Pernety

Pernety, Antoine-Joseph.An alchemical treatise on the great art foreword by Todd Pratum. [Edited by Edouard Blitz.]. Edited by Edouard Blitz. Boston (MA) Occult Publ. Co., 1898 reprint, York Beach (ME) S. Weiser, 1995. xi, 255 p... 

Pernety, Antoine-Joseph. The four seasons in alchemy Adapted from the French of the wise Benedictine Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety 1716-1801. 

Pernety, Antoine-Joseph. A treatise on the great art a system of physics according to Hermetic philosophy and theory and practice of the magisterium edited by Edouard Blitz. Agnz. rhttp //www,hermetics. org/pdf/The Great Art.pdfl. 1997. 

Pernety, Antoine-Joseph. Dictionaire mytho-hermetique. Paris Bauche, 1758. 

We may begin with the most blatant alchemical clue, Astre, appearing in the title. The standard meaning of that term in hermetic terms is given by Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety in his Dictiormaire Mytho-Hermitique (1787) ... 

Accordingly, the flesh of Adam—Dr. Dumouchel as the child of Science — is tinted pale brick-red by Duchamp, while his Eve is a chalky white. That too makes sense, for Eve seems much less significant to the Alchemists Pernety only says that she represents the Magisterium of the Wise, a sign of approaching whiteness in the cooked alchemical matter. ... 

Pernety then quickly gets to the heart of a complementary theme, Duchamp s depiction of what appears to be a symbolic sibling relationship in his painting of Spring ... 

As for the matter of those potentially incestuous Siblings, or those two Freres that are depicted in Duchamp s painting, Pernety further tells us that, regarding the BROTHER, ... 

It was also pointed out by Pernety that the only ones who enter into our Magisterium are Brother and Sister, which really means [Quick-] Silver and her fellow-sufferer, or Mercury and Sulphur. ... 

Since Marcel dedicated this painting to his sister (Soeur) Suzanne, what does Pernety have to say about the Mystic Sister s cmcial role in the Great Work As he explains, it is she who must represent the White Stage of the Alchemical Operation ... 

If taken literally, which one should not do (but which some Duchamp exegetes have done) , such a union between Brother and Sister—in this case, Marcel and Suzanne—would, obviously, result in incest. Nevertheless, even this kind of apparently dysfunctional familial perversion also has own quaintly allegorical, hence rather innocent, significance in Alchemy. Given the length accorded to the topic of Inceste by Pernety, evidently there is much potential alchemical significance to the theme ... 

Duchamp also made much ado about his diagrammatic arrow, or fleche. According to Pernety s definition, The arrows of Apollo and also those fleches of Hercules only represent the Eire of the Philosophers, all according to the explanations given by Nicholas Elamel for these Hieroglyphical Fig-As Duchamp explained, his symbolic arrow was meant to indicate... 

But exactly what is the great alchemical significance of one motif briefly introduced by Poisson, and later by Duchamp in his Notes, namely Vitriol According to Pemety s dictionary, this substance is truly one of the essential and central symbols of the alchemical pursuit, thus it calls for lengthy clarification. Additionally, Pernety s explanations provide even more information about those critical clues leading towards a better recognition of the real sources of Duchamp s notorious and consistently misunderstood addiction to puns and anagrams ... 

It will similarly be recalled how Pernety described the manner that la Nature emploie pour semence des metaux, non pas precise comme semence eloignee, mais prochaine, et de quelle matiere on doit I extraire. Duchamp also makes much mention of the odd adjective eloignee, as in Note 21, Eloignement (including a comment ostensibly against military service ). 

In short, Duchamp seems to say that it is the Philosopher s Stone, itself the perennially remote goal of the Alchemists, which turns out to be an as yet uncompounded distant matter that was to be extracted by the Alchemist-Artist from Sulphur, which is nearest, and also taken from Mercury and Salt. Moreover, as Pernety said, the process is like the art of sculpture The [alchemical] process is like modeling a man you will have no success by just taking a head, an arm and the other members belonging to a perfect man. He also points out the utility underlying Duchamp s notorious non-sense. According to Pernety, once one realizes that the Alchemists hide the real names of their materials, and that they do so with almost as much care as they do the rest [of their alchemical operations], one then becomes wary in the face of the apparent ingenuity of these Hermetic Authors. This also constitutes excellent advice for anyone so rash as to deal with Marcel Duchamp s Notes. 

Nonetheless, Pernety becomes once again a useful textual source allowing for a Poisson-like decipherment of Duchamp s texte obscure. As we are now privileged to learn from Pemety, originally it was the Alchemists who routinely practised a decomposition of elements, or basic forms. Decomposition," as designated by Pernety, involves... 

And likewise, once we look up Pemety s article dealing with DISSOLUTION, we uncover what appears to have been the real meaning of Duchamp s parallelisme elementaire. According to the way Pernety defined Dissolution, ... 

This endlessly reiterated decompositional and dissolutional alchemical process properly includes, just as stated in Duchamp s analysis, a linearization. According to Pernety s complementary explanation of the LINEAR (WAY), ... 

Still, Duchamp s rigid borders seem to be blacker than black itself in this case, their meaning becomes the one described by Pernety ... 

This identification also provides the most plausible textual context for Duchamp s bizarre invention of a certain active noun, otherwise unknown in modem French Dimultiplication, obviously meaning to un-multiply or, likewise, to fail to multiply. Again, Pernety explains the hidden ideological root of a reversed action bizarrely verbalized by Duchamp ... 

Even the odd verb traverser, which was distinctively used by Duchamp to describe some unique actions pertaining to such symbols of Hermetic Force, is explained by Pernety, and even with a cogent reference to the aspiring Artist. As he observes,... 

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