Vulcan of The Alchemists - Other Works and Discoveries

Other Works and Discoveries

The Elizabethan alchemist Francis Bacon, however, was skeptical of alchemy's enlistment of the Roman deity as symbolic of true Alchemical enquiry and exlaimed in The Advancement of Learning (1605):

Abandoning Minerva and wisdom they play court to the sooty smith Vulcan and his pots and pans,

However, Paracelsian alchemists such as Gerard Dorn, Jan Baptist 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 who was associated with alchemy, was cited no less than three times by Sir Thomas Browne in The Garden of Cyrus of 1658, firstly in its 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 the context of Classical Greek myth (in which Vulcan constructs) casts an invisible network in order to ensnare Venus, his wife in flagrante delicto with her lover Mars. Browne 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 he delivers his three factors for determining truth, namely authority, reason and experience; Vulcan here representing 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 Carl 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 demiurge who blindly gains power over Nature without integrity; this mundane level anticipates the nascent Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. The activities of the extraction of coal from mines to fuel colossal Furnaces to manufacture Steel and Iron on a gigantic scale and the development of the railroad and steam-train throughout Europe and North America are both decidedly Vulcan-like activities and in many ways, the general "business" of the Protestant work ethic and industrialised Western society, is 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 today devolved into the negative aspects of a demi-urge figure; none other than the modern technological man, who, divorced from God, forges his own destiny independent of Religion, Divine Love or theological considerations towards a brave new world or utopia.