What Is a Rebis? | AlchemyHQ

The image in the Rosarium Philosophorum (printed in the 1550s) is the most reproduced single figure in the alchemical visual canon, and the image is of a single body with two faces — one male, sun-crowned, on the right; one female, moon-crowned, on the left. The figure holds a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. The figure stands on a dragon. Below the figure, the Latin caption reads Rebis, the “double thing.” The image is the rebis, the hermaphroditic figure that represents the perfected matter of the magnum opus, the philosopher’s stone in its final form, the goal of the alchemical work (Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, 2013, pp. 95-100; Forshaw, “The ‘Monas Hieroglyphica’ and the Alchemical Rebis,” in Secret Texts, 2019; Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Philosophy, 2016; Abraham, Dictionnaire d’alchimie, 2010; Kahn, L’Alchimie et la Tradition, 2014). The image is striking, and the striking-ness is the point.

The word and the figure

The word rebis comes from the Latin res (“thing”) and bis (“twice” or “twofold”), meaning “a double thing.” The term is used in the alchemical tradition to refer to the hermaphroditic figure that represents the perfected matter of the magnum opus. The rebis is, in the alchemical tradition, the integration of the opposites. The active and the passive, the masculine and the feminine, the spirit and the body, the sun and the moon, the gold and the silver — all of these dualities are united in the rebis, and the rebis is the symbol of the unity that the alchemical work is meant to produce. The rebis is not a partial or a transitional figure. The rebis is the complete and final figure, the goal of the work, the philosopher’s stone made visible (Abraham, 2010).

The rebis is also the symbol of the integration of the human being with the cosmos. The alchemist who has produced the rebis has achieved the integration of the human with the divine, the body with the spirit, the self with the cosmos. The integration is the deepest claim of the alchemical tradition, and the rebis is the visual expression of the claim. The reader who treats the rebis as a curiosity is missing what the alchemists were after.

The visual tradition

The rebis is one of the most distinctive and most reproduced images in the alchemical visual tradition, and the visual tradition is large. The Rosarium figure described above is the most famous, but the rebis appears in many other forms: crowned with a single crown of gold and silver, holding a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other, surrounded by the sun and the moon; sometimes with wings; sometimes with two heads (one male, one female); sometimes with a single head that is androgynous. The variety of forms is itself significant. The alchemists were not committed to a single canonical image. They were working with a visual idea, and the idea was more important than any particular representation (Szulakowska, 2016).

The rebis image has been reproduced countless times in the alchemical literature, and the image has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the alchemical tradition. The image appears in the Splendor Solis, the Atalanta Fugiens of Michael Maier, the Musaum Hermeticum, the Theatrum Chemicum, and a long list of other alchemical treatises. The cluster on alchemy in art takes up the visual tradition in detail.

The marriage of Sol and Luna

The rebis is the offspring of the alchemical marriage of Sol and Luna, the king and the queen, the sun and the moon, and the marriage is one of the central images of the alchemical tradition. The Rosarium Philosophorum describes the marriage in detail, and the description is one of the most quoted passages in the alchemical literature.

The marriage of Sol and Luna is the union of the opposites that is the goal of the alchemical work. Sol is the active principle, associated with gold, with the sun, with the spirit, with the color red. Luna is the receptive principle, associated with silver, with the moon, with the body, with the color white. The marriage is the union of the two, the production of the rebis that is the goal of the work. A note on the polarity: the active/passive, masculine/feminine scheme in the Latin tradition is not always consistent. Several medieval and Renaissance texts invert or neutralize the polarity, and the rebis itself, as a unified male-female figure, transcends the simple binary. The inconsistency is part of the tradition, and the part is worth being clear about.

The alchemists used a variety of images to represent the marriage. The most common are the king and the queen in an embrace, the sun and the moon in conjunction, the eagle and the lion in a single body, and the red man and the white woman in an embrace. The images are all variations on the same theme: the union of the opposites, the integration of the dualities, the production of the rebis.

The rebis and the alchemical work

The rebis is the goal of the alchemical work, and the alchemist who has produced the rebis has achieved the integration that the alchemical tradition is working toward. The rebis is the philosopher’s stone in its final form, the elixir of life in its most potent form, the universal medicine that can cure all diseases and confer immortality. The rebis is also the symbol of the alchemical practitioner who has completed the work. The alchemist who has produced the rebis has himself or herself become the rebis, the integrated being who has achieved the union of the opposites.

Jakob Böhme’s De signatura rerum (1621) and his later Mysterium magnum (1623) discuss the rebis and the signature of the integrated being in a Christian mystical register that influenced later theosophical and anthroposophical readings (Böhme, De signatura rerum, 1621). Böhme’s reading is one of the more interesting because it tries to take the alchemical symbol seriously as a Christian theological concept, and the seriousness is part of why Böhme’s reading has been influential.

The rebis in the modern reception

The rebis remains a powerful symbol in the modern reception of the alchemical tradition, and the reception is the place where most contemporary readers encounter the figure. The Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Anthroposophical Society, and the various modern Rosicrucian orders all use the rebis as a central symbol in their alchemical vocabulary. The rebis is, in these traditions, a symbol of the integration of the human being with the divine, the union of the opposites, the goal of the spiritual life.

The Jungian reading of the rebis, developed by Carl Gustav Jung in the twentieth century, treats the figure as a representation of the self, the integrated psyche. On the Jungian reading, the rebis is the symbol of the integration of the conscious and unconscious elements of the personality, the union of the animus and the anima, the production of the integrated self. The Jungian reading has been influential in the modern reception of the rebis, and the reading is one of the reasons the rebis has been taken up by depth psychology and by the wider culture.

The rebis has also been an important source of inspiration for modern artists, particularly the Surrealists, who were drawn to the alchemical visual tradition in the 1920s and 1930s. The cluster on alchemy in art examines the visual tradition in detail, and the rebis is one of the most distinctive features of that tradition.

The rebis and gender

The rebis raises interesting questions about the gender symbolism of the alchemical tradition, and the questions are worth being clear about. The alchemists worked within a tradition that was deeply marked by the gender hierarchies of the medieval and early modern periods, and the rebis is, in a meaningful sense, a transgression of the gender hierarchy: the rebis is a single body that is both male and female, and the rebis is a symbol of the integration that the alchemical tradition is working toward.

The rebis can be read as a feminist symbol, a symbol of the integration of the masculine and the feminine, a symbol of the transcendence of the gender hierarchy. The rebis can also be read as a traditional symbol, a symbol of the union of the opposites within the inherited gender hierarchy. The reading depends on the context, and the rebis has been read in both ways in the modern reception of the alchemical tradition. The most useful reading, in my view, is to note that the rebis is doing both kinds of work at once, and the work is more interesting for the tension between them. The alchemists were inheritors of a tradition with rigid gender categories, and they produced a symbol that puts the categories in question. The tension is part of the symbol, and the part is the part most worth attending to.

The rebis is, in any case, a powerful symbol that has resonated with the modern imagination. The rebis is a symbol of the human aspiration to integration, wholeness, and the recovery of the original unity of the human being with the cosmos. The symbol has not been exhausted, and the exhaustion is not in sight.