Suaviter tells the story of an alchemist's dream.  One of its first images is that of a red rose superimposed upon a full moon hanging over a mountainous landscape - birds are singing; it is dawn.  Through the voyeuristic lens of the camera, the viewer watches the dream as it unfolds.  It is at this early hour when dreams are said to be at their most powerful and revelatory.  Of the single red rose, Cirlot says it “is, in essence, a symbol of completion, of consummate achievement and perfection” and was thus used by the alchemists of old to symbolize the objective of their opus, the Lapidis Philosophorum or the Philosopher’s Stone (275).  The short film’s voice-over track reads the Emerald Tablet, a short foundational text of alchemy whose source can be traced back to the Egyptian goddess Isis who in turn passed it on to her son, Horus.  Alchemical legend maintains that the essence of the text was eventually boiled down to a few paragraphs by Thoth, the Egyptian predecessor of the Greek god Hermes, who in turn gave it to humanity in his form of Hermes Trimegestus.  That the voice is feminine for the majority of the film is an example of how the alchemist's anima or soror mistica speaks to him, much like C.G. Jung who maintains that his first contact with his anima was manifest in the form of a dialogue with his inner feminine voice.  The text is well known to the sleeping alchemist.  In the dreamscape, however, he does not read it but hears it spoken aloud.  By differentiating herself as an aural spokesperson of the unconscious, the anima signals the impending confrontation and union of opposites which is about to occur in the alchemist’s psyche. The dream's intensity disturbs his sleep; its nature nearly escalating into an untenable nightmare.

            Suaviter, which means sweetly, is an excerpt from a Latin version of the Emerald Tablet.  All seem to agree that the Emerald Tablet somehow summarizes and instructs the adept in the ways of the alchemical opus.  Nevertheless, its riddle-like quality has mystified scholars and alchemists for centuries.  The entire text consists of sixteen sentences distributed among thirteen stanzas.  The central or seventh stanza contains the only instance where the reader is addressed directly, “You will separate earth from fire, the subtle from the dense, sweetly, with great ingenuity” (Gnosis 18).  That this curious adjective sweetly is chosen to accentuate this essential stanza suggests that at the heart of the alchemical process awaits a reward which can be obtained only through finesse.  The first part of the film, in similar fashion, evokes a smooth flowing rhythm as one image dissolves into another “sweetly.”

            Besides the character of the alchemist, Suaviter has two principles, a man and a woman.  The woman is the embodiment of Luna; the personification of the feminine qualities which alchemists associated with matter - the physicality of planar existence.  The man represents Sol; the personification of the masculine and the vertical, ethereal realm of spirit.  The woman sings a song of awakening and union.  The man asks that this union takes place, but hesitates.  In contemplating the magnitude of what he asks, he withdraws his request in his next breath.  Consciousness does not take the matter  of incarnation lightly.  With the cyclical nature of his song, he acquiesces by wishing for union, and then hesitates again.  In this fashion, Suaviter appears to be referencing the  alchemical process, or the “descent of consciousness into matter . . .” by showing its two principles at first individually and then later coming together (Gnosis 14).

            The eventual union between Sol and Luna, spirit and matter, occurs on the bed where the alchemist dreams.  The viewer notices, however, that the alchemist is no longer there; he has been deconstructed into the differentiated male and female aspects of his own psyche.  By giving voice to these archetypes in his dream, the alchemist’s anima demonstrates not only how his own physical existence can be transcended, but how the voices he hears may represent another transcendence from the personal to collective realm of the unconscious.

            At this union, or divine coniuntio, the alchemist awakens and realizes that what he just experienced was a dream; he does indeed still exist on the physical plane.  He rolls from his bed and goes to the kitchen to heat some water for his tea.  The blue flame transfixes the viewer's attention and brings to mind the everyday scenes of life which contain many such simple yet powerful examples of elemental transformation - in this case, the heating of water by fire and its transformation into steam.  The alchemist's chimney is triangular in shape and is identical to the alchemical symbol for fire.  From fire, to water, to steam and back to earth, the eye of the Anima Mundi ends the film looking at the viewer as if to say “what you think of as other is in actuality you looking back into yourself.”  In this sense, the staring eye of the Anima Mundi represents a similar coniuntio between matter and spirit, one that has been purified, stabilized and now propels us through our dreams.

 

 

Works Cited

Cirlot, J.E.  A Dictionary of Symbols.  New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971.

“From Lead to Gold.” Gnosis Magazine No. 40, Summer, 1996: 12-16

“The Emerald Tablet.” Gnosis Magazine No. 40, Summer, 1996: 17-19

 

 

The Emerald Tablet, A New Translation by Richard Smoley

 

 1. True it is, without deceit, certain, and most true:

 2. What is below is like what is above, and what is above is like what is below, to accomplish the wonders of the one thing.

 3. And just as all things have been from the one, by the design of the one, so all things have been born from the one thing, adaptation.

 4. Its father is the sun; its mother is the moon.  The wind carried it in its belly; its nurse is the earth.

 5. This is the father of all consecration of the whole world.

 6. Its power is intact, if it shall have been turned toward the earth.

 7. You will separate earth from fire, the subtle from the dense, sweetly, with great ingenuity.

 8. It ascends from earth to heaven, descends again toward earth, and receives the force of the things above and below.  Thus you will have the glory of the whole world.  Therefore all darkness will flee from you.

 9. This is the strong strength of all strength, because it will conquer everything subtle and penetrate everything solid.

 10. Thus was the world created.

 11. Hence will be wondrous adaptations, of which this is the method.

 12. And so I have been called Hermes Thrice-Greatest, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.

 13. What I have said about the working of the sun is complete.

 

 

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