Atalanta Fleeing

Mercury, therefore, is the wind, which receives the sulfur—or Dionysus, or if you prefer, Aesculapius, as a still-imperfect fetus from the maternal womb, or even from the ashes of the mother's burned body—and carries it to that place where it can be matured. And the Embryo is Sulfur, which was infused by the celestial Sun into the wind of Boreas The North Wind., so that the wind might bring it forth when matured. When the time of its gestation is completed, the wind gives birth to twins: one with white hair, called Calais, and the other with red hair, Zetes. These were the sons of Boreas (as the chemical poet Orpheus writes) who accompanied Jason among the Argonauts to take the Golden Fleece from the Colchians.

Indeed, Phineus, the blind prophet infested by the Harpies, could not be liberated except by these aforementioned sons of Boreas. For this favor obtained from them, he, being grateful, declared to the Argonauts the entire plan of their journey. Yet the Harpies are nothing other than the corrupting sulfur, which is driven away by the sons of Boreas when they have reached the proper age; and from that which was imperfect or troubled by noxious flying things, it becomes perfect, no longer subject to that evil. This then indicates the way for Jason the physician to obtain the Golden Fleece.

Our own Basil Basil Valentine, a legendary 15th-century alchemist, often cited as a master of the "Great Work." also mentions these ancient matters among others, where he clearly says in his sixth book: For a double wind must come, called Vulturnus The East-Southeast wind., and then a single wind called Notus The South wind., which will blow impetuously from the east and south; when their motion ceases, so that water is made from the air, you may confidently trust that the spiritual shall become corporeal.

And Ripley Sir George Ripley (c. 1415–1490), a famous English alchemist and author of The Compound of Alchymy. in his eighth "gate" says that our infant must be reborn in the air, that is, in the belly of the wind. To the same sense, the Ladder of the Philosophers original: "scala philos." Refers to the Scala Philosophorum, an anonymous alchemical treatise. says in its sixth step: And it must be known that the child of the wise is born in the air. And in the eighth step: The aerial spirits climbing together into the air love one another, for as Hermes says, the wind carried him in its belly: because the generation of our offspring takes place in the air, and the one being born in the air is born wisely. For he ascends from the earth to heaven, and descends again to the earth, acquiring the power of the things above and the things below.