Illustration by Louis Charbonneau-Lassay

in ‘Le Bestaire du Christ’, page 796.

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Part 1-Opening

The Septenary

Sulfur, Mercury and Salt correspond in the human personality to what we would call, Spirit–Soul and Body. Being purely activity, the Sulfur-Spirit act upon the passivity of the Salt-Body only through the intermediary of the Mercury-Soul, that is relatively passive towards the Spirit, but active towards the Body.

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In order for balance to exist, therefore health, a normal functioning, the three principles must harmonize within the person. If we represent each of them by a circle, we get, by the mutual interpenetration of each of these three circles until the meeting of their centers, the diagram of the septenary constitution of Man.

The interference of the three circles generates a combination of the Spirit and the Soul, we could call: Animic Spirit or Spiritual Soul. Penetrating the Body, Spirit develops there the Corporeal Spirit, to which the Soul when entering the Body gives as an echo, the Corporeal Soul. There is a space in the center, where Spirit, Soul and Body blend to create the Etherical Body or Astral Body, the Linga Sharira of (modern) Theosophy. It is from this knot of the personality that which everything resonates. Fulfilling the role of intermediary, this fluidic knot is assimilated to the god Mercury of the Mythology, and among the metals, quick-silver is attributed to it. The other planets-metals are as follow:

Ethereal Soul, Silver, Moon, Diana, Manas.

Animic Spirit or Spiritual Soul, tin the lightest of the metals, Jupiter united to Juno, Buddhi.

Corporeal Spirit, Iron, Mars, Kama Rupa.

Corporeal Soul, copper, Venus, Prana or Jiva.

Body, Lead, Saturn, Rupa.

The Spiritual Sun stands for the divine Light, that without fail shine upon our personality, more specially, or animic Spirit, to which our Jupiterian consciousness corresponds; what in us commands truly comes from the Spirit and the Soul- shaper of our feelings and ideal images, from which we think and we remember our souvenirs. From our corporeal Spirit are born the strong impressions, sometimes intense, that stimulates our mobility. The corporeal Soul, tends to manage the vitality that protects the sensibility. As for the corporeal body, it is the foundation of the vital structure. Without its density, no work would be accomplished, the Spirit would lack a base of operation and the Soul would vanish into the infinite.

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To the septenary of the planets-metals is linked the symbolism of the fundamental colors: Red, blue, yellow and their derived colors: violet, green, orange. Red is given to the circle of the Spirit, Blue to the circle of the Soul, and yellow to the circle of the Body. Therefore, violet becomes the color of the animic Spirit, green that of the corporeal Soul, and orange that of the corporeal Spirit, white that of the mercurial etheric body, and black is that of the pervading Chaos, that is not luminously organized.

Tradition teaches us to distinguish seven planetary types, the influence of which the personality is determined. It is possible to graphically determine seven analogue types in moving one of the three circles that represents Spirit, Soul and Body.

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Source:

By Oswald Wirth

Translated from the French from ‘Notions élémentaire d’Hermétisme’, Le Septénaire, page 126 to 131. In ‘Le Symbolisme Hermétique’, Dervy Livre_1969 Edition.

Original text in French:

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(To be continued…)

Towards

Part 2-First 3 types

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