Quinta da Regaleira is a Portuguese estate, consisting in the main palace, an outdoor garden and a cave system; it’s located in the town of Sintra, in the northwest of Lisbon.
This estate is practically a proper alchemical treatise written in stone. The construction began in 1910 on the project of the Italian architect Luigi Manini and on the commission of António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro, a businessman who made fortune with coffee plantations in Brazil.
In this estate you can find statues, ponds, caves, temples, labyrinths, etc ... all surrounded by a vast garden and all types of vegetation. The garden looks more well-finished on the south side of the estate, and, as you ascend to the north, the vegetation takes over becoming wilder and wilder. Each building contained within the estate is decorated with many hermetic symbols and forms difficult to interpret, a true hidden maze, full of secrets. All the elements are placed on the lot in this way they can thus build a true esoteric initiatory path.
Entrance:
The first thing you can notice by entering this fascinating mansion is a fake door, which is included in the outer wall; this already makes the visitor aware of the existence of an occult message behind these walls. In fact, just above this wall, not far from the "green lion", we can see four animal figures: a turtle, a salamander, a snail and a toad, respectively, representing the four elements: water, fire, earth and air; as well they represent the four primary alchemical qualities: Hot, cold, dry, wet.
The salamander represents the element of fire, the sacred fire of the alchemists, also known as hidden sulfur, as it never manifests itself in the sight of the alchemical operator. The salamander is the reagent between sulphur - earth - toad ♁ and water - turtle ☿ (in Alchemy, it is believed that the purest sulfur combined with the purest mercury can react giving gold as result) , so it acts as a salt element.
The Turtle is in this context a symbol of the water element, and therefore represents the philosophical mercury, being however a very rare symbol in alchemical works and treatise.
The Toad is the symbol of Nigredo, or the Black Work of Alchemy, the moment when matter itself, still in its primordial and chaotic state, dissolves as it rots. The toad connected to the Nigredo phase is very common in medieval alchemical treatieses.
Throughout the whole estate we find direct or indirect references to the snail, from the spiral on the outer wall, to the numerous spiral stairs, directed allusions to the shape of the spiral, a very common symbol in hermetic studies.
In ancient Rome, the snail was a very useful food, especially as an offering during funerals, since the spiral represented the resurrection and the return of the dead to the living world.
The Iron Door:
The three iron gates that separate the mansion from the outside can have various interpretations within an alchemy reading. In the first place, iron is the emblematic metal of the god Vulcan, the same deity is represented in a statue on the path called 'Passeio dos Deuses’ (the path of the Gods), not far from the entrance. The number 3 in reference to the doors can be a reference to Hermes Trismegistus, who possessed the three parts of the universal philosophy (the closest statue to the main building of the estate, placed right in the point where the initiatic journey begins, it’s exactly the Hermes one).
Iron, moreover, is a highly important metal in alchemy; it’s one of the seven major metals; the number seven is also one of the most recurring numbers in the estate.
The Jars of the Garden:
There are numerous decorated jars in Quinta da Regaleira gardens, many of them have Baphomets combined with grapes on their surface. They are probably representing vases for grapes harvesting, although Fulcanelli himself interprets this kind of representations as "pots containing the wine of philosophers, mercury”. An official interpretation presents them as Jupiter’s Horn of Abundance.
We can also observe on these jars some sheep heads, which in alchemy represent the first phase of transformation operations: the calcination.
The Path of the Gods:
Located not far from the main entrance of the Quinta, we find a group of statues representing divinities of Greek-Roman mythology: Hermes, Volcano, Dionysus, Pan, Ceres, Flora, Aphrodite, Orpheus and Fortune.
Hermes: Greek mythological figure of great importance for the alchemical art, which is called as well “the hermetic art". Traditionally, Hermes was a pre-Pharaonic monarch, author of the Emerald Tablet. The legend tells that he met Alexander The Great in the great pyramid of Giza, for this reason, the statue is placed inside the Quinta near the "Egyptian House" (a building in the Quinta, once used as a pool, to symbolize dissolution " SOLVE "), as the beginning of the initiatory journey.
The Hermes statue presents one of the most famous esoteric symbols, the Caduceus; a laurel stick with two snakes twisting around it, which represent solar / masculine and lunar / female strength.
Dionysus: This divinity alludes to the mercury element and knowledge. This god represents the primordial part of the human soul. The myth tells that Dionysus was born from Zeus's love for Semele, daughter of Cadmo, the king of Tebe. Hera, insanely jelous, after provoking the death of Semele with a trick, ordered the Titans to kill him. Of his dismembered body only the heart remained intact, and from that Dionysius could resurrect. All this resumes the essence of alchemical transformation. The one who undertake the sapiential path of self-knowledge must face a transformation that implies the transition from the historical dimension of time (Cronos) to the transcendent dimension of the Aion, the time of the gods.
Pan: A demigod, son of Penelope and Hermes, he is a reference to the fundamental principle of alchemical cosmology, expressed in the Emerald Tablet: "All is One", which in Greek translates as "ἒν τὸ Πᾶν - En to Pà n". Three words, as three are the constituent elements of matter (Sulfur, Mercury and Salt); Seven letters, as seven are the alchemical metals, seven operations, seven planets.
Venus: The goddess of love, is the ultimate symbol of cosmic love, indispensable energy that unites the elements of matter catalyzing the reaction.
Orpheus: Known above all for the legend that narrates his descent into the underworld, Orpheus is also mentioned by Rufinus, a fourth-century author who writes: "According to Orpheus, there was first a confusing mixture of things, which was called chaos. An immense chaos from which everything was born, which is neither cold nor hot, neither humid nor dry, nor darkness nor light, but all mixed eternal and infinite."
It is from this mineral chaos, to which the Orphic mysteries also refer, that the alchemist must extract the active and passive compounds necessary for his work.
Ceres and Flora: These goddesses of vegetation and nature meet different alchemical interpretations in the same way. Flora is the symbol of fertility, of fructification, which the raw material undergoes when enclosed in the glass container called "philosophical egg", of the vegetable development of matter in its purest form, known as a philosopher's stone or universal medicine.
Vulcan: the first alchemist to name Vulcan as the patron of the Hermetic Art was Paracelsus, in reference to the mastery with which this god manipulated metals and forges.
According to the legend, Venus, wife of Vulcan, fell in love with Mars and with him she betrayed her husband in his own bridal chamber. The Sun discovered adultery and immediately revealed it to Vulcan. This, infuriated, took revenge by building an invisible net, to be tied around the bed. In this way the two lovers, caught red-handed during their furtive encounter, are trapped in the net. This net is interpreted as an allusion to fixation, an operation by which unites and fixes the opposites (Mercury - Aphrodite / Venus and Sulfur - Mars). In this context, Vulcan would have been the salt of the philosophers. The Greek myths tell us that the god Vulcan was able to live in the center of the volcanoes (it is said he lived in Etna), enduring great heat, and in fact Paracelsus asserted that one of the properties of Salt is incombustibility.
Fortuna: This goddess is represented, as well as a statue on the path of the Gods, also in the mosaic inside the chapel, like seven Wheels of Fortune. According to Fulcanelli, the wheel started moving as a result of a word (divine revelation), and each rotation had to last as long as a complete human life.
The Terrace of the celestial worlds:
In this large terrace, built together with the entrance of the Guardians, there is a tower built by Carvalho Monteiro, which in its shape resembles a Sumerian or Babylonian Ziggurat.
The tower had as its purpose the observation of the stars, fundamental for the success of the alchemical work.
It is precisely this particular that differentiates the alchemical work from the proudly empirical and parallel chemistry. In reality, the observation of the stars served to realize the time that each operation required, in a historical time when there were no clocks.
There are many references to Heaven / Earth in the Quinta, such as the juxtaposition between Ziggurat and Initiation Well.
Located in front of the tower called Ziggurat, we find a fountain with two dragons, one representing sulfur, hot and dry, the other representing Mercury, cold and humidity.
At the base of this fountain we find small sculptures in the shape of a shell, the symbol par excellence of San Tiago, the patron saint of medieval alchemists.
The fountain of Abundance:
This fountain is decorated with a bas-relief representing two fish interweaving their tails, recalling the stick of Hermes, the Caduceus, and the philosopher's stone in its first state of transformation: in water. Above them we still find a shell representing the path of St. Tiago de Compostela.
At the top of the composition we find the letters CM, the omnipresent monogram of Carvalho Monteiro. In front of this fountain we find a semicircle terrace, set in it we find a kind of throne, placed in front of a marble table, apparently an altar. Finally, at the edge of the terrace we find two large vases and two figures of Baphomet carved on them.
The Baphomet is an allegory to represent nature (the faun, the god Pan) the feminine or lunar principle (represented by the horns of the creature) and the masculine or solar principle (represented by the pointed beard of the creature, like a ray of sunshine).
The presence of numerous decorative Baphomet within the estate is a confirmation of belonging to some esoteric order of Carvalho Monteiro.
The Cave of Leda:
Constructed in such a way as to form an ogival chamber capable of hosting an assembly of people as numerous as in the fountain of abundance, the cave is an allegory of the Alchemical Rebis, the result of an alchemical marriage with the aim of obtaining the philosopher's stone. In order for the Rebis to happen, a dark and humid place is needed, just like the cave of Leda.
From the roof hangs a chandelier, probably working in oil, in the form of a seal of Solomon, the six-pointed star.
At the center of a small lake we find the statue of Leda, with Jupiter at its side in the form of a swan.
Legend has it that Jupiter / Zeus, falling in love with Leda, turned into a swan to mate with her. Leda gave birth to two eggs, from which Castore and Polluce, Elena and Clitennestra were born.
The Dove, present in this statue but absent in the original myth, held in hand by Leda, is a symbolic value attributed to it intentionally by Monteiro. The white dove represents the success of the union between the swan (male, sulfur) and Leda (female, mercury), to give rise to the Rebis, represented by a Dolphin, a decorative element very present in the estate.
The Azulejo of the XIV Station:
This Azulejo represents the fourteenth station of the Via Sacra (The sacred path), which corresponds to the burial place of Jesus Christ. In the representation we see a strange cross, with the inscription INRI placed on it, but Christ is not present. The three nails of the crucifixion are very highlighted, which can refer to the three Works of Ars Magna, being Christ in hermetic art a common metaphor of the alchemical gold. The INRI written moreover, more than the Roman acronym "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum", refers to the acronym of the Rosicrucian alchemical tradition "Igne Natura Renovatur Integra", which means "Through fire, nature is completely renewed”.
The Initiation Well:
This well was not built with the intention of collecting water but as the main element of a Masonic ceremony.
The main symbolic element of this well is the descending path into the underground, a sort of path towards the underworld that will then lead to the ascent into the light. The descent into the well is also an allusion to the famous phrase of Basil Valentine
"Visit Interiora Terrae Rectifying Invenitis Occultum Lapidem (Veram Medicinam)"
that in English can be translated with "Visit the inside of the earth, and rectifying (with subsequent purifications) you will find the hidden stone (which is the real medicine) ", this sentence forms the acronym V.I.T.R.I.O.L.V.M.
This is a kind of invitation to investigate one's soul and one's spirit to purify oneself which is a parallel process to the production of the philosopher's stone.
The expression indicated the need to descend into the bowels of the earth, as well as into the dark corners of the soul, to achieve initiation, by operating that transmutation of matter into the spirit that would have enabled the alchemist to gain immortality and to bring wisdom to light, going through the different phases of the alchemical Work, that are: nigredo, albedo, rubedo.
For this purpose, it was necessary an acid such as vitriol, the universal dissolving salt, represented as a green lion in the estate, able to dissolve even the hardest stone and cause the most radical transformations, probably the most important liquid of the Great Work.
The well represented the beginning of the initiatory ritual, the neophyte adept descended the spiral staircase, through nine platforms (it is said there is a reference to the nine infernal circles) and the twenty-two arches (22 as the major arcana of the Tarots) while the others adepts observed him in a circle on the bottom of the well. Reached the bottom, on which there is a mosaic representing the cross of the Templars, the neophyte was accompanied through a door that led to an underground gallery. Here there was a vase-shaped sink, to symbolize the first phase of purification from the nigredo. Then the neophyte was led through the dark tunnel, which emerged at the height of the caves and the pond, to represent the rebirth of the soul.
Quinta da Regaleira is a truly unique Alchemic Mansion, its wealth of Masonic / alchemical symbols makes it an obligatory stop for all those who wish to learn the Hermetic Art.
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