Guna e Tria Prima/en

The three guṇa of the Indian tradition — sattva (clarity, balance), rajas (movement, activation) and tamas (inertia, material stability) — and the three principles of the Tria Prima of the Western alchemical tradition — Sulphur (Soufre), Mercury (Mercure) and Salt (Sel) — developed independently in distant eras and cultures, recognize the same phenomenon: three primary qualities through which the living presents itself, and from whose combination temperaments, characters, and states of consciousness emerge.

This page outlines the correspondence between the two families of principles, shows how the School of the Paret Method uses them together as a reference grid for non-verbal diagnosis, and documents the convergence with the Polyvagal theory explicitly established by Stephen Porges and collaborators in a 2018 academic article (Sullivan, Erb, Schmalzl, Moonaz, Noggle Taylor, Porges, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience).

I. The three guṇa in the Indian tradition

The Sanskrit term guṇa literally means "thread", "cord", "quality". In Sāṃkhya philosophy and subsequently in the Bhagavadgītā (particularly in chapters XIV "Guṇatraya-vibhāga-yoga" and XVIII), the three guṇa are described as the fundamental qualities of prakṛti — manifest nature. Everything that appears in the material, mental, and social world is composed of their variable combination.

Sattva (सत्त्व) — light, lucidity, balance, clarity, harmony. It manifests as mental tranquility, precise perception, unexcited joy, calm generosity, intelligence undistorted by desire or fear.
Rajas (रजस्) — movement, activation, passion, desire, agitation. It manifests as vital energy, ambition, initiative, but also as restlessness, anger, attachment to results.
Tamas (तमस्) — inertia, darkness, weight, material stability, sleep. It manifests as grounding, persistence, but also as laziness, dullness, depression, confusion.

In the classical view, none of the three guṇa is "bad" in itself. All three are necessary for the functioning of the living: without tamas there is no body or stability; without rajas there is no action or initiative; without sattva there is no clarity or discernment. The problem arises when a single guṇa becomes stably predominant beyond circumstances, fixing the person in a state that no longer corresponds to the real need.

The goal of yogic work is not to eliminate rajas or tamas in favor of sattva: it is to restore the possibility of fluid transition among the three, with sattva as the lucid organizer of the other two — exactly the structure that polyvagal theory describes as the role of the ventral vagus.

II. The Tria Prima in the Western alchemical tradition

The three Paracelsian principles — Souffre (Sulphur), Mercure (Mercury), Sel (Salt) — were systematized by Paracelso in the 16th century, developing older intuitions from the Greek and Arabic alchemical tradition. Oswald Wirth, in Symbolisme hermétique (1909), redefines them as prevailing qualities of the living and not as physical substances.

Sulphur (Souffre) — active, igneous, expansive principle. Heat, centrifugal movement, strength of the soul. Corresponds to the Indian rajas.
Mercury (Mercure) — mediating, volatile, intelligent-in-motion principle. Fluidity that binds Sulphur and Salt; for Wirth it is the central principle of the Paracelsian Tetraktys. Corresponds to the Indian sattva.
Salt (Sel) — passive, stabilizing, earthy principle. Fixed matter, conservation, grounding. Corresponds to the Indian tamas.

Here too, none of the three principles is considered bad in itself. The alchemical work — the Magnum Opus or Great Work — does not consist of eliminating two in favor of the third, but of separating, purifying, and reuniting the three principles at a higher level. Paracelso writes:

«De l'Unité tirez le nombre Ternaire et ramenez le Ternaire à l'Unité.»

The outcome of this work is the Quintessence or Philosophical Mercury: a Mercury that, after being distilled, contains in a higher unity both Sulphur and Salt — the seventh state of the School's typology.

III. The direct correspondence

The correspondence between the Indian guṇa and the Western Tria Prima is term for term and covers both quality and function:

Indian Guṇa	Alchemical Principle	Quality	Function	Prevailing Polyvagal Type
Sattva	Mercury	Clarity, lucidity, mediation	Balance between opposites, intelligence, social engagement	Ventral vagus (VVC)
Rajas	Sulphur	Movement, heat, passion	Activation, mobilization, action	Sympathetic system (SNS)
Tamas	Salt	Inertia, weight, material stability	Conservation, grounding, immobilization	Dorsal vagus (DVC)

The binary combinations of the three qualities produce the mixed states of the School's typology, described on the page The six character types in the polyvagal map:

Sattva + rajas = Mercury + Sulphur = lucid mobilization (polyvagal state "play", V+S);
Sattva + tamas = Mercury + Salt = lucid stillness (polyvagal state "intimate quiet", V+D);
Rajas + tamas without sattva = Sulphur + Salt without Mercury = blocked activation (polyvagal state of "fixation", S+D without V).

The balanced combination of the three — sattva + rajas + tamas coordinated under the primacy of sattva — corresponds to the alchemical Philosophical Mercury, to the polyvagal Integrated State, and to what Yoga calls sattvic samādhi.

IV. The documented academic convergence: Sullivan, Erb et al. 2018

In 2018, a group of researchers from the Maryland University of Integrative Health and other American institutions, together with Stephen Porges himself (Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina), published an article in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience entitled "Yoga Therapy and Polyvagal Theory: The Convergence of Traditional Wisdom and Contemporary Neuroscience for Self-Regulation and Resilience" [1].

The article explicitly establishes the correspondence between the three guṇa of yogic philosophy and the three neural platforms of polyvagal theory, and identifies five global states (three pure and two mixed — V+S "safe mobilization" and V+D "safe immobilization"). The structure is superimposable onto that which the School of the Paret Method reconstructed starting from Wirth and Paracelso, with the difference that the School explicitly includes also the third mixed state S+D (the fixation of Sulphur+Salt without Mercury) and the seventh integrated state.

The value of this article for the third axis of the School's wiki is twofold:

it documents that the convergence is not an isolated intuition of the School: it is recognized by international scientific literature, and Porges himself is a co-signatory;
it validates the School's approach of not reducing the Indian or alchemical tradition to neurophysiology: the authors explicitly write that their intent is comparative and translatory, and that the convergence allows yogic practice to operate as a distinct practice within modern healthcare contexts "while still rooted in its own traditional wisdom and explanatory framework".

The Paret Method adopts the same methodology: polyvagal theory provides a shared physiological grammar, but the alchemical, Hippocratic, planetary, and yogic traditions maintain their own operational and symbolic autonomy. The maps certify each other, they do not dissolve into one another.

V. Operational implications for the School's practice

The recognition of the guṇa-Tria Prima correspondence has three concrete consequences for the teaching and clinical practice of the School.

1. Enriched non-verbal reading. The yogic vocabulary — highly developed on bodily signs of prevalence of each guṇa (quality of gaze, respiratory rhythm, perceived temperature, voice quality, type of sleep, diet, social interaction) — enriches the Hippocratic-planetary non-verbal signs of the Western tradition. An experienced operator can read the same client alternately in a guṇa key or an alchemical key and obtain coherent descriptions.

2. Convergent exercises. Traditional yogic practices for rebalancing the guṇa (specific āsana, prāṇāyāma, sattvic diet, sādhana of clarification) are compatible with the School's exercises on presence in the moment, magnetic breathing, fascination, and the Mesmeric crisis. The School incorporates, where needed, one tradition or the other, recognizing that they work on the same phenomenological ground.

3. Shared ethical code. Both the yogic and alchemical traditions do not classify to fix the person in a type: they classify to indicate the habitual trance and to accompany them toward the integrated state. The goal — called samādhi, Philosophical Mercury, integrated state, or higher homeostasis — is the same described in different languages.

VI. A note on the risks of contemporary popularization

Both the Indian guṇa and the Western Tria Prima have become, in the contemporary wellness market, objects of popularizing simplifications that betray their spirit. The guṇa are often reduced to static dietary or character labels ("I am sattvic", "you are rajasic"); the alchemical Tria Prima is confused with generic curative magnetism or commercial typologies like MBTI.

The School of the Paret Method considers these simplifications the opposite of the authentic use of the two traditions. Both Sāṃkhya philosophy and Paracelsian alchemical thought insist on the dynamic character of the qualities: no one is stably sattvic, just as no one is stably a Mercury. The qualities transit throughout the day, the season, life; mastery lies in recognizing the transition and accompanying it.

The School's use of these maps is therefore diagnostic but not identity-based, operational but not dogmatic, convergent but not reductionist.

Sources

Indian tradition

Bhagavadgītā, particularly chapters XIV "Guṇatraya-vibhāga-yoga" and XVIII.
Sāṃkhya-kārikā by Īśvara Kṛṣṇa.
B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga (1966) and Light on the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (1993).
Eknath Easwaran (trans.), The Bhagavad Gita, Nilgiri Press, 2007.

Western alchemical tradition

Paracelso, De Natura Rerum and Opus Paramirum.
Oswald Wirth, Le Symbolisme hermétique dans ses rapports avec l'alchimie et la franc-maçonnerie, Dervy, 1909/2009.

Academic convergence

M. B. Sullivan, M. Erb, L. Schmalzl, S. Moonaz, J. Noggle Taylor, S. W. Porges, "Yoga Therapy and Polyvagal Theory: The Convergence of Traditional Wisdom and Contemporary Neuroscience for Self-Regulation and Resilience", Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12:67, 2018. DOI 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00067. Open access article, PMC ID PMC5835127.
S. W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory, Norton, 2011.

School publications

Marco Paret, Le Flux Magnétique et les Savoirs Anciens (2017).
Marco Paret, Hypnosis, Polyvagal Theory, and Somatic Liberation — A Non-Verbal Approach to Healing (Springer chapter, in preparation).