Join the Brother and the Sister

Two figures, identified in the text as brother and sister, reach toward one another while a cup passes between them. The motto instructs: "Conjunge fratrem cum sorore, & propina illis poculum amoris" — join the brother with the sister, and pour them a cup of love. In alchemical theory this is the conjunctio, the pairing of opposed principles (commonly glossed as sulfur and mercury, the "masculine" and "feminine" natures within a single substance) that had to unite before a more perfect body could form. Framing that union as siblings drinking together, rather than as strangers, reflects a running idea in the text that the two natures are already kin, drawn from one root. The plate sits early in the book’s sequence, before the more violent emblems of dissolution, establishing union as the process’s first precondition rather than its result.

Maker

Michael Maier (author); engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder

Medium of the original

Engraving

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons · via Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00509