actorily.

As concerns Greek alchemy, I shall content myself with a passage from
a work _On the Sacred Art_, attributed to OLYMPIODORUS (sixth century
A.D.), followed by some quotations from and references to the _Turba_.
In the former work it is stated on the authority of HORUS that "The
proper end of the whole art is to obtain the semen of the male secretly,
seeing that all things are male and female. Hence (we read further)
Horus says in a certain place: Join the male and the female, and you
will find that which is sought; as a fact, without this process of
re-union, nothing can succeed, for Nature charms Nature," _etc_. The
_Turba_ insistently commands those who would succeed in the Art, to
conjoin the male with the female,(1) and, in one place, the male is said
to be lead and the female orpiment.(2) We also find the alchemical work
symbolised by the growth of the embryo in the womb. "Know," we are
told, "... that out of the elect things nothing becomes useful without
conjunction and regimen, because sperma is generated out of blood and
desire. For the man mingling with the woman, the sperm is nourished by
the humour of the womb, and by the moistening blood, and by heat,
and when forty nights have elapsed the sperm is formed.... God has
constituted that heat and blood for the nourishment of the sperm until
the foetus is brought forth. So long as it is little, it is nourished
with milk, and in proportion as the vital heat is maintained, the bones
are strengthened. Thus it behoves you also to act in this Art."(3)

(1) _Vide_ pp. 60 92, 96 97, 134, 135 and elsewhere in Mr WAITE'S
translation.

(2) _Ibid_., p. 57

(3) _Ibid_., pp. 179-181 (second recension); _cf_. pp. 103-104.

The use of the mystical symbols of death (putrefaction) and resurrection
or rebirth to represent the consummation of the alchemical work, and
that of the phallic symbols of the conjunction of the sexes and the
development of the foetus, both of which we have found in the _Turba_,
are current throughout the course of Latin alchemy. In _The Chymical
Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz_, that extraordinary document of what
is called "Rosicrucianism"--a symbolic romance of considerable ability,
whoever its author was,(1)--an attempt is made to weld the two sets of
symbols--the one of marriage, the other of death and resurrection unto
glory--into one allegorical narrative; and it is to this fusion of
seemingly disparate concepts that much of it