Vulcan - About Vulcan, Vulcan in mythology, Vulcan of the alchemists

The Roman god of fire, especially destructive fire and volcanic activity, sometimes called Mulciber. He was identified with the Greek Hephaestus, and later given his attributes, such as metal-working.

Vulcan's analogue in Greek mythology is the god Hephaestus.

About Vulcan

Vulcan's forge was believed to be situated beneath Mount Etna in Sicily or under the Aeolian island of Vulcano in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

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 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 and Vulcan (the governor of fire) is the artist in it: 'He who is Vulcan has the power of the art ... He enjoined fire, and Vulcan, who is the lord of fire, to do the rest ... And he who governs fire is Vulcan, even if he be a cook or a man who tends the stove. It is an art, and Vulcan is its artist. He who is a Vulcan has mastered this art;

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 (1605):

Abandoning Minerva and wisdom they play court to the sooty smith Vulcan and his pots and pans. 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 arrows 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; 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;

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;

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;