing the 7 planets known to the medieval world: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Sol, Mercury, and Luna. Similar to chakras, the planets have symbolic themes that have correspondences with levels of human consciousness. Words that  describe the journey through the spheres are Visita, Interiora, Terra, Rectificando, Invenies, Occultum, and Lapidum (the Visit, the Interiorization, Earth, Rectification, Discovery, the Secret, and the Stone), which have meaning in relation to alchemical laboratory processes as well as the journey toward self-transformation and perfection.

Although the order of the process is intact, I did change the sequence of the planets from the sequence shown in the original image. My intent was to more closely pair the philosophical planets with the chakras of Eastern lore. Why? In part because modern Western folks are more onto Eastern chakra lore—however dummied-down and candy-coated--than their own mystical/Tantric traditions. Medieval alchemists and their forebears did see that planets as energies reflected in their own psyches that had to be journeyed through and transcended in pursuit of freedom and enlightenment. In some systems, Saturn was the viewed as the dastardly demiurge who barred the gates of Paradise and left humans wallowing in their mortality. In others, Saturn was equated with the transcendent godhead and divine ground. My lineup comes from my own personal work with the planets.

The triangle in the image depicts the alchemical trinity of sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur corresponds with the solar principle, mercury with the lunar principle, and salt with matter and the body. The solar principle is symbolized by a king astride a lion, and the lunar principle is symbolized by a queen riding a sea creature.

The doves at the top of the mandala represent the “quintessence”—the fifth element and divine essence to which the alchemical adept aspires. (The traditional image sports a salamander representing the element of fire in the left upper corner and an eagle, representing air in the upper right corner.)

Who is the bearded man in the center of the image?  It is your spiritual ideal and aspiration. Modern-day alchemist Dennis William Hauck claims that medieval alchemists meditated on images like this mandala and that they sometimes placed a mirror in the center of the image to remind themselves that, in the words of an ancient Hindu sage “That thou art.”

Visit Hauck's Alchemy lab  for a more in depth discussion on the Azoth mandala.