According to Rockwood (1973, pp. viii-x) Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen has received scholarly critique suggesting the poem is esoteric or magical, requiring a "specifically Renaissance understanding of the (Hermetic) mysteries" found in Book I. "Esoteric alchemy was a spiritual discipline, a mystical and symbolic procedure by which 'base metal,' i.e. the natural man "the raw material provided by Nature) can be transmuted into 'philosophical gold,' i.e. a true gentleman."
(One avenue of logic behind alchemy was that since all matter, according to Aristotle and the Greek philosophers, was comprised of fire, air, earth, and water, then it must be possible to create any substance out of these simply by combining them in the right proportions. Alchemy as a body of knowledge, came to be a quest for the secrets of transmutation of metals and discovering the Philosopher's Stone - "the physical vehicle for the 'divine spark' necessary to the process of transmutation, spiritual (or natural or physical) transmutation." For further information on this topic, consider researching Hermes Trismegistus and the Hermetic Corpus. The language or symbolism behind The Faerie Queen is psychological in nature and to further understand this, all one has to do is look at the writings of C.G. Jung. And ancient sources of esoterica is Neo-Plotanism and Gnosticism, both of which share the central idea that the universe was emanated, not created.)
In Access to Western Esotericism, Antoine Faivre proposes four essential criteria for esotericism:
- Correspondences
- Living Nature
- Imagination and Meditation
- The Experience of Transmutation
If The Faerie Queen is esoteric in nature, is it simply because it can be defined as symbolic according to Brennan's definition of symbolism - A kind of poetry which gives expression to a transcendent self by using natural objects as symbols and which therefore has a religious dimension. (The notion of the higher self is indebted, historically, to mysticism.)
In Book I of The Faerie Queen "the initial opposites are Redcrosse, the alchemical Sol, symbolizing the feminine unconscious of the male psyche. The entire unconscious (personal and collective) is symbolized by the hermaphroditic Mercurius, who can be separated into opposites and analyzed according to the alchemical axiom of Maria Prophetissa: One (una) becomes two (Duessa); two becomes three (Archimago); and out of the third comes the one as the fourth (Arthur). Una and Duessa are respectively the light and dark feminine aspect of Mercurius , Arthur and Archimago the light and the dark masculine aspects. Following the 'spiritual incest" or mysteriium coniunctionis of Sol (Redcrosse) and Luna (Duessa) comes the synthesis (appearance of Arthur) and the final consolidation (House of Holiness and betrothal to Una). The opus alchymicum progresses from the defeat of the wingless, chthonic, feminine, physical dragon (Canto I) to the victory of its opposite, the winged aerial, masculine, spiritual dragon (Canto XI), and, the ending as it began, represents the fusion of opposites, or the making of the filius philosophorum. In conclusion, Book I reflects the alchemical forms of thought and maintains that esoteric alchemy provides a key that unlocks the allegory. " (Rockwood)
Side notes:
At present, the term Esotericism is used in two different manners amongst scholars:
- Typological - Refers to the traditions of inner secrecy to what is seen as the deeper "inner mysteries of religion" as opposed to merely external or extoric religious observance.
- French Scholarship - "E'sotrisme occidental" has long been used by covering the entirety of currents and traditions, and since the 1990's this term has been rising in popularity in international academic discourse.
In some circles, the term Faerie means enchantment (spell).
Works Cited:
Rockwood, JRJ. Alchemical Forms of Thought in Book. Doctoral Thesis Excerpt. 1973. pp. viii-x.