d, etc., has vanished." (Garbe,
Samkhya-Phil., p. 326.)

In the materia (prakri) of the Samkhya system reside the three qualities
or constituents already familiar to us, Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva. Whoever
unmasks these as the play of qualities, raises himself above the world
impulses. For him, as he is freed from antagonisms, the play ceases. When
a soul is satiated with the activity of matter and turns away from it with
disdain, then matter ceases its activity for this soul with the thought,
"I am discovered." It has performed what it was destined to perform, and
withdraws from the soul that has attained the highest goal, as a dancing
girl stops dancing when she has performed her task and the spectators have
enough. But in one respect matter is unlike the dancing girl or actress;
for while they repeat their performance at request, matter "is tenderly
disposed like a woman of good family," who, if she is seen by a man,
modestly does not display herself again to his view. This last simile is
facilitated in the original texts by the fact that the Sanskrit for soul
and man has the same phonetic notation (pums, purusa). (Garbe, l. c., pp.
165 ff.)

In comparing the common mystic content of Vedanta and Samkhya-Yoga with
alchemy, I avoid the difficulty involved in establishing a detailed
concordance of the hermetic philosophy with one or another system. An
inquiry into this topic would result differently according to which
hermetic authors we should particularly consider.

It is probably worthy of notice that the Yoga-Mystics, like the
alchemists, are acquainted with the idea of the union of the sun and the
moon. Two breath or life currents are to be united, one of which
corresponds to the sun, the other to the moon. The expression Hathayoga
(where hatha = mighty effort. Cf. Garbe, Samkhya and Yoga, p. 43) will
also be interpreted so that Ha = sun, tha = moon, their union = the yoga
leading to salvation. (Cf. Hatha-Yoga-Prad., p. 1.)

The union of two things, the sun with the moon, the soul with God, the
seer with the seen, etc., is also taught by the image of the connection of
man and woman. That is the mystic marriage (Hieros gamos), a universally
widespread symbol of quite supreme importance. In alchemy the last
process, i.e., according to the viewpoint of representation, the
tincturing or the unification, is quite frequently represented in the
guise of a marriage--sometimes of a king and a queen. We cannot interchange