Specific Symbols

Let's start with the particular symbols used most: the crucified serpent and the ouroboros.

Crucified Serpent

Any fast google will tell you that the serpent cross means "fixing the volatile", but that doesn't really tell you what it means so let's unpack it a little. First, volatile in general means "changeable". In specifically alchemical terms it often refers to mercury, which is certainly one of the most changeable elements alchemists worked with. Thus, in laboratory terms, "fixing the volatile" can mean rendering mercury by heat or other reaction to separate it into a stable form, or applying mercury as a solvent to a mineral. In more broadly alchemical symbolic terms, it means a lot more.

Several of the substances produced by mercury reactions are red. The color red usually stands for the active principle, in alchemy. This may, from one direction or another, help explain why Mercury, in code terms, often stands for Spirit. Spirit, active, animal, mercury and red are all symbolically associated alchemical terms.

Some mercuric substances, such as calomel (mercury chloride), have also been used medicinally. Notably, mercury was also one of the treatments for syphilis, which, if it was used in antiquity, may help explain its significance in alchemy as a purifying agent. Efficacy against such a feared disease would certainly make the reputation of any substance.

We find another connection to healing in the derivation of the symbol itself, which appears to come from one of the biblical tales of Moses, in which he nails a bronze serpent to a cross and displays it to relieve sufferers of snakebite and/or plague depending on your version.

So "fixing the volatile" generally means stabilizing the active principle, something which can separate harmful and beneficial elements from each other or even transform the harmful (pure active, too active) into the beneficial (balanced active).

The symbol that Izumi, Ed and Al wear, however, is not the crucified serpent alone. It is the crucified serpent winged and crowned. As we can see in many manuscripts, wings are used to mark progress or advancement of an alchemical solution toward perfection. Crowns mark the final stage of a spirit or solution: perfection, completion, ascension.

If we interpret snake = Mercury = spirit, which is a common symbol chain, then the symbol can suggest that the final "rendering" of the spirit, by death or enlightenment, will produce the pure, perfected, incorruptible spirit that, in alchemical terms, tends to go along with an incorruptible body. In this reading, the symbol indicates immortality, the standard promise of the philosopher's stone.

One somewhat less classic way to read the whole symbol is as a statement that when the volatile is fixed into a stable, presumably healing, form, that is perfection. That to reach a stage that is beneficial is either a) as close to perfection as we can come or b) the only perfection we truly need to seek. My own feeling is that this would be Izumi's interpretation. Certainly the fact that she wears this symbol on her body, which we have no indication Dante does, suggests that it means something significant to her. Another possibility, of course, is that it is a reminder to herself of own hubris in attempting human transmutation. It seems likely, after all, she knew that symbol was associated with that transmutation in some way.

Ouroboros

The ouroboros is usually a snake or dragon biting its tail, though the continual circle can be formed by other animals, such as two birds. In any event, it is a consistent symbol of an endless cycle, though the nature of that cycle is a subject of constant debate.¹ Once again, though, the version we see in FMA is altered. This time, the dragon is winged and encloses the Seal of Solomon. This variation is not unique, similar concepts can also be found in the emblems of Theosophy and its offshoots such as Martinism.² It does, however, indicate a different interpretation than the standard ouroboros would.

Mclean mentions that the dragon in general is a very double edged symbol, representing the first alchemical stage (black, decomposed) when unwinged and the last stage "the spiritualising of the earthly substance" when winged. Thus, there is a double impact to the Homunculi's ouroboros: a winged dragon biting it's tail could indicate a sustainable perfected reaction, yet it invites contemplation of the unwinged dragon--and the Homunculi are most certainly an expression of decomposition and of the cycle of rebirth that an unwinged snake biting its tail would normally refer to.

If you look through the image archives, at The Alchemy Website, you will find the Seal of Solomon pretty frequently. The two triangles that make it up will be different colors, if the image is colored, often blue and red or black and white. This is, as we will see in the Colors section later, a common way of noting opposing forces such as water and fire, or masculinity and femininity. Thus the Seal, which may show the triangles interlaced, indicates the balance or combination of opposing elements, up to and including the Above and Below. In that last variation, the symbol necessarily indicates the balanced unity of all that is, which can be taken as an aspect of perfection.

The Seal reinforces the notion of the winged ouroboros as an expression of the final stage, of perfection. The symbol as a whole suggests eternal perfection.

Thus, I would not say that the Sins' symbol and Izumi's symbol are opposites, as I have seen suggested. They can be read as expressions of exactly the same thing: perfection in balance, in unity, in healing. The Seal and ouroboros, in particular, connect directly to Izumi's philosophy of "All is One, One is All", and the incorruptible spirit and body implied by the crucified serpent are certainly what Dante is pursuing. They can also, of course, be read as different inflections of the same concept, with the crucified serpent showing permanence in stillness, at the apex if you will, while the ouroboros shows permanence in motion, the cycle that is centered.

On yet another level, and taking into account the characters involved, Izumi, Ed and Al can be seen as nailing down the runaway, destructive cycle that the Sins embody and act out. The appearance of the crucified serpent in the array Dante used to contain and bind the Homunculi certainly suggest this.

On a somewhat disturbing level, the positioning of these symbols can also be read as an indication that the Homunculi are a perfected state, marked with the perfection-in-motion while they are active and bound by the perfection-fixed. This reading suggests that the presence of a soul creates imperfection, and that it is out of this imperfection that alchemy is possible.

Colors

All symbols in alchemy are very fluid, and all of them have multiple meanings, few moreso than colors. One thing we can say, however, based on a study of colored alchemical images, is that blue and red are often used as opposites.

The most common blue, in the show, is military uniforms, and since Ed's trademark is his red coat, and I can't help wondering if that was entirely on purpose.

More interesting still, the illustrations seem to use blue and white as interchangeable. Humberg mentions that white is associated with the feminine and red with the masculine (or passive and active). On the other hand, "the crow's beak blue as lead" rather indicates blue is a variety of black, the crow being symbolic of Blackening or the first stage of transmutation. We could, in good alchemical tradition, combine both interpretations and thereby take the blue of the military uniforms as feminine/passive in the sense of being bound to carry out another's will, and also black in the sense of destroyed/destructive and taking the nature of death.

If the uniforms were a deliberate, symbolic choice, it adds a layer to the fact that Mustang and Hawkeye are in civilian clothes when they go to destroy Bradley. They have cast off passivity in both practical and esoteric symbol sets.

The color combination of black-white-red is also employed in Ed's clothes. Those are, in fact, the only colors he wears, and the balance of them seems significant. Black, the color of destruction, and red, the color of perfection, are both strongly represented. White, on the other hand, the representative of recombination, of harmony, is only barely present. The ensemble suits Ed's tendency to extremes, and also suggests that he may be missing a step to actually get where he wants to go.

Tidbits of Interest

Just some other things that caught my attention.

Stages

Humberg gives the three stages of alchemy as destroyed, recombined, perfected. This seems to be fairly standard.

No one in FMA uses those stages, though. The stages Armstrong quotes to Scar are understand, destroy, recombine, which seems to leave out the stage of perfection altogether. If perfection is synonymous with the Stone, and the Stone, in the FMA-verse, is simply a shortcut, a condensation of lives that the alchemist may draw on to circumvent having to pay with his/her own, then this may be understandable.

Izumi, on the other hand, uses accept, understand, create (ep 27). Izumi's version offers a hint that the ability to create is the distinguishing factor of human life/existence, particularly in light of how her philosophy seems to derive from her experience of having and losing a child. It is by her that we are reminded that the Elrics watched Elysia being born, and she seems to feel this is significant to their development.

This also suggests why Izumi refers to the total perception of space/time/matter/energy within the Gate as "a conjuror's trick": because to use that perception to alter what the world is, alchemically, is to deny the first step of her alchemy, acceptance. Ed it not wrong, really, when he says it's the Truth; but it's an instrumental truth, a mechanical truth. Truth, and total perception, are not wisdom. Izumi seeks wisdom: action and instrumentality of will that are in accord with the shape of what she has perceived, not seeking to alter that shape overall.

Texts

The text on the paper Roy hands Ed at the end of episode Eight, after the whole "name of Full Metal Alchemist" sentence, is taken from the end of Ripley's Recapitulation of the Twelve Gates, as egregiously allegorical an alchemical text as you're likely to find. It's a fun read, really.

Little Observations

Both Izumi and Scar's older brother pay for their attempts at resurrection with the body parts most proximal to the one being called back: Izumi's uterus and nearby organs, Scar's brother's genitals.

The image on the Gate, an eye surrounded by a glory, is the Eye of Providence. Often used to indicate the beneficial oversight of God, it is also associated with the circled dot, which is sometimes a symbol of gold and sometimes a symbol for the sephirot Keter. More on this in the Gate page.

The parts of humans identified by FMA, especially in the context of alchemy, are inochi (life), tamashii (soul), seishin (will or mind or spirit) and nikutai (body). The part that allows alchemy to be done, the part the Sins are missing, according to Lust, is tamashii. The energy source of alchemy, as identified by Hohenheim, is inochi.

Footnotes

1. For an example of just how many ways the concept of ouroboros can be taken and applied, see this conversation thread on levity.com.



2. For the reference on Martinism, look a bit over halfway down this thread. You may find it easiest to run a Find on "seal of solomon"; the second instance is the one you want.

Sources

My best source for things alchemical is The Alchemy Website. This site offers primary sources in abundance, both text and pictures, and their archives contain a great deal of useful conversation between modern, practicing alchemists. The site is not very systematically arranged, quite in the alchemical tradition, but it is searchable.

If primary sources are too time-consuming for you, the Alchemy Dictionary can usually give you a decent thumbnail sketch. Keep in mind, however, that these entries are necessarily abbreviated and, by that token, not entirely accurate.

The Fullmetal Alchemist anime universe places our own history and that of the FMA world on either side of the Gate that, Hohenheim tells us, exists in every human heart and spirit. Our history has produced mechanical science as its primary tool for technological advancement; the FMA history produced alchemy to the same ends. A great many things within the story follow this pattern--parallel but different.

Let us start with religion. In episodes Forty-four and Forty-five, Dante tells us that Christianity is a dead religion, yet she is personally familiar with it and even names the Homunculi after the Seven Deadly Sins. Since she also tells us she is about four hundred years old, this gives us a timeframe for the religion's death. She cites the Plague and witch hunts during her early life, which suggests that major events from our history occurred in hers as well, supposing that FMA history and our history are running at the same rate of time.¹ Within that timeframe the most likely point at which Christianity might have failed is the early 1500s--the Reformation. In our history, this time resulted in an explosion of Christian sects as the outliers of the Catholic church speciated into the myriad Protestant sects. The subsequent loss of the Church as a monolithic centralizing force resulted in the serious decline of the religio-political entity known as the Holy Roman Empire.

During and after the Reformation the Empire's constituent countries and kingdoms broke down into fairly constant war for a good two and a half centuries. Tiny kingdoms formed and reformed, allied and broke apart, and were traded about like poker chips in the game of diplomacy. If this also occurred in the FMA history, possibly exacerbated by the absolute failure of Christianity as opposed to sectarian strife, it could have been what shaped Dante's modus operandi. Despair and death, her favored motivation and means for creating the Philosopher's Stone, would certainly have been in plentiful supply during this period.

Amestris at the time of the anime, however, is enjoying the fruits of what appears to be a period of prosperity and, until recently, peace. This could fit well with the supposition that Amestris is equivalent to Germany, culturally and geographically. The Holy Roman Empire is known to German history as the First Reich, or First Empire. The Second Reich, a time of economic and cultural productivity, covers the period between 1871 and 1918 (WWI). Chronologically, this places the government that Bradley rides down in flames as the Second Reich; the general prosperity of Amestris suggests the same thing. The undesirability, from Dante's point of view, of such peace could explain why she went to the trouble of producing Bradley, a Homunculus that ages, to take over the country and provoke more wars. The transfer of power from executive to parliament, shown at the end of the anime, also parallels the forced resignation of the German Emperor at the end of WWI in favor of a parliamentary republican government.

This, however, is where things start to get a good deal more complicated, because the same could also be said of the Third Reich, also known as the Nazis, which held sway between 1933 and 1945.² The aggressiveness of Amestris toward its own people, as well as its national neighbors, is somewhat more typical of the Third Reich than the Second. Dante's manipulation of the government from behind the scenes, by and for arcane ends, strongly echoes the occult mythos surrounding the Nazi government. It is clear that the anime writers are aware of this mythos and wish to draw upon it, as they introduce Hohenheim's involvement with the Thule Society once he enters our history.³ The Ishvarites, and the manner in which Amestris deals with them, also echoes, though it does not exactly mirror, the Jewish population of Germany during the Third Reich.

To expand on that particular point, the Ishvarite faith is not a direct parallel to Judaism, but some similarities do stand out. The most obvious is that they are monotheists within a generally polytheistic nation (ep 15). While the prevalence of Judaism's offshoots, Christianity and Islam, make it difficult to recall, these days, monotheism is one of that faith's original distinguishing traits.⁴ An argument can also be made for certain attitudinal similarities. The stoicism with which the Ishvarites bear up under persecution has also, at times, been characteristic of mainstream Judaism (eg Amos 3:2). The idea that the Great Art emerged from Ishvarite faith and philosophy to evolve into modern alchemy, as mentioned in episode Thirty-six, parallels the frequent reference to Judaic esoteric philosophy in our historical alchemical practice.⁵ The anime writers' use of an historically loaded image--undesirables being transported to designated camps by train--suggests that they drew these parallels deliberately.

Thus, it may be most accurate to regard Amestris as an alloy of the Second and Third Reichs. The historical imperatives that produced a military dictatorship, somewhat paralleling the Third, within the time period of the Second, are different from those of our history. The transfer of power to parliamentary government is not, in Amestris, associated with loss of a war, nor is it accompanied by the viciously punitive treaty terms leveled against Germany after WWI. This may mean that Amestris' new government will have a better chance for lasting stability than the Weimar Republic did. Certainly the FMA universe is not headed toward the Great Depression, at least not because of a widespread shift from wartime back to peacetime economy in the midst of massively short resources of everything. On the other hand, Amestris does have a large supply of soldiers who may be disgruntled by the reduction in military privilege and, perhaps, size, and a body of powerful Alchemists who may or may not now find themselves unemployed. It is possible these groups could produce the same kind of widespread unemployment and dissatisfaction that so helped the National Socialist Party in its bid for power.

Which is to say, while there are considerable parallel pieces between FMA history and ours, the pieces are not arranged in the same shape.

Footnotes

1. I am tempted to think that our history and the FMA history started to diverge precisely from the point at which Hohenheim succeeded in producing the Philosopher's Stone, but there is no canonical reason to think so aside from how prettily balanced the idea is.

2. It is also worth noting, here, that the insignia of the Amestris army, and the ranks they go with, are identical to those of the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII, save that the colors are blue and gold rather than red and gold. This, again, indicates the later regime in an earlier timeframe. Beyond even that, though, it indicates that Amestris is more than a mix of Germanies. It is a mix of whole separate nations and cultures. More on this in the Names page.

3. The extent to which Nazi leaders may or may not have been involved in or believers in various forms of esoteric mysticism is a favorite topic for speculation, especially among the successors of the Spiritualist movement of the nineteenth century. Little solid evidence one way or another exists. The mythos of Nazi occultism is rich and ever-growing, however, and the anime writers clearly wished to invoke it by mentioning Haushofer. See Sources for more details.

4. At first glance it seems highly ironic that a monotheistic people should worship a deity called Ishvara, that being a Hindu word for the/a supreme being. The choice of that name is peculiarly appropriate, though. Mainstream Hindu theology, while it contains an infinitely divisible number of deities, understands all of those deities as aspects of, in the end, a single godhood. Similarly, though from the opposite direction, many branches of post-Roman-Empire Judaic theology hold that there is only one god, but understand the gods of other faiths as alternate interpretations (or misinterpretations) of that single godhood. As an additional bonus, Ishvara is a name most often associated with Shiva, the destructive aspect of the Trimurti. This connects nicely with Scar's focus on the destructive stage of the alchemical process.

5. The primary source of this tradition appears to be Nicholas Flamel, who purported to have found a book of alchemical information he calls the book of Abraham the Jew. Or, at least, someone writing with the name of Flamel purported to have found such a book, and to have interpreted sufficient of it to create the philosopher's stone. For a view of how tangled the dating and attribution of the texts involved is, see this thread.

Some Sources

Germany: a good quick reference is Wikipedia.

Hindu theology: for a very brief overview, see Encyclopedia Mythica.

Judaism: Wiki is, again, the easiest fairly reliable reference.

Alchemy: Levity.com is a good source for many things, uses of esoterica included.

Nazi Occultism: a pleasantly skeptical and delightfully snarky site is The Nazis and The Occult. After reading this, you may check out sumeria.net or crystalinks.com for a more credulous view and a good idea of what mythos the anime writers are drawing on.