Gnostic Art

The Mute Book

Mutus Liber, 1677.

The final plate of the wordless alchemical treatise “Mutus Liber” (Mute Book) representing the goal of alchemy: reunion with the Divine Spirit. Heracles (the prone figure at bottom) incarnates in the initiate who enters the Straight Path and subsequently receives the Venustic Initiation, the entrance of the Universal Cosmic Christ into the human being. The Christ, inside the Human Soul, must labor and sacrifice. Here he is shown psychologically dead (no ego at all) after completing his work. The result is the Perfected Stone, the square formed by the union of the man and woman and the Father above. The man and woman have achieved equilibruim (the Sun and Moon have switched places between them). From their mouths come the words Oculatis Abis: “Thou departest seeing.” The work is finished: the ladder to Heaven (in the back) is set aside. The Father receives His Glory in Heaven as He crowned by the Cherubim and is illuminated by the light of the Christ (the Sun), with whom He is now One. On either side of the image are the two olive branches tied to the wings of the spirit, a variation on the Caduceus of Mercury.