Smell

In the alchemists' abundant imagery, there are actually only two smells: the delightful fragrance and the repulsive stench.

The fragrance is wholly positive and is usually expressed with flowers; its sweetness is a symbol of renewed life; in church history and Gnosticism, it is an expression of the Holy Spirit.

The stench is associated with the impure, with death, decay, and the underworld or hell; for alchemists, it is an expression of putrefactio, a symbol of "moral darkness." The mercurial serpent was linked to a malignant stench, and it was said to "be found on dung heaps." (Mysterium Coniunctionis, par. 472.)

The symbol of the nose is of course related; in some contexts, it stands for intuition; to "smell something out." Since smell is invisible and belongs to the air, it is connected to spirit and consequently to the dead. Smell reveals the true essence of something, where the sulfurous Devil is a nearby example. We can note that "essence" means both "true nature" and "pleasant-smelling etheric oil," and in this context, further observe that "etheric" means "spiritualized" and so on. Smell, through intuition, discovers the value of something invisible.

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