Die Alchemie. Das ist die Lehre von den grossen Geheim-Mitteln der Alchemisten und den Speculationen, welche man an sie knüpfte (1869) - Page 25

Verse 4. original Hebrew: וירא אלהים את האור כי טוב ויבדל אלהים בין האור ובין החשך

And God saw that the light was good. Then God separated the light from the darkness. (Luther)

Verse 5. original Hebrew: ויקרא אלהים לאור יום ולחשך קרא לילה ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד

And called the light Day, and the darkness Night. Then from evening and morning came the first day. (Luther)

These three verses also belong to the original source, with the difference that in Verse 3 it says: And God said: Let there be light. And there became sun, moon, and stars. The interpretation of the original would then be:

God speaks "Let there be light" in the collective language. And as it becomes light, there arise in specie specifically: sun, moon, and stars in the celestial egg. The heaven is not yet there, as it only arises on the second day. But no matter, the place is already there in the celestial egg where the sun, moon, and stars can be attached, and that suffices for the time being. A pseudo-heaven false or temporary heaven performs the same services as an actual heaven, all the more so since pseudo-heaven and heaven amount to the same thing: the upper half of the eggshell, which is also hinted at in Verse 1 when it says: In the beginning God created heaven and earth.

Now God sees the light, that it is good, which means he sees that the sun, moon, and stars are good. And after he has seen this: original Hebrew: ויבדל וגו' he distinguishes between light and darkness. (Luther: he separates the light from the darkness). This means God takes the sun, moon, and stars and distinguishes them. In this nature, he arranges the sun on one side and the moon and stars on the other. The sun receives the name: Light, because it brings light kat' exochēn preeminently; it shines during the day, and light belongs to the day. The moon and stars receive the name Darkness, for they shine in the night, the night to which the concept of darkness is attached, just as the concept of light or being bright is attached to the day. Thus, the word "Light," Or Hebrew for light, is attached to a different meaning in Verse 3 and the first half of Verse 4 than in the second half of Verse 4. There it means light, here it means sun. And "Darkness," Choshech Hebrew for darkness, is attached to a different meaning in Verse 2 than in Verse 4. There it means darkness, here it means moon and stars. It therefore means: God distinguishes between light and darkness: that is: God distinguishes between the sun on one side and the moon and stars on the other.

Furthermore, God calls (Verse 5) the light, which according to Verse 4 is the sun: Day; and the darkness, which according to Verse 4 is the moon and stars: Night. That is, the day is established by the hand of the sun, and the night is established by the hand of the moon and stars, and thus the day in general is established, consisting of day in the narrower sense and night. This day must be established on the first day of creation; the first day must bring itself forth so that creation can proceed by days at all. Mind you, the day in general is not yet established itself, only its requirements are established. These requirements are only utilized in the following when it says: And there was evening, and there was morning: one day. (Literally so). Luther has, which remains the same in meaning: then from evening and morning came the first day.

The day as a whole is constituted by day in the narrower sense and night; but not by morning and evening. Therefore, one would expect it to say: And there was day, and there was night: one day. That this does not happen is perhaps less so that the author does not collide with day in the whole and day in the narrower sense, but because he leans on the morning and evening of the days on which man works. He lets the days on which God creates run parallel to the working days of man. Man, however, works on average during the day, and not at night. He does not calculate day and night by his work, but morning and evening. The morning, when he begins to work, marks the day for him; the evening, when he stops working, marks the

night for him. In the parallel with the working human, it now also becomes morning and evening for the creating God. In the morning he begins to create, in the evening he stops. And when it has become evening, the day is over, not the day in the narrower sense, but the day in the wider sense, day and night. For in the creation of the world, leaning on the working human, the night does not count; the night belongs to sleep, during which no work is done.

But why, given this state of affairs, does it say: It was evening, it was morning: one day, and not rather: It was morning, it was evening: one day? First comes the morning and then the evening, and then the day is completed. But it is not that first comes the evening and then the morning, and then the day is completed. Well, this is related to the fact that in the view we have here, evening equals night, which equals the moon and stars. Instead of "moon and stars," the moon is taken prominently. But the Jews calculated according to the lunar year and determined their festivals according to the moon. In addition, in the six-day creation, the Sabbath is the starting point of the whole matter, but even this can be brought into relation with the moon. For the six-day creation has four Sabbaths, but it also has four lunar phases: new moon, first quarter, full moon, and last quarter. Sabbath and lunar phase thus coincide to a certain extent. Perhaps it even happened that in ancient times the Sabbath was celebrated at the time of the new moon, first quarter, full moon, and last quarter, and that it was only introduced later that the Sabbath simply linked to a period of seven days. This newer mode would then have been introduced because it is not everyone's business to observe the moon, and the weather is also often an obstacle to observation. Seven days, however, anyone can count for themselves at any time. Thus we have the moon standing in the foreground opposite the sun, and with it the evening, which equals the moon, also steps into the foreground opposite the morning, which equals the day and the sun. To point this out, the author exploits the present passage.

It now happens every day that God distinguishes between the sun on one hand and the moon and stars on the other, that in relation to this, the day belongs to the sun and the night belongs to the moon and stars, and that in relation to this it becomes morning and evening, whereby the day is concluded. Therefore, the original has the refrain every time a creation day is over: And there was evening and there was morning: the second, third, etc. day. In this refrain, one must supply what precedes it on the first day, which is stated very explicitly on the first day, but is now considered superfluous to state again and again.

One must not take offense at the different meanings given in quick succession to the words "Light," Or, and "Darkness," Choshech. It is a characteristic passion of the original to present one and the same word in different meanings in quick succession. We will encounter something similar in the immediately following verses regarding the word Rakia expanse or firmament. This passion also leads us to the fact that when the author provides: It was evening, it was morning: one day, let it be marked: It was night, it was day: one day. He does this less to avoid colliding with day in the narrower and wider sense, but rather to lean on the working day of man. In and of itself, the author would not avoid bringing the word Day, Yom, in two meanings in quick succession; on the contrary, that would be, as one says in common life, water for his mill.

The situation and interpretation of the author of the present creation story in the first chapter of the first book of Moses is different. First of all, in Verse 3, he has: And God said: Let there be light. And there was light. Regarding this light as such, God sees that it was good, and then makes a distinction between this light and the darkness of Verse 2. For the day as a whole, two things are necessary:

day in the narrower sense, and night. The author has the day in the narrower sense in his mysterious light, but not the night. For the latter, he draws in the darkness. He imagines that in a room it can be bright in one corner and dark in the other. In the same way, it can be bright on one side of the world-egg on the basis of the created light, and dark on the other side on the basis of the darkness in Verse 2. God calls the light: Day, for it has the mission to establish the day in the narrower sense. And God calls the darkness: Night, for it has the mission to establish the night. Thus the requirements for day and night are there, and they are utilized when it says: And there was evening, and there was morning: one day, that is, evening and morning unfold by the hand of the given day and the given night. With the morning and evening, the author then enters into the sense of the original, only the reversal from morning and evening to evening and morning is undertaken so that the sequence of darkness and light in the text is taken into account. The darkness is already there in Verse 2, the light only in Verse 3. Thus the darkness has the jus prioritatis right of priority, and this right of priority asserts itself in that the evening (night, darkness) comes first, and then the morning (day, light). For the refrains on the 2nd and 3rd day: And there was evening etc., the author now has the analogous situation in the same way as the author of the original in his own way. On the 2nd and 3rd day, God also makes a distinction between light and darkness; he has the day by the hand of the light, Verse 3, and the night by the hand of the darkness, Verse 2, and these then unfold, analogously to the first day, into day and night. Thus evening and morning become the 2nd day, the 3rd day. Only on the 4th day, which brings sun, moon, and stars to the author of the present creation story, does that refrain stop, and "And there was evening" etc. follows in the footsteps of the original. So where the author of the present creation story does not yet have sun, moon, and stars, that is on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd day, his mysterious light, by the hand of darkness, takes over the role of sun, moon, and stars; they are the requirements for day and night, and by their hand, day and night unfold. The author thus gets just as far with his light and the darkness attached to it as if he already had sun, moon, and stars; he lets it go along as an equal beside sun, moon, and stars in relation to the production of day and night. But he does not only go that far; he goes one step further. He also imparts warming rays to his mysterious light, which, like the warming rays of the sun, go down to the earth and there promote the growth of plants. If this were not so, then on the 3rd day, when the sun is not yet there at all, the earth could not let grass, herbs, and trees arise. The author thus exploits his mysterious light quite energetically, and in this we can find no further scruple. If he is not to nurture and care for his mysterious child, who then should?

Second Day.

Verse 6. original Hebrew: ויאמר אלהים יהי רקיע בתוך המים ויהי מבדיil בין מים למים

And God said: Let there be a Rakia between the water, and let there be a distinction between water and waters.
These are again the words of the original.
Luther: And God said: Let there be a firmament between the waters, and let it be a distinction between the waters.

Luther's firmament is the stereoma solid structure of the Septuagint. "Veste" the word Luther uses for firmament is today's "Feste" stronghold or solid thing. Luther writes a V instead of an F. In an analogous way, he would write "Vest," "Vestung" etc. instead of "Fest," "Festung." We will get to know the Alexandrian stereoma firmament later; it is a meaning forced upon the vocabulary which it did not originally have. Rakia is a noun based on a natural sound. This natural sound is Rak and runs parallel to our Knack crack or snap. Rakia is roughly something that makes a "rak" or "knack." If one therefore takes up the Rakia, one does something that makes a "rak" or "knack," that is, one smashes something in. As a further consequence, Rakia is also on the one hand the place of the smashing, and on the other hand what one has before one when the smashing has occurred, that is, the thing set by the smashing, the shattered thing. When it therefore says: God said, let there be a Rakia, it means: God said, let there be a smash-

ing in. This 2nd day brings us the heaven, that is, the permanent lid of the smashed-in reservoir for the world-water. The upper half of the world-egg contains no water and can therefore be grasped as a lid over the actual water reservoir. Furthermore, however, the water-transformation experiment also begins to take place on the 2nd day. This is absolutely necessary. At the time when the blow, the shattering blow against the eggshell occurs, the water transformation must simultaneously take place. Only if this occurs can a shell form which prevents the world-water, robbed of its vessel, from running off. We already know that it is assumed that the first precipitate forms concentrically with the intact vessel and is hard. Thus we obtain, so to speak, a vessel within a vessel, and the water can no longer run off.

We will get to know the details immediately. Here only the general question: Why does Jewish Alchemy take the standpoint that the world-egg is smashed in? We have the following situation: The world-water is in the egg. Sediment forms; this represents the earth which we inhabit. The water that places itself above the sediment represents the sea. The upper half of the eggshell represents the heaven above us, which has the shape of a bell, half an eggshell. Well, all that could take place inside the egg if it were assumed that the earth and sea had an outermost shell, and this outermost shell were the lower half of the world-egg. At this point, the lower half of the eggshell would be in no one's way, so why does it need to be smashed in? Well, the answer to this is as follows. An eggshell is a homogeneous mass; what it is above, it is below; what it is below, it is above. If the upper half qualifies as heaven, then the lower half also qualifies for it. If one says the upper half becomes heaven, then the lower half must also become heaven. To say the upper half becomes heaven but the lower does not would be to state the problem, in other words, that an eggshell lacks homogeneity. If the relationship were as we have just described, then the outermost shell of our earth would have the property of the heaven above us; it would be a heaven, and thus we would have not only a heaven above us, but also a heaven below us. That, however, seemed to the Jewish alchemists an absolute perversity, that we should have a heaven under us. Therefore, that which would become the heaven under us if the matter were allowed to take the course we described above is removed from the world; it is shattered. Now to the text of the Scripture.