Atalanta Fleeing

...one day be better and more pleasant: but if indeed it is first surrendered to the senses, there is no doubt that a transition will be made from sense to the intellect, as if through a door. For it is said that nothing is in the intellect which did not first enter through some sense, since the intellect of a newborn man is held to be like a blank slate original: "tabula rasa", upon which nothing is yet written, but whatever one wishes can be written by the mediation of the senses, acting as a stylus. And it is commonly said: There is no desire for what is unknown, because it is necessary that the senses—as investigators and messengers—first bring every knowable thing and make it known to the intellect, acting as dictator and arbiter, just like sentinels original: "excubitores" watching over the gates of some city (at their respective organs). Concerning the reasoning behind the title of these emblems, I shall add a few words, lest this also seem strange and discordant to you. Atalanta is celebrated by the poets for her flight, by which she outran all her suitors in a race; because of this, death befell those who were defeated, while she was the prize of victory, until she was overcome and won by Hippomenes—a youth more daring and far-sighted—by the throwing of three golden apples at intervals during the race. While she stopped to pick these up, she was overtaken by him, who was already reaching the goal. Just as this Atalanta flees, so one musical voice original: "vox Musicalis" always flees before another, and the second follows it, like Hippomenes. Yet they are stabilized and held firm by a third voice, which is simple and of a single value, acting as a golden apple. This same maiden is purely chemical—namely, the Philosophical Mercury The elusive, volatile spirit of matter fixed and held back in its flight by the golden sulfur The active, "fixing" principle that solidifies the fluid mercury. If anyone knows how to stop this mercury, he will have the bride he seeks; if not, he will face the ruin of his affairs and his own destruction. From Hippomenes and Atalanta coming together in the temple of the Mother of the Gods—that is, in the vessel The alchemical glass or retort—they become lions, or rather, they acquire a red color The "Rubedo" or Red Work, the final and most perfect stage of alchemical transformation. He also obtained...