Vulcan
Vulcan, in Roman mythology, is the son
Jupiter and Juno, husband of
Venus, and father of Caeculus. He was god of
fire and
volcanoes, and the manufacturer of art, arms,
iron, and armor for gods and heroes. Vulcan's analogue in
Greek mythology is the god
Hephaestus. He is also called Mulciber in Roman mythology and Sethlans in
Etruscan mythology.
Encyclopedia
Vulcan, in Roman mythology, is the son
Jupiter and Juno, husband of
Venus, and father of Caeculus. He was god of
fire and
volcanoes, and the manufacturer of art, arms,
iron, and armor for gods and heroes. Vulcan's analogue in
Greek mythology is the god
Hephaestus. He is also called Mulciber in Roman mythology and Sethlans in
Etruscan mythology.
About Vulcan
Vulcan's smithy was believed to be situated underneath
Mount Etna in
Sicily or under the Aeolian island of
Vulcano in the
Tyrrhenian Sea. At the Vulcanalia festival, which was held on August 23, fish and small animals were thrown into a fire.
Vulcan's shrine in the
Forum Romanum, called the
Volcanal, appears to have played an important role in the civic rituals of the archaic
Roman Kingdom.
Today, a
statue of Vulcan located in
Birmingham, Alabama is the largest
cast iron statue in the world.
Vulcan in mythology
To punish mankind for stealing the secrets of fire,
Jupiter ordered the other gods to make
Pandora as a poisoned gift for man. Vulcan’s contribution to the beautiful and foolish Pandora was to mold her from clay and to give her form. He also made the thrones for the other gods on
Mt. Olympus.
Vulcan of the Alchemists
During the Renaissance the
physician/alchemist
Paracelsus introduced the mythological figure of
Vulcan as the patron
deity of
alchemy. To Paracelsus Vulcan was synonymous with both the alchemist/physician's manipulation of fire, heating and distilling of nature's properties for medicine, and the transforming power and creative potential locked within Man, the greater invisible Man or anthropos, slumbering within.
- Alchemy is an art is the product or process of the effective application...
and Vulcan is the artist in it: 'He who is Vulcan has the power of the art ... All things have been created in an unfinished state, nothing is finished, but Vulcan must bring all things to their completion. Everything is at first created in its prima materia, its original stuff; whereupon Vulcan comes, and develops it into its final substance ... God created iron but not that which is to be made of it. He enjoined fire, and Vulcan, who is the lord of fire, to do the rest ... From this it follows that iron must be cleansed of its dross before it can be forged. This process is alchemy; its founder is the smith Vulcan. What is accomplished by fire is alchemy-whether in the furnace or in the kitchen stove. And he who governs fire is Vulcan, even if he be a cook or a man who tends the stove.
Elsewhere Paracelus writes:-
- Alchemy is a necessary, indispensable art ... It is an art, and Vulcan is its artist. He who is a Vulcan has mastered this art; he who is not a Vulcan can make no headway in it.
The
Elizabethan Alchemist
Francis Bacon was skeptical of alchemy's enlistment of the Roman deity as symbolic of true Alchemical enquiry and exlaimed in The Advancement of Learning :
- Abandoning Minerva and wisdom they play court to the sooty smith Vulcan and his pots and pans.
However, Paracelsian alchemists such as Gerard Dorn,
Jan Baptist van Helmont and Arthur Dee each acknowledged the Roman god of forge and furnace as symbolic of their art. Van Helmont specifically described alchemy as Vulcan's art, whilst Arthur Dee in his Arca Arcarnum
wrote:
Though I am constrained to die and be buried nevertheless Vulcan carefully gives me birth
.
The Roman god and Paracelsian deity
associated with alchemy is cited no less than three times by Sir Thomas Browne in The Garden of Cyrus of 1658,firstly in its very opening lines:
That Vulcan gave arows unto
Apollo and Diana according to gentile
theology in the work of the fourth day may pass for no blind apprehension of the creation of the
Sun and
Moon.
Secondly within the context of Classical Greek myth in which Vulcan constructs and casts an invisible network in order to ensnare Venus his wife in flagrante delicato
with her lover Mars. Browne humorously stating:
As for that famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and
Venus, and caused that inextinguishable laugh in heaven; since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it.
And finally at the very apotheosis of his literary-alchemical opus in which he delivers his three factors for determining truth, namely authority, reason and experience; Vulcan here representing the demi-urge or "higher man" who, not unlike the
Gnostics, "Man of Light," uses his craftmanship and skills to aid, enlighten and liberate the Spiritual Man within.
- Flat and Flexible truths are beat out by every hammer, but Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour.
In modern times the Swiss psychologist
Carl Jung interpreted Vulcan as one who:
- kindles the fiery wheel of the essence in the soul when it 'breaks off' from God; whence come desire and sin, which are the "wrath of God." CW 12 215.
The alchemists adoption of the mythic figure of Vulcan may be interpreted on several levels. At the lowest scale of interpretation Vulcan represents the cunning amoral
demiurge who blindly gains power over Nature without integrity; this mundane level anticipates the nascent
Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. The activities of the extraction of coal from mines to fuel colossal Furnaces to manufacture Steel and Iron on a gigantic scale and the development of the railroad and steam-train throughout
Europe and
North America are distinctly Vulcan-like activities and in many ways the general "busyness" of the Protestant work-ethic and Industrialised Western society, is strongly reflected in this archetypal figure.
At a higher level of interpretation Vulcan is transformed to become an inspired apostle, the visionary capable of releasing Mankind from the bonds of unknowingness and darkness.
The transforming power of Vulcan the "higher man" and anthropos figure of the alchemists has today devolved into the negative aspects of a demi-urge figure; none other than modern technological man, who, divorced from God, forges his own destiny independent of Re
