ABSTRACT
This idea of conjoining the separated opposites in matter is often described as the ‘Chymicall Wedding’ and depicted in alchemical emblems as a coitus, often between a naked king and queen. It is a marriage ‘betwixt the agent and the patient … male and female, Mercury and Sulphure vive’. In this coitus is ‘the sperme conceived’, the seed of new form, eventually to be born as the ‘Philosophers’ Child’ or ‘filius macrocosmi’, i.e. the Stone.
