Transitions, Rebirth, Resurrection.
These are the central principles in alchemy and hermetic philosophy.
In order for anything new to come forth into reality, something else must end and endure a decaying process. Just like the Phoenix rises again from the ashes, a transformative effect on the soul can resurrect dormant energies. The following excerpt used in the film is from the Corpus Hermeticum, the ancient teachings of Hermes Trismegistus:
“Tell me: Why do they merit death who are in Death?
It is because the gloomy Darkness is the root and the base of the material frame;
from it came the Moist Nature;
from this the body in the sense-world was composed;
and from this [body] Death doth the Water drain.
If then thou learnest that thou art thyself of Life and Light,
and that thou [happen’st] to be out of them,
thou shalt return again to Life.
When the material body is to be dissolved,
first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change,
and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish,
and thou surrenderest thy way of life,
void of its energy, unto the Daimon.
The body’s senses next pass back into their sources,
becoming separate,
and resurrect as energies;
and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.”
