The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

As he was leaving, a plume from his cap fell on the bush. From that day,
the bush had plumes of purple flowers.
This legend refers to the Rosicrucian symbol AA, which derives
from the Apollo's anguished cry at the accidental death of the youth
Hyacinth, described by Ovid (see Appendix 4). 966 The drops of
Hyacinth's blood became rich purple flowers, albeit not the modern
hyacinth but the blue larkspur or hyacinthos grapta, which has markings
on the base of its petals resembling the early Greek letters AI. 967
Similarly, the Salaminians reported a new flower when Ajax died. 968 It
was smaller than a lily, white, tinged with red and like the hyacinth bore
the letters Ai! Ai! or woe! woe!
With the death of Hyacinth, Apollo also uttered the distraught cry
from his heart, Ai, Ai, which are formed on the leaves of the hyacinth. 969
For boy and man alike these letters are the wail of woe foreshadowing
ritual death. Ovid prophesies that Hyacinth will return a second time as a
very powerful hero. 970
Elizabethan works refer to the Hyacinth as the herb or weed. 971
The Greeks write Ai as U, or upsilon, which corresponds to the English
letter V, the invert of A. As we shall see in the next chapter, Sir Francis
Bacon first used the AA sign in his literary headpieces, from 1577 on the
Continent and 1579 in England.
These enigmatic headpieces signaled that within lay a metaphor
for one of the secret Rosicrucian mythological histories of ancient Britain
when Britain was called Ortygie, the land of Leto the White Goddess.
Leto was the mother of Apollo and Artemis (AA). William Blake’s hymn
Jerusalem described this Hyperborean island of God (see also Chapter 17)
where the inhabitants were, in a sense, Apollo’s priests and Apollo had a
grand shrine and big circular temple: 972
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
The AA, one A bright and the other A shadowed, symbolises that
half the work is visible and half is veiled. Sir Francis Bacon later
entwined the two letters with hyacinth flowers, or the herb Asclepias
acida, representing the golden flower of alchemy. This flower, though
golden in nature, is the hyacinthine color of blue or the sapphire blue of
the hermaphrodite. 973
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