Die Alchemie. Das ist die Lehre von den grossen Geheim-Mitteln der Alchemisten und den Speculationen, welche man an sie knüpfte

Consideration was then given to the Six-Day Creation, referred to so that what does not originally belong in the Bible is legalized by the Bible itself. Not even the Ten Commandments were spared from this patchwork. Indeed, the fact that they even went so far as to alter the Ten Commandments makes the maneuver clear.

Regarding the Sabbath commandment, the Ten Commandments state:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. original Hebrew: זכור את יום השבת לקדשו
Six days you shall labor and do all your work. original Hebrew: ששת ימים תעבד ועשית כל מלאכתך
But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. original Hebrew: ויום השביעי שבת ליהוה אלהיך לא תעשה כל מלאכה אתה ובנך ובתך עבדך ואמתך ובהמתך וגרך אשר בשעריך
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. original Hebrew: כי ששת ימים עשה יהוה את השמים ואת הארץ את הים ואת כל אשר בם וינח ביום השביעי על כן ברך יהוה את יום השבת ויקדשהו

This last verse is the one that has been spliced in.

In general, the Ten Commandments present what they command, and with that, the matter is finished. In specific cases, certain diversions explanatory expansions or motivations are made. For instance, in the Second Book of Moses Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 5, it says: "Do not worship them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God," and so on. This last addition is meant to say: do what I command you here; if you do not, then I know how to punish you. It is entirely analogous to Verse 7: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not leave unpunished," etc. This again means: do what I tell you, or else punishment follows. Similarly, Verse 12: "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long," etc. This means: do what I say, and the reward will not be withheld. These are diversions that move strictly within the limits of reward and punishment.

However, no command among the Ten Commandments is given a motivation a logical or historical reason for its existence. It does not say, "you shall have no other gods before me because God is the creator of the world," or "you shall not kill or commit adultery because of this or that reason." Only in the Sabbath commandment do we find a motivation in the phrase: "For in six days," etc. It explains the basis for the Sabbath commandment, and this is precisely what is offensive and characterizes the passage starting with "Six days" as a spliced-in addition. The interpolating author would have completely fulfilled his mission if he had stopped at "and rested on the seventh day." But in his zeal, he cannot stop and adds: "Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath and hallowed it." He wants to thoroughly bridge the gap with the creation story, but in doing so, he creates a rift in the character of the Ten Commandments by accumulating motivations where none should be.

Furthermore, the nature of this splice is characterized as follows:
It says: "For in six days Jehovah The Lord made heaven and earth," etc. But this is fundamentally untrue: the Six-Day Creation was not performed by Jehovah, but by Elohim God. One might say that it does not matter so exactly. In the Ten Commandments, names like Elohim, El Jehovah, El, and Jehovah seem to run together. But no, they do not run together; only our splicing author creates a mess, showing that he patches with a clumsy hand as well as a bold one.

In the Second Book of Moses, Chapter 20, Verse 1, Elohim speaks. Here, God is to be presented quite generally. God is not yet Jehovah; He only explicitly presents Himself as such in Verse 2, and until He has stamped Himself as Jehovah on the basis of Verse 2, He is not yet that. Therefore, the general name Elohim is used.

Verse 2. Now follows: I am Jehovah Elohecha, that is, Jehovah, your God (El).

Verse 3. You shall have no other gods. Here the word is Elohim, which is the plural of El God. Each individual god among those "you shall not have" is an El, but not a Jehovah; their plural is Elohim, which is the sum of individual gods.

Verse 5. "For I the Lord, your God, am a jealous God." Here it says: I, Jehovah Elohecha am—exactly as in Verse 2. "I am a jealous God." Here the word is El and not Jehovah. The El is specifically defined in relation to what He does, because Jehovah stands too high to be more closely defined. He is defined generally by El or Elohecha, the God whom you have, and that is definition enough. Every further definition is pushed onto the El.

Verse 7. You shall not misuse the name of God. Here stands Jehovah Elohecha, exactly as in Verse 2. "The Lord will not leave unpunished the one who misuses His name." Here Jehovah is used specifically because it is Jehovah who must not be misused. El can be misused, for God Himself, so to speak, misuses the term El by calling false gods El. But because the misuse falls within the domain of Jehovah, Jehovah punishes the misuse.

Verse 10. On the 7th day is the Sabbath of the Lord. Here again stands Jehovah Elohecha, exactly as in Verse 2.

Verse 11. "For in 6 days the Lord made heaven and earth." Here stands Jehovah. The reason is simply that the splicing author does not see through the true situation regarding El and Jehovah. Strictly speaking, he should say: Elohim made heaven and earth, according to the Six-Day Creation story. If he does not want that, he must say Jehovah Elohecha, as in Verse 2. There is no motive at all here for a simple Jehovah.

"Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day." Here again Jehovah stands instead of Elohim or at least Jehovah Elohecha. It is again the handiwork of the splicing author.

Verse 12. "Honor father and mother," etc. Here again stands Jehovah Elohecha, exactly as in Verse 2.

Thus, everywhere, there is a sharp consistency in the name of God, except in Verse 11. Well, by this very fact, this verse is characterized as a spliced-in addition.

Finally, we point out that it is a bold characterization of the Six-Day Creation when it says: In 6 days God made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that is "in them." ("In them" is actually plural, בם?; thus it does not mean "in it," the sea, but "in them," meaning heaven, earth, and sea). It is a bold stroke that everything produced in the 6 days should now be summarized as: heaven, earth, sea, and what is in them. The intention behind this description is, of course, that once the 6 days have been mentioned, heaven and earth from the second creation story should also be presented alongside them. But this is once again a maneuver that reveals itself as the work of a splicing author.

Regarding the Sabbath commandment, we simply have the following: this commandment says you shall work 6 days and celebrate the Sabbath on the 7th. You shall not celebrate all 7 days of the week, but only the one Sabbath. Thus, 6 days are assigned to work. This is how the 6 days enter the commandment, in contrast to the single Sabbath. Originally, there was nothing in the Ten Commandments referring to God creating the world in 6 days, or connecting the 6 working days of the week to God's work. Such a reference was only spliced in later to legalize the first creation story.

We will learn about a very special maneuver used by the Alexandrians to legalize the first creation story and maintain the two creation stories side-by-side.

It is obvious that the actual state of affairs is not changed by all such arts: despite this, the first creation story remains the first, and the second remains the second, and they stand exclusively opposite each other.

As stated, the first creation story as we have it does not belong in the Bible at all. It is, as we have also already said and as we will learn more closely later, a fragmentary alchemical work. But despite its non-biblical standpoint, and despite its fragmentary state in alchemical terms, it is one of the most important alchemical documents we possess. Through it, Jewish alchemy becomes clear to us; and since Greek alchemy leans on the Jewish, Greek alchemy becomes clear as well. It offers us an important starting point to further pursue alchemy. Not only that, it gives us the material to draw conclusions about Egyptian and Indian alchemy.

God as World-Creator — The Six-Day Creation

After the Indians brought alchemy into a very direct relation to the deity, and after the Egyptians followed in their footsteps by turning the Nile—around which all Egyptian alchemy ultimately revolves—into a god, there was also a motive for the Jews to bring the deity into relation with alchemy. In doing so, they proceeded from the water-transformation experiment the alchemical process of deriving solids from water. (Compare Alchemy among the Egyptians). They reasoned: in the water-transformation experiment on a small scale, the alchemist is the one who institutes the experiment; who then is the one who institutes that experiment on a large scale? And to this they answered: God!

Since the one who institutes the water-transformation experiment on a large scale creates the world, God becomes the one who creates the world. This God, who brings the world into existence and creates it based on the water-transformation experiment on a large scale, is an alchemical God. He is as an alchemist on a grand scale what man is as an alchemist on a small scale. It is to this alchemical God that the First Book of Moses, Chapter 1, Verses 26 and 27 refers: "And God said, let us create man in our image. And God created man in his image." Here it is taught that man looks like God.

Against this, alchemy asks: how can a man know what God looks like? The self-revealing God cannot be considered here, for He takes on various forms, from which no single image can be derived. Who then can say that man is an image of God, or looks like God, since no one knows what God looks like? But if we keep alchemy in view, the matter becomes clear. God, who creates the world and performs the water-transformation experiment on a large scale, is in the great what the man who performs the experiment on a small scale is in the small. Conversely, the human alchemist is on a small scale what the God-Alchemist is on a large scale, and thus an image, a reflection of God. The biblical man who is a reflection of God is the alchemist, the human practicing alchemy. This is analogous to the Indians, for whom the man living through the four world-ages is the alchemical man.

Thus, we have first of all, quite generally, God as the World-Creator. This conception of the alchemical God stands initially for itself. It is only extended later, and this extension takes place by means of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is the true national holiday of the Jews; only it is discussed in the Ten Commandments. Sabbath means day of rest. Thus, the Sabbath festival is, in its primary characteristic, a day of rest, as it is described in the Ten Commandments. (Compare the previous section). Now the alchemists said: the Sabbath is a day of God; man rests on it, and by resting, he imitates God. Through the hallowing of the Sabbath, a relationship between God and man occurs, and the central point is mutual rest.

But the relationship between God and rest is inherently complicated. God is the principle of activity; God incessantly cares for man, working and creating for man without pause. How then does God fit with rest? Here, God in His capacity as World-Creator provides a starting point. When God created the world, it was said, He had undertaken a particularly prominent act of activity. And after the act was completed, a point of rest occurred, just as a point of rest occurs whenever a task is finished. Thus, the relationship between God and rest is established. Therefore, the Sabbath led to the idea that the God who created the world rested after He had created it.

Now they went a step further and said: what man does on the Sabbath—namely, rest—is what God did after He created the world. The rest of the Sabbath is the same for God and man; therefore, the non-rest of the weekdays will also be the same for God and man. Before man comes to the Sabbath rest, he works for 6 days; therefore, God must also have worked for 6 days before His Sabbath rest. Since God's Sabbath rest refers to the rest after the creation of the world, God's 6 working days must be assigned to the creation of the world itself, to the act of world-creating. And thus the problem is established: God created the world in 6 days.

Jewish Cosmogenesis in General

Following Egyptian alchemy, Jewish alchemy is cosmological and cosmogenetic. What is alchemical about Egypt is, on the one hand, extended to the world we inhabit and, on the other, restricted to the earth that the water-transformation experiment produces. Then Egypt is dropped entirely, and the water-transformation experiment on a small scale is contrasted with cosmogenesis on a large scale. We have already encountered this in Egyptian alchemy.

The scope of Jewish cosmogenesis is therefore very simple. One takes the "world-water"—or rather, God takes it—and lets it stand; then the earth we inhabit arises as a sediment. It arises according to the same principle by which sediment arises in the water-transformation experiment. Generally, this provides a connection to Egypt and the Nile, but specifically, something new emerges. Egypt forms a single cosmologicum cosmological entity, whereas the world we inhabit yields a double cosmologicum, namely the orbis terrarum fixus fixed circle of lands and the orbis terrarum fluidus fluid circle of lands or the seas.

Egypt corresponds only to the orbis terrarum fixus. Something that corresponds to the orbis terrarum fluidus in and of itself does not exist in Egyptian alchemy; it enters it only indirectly by letting the Nile play a double role as both the orbis terrarum fluidus and the world-water, the latter of which it initially parallels. Thus, even in the first basic features, there is a difference between Egyptian and Jewish alchemy. In the former, we have the Nile (world-water) and Egypt (fixed earth), which is a two-fold system. In the latter, however, we have a three-fold system: world-water, fixed earth, and fluid earth.

In the water-transformation experiment on a small scale, this three-fold nature reveals itself as follows:
1. One takes the water suitable for the transformation experiment; this is the first.
2. Now the earth settles to the bottom; this is the second.
3. The water stands above the sediment, and this water is the third.

In cosmogeny on a large scale:
1. God takes the water suitable for the transformation experiment; this is the first.
2. Now the orbis terrarum fixus settles to the bottom; this is the second.
3. The orbis terrarum fluidus stands above the orbis terrarum fixus, and this fluid earth is the third.

However, the fluid earth does not actually stand above the fixed earth, and here adjustments must be made. This is done as follows: one says that the precipitation of the orbis terrarum fixus occurs successively. Imagine that the first precipitation occurs in a horizontal plane, but that the final precipitation does not occur in a horizontal plane, but...