Le Acque Corrosive/en

📖 Fonte primaria: corpus Ur (1927-1928) — Krur (1929)
Questa pagina deriva direttamente dal corpus della rivista Ur (1927-1928) e Krur (1929) curata dal Gruppo di UR sotto la direzione di Julius Evola con la partecipazione di Arturo Reghini, Giulio Parise, Ercole Quadrelli, Guido De Giorgio, Luigi Valli, Ercole Quadrelli (Abraxa) e altri collaboratori. Le tre annate sono state riedite a cura di Evola con il titolo Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io. Documenti Drive ISI-CNV: 📖 UR-KRUR — Corpus integrale OCR rivisto — le tre annate complete della rivista (Ur 1927, Ur 1928, Krur 1929) in formato Google Doc consultabile. 📁 Folder EVOLA UR KRUR — cartella Drive ISI-CNV con tutti i materiali UR-KRUR e l'opera evoliana correlata. Edizione di riferimento: Julius Evola (a cura di), Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io, 3 voll., Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma, ed. critica 1971. Trad. fr.: Introduction à la magie, trad. Gérard Boulanger, Milano, Archè, 1984.

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The «corrosive waters» (also «poison-waters», «tartar water», «philosophical vinegar», «strong waters», «philosophical corrosives») are — in the technical language of the alchemical-hermetic tradition — those operative agents that produce in the body and soul of the initiate a sudden and radical dissolution of ordinary structures, violently accelerating the process of «initiatic death» that ordinary disciplinary paths achieve through slow asceticism. They include physical substances (sacred wine, hashish, opium, peyote, agarics, and — in the Indian tantric tradition and certain ancient Dionysian currents — blood and sexual fluids), extreme corporeal techniques (breath suspension, sensory deprivation, exposure to intense cold or heat, exasperated physical trials), relational substances (magical-initiatic use of sexual union, of the woman as «door», of blood ties), and shock events (controlled terror, fear of death, ritual mourning).

The theme is systematically treated by Iagla — pseudonym of Ercole Quadrelli, one of the most learned collaborators of the UR Group — in the article «Sulle «Acque Corrosive»» published in UR year II (1928), pp. 129-135, and taken up in many other places in the journal by various authors. It constitutes one of the most delicate and least communicated nuclei of the entire corpus, because it touches on practices that require rigorous preliminary preparation and that, applied outside the appropriate initiatic context, are destructive rather than realising.

In the thought of the Paret-ISI-CNV School, the theme of corrosive waters is not central to ordinary work — the School privileges the path of patient construction of the nucleus, according to Abraxa's «Dry Way» (cf. The Three Ways — Magic Mysticism Yoga) — but is thematised here for doctrinal clarity, because anyone who studies the tradition encounters it in classical texts and needs a correct map to avoid misunderstanding. This page expounds the concept, the danger, and the traditional criteria for the legitimacy of resorting to these methods.

I. The dual way of alchemy: slow and violent

Iagla introduces the theme by referring to the fundamental principle of the tradition: every authentic alchemical work produces a radical change in the operator's state — the so-called «resurrection» of the hermetic philosophers, in which «an incorporeal essence has immersed itself in the body almost as in a dense medium, and from then on moves in a dark world». The task is to dissolve this density, subtilise it, with the very power of the soul. But to produce this action, the soul itself needs a new quality — secret of the philosophers — which can be induced in two fundamentally different ways:

Direct (internal) way: the long patient work of the individual «in the dark, as if boring a tunnel. The blows accumulate (disciplines, rites, intentions) — with the rhythm of the return of the water of Eliphas Levi — while you may notice nothing, perceive no result, no tangible fruit. Suddenly the last wall falls: a flood of free air, of light, invests you». Its discipline is to ignite in the soul a «astral fire, a magical and philosophical fire», after which «the soul reacts on what envelops it, thins the fabric of density, exalts a new vibratility until a perfect diaphanous quality is produced». It is the Dry Way of Abraxa, with possible auxiliary use of corrosive waters only once the nucleus is fixed
Inverse (external) way — that of corrosive waters in the proper sense: «Reverse the method, and stop at the principle of this inverse direction». «Instead of dissolving the body through the preliminary awakening of the soul, compel the soul to awaken through special agents, which provoke sudden reactions in the deepest structure of the body's forces, towards abrupt leaps to abnormal stages of vibratility and fluidic instability». It is the Tantric Way / Dionysian / of «violence at the gate of heaven»

Iagla describes it with images of great power:

«It is the viper's bite, which suddenly pulls the ground from under you. Then what happens: If you, faster than lightning, know how to stop — you fix an absolute light; or you let yourself be surprised, and then you collapse, as if under a blow. A good risk, then: a superb game for gamblers of great style: for those who disdain half-measures and the patient discipline of slow constructions. They are the «violences at the gate of heaven».»

II. The mechanics of corrosive waters

Iagla expounds the precise mechanics of how these substances and techniques operate. The action is physico-chemical on the body, but subtly magical on the soul. The corrosive waters corrode the ordinary structure of the body — the interlocking of stable psycho-physical forces — and for that brief interval of disintegration liberate deep forces that normal waking consciousness keeps contained:

They unbind the ordinary knots of the psychophysical system — temporarily dissolve the structure that makes a person what they are
They liberate the exalted forces that lie below the threshold: «modes of an exalted force that would pass into transcendent sensations» (Novalis, cited by Iagla)
They open thresholds onto non-ordinary intelligences and states of consciousness — visions, presences, precognitive phenomena, communications with one's own deep nucleus or with third entities
They expose simultaneously to the action of obsessions — «true obsessions — or, better said, the hypertrophy of what habitual obsessions are, because, outside the liberated, there is no one among mortals who, in one form or another, is not an obsessed person»

The danger, clearly formulated by Iagla, is twofold:

If the operator's nucleus is not already fixed and robust: the disintegration does not produce awakening but pathological fragmentation of the personality. «All those who in vulgar life abandon themselves to the use of these substances are precisely on this plane». The consequence is visionarism, deformed clairvoyance, dependence, vice, obsession, progressive dissolution
If the liberated forces discharge onto the lower faculties: instead of sublimating into the «force of the pure self», they «abort» in two typical directions:

Faculty of imagination seized: «the fantastic world of visionaries bursts forth, the orgy of forms and colours of false clairvoyants, the dreams full of subtle and captivating sensations of opium-eaters and hashish-eaters»
Faculty of sensation seized: a world of «strange, indefinable, intoxicating voluptuousness is created, which gradually becomes a need for the soul. Vice is created»

Iagla's warning is therefore that daily alcohol is a corrosive water of mitigated efficiency that produces in small doses the same effects as stronger substances: disintegration, loss of control, lowering of the nucleus, dependence. The difference between vulgar abuse and magical use of corrosive waters lies entirely in the preliminary structure of the operator and in the precision of the ritual context.

III. The «soma»: the beverage of immortality

Iagla reports with great rigour the traditional doctrine on the «soma» — the mythical «beverage of immortality» cited in multiple traditions as the sacred means for accessing higher states. His footnote in the article is of doctrinal importance:

«In the special reference to wine, it should be remembered that in antiquity it was often considered a sacred beverage. In Eastern traditions it is said that the «beverage of immortality» — the Persian Haoma, the Vedic Soma — at a certain epoch was no longer «known», whence it was necessary to replace it, in sacrificial rites, with another beverage that was no more than a reflection of the primitive Soma: and this role was held, essentially, by wine, to which refers, among the Greeks, a good part of the legend of Dionysus. And the relation of wine to initiatic wisdom is found in various other traditions, e.g. in that of the Persian Sufis (R. Guénon, Le Roi du Monde, Paris, 1926, ch. VI).»

The Vedic soma (Sanskrit soma), the Avestan-Zoroastrian haoma, the Dionysian wine, the sacred wine of the Christian tradition (blood of Christ in the Eucharist), the mead of Nordic traditions, the ambrosia of the Olympians are different formulations of the same traditional science: the existence of a privileged corrosive water, legitimately used in ritual contexts, operatively effective for producing higher states of consciousness. The loss of the science of the original soma, in a certain epoch, forced traditions to use wine as an attenuated substitute — with the consequence, obviously, that wine degenerated into a profane beverage has lost its original sacred virtue.

IV. Corrosive waters in the vision of the UR Group

The articles of the UR Group on the subject — attributable both to Iagla (UR 1928 pp. 129-135) and to other pseudonyms (Abraxa 1927, reprises by Leo, EA, Pietro Negri in various issues) — converge on four firm doctrinal points:

Corrosive waters are a legitimate instrument of the initiatic tradition — not a modern invention, not a degeneration, not an «inferior» way. They have been used always, as demonstrated by the Dionysian Mysteries, Indian tantric practices, certain Sufi currents, the sacrifice of Vedic soma
They are, however, a reserved instrument — never a starting point for the neophyte, always a possible integration into an already constituted path of discipline. Cf. Abraxa's formulation (UR 1927 n. 3, p. 48): «Only then [with the nucleus constituted] will you be able to use with profit, as an auxiliary, some «corrosive water» […]; but if that nucleus were not already constituted, they would lead you through dissolution not above but below the human condition»
They require expert initiatic direction — the autodidact who approaches these substances outside a school, for personal experimentation or for the search for altered states, almost inevitably produces upon themselves visionarism, dependence, obsession. This is exactly what has historically happened to the vast majority of experimenters with psychoactive substances in the 20th and 21st centuries
They are inseparable from a ritual and symbolic context — the substance is always co-activated by invocations, gestures, sacred context, presence of the master or the chain. The bare substance, taken in a profane context, does not operate its alchemical virtue but only its raw pharmacological effects

This explains the firm position of the Paret-ISI-CNV School — and of the entire authentic hermetic tradition — against the uninformed use of psychoactive substances as a spiritual «shortcut». It is not moral prohibitionism: it is technical competence. He who knows how corrosive water operates also knows why a certain widespread abandonment today to synthetic substances, DIY psychedelics, home hyperventilation practices, etc., produces regularly pathological outcomes rather than realising outcomes.

V. «Corrosive waters» in related domains

Iagla observes — and the point is doctrinally important — that «corrosive waters» does not designate only chemical or vegetable substances, but a broader class of operative agents that share the quality of violently disintegrating the ordinary structure. Among them:

Breath suspension (Indian kumbhaka, advanced pranayama exercises) — prolonged apnea produces modified states of consciousness physiologically
Total sleep deprivation for several days — a practice used in many initiatic traditions to «force» thresholds
Ritual excess and ecstasy — prolonged dervish dances, Dionysian orgiastic rites, certain Sufi dhikr
Use of the woman in tantric rites of the «left hand» (vāmācāra) — sexual union as androgynous alchemical agent
Controlled terror events — initiatic trials with suspension, simulation of death, shock events provoked with ritual purpose
Exposure to thermal extremes — Nordic ice baths, ritual sauna, sweat lodges of Amerindian traditions
Prolonged fasts with initiatic purpose
Authentic traumatic events — a bereavement, a serious illness, an existential crisis, a war: which tradition recognises as «spontaneous corrosive water» sent by life itself, and which he who has discipline can transform into a path of realisation

Iagla explicitly formulates: «Magically, it acts as a corrosive water: even in reaction to the individual» — even events of ordinary life, taken in the right way by one who already has the nucleus constituted, can functionally substitute for substances. It is in this sense that the Paret-ISI-CNV School teaches not to go looking for corrosive waters in the laboratory or in illegal commerce: life itself, lived integrally, regularly provides the corrosive waters the initiate needs. One need only recognise them when they arrive and know how to manage them without being either disintegrated or made dependent.

VI. Bibliography

Iagla [Ercole Quadrelli], Sulle «Acque Corrosive», in UR — Rivista di indirizzi per una Scienza dell'Io, year II (1928), pp. 129-135 — [main primary source]
Abraxa, Le Tre Vie, in UR year I (1927), pp. 45-49 — the passage on «auxiliary corrosive waters» with the nucleus constituted
Pietro Negri / Leo / EA, various occurrences in UR 1927-1928 and KRUR 1929 on use and dangers
René Guénon, Le Roi du Monde, Paris 1926, ch. VI — on Soma-Haoma-sacred wine
Mircea Eliade, Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase, Paris 1951 — on traditional ecstatic techniques, including substances and trials
R. Gordon Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Harcourt 1968 — mycological thesis on Vedic soma (identification with Amanita muscaria)
Albert Hofmann, R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, Harcourt 1978 — thesis on ergotine as Eleusinian kykeon

Sources

Primary sources of the UR-KRUR corpus

The primary reference source for this page is the corpus of the journal Ur (1927-1928) and Krur (1929), edited by the UR Group directed by Julius Evola with the participation of Arturo Reghini, Giulio Parise, Ercole Quadrelli, Guido De Giorgio, Luigi Valli and other collaborators. The three annual volumes have been reprinted edited by Julius Evola under the title Introduction to Magic (3 vols., Milan, Bocca / Casa Editrice Atanòr / Edizioni Mediterranee, various editions from 1955; critical ed. Mediterranee, Rome, 1971).

Gruppo di UR, Rivista Ur, years 1927-1928 (12 issues each).
Gruppo di KRUR, Rivista Krur, year 1929 (12 issues).
Julius Evola (ed.), Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io, 3 vols., Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, critical ed. 1971 (and subsequent reprints).
French edition: Groupe d'Ur, Introduction à la magie, trans. Gérard Boulanger, Milan, Archè, 1984.

OCR Corpus Drive ISI-CNV — the entire corpus of the three UR-KRUR annual volumes is available in revised OCR: Drive Document with the three complete annual volumes (folder EVOLA UR KRUR).

Historical-traditional framework

Julius Evola, La Tradizione Ermetica, Bari, Laterza, 1931 (and reprints Mediterranee).
Julius Evola, Il Cammino del Cinabro, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1963 (intellectual autobiography with first-hand account of the UR-KRUR experience).
Arturo Reghini, I Numeri Sacri nella Tradizione Pitagorica Massonica, Rome, Atanòr, 1947.
Arturo Reghini, Per la Restituzione della Geometria Pitagorica, Atanòr, 1935.
Renato Del Ponte, Evola e il magico Gruppo di UR, Borzano (RE), SeaR, 1994.
Gianfranco de Turris (ed.), Esoterismo e Fascismo, Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, 2006.

Secondary reference bibliography

Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Equinox, 2013 (chapters on the Italian traditionalist school).
Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, SUNY Press, 1994 (for the context of the European esoteric revival).
Marco Paret, ISI-CNV materials on the Italian hermetic tradition and the link between UR-KRUR, operative alchemy and the School's magnetism.