THREE ASPECTS OF THE WAY 113

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alchemy properly so called—the soul, fixed in a state of
sterile hardness, must be “liquefied” and then again
“congealed” in order to be rid of its impurities, This
“congelation” will in its turn be followed by a “fusion”
and this again by the final “crystallisation.” In order
to bring about these changes the natural forces of the
soul are actualised and coordinated. They may be com-
pared to the forces of nature—heat, cold, moistness
and dryness. There is in the soul an expansive force
which normally shows itself as confident joy (busz) and
as love and so as ‘“heat,”” and there is a contractive
force—a ‘“coldness’”—which shows itself as fear, its
spiritual form being the extreme contraction (gabd) of
the soul, in face of death and eternity, into the single
point of the present. As for moistness and dryness,
these correspond respectively to the “liquefying” pas-
sivity of the soul and the “fixing” activity of the Spirit.
These four forces can also be connected with two
complementary principles which are analogous to the
“Sulphur” and “Mercury” of the alchemist. In the
Sufic method these two principles are to be identified
respectively with the spiritual act—the active affirmation
of a symbol—and the plasticity of the psyche. Thanks
to the intervention of Grace the voluntary affirmation
of the symbol becomes the permanent activity of the
Spirit (ar-Rith) while the plasticity or receptivity of the
soul takes on a cosmic amplitude.!

The fiery quality and the “fixative’” quality are

1. According to Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi the universal meaning of
Sulphur is the Divine Act (al-Amr) and that of Mercury Nature as a whole
(Tabi-‘at al-kull).

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