ALCHEMY
A working understanding of Alchemy includes both scientific method and spiritual symbolism. A series of elemental transformations is intended to create a new material. However, these changes are not just dependent on following a physical recipe, they must also incorporate symbolic relationships. The basic alchemical sequence begins with a male and female sealing the prima materia (original substance) into a vessel. This process changes the substance from being red to back, nigredo, the dark side. Calcinatio, is the application of fire to the substance, turning it from black to purple and then into ash. The ashes are dissolved in the solutio, or water. The sunlike substance, sulfur accomplishes the coagulatio, drying, of the solution. The pairing of opposites is possible in a gaseous state, sublimatio. Finally, an alchemical wedding of process and material leads to the reddish yellow/rosy pink philosopher' s stone, coniunctio. Details of this process are revealed by reviewing alchemical symbolism and writings throughout thousands of years of history. The residue of the alchemical tradition is found in science, mythology, religion, art, literature, psychology, politics, and many more areas of intellectual thought and cultural experience.
Real Alchemy - A Primer
http://books.google.com/books?id=s1CY904VtiYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
The "Royal Art" is expressed in both the practical laboratory and the mystical inner work. Discussions are drawn from both the Western and the Eastern traditional works on alchemy. Subjects range from the outer laboratory techniques to inner spiritual practice, cabala, theurgy, magic,mythology, mystisism, science and the arts. In the transformation of the human condition , where nature alone can do nothing more, there must be the alchemical "Art" to take over. Alchemy cannot be understood by abstract thought alone, nor is it just a psychic process in the unconscious mind. It is a true and authentic exercise of the soul and the spirit.
The alchemical process is highly autonomous (it "decocts and putrefies
by itself"), but it must constantly be nourished with the fiery element,
because the salamander thrives on fire. The increase of consciousness has a Promethean quality, it is by the
naive mind experienced as a subversive activity to undermine the
instituted harmonious order of the gods. Prometheus
literally means "forethought" . He is like the serpent in paradise who
breaches the ratified order of God, encouraging people to eat the fruit
of knowledge, in order to open their eyes. The serpent and Prometheus
are the same person. People are afraid of this capacity, as it seems
unfettered by the laws of Maat, the predefined order of the Egyptian
gods. But this serpent, whom people are afraid of, is the 'serpens
mercurialis' himself. If there is too much pagan naivete, then there is
too little quicksilver. Then it won't work out. The penetrating force of
Mercurius is essential to the process.
Scotland is an important country in the history of alchemy as it has within its borders by far the best collection of alchemical books in the world. The Ferguson collection in Glasgow University Library, the Young Collection also in Glasgow, and the John Read Collection in St Andrews, provide access to the texts of about 95% of all alchemical books.
Field Body, Iona Miller
"The Beast,
the
Dragon, the terrible monster, is the disguise of the beloved;
the horror to be overcome itself is, or contains, the Reward’
Beauty and the Beast must be conjoined’ The old tag that a
serpent becomes not a Dragon save by devouring another serpent,
has an Alchemical sense:
These are the two Dragons, male and female: they destroy one another, or one destroys the other and a new and mightier one is born, a fiery wonder: A Phoenix*, (traditionally depicted as having red and gold plumage), a leaping glory, a STAR of dream ascending to the throne of the world. This was the Transmutation, the Great Work of the hidden glory of perfection". --Arthur Machen, Fr.GD. (Frater of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn)
These are the two Dragons, male and female: they destroy one another, or one destroys the other and a new and mightier one is born, a fiery wonder: A Phoenix*, (traditionally depicted as having red and gold plumage), a leaping glory, a STAR of dream ascending to the throne of the world. This was the Transmutation, the Great Work of the hidden glory of perfection". --Arthur Machen, Fr.GD. (Frater of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn)
“Nothing is possible without love,” C.G. Jung once told Miguel Serrano,
“not even the processes of alchemy, for love puts one in a mood to risk
everything and not to withhold elements.” Alchemy is the particular
variant of occult spiritual doctrine on which Jung settled as closest to
his own school of depth psychology. And, as Serrano explained, since
Jung “revitalized the work of the Gnostics and the alchemists, he
himself had to participate in their mysteries.” --Jeff Satinover
Jung advocates a directing inwards of libido, a strong sense of introversion. Of course, this makes it necessary to withdraw the projections from the objective world, because his path is one of withdrawal and introversion. In Christian mysticism, solitude and self-denial work to create a condition of "Imageless, Stillness and Wordlessness". It represents the ideal of the empty self, as in Buddhism.
But Jung says that withdrawal of libido from the outer world implies that libido falls back into the unconscious, thus activating the unconscious archetypes. Jung's design is to confront the unconscious images, and relate to them, ideally by way of active imagination. This spiritual ideal is the very opposite of the apophatic way, according to which all inner images must be brushed away to cleanse the mind of anything resembling the worldly.
John of the Cross and the Buddhist theorist alike, say that subjective experiences of the mind build on the same worldly categories through which the outer world is experienced. All images of the soul are of the world, and therefore create an attachment to the world. This works counter to the attainment of 'unio mystica', which means transcending all sense impressions, to enter a state of total detachment. God can only be found *beyond* everything else.
This is very remote from Jung's standpoint. Jung said that, to him, unconscious was God. This spiritual power can be experienced through the images of the unconscious. If God cannot be experienced, he says, then we are forced to suspect that He doesn't exist. His experiential standpoint is glaringly obvious in all his writings, in MDR, too. He rejects the standpoint of blind faith, when there is no experience of the divine.
Jung advocates a directing inwards of libido, a strong sense of introversion. Of course, this makes it necessary to withdraw the projections from the objective world, because his path is one of withdrawal and introversion. In Christian mysticism, solitude and self-denial work to create a condition of "Imageless, Stillness and Wordlessness". It represents the ideal of the empty self, as in Buddhism.
But Jung says that withdrawal of libido from the outer world implies that libido falls back into the unconscious, thus activating the unconscious archetypes. Jung's design is to confront the unconscious images, and relate to them, ideally by way of active imagination. This spiritual ideal is the very opposite of the apophatic way, according to which all inner images must be brushed away to cleanse the mind of anything resembling the worldly.
John of the Cross and the Buddhist theorist alike, say that subjective experiences of the mind build on the same worldly categories through which the outer world is experienced. All images of the soul are of the world, and therefore create an attachment to the world. This works counter to the attainment of 'unio mystica', which means transcending all sense impressions, to enter a state of total detachment. God can only be found *beyond* everything else.
This is very remote from Jung's standpoint. Jung said that, to him, unconscious was God. This spiritual power can be experienced through the images of the unconscious. If God cannot be experienced, he says, then we are forced to suspect that He doesn't exist. His experiential standpoint is glaringly obvious in all his writings, in MDR, too. He rejects the standpoint of blind faith, when there is no experience of the divine.
Soror Mystica, Andrew Gonzales
In philosophic alchemy, there exists the idea of the Soror Mystica
who works with the alchemist while he mixes his substances in his
retorts. . . . At the end, there occurs a mystic wedding. . . . In the
processes of individuation worked out in the Jungian laboratory between
the patient and the analyst, the same fusion takes place. . . . It is a
forbidden love which can only be fulfilled outside of matrimony. . . .
While it is true that this love does not exclude physical love, the
physical becomes transformed into ritual.
Consider the Tantric practices of India, in which the Siddha magicians attempted to achieve psychic union. The ritual of the Tantras is complicated and mysterious. The . . . woman would usually be one of the sacred prostitutes. . . . Just as in alchemy lead is converted into gold . . . the act of coitus was really intended to ignite the mystic fire at the base of the vertebral column. . . . The woman is a priestess of magic love, whose function is to . . . awaken the . . . chakras of the Tantric hero. . . . The man does not ejaculate the semen, but impregnates himself; and thus the process of creation is reversed and time is stopped. . . .The product of this forbidden love is the Androgyne, the Total Man, all of whose . . . centers of consciousness are now awakened. . . .
Jung, the magician, had almost alone made it possible for us today to take part in those Mysteries which seem capable of taking us back to that legendary land of the Man-God.--Miguel Serrano
Consider the Tantric practices of India, in which the Siddha magicians attempted to achieve psychic union. The ritual of the Tantras is complicated and mysterious. The . . . woman would usually be one of the sacred prostitutes. . . . Just as in alchemy lead is converted into gold . . . the act of coitus was really intended to ignite the mystic fire at the base of the vertebral column. . . . The woman is a priestess of magic love, whose function is to . . . awaken the . . . chakras of the Tantric hero. . . . The man does not ejaculate the semen, but impregnates himself; and thus the process of creation is reversed and time is stopped. . . .The product of this forbidden love is the Androgyne, the Total Man, all of whose . . . centers of consciousness are now awakened. . . .
Jung, the magician, had almost alone made it possible for us today to take part in those Mysteries which seem capable of taking us back to that legendary land of the Man-God.--Miguel Serrano
The lower half of this vessel belongs to earth, the upper to heaven.
One can not do without it in the work, for it comprises all and is all
as it is also the fire and the matter of the work. The fire, the matter
and the vessel are but one thing only. It is in the Hermetic Vessel
that all the steps of the alchemical process transpire to arrive at the
Philosopher' s Stone. Only a fool would not Hermetically seal this
vessel as his matter evolves. What a pitiful disaster would there be
during the alchemical process if one would be so careless as to not
having sealed his vessel, especially during sublimatio and the
manifestation of the"Stone"!
Without the vessel the fixed would be lost during its volatilization, and the volatile could never become the fixed. Many alchemists became just as obsessed with their laboratory experiments. It is this obsessive spirit that must, sooner or later, be terminated by the penetrating Mercurius, and the artifex endure the period of nigredo. Just as all the artists do, or any composer, or writer. The central image of alchemy is the idea of the opus as being committed to a sacred work.
The Turba Philosophorum dictates, "O all ye seekers after this Art, ye can reach no useful result without a patient, laborious, and solicitous soul, persevering courage, and continuous regiment". Through such work the artists achieve the Hermetic opus by having separated the finer from the gross,. Thus the masters unfold and express the beauty of that which is in the world, nature and in themselves. It is in their obsession of such work that they penetrate Mercurius just as Mercurius penetrates them, for Mercury draws out the Sulfur, and the Sulfur attracts and coagulates the Mercury as they become the "One Thing". --Steve Kalec
Without the vessel the fixed would be lost during its volatilization, and the volatile could never become the fixed. Many alchemists became just as obsessed with their laboratory experiments. It is this obsessive spirit that must, sooner or later, be terminated by the penetrating Mercurius, and the artifex endure the period of nigredo. Just as all the artists do, or any composer, or writer. The central image of alchemy is the idea of the opus as being committed to a sacred work.
The Turba Philosophorum dictates, "O all ye seekers after this Art, ye can reach no useful result without a patient, laborious, and solicitous soul, persevering courage, and continuous regiment". Through such work the artists achieve the Hermetic opus by having separated the finer from the gross,. Thus the masters unfold and express the beauty of that which is in the world, nature and in themselves. It is in their obsession of such work that they penetrate Mercurius just as Mercurius penetrates them, for Mercury draws out the Sulfur, and the Sulfur attracts and coagulates the Mercury as they become the "One Thing". --Steve Kalec
Soror and Frater
The 'serpens mercurialis' is penetrated in the way of a self-sacrifice.
The penetrating nature of Mercurius represents the very mercurial force
that is capable of interrupting an endless circle of repetition. The
intellect also has such capacity. The "scholarly mind", however, does
not want this to happen. The alchemical historian will never rend the
books asunder, figuratively speaking. That's why it's such an effective
trap, as the penetration of the alchemical spirit, in itself, belongs to
the alchemical process. The old king, representing the olden ways, is
stabbed with the sword (in an image in Speculum Veritatis).
Gnosticism & Jung
Gnostic and occult ideas are obviously the predominant feature of
Jungian thought. Nonetheless, most people remain unaware of the fact
that the occult ideas on which Jung worked were hardly original
discoveries of his, as Jung leaves the impression they were; such ideas
were ubiquitous in the decaying culture centers of Middle Europe in the
years prior to World War II. Most people remain equally unaware that
occult practices also lie at the heart of Jung's own theory, clinical
practice, and inner experiences. For the most part this is because these
ideas have been presented in the Jungian literature, are explained in
Jungian training, and when they appear in patients' dreams will be
interpreted almost exclusively in symbolic terms, not literally. So, for
example, an alchemical picture of a man and woman coupling in a bath-or
a dream of something similar-will be taken solely as a metaphor, of a
“union of opposites.”
It can and should be argued that even so, these occult ideas tend to undermine moral standards. The very concept of a “union of opposites,” especially at its supposedly highest level-the reconciliation of good and evil-is the dangerous Nietzschean vision found everywhere in Gnosticism, occultism, and, indeed, outright Satanism. And yet even critics of the Jungian scheme have failed to see that, however decent, sincere, and conventional are many of Jung's followers, Jung himself had found a way to live out not only symbolically but explicitly the core practices of occultism.
Only now, at a time when Jungian and Jungian-related spirituality-with its emphasis on Gnostic “wisdom,” sexual freedom, goddess worship, and accommodation with evil-has infiltrated deeply into the Church (especially in the Anglican and Roman communions) has the veil at long last begun to be lifted. Only now, at a time when Jungian and Jungian-related spirituality-with its emphasis on Gnostic “wisdom,” sexual freedom, goddess worship, and accommodation with evil-has infiltrated deeply into the Church (especially in the Anglican and Roman communions) has the veil at long last begun to be lifted.
The core “mystery” to be grasped by the devotees of this religion was “identification with the sun-god.” A theistic God was a fairy tale: the true god lies within “the Self.” To experience Her/Him is to have grasped the secret of immortality. Such a “faith” is really no faith at all, but a form of experience-based knowledge, superior because it requires no sacrifice of the intellect, as do superstitious “faiths.”
Much of what we now see happening in the domains of religion and spirituality and culture can be laid at Jung's doorstep-the modern amalgam of goddess worship and polytheism; the replacement of morality-oriented Jewish and Christian worship with ancient pagan initiation rituals; resurgent pantheism in scientific and pseudo-scientific guise; and above all a brutal moral relativism (that is, the reconciliation of good and evil). --Jeff Satinover,
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/09/006-jung-love-50
It can and should be argued that even so, these occult ideas tend to undermine moral standards. The very concept of a “union of opposites,” especially at its supposedly highest level-the reconciliation of good and evil-is the dangerous Nietzschean vision found everywhere in Gnosticism, occultism, and, indeed, outright Satanism. And yet even critics of the Jungian scheme have failed to see that, however decent, sincere, and conventional are many of Jung's followers, Jung himself had found a way to live out not only symbolically but explicitly the core practices of occultism.
Only now, at a time when Jungian and Jungian-related spirituality-with its emphasis on Gnostic “wisdom,” sexual freedom, goddess worship, and accommodation with evil-has infiltrated deeply into the Church (especially in the Anglican and Roman communions) has the veil at long last begun to be lifted. Only now, at a time when Jungian and Jungian-related spirituality-with its emphasis on Gnostic “wisdom,” sexual freedom, goddess worship, and accommodation with evil-has infiltrated deeply into the Church (especially in the Anglican and Roman communions) has the veil at long last begun to be lifted.
The core “mystery” to be grasped by the devotees of this religion was “identification with the sun-god.” A theistic God was a fairy tale: the true god lies within “the Self.” To experience Her/Him is to have grasped the secret of immortality. Such a “faith” is really no faith at all, but a form of experience-based knowledge, superior because it requires no sacrifice of the intellect, as do superstitious “faiths.”
Much of what we now see happening in the domains of religion and spirituality and culture can be laid at Jung's doorstep-the modern amalgam of goddess worship and polytheism; the replacement of morality-oriented Jewish and Christian worship with ancient pagan initiation rituals; resurgent pantheism in scientific and pseudo-scientific guise; and above all a brutal moral relativism (that is, the reconciliation of good and evil). --Jeff Satinover,
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/09/006-jung-love-50
This thing is one common substance, therefore all have it alike. Through
knowledge of this matter we can make the stone. It comes to birth
through its fiery father's radiating Solar beams which are secretly
hidden in its watery, Lunar, reflective, mother's bosom. The spirit,
wind, rising air, elevation and exaltation, sublimes it as it bears it
in its womb. The Earth nurses and fixes it, and gives it its telesmic
potency and power of manifestation. Thus the four elements are
converted and wonderful things are created through such adaptation of
the rotations of the wheel of evolution. In other words, If one can
separate the subtle from the gross, the fire from the earth, gently with
great sagacity, then the stone rises to heaven and descends again new
born to earth, fixing again its glory into hardness and manifestation as
a realization. This is repeated over and over until it becomes perfect
as it establishes the kingdom of heaven on earth
having acquired the powers and influences of both extreme opposites as
the infinite hights and the bottomless pit becoming the "One Thing".
If one masters this technique, he will then have the glory of the whole world. For that which is the visible and the outer, is only half the world, as a counterpart of the other half, that which is the invisible and the inner. It is most subtle as it penetrates all, yet it overcomes all subtlety due to its incorruptibility. It is both heaven and earth joined and wed to produce the "One" only thing. This is the "Whole" world, the three in One as the fully integrated Spirit, Soul and Body, or mercury, sulfur and salt. This is the beauty of that wondrous work accomplished by that irradiating Solar Eye, as the true light of the world, which from itself, selflessly and infinitely outpours of itself its blessed glory, warming and lighting everything up. -Steve Kalec, Emerald Tablet
If one masters this technique, he will then have the glory of the whole world. For that which is the visible and the outer, is only half the world, as a counterpart of the other half, that which is the invisible and the inner. It is most subtle as it penetrates all, yet it overcomes all subtlety due to its incorruptibility. It is both heaven and earth joined and wed to produce the "One" only thing. This is the "Whole" world, the three in One as the fully integrated Spirit, Soul and Body, or mercury, sulfur and salt. This is the beauty of that wondrous work accomplished by that irradiating Solar Eye, as the true light of the world, which from itself, selflessly and infinitely outpours of itself its blessed glory, warming and lighting everything up. -Steve Kalec, Emerald Tablet
"The next stage, 'coniunctio' , is really what defines alchemy [...] It's the 'Romeo and Juliet' part of the opus, and it's my opinion that this is brought about by the love between man and woman. In the 'opus' the masculine spirit and feminine soul are attracted to one another, and in human terms this comes about by projection. A man projects his feminine soul onto a woman, a woman projects her masculine spirit onto a man, and they fall in love. In the Middle Ages some of the illustrations for this stage were quite explicit, notably the "Rosarium Philosophorum" , which shows a couple embracing. Again differing from the prevailing medieval attitude, the 'opus' couldn't be achieved in a monastery or nunnery, it was for real people leading normal lives."
(Adam McLean, http://tinyurl. com/3qdhudm )
This way of looking at alchemy, in the way of a communion, has its forerunner in Gnostic religion, which is one of the precursors of alchemy. The above analysis, following Rosarium Philosophorum, speaks mostly in romantic terms, but history is full of sects that take it further, into a cult of sexuality. The gnostic form of licentious sects were notorious for eating menstrual and seminal fluid as a sacramental meal, for they thought that these substances held the pure light of spirit. St Augustine in his account of the Manichean (gnostic) system speaks of confessions made by certain women of Carthage about the scandals associated with their cult. On examination it was later confirmed that 'ground meal was sprinkled underneath the copulating pair to absorb the semen so that it could be mixed and consumed' (Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls..., 1979, p. 130). (cf. Walker, B. (1983). Gnosticism, pp.130-31).
Ritual communion implies that one partakes of the divine substance, sometimes interpreted as the eating of the god, as when the ancient Celts partook of the sacrificial victims. Of course, this naive outlook survives in the Eucharist of the Christian church. Stanley Kubrick, in Eyes Wide Shut (Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman) gives us an insight into this aspect of our inner nature, also the shadow-side of our culture. It is about high society people involved in secret cultic practices involving sexuality. One insight is how very boring it is. That's why these sects are religious, otherwise the whole shindy would be experienced as trite (Warner Bros. digitally altered the orgy for the American release, blocking out graphic sexuality). Of course, to a person who lacks faith, the experience of the Christian service would be boring, too.
It is my view that rites of communion belong to an older religious conception, which has been superseded by medieval alchemy. I don't think the Rosarium should be interpreted on romantic lines. I am averse to the pagan interpretation, on lines of New Age, because it looks at the symbols naively. A person certainly has the right to be naive. The are primitivists and naivists in history of art, too, whose works are greatly appreciated. Nevertheless, pagan alchemy implies a regression from the medieval standpoint. This presents no solution to modern man, to return to a world where crystals are holy and has hidden spiritual capacities, or where the sexual union of man and woman is an integral part of the spiritual work. Everybody has a right to a view. To me, it is a misinterpretation of alchemy. I also highlight what I think is Carl Jung's misinterpretation, in my article.
I don't believe in the cacophonous interpretation of alchemy, i.e that all voices are right in their own sense. Some is bad, some is good, some is outright crap. Already the medievals knew this. They certainly did not revere all the texts. Central to alchemy is purification, to remove the pollutants and the excess material. This is not merely to be performed ritually, but purification must be carried out in the understanding. --Mats Winther
REBIS - http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/compself.htm#rebis
Living Fount
From "Aion" (56/57): "The author of the [Clemintine] Homilies espouses a Petrine Christianity distinctly "High Church" or ritualistic in flavour. This, taken together with his doctrine of the dual aspect of god, brings him into close relationship with the early Jewish-Christian Church, where, according to the testimony of Epiphanius, we find the Ebionite notion that God had two sons, an elder one, Satan, and a younger one, Christ-- (Panarium, ed. by Oehler, I, p.267). Michaias, one of the speakers in the dialogue, suggests as much when he remarks that if good and evil were begotten in the same way they must be brothers--(Cleminitine Homilies XX, ch. VII)."
The Satan-Christ brothership:
J B Russel "Satan", Cornell University Press, 1981, p.56, 153-154
referencing:
Lactantius (c.245-325) "Divine Institutes" 2.8 etcetera
Epiphanius "Panarion" 24.6
C G Jung "Aion" par.77
CG Jung "The Spirit Mercurius" par.271 f
referencing:
Michael Psellus "De daemonibus" (trans.Marcilio Ficino),fol.N.Vv.
Epiphanius "Panarion" XXX,16,2 (edit.Karl Holl, Leipzig 1915-33)
The Satan-Christ brothership:
J B Russel "Satan", Cornell University Press, 1981, p.56, 153-154
referencing:
Lactantius (c.245-325) "Divine Institutes" 2.8 etcetera
Epiphanius "Panarion" 24.6
C G Jung "Aion" par.77
CG Jung "The Spirit Mercurius" par.271 f
referencing:
Michael Psellus "De daemonibus" (trans.Marcilio Ficino),fol.N.Vv.
Epiphanius "Panarion" XXX,16,2 (edit.Karl Holl, Leipzig 1915-33)
In the 1970s Campbell began to augment his lectures with color slide projections, which appealed to the Sensation and Feeling functions as well as the Thinking function. He stayed in my home on most of his West coast trips in the 1970s, and I drove him to many of his lectures; hence, I saw these slides many, many times. I recall the dragon "spewing Jason" from a 4th or 5th century Greek vase on which it had been painted. It was a magic potion from Athene which enabled Jason to emerge from the dragon's maw. Michael Maier's "Scrutinium Chymicum" (1687) has an engraving of a wolf eating a dead king. Then in the background, the wolf is consumed in fire,from which the resurrected king emerges. Thus, the king representsspirit-Sun-gold descended to and devoured by Physis-Saturn-lead. --Richard Roberts
We are of course quite ignorant of the exact nature of the crucial experience which for the alchemist was equivalent to
obtaining the Philosopher' s Stone or the Elixir. Excessively prolix in all that concerns the preliminaries and various phases of the opus, alchemical literature makes only cryptic and, for the most part, incomprehensible allusions to the mysterium magnum. But if we are right in insisting on the interdependent relationships between mineralogical symbolism, metallurgical rites, the magic of fire and the beliefs in the artificial transmutation of metals into gold by operations which replace those of Nature and time; if we take into account the close connection between Chinese alchemy and neo-Taoist techniques, between Indian alchemy and tantrism; if, in short, the Alexandrian alchemists did, as seems probable, project on to mineral substances the initiatory spectacles of the Mysteries-it becomes possible to penetrate into the nature of alchemical experience.
The Indian alchemist provides us with a point of comparison: he works on mineral substances in order to 'cleanse' and to 'awaken' himself, or, in other words, to enter into possession of those divine substances which were dormant in his body. The Western alchemist by endeavoring to 'kill' the ingredients, to reduce them to the materia prima, provokes a sympatheia between the 'pathetic situations' of the substance and his innermost being. In other words, he realizes, as it were, some initiatory experiences which, as the course of the opus proceeds, forge for him a new personality, comparable to the one which is achieved after successfully undergoing the ordeals of initiation. His participation in the phases of the opus is such that the nigredo, for example, procures for him experiences analogous to those of the neophyte in the initiation ceremonies when he feel 'swallowed up in the belly of the monster, or 'buried', or symbolically 'slain by the masks and masters of initiation'. --Mircea Eliade, pg. 160 of "The Forge and the Crucible"
Medieval alchemists were more correct in their views than Carl Jung
believes. Medieval alchemy is a paradigm of the spiritual path that can
be applied today, provided that the artifex realizes that cooking
chemicals is not central to the process, although it has a symbolic
quality, and it has a value as a symbol, as do any of its products,
crystals, et al. To make operations with material substances can have a beneficent
effect. In "sandplay therapy" patients work with sand. Carl Jung used to
dig channels into the sand and lead water through them. But he never
believed that such work is sufficient to realize the self.
Atlanta Fugiens
The Light of Nature
The intellectual vision is said by many authors to be of a paramount importance in the great work. This vision is said to be the " true and not fantastic imagination" . It is described as "the active evocation of inner images and the power to make hidden things that are invisible appear". This is a true achievement of thought and idea, more than just suggestions of unrealistic or groundless fancies. It is not just the fantasizing with objects and ideas, but the capacity to seize their deeper reality as related in images true to their nature.
Ruland says that imagination is the Star in man. The term Astrum is a term invented by Paracelsus. He said that the power to visualize belonged to something astral in man. He meant that it belonged to an intellect above the lower material man and that it was a divine intelligence belonging to the spiritual man and is as the quintessence in man. It is the mediator between man and what is the Divine. He said, imagination is a concentrated extract of the life forces, both physical and psychic.
Paracelsus says that "man has a visible and invisible workshop. The visible one is his body, the invisible one his imagination. The imagination is a sun in the soul of man acting in its own sphere, as the sun in our system acts on the earth. Wherever the latter shines, germs planted in the soil grow and vegetation springs up. The imagination acts in a similar manner in the soul, and calls forms of life into existence. The spirit is the master, imagination the tool, and the body is the sculptural material."
To make manifest that which is hidden can only be through this divine faculty. Before any transmutation can be had, one must be able to extract the hidden nature within, while the sensory objective nature is made to become hidden. The "Novum Lumen Chemicum" says that one must remove the shadow from hidden things and relates this operation to an intellectual and imaginative act. Sendivogius says that this is the key that the ancients never revealed. Albertus Magnus says that all alchemical and magical techniques act only when man is in a sort of ecstasy, a higher state or an active trance prayer or meditation.
" Convert the elements". " Transform the natures and thou wilt obtain what thou seekest". All these can be achieved and mastered by the perfect creative imagination, which is the most mighty power of soul. --Steve Kalec
The intellectual vision is said by many authors to be of a paramount importance in the great work. This vision is said to be the " true and not fantastic imagination" . It is described as "the active evocation of inner images and the power to make hidden things that are invisible appear". This is a true achievement of thought and idea, more than just suggestions of unrealistic or groundless fancies. It is not just the fantasizing with objects and ideas, but the capacity to seize their deeper reality as related in images true to their nature.
Ruland says that imagination is the Star in man. The term Astrum is a term invented by Paracelsus. He said that the power to visualize belonged to something astral in man. He meant that it belonged to an intellect above the lower material man and that it was a divine intelligence belonging to the spiritual man and is as the quintessence in man. It is the mediator between man and what is the Divine. He said, imagination is a concentrated extract of the life forces, both physical and psychic.
Paracelsus says that "man has a visible and invisible workshop. The visible one is his body, the invisible one his imagination. The imagination is a sun in the soul of man acting in its own sphere, as the sun in our system acts on the earth. Wherever the latter shines, germs planted in the soil grow and vegetation springs up. The imagination acts in a similar manner in the soul, and calls forms of life into existence. The spirit is the master, imagination the tool, and the body is the sculptural material."
To make manifest that which is hidden can only be through this divine faculty. Before any transmutation can be had, one must be able to extract the hidden nature within, while the sensory objective nature is made to become hidden. The "Novum Lumen Chemicum" says that one must remove the shadow from hidden things and relates this operation to an intellectual and imaginative act. Sendivogius says that this is the key that the ancients never revealed. Albertus Magnus says that all alchemical and magical techniques act only when man is in a sort of ecstasy, a higher state or an active trance prayer or meditation.
" Convert the elements". " Transform the natures and thou wilt obtain what thou seekest". All these can be achieved and mastered by the perfect creative imagination, which is the most mighty power of soul. --Steve Kalec
http://www.psychovision.ch/hknw/holy_wedding_alchemy_modern_man_p1j_e.htm
The Unconscious mind is the fertile black earth. All consciousness emerges out of this massa confusa, rich with the Gold of the Alchemists, that is the Light of consciousness. It is the womb which gives borth to the Child Mercurius. The unconscious is our universal mother, not something that hampers our growth and something to struggle against. Rather, we venerate her as the Universal ISIS who has given birth to the SUN. We are told that consciousness should inseminate the unconscious to bring forth her fruits. The Hermetic King does not struggle against the Hermetic Queen, but unites with Her in the coniunctio.
A king and queen with symbolic attributes. Two monarchs, possibly the
recipients of the manuscript, with various symbols of longevity. The
phoenix is shown on the left moulting and pecking at its breast and on
the right rising from the flames triumphantly. The sun and moon, ever
present, represent eternity as do the intertwined snakes. This image
represents the opening of the manuscript. From a collection of treatises
and poems on alchemy and the philosopher's stone, which was believed to
bestow on its possessor the power of eternal life. Credit: © The
British Library / Heritage-Images / Imagestate
Credit: Ann Ronan Picture Library / Heritage-Images The Sixth Key of Basil Valentine,
legendary 15th century German monk and alchemist, 1651. The marriage of
the alchemical king (gold) and queen (silver) and the process of
distillation in a furnace using an alembic in a water bath or bain
marie. From Von dem grossen Stein Uhralten by Basil Valentine.
(Strasbourg, 1651).
Fire of Dew
"I am the moisture which preserves everything in nature and makes it live, I pass from the upper to the lower planes; I am the heavenly dew and the fat of the land; I am the fiery water and the watery fire; nothing may live without me in time; I am close to all things yea; in and through all things, nevertheless unknown. Nevertheless I only am in the grasp of the Philosophers. I unfold and fold up again, Bringing contentment to the artists, without me thou canst do nothing
Furthering any of your affairs. Therefore fear God, pray and work in patience, if you find me your want would cease and you have a merciful God who befriendeth thee and giveth thee whatever thy heart may desire." --"Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians"
"I am the moisture which preserves everything in nature and makes it live, I pass from the upper to the lower planes; I am the heavenly dew and the fat of the land; I am the fiery water and the watery fire; nothing may live without me in time; I am close to all things yea; in and through all things, nevertheless unknown. Nevertheless I only am in the grasp of the Philosophers. I unfold and fold up again, Bringing contentment to the artists, without me thou canst do nothing
Furthering any of your affairs. Therefore fear God, pray and work in patience, if you find me your want would cease and you have a merciful God who befriendeth thee and giveth thee whatever thy heart may desire." --"Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians"
Like the Gargoyles on top of cathedrals, they stand on guard and watch how one dares to enter the holy place.
The guardians appear only when one has reached that profound stillness of mind, body, soul and spirit, when all thoughts have stopped and one is truly in the mystical silence. I know this silence. It is in this spiritual peace and silence that one is readied to enter into communion with the divine master.
It is also in this silence, this anti chamber that leads to the inner portals of the most inner sanctum, where one will find the greater light. It is in this anti chamber that the guardians appear and test your readiness. If they manage to scare you back, they won. If you could stare them down with your most steady peace, you will have won your entrance. They will dissolve in front of you as you pass through the highest degrees of purification having killed your own beast. Anyone who has ever reached such a silence and elevated state, will not be afraid of how so ever heinous a figure appears. Because he will be at peace and will have the fortitude to conquer any beast.
Buddha was meditating under a tree when his guardian appeared as an army that shot arrows at him. The arrows turned to flowers when they reach him. We all will experience the guardians in our own way and will absolutely confront them as we dare to enter the Holy of Holies. --Steve Kalec
The guardians appear only when one has reached that profound stillness of mind, body, soul and spirit, when all thoughts have stopped and one is truly in the mystical silence. I know this silence. It is in this spiritual peace and silence that one is readied to enter into communion with the divine master.
It is also in this silence, this anti chamber that leads to the inner portals of the most inner sanctum, where one will find the greater light. It is in this anti chamber that the guardians appear and test your readiness. If they manage to scare you back, they won. If you could stare them down with your most steady peace, you will have won your entrance. They will dissolve in front of you as you pass through the highest degrees of purification having killed your own beast. Anyone who has ever reached such a silence and elevated state, will not be afraid of how so ever heinous a figure appears. Because he will be at peace and will have the fortitude to conquer any beast.
Buddha was meditating under a tree when his guardian appeared as an army that shot arrows at him. The arrows turned to flowers when they reach him. We all will experience the guardians in our own way and will absolutely confront them as we dare to enter the Holy of Holies. --Steve Kalec
Philosopher's stone and the serpent of alchemy from the 1622 edition of Philosophia Reformata by J. D. Mylius. (FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)
Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1970. 702 p. (p. 48-56).
"The alchemical doctrine of the scintilla or spark is presented, the symbol of the eye is examined and its significance is explained in psychological terms. The concept of spark or scintilla is found in the writings of Meister Eckhart, Heractitus, Hippolytus and Simon Magus as well as in those of the alchemists. Alchemists defined the spark as Archaeus, the fiery centre of the earth which is hermaphroditic, consisting in a conjunction of male and female. The parallel to Adam Kadmon, the original man of Jewish Gnosis and the product of the conjunction of sun and moon, is noted. The significance of the eye as a symbol of the scintilla is discussed and related to the doctrine of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The psychological analysis of the eye and sun as symbol and allegory of the consciousness, which is the mark of the ego complex, is compared to the alchemists' view of the union of the scintillae to form gold (sol) and the Gnostic goal of reintegrating atoms of light. Dom's concept of the scintilla, an invisible sun in the centre of man and a fire point created by tension of masculine and feminine principles in Mercurius, is examined as in Khurach's description of the scintilla as elixir. The resemblance between Khurath's concept and that of Monoimos is noted."
The realization of the complementarian self is a slow procedure corresponding to the creation of the 'lapis philosophorum' in alchemy. The relation between the conscious ego and the unconscious, as rendered by Jungian psychology, is enhanced with an alternative, indirect, approach to the integration of the unconscious that better approximates the medieval alchemical view. The symbolic depiction of the process according to the medievals is very apt. Transformations can be invoked in the unconscious, capable of continuing autonomously, although the procedure is dependent on "heating" in the form of conscious meditations. Eventually the transformations taking place in the unconscious (the 'vas hermeticum') will cause an after-effect in the conscious sphere.
The hermaphrodite in alchemy is reinterpreted in terms of the "complementarian self". It differs from Jung's understanding of the end goal of alchemy as the realization of the conjunct conscious and unconscious — the integrated self. Instead the hermaphrodite, or the 'lapis philosophorum' , is the result of a largely autonomous process that occurs relatively independent of the ego. If this is correct, the ego need not undergo the radical transformations that Jung portrays, involving a psychological crisis, or severe depression. The renovated self, as such, as the wonder-working 'lapis', will influence the ego, as an after-effect.
Read the article here:
http://home7. swipnet.se/ ~w-73784/ compself. htm
Mats Winther
"The alchemical doctrine of the scintilla or spark is presented, the symbol of the eye is examined and its significance is explained in psychological terms. The concept of spark or scintilla is found in the writings of Meister Eckhart, Heractitus, Hippolytus and Simon Magus as well as in those of the alchemists. Alchemists defined the spark as Archaeus, the fiery centre of the earth which is hermaphroditic, consisting in a conjunction of male and female. The parallel to Adam Kadmon, the original man of Jewish Gnosis and the product of the conjunction of sun and moon, is noted. The significance of the eye as a symbol of the scintilla is discussed and related to the doctrine of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The psychological analysis of the eye and sun as symbol and allegory of the consciousness, which is the mark of the ego complex, is compared to the alchemists' view of the union of the scintillae to form gold (sol) and the Gnostic goal of reintegrating atoms of light. Dom's concept of the scintilla, an invisible sun in the centre of man and a fire point created by tension of masculine and feminine principles in Mercurius, is examined as in Khurach's description of the scintilla as elixir. The resemblance between Khurath's concept and that of Monoimos is noted."
The realization of the complementarian self is a slow procedure corresponding to the creation of the 'lapis philosophorum' in alchemy. The relation between the conscious ego and the unconscious, as rendered by Jungian psychology, is enhanced with an alternative, indirect, approach to the integration of the unconscious that better approximates the medieval alchemical view. The symbolic depiction of the process according to the medievals is very apt. Transformations can be invoked in the unconscious, capable of continuing autonomously, although the procedure is dependent on "heating" in the form of conscious meditations. Eventually the transformations taking place in the unconscious (the 'vas hermeticum') will cause an after-effect in the conscious sphere.
The hermaphrodite in alchemy is reinterpreted in terms of the "complementarian self". It differs from Jung's understanding of the end goal of alchemy as the realization of the conjunct conscious and unconscious — the integrated self. Instead the hermaphrodite, or the 'lapis philosophorum' , is the result of a largely autonomous process that occurs relatively independent of the ego. If this is correct, the ego need not undergo the radical transformations that Jung portrays, involving a psychological crisis, or severe depression. The renovated self, as such, as the wonder-working 'lapis', will influence the ego, as an after-effect.
Read the article here:
http://home7. swipnet.se/ ~w-73784/ compself. htm
Mats Winther
Chaos As the Universal Solvent, by Iona Miller, 1992
ABSTRACT: There is a
generic process in nature and consciousness which dissolves and
regenerates all forms. The essence of this transformative,
morphological process is chaotic--purposeful yet inherently
unpredictable holistic repatterning. The Great Work of the art of
alchemy is the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, a symbol of
wholeness and integration. The liquid form of the Stone, called the
Universal Solvent, dissolves all old forms like a rushing stream, and
is the self-organizing matrix for the rebirth of new forms. It is thus
a metaphor or model for the dynamic process of transformation, ego
death and re-creation.
The alchemical operation SOLUTIO, called "the root of alchemy," corresponds with the element water. It implies a flowing state of consciousness, "liquification" of consciousness, a return to the womb for rebirth, a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. It facilitates feedback via creative regression: de-structuring, or destratification by immersion in the flow of psychic imagery through identification with more and more primal forms or patterns--a psychedelic, expanded state. Chaos Theory provides a metaphorical language for describing the flowing dynamics of the chaotic process of psychological transformation.
"All substances are part of my own consciousness. This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."
Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state. Like the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant. --Leary, Metzner, Alpert; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
To summarize, I have spoken of seven major aspects of SOLUTIO symbolism: (1) return to the womb or primal state; (2) dissolution, dispersal, dismemberment; (3) containment of a lesser thing by a greater; (4) rebirth, rejuvenation, immersion in the creative energy flow; (5) purification ordeal; (6) solution of problems; and (7) melting or softening process. These different aspects overlap. Several or all of them may make up different facets of a single experience. Basically it is the ego's confrontation with the unconscious that brings about SOLUTIO. --Edward Edinger, ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE
THE MEDICINE OF PHILOSOPHERS
Alchemy had one great prescription for the accomplishment of the Great Work: "Solve et Coagula"--reduce or dissolve all to its primary, most fundamental essence and embody that creative, holistic spirit. The ancient alchemists sought to transform "lead" into "gold." We repeat this process as modern alchemists when we seek the transformative medium which allows us to recognize our rigidities ("lead") and facilitates our healing and expression of our full creative potential ("gold").
That medium is the ever-flowing river of our consciousness. The organic, regenerative process of "re-creational ego death" is common to mysticism, experiential psychology, and psychedelic journeys. Spiritual exploration, or soul travel, is shared by all three modes of immersion in the universal stream of consciousness. They are all variations on the theme of the consciousness journey, and echo our shamanic roots, and the mythemes of eternal return and hero/heroine. Participants reach a deep, integral level, and direct experience of Higher Power, often merging with the Creation or the Creator.
All these modes facilitate psychedelic consciousness, though any given experience may vary in duration and depth. Their prescribed frequency varies: meditators are advised to "die daily;" in psychotherapy once a month may be enough for regenerative therapy; psychedelic use varies from single experiences, to monthly, to annually. Despite different modes of induction, all these experiences reflect the illusory nature of time, space, and ego as reality constructs. The primary nature of consciousness is revealed. The word psychedelic has its roots in the Greek psyche, soul, and delos, visible, evident. It is direct evidence of the soul, the pure manifestation of soul.
Stace (1960) identifies nine qualities of the psychedelic experience as follows: 1) unity of all things; 2) transformation of space and time; 3) deeply felt positive mood; 4) sacredness; 5) objectivity and reality; 6) paradoxicality; 7) alleged ineffability; 8) transiency, and 9) persisting positive changes in subsequent behavior. In the practice of mysticism there is identification with progressively more subtle "bodies" or vehicles of consciousness, culminating in a transform from a mental or causal body to a vehicle of pure Light.
In experiential psychotherapy, transformation results from deepening within the flow of psychic imagery, progressively identifying with more primal forms, and ultimately with formlessness. In psychedelic experience, expansion of consciousness dissolves ego boundaries leading to morphological transformations and ecstatic communion. In alchemy, one sought not only to find or create the Stone, but also to apply it, or use it creatively in the everyday world. Now, we might speak of integrating or actualizing the results of our transformations in daily life. Thus, self-actualization or self-realization implies the grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration.
The liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone was known as the UNIVERSAL SOLVENT. According to the alchemists, the operation of solutio (liquification) has a twofold effect: it causes old forms to disappear and new regenerate forms to emerge. To a rigid consciousness, the primal ocean of the unconscious is experienced as chaotic, violent, irrational processes of generation and destruction. Through "creative regression," the generic form of ego death, consciousness recycles, recursively bending back upon itself. The direction is a recapitulation of, a re-experiencing of sequences from earlier life, conception and birth experience, ancestral awareness, genetic and physiological recognitions, molecular and atomic perception, and quantum consciousness. As consciousness explores and expands, ego dissolves.
Pure consciousness, the fundamental luminosity, is the ground state of unborn form. The generic purpose of ego death is to liberate our embodied being, precipitating communion with and re-patterning by the Whole. When all forms finally dissolve into unconditioned consciousness, the ground state of the Nature Mind is revealed as the mystic Void, the womb of creation. When the constructed forms which hold personality together are voluntarily relinquished, consciousness "liquifies" and rapidly moves toward the unconditioned state.
Though easy to say, it is sometimes difficult to achieve such liberation from the mental-conceptual activity of the nervous system. When we do, the quiescent nervous system is open and receptive to the conscious recognition of pure energy transforms with no interpretations. The Universal Solvent dissolves problems, heals, allows life to flow in new, creative patterns. These new patterns embody the evolutionary dynamic. According to chaos theory, free-flowing energy is capable of self-organization. In consciousness this means that the obstructions to free flowing energy must first be dissolved.
Through re-creational ego death, consciousness dissolves into healing communion with the whole of existence, renewing itself, emerging with a new creative potential. The need for the periodic destruction of outmoded systems implies the value of recycling consciousness through death/rebirth experience. The universal solvent is not ordinary water, but "philosophical" water, the water of life, aqua permanens, aqua mercurialis. It is also the panacea, "elixer vitae," "tincture," or universal medicine. To periodically dip into these healing waters has a tonic, rejuvenating effect which pervades all aspects of being, like a soothing balm. This divine water signifies the return of The Feminine, a reflective consciousness with inner awareness and archetypal spiritual perceptions.
This Feminine Divinity is the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, the universal animating principle, the upwelling spring of the creative Imagination, the dynamic flow of imagery, pattern, and form. This dynamic has been known as Isis, Shakti, Maya, Shekinah, Sophia, Demeter/Persephone, Mary. In psychedelic mysticism, the animating principle is being referred to as Gaian Consciousness (Abraham, 1992), which we might view as a rebirth of ancient ecstatic, communal consciousness. It is the psychobiological basis of deep ecology, the flow of relationships.
The return of chaos heralds the "greening of consciousness," the greening of the cultural wasteland. Hillman (1985) describes the anima not as a projection of, but rather the projector of psyche. We are contained within Her fantasy, not She within ours.
Grinnell (1973) describes the transformative process of solutio which facilitates the fluid, mobile basis of consciousness: For aqua permanens is a mode of the arcane substance; its symbol is water or sea-water, an all-pervading essence of anima mundi, the innermost and secret numinosum in man and the universe, that part of God which formed the quintessence and real substance of Physis, at once the highest supercelestial waters of wisdom and the spirit of life pervading inorganic matter. The arcane descriptors of this paradoxical liquid Stone are cryptic, couched in metaphor. But what does it mean experiencially and pragmatically? How does this chaotic transformative process engineer our consciousness?
The divine water, as a liquid symbol of the Self, can be experienced in many ways. It has been described as innocuously as the "stream of consciousness," and as poetically as the "Heart of The River of Created Forms." Solutio implies the liquification of consciousness through the dissolution of rigidities which inhibit free flow. They include roles, game patterns, defense strategies, rigid attitudes and beliefs, interpretations, complexes, "old" myths, and "frozen" energy surrounding traumas which manifests as fear and pain. Fossilized or ossified energies create obstructions to free flow, like boulders in a stream produce turbulence. Destructuring transformative processes can dissolve them, increasing the sense of flow.
This "liquified" consciousness is psychedelic, a nonordinary expanded awareness which dissolves fixations and habits, and loosens cramped attitudes. Mystic ecstasy, or the psychedelic state is mind-manifesting, consciousness expanding. It dissolves the identification of our consciousness with our histories, bodies, emotions, thoughts, and even beliefs. We are free to explore myriad forms, structures, and patterns, and/or become formless, resting in that unborn, unconditioned, unmodified healing state. We experience the essence of other forms of existence.
The Oneness of all life and existence is directly experienced through a variety of transformations ranging from plant and animal identifications to planetary and universal consciousness. Entering the turbulent flow of the stream of consciousness, we can ride its currents back to the Source, pure unconditioned cosmic consciousness. We can imbibe the life-giving qualities of this "water" through mind-expanding experiential contact with this deep consciousness. The transformative process is also reflected in our modern physical worldview as chaos theory, which we can view as a modern "myth," a new metaphor for the dynamics of consciousness.
Chaos is ubiquitous in nature, pervading all dynamic processes, perturbing them unpredictably. Chaos theory shows us that nature is continually unfolding new forms from the chaotic matrix of creation. Our dynamic consciousness is an essentially chaotic process. Chaos tracks a time evolution with sensitive dependence on initial conditions. When we "return" experiencially to the "initial conditions" of our existence, our whole being is holistically repatterned. Our historical limitations are superseded by the creative power of the eternal Now. We can allow chaos, as the universal solvent, to liquify consciousness and re-create ourselves.
This presumes a therapeutic atmosphere, a "safe" set and setting, because each phase of the journey is an encounter with uncertainty. The journey into deep consciousness appears inherently chaotic because the state of uncertainty pervades each moment of transition. Underlying moments of transience there are momentary blanks in awareness--little voids--flickering microstates which repattern each phase. Whether the experience is one of loss of personal boundaries or direct perception of stark, raw reality, or visionary dreams, there is no predicting where the chaotic orbit of consciousness will roam next. To embrace chaos in our consciousness journeys, therefore means to cooperate and flow with the transformative process, opening ourselves to our deepest emergent potential.
It's O.K. to let go periodically and temporarily become unstructured nothingness and open to holistic re-patterning. Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution (Kauffmann, 1991). This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices.
The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion. The Philosopher's Stone may thus be seen as a "strange attractor" in the life of anyone engaged in the quest for transformation. It is an instinctual attraction toward processes which dissolve the ego and liquify consciousness, leading to transpersonal experience after symbolic death/rebirth. Freedom in the exploration of imagery comes from the creative capacity to experience loss. Experiencially, it appears as being channeled into the swirling mass of interacting symbols, an overwhelming vortex of pure information. We are sucked inexorably into interaction with the self-symbol, sucked into ourselves, like flotsam is pulled into a whirlpool.
This is the vortex of the system, the vortex of self, where all levels cross. It overwhelms or tangles the mental processes, the self-imaging processes that maintain the illusion of stable personality and individual boundaries. In solutio, the body is joined with the soul and spirit. The skin-boundary dissolves into visceral as well as spiritual perception. Awareness of physical processes may be greatly amplified, appearing as impressions, intuitions, sensations, sounds, odors. The body is always speaking silently. Through this raw, physical expression, that which was solid becomes liquified, dissolved, deliteralized.
The concrete image of the body "morphs" into the flow of pure energy, in a variation of Transubstantiation. It is the "rapture" of being seized up into the heavenly realm. The flow of dynamic energy from the deep Self reawakens and activates the body, and also that portion of the unconscious that the body carries. The body not only carries, but is the memory of the entire evolutionary cycle. Consciousness can access any portion of this material memory through creative regression. The body manifests kinesthetic, preverbal, and preconceptual memory of its direct experience. Immersion in the healing creative energy flow is like a spiritual baptism, which facilitates creative reformation of ordinary consciousness, and even the physical body.
Solutio, as a state of consciousness, unites the powers of above and below, transpersonal and personal. It is the integration of the higher spiritual powers with personal experience that embodies the healing dynamic. This produces the paradoxical poison-panacea. The dual nature of the universal medicine points to a consciousness state beyond both opposites. In Greek myth, Athena gave Asklepios, the divine healer, the blood of Medusa as the universal medicine. In its negative aspect it was toxic and produced death. The positive aspect brought healing; this mysterious potion is the "cure-all," the "solution."
Divine water (sometimes symbolized as blood) is dangerous, poisonous, seductive, addictive, even deadly in its primeval, untransformed state--madness. In the science fiction novel, DUNE, the new messiah and the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood imbibe the psychoactive "water of life" with impunity. Moving past the fear and pain, they transcend time/space and commune with the continuum of all existence. What sets them apart from others, on whom the potion has a fatal effect, is their ability to withstand and convert its initial toxic effects into a religious ecstasy.
They know how to navigate in that turbulent flow, during their consciousness journeys--"moving without traveling." The alchemical solution to this problem of primordial, raw experience is to "cook" it into a reflective consciousness. Recycling itself, the ego cooperates in its own "re-creational death," connecting with the transpersonal forces of rebirth and renewal. The reborn personality is resurrected, restored to life through new meaning. The ego acknowledges the Self as its new center of gravity, and personality heals.
Experiential connection to the living reality of the Self, the "waters of life" is the panacea, the magical elixer of life. Solutio (and its prime agent, chaos) arises spontaneously from the depths as irrational images, dreams and fantasies. In dreamhealing, the dream symbols are followed deeper and deeper down to the primal level where all structure dissolves into its original source. This journey into the depths, and subsequent emergence, is the basis of shamanic healing. As we journey in the autonomous consciousness stream, guided movement deeper into and beyond the fear and pain brings up the classical imagery of the solutio, as resistance subsides. There is no part of it that is not us. The transformative process dissolves blockages, obstructions or "frozen" consciousness which disturb and distort the free flow of energy.
1) RETURN TO THE WOMB OR PRIMAL STATE
The alchemist Paracelsus said, "He who enters the kingdom of God must first enter his mother and die." That death-like silence is also our mother, the virgin womb of the imagination. The dynamics of "creative regression" are common to mystical experience, psychedelic exploration, and therapeutic consciousness journeys. All lead to immersion in the flow of the stream of consciousness.
Creative regression is a generic form of the myth of the eternal return, chronic recurrence, reiteration. In the dynamics of chaos theory we find this recursive motion in the concept of iteration--self-similarity--which produces the similarity in infinitely descending scales of fractal generation. Iteration is like a stretching and folding of the spacetime continuum. Experientially it manifests within us as a spiritualizing instinct, a recursive "bending back" of instinct toward that which is primordial and divine.
Thus, whether induced through psychoactive substances, mystical transport, or experiential psychotherapy typical imagery recycles, recapitulates, or reiterates cascades of impressionistic transformations spanning the entire spectrum of archetypal experiences--morphological transformations. These include but are not limited to childhood, birth, embryonic development, ancestral, mythic, genetic, evolutionary, universal, and quantum consciousness. Access to the entire continuum of organic and inorganic evolution as well as the collective unconscious becomes available. That information most pertinent to the whole self emerges in the stream of consciousness as virtual experience. What is pertinent is what gets spontaneously "downloaded," and it repeats and reiterates the basic issues in yet another, eternally creative way.
Stan Grof has cataloged an extensive taxonomy of these states, most notably in THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY (1988). Such experiences of cosmic consciousness constitute a "return to the Mother," the blissful fusion of primal union, at both personal and universal levels. The direction of this dynamic process is recursive, bending back through deep time, ontology, and phylogeny. It echoes the semantic roots of the words religion and yoga, which imply a "linking backward" in the bond between gods and man, a craving for ecstasy, and transcendence of the limitations of physical form (Milkman, 1987).
Jung called this dynamic an opus contra naturam, a work against nature. But chaos theory shows us it is actually quite organic, natural, and instinctual. In alchemy it was the Great Work. Consciousness turns back on itself, reiterating each level of organization, de-structuring each strata as it dives deeper toward the unconditioned, formless beginning, or "unborn" state. This primal state is amniotic bliss experienced as the Void, the cosmic womb. Images of the Great Mother system become reactivated, though not exactly in their original form. Imagery like fractals is self-similar, but not entirely identical.
This creative regression is to the prepersonal domain, the preverbal, preconceptual domain, not the transpersonal spiritual domain (transverbal, transconceptual). Typically in the first few dreamhealing sessions, a person will enter a dream symbol doorway which leads back to a conception memory. They may or may not recognize it as such during the journey. But in content, the symbolism is very clear. The imagery is fundamental or primal, appearing as a dance of energy, matter, and consciousness--the body-ego's conscious experience. These images are close to the stuff of our creation -- the prima materia -- of our existence. We may experience it as free-floating: a paradox of chaos and a deep-felt sense of flowing and peace.
The imagery here is psychedelic -- consciousness expanding -- an autonomous manifestation of imagination. The panoply of the ceaseless transformation of energy may overwhelm the senses, leading to a sense of total chaos. There is nothing to do but let go, surrender to it, merge with it, flow with it. The dancing energy waves and patterns are perceived as deep whorls, spinning spirals, black holes, infinite voids, gray clouds of nothingness. There is melding of the senses -- synesthesia -- such as "tasting" music, "seeing" sound, etc. Simple throbbing and other extremely primitive sensations may be experienced. Experience of this state produces a new acceptance of the original conditions of conception, and re-structuring of the primal self-image.
We go into the primal chaos to begin the process of reformation from our pre-structural beginning. In essence, we re-enter the womb as we are initiated in the mysteries of the psyche. We re-conceive our primal self image, healed by communion with the creative Source.
2) DISSOLUTION, DISPERSAL, DISMEMBERMENT
The classic text of re-creational surrender or sacrifice of self is THE BARDO THODOL, or THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. It is explicitly for the living who undertake the death-like regression into the unconscious, as well as the dying. Because of their orientation toward consciousness journeys, THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE and THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD are useful translations or contemporizations of the transformational classic.
The realm of death is the twilight zone between consciousness and matter. Here psychoid phenomena manifest through the mingling of these modes. Here mind/matter duality ceases, creating enchantment, uncanny synchronicities, time warps, psychic experience, revelation of the mind of matter, the Nature Mind. The moment of ego death is heralded by certain symptoms of transition. Resistance by the mind to this creative dissolution brings about physical symptoms which range from shaking and a sense of increasing pressure and anxiety, to paradoxical flashes of hot and cold, to extreme dizziness and disorientation.
As the classic psychedelic manual says, "The hard, dry, brittle husks of your ego are washing out; Washing out to the endless sea of creation." (Leary et al, 1964). Distressing or disturbing symptoms symbolize the violence of the passage of consciousness from form to formlessness. Images of the body disintegrating or being blown to atoms (fear of exploding = fear of expanding) are characteristic psychedelic experiences. Perhaps the very elements of our bodies "remember" their formation in the crucible of some supernova. There may be identification with merciless destruction, the Dance of Shiva, the raging elements of nature, a variety of forms of explosive discharge. Here are visions of fires, floods, raging storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, turbulent lakes of magma.
Consciousness "breaks up" into its elemental forms, manifesting as overwhelming imagery. This first phase of dissolution may be characterized by the futility of resistance, magnetic downward spirals, gravity wells, loss of morphological identity. E.J. Gold describes the second stage of the voyage as one of being overwhelmed by illusions produced by conditioning. Yet the primal element of pure forms breaks through and the voyager recognizes "the basic component of consciousness which when combined produces what is called the element Water."
In consciousness journeys, chaos functions as the universal solvent, that which dissolves all patterns and forms including the rigid, outmoded aspects of the self. In the dream journey, one might enter a spinning vortex and become dismembered by centrifugal force, torn limb from limb. We remain in this state of dis-integration until we re-member our essential self, embodying the wounded healer. That sense of disintegration comes as the ego gives up its "unified" linear perspective (bivalent) to the multiple consciousness or awareness (multi-valence) of the deep self. Fear makes it feel like fragmentation, but in truth there is nothing in that imagery that is not us. The death throes of the ego prepare it for rebirth, through communion with cosmic consciousness, a new incarnation of the spirit, death and resurrection.
The nature of universal consciousness is oceanic. When the ego is in danger of "getting in over its head," it panics as if faced with drowning in the depths of this vast ocean of consciousness. It overwhelms the ego which cannot fathom this abyss. This aspect of solutio brings mythic images of the dying god, of violent death and sacrifice, and of the isolation of the hero. It means nothing less than the sacrifice of the old self. The dissolution phase may mean myths of the triumph of darkness; myths of floods and the return of chaos, of the defeat of the hero.
In Gold's words, "Death comes to all forms; everything eventually is broken up by dissolution, so there's no point clinging to yet another biological form out of desire, longing for stability, or from fear and weakness."
3) CONTAINMENT OF A LESSER THING BY A GREATER
The ego "takes the plunge," it lets go and dissolves its old matrix, its old boundaries. When its boundaries melt, ego-consciousness dissolves into deep consciousness. The "wave merges with the ocean," and experiences its own deep transpersonal nature. It moves swiftly through the fear and pain, awakening to an infinitely wider reality of universal energy waves. In the ocean of creativity, "your own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor death." (Leary, 1964).
Experience of the pure, unmodified state of consciousness transcends all opposites, and therefore consciousness journeys provide an experiential "container" for the reconciliation of paradox within a larger field of experience--a broader, transcendent perspective. The transformational process acts as a "container" (alchemical retort) of the contents of psyche. But these contents, reduced to their essence are "nothingness," simply dreams and imagination. Emptiness is the real Philosopher's Stone. By dissolving into non-relative consciousness, mood swings or identification with conflicting polar positions may be transcended by an enlarged state of consciousness which embraces and contains the entire continuum.
Flow replaces polarity. Jung spoke of the transcendent function as a symbol-forming force continuously creating emergent imagery which facilitates whole-self realization. It is thus an evolutionary and adaptive force. Mindell (1985) speaks of the flow in alchemical terms: The alchemists called this flow the 'aqua permanens', or permanent water. Aqua permanens is the fluid process, the energy or life which was locked up in the tension of conflict which has now been freed through the flow between the opposites. Fluidity comes from conflict. Whereas before there was a boundary between conflicting opposites, between intent and reality, streaming energy now transforms therapy into natural science.
Dreams, visions, or the stream of consciousness can be used therapeutically as an evolutionary force to guide people from a small sense of self and expand them toward a larger image. This expansion of the sense of self may require some adjustment. The illumination (awakening to larger Reality) may also come through a nature-mystic experience, intense sexual experience, E.S.P., a consciousness journey, or meditation. Enlightenment (even the "seed" of enlightenment) is an experience of awe, bliss, and infinite possibilities. The ego realizes it is not the center of the whole person, but only "manages" the personality.
There are autonomous archetypal forces which inhabit the psyche with their own agendas, patterns, and goals. Our psyche is transpersonal; it has no boundaries. Our conscious awareness is only a manifestation of this larger consciousness. Within this larger consciousness, we are at home with a plurality of visions. The parts contain the whole (to a degree), enfolded or embedded like a fractal or hologram. Containment may take place symbolically in the therapeutic relationship.
The consciousness guide, therapist, or shaman functions as a guide to the netherworld. The "wounded healer" has a numinous quality which provokes the projections of others. Shamans work within the belief systems of their subjects to expand their sense of what is possible. Those subjects' experiences generally reflect the style and beliefs of the shaman--the shaman's positive expectation of particularized results. Exposure to the infinitely broader worldview of a shamanic personality will automatically move a "smaller" personality into solutio, dissolution. This rapport or participation mystique is an unconscious, automatic process--a positive sort of psychic contagion. This unconscious dynamic may be responsible for the phenomenon of "contact high."
Melting Vacuum
4) REBIRTH, REJUVENATION, IMMERSION IN THE CREATIVE ENERGY FLOW
Psychedelic, as well as mystical literature contains many examples of surrendering, letting go, accepting, merging, and joining the flow of the "Nature Mind," where all is consciousness--the audible life stream. This "Diamond Consciousness" is awareness of creative flux of the Void, the fluid unity of life. We flow within it, and it flows through us. The death-rebirth sequence typically opens a person to the transpersonal domain with its virtually infinite creativity. It reveals and unfolds our future potentials. In dreamhealing, chaotic consciousness is also creative consciousness.
Terence McKenna reminds us that, "Riverine metaphors are endlessly applicable. They represent the flowing of forces over landscapes, the pressure of chaos on the imagination to create creatively. . .The key is surrender and dissolution of boundaries, dissolution of the ego." When we immerse ourselves in that creative energy, we find healing on many levels of our being. It may feel tingly or effervescent, or like streaming energy. Direct experience of this level brings a true sense of oneness with all that exists, the seamless fabric of existence. It opens us to re-patterning by the whole--a re-construction or re-patterning of personality through holistic change at the most fundamental level. Immersion in the oceanic experience of universal consciousness is a life-changing experience. It is experience of the web of life, the biological life flow, an ineffable current of bliss.
Once we experience that larger world and self--the rhythmic pulse of all life--we are never the same again, so long as we remember. Communing with this energy, experiencing these states of consciousness, has been the practice of shamans since the dawn of man. Shamanic consciousness means the ability to enter and exit altered states at will. This power is connected to the liquid expression of life--the sap of life--the vegetable forms of the liquid Stone, and its identity with psychotropic plants.
This notion reiterates that of the "greening of consciousness." Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1973) spoke of the distillate of his mystical experience as follows: "The Current is clearly a subtle, fluid-like substance which brings the sense of well-being already described. Along with It, a more than earthly Joy suffuses the whole nature. To myself, I called It a Nectar. Now, I recognize It under several names. It is also the 'Soma,' the 'Ambrosia of the Gods,' the 'Elixir of Life,' the 'Water of Life' of Jesus, and the 'Baptism of the Spirit' of St. Paul. It is more than related to Immortality; in fact, It is Identical with Immortality.
" When the ego is completely dissolved in this renewing bath, we experience timeless consciousness, and are reborn based on a new, healthier primal self-image. This rejuvenation comes from connecting with pristine consciousness, the eternal aspects or forces of nature. Even though we cannot conceive of it, we can experience the infinite, the eternal, the transcendent.
Visions of Creation, Emanation, the upwelling Source, emerge. Spiritual reincarnation means bringing to life that which was formerly dead or unawakened, through connection with the original creative power. It is the theme of the Quest -- the greening of the Wasteland. The process of rebirth is the mythic enactment of "the one story" whose pattern is found in every narrative. Beneath the differences, the meaning -- having to do with the loss and recovery of identity -- does not change. This story of the loss and regaining of identity is the framework of most literature, from which comes the hero with a thousand faces.
Some variation of the hero's adventures, death, disappearance, and marriage or resurrection are the focal points of most stories. The original sense of identity (romance and comedy), its loss (tragedy and irony), and its recovery in the regenerate world of romance and comedy is mirrored in the mythic quest. Myths of the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection, creation and defeat of the powers of darkness and death are perennial themes. The descent and subsequent ascent, going deep into the consciousness journey and emerging transformed, is a form of death/rebirth, a powerful archetypal theme which is initiatory in character.
5) PURIFICATION ORDEAL
Aesculapian dreamhealing, uses many ritual forms of purification, such as diet, sweats, and baths. But the psychic purification is a process of shedding fears and pain which prevent us from flowing. Fear and pain are what keep us "stuck." Each initiation contains an ordeal within its enfolded nature. At least it feels like an ordeal to the old ego structure which must dissolve or die. The quantum leap of initiation, being seized from one state and moved to another, involves a sudden and profound change. It requires an adjustment. Also, life may present synchronistic challenges, outside the dreamhealing sessions.
One dreamhealing participant was having a sweat. She was sent to look for an offering in the form of some wood to burn in the ritual. She finally returned with a huge gnarled log, which was quite representative of her twisted back (scoliosis). That wood really stank when it first was consigned to the fire--but as time went on, it burned pure and smelled extraordinarily sweet. She emerged with more mobility than she could remember every having and the healing persists. In yoga, we hear about clearing blocks at the various chakras through purification practices.
Progressive stages of purification allow the energy of the serpent power to flow or rise ever-higher through the chakra system. Thus, the yogi realizes the true nature of self. Mindell (1982) has commented on this process in regards to flow and healing: In healing ceremonies, light, water, love, release of emotions, energy flow, circulation, harmony and crystal clear water are all descriptions of curative experiences. The water is a description of free flowing energy which cleans the body by unlocking egotism and its resulting cramps. . .The sap of plants flows in the body of the enlightened yogi. In India lack of flow in the imaginary veins and arteries which carry energy and blood is blamed for illness. Cleaning these conduits and reestablishing flow is all-important. . .there is a resistance at some point to the flow of energies. In fact, all disease is merely a restriction of the flow of life force in a particular area. Speaking more of the mental aspect of the process he uses water as an image of purification ordeal: Whenever a complex exists, consciousness rigidifies and tries to steer around the strong emotions connected with the core of the complex.
Water therapy allows the complexes to speak, encourages the body to dance its own rhythm and lets the unpredictable come alive. A water experience is holistic and unifies the entire personality so that ego, Self, dreams, body, inner and outer come together in one human being. The more rigid the ego and the more powerful a governing complex, the more threatening the flow of the body or the psyche appears. A rigid and frightened personality becomes terrified, split off from nature, and cannot believe that a Self or a body consciousness exists that can organize behavior once ego rulership is given up. . .Water is medicine against the rigidification of intuition, physical mobility, and feelings. Another expression of purification ordeal occurs with psychedelics. It is a mental purge of gross karma which manifests as wrathful visions or second bardo nightmares.
These visions, as well as the peaceful ones must simply be endured, despite awe and terror. They may be horrific visions of apocalypse and catastrophe--bloodthirsty hallucinations. They come as the ego struggles to maintain its boundaries, as the mind seeks to reconstruct the personality. But the experience of this hellish state of consciousness is not mandatory with every journey. Recognition of the greater Reality brings instantaneous liberation from this ordeal.
Edinger (1973) uses Job from THE BIBLE as a classic example of an ego's confrontation with the awesome powers of the unconscious through its trials and travails. Job's encounter with the Self brings about a death/rebirth experience. Job feels like he is being punished, and insists on discovering the meaning of his experience. Job encounters Jahweh in dreams first, anticipating later conscious encounter. Job is shown the abysmal aspect of God and the depths of his own psyche with its monstrous aspects, much like the wrathful visions of THE BARDO THODOL.
Finally, Job's questions are answered, not rationally, but through living experience, conscious realization of the autonomous archetypal psyche. The realization comes to birth only through the ordeal. All these struggles in the cycling of death/rebirth may be linked back through symbolic similarity to the individual birth ordeal. It is characteristic of chaotic systems that events originally separated by time and space can become enfolded closely together. Events linked by the same state of consciousness are related; learning is state-related (Tart; Rossi).
Our lessons and our ordeals are related to our states of consciousness. Thus personal and transpersonal experience of this eternal cycle of the generation of forms become fused and conditioned by the individual aspect of archetypal experience.
6) SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS
There is more than a linguistic link between the metaphor of a liquid solution, and the solution of a problem. The moment of "a-ha" comes frequently in process-oriented therapy, as direct realization brings fresh understanding through the "empty mind," or "beginner's mind." Solutions come through creativity. They may appear effortlessly.
The relationship between healing and creativity is implicit--healing is the physical analog of creativity, like attitude changes and intuition are its emotional and mental analogs. Healing is a special case of creativity, or creative problem-solving. During reverie states, the mind goes into chaotic patterns for problem-solving. The more difficult the problem, the more chaos. Dreamhealing facilitates entry into these healing states of consciousness.
McAuliffe (198 ) reported in OMNI on the work of Paul Rapp detecting chaos in brain wave fluctuations: After analyzing the EEGs of humans, Rapp has also come around to this friendlier view. "When we are healthy and alert, the interval between electrical waves is never rigidly fixed," he reports, "but always vacillates around a certain frequency range." Moreover, when we are mentally challenged, the interval between the electrical wave becomes even more variable--or chaotic. This suggests, in Rapp's opinion, that chaos "may actually be highly beneficial during problem solving. Clearly the greater the mental challenge, the more chaotic the activity of the subject's brain. . .What does all this mean?
In Rapp's opinion, chaotic activity may be an asset in problem solving. "You want to be able to scan as wide a range of solutions as possible and avoid locking on to a suboptimal solution early on," he explains. "One way to do that is to have a certain amount of disorderliness, or turbulence, in your search." We can draw a direct analogy between the dreamhealing process and creative process. Dreamhealing begins with the pilgrimage, which expresses one's intent or commitment.
The creative process begins with receptivity, which includes interest, preparation, and immersion in the subject matter. Next in dreamhealing comes the confession, or the identification of the problem, where you have missed the mark. Creativity also requires the ability to identify the problem, see the right questions, to use errors, to have detached devotion. The purification or cleansing of dreamhealing parallels the generalized sensitivity to problems that come during creativity, an attunement to the realization of what needs to be done. The offering is a sign of letting go, sacrifice of the old ego form, the commitment to healing.
Creativity requires the surrender of time and self to the process of flow; fluency of thinking; flexibility; abandoning old ways of thought. The heart of the quest is dream incubation, a reverie which seeks connection with higher power. Creativity also requires incubation, reverie, serendipity, spontaneity, adaptation, tolerance for ambiguity, and originality. This permits uncommon responses and unconventional associations. Healing occurs in a moment of oneness, chaotic consciousness. In creativity it is paralleled by the moment of illumination, redefinition, invention, vision. Dreamhealing requires amplification, or work on dreams and validation. Elaboration is its counterpart, the use of two or more abilities for the construction of a more complex object or theory, plus verification. Re-entry implies actualization, renewal, grounding, maturing.
Creatively it means real-time application, follow-through, product, utilization of the result. It implies choosing the post-session personality, as re-calibrated through the imprint of the whole. It means stabilizing that state of creative consciousness which emerged in the session. In all cases, guided or not, the creative or healing process follows approximately this model. The resources are contacted deep within and they well-up in sometimes unexpected ways from the deep Source.
7) MELTING OR SOFTENING PROCESS
Melting turns what was solid into a liquid. Variations on the theme include moistening and softening. Whether we look at modern consciousness journeys, ancient reports, or psychedelic experiences the metaphors are the same. Melting or softening is the result of incubation in dreamhealing, yoga, and alchemy. THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE offers such suggestions as "Let the feelings melt all over you," "Let your body merge with the warm flux," "Allow your own mind also to melt away very gradually." Feelings of the body melting or flowing as if wax are typical of the psychedelic experience, as boundaries dissolve.
Leary et al note a state of consciousness where, "All the harsh, dry, brittle angularities of game life [are] melted. You drift off -- soft, rounded, moist, warm. Merged with all life. You may feel yourself floating out and down into a warm sea. Your individuality and autonomy of movement are moistly disappearing."
An older report is this passage from THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING, a seventeenth century alchemy text:
The Father sweats, surrounding his Son,
And pours out his prayer to God,
To Whom all things are possible,
Who creates, and has created all things.
He prays that his Son may be led from his body,
And he be reborn as he was at first.
God grants his prayer, it is not ignored,
Telling the Father to lie down and go to sleep.
God sent down rain from heaven
Through the clear stars; in truth,
It was fruitful silver indeed.
The Father's Body is moistened and softened.
By the help and Grace of God, at the end,
We may obtain Thy gracious Gift!
The Father strongly sweats and glows,
While oil and True Tincture from him flows. The feverish father sweats the tincture of the wise from his body. The hidden fire causing the sweat is the antithesis of the moisture that it produces. This heat is the warmth of incubation, which is equivalent to a "brooding" state of meditation. The aim of this meditation is self-incubation for transformation and resurrection. This liquefaction is a characteristic state of consciousness during psychedelic sessions. When the normal structures of awareness break down, consciousness transforms to a flowing or fluid state.
Speaking of his fusion of non-linear dynamics, post-structuralism, and psychedelic experience, psychonaut Manuel DeLanda was interviewed by MONDO 2000 (Issue 8; Winter, 1992). He reports on his experience in the language of chaos theory. The metaphor they use is solid, liquid, gas. If the system is solid, too crystallized, its dynamics are completely uninteresting. If it's gaseous, it's also uninteresting--all you have to do is take averages of behavior and you know what's going on.
Liquids have a lot more potential, with all kinds of attractors and bifurcations. Now what they're coming to believe is that the liquid state in nature--not just actual liquids, but liquidity in the abstract sense of being not too rigid or too loose--these liquid systems "poised on the edge of chaos" are natural computers....When you trip, you liquify structures in your brain, linguistic structures, intentional structures. They acquire a less viscous consistency, and your brain becomes a super-computer. You are able to think concepts you were not able to think before. Information rushes in your brain, which makes you feel like you're having a revelation. But of course no one is revealing anything to you. It's just self-organizing.
It's happening by itself. ...free-flowing matter and energy are capable of self-organization. I don't think there are higher states of consciousness. You liquify yourself, and you go through phase transitions, and then it seems to you that you are in a higher state of consciousness. When I'm tripping, I'm thinking concepts I'm sure no one's ever thought before, and in a way it's like a higher state of consciousness, but it's not a plane that was waiting there for me to access it. It's something I'm building that moment by destratifying my brain. There might be an ethics here: how to live your life poised at the edge of chaos, how to allow self-organizing processes to take place in all the strata that bind you. In your life, you could create maps of attractors that bind your local destiny--those behaviors that are habitual and so on.
And try to find those bifurcations that would allow you to jump, if not to complete freedom--that doesn't exist--but to another set of attractors less confining, less binding, less stratifying. Or learn to lead your life near a bifurcation without ever crossing it--the lesson of being poised on the edge of chaos. In reducing all to pure water, the prima materia and the ultima materia become synonymous. That primal consciousness state, that creative and chaotic consciousness is the beginning of the operation of "water", and its ultimate realization. It becomes easy to see why the operation of water is the "root of alchemy."
Through consciousness journeys which liquify our rigid notions of self and world, we re-create the adventures of the hero or heroine. The theme is the loss and recovery of identity. The hero is deserted, betrayed or even killed, but then comes back to life again. They may be swallowed by a huge sea monster, or wander in a strange dark underworld and then fight their way out again. The shift is from abandonment and isolation, to struggle, to the triumph or marriage phase, (unitive consciousness). The myth of the defeated hero (rigid ego) brings images of the triumph of dark forces, myths of floods and the return of chaos. Then the stage is set for miraculous rebirth--The Son is born from the Father, as in THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING passage. This process of rebirth is the universal medicine.
REFERENCES
Aaronson, Bernard S., "The Hypnotic Induction of the Void," Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, Vol. 26: No. 1, p. 22-30; No. 2, p. 63-72; No. 3, p. 114-117; No. 4, p.129-133.
Abraham, Ralph; McKenna, Terence; Sheldrake, Rupert; TRIALOGUES AT THE EDGE OF THE WEST; Bear and Co., Santa Fe, 1992.
Davis, Erik, "DeLanda Destratified"; MONDO 2000, #8, Winter 1992, p. 45-48.
Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Evans-Wentz, W.Y.; THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Causeway Books, New York, 1973.
Gold, E. J.; AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Gateways
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Grof, Stanislav; THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY; SUNY Press, Albany, 1988.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Kauffman, Stuart A., "Antichaos and Adaptation"; SciAmer, August 1991, p.78-84.
Leary, T., Metzner, R., Alpert, R.; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, University Books, New York, 1964.
McAuliffe, Kathleen; "Get Smart: Controlling Chaos"; OMNI
Merrell-Wolff, Franklin; PATHWAYS THROUGH TO SPACE; Warner Books, New York, 1973.
Milkman, Harvey & Sunderwirth, Stanley; CRAVING FOR ECSTASY; D.C. Heath & Co., Lexington, Massachusetts, 1987.
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (formerly The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago; 1994.
Mindell, Arnold; DREAMBODY; Sigo Press, Boston, 1982.
Mindell, Arnold; RIVER'S WAY; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Rossi, Ernest: THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF MIND-BODY HEALING, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, 1986.
Stace, W.D.; MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY; Lippincott, New York, 1960.
Swinney, Graywolf and Iona Miller; DREAMHEALING: CHAOS AND THE CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS, Asklepia Press, 1992.
Tart, Charles; STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS; E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1975.
Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.
The alchemical operation SOLUTIO, called "the root of alchemy," corresponds with the element water. It implies a flowing state of consciousness, "liquification" of consciousness, a return to the womb for rebirth, a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. It facilitates feedback via creative regression: de-structuring, or destratification by immersion in the flow of psychic imagery through identification with more and more primal forms or patterns--a psychedelic, expanded state. Chaos Theory provides a metaphorical language for describing the flowing dynamics of the chaotic process of psychological transformation.
"All substances are part of my own consciousness. This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."
Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state. Like the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant. --Leary, Metzner, Alpert; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
To summarize, I have spoken of seven major aspects of SOLUTIO symbolism: (1) return to the womb or primal state; (2) dissolution, dispersal, dismemberment; (3) containment of a lesser thing by a greater; (4) rebirth, rejuvenation, immersion in the creative energy flow; (5) purification ordeal; (6) solution of problems; and (7) melting or softening process. These different aspects overlap. Several or all of them may make up different facets of a single experience. Basically it is the ego's confrontation with the unconscious that brings about SOLUTIO. --Edward Edinger, ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE
THE MEDICINE OF PHILOSOPHERS
Alchemy had one great prescription for the accomplishment of the Great Work: "Solve et Coagula"--reduce or dissolve all to its primary, most fundamental essence and embody that creative, holistic spirit. The ancient alchemists sought to transform "lead" into "gold." We repeat this process as modern alchemists when we seek the transformative medium which allows us to recognize our rigidities ("lead") and facilitates our healing and expression of our full creative potential ("gold").
That medium is the ever-flowing river of our consciousness. The organic, regenerative process of "re-creational ego death" is common to mysticism, experiential psychology, and psychedelic journeys. Spiritual exploration, or soul travel, is shared by all three modes of immersion in the universal stream of consciousness. They are all variations on the theme of the consciousness journey, and echo our shamanic roots, and the mythemes of eternal return and hero/heroine. Participants reach a deep, integral level, and direct experience of Higher Power, often merging with the Creation or the Creator.
All these modes facilitate psychedelic consciousness, though any given experience may vary in duration and depth. Their prescribed frequency varies: meditators are advised to "die daily;" in psychotherapy once a month may be enough for regenerative therapy; psychedelic use varies from single experiences, to monthly, to annually. Despite different modes of induction, all these experiences reflect the illusory nature of time, space, and ego as reality constructs. The primary nature of consciousness is revealed. The word psychedelic has its roots in the Greek psyche, soul, and delos, visible, evident. It is direct evidence of the soul, the pure manifestation of soul.
Stace (1960) identifies nine qualities of the psychedelic experience as follows: 1) unity of all things; 2) transformation of space and time; 3) deeply felt positive mood; 4) sacredness; 5) objectivity and reality; 6) paradoxicality; 7) alleged ineffability; 8) transiency, and 9) persisting positive changes in subsequent behavior. In the practice of mysticism there is identification with progressively more subtle "bodies" or vehicles of consciousness, culminating in a transform from a mental or causal body to a vehicle of pure Light.
In experiential psychotherapy, transformation results from deepening within the flow of psychic imagery, progressively identifying with more primal forms, and ultimately with formlessness. In psychedelic experience, expansion of consciousness dissolves ego boundaries leading to morphological transformations and ecstatic communion. In alchemy, one sought not only to find or create the Stone, but also to apply it, or use it creatively in the everyday world. Now, we might speak of integrating or actualizing the results of our transformations in daily life. Thus, self-actualization or self-realization implies the grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration.
The liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone was known as the UNIVERSAL SOLVENT. According to the alchemists, the operation of solutio (liquification) has a twofold effect: it causes old forms to disappear and new regenerate forms to emerge. To a rigid consciousness, the primal ocean of the unconscious is experienced as chaotic, violent, irrational processes of generation and destruction. Through "creative regression," the generic form of ego death, consciousness recycles, recursively bending back upon itself. The direction is a recapitulation of, a re-experiencing of sequences from earlier life, conception and birth experience, ancestral awareness, genetic and physiological recognitions, molecular and atomic perception, and quantum consciousness. As consciousness explores and expands, ego dissolves.
Pure consciousness, the fundamental luminosity, is the ground state of unborn form. The generic purpose of ego death is to liberate our embodied being, precipitating communion with and re-patterning by the Whole. When all forms finally dissolve into unconditioned consciousness, the ground state of the Nature Mind is revealed as the mystic Void, the womb of creation. When the constructed forms which hold personality together are voluntarily relinquished, consciousness "liquifies" and rapidly moves toward the unconditioned state.
Though easy to say, it is sometimes difficult to achieve such liberation from the mental-conceptual activity of the nervous system. When we do, the quiescent nervous system is open and receptive to the conscious recognition of pure energy transforms with no interpretations. The Universal Solvent dissolves problems, heals, allows life to flow in new, creative patterns. These new patterns embody the evolutionary dynamic. According to chaos theory, free-flowing energy is capable of self-organization. In consciousness this means that the obstructions to free flowing energy must first be dissolved.
Through re-creational ego death, consciousness dissolves into healing communion with the whole of existence, renewing itself, emerging with a new creative potential. The need for the periodic destruction of outmoded systems implies the value of recycling consciousness through death/rebirth experience. The universal solvent is not ordinary water, but "philosophical" water, the water of life, aqua permanens, aqua mercurialis. It is also the panacea, "elixer vitae," "tincture," or universal medicine. To periodically dip into these healing waters has a tonic, rejuvenating effect which pervades all aspects of being, like a soothing balm. This divine water signifies the return of The Feminine, a reflective consciousness with inner awareness and archetypal spiritual perceptions.
This Feminine Divinity is the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, the universal animating principle, the upwelling spring of the creative Imagination, the dynamic flow of imagery, pattern, and form. This dynamic has been known as Isis, Shakti, Maya, Shekinah, Sophia, Demeter/Persephone, Mary. In psychedelic mysticism, the animating principle is being referred to as Gaian Consciousness (Abraham, 1992), which we might view as a rebirth of ancient ecstatic, communal consciousness. It is the psychobiological basis of deep ecology, the flow of relationships.
The return of chaos heralds the "greening of consciousness," the greening of the cultural wasteland. Hillman (1985) describes the anima not as a projection of, but rather the projector of psyche. We are contained within Her fantasy, not She within ours.
Grinnell (1973) describes the transformative process of solutio which facilitates the fluid, mobile basis of consciousness: For aqua permanens is a mode of the arcane substance; its symbol is water or sea-water, an all-pervading essence of anima mundi, the innermost and secret numinosum in man and the universe, that part of God which formed the quintessence and real substance of Physis, at once the highest supercelestial waters of wisdom and the spirit of life pervading inorganic matter. The arcane descriptors of this paradoxical liquid Stone are cryptic, couched in metaphor. But what does it mean experiencially and pragmatically? How does this chaotic transformative process engineer our consciousness?
The divine water, as a liquid symbol of the Self, can be experienced in many ways. It has been described as innocuously as the "stream of consciousness," and as poetically as the "Heart of The River of Created Forms." Solutio implies the liquification of consciousness through the dissolution of rigidities which inhibit free flow. They include roles, game patterns, defense strategies, rigid attitudes and beliefs, interpretations, complexes, "old" myths, and "frozen" energy surrounding traumas which manifests as fear and pain. Fossilized or ossified energies create obstructions to free flow, like boulders in a stream produce turbulence. Destructuring transformative processes can dissolve them, increasing the sense of flow.
This "liquified" consciousness is psychedelic, a nonordinary expanded awareness which dissolves fixations and habits, and loosens cramped attitudes. Mystic ecstasy, or the psychedelic state is mind-manifesting, consciousness expanding. It dissolves the identification of our consciousness with our histories, bodies, emotions, thoughts, and even beliefs. We are free to explore myriad forms, structures, and patterns, and/or become formless, resting in that unborn, unconditioned, unmodified healing state. We experience the essence of other forms of existence.
The Oneness of all life and existence is directly experienced through a variety of transformations ranging from plant and animal identifications to planetary and universal consciousness. Entering the turbulent flow of the stream of consciousness, we can ride its currents back to the Source, pure unconditioned cosmic consciousness. We can imbibe the life-giving qualities of this "water" through mind-expanding experiential contact with this deep consciousness. The transformative process is also reflected in our modern physical worldview as chaos theory, which we can view as a modern "myth," a new metaphor for the dynamics of consciousness.
Chaos is ubiquitous in nature, pervading all dynamic processes, perturbing them unpredictably. Chaos theory shows us that nature is continually unfolding new forms from the chaotic matrix of creation. Our dynamic consciousness is an essentially chaotic process. Chaos tracks a time evolution with sensitive dependence on initial conditions. When we "return" experiencially to the "initial conditions" of our existence, our whole being is holistically repatterned. Our historical limitations are superseded by the creative power of the eternal Now. We can allow chaos, as the universal solvent, to liquify consciousness and re-create ourselves.
This presumes a therapeutic atmosphere, a "safe" set and setting, because each phase of the journey is an encounter with uncertainty. The journey into deep consciousness appears inherently chaotic because the state of uncertainty pervades each moment of transition. Underlying moments of transience there are momentary blanks in awareness--little voids--flickering microstates which repattern each phase. Whether the experience is one of loss of personal boundaries or direct perception of stark, raw reality, or visionary dreams, there is no predicting where the chaotic orbit of consciousness will roam next. To embrace chaos in our consciousness journeys, therefore means to cooperate and flow with the transformative process, opening ourselves to our deepest emergent potential.
It's O.K. to let go periodically and temporarily become unstructured nothingness and open to holistic re-patterning. Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution (Kauffmann, 1991). This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices.
The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion. The Philosopher's Stone may thus be seen as a "strange attractor" in the life of anyone engaged in the quest for transformation. It is an instinctual attraction toward processes which dissolve the ego and liquify consciousness, leading to transpersonal experience after symbolic death/rebirth. Freedom in the exploration of imagery comes from the creative capacity to experience loss. Experiencially, it appears as being channeled into the swirling mass of interacting symbols, an overwhelming vortex of pure information. We are sucked inexorably into interaction with the self-symbol, sucked into ourselves, like flotsam is pulled into a whirlpool.
This is the vortex of the system, the vortex of self, where all levels cross. It overwhelms or tangles the mental processes, the self-imaging processes that maintain the illusion of stable personality and individual boundaries. In solutio, the body is joined with the soul and spirit. The skin-boundary dissolves into visceral as well as spiritual perception. Awareness of physical processes may be greatly amplified, appearing as impressions, intuitions, sensations, sounds, odors. The body is always speaking silently. Through this raw, physical expression, that which was solid becomes liquified, dissolved, deliteralized.
The concrete image of the body "morphs" into the flow of pure energy, in a variation of Transubstantiation. It is the "rapture" of being seized up into the heavenly realm. The flow of dynamic energy from the deep Self reawakens and activates the body, and also that portion of the unconscious that the body carries. The body not only carries, but is the memory of the entire evolutionary cycle. Consciousness can access any portion of this material memory through creative regression. The body manifests kinesthetic, preverbal, and preconceptual memory of its direct experience. Immersion in the healing creative energy flow is like a spiritual baptism, which facilitates creative reformation of ordinary consciousness, and even the physical body.
Solutio, as a state of consciousness, unites the powers of above and below, transpersonal and personal. It is the integration of the higher spiritual powers with personal experience that embodies the healing dynamic. This produces the paradoxical poison-panacea. The dual nature of the universal medicine points to a consciousness state beyond both opposites. In Greek myth, Athena gave Asklepios, the divine healer, the blood of Medusa as the universal medicine. In its negative aspect it was toxic and produced death. The positive aspect brought healing; this mysterious potion is the "cure-all," the "solution."
Divine water (sometimes symbolized as blood) is dangerous, poisonous, seductive, addictive, even deadly in its primeval, untransformed state--madness. In the science fiction novel, DUNE, the new messiah and the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood imbibe the psychoactive "water of life" with impunity. Moving past the fear and pain, they transcend time/space and commune with the continuum of all existence. What sets them apart from others, on whom the potion has a fatal effect, is their ability to withstand and convert its initial toxic effects into a religious ecstasy.
They know how to navigate in that turbulent flow, during their consciousness journeys--"moving without traveling." The alchemical solution to this problem of primordial, raw experience is to "cook" it into a reflective consciousness. Recycling itself, the ego cooperates in its own "re-creational death," connecting with the transpersonal forces of rebirth and renewal. The reborn personality is resurrected, restored to life through new meaning. The ego acknowledges the Self as its new center of gravity, and personality heals.
Experiential connection to the living reality of the Self, the "waters of life" is the panacea, the magical elixer of life. Solutio (and its prime agent, chaos) arises spontaneously from the depths as irrational images, dreams and fantasies. In dreamhealing, the dream symbols are followed deeper and deeper down to the primal level where all structure dissolves into its original source. This journey into the depths, and subsequent emergence, is the basis of shamanic healing. As we journey in the autonomous consciousness stream, guided movement deeper into and beyond the fear and pain brings up the classical imagery of the solutio, as resistance subsides. There is no part of it that is not us. The transformative process dissolves blockages, obstructions or "frozen" consciousness which disturb and distort the free flow of energy.
1) RETURN TO THE WOMB OR PRIMAL STATE
The alchemist Paracelsus said, "He who enters the kingdom of God must first enter his mother and die." That death-like silence is also our mother, the virgin womb of the imagination. The dynamics of "creative regression" are common to mystical experience, psychedelic exploration, and therapeutic consciousness journeys. All lead to immersion in the flow of the stream of consciousness.
Creative regression is a generic form of the myth of the eternal return, chronic recurrence, reiteration. In the dynamics of chaos theory we find this recursive motion in the concept of iteration--self-similarity--which produces the similarity in infinitely descending scales of fractal generation. Iteration is like a stretching and folding of the spacetime continuum. Experientially it manifests within us as a spiritualizing instinct, a recursive "bending back" of instinct toward that which is primordial and divine.
Thus, whether induced through psychoactive substances, mystical transport, or experiential psychotherapy typical imagery recycles, recapitulates, or reiterates cascades of impressionistic transformations spanning the entire spectrum of archetypal experiences--morphological transformations. These include but are not limited to childhood, birth, embryonic development, ancestral, mythic, genetic, evolutionary, universal, and quantum consciousness. Access to the entire continuum of organic and inorganic evolution as well as the collective unconscious becomes available. That information most pertinent to the whole self emerges in the stream of consciousness as virtual experience. What is pertinent is what gets spontaneously "downloaded," and it repeats and reiterates the basic issues in yet another, eternally creative way.
Stan Grof has cataloged an extensive taxonomy of these states, most notably in THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY (1988). Such experiences of cosmic consciousness constitute a "return to the Mother," the blissful fusion of primal union, at both personal and universal levels. The direction of this dynamic process is recursive, bending back through deep time, ontology, and phylogeny. It echoes the semantic roots of the words religion and yoga, which imply a "linking backward" in the bond between gods and man, a craving for ecstasy, and transcendence of the limitations of physical form (Milkman, 1987).
Jung called this dynamic an opus contra naturam, a work against nature. But chaos theory shows us it is actually quite organic, natural, and instinctual. In alchemy it was the Great Work. Consciousness turns back on itself, reiterating each level of organization, de-structuring each strata as it dives deeper toward the unconditioned, formless beginning, or "unborn" state. This primal state is amniotic bliss experienced as the Void, the cosmic womb. Images of the Great Mother system become reactivated, though not exactly in their original form. Imagery like fractals is self-similar, but not entirely identical.
This creative regression is to the prepersonal domain, the preverbal, preconceptual domain, not the transpersonal spiritual domain (transverbal, transconceptual). Typically in the first few dreamhealing sessions, a person will enter a dream symbol doorway which leads back to a conception memory. They may or may not recognize it as such during the journey. But in content, the symbolism is very clear. The imagery is fundamental or primal, appearing as a dance of energy, matter, and consciousness--the body-ego's conscious experience. These images are close to the stuff of our creation -- the prima materia -- of our existence. We may experience it as free-floating: a paradox of chaos and a deep-felt sense of flowing and peace.
The imagery here is psychedelic -- consciousness expanding -- an autonomous manifestation of imagination. The panoply of the ceaseless transformation of energy may overwhelm the senses, leading to a sense of total chaos. There is nothing to do but let go, surrender to it, merge with it, flow with it. The dancing energy waves and patterns are perceived as deep whorls, spinning spirals, black holes, infinite voids, gray clouds of nothingness. There is melding of the senses -- synesthesia -- such as "tasting" music, "seeing" sound, etc. Simple throbbing and other extremely primitive sensations may be experienced. Experience of this state produces a new acceptance of the original conditions of conception, and re-structuring of the primal self-image.
We go into the primal chaos to begin the process of reformation from our pre-structural beginning. In essence, we re-enter the womb as we are initiated in the mysteries of the psyche. We re-conceive our primal self image, healed by communion with the creative Source.
2) DISSOLUTION, DISPERSAL, DISMEMBERMENT
The classic text of re-creational surrender or sacrifice of self is THE BARDO THODOL, or THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. It is explicitly for the living who undertake the death-like regression into the unconscious, as well as the dying. Because of their orientation toward consciousness journeys, THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE and THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD are useful translations or contemporizations of the transformational classic.
The realm of death is the twilight zone between consciousness and matter. Here psychoid phenomena manifest through the mingling of these modes. Here mind/matter duality ceases, creating enchantment, uncanny synchronicities, time warps, psychic experience, revelation of the mind of matter, the Nature Mind. The moment of ego death is heralded by certain symptoms of transition. Resistance by the mind to this creative dissolution brings about physical symptoms which range from shaking and a sense of increasing pressure and anxiety, to paradoxical flashes of hot and cold, to extreme dizziness and disorientation.
As the classic psychedelic manual says, "The hard, dry, brittle husks of your ego are washing out; Washing out to the endless sea of creation." (Leary et al, 1964). Distressing or disturbing symptoms symbolize the violence of the passage of consciousness from form to formlessness. Images of the body disintegrating or being blown to atoms (fear of exploding = fear of expanding) are characteristic psychedelic experiences. Perhaps the very elements of our bodies "remember" their formation in the crucible of some supernova. There may be identification with merciless destruction, the Dance of Shiva, the raging elements of nature, a variety of forms of explosive discharge. Here are visions of fires, floods, raging storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, turbulent lakes of magma.
Consciousness "breaks up" into its elemental forms, manifesting as overwhelming imagery. This first phase of dissolution may be characterized by the futility of resistance, magnetic downward spirals, gravity wells, loss of morphological identity. E.J. Gold describes the second stage of the voyage as one of being overwhelmed by illusions produced by conditioning. Yet the primal element of pure forms breaks through and the voyager recognizes "the basic component of consciousness which when combined produces what is called the element Water."
In consciousness journeys, chaos functions as the universal solvent, that which dissolves all patterns and forms including the rigid, outmoded aspects of the self. In the dream journey, one might enter a spinning vortex and become dismembered by centrifugal force, torn limb from limb. We remain in this state of dis-integration until we re-member our essential self, embodying the wounded healer. That sense of disintegration comes as the ego gives up its "unified" linear perspective (bivalent) to the multiple consciousness or awareness (multi-valence) of the deep self. Fear makes it feel like fragmentation, but in truth there is nothing in that imagery that is not us. The death throes of the ego prepare it for rebirth, through communion with cosmic consciousness, a new incarnation of the spirit, death and resurrection.
The nature of universal consciousness is oceanic. When the ego is in danger of "getting in over its head," it panics as if faced with drowning in the depths of this vast ocean of consciousness. It overwhelms the ego which cannot fathom this abyss. This aspect of solutio brings mythic images of the dying god, of violent death and sacrifice, and of the isolation of the hero. It means nothing less than the sacrifice of the old self. The dissolution phase may mean myths of the triumph of darkness; myths of floods and the return of chaos, of the defeat of the hero.
In Gold's words, "Death comes to all forms; everything eventually is broken up by dissolution, so there's no point clinging to yet another biological form out of desire, longing for stability, or from fear and weakness."
3) CONTAINMENT OF A LESSER THING BY A GREATER
The ego "takes the plunge," it lets go and dissolves its old matrix, its old boundaries. When its boundaries melt, ego-consciousness dissolves into deep consciousness. The "wave merges with the ocean," and experiences its own deep transpersonal nature. It moves swiftly through the fear and pain, awakening to an infinitely wider reality of universal energy waves. In the ocean of creativity, "your own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor death." (Leary, 1964).
Experience of the pure, unmodified state of consciousness transcends all opposites, and therefore consciousness journeys provide an experiential "container" for the reconciliation of paradox within a larger field of experience--a broader, transcendent perspective. The transformational process acts as a "container" (alchemical retort) of the contents of psyche. But these contents, reduced to their essence are "nothingness," simply dreams and imagination. Emptiness is the real Philosopher's Stone. By dissolving into non-relative consciousness, mood swings or identification with conflicting polar positions may be transcended by an enlarged state of consciousness which embraces and contains the entire continuum.
Flow replaces polarity. Jung spoke of the transcendent function as a symbol-forming force continuously creating emergent imagery which facilitates whole-self realization. It is thus an evolutionary and adaptive force. Mindell (1985) speaks of the flow in alchemical terms: The alchemists called this flow the 'aqua permanens', or permanent water. Aqua permanens is the fluid process, the energy or life which was locked up in the tension of conflict which has now been freed through the flow between the opposites. Fluidity comes from conflict. Whereas before there was a boundary between conflicting opposites, between intent and reality, streaming energy now transforms therapy into natural science.
Dreams, visions, or the stream of consciousness can be used therapeutically as an evolutionary force to guide people from a small sense of self and expand them toward a larger image. This expansion of the sense of self may require some adjustment. The illumination (awakening to larger Reality) may also come through a nature-mystic experience, intense sexual experience, E.S.P., a consciousness journey, or meditation. Enlightenment (even the "seed" of enlightenment) is an experience of awe, bliss, and infinite possibilities. The ego realizes it is not the center of the whole person, but only "manages" the personality.
There are autonomous archetypal forces which inhabit the psyche with their own agendas, patterns, and goals. Our psyche is transpersonal; it has no boundaries. Our conscious awareness is only a manifestation of this larger consciousness. Within this larger consciousness, we are at home with a plurality of visions. The parts contain the whole (to a degree), enfolded or embedded like a fractal or hologram. Containment may take place symbolically in the therapeutic relationship.
The consciousness guide, therapist, or shaman functions as a guide to the netherworld. The "wounded healer" has a numinous quality which provokes the projections of others. Shamans work within the belief systems of their subjects to expand their sense of what is possible. Those subjects' experiences generally reflect the style and beliefs of the shaman--the shaman's positive expectation of particularized results. Exposure to the infinitely broader worldview of a shamanic personality will automatically move a "smaller" personality into solutio, dissolution. This rapport or participation mystique is an unconscious, automatic process--a positive sort of psychic contagion. This unconscious dynamic may be responsible for the phenomenon of "contact high."
Melting Vacuum
4) REBIRTH, REJUVENATION, IMMERSION IN THE CREATIVE ENERGY FLOW
Psychedelic, as well as mystical literature contains many examples of surrendering, letting go, accepting, merging, and joining the flow of the "Nature Mind," where all is consciousness--the audible life stream. This "Diamond Consciousness" is awareness of creative flux of the Void, the fluid unity of life. We flow within it, and it flows through us. The death-rebirth sequence typically opens a person to the transpersonal domain with its virtually infinite creativity. It reveals and unfolds our future potentials. In dreamhealing, chaotic consciousness is also creative consciousness.
Terence McKenna reminds us that, "Riverine metaphors are endlessly applicable. They represent the flowing of forces over landscapes, the pressure of chaos on the imagination to create creatively. . .The key is surrender and dissolution of boundaries, dissolution of the ego." When we immerse ourselves in that creative energy, we find healing on many levels of our being. It may feel tingly or effervescent, or like streaming energy. Direct experience of this level brings a true sense of oneness with all that exists, the seamless fabric of existence. It opens us to re-patterning by the whole--a re-construction or re-patterning of personality through holistic change at the most fundamental level. Immersion in the oceanic experience of universal consciousness is a life-changing experience. It is experience of the web of life, the biological life flow, an ineffable current of bliss.
Once we experience that larger world and self--the rhythmic pulse of all life--we are never the same again, so long as we remember. Communing with this energy, experiencing these states of consciousness, has been the practice of shamans since the dawn of man. Shamanic consciousness means the ability to enter and exit altered states at will. This power is connected to the liquid expression of life--the sap of life--the vegetable forms of the liquid Stone, and its identity with psychotropic plants.
This notion reiterates that of the "greening of consciousness." Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1973) spoke of the distillate of his mystical experience as follows: "The Current is clearly a subtle, fluid-like substance which brings the sense of well-being already described. Along with It, a more than earthly Joy suffuses the whole nature. To myself, I called It a Nectar. Now, I recognize It under several names. It is also the 'Soma,' the 'Ambrosia of the Gods,' the 'Elixir of Life,' the 'Water of Life' of Jesus, and the 'Baptism of the Spirit' of St. Paul. It is more than related to Immortality; in fact, It is Identical with Immortality.
" When the ego is completely dissolved in this renewing bath, we experience timeless consciousness, and are reborn based on a new, healthier primal self-image. This rejuvenation comes from connecting with pristine consciousness, the eternal aspects or forces of nature. Even though we cannot conceive of it, we can experience the infinite, the eternal, the transcendent.
Visions of Creation, Emanation, the upwelling Source, emerge. Spiritual reincarnation means bringing to life that which was formerly dead or unawakened, through connection with the original creative power. It is the theme of the Quest -- the greening of the Wasteland. The process of rebirth is the mythic enactment of "the one story" whose pattern is found in every narrative. Beneath the differences, the meaning -- having to do with the loss and recovery of identity -- does not change. This story of the loss and regaining of identity is the framework of most literature, from which comes the hero with a thousand faces.
Some variation of the hero's adventures, death, disappearance, and marriage or resurrection are the focal points of most stories. The original sense of identity (romance and comedy), its loss (tragedy and irony), and its recovery in the regenerate world of romance and comedy is mirrored in the mythic quest. Myths of the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection, creation and defeat of the powers of darkness and death are perennial themes. The descent and subsequent ascent, going deep into the consciousness journey and emerging transformed, is a form of death/rebirth, a powerful archetypal theme which is initiatory in character.
5) PURIFICATION ORDEAL
Aesculapian dreamhealing, uses many ritual forms of purification, such as diet, sweats, and baths. But the psychic purification is a process of shedding fears and pain which prevent us from flowing. Fear and pain are what keep us "stuck." Each initiation contains an ordeal within its enfolded nature. At least it feels like an ordeal to the old ego structure which must dissolve or die. The quantum leap of initiation, being seized from one state and moved to another, involves a sudden and profound change. It requires an adjustment. Also, life may present synchronistic challenges, outside the dreamhealing sessions.
One dreamhealing participant was having a sweat. She was sent to look for an offering in the form of some wood to burn in the ritual. She finally returned with a huge gnarled log, which was quite representative of her twisted back (scoliosis). That wood really stank when it first was consigned to the fire--but as time went on, it burned pure and smelled extraordinarily sweet. She emerged with more mobility than she could remember every having and the healing persists. In yoga, we hear about clearing blocks at the various chakras through purification practices.
Progressive stages of purification allow the energy of the serpent power to flow or rise ever-higher through the chakra system. Thus, the yogi realizes the true nature of self. Mindell (1982) has commented on this process in regards to flow and healing: In healing ceremonies, light, water, love, release of emotions, energy flow, circulation, harmony and crystal clear water are all descriptions of curative experiences. The water is a description of free flowing energy which cleans the body by unlocking egotism and its resulting cramps. . .The sap of plants flows in the body of the enlightened yogi. In India lack of flow in the imaginary veins and arteries which carry energy and blood is blamed for illness. Cleaning these conduits and reestablishing flow is all-important. . .there is a resistance at some point to the flow of energies. In fact, all disease is merely a restriction of the flow of life force in a particular area. Speaking more of the mental aspect of the process he uses water as an image of purification ordeal: Whenever a complex exists, consciousness rigidifies and tries to steer around the strong emotions connected with the core of the complex.
Water therapy allows the complexes to speak, encourages the body to dance its own rhythm and lets the unpredictable come alive. A water experience is holistic and unifies the entire personality so that ego, Self, dreams, body, inner and outer come together in one human being. The more rigid the ego and the more powerful a governing complex, the more threatening the flow of the body or the psyche appears. A rigid and frightened personality becomes terrified, split off from nature, and cannot believe that a Self or a body consciousness exists that can organize behavior once ego rulership is given up. . .Water is medicine against the rigidification of intuition, physical mobility, and feelings. Another expression of purification ordeal occurs with psychedelics. It is a mental purge of gross karma which manifests as wrathful visions or second bardo nightmares.
These visions, as well as the peaceful ones must simply be endured, despite awe and terror. They may be horrific visions of apocalypse and catastrophe--bloodthirsty hallucinations. They come as the ego struggles to maintain its boundaries, as the mind seeks to reconstruct the personality. But the experience of this hellish state of consciousness is not mandatory with every journey. Recognition of the greater Reality brings instantaneous liberation from this ordeal.
Edinger (1973) uses Job from THE BIBLE as a classic example of an ego's confrontation with the awesome powers of the unconscious through its trials and travails. Job's encounter with the Self brings about a death/rebirth experience. Job feels like he is being punished, and insists on discovering the meaning of his experience. Job encounters Jahweh in dreams first, anticipating later conscious encounter. Job is shown the abysmal aspect of God and the depths of his own psyche with its monstrous aspects, much like the wrathful visions of THE BARDO THODOL.
Finally, Job's questions are answered, not rationally, but through living experience, conscious realization of the autonomous archetypal psyche. The realization comes to birth only through the ordeal. All these struggles in the cycling of death/rebirth may be linked back through symbolic similarity to the individual birth ordeal. It is characteristic of chaotic systems that events originally separated by time and space can become enfolded closely together. Events linked by the same state of consciousness are related; learning is state-related (Tart; Rossi).
Our lessons and our ordeals are related to our states of consciousness. Thus personal and transpersonal experience of this eternal cycle of the generation of forms become fused and conditioned by the individual aspect of archetypal experience.
6) SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS
There is more than a linguistic link between the metaphor of a liquid solution, and the solution of a problem. The moment of "a-ha" comes frequently in process-oriented therapy, as direct realization brings fresh understanding through the "empty mind," or "beginner's mind." Solutions come through creativity. They may appear effortlessly.
The relationship between healing and creativity is implicit--healing is the physical analog of creativity, like attitude changes and intuition are its emotional and mental analogs. Healing is a special case of creativity, or creative problem-solving. During reverie states, the mind goes into chaotic patterns for problem-solving. The more difficult the problem, the more chaos. Dreamhealing facilitates entry into these healing states of consciousness.
McAuliffe (198 ) reported in OMNI on the work of Paul Rapp detecting chaos in brain wave fluctuations: After analyzing the EEGs of humans, Rapp has also come around to this friendlier view. "When we are healthy and alert, the interval between electrical waves is never rigidly fixed," he reports, "but always vacillates around a certain frequency range." Moreover, when we are mentally challenged, the interval between the electrical wave becomes even more variable--or chaotic. This suggests, in Rapp's opinion, that chaos "may actually be highly beneficial during problem solving. Clearly the greater the mental challenge, the more chaotic the activity of the subject's brain. . .What does all this mean?
In Rapp's opinion, chaotic activity may be an asset in problem solving. "You want to be able to scan as wide a range of solutions as possible and avoid locking on to a suboptimal solution early on," he explains. "One way to do that is to have a certain amount of disorderliness, or turbulence, in your search." We can draw a direct analogy between the dreamhealing process and creative process. Dreamhealing begins with the pilgrimage, which expresses one's intent or commitment.
The creative process begins with receptivity, which includes interest, preparation, and immersion in the subject matter. Next in dreamhealing comes the confession, or the identification of the problem, where you have missed the mark. Creativity also requires the ability to identify the problem, see the right questions, to use errors, to have detached devotion. The purification or cleansing of dreamhealing parallels the generalized sensitivity to problems that come during creativity, an attunement to the realization of what needs to be done. The offering is a sign of letting go, sacrifice of the old ego form, the commitment to healing.
Creativity requires the surrender of time and self to the process of flow; fluency of thinking; flexibility; abandoning old ways of thought. The heart of the quest is dream incubation, a reverie which seeks connection with higher power. Creativity also requires incubation, reverie, serendipity, spontaneity, adaptation, tolerance for ambiguity, and originality. This permits uncommon responses and unconventional associations. Healing occurs in a moment of oneness, chaotic consciousness. In creativity it is paralleled by the moment of illumination, redefinition, invention, vision. Dreamhealing requires amplification, or work on dreams and validation. Elaboration is its counterpart, the use of two or more abilities for the construction of a more complex object or theory, plus verification. Re-entry implies actualization, renewal, grounding, maturing.
Creatively it means real-time application, follow-through, product, utilization of the result. It implies choosing the post-session personality, as re-calibrated through the imprint of the whole. It means stabilizing that state of creative consciousness which emerged in the session. In all cases, guided or not, the creative or healing process follows approximately this model. The resources are contacted deep within and they well-up in sometimes unexpected ways from the deep Source.
7) MELTING OR SOFTENING PROCESS
Melting turns what was solid into a liquid. Variations on the theme include moistening and softening. Whether we look at modern consciousness journeys, ancient reports, or psychedelic experiences the metaphors are the same. Melting or softening is the result of incubation in dreamhealing, yoga, and alchemy. THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE offers such suggestions as "Let the feelings melt all over you," "Let your body merge with the warm flux," "Allow your own mind also to melt away very gradually." Feelings of the body melting or flowing as if wax are typical of the psychedelic experience, as boundaries dissolve.
Leary et al note a state of consciousness where, "All the harsh, dry, brittle angularities of game life [are] melted. You drift off -- soft, rounded, moist, warm. Merged with all life. You may feel yourself floating out and down into a warm sea. Your individuality and autonomy of movement are moistly disappearing."
An older report is this passage from THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING, a seventeenth century alchemy text:
The Father sweats, surrounding his Son,
And pours out his prayer to God,
To Whom all things are possible,
Who creates, and has created all things.
He prays that his Son may be led from his body,
And he be reborn as he was at first.
God grants his prayer, it is not ignored,
Telling the Father to lie down and go to sleep.
God sent down rain from heaven
Through the clear stars; in truth,
It was fruitful silver indeed.
The Father's Body is moistened and softened.
By the help and Grace of God, at the end,
We may obtain Thy gracious Gift!
The Father strongly sweats and glows,
While oil and True Tincture from him flows. The feverish father sweats the tincture of the wise from his body. The hidden fire causing the sweat is the antithesis of the moisture that it produces. This heat is the warmth of incubation, which is equivalent to a "brooding" state of meditation. The aim of this meditation is self-incubation for transformation and resurrection. This liquefaction is a characteristic state of consciousness during psychedelic sessions. When the normal structures of awareness break down, consciousness transforms to a flowing or fluid state.
Speaking of his fusion of non-linear dynamics, post-structuralism, and psychedelic experience, psychonaut Manuel DeLanda was interviewed by MONDO 2000 (Issue 8; Winter, 1992). He reports on his experience in the language of chaos theory. The metaphor they use is solid, liquid, gas. If the system is solid, too crystallized, its dynamics are completely uninteresting. If it's gaseous, it's also uninteresting--all you have to do is take averages of behavior and you know what's going on.
Liquids have a lot more potential, with all kinds of attractors and bifurcations. Now what they're coming to believe is that the liquid state in nature--not just actual liquids, but liquidity in the abstract sense of being not too rigid or too loose--these liquid systems "poised on the edge of chaos" are natural computers....When you trip, you liquify structures in your brain, linguistic structures, intentional structures. They acquire a less viscous consistency, and your brain becomes a super-computer. You are able to think concepts you were not able to think before. Information rushes in your brain, which makes you feel like you're having a revelation. But of course no one is revealing anything to you. It's just self-organizing.
It's happening by itself. ...free-flowing matter and energy are capable of self-organization. I don't think there are higher states of consciousness. You liquify yourself, and you go through phase transitions, and then it seems to you that you are in a higher state of consciousness. When I'm tripping, I'm thinking concepts I'm sure no one's ever thought before, and in a way it's like a higher state of consciousness, but it's not a plane that was waiting there for me to access it. It's something I'm building that moment by destratifying my brain. There might be an ethics here: how to live your life poised at the edge of chaos, how to allow self-organizing processes to take place in all the strata that bind you. In your life, you could create maps of attractors that bind your local destiny--those behaviors that are habitual and so on.
And try to find those bifurcations that would allow you to jump, if not to complete freedom--that doesn't exist--but to another set of attractors less confining, less binding, less stratifying. Or learn to lead your life near a bifurcation without ever crossing it--the lesson of being poised on the edge of chaos. In reducing all to pure water, the prima materia and the ultima materia become synonymous. That primal consciousness state, that creative and chaotic consciousness is the beginning of the operation of "water", and its ultimate realization. It becomes easy to see why the operation of water is the "root of alchemy."
Through consciousness journeys which liquify our rigid notions of self and world, we re-create the adventures of the hero or heroine. The theme is the loss and recovery of identity. The hero is deserted, betrayed or even killed, but then comes back to life again. They may be swallowed by a huge sea monster, or wander in a strange dark underworld and then fight their way out again. The shift is from abandonment and isolation, to struggle, to the triumph or marriage phase, (unitive consciousness). The myth of the defeated hero (rigid ego) brings images of the triumph of dark forces, myths of floods and the return of chaos. Then the stage is set for miraculous rebirth--The Son is born from the Father, as in THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING passage. This process of rebirth is the universal medicine.
REFERENCES
Aaronson, Bernard S., "The Hypnotic Induction of the Void," Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, Vol. 26: No. 1, p. 22-30; No. 2, p. 63-72; No. 3, p. 114-117; No. 4, p.129-133.
Abraham, Ralph; McKenna, Terence; Sheldrake, Rupert; TRIALOGUES AT THE EDGE OF THE WEST; Bear and Co., Santa Fe, 1992.
Davis, Erik, "DeLanda Destratified"; MONDO 2000, #8, Winter 1992, p. 45-48.
Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Evans-Wentz, W.Y.; THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Causeway Books, New York, 1973.
Gold, E. J.; AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Gateways
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Grof, Stanislav; THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY; SUNY Press, Albany, 1988.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Kauffman, Stuart A., "Antichaos and Adaptation"; SciAmer, August 1991, p.78-84.
Leary, T., Metzner, R., Alpert, R.; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, University Books, New York, 1964.
McAuliffe, Kathleen; "Get Smart: Controlling Chaos"; OMNI
Merrell-Wolff, Franklin; PATHWAYS THROUGH TO SPACE; Warner Books, New York, 1973.
Milkman, Harvey & Sunderwirth, Stanley; CRAVING FOR ECSTASY; D.C. Heath & Co., Lexington, Massachusetts, 1987.
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (formerly The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago; 1994.
Mindell, Arnold; DREAMBODY; Sigo Press, Boston, 1982.
Mindell, Arnold; RIVER'S WAY; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Rossi, Ernest: THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF MIND-BODY HEALING, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, 1986.
Stace, W.D.; MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY; Lippincott, New York, 1960.
Swinney, Graywolf and Iona Miller; DREAMHEALING: CHAOS AND THE CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS, Asklepia Press, 1992.
Tart, Charles; STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS; E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1975.
Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.
Introduction to Alchemy, Iona Miller 1986
Prepared as a class for
Spring Quarter 1986, Rogue Community College. This class provided
feedback and interaction which fed into my Phanes Press book, THE MODERN ALCHEMIST: A Guide to Personal Transformation,
Miller & Miller (1994), covering both therapeutic healing and
spiritual development through a series of alchemical plates from the Book of Lambspring,
as a typical metaphorical process.
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books. Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library. Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity.
Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold. Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness. Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness.
Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life. For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts. Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians: 1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise vonFranz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few. 2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth." Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course. There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally.
Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational. Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference. Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths. All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body. Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age. These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development). They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities.
11. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage.
12. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
13. Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature.
Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton. Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493. His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions. Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations.
Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove). This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus.
Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason. However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories.
Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs! It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues. S
cience is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter." Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world. Von Franz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ...Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea." These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation. One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory.
VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness." This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors." "...scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world." This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute."
Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions. Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was basically the same, as we shall see. Some modern schools of the Hermetic Arts see an identity between medieval European alchemy and the eastern practice of Yoga. They see a metaphysical or symbolic correspondence between the planetary and metallurgical attributions of alchemy and the chakras. Yoga is also experimental in nature; the experiment is performed on oneself.
The qualities of the metals correspond to the planets and chakras as follows. Lead Saturn Sacral Plexus Iron Mars Sexual Ganglion Tin Jupiter Solar Plexus Gold Sun Cardiac Plexus Copper Venus Pharyngeal Plexus Silver Moon Pituitary Body Quicksilver Mercury Pineal Gland Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium. Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis.
We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas.
Mercury..........Sattva
Sulphur.........Rajas
Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh).
The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas. They are: Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth). Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage. The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called idapingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus. The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows." In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows: 1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy. 2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities: a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury; b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher; c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt. 3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth. 4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists. 5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher. 6. Yoga says 1) Prana or Surya, sun, 2) Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury. 7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies. 8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is 1). to recognize what goes on in his body, and 2). to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality. This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT.
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious changes the alchemist him/herself into a new creature. Jung asserted that the medieval alchemists were unaware of the natural process of psychological transformation which went on in their subconscious. Therefore, they projected this process into their experiments as a science of the soul. In other words, they projected an inner process outside of themselves. Had they been more conscious in their intent or more sophisticated in their psychology like the yogis, they would have been more consistently successful at producing the coveted lapis or Philosopher's Stone, a sort of "quantum Tantra." But why is a study of alchemy relevant to our modern lives, even if we have a spiritual orientation? We are not daily occupied with pseudo-alchemical experiments like the alchemists, or are we? In many metaphorical ways we are thinking like alchemists all the time.
Also, Jung observed that the dreams of his clients repeatedly stressed the main alchemical themes, especially the conflict and union of opposites. One of the main symbols of reconciliation of this conflict are various mandala forms, present from alchemy to Tibetan Buddhism. The alchemical symbolism is widespread in dreams of modern individuals, and can shed light on these more primitive aspects of our subconscious life. It is important for our understanding of our own unconscious, and how it transcends and subverts us.
Plato enjoined us to "Know Thyself." In Alchemical Active Imagination, vonFranz states, "True knowledge of oneself is the knowledge of the objective psyche as it manifests in dreams and in the manifestations of the unconscious. Only by looking at dreams, for instance, can one see who one truly is; they tell us who we really are, that is something which is objectively there. To meditate on that is an effort towards self-knowledge, because that is scientific and objective and not in the interest of the ego but in the interest of "what I am" objectively. It is knowledge of the Self, of the wider, objective personality." We could view alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy, which originally had the meaning 'to heal,' and the implication of 'service to the gods.'
Psychotherapy basically means service to the psyche, and offers us a way to reconnect with out unconscious, thus experiencing wholeness. It also opens an avenue to increased physical health, since those ailments which remain unconscious often manifest as psychosomatic diseases. Knowledge of alchemy's symbolism can lead us to psychological insight in terms of our own conditions, especially that reflected in dreams. Alchemy may be carried out as either a physical or mental operation. The Jungian orientation is primarily mental, though it often takes a physical form or expression. For example, you might choose to ritually 'act out' certain aspects of the Great Work in active imagination. The Jungian interpretation that alchemy is a passive and unconscious process comes from a basically mental, or Greek orientation. The type of alchemy that aims at rejuvenation or preserving the physical body is descended from the physically-oriented Egyptian alchemy. The main traditions of conscious, inner spiritual alchemy come mainly from the Islamic and Oriental philosophies.
Jung's original interest in alchemy came from a dream he had of a library filled with arcane tomes from medieval times and the Renaissance. During the next 15 years he spent collecting this library, he learned to recognize the major symbols of the unconscious. He was reading about them in alchemy books and hearing about them in his patients' dreams and fantasies. Their projections recurrently told him of an inner quest, a sealed vessel, the conflict of opposites, a philosophical tree, a fountain of eternity, a golden flower, a Stone, a sacred wedding, etc. Slowly Jung familiarized himself with their alchemical meaning. Then he, himself, became a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone -- a guide to the depths of the unknown. In his case this power manifested as the ability to heal at the psychophysical level -- in other words, to release any blocks hindering the natural process of growth and transformation. When proceeding in the direction of their individuation his clients' harmony was restored, self-equilibration returned. Jung equated individuation with self-realization.
We should be careful here not to dichotomize between "mental" and "physical" too much or we will lose our proper alchemical perspective. Alchemy cannot be reduced to a metaphor of psychological or philosophical transformation -- it requires first-hand experimentation. Grossinger says that "what Carl Jung recognized was that the stages of the alchemists also corresponded to a process of psychological individuation. The psychic stages were as precise and rigorous as the chemical ones by which they became imagined. Furthermore, they generated a physical and even quantitative terminology for an undiagnosed tension of opposites in the human psyche arising from male and female archetypes, a struggle they sought to resolve by the creative unity of the chemicals in the Stone."
Alchemy sought to unite Spirit (male), and Matter (female) through a Royal Union (coniunctio) to create their synthesis in the homunculus, hermaphrodite, or lapis. This is an alchemical metaphor or version of the generic process of spiritual rebirth. The entire body of alchemical literature covers many variations on the theme of the Great Work. No single person will ever express all of the operations and symbols described in alchemy, just as no single person ever embodies the totality of the Self. We each have unique experiences of the common roots of humanity or the collective unconscious. Thus, the various operations of alchemy come in different order for the various practitioners. The alchemical writings seem to contradict one another about the evolution of the process. ome claim to have made the Stone and lost it, over and over -- like the elusive revelations of a psychedelic trip. Likewise, in dreams we sometimes find the symbols of the end-product (like a mandala, or flower, or child) appearing at the beginning of the process. They symbolize what is latent and seeks manifestation.
Nevertheless, in both alchemy and Jungian psychology there are classic stages in the process of individuation or personal experience of the unconscious -- psychic milestones. One major recurrent theme in modern dreams is the symbolism of the planets, which correspond with the alchemical metals. These metals, or planets (astrology), archetypes (depth psychology) or Spheres (QBL) can be understood psychologically as the building blocks of the ego, which forms itself from fragments of these divine archetypal qualities. These spiritual principles seek concretization through the unique experience of an individual ego. This links spirit and matter; it comes down to earth. The sacredness of the Opus, or Great Work, is the central idea behind alchemy. It is a holistic perspective. One must be self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented. The adept is also diligent, patient and virtuous.
n other words, in order to create the Stone, you must have that integrative potential within yourself for self-realization -- for becoming whole or 'holy.' It requires an inward seeking, just like the process of individuation. It is a solitary task for no one may follow where you go. But there may be guides who will help inspire your faith and dedication to the task. Others have been to the territory you will explore, but none will accompany you. The secret of alchemy is that it is a personal journey of transformation, and cannot be explained but only experienced. It is "eating the dish," not just reading about it in an alchemical cookbook. Its effects must be channeled into spiritual growth, for if alchemy is used to gratify personal desire the work is lost. This means the ego gets inflated with its own importance when the real power source lies within the Self. This naturally produces a regression back into an unconscious state, back to the prima materia, raw psychic material.
The instinctual urge for growth and transformation lies within us. For this urge to be considered evolutional requires that the ego must cooperate quite deliberately and consciously with the Self. This leads toward self-realization. The main purpose of the Opus is "to create a transcendent, miraculous substance which is variously symbolized as the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, or the universal medicine (panacea). The procedure is, first, to find the suitable material, the so called prima materia (lead), and then to subject it to a series of operations which will turn it into the Philosopher's Stone (gold)." (Edinger, 1978). The First Matter is a homogenous unity of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt. It is therefore 'three,' but can also be expressed as 'four' elements, which are again essentially 'one.' Jung felt that the secret of the psyche was contained in this question of the 'three' and the 'four.'
In alchemy it is expressed as the axiom of Maria Prophetessa: "Therefore the Hebrew prophetess cried without restraint: 'one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.'" Today, physicists echo this statement when they call 'plasma' both the fourth and first state of matter (the others being liquid, gas and solid). In Jungian psychology, the prima materia is the original undifferentiated condition of ordinary consciousness, which is really unconsciousness -- subjective awareness. Mystics of all times have repeated that in the ordinary state we are all asleep or even "dead" to the true Reality. In psychology the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth). In Jungian theory we have a dominant function and limited access to one or two others, but the fourth function is inaccessible, elusive, maladapted, or hard to integrate. It is what keeps us from "getting it all together." Thus, we are out-of-balance.
Balancing the four functions means achieving an integrated personality, harmony and well-being. This requires undergoing a symbolic process of the union of opposites, which is what both alchemy (and Tantra) and Jungian analysis are all about. Both alchemy and Jungian psychology require a period of depth analysis (solutio) to distinguish the original, undifferentiated contents. The ego learns what part of the personality comes from itself and which parts from the Self. It reflects on its own component parts (subpersonalities) and learns to see itself as a small part of a greater whole, the larger unity of the Self. Edinger says, "The fixed, settled aspects of the personality which are rigid and static are reduced or led back to their original, undifferentiated condition as part of the process of psychic transformation," i.e. back to a state of 'innocence.'
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books. Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library. Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity.
Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold. Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness. Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness.
Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life. For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis.
Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts. Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians: 1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise vonFranz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few. 2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth." Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course. There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally.
Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational. Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference. Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths. All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body. Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age. These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development). They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities.
11. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage.
12. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
13. Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature.
Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton. Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493. His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions. Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations.
Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove). This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus.
Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason. However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories.
Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs! It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues. S
cience is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter." Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world. Von Franz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ...Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea." These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation. One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory.
VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness." This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors." "...scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world." This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute."
Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions. Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was basically the same, as we shall see. Some modern schools of the Hermetic Arts see an identity between medieval European alchemy and the eastern practice of Yoga. They see a metaphysical or symbolic correspondence between the planetary and metallurgical attributions of alchemy and the chakras. Yoga is also experimental in nature; the experiment is performed on oneself.
The qualities of the metals correspond to the planets and chakras as follows. Lead Saturn Sacral Plexus Iron Mars Sexual Ganglion Tin Jupiter Solar Plexus Gold Sun Cardiac Plexus Copper Venus Pharyngeal Plexus Silver Moon Pituitary Body Quicksilver Mercury Pineal Gland Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium. Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis.
We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas.
Mercury..........Sattva
Sulphur.........Rajas
Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh).
The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas. They are: Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth). Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage. The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called idapingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus. The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows." In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows: 1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy. 2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities: a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury; b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher; c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt. 3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth. 4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists. 5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher. 6. Yoga says 1) Prana or Surya, sun, 2) Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury. 7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies. 8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is 1). to recognize what goes on in his body, and 2). to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality. This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT.
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious changes the alchemist him/herself into a new creature. Jung asserted that the medieval alchemists were unaware of the natural process of psychological transformation which went on in their subconscious. Therefore, they projected this process into their experiments as a science of the soul. In other words, they projected an inner process outside of themselves. Had they been more conscious in their intent or more sophisticated in their psychology like the yogis, they would have been more consistently successful at producing the coveted lapis or Philosopher's Stone, a sort of "quantum Tantra." But why is a study of alchemy relevant to our modern lives, even if we have a spiritual orientation? We are not daily occupied with pseudo-alchemical experiments like the alchemists, or are we? In many metaphorical ways we are thinking like alchemists all the time.
Also, Jung observed that the dreams of his clients repeatedly stressed the main alchemical themes, especially the conflict and union of opposites. One of the main symbols of reconciliation of this conflict are various mandala forms, present from alchemy to Tibetan Buddhism. The alchemical symbolism is widespread in dreams of modern individuals, and can shed light on these more primitive aspects of our subconscious life. It is important for our understanding of our own unconscious, and how it transcends and subverts us.
Plato enjoined us to "Know Thyself." In Alchemical Active Imagination, vonFranz states, "True knowledge of oneself is the knowledge of the objective psyche as it manifests in dreams and in the manifestations of the unconscious. Only by looking at dreams, for instance, can one see who one truly is; they tell us who we really are, that is something which is objectively there. To meditate on that is an effort towards self-knowledge, because that is scientific and objective and not in the interest of the ego but in the interest of "what I am" objectively. It is knowledge of the Self, of the wider, objective personality." We could view alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy, which originally had the meaning 'to heal,' and the implication of 'service to the gods.'
Psychotherapy basically means service to the psyche, and offers us a way to reconnect with out unconscious, thus experiencing wholeness. It also opens an avenue to increased physical health, since those ailments which remain unconscious often manifest as psychosomatic diseases. Knowledge of alchemy's symbolism can lead us to psychological insight in terms of our own conditions, especially that reflected in dreams. Alchemy may be carried out as either a physical or mental operation. The Jungian orientation is primarily mental, though it often takes a physical form or expression. For example, you might choose to ritually 'act out' certain aspects of the Great Work in active imagination. The Jungian interpretation that alchemy is a passive and unconscious process comes from a basically mental, or Greek orientation. The type of alchemy that aims at rejuvenation or preserving the physical body is descended from the physically-oriented Egyptian alchemy. The main traditions of conscious, inner spiritual alchemy come mainly from the Islamic and Oriental philosophies.
Jung's original interest in alchemy came from a dream he had of a library filled with arcane tomes from medieval times and the Renaissance. During the next 15 years he spent collecting this library, he learned to recognize the major symbols of the unconscious. He was reading about them in alchemy books and hearing about them in his patients' dreams and fantasies. Their projections recurrently told him of an inner quest, a sealed vessel, the conflict of opposites, a philosophical tree, a fountain of eternity, a golden flower, a Stone, a sacred wedding, etc. Slowly Jung familiarized himself with their alchemical meaning. Then he, himself, became a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone -- a guide to the depths of the unknown. In his case this power manifested as the ability to heal at the psychophysical level -- in other words, to release any blocks hindering the natural process of growth and transformation. When proceeding in the direction of their individuation his clients' harmony was restored, self-equilibration returned. Jung equated individuation with self-realization.
We should be careful here not to dichotomize between "mental" and "physical" too much or we will lose our proper alchemical perspective. Alchemy cannot be reduced to a metaphor of psychological or philosophical transformation -- it requires first-hand experimentation. Grossinger says that "what Carl Jung recognized was that the stages of the alchemists also corresponded to a process of psychological individuation. The psychic stages were as precise and rigorous as the chemical ones by which they became imagined. Furthermore, they generated a physical and even quantitative terminology for an undiagnosed tension of opposites in the human psyche arising from male and female archetypes, a struggle they sought to resolve by the creative unity of the chemicals in the Stone."
Alchemy sought to unite Spirit (male), and Matter (female) through a Royal Union (coniunctio) to create their synthesis in the homunculus, hermaphrodite, or lapis. This is an alchemical metaphor or version of the generic process of spiritual rebirth. The entire body of alchemical literature covers many variations on the theme of the Great Work. No single person will ever express all of the operations and symbols described in alchemy, just as no single person ever embodies the totality of the Self. We each have unique experiences of the common roots of humanity or the collective unconscious. Thus, the various operations of alchemy come in different order for the various practitioners. The alchemical writings seem to contradict one another about the evolution of the process. ome claim to have made the Stone and lost it, over and over -- like the elusive revelations of a psychedelic trip. Likewise, in dreams we sometimes find the symbols of the end-product (like a mandala, or flower, or child) appearing at the beginning of the process. They symbolize what is latent and seeks manifestation.
Nevertheless, in both alchemy and Jungian psychology there are classic stages in the process of individuation or personal experience of the unconscious -- psychic milestones. One major recurrent theme in modern dreams is the symbolism of the planets, which correspond with the alchemical metals. These metals, or planets (astrology), archetypes (depth psychology) or Spheres (QBL) can be understood psychologically as the building blocks of the ego, which forms itself from fragments of these divine archetypal qualities. These spiritual principles seek concretization through the unique experience of an individual ego. This links spirit and matter; it comes down to earth. The sacredness of the Opus, or Great Work, is the central idea behind alchemy. It is a holistic perspective. One must be self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented. The adept is also diligent, patient and virtuous.
n other words, in order to create the Stone, you must have that integrative potential within yourself for self-realization -- for becoming whole or 'holy.' It requires an inward seeking, just like the process of individuation. It is a solitary task for no one may follow where you go. But there may be guides who will help inspire your faith and dedication to the task. Others have been to the territory you will explore, but none will accompany you. The secret of alchemy is that it is a personal journey of transformation, and cannot be explained but only experienced. It is "eating the dish," not just reading about it in an alchemical cookbook. Its effects must be channeled into spiritual growth, for if alchemy is used to gratify personal desire the work is lost. This means the ego gets inflated with its own importance when the real power source lies within the Self. This naturally produces a regression back into an unconscious state, back to the prima materia, raw psychic material.
The instinctual urge for growth and transformation lies within us. For this urge to be considered evolutional requires that the ego must cooperate quite deliberately and consciously with the Self. This leads toward self-realization. The main purpose of the Opus is "to create a transcendent, miraculous substance which is variously symbolized as the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, or the universal medicine (panacea). The procedure is, first, to find the suitable material, the so called prima materia (lead), and then to subject it to a series of operations which will turn it into the Philosopher's Stone (gold)." (Edinger, 1978). The First Matter is a homogenous unity of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt. It is therefore 'three,' but can also be expressed as 'four' elements, which are again essentially 'one.' Jung felt that the secret of the psyche was contained in this question of the 'three' and the 'four.'
In alchemy it is expressed as the axiom of Maria Prophetessa: "Therefore the Hebrew prophetess cried without restraint: 'one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.'" Today, physicists echo this statement when they call 'plasma' both the fourth and first state of matter (the others being liquid, gas and solid). In Jungian psychology, the prima materia is the original undifferentiated condition of ordinary consciousness, which is really unconsciousness -- subjective awareness. Mystics of all times have repeated that in the ordinary state we are all asleep or even "dead" to the true Reality. In psychology the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth). In Jungian theory we have a dominant function and limited access to one or two others, but the fourth function is inaccessible, elusive, maladapted, or hard to integrate. It is what keeps us from "getting it all together." Thus, we are out-of-balance.
Balancing the four functions means achieving an integrated personality, harmony and well-being. This requires undergoing a symbolic process of the union of opposites, which is what both alchemy (and Tantra) and Jungian analysis are all about. Both alchemy and Jungian psychology require a period of depth analysis (solutio) to distinguish the original, undifferentiated contents. The ego learns what part of the personality comes from itself and which parts from the Self. It reflects on its own component parts (subpersonalities) and learns to see itself as a small part of a greater whole, the larger unity of the Self. Edinger says, "The fixed, settled aspects of the personality which are rigid and static are reduced or led back to their original, undifferentiated condition as part of the process of psychic transformation," i.e. back to a state of 'innocence.'
cont.
Further, Edinger compares the
problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what
to work on in psychotherapy. He gives some hints:
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious. There is no set number of alchemical operations, just as there is no set number or order to archetypes. However, certain of the operations seem to recur more often in the literature and experience. We could consider these as the skeletal frame of the alchemical process. Their order switches around also.
Edinger lists seven operations which seem to typify the major transformations of the alchemical process. These include: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio. Other major operations include nigredo, albedo, rubedo, solificatio, multiplicatio, projectio, separatio, circulatio, and more. We can detail the nature of each of these operations later.
For now, it is enough to grasp the overview which is best stated by Jung, himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis: "...the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis [solve or solutio] on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation [coagula or coagulatio] on the other. For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly, there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia. And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end. There are countless speculations on the nature of the end state, all of them reflected in its designations. The commonest are the ideas of its permanence (prolongation of life, immortality, incorruptibility), its androgyny, its spirituality and corporeality, its divinity and its resemblance to man (homunculus)." He goes on to point out what this might mean psychologically. We could view it as conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels creating splits in the personality.
Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis. The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims at uniting them permanently. The images of the goal which then appear in dreams often run parallel with the corresponding alchemical symbols."
He reiterates the value of accessing the alchemical symbolism for increasing insight. "Investigation of the alchemical symbolism, like a preoccupation with mythology, does not lead one away from life anymore than a study of comparative anatomy leads away from the anatomy of the living man. On the contrary, alchemy affords us a veritable treasure-house of symbols, knowledge of which is extremely helpful for an understanding of neurotic and psychotic processes. This, in turn, enables us to apply the psychology of the unconscious to those regions in the history of the human mind which are concerned with symbolism." Each of the operations of alchemy functions as the center of focus of an elaborate symbol-system. Other symbols which are related to the operation cluster around the theme of the operation -- they share a common essence. These central symbols provide basic categories which we can use to understand our own personal psychic life, and even the transformation processes of others.
Taken together, the alchemical operations illustrate almost all of the full range of experiences which are involved in the process of individuation. As Grossinger points out, "Alchemy is thus a form of chemical research into which unresolved psychic elements were projected. The alchemical nigredo, the initial phase of the operation which produces 'black blacker than black,' is also an internal experience of melancholia, an encounter with the shadow." But this is also the necessary first stage in Jungian analysis -- confronting that which has been rejected or repressed is essential to becoming whole. This realm of the shadow can often provide more real substance for the spiritual quest than mimicking the teachings of a spiritual master without really changing oneself. Though stumbling around in the dark seems frustrating, if it is honest and heartfelt, and one really grapples with the shadow problem, the way is cleared for progress that will be sustained by a firm foundation gained in the early phases.
Throughout the alchemical process, the lapis functions as an inner guide by presenting itself in diverse symbolism. It symbolizes the growing manifestation of your latent potential for wholeness. It frequently manifests in mandala symbolism. This includes such forms as a revolving wheel or the zodiac, the petals of a magnificent flower, or a serpent eating its tail. As a grand union of opposites, it symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy Alchemy is a means of understanding our unconscious projections of archetypes into the world.
In "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines," Rudolf Bernoulli summarizes the basics of extroverted and introverted alchemy. He says, "There are two kinds of alchemy: one strives to know the cosmos as a whole and to recreate it; it is in a sense the precursor of modern natural science. It aspires to create gold as the supreme perfection in this sphere...The other alchemy strives higher; it strives for the great wonder, the wonder of all wonder, the magic crystal, the philosopher's stone."
"This is not a substance susceptible of chemical analysis. It does not represent a spiritual or psychological state that can be reduced to a clear formula. It is something more than perfection, something through which perfection can be achieved. It is the universal instrument of magic. By it we can attain to the ultimate. By it we can completely possess the world. By it we can make ourselves free from the world, by soaring above it. This is alchemy in the mystical sense ...The goal is reached only when a man succeeds in creating the ...stone within himself, and this is made possible only the intervention of the 'inner master.'" i.e. the Self. Psychologically, the union of body and spirit or of conscious and unconscious can be safely attempted only when both have undergone a purification brought about by the earlier stages of analysis, in which the conscious character and the personal unconscious are reviewed and set in order. (Psychic Energy, p. 452-3).
In the alchemistic literature there is evidence that the mysterious coniunctio took place in three stages. The first is that of the union of opposites, the double conjunction, which chiefly concerns us here. The second stage effects a triple union, that of body, soul, and spirit; or, as it is said elsewhere, "the Trinity is reduced to a Unity."
In the Book of Lambspring, published in 1625, this triple union is represented first by two fishes swimming in the sea, pictured with the legend, "The sea is the Body, the two fishes are the Soul and the Spirit", and later by a second picture showing a deer and a unicorn in a forest, with the following text: In the Body [the forest] there is Soul [the deer] and Spirit [the unicorn] ...He that knows how to tame and master them by art, and to couple them together, may justly be called a master, for we rightly judge that he has attained the golden flesh.
The literature offers far less material about this more advanced stage of the work than about the simple coniunctio, and still less about the third stage, the union of the four elements, from which the fifth element, the "quintessence," arises. However, Jung's latest works are largely concerned with the problems of this fourfold coniunctio, through which not only are the personal parts of the psyche -- ego and anima, or ego and animus -- consummated, but these, in a further stage of development, are in turn united with their transpersonal correlates -- wise man and prophetess, or great mother and magician (under whatever names these superordinate elements are conceived).
The subject is by no means simple, but it amply repays careful study. Further definitions and descriptors of the dynamics of alchemy can be found in my book THE MODERN ALCHEMIST, (Phanes Press, 1994) which is divided into two major parts, each representing an 'octave' of the famous alchemical dictum, "Solve et Coagula":
I. Metamorphosis of Soul; therapy or personal growth, and
II. Personification of Spirit on spiritual development.
Chapters in Part I of The Modern Alchemist include:
The Prima Materia on Persona, the social mask
The Nigredo on the Shadow, or chaos, depression and inertia
The Union of Opposites, on Anima or the archetypal Feminine
Participation Mystique, on Animus as the archetypal Masculine
Solutio, the operation of liquification and the Adversary archetype
Coagulatio, the operation of embodiment, archetype of the Great Mother
Sublimatio, operation of ennobling, archetype of Wise Old Man
Albedo, Rubedo and Coniunctio, the miracle marriage of opposites
Part II covers the following: Solificatio, operation of the sun and the Hero archetype
The Philosopher's Stone on the lapis and shamanic Mana Personality
Puer/Senex on the dynamics of youth and maturity, magickal child archetype
The Transcendent Function on the Self or God-Image in the soul
Devouring Father on the conception of divine child
Anima Consciousness on the return of the Feminine and Incubation
Individuation and Rebirth on spiritual rebirth phenomena
Ultima Materia on culmination of the Great Work in the Adept or God-Man/Woman
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious. There is no set number of alchemical operations, just as there is no set number or order to archetypes. However, certain of the operations seem to recur more often in the literature and experience. We could consider these as the skeletal frame of the alchemical process. Their order switches around also.
Edinger lists seven operations which seem to typify the major transformations of the alchemical process. These include: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio. Other major operations include nigredo, albedo, rubedo, solificatio, multiplicatio, projectio, separatio, circulatio, and more. We can detail the nature of each of these operations later.
For now, it is enough to grasp the overview which is best stated by Jung, himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis: "...the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis [solve or solutio] on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation [coagula or coagulatio] on the other. For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly, there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia. And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end. There are countless speculations on the nature of the end state, all of them reflected in its designations. The commonest are the ideas of its permanence (prolongation of life, immortality, incorruptibility), its androgyny, its spirituality and corporeality, its divinity and its resemblance to man (homunculus)." He goes on to point out what this might mean psychologically. We could view it as conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels creating splits in the personality.
Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis. The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims at uniting them permanently. The images of the goal which then appear in dreams often run parallel with the corresponding alchemical symbols."
He reiterates the value of accessing the alchemical symbolism for increasing insight. "Investigation of the alchemical symbolism, like a preoccupation with mythology, does not lead one away from life anymore than a study of comparative anatomy leads away from the anatomy of the living man. On the contrary, alchemy affords us a veritable treasure-house of symbols, knowledge of which is extremely helpful for an understanding of neurotic and psychotic processes. This, in turn, enables us to apply the psychology of the unconscious to those regions in the history of the human mind which are concerned with symbolism." Each of the operations of alchemy functions as the center of focus of an elaborate symbol-system. Other symbols which are related to the operation cluster around the theme of the operation -- they share a common essence. These central symbols provide basic categories which we can use to understand our own personal psychic life, and even the transformation processes of others.
Taken together, the alchemical operations illustrate almost all of the full range of experiences which are involved in the process of individuation. As Grossinger points out, "Alchemy is thus a form of chemical research into which unresolved psychic elements were projected. The alchemical nigredo, the initial phase of the operation which produces 'black blacker than black,' is also an internal experience of melancholia, an encounter with the shadow." But this is also the necessary first stage in Jungian analysis -- confronting that which has been rejected or repressed is essential to becoming whole. This realm of the shadow can often provide more real substance for the spiritual quest than mimicking the teachings of a spiritual master without really changing oneself. Though stumbling around in the dark seems frustrating, if it is honest and heartfelt, and one really grapples with the shadow problem, the way is cleared for progress that will be sustained by a firm foundation gained in the early phases.
Throughout the alchemical process, the lapis functions as an inner guide by presenting itself in diverse symbolism. It symbolizes the growing manifestation of your latent potential for wholeness. It frequently manifests in mandala symbolism. This includes such forms as a revolving wheel or the zodiac, the petals of a magnificent flower, or a serpent eating its tail. As a grand union of opposites, it symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy Alchemy is a means of understanding our unconscious projections of archetypes into the world.
In "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines," Rudolf Bernoulli summarizes the basics of extroverted and introverted alchemy. He says, "There are two kinds of alchemy: one strives to know the cosmos as a whole and to recreate it; it is in a sense the precursor of modern natural science. It aspires to create gold as the supreme perfection in this sphere...The other alchemy strives higher; it strives for the great wonder, the wonder of all wonder, the magic crystal, the philosopher's stone."
"This is not a substance susceptible of chemical analysis. It does not represent a spiritual or psychological state that can be reduced to a clear formula. It is something more than perfection, something through which perfection can be achieved. It is the universal instrument of magic. By it we can attain to the ultimate. By it we can completely possess the world. By it we can make ourselves free from the world, by soaring above it. This is alchemy in the mystical sense ...The goal is reached only when a man succeeds in creating the ...stone within himself, and this is made possible only the intervention of the 'inner master.'" i.e. the Self. Psychologically, the union of body and spirit or of conscious and unconscious can be safely attempted only when both have undergone a purification brought about by the earlier stages of analysis, in which the conscious character and the personal unconscious are reviewed and set in order. (Psychic Energy, p. 452-3).
In the alchemistic literature there is evidence that the mysterious coniunctio took place in three stages. The first is that of the union of opposites, the double conjunction, which chiefly concerns us here. The second stage effects a triple union, that of body, soul, and spirit; or, as it is said elsewhere, "the Trinity is reduced to a Unity."
In the Book of Lambspring, published in 1625, this triple union is represented first by two fishes swimming in the sea, pictured with the legend, "The sea is the Body, the two fishes are the Soul and the Spirit", and later by a second picture showing a deer and a unicorn in a forest, with the following text: In the Body [the forest] there is Soul [the deer] and Spirit [the unicorn] ...He that knows how to tame and master them by art, and to couple them together, may justly be called a master, for we rightly judge that he has attained the golden flesh.
The literature offers far less material about this more advanced stage of the work than about the simple coniunctio, and still less about the third stage, the union of the four elements, from which the fifth element, the "quintessence," arises. However, Jung's latest works are largely concerned with the problems of this fourfold coniunctio, through which not only are the personal parts of the psyche -- ego and anima, or ego and animus -- consummated, but these, in a further stage of development, are in turn united with their transpersonal correlates -- wise man and prophetess, or great mother and magician (under whatever names these superordinate elements are conceived).
The subject is by no means simple, but it amply repays careful study. Further definitions and descriptors of the dynamics of alchemy can be found in my book THE MODERN ALCHEMIST, (Phanes Press, 1994) which is divided into two major parts, each representing an 'octave' of the famous alchemical dictum, "Solve et Coagula":
I. Metamorphosis of Soul; therapy or personal growth, and
II. Personification of Spirit on spiritual development.
Chapters in Part I of The Modern Alchemist include:
The Prima Materia on Persona, the social mask
The Nigredo on the Shadow, or chaos, depression and inertia
The Union of Opposites, on Anima or the archetypal Feminine
Participation Mystique, on Animus as the archetypal Masculine
Solutio, the operation of liquification and the Adversary archetype
Coagulatio, the operation of embodiment, archetype of the Great Mother
Sublimatio, operation of ennobling, archetype of Wise Old Man
Albedo, Rubedo and Coniunctio, the miracle marriage of opposites
Part II covers the following: Solificatio, operation of the sun and the Hero archetype
The Philosopher's Stone on the lapis and shamanic Mana Personality
Puer/Senex on the dynamics of youth and maturity, magickal child archetype
The Transcendent Function on the Self or God-Image in the soul
Devouring Father on the conception of divine child
Anima Consciousness on the return of the Feminine and Incubation
Individuation and Rebirth on spiritual rebirth phenomena
Ultima Materia on culmination of the Great Work in the Adept or God-Man/Woman
ALCHEMY BOOKS:
Aion: Research Into the Phenomenology of the Self,
C.G. Jung Collected Works
A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Obed S. Johnson
Alchemical Active Imagination, M-L Von Franz
Alchemical Mandala, Adam McLean
Alchemical Medicine, Paracelsus
Alchemical Studies, C.G. Jung
Alchemical Symbols and Secret Aphabets, C.J.S. Thompson
Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger
Alchemist's Handbook, Frater Albertus
Alchemy, Franz Hartmann
Alchemy, Child of Greek Philosophy, Arthur J. Hopkins
Alchemy, the Secret Art, Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola
Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger
Archidoxes of Magic, Paracelsus
Atalanta Fugiens, Joscelyn Godwin, trans.
Aurora of the Philosophers, Paracelsus
Azoth or the Star in the East, A.E. Waite
Coelum Philosophorum, Paracelsus
Collectanea Chemica, Philalethes
Concerning the Alchemical Degrees, Grades & Compositions, Paracelsus
Concerning the Spirits of the Planets, Paracelsus
Cosmic Alchemy, C.C. Zain
Crowning of Nature, Adam McLean
Elixir of Enlightenment, A.H. Almas
Forge and the Crucible, Eliade
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Betty Dobbs
Goethe: the Alchemist, Ronald Gray
Golden Game, Klossowski de Rola
Grail Legend, Jung & Von Franz
Hermetic Tradition, Julius Evola
Internal Alchemy: the Natural Way to Immortality, Master Hua-Ching Ni
Jewish Alchemists, Raphael Patai
Jung on Alchemy, Nathan Schwartz-Salant
Mirror of Alchymy, Roger Bacon
Modern Alchemist, Iona Miller , R. Miller
Mystery of the Coniunctio, Edward F. Edinger
Orders of the Great Work: Alchemy, M.P. Hall
Origin and Structure of the Cosmos, Robert Fludd
Papers Toward Radical Metaphysics: Alchemy, Charles Ponce
Paracelsus: Selected Writings, foreword by Jung; N. Guterman (Tr.)
Philosopher's Stone, Michio Kushi
Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy, M. Junius
Preparation of the Sophic Mercury, Philalethes
Psychology and Alchemy, Jung
Quest for the Red Sulphur: the Life of Ibn' Arabi, Claude Addas
Robert Fludd, Joscelyn Godwin
Rosary of the Philosophers, Adam McLean
Science of Alchemy, William W. Westcott
Secret Tradition in Alchemy, A.E. Waite
Secrets of John Dee, James Gordon
Spiritual Alchemy, Mikhael Omraam
Splendor Solis, Godwin, McLean
Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic, Chang Po-tuan, Thomas Cleary (Tr.)
Aion: Research Into the Phenomenology of the Self,
C.G. Jung Collected Works
A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Obed S. Johnson
Alchemical Active Imagination, M-L Von Franz
Alchemical Mandala, Adam McLean
Alchemical Medicine, Paracelsus
Alchemical Studies, C.G. Jung
Alchemical Symbols and Secret Aphabets, C.J.S. Thompson
Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger
Alchemist's Handbook, Frater Albertus
Alchemy, Franz Hartmann
Alchemy, Child of Greek Philosophy, Arthur J. Hopkins
Alchemy, the Secret Art, Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola
Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger
Archidoxes of Magic, Paracelsus
Atalanta Fugiens, Joscelyn Godwin, trans.
Aurora of the Philosophers, Paracelsus
Azoth or the Star in the East, A.E. Waite
Coelum Philosophorum, Paracelsus
Collectanea Chemica, Philalethes
Concerning the Alchemical Degrees, Grades & Compositions, Paracelsus
Concerning the Spirits of the Planets, Paracelsus
Cosmic Alchemy, C.C. Zain
Crowning of Nature, Adam McLean
Elixir of Enlightenment, A.H. Almas
Forge and the Crucible, Eliade
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Betty Dobbs
Goethe: the Alchemist, Ronald Gray
Golden Game, Klossowski de Rola
Grail Legend, Jung & Von Franz
Hermetic Tradition, Julius Evola
Internal Alchemy: the Natural Way to Immortality, Master Hua-Ching Ni
Jewish Alchemists, Raphael Patai
Jung on Alchemy, Nathan Schwartz-Salant
Mirror of Alchymy, Roger Bacon
Modern Alchemist, Iona Miller , R. Miller
Mystery of the Coniunctio, Edward F. Edinger
Orders of the Great Work: Alchemy, M.P. Hall
Origin and Structure of the Cosmos, Robert Fludd
Papers Toward Radical Metaphysics: Alchemy, Charles Ponce
Paracelsus: Selected Writings, foreword by Jung; N. Guterman (Tr.)
Philosopher's Stone, Michio Kushi
Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy, M. Junius
Preparation of the Sophic Mercury, Philalethes
Psychology and Alchemy, Jung
Quest for the Red Sulphur: the Life of Ibn' Arabi, Claude Addas
Robert Fludd, Joscelyn Godwin
Rosary of the Philosophers, Adam McLean
Science of Alchemy, William W. Westcott
Secret Tradition in Alchemy, A.E. Waite
Secrets of John Dee, James Gordon
Spiritual Alchemy, Mikhael Omraam
Splendor Solis, Godwin, McLean
Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic, Chang Po-tuan, Thomas Cleary (Tr.)
Passion, Gonzales
Alchemy in Jungian Psychology
ALCHEMY IN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
... And Alchemical Imagination ...
Making Psyche Matter
by Iona Miller, 1986
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books.
Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library.
Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity. Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold.
Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness.
Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness. Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life.
For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis. Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts.
Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians:
1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise vonFranz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.
2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth."
Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course.
There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally. Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational.
Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference.
Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.
Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths.
All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body.
Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age.
These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development).
They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature. Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493.
His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions. Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations. Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove).
This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus. Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason.
However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories. Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs!
It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues. Science is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter."
Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world. VonFranz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ... Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea."
These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation.
One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory. VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness."
This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors ... scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world."
This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute." Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions.
Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was the same ...
Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium.
Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis. We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas. Mercury..........Sattva Sulphur.........Rajas Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh). The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas.
They are:
Akasha (quintessence);
Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water);
Vayu (air);
Prithivi (earth).
Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage. The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called ida and pingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus.
The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini Serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows."
In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows:
1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy.
2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities:
a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury;
b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher;
c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt.
3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth.
4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists.
5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher.
6. Yoga says
a. Prana or Surya, sun,
b. Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury.
7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies.
8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is ...
1.. to recognize what goes on in his body, and
2.. to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality.
This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT).
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious transforms the Alchemist him/herself into an entriely new creature .... The Golden Child ...
... And Alchemical Imagination ...
Making Psyche Matter
by Iona Miller, 1986
Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology. Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms. It is an art, both experiential and experimental. It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.
Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter. In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books.
Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library.
Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination. Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity. Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold.
Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious. Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness.
Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness. Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation. Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life.
For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works. They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis. Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts.
Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians:
1). Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise vonFranz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.
2). Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance.
A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality. Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed. It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth."
Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course.
There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally. Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit). Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational.
Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference.
Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus.
There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.
Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine. Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc.
But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more. It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine. It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths.
All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body.
Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms. The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.
In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.' These include the following:
1. A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2. A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3. A system for inducing transmutation.
4. The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5. The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6. A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7. Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8. The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9. A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10. The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age.
These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development).
They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities. In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage. In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature. Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism. But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today?
The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life. Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton.
Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.
The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view. He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931. Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493.
His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist. He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy. He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions. Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition. His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits. He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving. He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations. Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance. He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism. He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove).
This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star." This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion. But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions. He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus. Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation. He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason.
However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges. Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact. He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance. He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards. He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories. Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views. In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since. Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs!
It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive. Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues. Science is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic. VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter."
Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later." Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world. VonFranz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter." It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology.
Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision. Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ... Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).
As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea."
These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation.
One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory. VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized. This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness."
This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors ... scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world."
This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it.. "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute." Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results. This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions.
Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times. Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.
Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was the same ...
Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium.
Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis. We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas. Mercury..........Sattva Sulphur.........Rajas Salt..........Tamas
The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative. The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action. The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas. These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body. Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh). The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines. The Indian elements are known as Tattvas.
They are:
Akasha (quintessence);
Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water);
Vayu (air);
Prithivi (earth).
Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation. Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed. This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers. The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon. Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.
Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon. Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage. The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body. One equates with the sun, another with the moon. They are called ida and pingala. The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination. The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus.
The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini Serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination.
Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein. The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire. Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows."
In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows:
1. Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy.
2. Both affirm that all things combine three qualities:
a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury;
b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher;
c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt.
3. Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth.
4. Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists.
5. Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher.
6. Yoga says
a. Prana or Surya, sun,
b. Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna). Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury.
7. Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies.
8. Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.
In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is ...
1.. to recognize what goes on in his body, and
2.. to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality.
This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT).
The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization. The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious transforms the Alchemist him/herself into an entriely new creature .... The Golden Child ...
>
> Of Natural and Supernatural Things, Basilius Valentinus
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 26340/26340- h/26340-h. htm
>
> The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry, by M. M. Pattison Muir
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 14218/14218- h/14218-h. htm
>
> Hidden Symbolism of ALCHEMY and the OCCULT ARTS by Dr. Herbert Silberer
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 27755/27755- h/27755-h. html
>
> Ordinall of Alchemy (Norton, Holmyard)
> http://books. google.se/ books?id= wV393s2w7o8C
> <http://books. google.se/ books?id= wV393s2w7o8C& lpg=PP1&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20
> J.%20Holmyard% 22&pg=PP1# v=onepage& q&f=false>
> &lpg=PP1&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20J. %20Holmyard% 22&pg=PP1# v=onepage& q&f=false
>
> The Works of Geber (Holmyard, Russell)
> http://books. google.se/ books?id= siLPmQew3AoC
> <http://books. google.se/ books?id= siLPmQew3AoC& lpg=PR2&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20
> J.%20Holmyard% 22&pg=PR2# v=onepage& q&f=false>
> &lpg=PR2&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20J. %20Holmyard% 22&pg=PR2# v=onepage& q&f=false
> Of Natural and Supernatural Things, Basilius Valentinus
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 26340/26340- h/26340-h. htm
>
> The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry, by M. M. Pattison Muir
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 14218/14218- h/14218-h. htm
>
> Hidden Symbolism of ALCHEMY and the OCCULT ARTS by Dr. Herbert Silberer
> http://www.gutenber g.org/files/ 27755/27755- h/27755-h. html
>
> Ordinall of Alchemy (Norton, Holmyard)
> http://books. google.se/ books?id= wV393s2w7o8C
> <http://books. google.se/ books?id= wV393s2w7o8C& lpg=PP1&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20
> J.%20Holmyard% 22&pg=PP1# v=onepage& q&f=false>
> &lpg=PP1&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20J. %20Holmyard% 22&pg=PP1# v=onepage& q&f=false
>
> The Works of Geber (Holmyard, Russell)
> http://books. google.se/ books?id= siLPmQew3AoC
> <http://books. google.se/ books?id= siLPmQew3AoC& lpg=PR2&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20
> J.%20Holmyard% 22&pg=PR2# v=onepage& q&f=false>
> &lpg=PR2&dq= inauthor% 3A%22E.%20J. %20Holmyard% 22&pg=PR2# v=onepage& q&f=false
Starfire
Foreword
The tantric/hermetic, Royal Rite of the Vampire can never be predatory or sexual. It does not indicate any form of Freudian psychosis and although it is an expression of True Love, this does not correspond to any mundane romantic expectations. Human Love seems mostly needy, arising in response to a variety of chemical and emotional deficits and rather than transforming the couple involved, it simply seems to reinforce old complexes and prejudices, being entered into in the hope of fulfilling preconceived expectations.
Starfire cannot be achieved by partial individuals seeking some form of socially conditioned notional completeness through the other person. Both individuals must have personal integrity in order to transcend the possibility of simply becoming each other’s other half. The whole realm of Starfire in its varying manifestations should be entered into without preconceptions and without emotional inadequacy.
If there isn’t a degree of prior individuation, then it does become just another variation on the theme of Freudian domination and the desire for personal power through the sexual victimization of another person. In itself Starfire is Death, the journey’s end. Its symbolic expression is best appreciated in Waite’s Two of Cups. It is a "Love which is not in Nature, but by which Nature is Sanctified". As the Rite of Quickening, it often happens at its greatest intensity when it is least expected to happen and the individual/s involved hate no foreknowledge of it.
The Endocrinal glands tend to be multi-functional, with more than just one gland being responsible for the production of a single hormone or neurotransmitter. The Endocrinal System is fantastically complex and operates on a feedback loop of constantly changing levels of hormones, interacting and affecting each other in order to maintain a delicate balance.
To attempt to give a full explanation of the Starfire Ritual in Anatomical and Physiological terms would require a book to be written, so I will restrict the discussion to those glands and organs directly associated with the psychosomaticSephira system which stimulates the production of the hormones most closely identified with Starfire, the Holy Grail and Vampire Lore. Firstly however it is worth actually defining the objectives of undertaking the Rite of the Vampire.
These are:
1) To enhance intelligence
2) To promote longevity
Intelligence
Intelligence in cybernetic terms is defined as "The ability of an organism to exist and develop in symbiosis with its environment". The Rite of the Vampire was, in classical terms, a Royal prerogative which was undertaken on a regular basis with selected partners in order to promote within the reigning Queen or King a sequence of events leading to transcendent intelligence.
Originating in Scythian Royal Families the Rite of the Vampire enabled the Queen to maintain, and the King to obtain sovereignty, firstly over themselves, and secondly over the destiny which affected the people whom they served and guided. Whilst the Queen could reign independently, it was thought by the ancients that a King could not be a King without a Queen. In modern everyday terms this idea has a sound basis in the difference between male and female physiology, which difference in part is reflected in, and was balanced out by, the Rite of the Vampire.
In the ancient world the caste system defined the tasks of every individual within society. The Royal family was the nation’s spirit, soul and mind, the warriors were its arms, the yeomen and artisans were its torso and its legs. Each caste performed its specific tasks and each caste relied upon the other for direction, sustenance and defense. Each caste was considered as vital as the other, in the task of maintaining the nation as a whole. Today the nations are being run by the toe fat.
The task of the Royal Family was to guide and direct the efforts of the other castes and it could only do this efficiently if it was psychologically healthy and possessed of a considerable degree of wisdom and farsightedness. Its specific task was to foresee future problems and benefits and direct the nation accordingly.
To be able to exercise this amount of sovereign control over destiny, they first had to ensure sovereignty within themselves and this entailed adopting a practical, consistent method of integrating all the aspects of the psyche, by uniting and enhancing communication between the various areas of the brain contained within the general divisions of the left and right cerebral lobes. This task was not achieved by lengthy self analysis or psychotherapy but simply by ingesting chemicals which would encourage a greater sense of union within self and thus a transcendent appreciation of the self’s union with the Mind of Godhead or the Universe. Thereby true sovereignty, the will of theOne, could be integrated into the mind of the royal seer and followed.
Within the mind are a host of barriers, many of which are caused by the brain’s chemical and physical inability to efficiently communicate with itself. This causes a sense of confusion and isolation which encourages various forms of attachment to comforting delusions. Sovereignty over self is attained by accepting the self for what it is. In so doing the individual, dispensing with the energy consuming need to erect and maintain defensive mental routines, allows the truth to prevail instead, without regret and without judgment. In this manner the mind becomes detached and observant.
The energy formally used to sustain defensive mechanisms and constellations of delusionary complexes is freed from its shackles and can he used to enhance alertness and perception. In focused attention there is discovered Truth and this is the greatest manifestation of intelligence. Symbiosis is - above all else - Harmony and Harmony is transcendence. As a result of the Rite of the Vampire, Scythian culture itself was rooted in the love of Truth and Honor. The Harmony they experienced within themselves as a result of their personal honesty affected their relationship with the natural world which they adored and correspondingly lived in harmony and symbiosis with. For the Scythian, who had an almost childlike love of life, dishonesty was the enemy of joy and the death of clarity.
In consequence it was said of the Scythian Royal caste that they hated usurers, merchants and tradesmen and abhorred the deceit of the marketplace. Above all, to a Royal Scythian, who knew transcendent reality, and in being able to read his or her own heart and mind, could read the hearts and minds of other men; anyone attempting to lie to them or deceive them was proffering the greatest of insults and appeared to be tuning the universe upside down and perverting the Harmony of the Natural Order of life itself.
In Gothic Romance we have a particularly apposite example of the Scythian hatred of liars and cheats. The Scythian "vampire" is portrayed therein as living in terror of the christian cross and holy water and so we are fooled into believing that the vampire was an evil denizen of Hell who cannot bear to look upon or come into contact with the greatest of all the symbols of virtue and righteousness. However the reverse is actually the case. Because of the intent of those who have stolen it, the christian cross to a "vampire" was the epitome of everything that is evil, malicious, self serving, deceitful, dishonest and corrupt. To the "vampire" the church were no better that spies, holy protection racketeers and murderers, they were tradesmen and usurpers.
The vampire’s reaction to the cross was not holy terror but disgust and contempt, which was compounded by insult if the cross were wielded by a cleric, because to the vampire the cross was also associated with the martyrdom of one of the Family. To use a Vampire Family symbol to ward off a Vampire was the ultimate insult to the vampire’s intelligence. Likewise with holy water. In the medieval romances dire warnings are issued to those who would pour water upon the cubic stone of the Holy Grail.
Such an act would bring down thunder and lightning on the head of the transgressor. This symbolism indicates that the stone that pours forth the waters of life, namely the Grail Maiden should not be baptized because such a christian act is an act of territorializing usurpation, which is viewed by the Dragon Bloodlines in much the same way as anyone else would view the dog that urinates up a tree.
Christian clerics are usurpers and the act of aspersing with holy water is taken as their arrogance and audacity in attempting to make their own, something they can never possess or use to further their own selfish materialistic desires. The Vampire Race didn’t live in fear of idolatrous trinkets, it viewed them with anger and contempt as a form of utter stupidity that insults the intellect.
To return to the central theme of the narrative, the achieving of internal union was a fairly straightforward and predictable event. This is because the Royal Scythians, the Vampire or Elven Kings and Queens originated from a bloodline that had specific physiological differences in comparison to to other human species. Principally, as stated, they were in possession of a greater number of Melatonin sensitive synaptic receptors on both sides of the brain than ordinary human beings.
Secondly they possessed also a greater number of axons uniting the right and left lobes of the brain via the corpus callosum. This allowed for an enhanced trans-lobal communication potential. Thirdly both male and female "vampires" had larger Pineal glands than other people. In Vampire culture these assertions are reflected in the symbolism they used.
The synaptic and axonal connections via the corpus callosum were represented by the image of the dove of the Holy Spirit descending, holding within its beak a paten which it intends inserting into a Grail Cup. This was a medieval Templar symbol. The wings of the dove represent the axon branches of the limbic system of the left and right cerebrum whilst the body of the dove represents the corpus callosum which joins the two halves together.
Similarly the Aryan symbol of the swan displayed also takes the trouble to emphasize the same assertion but rather uses the swan’s head to distinguish the position of the Pineal gland. Both birds are used to convey a sense of grace and serenity and the observer is encouraged to associate such states with the psychic condition of the Dragon Grail Bloodline, arising specifically from neurophysiologic differences between that bloodline and the rest of humanity.
Differences in sensitivity to psychic or physical stimulus between the ancient Scythian Royal caste and other castes is emphasized in the west by the Tale of the Princess and the Pea. This story has a variant in Hinduism which itself shares a common Aryan cultural root with the Scythians. Here the difference between a Brahmin and a Ksatriya attracts comment and it becomes clear that a tendency toward heightened physical sensitivity distinguishes the Royal Priest from the Noble Warrior. One is quite clearly encouraged to associate caste difference with physical difference and conclude that caste was not a matter of social status but of physical and psychological function. The Priest was bred to be physically different to the Warrior.
The " vampire" was born with a higher potential for perception, transcendence and intelligence. Although operating on a higher base line in these areas than other species, the vampire race in their own perception of their everyday psychological and physiological condition, occupied a functional norm and walked a thin tightrope between their own mundanity, which for others would be perceived as being transcendent, and an even higher state of being.
Because of the neurophysiologic variations, achieving such a state would be quite a straightforward matter of ingesting certain neurotransmitters and hormones within the correct environmental conditions. Having so many more synapses and axons to accommodate these chemicals than other human beings, just a slight push could send them over the edge of their accepted reality and into another level of the universe.
A homoeopathic dose would allow them to achieve critical mass, whilst in others, much larger doses would have no affect at all because there are not the number of axons connecting the two lobes anyway. A simple example of this odd phenomena is that many devotees of various faiths follow gurus, attend seminars and retreats or take drugs and still, after years of struggle, yearning and discipline, get nowhere near attaining any state of mind that might be termed transcendent or intelligent according to the parameters defined herein.
Society encourages us to believe that we are all a homogenous mean, we are all built the same and we all share equal and similar attributes and potentials. The Church in particular is still very keen to push this particular piece of propaganda. This of course is blatantly untrue but those who are unaware of the physiological differences may strive for years in a state of utter perplexity, attempting to fulfill the desire to become enlightened.
Such perplexity is compounded when they meet others who make no attempt at all to achieve such a coveted state but simply live in it daily, having been born to it. Transcendence isn’t a matter of getting a load of exercises right, it’s a matter of being born with the kind of brain, endocrinal system and genetic memory that allows the mind to perceive such a state of being.
Being a witch, a magician, a vampire, a fairy or a royal dragon is not something that can be bestowed through rites of initiation or by adopting the pose. Such beings are of a different race, a race into which they are born. It is not a club that people can join and there are no human equivalents or substitutes, even though the church has attempted to usurp the status and power of these beings, the utter mess they have made of life on Earth just goes to prove my point.
They have usurped the positions formerly occupied by the transcendent and, lacking both the tools to perform the task and the inate desire to accept the ’Oblige’ which goes with the ’Noblesse’, they have stupidly and callously raped the planet and wiped out thousands of its precious species, bringing the world itself to the brink of disaster. The "vampire" was bred, with man’s collusion, to be man’s natural overlord and was born with that transcendent potential which was an essential part of the employment requirement for Kings and Queens.
Longevity
This aspect of the Rite of the Vampire has two subtexts, the physical and the spiritual. The former in social terms was intended to establish a sense of continuity and consistency to the reign of a King or Queen. The latter is determined by the phenomena of transcendent understanding. By performing the Rite of Starfire regularly it was possible to extend the normal span of life up to about one third and though the legend of the Vampire having eternal life can be said to be true, it does not relate to physical life. The Vampire is to all intents and purposes Dead in one sense but far more alive than ordinary human beings in another.
There are two types of life, both depend upon ones state of perception for their true appreciation. In Stoker’s ’Dracula’ we are introduced to the idea that Dracula’s image is not reflected in any mirror. Later on, towards the end of the Tale the Count says to Mina Harker "There is no Life in this body". The former incident explains the latter statement.
It is expressed eloquently elsewhere - "Be dead to the old nature and alive to the new". Jesus taught that there were two types of life, one mundane and the other transcendent. the old nature, the old life, is lived in relation to its environment and the opinion of those around it. It is bound by taboo and morality and considers itself the only reality.
This is the Ego, the individual, unregenerate Personality. Being a component of the Brain’s function, it dies with the body. The Ego or personality is a safety function, a minor form of self awareness that is formed by memory. In a sense, like memory it is a quality of the past and in its functioning it relates all new experience to past memory in order to quantify the threat or potential of any newly experienced phenomena.
In so doing it does not observe the new but makes of it the old, by comparing it to the nearest similar previous experience. Therefore as the ego is essentially memory and memory is the past and the past is dead and gone, so too is the human personality. Human beings are to all intents and purposes machines and they are truly the living dead.
The ego or personality, all that a human being thinks of within themselves as being alive, is founded upon fear. During the process of quickening the transcending mind, fear begins to appreciate that it is beginning to disintegrate. It is dying.
As it dies the fear that it is dies also and the memory which formerly prevented the perception from seeing anything new, suddenly sees all things anew. As memory is also the principal component of time, then what the perception also observes for the first time is the end of time: Eternity. What is left after the mind dies is the Eternal, the greater being, the spirit of the Universe:Life Itself
From that point onwards memory is founded not on fear but upon understanding. What lives from then onwards is the eternal perceiving itself through the senses of the vampire. The former "personality" is dead and in terms that human beings would understand "There is no life in this body", no fixed or immutable point of reference. This was why Dracula cast no reflection in the mirror. The face, the body, is what human beings think of when they affirm to themselves their selfhood and, being shaped by the personality, the body becomes the ego, the I.
The symbolic absence of a reflection is intended to assert that Dracula, and "vampires" in general, are "dead to the old nature but alive to the new". This is the foundation upon which Jesus’ entire message was built. It is only the Vampire that can truly say, with the voice of the eternal- "I AM THE TRUTH, THE WAY AND THE LIFE". For it is only in the blood of the vampire that there can be found the secret of Eternal Life.
Did vampires have eternal life? Well, yes they did. They were born Eternal in the sense that they were born to be transcendent and their Rites afforded them the ability to "yield" to the transcendent dynamic and perceive eternity. From that point on time becomes less relevant and they never departed from the eternal now that is perceived whilst in this physical life.
Time is created by mind which is fear. Without fear there is no time and whilst living in the physical body they perceive their mortal lives as immortal. So in the time it takes for a mortal to live out his natural life, the Vampire has already lived an eternity in the same space of years. When a Vampire body dies, the Spirit lives on because it is the spirit of the eternal.
The greatest heresy of all for the church is that they cannot ever achieve for themselves or bestow upon others the ability to attain life after death. The greatest heresy is that humans die, whilst the vampire and the fairy live forever. The greatest lie that the Church has ever uttered is in trying to convince people that faith or transubstantiation in communion will grant eternal life.
Even if the blood in the Eucharist Chalice were the blood of Christ or the Virgin, it would avail Man nothing because he is not anatomically equipped to process the chemicals that allow the brain to see the eternal. Mortal man is equipped to live his allotted span and then die forever. Individual reincarnation of the personality is equally as spurious a lie which, like the Church’s teachings concerning life after death, is propagated to induce behavioral conformity. However, there are still Grail Maidens on the Earth and the spirit of Kali has not yet completely passed into oblivion, despite the best efforts of the Church to breed her handmaidens out of existence.
The author discussed with Kenneth Grant the understanding that there is still a genetic difference between the Dragon Blood and the Blood of the Kasatriya and Sudra Castes. There is no elitism or snobbery involved in such a view. In times past there was a social niche for Dragons, Fairies, Vampires, Witches and Druidhes where, along with their human cousins they fulfilled a responsible social role in the affairs of Man.
However today they are just viewed as madmen or anomalies and society has no time for people who believe they can see beyond the endless desire to attain self worth or a sense of personal identity through fruitless labour and pointless consumption. Often the Quickening and Starfire does come unexpectedly and when it does, nothing can prepare the individual for its consequences. We are all taught that there is nothing beyond the reality defined within the consensus of the prevailing mass psychosis, with its materialistic fantasies and childish notions of Heaven and Hell.
We are all encouraged to conform and we have our expectations regulated accordingly. In particular no one in the west is taught that there is a dynamic potential within human relationships which transcends the mundane desire to assuage loneliness or greed, to propagate the genes, replicate the self or achieve self worth through sexuality. In consequence, for those who have been taught that there is no such things as Dragons, Vampires, Witches, Fairies or Druidhes and furthermore that all are sons of Adam and thus born equal in the sight of God, it can come as a bit of a surprise if Starfire, as the Quickening, creeps up unawares and does something to the soul that has remarkable similarities to it having been hung, drawn and quartered.
A new reality manifests itself, the brain becomes sensitized to the chemical phenomena that accompanies the revolution in perception and this new state becomes the norm, the base line. To maintain it Starfire as a ritual must be continued. There is now a new physiological requirement that must be met that is beyond human understanding, because human beings are blessedly bereft of the dormant brain tackle that has now fully kicked in and has become addicted to La Fontaine de Soif.
It should be explained that Starfire does not necessarily have to be the consumption of blood in the first instance. As the Quickening it can sometimes occur in the Grail Bloodline spontaneously and unexpectedly, and involve the subject in a situation where they become aware of a tremendous level of energy in someone they meet and become close to and this energy field, in close proximity, does something to the subject’s perceptions. There can be a feeling of tremendous stillness and peace and a cessation of desire. It is like Death.
The only way to explain it is to say that it appears to rewire the brain which then subconsciously expects a continuity of that self same stimulus. Without a regular fix there can be problems. It all sounds like the twaddle we read in Gothic Novels, like some form of stereotypical motif that Vampirewannabees would use to justify the idiocy of being seen in public with orthodontic augmentations.
However the Fontaine de Soif does exist and, as I have said before, the best way of appreciating it is to think of the alcoholic who, before the first drink doesn’t know that they even are alcoholics, but afterwards need that chemical fix regularly or their life goes to pieces. In alcoholism the chemical deficiency is, I believe, for a neurotransmitter called Neuropeptide. In vampirism it is for Melatonin but that in itself is only one component. Prolactin, Oxytocin, Vassopresin and Dopamine could also be implicated in the dependence.
A happy Dragon can go through life without any of this and without any of the Gothic overtones, just as long as they never meet another one of their bloodline. If they do though, there is a chance that they will discover a separate reality which they will find painful to be bereft of.
When talking of royal vampirism one should be aiming to associate the phrase with the evening scent of Nightstock, with moonlight and star shine and the song of the Nightingale in the forest behind the rose-walk.
"In the centre of the chamomile lawn there stands a black marble plinth from beneath which trickles the waters of life, whose sparkling melody harmonizes with the plaintive haunting song of the beautiful, elven girl, the beloved who, leaning against the monolith, stares into the starlit western sky, as if surveying a vast abyss, a realm of infinite depth that no man could ever hope to see with human eyes".
She is the journey’s end and the fulfillment of the dragon nature. Royal vampirism is about devotion to the feminine and surrender to the goddess, it is about a love that sacrifices self even unto death. It cannot be presented without the kind of romantic imagery whose symbolism transcends mortal love. Here we have a situation where the sidhe, in order to consummate his or her nature, must sacrifice that nature to the source of its consummation. The Dragon Maiden is not the victim and the vampire is not the predator. Both consume and transform each other and ultimately the sidhe must die in the arms of the beloved.
The confusion between this imagery and that of the dentally gifted fashion victim is the confusion between royal and martial vampirism. This particular manifestation of the legend was real and there is no getting away from that. Like royal vampirism it concerned itself with the assimilation of identities but beyond that it was for adrenaline junkies and thyroxine freaks. Originating in Scythian battle custom, warriors would drink the blood of fallen friend or foe alike in order to take upon themselves the valor and spirit of the dying warrior.
The more adrenaline and endorphins the victim or donor had in their bloodstream the better, because this provided fuel for the predators to continue the fray. It did not concern itself with high philosophy, transcendent love, intelligence or longevity and was itself in effect a short cut to the grave. A case of live hard, die young. Today athletes have been known to gradually extract their own blood, up to about two pints, and store it prior to events. Several hours before their performance they would reinject the blood back into their systems, giving them a significant and very useful buzz.
In stories such as le Fanu’s ’Carmilla’,Stoker’s ’Dracula ’and lately the work of Warrington, the most significant component of the vampire’s personality is not the callousness or predation, but their adoration and love for the victim. The method of consummation however, has been confused with that of the Scythian Warrior. Having said that, the stories themselves echo significantly the sentiments expressed in the world’s first story of royal vampirism, the Song of Songs, to be given further consideration in relating and expanding upon the underlying theme in historical examples of the Royal Rite.