of his Auslegung d. hierogl. Fig.) the following: "Consider well these two
dragons for they are the beginning of the philosophy [alchemy] which the
sages have not dared to show their own children.... The first is called
sulphur or the warm and dry. The other is called quicksilver or the cold
and wet. These are the sun and the moon. These are snakes and dragons,
which the ancient Egyptians painted in the form of a circle, each biting
the other's tail, in order to teach that they spring of and from one thing
[our lion!]. These are the dragons that the old poets represent as
guarding sleeplessly the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperian
maidens. These are the ones to which Jason, in his adventures of the
golden fleece, gave the potion prepared for him by the beautiful Medea.
[See my explanation of the motive of dismemberment] of which discourses
the books of the philosophers are so full that there has not been a single
philosopher, from the true Hermes, Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras,
Artephias, Morienus, and other followers up to my own time, who has not
written about these matters. These are the two serpents sent by Juno (who
is the metallic nature) that were to be strangled by the strong Hercules
(that is the sage in his cradle) [our wanderer], that is to be conquered
and killed in order to cause them in the beginning of his work to rot, be
destroyed and be born. These are the two serpents that are fastened around
the herald's staff and rod of Mercury.... Therefore when these two (which
Avicenna calls the bitch of Carascene and the dog of Armenia) are put
together in the vessel of the grave, they bite each other horribly. [See
the battle of the sons of the dragon's teeth with Jason, the elders in the
parable, but also the embrace of the bridal pair and the mythological
parallels wrestling = dragon fight = winning the king's daughter,... =
incest = love embrace or separation of the primal parents, etc....] ... A
corruption [destruction] and putrefaction must take place before the
renewal in a better form. These are the two male and female seed that are
produced ... in the kidneys and intestines ... of the four elements."

The dragon, who is killed at the beginning of the work, is also called
Osiris by the old alchemists. We are now acquainted with his
dismemberment, also his relation to lead ore. Flamel calls the vessel of
the alchemistic operation a "grave." Olympiodorus speaks in an alchemistic
work of the gr