246 AXIAL SYMBOLISM AND SYMBOLISM OF PASSAGE
influences. This symbolism is obvious as far as light is concerned; as to rain, we have said as much for it elsewhere, [1] specifying that it is always a question of the descent of these influences into the terrestrial world, and pointing out that this is in reality the deeper meaning of the very widespread rites which have 'rain-making' as their purpose [2]-a meaning that is entirely independent of any 'magical' application. Furthermore, light and rain both have a 'vivifying' power that well represents the action of the influences in question. [3] The symbolism of dew, closely connected with that of rain by its very nature, is likewise related more especially to the giving of life; and this symbolism is common to numerous traditional forms-Hermetism, [4] the Hebrew Kabbala, [5] and to the Far Eastern tradition. [6]
It is important to note that light and rain, when they are considered from this point of view, are not only related to the heavens in a general way, but more especially to the sun; and this is strictly in conformity with the nature of the corresponding physical phenomena, that is, to light and rain themselves, understood in their literal sense. In fact, the sun is on the one hand the direct source of light in our world, and on the other hand it is also the sun which, causing the evaporation of water, draws it so to speak to the upper regions of the atmosphere whence it falls again as rain upon the earth. What must be further noted in this respect is that the action of the sun in its production of rain is due to its heat. We thus find the two complementary terms, light and heat, into which the igneous element is polarised, as we have said on other occasions; and this remark provides the explanation of the double meaning of a symbolic representation which seems to have been, in general, poorly understood.
In very different times and places and even into the Western Middle Ages, the sun has often been represented with two kinds of rays, straight and undulating by turns. A remarkable example of this depiction is to be found on an Assyrian tablet in the British Museum, ( figure 20) dating from the ninth century before the Christian era, [7] where the sun appears as a kind of
Figure 2 I
star with eight rays. [8] Each of the four vertical and horizontal rays is constituted by two straight lines forming between them a very acute angle, and each of the four intermediary rays is made up of three undulating parallel lines. In other equivalent figurations the undulating rays are formed, as are the straight rays, by two lines meeting at their extremities, which then reproduce the well known aspect of the 'flaming sword'. [9] In all cases, it goes without saying that the essential elements to consider are, respectively, the straight line and the undulating line, to which the two kinds of rays can finally be reduced in the most simplified representations. But what exactly is the meaning of these two lines in this context?
First of all, according to the meaning which may seem the most natural when it is a question of a representation of the sun, the straight line represents light and the undulating line represents heat. Furthermore, this
corresponds to the symbolism of the two Hebraic letters hesh and shin, as respective elements of the roots ar and ash which express precisely these two complementary modalities of fire. [10] But what seems to complicate things, on the other hand, is the very general acceptance of the undulating line as a symbol of water; in this same Assyrian tablet, the waters are represented by a series of undulating lines just like those seen in the rays of the sun. The truth is that, as a consequence of what we have already explained, there is no contradiction here at all: the rain, to which the general symbol of water is naturally appropriate, can really be considered as proceeding from the sun; and besides, being an effect of solar heat, its representation can legitimately merge with that of the heat itself. [11] Thus, the double radiation which we were considering is indeed light and heat in a certain respect; but at the same time and in another respect it is also light and rain, by which the sun exercises its vivifying action on all things.
In connection with the same question, this should be noted: fire and water are two opposed elements, this opposition, moreover, being only the outward appearance of a complementarity; but beyond the domain where these oppositions are affirmed, they must, like all contraries, be joined and somehow united. In the principle itself, of which the sun is a sensible image, they are in a way identified, which justifies even more completely the representation that we have just been studying; and even at levels lower than that of the Principle but corresponding to states of manifestation higher than the corporeal world to which fire and water belong in their 'gross' aspect that gives rise to their opposition, there can still be between them an association equivalent, so to speak, to a relative identity. This is true for the 'upper waters', the possibilities of supraformal manifestation which, in a certain sense, are symbolically represented by the clouds whence the rain descends upon the earth, [12] and wherein at the same time there is fire in the form of lightning; [13] and it is still the same,
in
the realm of formal manifestation, for certain possibilities pertaining to the subtle domain. It is particularly interesting to observe in this connection that the alchemists 'understand by the waters, the rays and the glimmer of their fire', and that they give the name 'ablution', not to the 'act of washing something with water or other liquor' but to a purification effected by fire, so that 'the ancients have hidden this ablution under the enigma of the salamander, said to live on fire, and under that of the incombustible flax, [14] which is there purified and whitened without being consumed'. [15] We can understand by this why so many allusions should be made in Hermetic symbolism to a 'fire that does not burn' and a 'water which does not wet the hands', and also why 'animated' mercury, that is, mercury vivified by the action of sulphur, should be described as an 'igneous water', and sometimes even as a 'liquid fire'. [16]
To return to the symbolism of the sun, we will only add that the two kinds of rays of which we have spoken are to be found in certain symbolic figurations of the heart, and the sun, or what it represents, is in fact considered as the 'Heart of the World', so much so that here also it is really a question of one and the same thing; but this, insofar as the heart appears simultaneously as a centre of light and of heat, will give rise to yet other considerations. [17]