The New Alchemical Salamander: Octavio Paz’s Bridge to the Other
Lyndy Abraham, author of A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, defines the alchemical significance of the salamander as “a symbol of the fiery masculine seed of metals, sulphur, the hot, dry active male principle of the opus[the circular transformation or conversion of the elements]; the red stone or elixir, the magical ‘philosopher’s stone which has the power to convert base metal to gold and cure all disease and imperfection” (Abraham 176). Octavio Paz’s poem “Salamander” uses the alchemical salamander image only to transform it from active, masculine to passive, feminine and later active, feminine in quality. The transformation of the salamander’s metaphysical nature is also conveyed through the use of the Mexican Xolotl myth as Xolotl creates a link between the living and the dead, the normal with the other. This ongoing metamorphosis of semiotic meaning maintains the salamander’s alchemical function within the opus, and the poem, while signifying that the salamander symbol is being utilized as a bridge to the other. From a Jungian perspective, the other can be seen as other human beings, the unknown, death, or the subconscious. It represents all of the parts of the human experience that are pushed aside or ignored due to social dichotomies and their conscious or subconscious implications. Because the salamander image has the power to connect man to the other, it cures man of illness and imperfection. Paz seeks to build this connection through his poem, or the word image, because when man can reach a unified state beyond duality, only then is his experience of life pure and beyond the artificial constraints of time or society, and only then may true communication and community manifest.
Paz builds the salamander’s traditional association with the active, masculine principle from the very beginning of the poem in order to establish its ability to aid in the process of individuation or the creation of the philosopher’s stone. Paz begins his poem with, “salamander (the fire wears black armor) a slow-burning stove between the jaws-marble or brick-of the chimney it is” (Paz 139). The salamander represents the hot, dry, male active principle in alchemy. Physical or experimental alchemy, versus philosophical alchemy, used the salamander within the stove to signify part of the laboratory process of converting elements in order to create gold from base matter. Popular culture associated the salamander with cooking stoves because it was believed that the salamander was “…conceived by fire, nursed by fire and perfected by fire” as Abraham reports was indicated in the alchemical text Zoroaster’s Cave (176). The salamander’s fiery quality suggests its ability to transform substances, or coalesce them, as fire can cook, heat, or burn depending on the circumstance. This ability is key to understanding the salamander’s alchemical and thus Jungian function. Richard J. Callan of the University of New Hampshire explains, “All our being longs to escape from the opposites that tear at us and to be reborn to the fullness of being in which life, death, time, eternity, and all other dualities are reconciled” (916). This longing toward the union of opposites has alchemical significance as the philosopher’s stone promises eternal life or perfect happiness and must be created in the fire through the transformation of base matter to something higher in quality. In psychological terms, the philosopher’s stone promises “…the fullness of being, wherein tensions are resolved and opposites fused into unity…the archetypal goal of life” (Callan 916). Paz’s communicates the salamander’s ability to dissolve duality by establishing its masculine, active principle in the image of a burning stove. It is masculine in its containment and active in its ability to transmute substances. Author Judith Bernard in Mexico as Theme, Image, and Contribution to Myth in the Poetry of Octavio Paz argues that “The distinguishing mark of Paz’s imagery is the quality of uniting opposing forces, which as we see, relates ultimately to his vision of a transcendental ‘otra orilla’ [other shore] and the spiritual completion of man” (Bernard 32). The salamander image is introduced to readers as able to unite oppositions from the very beginning in order to express “Salamander’s” purpose of transcending the other through a poetic voyage toward unity.
Paz’s beginning image of the salamander is traditional, but he quickly shows readers that he will be playing with the salamander motif in relation to the other with the introduction of the samurai image and its connection with the other. Paz continues, “an ecstatic tortoise, a crouched Japanese warrior” (141). The masculine association to the salamander is still present, but his introduction of the oriental style of paradox along with the image of the Japanese warrior communicates that the salamander will not remain a simple linear symbol within the poem. Instead, the salamander symbol, along with its alchemical significance, will be fleshed out by the exploration of its alternate states and significations. The salamander oven is hot and burning, but it also looks like a tortoise: slow and calm. A tortoise’s pace is unhurried and its demeanor still, yet its unknown and internal life force may still yet be ecstatic. The salamander oven may also appear to be a crouching Japanese warrior, or samurai, in his stove like armor. The crouched warrior is active potential in suspension. Its silence and stillness is requisite for its violent and ready action. At the same time, the Japanese warrior himself is a signifier of the other to readers of a more occidental cultural heritage due to his place in oriental culture, yet he still embodies the active, masculine principle of the salamander within the western alchemical tradition. Furthermore, directly after his reference to the Japanese warrior, when Paz writes, “whatever it is, martyrdom is repose impassive under torture,” he alludes to the connection between the samurai’s ritual suicide and the opus. As Encyclopaedia Brittanica mentions, “The ideal samurai was supposed to be a stoic warrior who followed an unwritten code of conduct, later formalized as Bushidō, which held bravery, honour, and personal loyalty above life itself; ritual suicide by disembowelment was institutionalized as a respected alternative to dishonour or defeat” (“Samurai” entry 1). The samurai’s virtues become a bridge to the other, to death, the unknown, or the feminine, because though his virtues compose his character, they lead him to choose death over defeat. In other words, he would choose the ultimate other over a negative state of being. Paz utilizes the samurai ritual suicide as a symbol for the opus because in the opus, the salamander must lose its active, masculine quality in order to aid the conversion of the elements for the distillation of the philosopher’s stone or a better state of being.
Paz also connects the salamander’s active, masculine principle and its negative connotations in relation to modern life. Paz writes, “Salamander in the abstract city between dizzy geometries -glass cement stone iron-” (141). The salamander’s connection to the opus, again elemental conversions necessary to distill the philosopher’s stone, is now contextualized. The salamander oven is the chemist’s laboratory and instead of an alchemical panacea, modern science has created the materials for industry and growth. Carl Jung, in his writings on alchemy, relates that “The alchemical opus deals in the main not just with chemical experiments as such, but with something resembling psychic processes expressed in pseudochemical language” (242). The city Paz introduces is alchemy taken literally not metaphorically. The salamander within semiotic relation to the city takes man further away from the philosopher’s stone or individuation. The modern city presented by Paz is not structured with natural elements; it is composed of the outcomes of laboratory experiments. Science has used its active, masculine laboratory fire to create new materials like steel. The city then grows beyond nature in size and scope with novel materials, creating growing physical structure at the expense of growing human connections. The city’s growth is like “formidable chimeras [that] appear raised up by calculus” (141). In Greek mythology, a chimera is “a fire-breathing female monster resembling a lion in the forepart, a goat in the middle, and a dragon behind,” (“Chimera” entry 1 &2). The active, masculine principle of the salamander has been exploited by modern science in order to provide powerful urban centers constructed out of materials foreign to nature. Calculus aids this practice by exploiting possibility. Paz perceives the product of advanced science and math as almost nightmarish for they impose a masculine, active vision on the unknown, or the other. The city is as unnatural as the chimera because although the other is being reached for, the other is only worked toward with a narrow vision shaped by the masculine, active principle; its industry and its smoke is the fire of the chimera monster, nature distorted beyond recognition. The change in human civilization “multiplies by profit by the side of the anonymous wall sudden poppy” (Paz 141). Money, an active medium of growth, funds the unnatural state humanity has fallen into, and the actual people of the city fall into anonymity or delirium, for they are still separated from the wholeness of the human experience. The city with its manic dimensions has not brought them closer to being at peace with the other. Although the alchemical function of the salamander is not completely lost even within the context of the city, or modern life, Paz recognizes the negative consequences of the salamander’s exaggerated active masculine principle. He describes, “Salamander Yellow claw a scrawl of red letters on a wall of salt Claw of sunlight on a heap of bones” (Paz 141). The traditional fiery colors of the alchemical salamander now appear almost completely divorced from its traditional alchemical association, which is positive. Instead of the salamander serving a beneficial metaphysical purpose, its exploited energy is utilized for destruction or as a marker of death, indicating that modern society is unable to reach the other in a healthy way if they approach it through the exploitation of the active, masculine principle.
Because the traditional meaning of the salamander has degenerated in to a negative state within the modern world, Paz relates an ending to the traditional salamander while maintaining a connection to traditional alchemy. Paz emphasizes the salamander’s active, masculine alchemical role while creating a linguistic contradiction, connecting the salamander with the other, when he writes, “Salamander ancient name of fire and ancient antidote to fire flayed sole of the foot on hot coals” (Paz 141). Paz denotes the salamander as a true emblem of fire while pointing out its paradoxical role as antidote for fire. The salamander’s dual functions maintain a connection to traditional alchemy by showing the union of opposites and the good that comes of it, the antidote. He balances out the paradox, and cleverly maintains a connection to the other, when he writes the line, “aminathus amante aminathus,” which means “asbestos lover asbestos” (Paz 141). This line also alludes to the salamander’s dual role in philosophical alchemy by its juxtaposition of poison with the lover, or the negative with the positive, or even the normal with the other. Paz demonstrates that the salamander image contains both aspects of life. Therefore, its fullness can not be contained by the label of active, masculine, and by implication, it functions as a bridge to the other. He notes its transformation, “Salamander fallen star in the endlessness of bloodstained opal ensepulchred beneath eyelids of quartz lost girl in tunnels of onyx” (Paz 141). The salamander’s potential is vast within the traditional alchemical context, but like a star that burned too bright it burnt out by the heaviness of its fullness. The salamander symbol has died in its traditional sense, at this point in the poem, as the active, masculine principle is too much aligned with a power crazed and industrial civilization, yet in its death, or period of respite, it still has a transformative power in its expressed and unified duality. This time, as Paz envisions it, the salamander is an agent of internal change. The opal, symbol of variability, is bloody, but within the depths of non-being, the other is manifested. Here Paz offers the first shift of the salamander from the active, masculine principle to the passive, feminine principle. Instead of a masculine figure resting in a time of nothingness, it is a “lost girl” sleeping under heavy, quartz lids. The masculine quality of the salamander has shifted to the feminine while dormant or transitioning through its period of death.
Although Paz is describing the feminization of the salamander, he also uses the Mexican myth of the god Xolotl to express the salamander’s function as a bridge to the other. Paz states, “The sun nailed to the sky’s center does not throb does not breathe life does not commence with out blood without the embers of sacrifice the wheel of days does not revolve” (146). The sun within the center of the sky represents time itself, and sacrifice is required for it to turn or to progress because without sacrifice, time is immobile and actually a span under one static form. As nature demonstrates, a period of ending, or experience within the other or non-life, must occur for new life to appear. Similarly, a period of ending must happen for time to shift and offer new beginnings. Paz explains the shifting of time and the period of death through the Xolotl myth. Paz notes, “Xolotl refuses to consume himself he hid himself in the corn but they found him he hid himself in the maguey but they found him he fell into the water and became the fish axolotl the Double-Being ‘and then they killed him’ Movement began, the world was set in motion the procession of dates and names” (147). He explains that Xolotl death is inevitable just as time too must die to move forward. Alchemically speaking, the Xolotl salamander transforms time itself as he transforms. Paz then further comments on Xolotl’s transformation as a result of his death or meeting with the other. Paz writes, “Xolotl the dog, guide to Hell he who dug up the bones of the fathers he who cooked the bones in a pot he who lit the fire of the years the maker of men Xolotl the penitent the burst eye that weeps for us Xolotl larva of the butterfly double of the Star sea-shell other face of the Lord of Dawn Xolotl the axolotl” (147). Xolotl, a salamander god, is now described as the other in potential and by association. Xolotl is like a butterfly larva that will burst from its dormant shell as a natural figure of beauty. Xolotl, the salamander, is named as the other face of Quetzalcoatl, the morning star and lord of the dawn. Burr Cartwright Brundage gives background information on the association. He remarks, “We believe that Xolotl was originally a stifling presence, a numen of the underworld…and thus could be logically cast as the evening star. This in turn necessarily paired him with Quetzacoatl who already was Ce Acatl, the morning star” (200). Paz uses Xolotl to express a natural connection between “normal” and other, or active and passive. Xolotl is the inverse of the day light’s solar rigor as the god shines with less heat. The morning star nor Quetzalcoatl is complete without him, just as all being necessitates connection to its shadow in order to be whole.
Paz does not see pure death in the downfall of the salamander’s purpose: instead, he recognizes it as having new potential within cyclical time as a figure of the feminine, active principle. Paz highlights that the salamander principle is changing when he states, “in the circles of basalt buried seed grain of energy in the marrow of granite Salamander, you who lay dynamite in iron’s black and blue breast you explode like a sun” (141–143). The salamander’s state of non-being shifts here to the image of a seed. As a seed lies dormant, so too does the salamander. As a seed bursts forward to blossom in another form, so too does the salamander. The salamander’s connection to alchemy is still present in Paz’s reference to dynamite, which functions from the combustion of various combined and transformed elements. At the same time, the salamander’s function is feminized, now in active form, as the dynamite’s breast explodes in to activity and life like sunshine. This bursting forth, or new state, is both painful and beautiful. Paz writes, “you open yourself like a wound you speak as a fountain speaks” (143). When Paz writes “you,” he is referring to the salamander. The new aspect of the salamander opens like a wound because transformations are often painful. The beauty is that which is communicated from the salamander’s sacrifice: the sacrifice is beautiful and healing, coming from a fountain. In alchemy, the fountain represents “the magical transforming substance” (Abraham 81). If the salamander is speaking like the fountain, then the salamander is now a conveyer of a transformed word. Nevertheless, Bernard elaborates and deepens the meaning of Paz’s fountain. She explains, “This fountain, however, is a human fountain, intimating that this inspiration does not come from a source outside man but from some untouched well within him, but shared by his fellow man: a collective reserve of unconsciously held truths” (Bernard145). Because the salamander itself has transformed and become one with its other attributes, its transmittance or word expresses the philosopher’s stone to a whole new level of the other, the reader.
Because the image of the salamander has transformed to and even beyond the active, feminine principle, Paz now argues that the philosopher’s stone is within reach, meaning individuation and true existence is now possible through the acceptance and activation of the other. He describes the alchemical work within a new context, “blade of wheat daughter of fire spirit of fire condensation of blood sublimation of blood evaporation of blood Salamander of air the rock is flame the flame is smoke red vapor” (143). The salamander is no longer stable in its significance. It is active, masculine yet active, feminine. It is represented by the vegetable and mineral. Its fullness of being allows it to be a thing of both air and fire. The opposites within the salamander no longer function separately. Paz describes the new significance of the salamander, “Salamander solar arrow lamp of the moon column of noonday name of woman scales of night (The infinite weight of light a half-drachm on your eyelashes)” (143). All levels of illumination, whether physical or metaphorical, now emanate from the salamander or the individuated being. This is the true condition and origin of life. Paz remarks, “a lizard her tongue ends in a dart her tail ends in a dart She is unhissable She is unsayable she rests upon hot coals queens it over firebrands If she carves herself in the flame she burns her monument Fire is her passion, her patience Salamander Salamater” (145). The salamander’s internal unification with the other engenders the ultimate generative principle where creation is possible because all shades of experience can be potentialized. In The Bow and the Lyre, Paz argues that “… the image is a phrase in which the plurality of meanings does not disappear. The image receives and exalts all the values of the words without excluding the primary and secondary meanings” (92). The salamander is the image in which Paz shows the reader how an image can take multiple meanings without losing its differentiated meanings. Therefore, Paz is able to metaphorically frame the new salamander as the mother of generation, for her passion activates life while her patience nurtures it, and she holds all possibility within her sign. As Paz suggests in The Bow and the Lyre, because the salamander offers readers with infinite possibility, she offers man “…his condition: being able to be. And the power of his condition consists in this. In sum, our original condition is not only lack, nor is it abundance, but possibility” (138). Paz thus leaves readers contemplating his prophetic word of man and life’s optimum possibility as whole beings.
Paz’s poem “Salamander” depends heavily on traditional alchemical attributes of the salamander’s role in the opus, yet Paz transcends tradition and presents readers with a new vision of the salamander. This new vision in alchemical imagery communicates through the poetic word the potentiality for the experience of a truer, more authentic life. Paz delivers readers a new philosopher’s stone within the salamander image. The other is not apart from man in this vision but rather a part of him. This union of opposites within man carries the traits of Jung’s individuation while expressing a fuller reality, transmitted by a deeper understanding of life. Dichotomies that frame life as one way or another limit experience. Life, though, is multiplicitous and requires all of its states to be accepted in order for it to function healthily.
Works Cited
Abraham, Lyndy. A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998.
Bernard, Judith Ann. Mexico as Theme, Image, and Contribution to Myth in the Poetry of Octavio Paz. University Microfilms, Inc: Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1964.
Brundage, Burr Cartwright. The Phoenix of the World: Quetzalcoatl and the Sky Religion. Norman, Ok: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Callan, Richard, J. “Some Parallels between Octavio Paz and Carl Jung.” Hispania. 60.4. (Dec. 1977). Pp. 916–926.
“Chimera & Samurai.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 24 Feb. 11. Entries 1 &1.
Jung, C. G. Psychology and Alchemy. Princeton University Press: New York, 1968.
Paz, Octavio. The Bow and the Lyre. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009
