Incredible post Io!! I had some many strong associations with this stuff...

long winded I'm afraid...but I've got to get them out, the resonance is so strong!

I've been working, counseling a few women, who suffered intense sexual and physical abuse as young children, often by a boyfriend of a mother, either neglectful and turned to stone herself, like the serpent-headed Medusa, or in complicity with the man. Ghastly as that sounds, it is, very sadly, not uncommon.

These women can have dreams of vanquishing snakes or vampires (one strongly associates with TV warrior/hero Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

The motif of the "The snake venom/poison is the cure" reminds me of the ancient Greek myth of Perseus and how he vanquished the Medusa with her serpent locks. He did so, with the positive mother 'mirror' provided by Athena, seeing her true 'reflection' and loped off her head, whereupon the poison blood that poured forth provided the power for his renewed strength. The creative spirit was also released as the Winged Pegasus, whose hoof struck the rock, and caused the fountain of poesy to erupt.

Perseus, having vanquished the serpent-head negative, animus bound, mother-dragon imago, goes on to destroy the negative father image of Poseidon's sea monster, and releases the repressed feminine, Anima, imago, Andromeda, who has been 'chained to her rock.'

The story is told of the male hero, but the story can pertain to a woman hero as well, because the woman can also have the introjected, animus image, of the negative mother to vanquish, (created inside her by the terrible things she let happen to her daughter in the case of my clients).

And with the poisonous blood of the vanquished serpent-mother she goes on to have the power to release the repressed feminine - the anima - Andromeda in her soul.

An alchemical reaction?

"In December 2006 I purchased a copy of the Serpent Grail by Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn. The book that had caused the Paris 4 to post the Forbidden Letters. After having read both the Letters and the Serpent Grail I soon agreed with Arthur Musing that the Serpent Grail indeed did not hold the truth behind the Grail and the Elixir of Life as the authors had promised on the cover of that book. (A book dangerously leaning on shamanism in my opinion, because, as Kenneth Humphreys points out, the shamans, like any other priest or witchdoctor, lived 'on the backs of others ever since people started living in groups. Given this venal motive of these 'religiously inclined' we would be wise therefore to exercise caution before buying its product, or accepting its claims.')


But back to the Serpent Grail. Was that book, as Musing wrote too, nonetheless the best possible introduction to the Forbidden Letters because of the, what he called, secondary information it contained? I regret to say it was not. I've studied the book carefully and there is no secondary information on the Grail and the Elixir of Life that couldn't be found in long published other books. The book as a whole didn't even help me understand the alchemical theory of the Paris 4, like the response articles on World Mysteries did. In particular the ones by Hanno Temming, Otto Reich and Jonathan Rice. To put things elegantly: Arthur Musing had been very kind to Gardiner and Osborn is his little review-quote on the Serpent Grail in the Rice-article.


The core-theory of the Serpent Grail is, I'm afraid, even quite risible.


'Reading Gardiner's [The Serpent Grail] manuscript, his initial insight was that to cure or heal others, the ancient shaman or tribal witchdoctor would mix snake's venom with snake�s blood. The venom can kill, but the blood of the snake acts as an antidote to the poison and neutralises it, and so it was found that both mixed together would create a potent substance that, when swallowed, could cure most or all diseases.

However, Gardiner�s angle was that the mixture of both the snake venom and blood was perhaps the original �elixir of life� and this is what made his thesis refreshing and exciting.

In his original manuscript Gardiner stated that these two properties of the one snake were mixed in a �human skull cap� � adding that this �bowl� was possibly the origin for the Holy Grail vessel.' [Gary Osborn]


Risible, because, as all true experts on the Grail know, and Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince pointed out in an interview...


'...the vessel idea of the Grail was not its original form. The first tales either didn't describe the mysterious Grail as anything in particular, or had it as a stone.'


Risible, because the single serpent of Asclepius of medicine, the one that also represents the shamans and witchdoctors of Gardiner, has absolutely nothing to do with the intertwined serpents of the Caduceus of Hermes, who represent alchemical transformation and the Elixir of Life, being a by-product of that transformation in the body of the successful alchemist.


In other words, Gardiner and Osborn had failed to see that the Elixir of Life is produced in the lightbody of the victorious alchemist (the Shining One), i.e. man deified. That it is a purely microcosmic elixir therefore, and not a macrocosmic one, meaning one mixed in a skull for instance and presented to some patient. In yet other words: the Elixir of Life is not swallowed, it is exclusively produced and consumed in the body of a triumphant alchemist.


Needless to say that Gardiner and Osborn were ignorant then too about the true nature of the Philosopher's Stone. To give an example from their book:


'As von Eschenbach says, this stone is called the Grail. But how can we look upon something that is within ourselves? Clearly, we are not to take this literally.' [italics by me]


Because through the Forbidden Letters we know now that the Stone of Transmutation is indeed a real stone. That it...


'...grows from flesh and blood...'[Jung]


...that it...


'...is produced about where the liver is...'[The Paris 4]


...and that it is...


'...even pointy and about the size of a child's fist.'[The Paris 4]



That it...


'...ignites the Kundalini-fire...'[The Paris 4]


... and that the Phoenix is a metaphor for the alchemist in that fire. [see footnote 2]"

Source : www.world-mysteries.com/PhilipGa...rs_16.htm