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This is an adaptation of an article I wrote quite a few years ago while in the midst of my studies of alchemy in the Crowley-Harris Thoth deck.

Aleister Crowley wrote little directly about alchemy, but his Thoth deck is full of alchemical symbolism. Alchemy is the transformation of base matter into gold, whether physically in the outer world or psychically in the inner. The transformation process consists of a series of stages (described variously as three or seven or twelve or more) that are often depicted through word-less picture books known as mutus liber in which the ideas are hidden within the image.

Crowley taught that magick is “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” In Magick in Theory and Practice (hereafter, Magick) he declares that alchemical transformation is a branch of magick. Furthermore, the “Great Work” of alchemy is the culmination of all magick. It is “the attainment of the Summum Bonum, true Wisdom and perfect Happiness.” Crowley continues, “The Alchemist is to take a dead thing, impure, valueless, and powerless, and transform it into a live thing, active, invaluable and thaumaturgic [able to work wonders]  . . . to bring each substance to the perfection of its own proper nature.” Crowley compares alchemy to initiation, for both works isolate the product from its accretions, returning it to the essence of its own nature. In the aspirant to initiation these “accretions” are “the complexes which have corrupted” the aspirant and must be purified.

As Crowley further explains in Magick, all the Major Arcana (Crowley’s “Atu”) are alchemical. The Fool begins the Great Work (“the first matter is a man . . . a perishable parasite”) and the Universe card ends it, being a glyph of its completion (“the pure and perfect Individual originally inherent in the substance chosen”). Crowley does not specify the alchemical action taking place in each Atu, giving only vague hints. The Priestess, Empress and Emperor are philosophic mercury, salt and sulphur, respectively, and are “modes of action [rather] than actual qualities . . . the apparatus of communication between the planes.” Strength is “distillation, operated by internal ferment, and the influence of the sun and moon.” In the Hermit, the philosophic or Orphic Egg is fertilized (this being a solitary act in which the energy raised goes into the Great Work). Death is putrefaction, “the series of  chemical changes which develops the final form of life from the original latent seed in the Orphic egg.” Thus, the middle cards depict the breaking up of these accretions or “coagulations of impurity.” As the First Matter blackens and putrefies, along with the aspirant’s agonized reluctance to their elimination, he plunges into “such ordeals that he seems to turn from a noble and upright man into an unutterable scoundrel.”

XIV. Art/Temperance

For this article we will examine the most overtly alchemical card of the Thoth deck. Following the Death card we arrive at Temperance, which Crowley renames ART, signifying what is called the “alchemical art,” to tell us that this is where the most active and defining alchemical act takes place—“the mingling of the contradictory elements in a cauldron.” As we saw earlier, Crowley defined magick as “ the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” The ART card portrays the art of change, the synthesis or the creative process through which something new emerges that is far more than the sum of its parts. 

The stage of the great Work shown in the ART card consists of the mingling of all the elements in the cauldron, so that all contraries are united.

Art, the Lovers and the Egg

The whole of ART is the hidden content of the Egg seen in the earlier Lovers and Hermit cards, which in ART appears as the egg opened into the pearlescent oval behind the Alchemist. Art is the content of the Egg fulfilled. In a modern, post-Crowleyan world (since 1951), this card depicts the moment when the separate DNA strands, carried in the sperm of the father and the egg of the mother, fuse into new DNA (an “assimilation of its equal and opposite”). Art is the solution to the problem introduced in the Lovers where the Two strive to become One. Together these two cards move from analysis and choice in the Lovers to synthesis and transformation in Art. This coming together of the two to create the One can be seen in the cells multiplying in the blue background of the card.

The Red Lion found in the Lovers card appears again, but drained of its last drops of blood, becoming white, and the former White Eagle of the Lovers is now in full menstrual flood. Water from a silver cup joins with a fiery brand and with animal secretions in a golden cauldron. On the lip of the cauldron is a cross, showing that the mixing has occurred, while at the bottom of the cauldron we see a raven on a skull, the caput mortuum or “dead-head” putrified dross that has separated from the elixir. Crowley reminds us that this is also fallow earth. 

The Alchemical Child

Crowley tells us that the figure in the Art card is an hermaphrodite, whose name is literally Hermes-Aphrodite (or Mercury-Venus). Here we see a two-headed being whose faces and arms have counterchanged in color since the Lovers. Grillot De Givry in A Pictorial Anthology of Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy quotes Nicolas Flamel:

“In the second operation thou hast two conjoined and married natures, the masculine and feminine, and they are fashioned in one sole body, which is the androgyne of the ancients, formerly called likewise the raven’s head or element transformed.”

The alchemical child has assimilated the opposites of its parents, and, as is said in The Emerald Tablet it is an admixture of the four elements: “The Sun is its Father, the Moon its Mother, the Wind carries it in its belly; its nurse is the Earth.”

The Emperor and Empress along with the Brothers (Crowley’s alternate name for the Lovers or Gemini card) are here united into a single entity, wearing a robe decorated with the snake of the Emperor and bee of the Empress and in the color green of new vegetable growth. For Crowley this signifies that the first problem of alchemy, which was to raise mineral to vegetable life, has been achieved. The Alchemist is now at work on perfecting the next stage—the animal life. The green can be likened to the vigor viriditas or green energy of Hildegard of Bingen and the “force that through the green fuse drives the flower” of Dylan Thomas’ alchemical poem of opposites (that could have been written with this card in mind). 

The Archer

Astrologically, ART is Sagittarius (the Archer) and the zodiacal opposite of the LOVERS Gemini (the Brothers), “and therefore, ‘after another manner,’ one with it,” since both cards feature archers. The arrow of Sagittarius represents creative aspiration. 

In “The Fifth Aethyr” of Crowley’s The Vision and the Voice we are told that the arrow’s feathers are Ma’at (divine truth) and “the arrow persists for it is the direction of Energy, the Will [Thelema] that createth all Becoming.” In the Hebrew Kabbalah as applied to the tarot where each Atu corresponds to a Hebrew letter, Sagittarius/ART is on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life, connecting the Sun of Tiphareth to the Moon of Yesod (“the sphere which formulates Existence”)—Sol et Luna! The arrow, pointed up, aspires to Tiphareth, habitation of the Holy Guardian Angel. 

The Rainbow

The arrow pierces a rainbow called Qesheth in Hebrew (the bow that propels the arrow), for the Hebrew letters Qoph, Shin and Tav that make up the word are the three paths connecting Malkuth (Foundation) to the Tree above it. Crowley points out that alchemically, “at a certain period, as a result of putrefaction, there is observed a phenomenon of many-coloured lights, the ‘coat of many colours’ said to have been worn by Joseph and Jesus, in the ancient legends.” Thus a rainbow, coloring everything we see, separates the heavenly bodies in the Tree above from the physical plane of Malkuth below. It is called the Cauda pavonis or Peacock’s Tail and is, alchemically speaking, a kind of iridescent shimmer that forms on top of the solution at this stage. 

In “Absinthe: The Green Goddess,” Crowley talks a little more about this:

“Originally in the . . . legend of the Hebrews, the rainbow is mentioned as a sign of salvation. The world has been purified by water, and was ready for the revelation of Wine. God would never again destroy His work, but ultimately seal its perfection by a baptism of fire. Now, in this analogue also falls the coat of many colors which was made for Joseph, a legend which was regarded as so important that it was subsequently borrowed for the romance of Jesus. The veil of the Temple, too, was of many colors. . . . In western Mysticism, . . . the middle grade initiation is called Hodos Camelioniis, the Path of the Chameleon. There is here evidently an allusion to this same mystery. We also learn that the middle stage in Alchemy is when the liquor becomes opalescent. Finally, we note among the visions of the Saints one called the Universal Peacock, in which the totality is perceived thus royally appareled.”

The Arrows

Crowley explains in Magick that the arrow is “Temperance in the Taro [sic]; it is a life equally balanced and direct which makes our work possible; yet this life itself must be sacrificed!” In a footnote Crowley adds, “Note that there are two arrows: the Divine shot downward, the human upward. The former is the Oil, the latter the Incense, or rather the finest part of it.” In the Art card, like incense, the rainbow forms an airy cloud ascending from the cauldron and its combined fire and water, blood and gluten, sperm and menstrual blood. This iridescent shimmery incense rises with the arrow as the aspiration of the human spirit toward the Divine. At the very bottom of the card flames shoot up out of what looks like water but may represent the oil or chrism with which the Divine blesses the world below. 

Crowley equates the Alchemist with the many breasted moon-goddess Artemis, also known as Diana the Huntress with her rainbow bow. In fact, the Alchemist has integrated not only the King and Queen but also the Brothers and Eros into an insignia of life-force energy. The multiple breasts symbolize Diana at Ephesus. However, if they are considered as six circles (one unseen) tangential to a central seventh, then it points to ART as the culmination of the second of three rows of seven cards in which the Trumps are often presented. As five circles, alternating dark and light plus a central circle of both dark and light, it represents the Alchemist having integrated the all the opposites within itself.

V.I.T.R.I.O.L.

When alchemical mercury, salt and sulphur perfectly combine they form what is called the “universal solvent,” Vitriol. V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is an acronym standing for the Latin phrase on the Art card, written along the inside edge of the egg: “Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem,” which translates as “Visit the interior of the earth; by rectification you shall find the hidden stone.” The “hidden stone” is the universal medicine or panacea. In Magick, Crowley explained that “the Universal Medicine will be a menstruum of such subtlety as to be able to penetrate all matter and transmute it in the sense of its own tendency, while of such impartial purity as to accept perfectly the impression of the Will of the Alchemist.”

Rectification means both “repeated distillation” but also “the means to finding a straight line that is equal in length to a curved [or crooked] line (the shaft of the arrow).” Crowley says, “it implies the right leading of the new living substance in the path of the True Will.” It is apparent that ART, being on the middle pillar, is the straight line to the Divine. 

In alchemical psychology V.I.T.R.I.O.L. implies that we must re-enter the Mother’s body (or egg) from whence we came. That is, we must descend to the deepest cave of the unconscious and the most material world of the next Tarot card, the Devil (the Jungian “Shadow”), in order to put everything we discover about ourselves through the alchemical solve et coagula process. In this way we make straight whatever has become crooked within us. The seven letters also represent the seven planets and their metals, which represent those specific energies and emotions within the self that need to be freed from the “dross” so that they can function according to their true nature.

Divine Tantric Instruction

In Crowley’s appendix to the Book of Thoth, called the “General Characteristics of the Trumps” (also in “The Heart of the Master”) this verse describes the ART card:

Pour thine all freely from the Vase in thy right 
hand, and lose no drop. Hath not thy left hand a vase?
Transmute all wholly into the Image of thy will,
Bringing each to its true token of Perfection.
Dissolve the Pearl in the Wine-cup; drink, and
Make manifest the Virtue of that Pearl.

First of all, this is a sexual or tantric instruction. It requires etherealizing the energies raised in the sexual act, followed by the focus of this energy on an “image of thy will.” Secondly, Cleopatra, in the name of health, drinks a pearl dissolved in wine to show how easily she absorbs the worth of a whole province, while Shakespeare has Hamlet’s father (calling the pearl a Union) similarly drink the value of four kingdoms. Remember, the pearl is the iridescent character of the alchemical egg, the perfection that remains once the dross has been separated out.

I believe Crowley drew for some of his imagery on Canto II of Dante’s Paradiso, in which Beatrice proposes an alchemical experiment to determine the true source of dark and light. She tells Dante that, should he do this experiment, it will “set him free.” In 148 short lines, Dante invokes Minerva (Diana), travels to the Moon with the speed of an arrow to ask whether the dark spots on the Moon are due to the sins of Cain. He describes being on the Moon as entering into a luminous cloud or an eternal pearl, as “water accepts a ray of sunlight,” and how one dimension absorbing another is as a longing for unity. In the experiment, light is thrown back by the hidden layer of lead [base matter] beneath a glass. Finally, each angelic intelligence and its diverse virtue makes a different alloy within each precious body that it quickens, and these combine within a person. This is the formative principle that produces, according to its worth, dark and bright.

Our Angel Adept

In looking for the highest level of this card it serves us now to turn to Lon Milo DuQuette’s commentary on Crowley’s “Liber Samekh” (from the Hebrew letter corresponding to this card, which means a “prop or tent support”). It is a ritual suggesting how Samekh signifies a prop or support through communion with the Holy Guardian Angel, residing in Tiphareth, to which the ART card aspires. It’s worth remembering that the Alchemist is pictured as an angel on other tarot decks. Lon Milo DuQuette explains in The Magick of Aleister Crowley: 

“This then is the true aim of the Adept in this whole operation, to assimilate himself to his Angel by continual conscious communion. For his Angel is an intelligible image of his own true Will, to do which is the whole of the law of his Being. . . . His Angel is the Unity which expresses the sum of the Elements of that Self, that his normal consciousness contains alien enemies introduced by the accidents of environment, and that his Knowledge and Conversation of His Holy Guardian Angel destroys all doubts and delusions, confers all blessings, teaches all truth, and contains all delights.”

Alchemy is the means by which the “alien enemies introduced by the accidents of environment” are refined out of ourselves so that our will and that of the Holy Guardian Angel (“the sum of the Elements of that Self”) may operate in unity from the essence of one’s own true nature.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

NOTE: Unless otherwise stated, all quotes come from Crowley’s Book of Thoth.

Akron and Hajo Banzhaf. The Crowley Tarot: The Handbook to the Cards (U.S. Games, 1995).

Anonymous. The Emerald Tablet (various versions).

Crowley, Aleister. “Absinthe: The Green Goddess” in The International (XII:2, Feb 1918).

________. The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians Being the Equinox Volume III No. V (various editions).

________. “Fifth Aethyr,” in The Vision and the Voice (Weiser, 1999).

________. The Heart of the Master & Other Papers, edited by Hymenaeus Beta (Thelema Media, 1992).

________. Magick, edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Samuel Weiser, 1974). Otherwise published as Book 4 Part III: Magick in Theory and Practice.

Dante, Paradiso (various translations and editions).

DuQuette, Lon Milo. “Liber Samekh” in The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema (Weiser, 2003).

________. Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (Weiser, 2003).

Lévi,Eliphas. The Key of the Mysteries, translated by Aleister Crowley (Weiser, 2001).

Snuffin, Michael. The Thoth Companion: The Key to the True Symbolic Meaning of the Thoth Tarot (Llewellyn, 2007).