Alchemy: The Royal Art's topics - tribe.net

Alchemical story

2008-06-26T16:22:25Z

An essentially alchemical story -
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WE ARE ALL SHAMANS-IN-TRAINING
By Paul Levy
In 1981 I spontaneously went into such an ecstatic state that I was hospitalized by what I call the “anti-bliss patrol.” The authorities had become alerted because I was simply unable to restrain my enthusiasm at the “good news” that was beginning to reveal itself to me about the nature of reality. Stepping out of my usual way of trying to control my experience, during that next year I was thrown in mental hospitals a number of times and (mis)diagnosed as having manic-depressive (bi-polar) illness. I was told that I had a chemical imbalance and would have to go on medication and learn to live with my “illness” for the rest of my life. Little did the doctors realize that although my experience looked like a typical nervous breakdown, I had actually gotten “drafted” into a deeper psycho-spiritual process of an entirely different order – a spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation - that was blowing my mind as it was simultaneously revealing it.
My inner process had spilled outside of my skull and just like a dream was synchronistically expressing itself through events in the seemingly outer world. Finding myself in a meaning-filled, meaningful, and enchanted universe, the world had become animated by spirit, as if it was a living oracle, a continually unfolding revelation that was speaking symbolically. It became glaringly apparent to me that there was an intimate correlation and synchronistic correspondence between what was going on in the internal landscape of my psyche and the seemingly outer world. The boundary between inner and outer was dissolving. It was as if something deep inside of me was expressing itself through the medium of the outside world, and was able to extend itself into the outside world and configure events so as to in-form and give shape to itself.
According to consensus reality, I was “certifiable,” and I was in full agreement, in that I had certifiably stepped out of my self-entrancing, self-limiting, and self-binding conceptual, cognitive mind into a much more expansive “space.” As if snapping out of a trance, I found myself not out of my mind, in the sense that I was crazy, but rather, inside of my mind, which was now discovered to be everywhere, in that I was beginning to realize that I was dreaming.
My parents bought into the psychiatrist’s diagnosis that their only child had a mental illness, as in my parents’ world doctors were genuine authority figures who knew what they were talking about. In the words of the late psychiatrist R. D. Laing, “Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a ‘dream’ is going crazy.” Tragically, with the support and blessing of the psychiatric community, both of my parents passed away convinced their son was crazy.
When we begin to spiritually awaken, our personality structure and sense of who we are can melt down and dis-integrate, as our inner “constitution” is being rewritten. This process can convincingly appear to others as if we are having a nervous breakdown or a psychotic break.
Stepping out of my normal, conditioned, repressed and domesticated self as if breaking out of a prison, I felt on the cutting edge of the big bang itself. It was as if I was becoming attuned to and a receptive vehicle for a deeper, more authentic, less self-conscious and much more unfettered, creative and ecstatic part of myself to freely in-form my experience and give shape to itself. My experience was so mind-blowing that I had trouble “keeping it together,” particularly because previous to the hospitalizations I wasn’t in a safe container but was unrestrained, out in a world that did not understand the value of such experiences. My situation was actually quite dangerous, as during the beginning stages of my awakening I was not able to mediate and channel the transpersonal energies that were activated within me in a way that was acceptable to the culture at large.
The dissolution and breakdown of the old structures of the psyche can become a breakthrough, however, depending on how it is contained and related to by the surrounding community and unfolded. The dis-integration can be the beginning of a coming together at a more coherent, and unified level of consciousness.
Our species and its civilization are currently in the throes of a collective (nervous) breakdown. If what we, as a species, are doing to ourselves (destroying the biosphere, the very life-support system of the planet, to use one example) isn’t collective madness, then what in the world is? Our underlying institutionalized and incorporated structures that are helping to keep us asleep are breaking down and coming apart. Just as with an individual’s psyche, only writ large en masse on the world stage, we are going through a collective shamanic initiation process, a genuine “death/rebirth” experience. The false, illusory separate self, which experiences ourselves as alien from one another is “dying” as the fundamental framework by which we relate to each other and the world, as we incarnate and give “birth” to a truer sense of who we are, realizing our deep interconnection and interdependence with each other and all living beings.
The shamanic personality is very sensitive to the unconscious, both in themselves and in others. The shaman has very permeable boundaries between their conscious mind and the unconscious, as if they’ve created a bridge which allows contents between the two to easily pass through and intermingle with and reciprocally co-inform each other. The shaman’s collaborative, creative interplay between the conscious and unconscious creates a synthesis, which is a “third thing,” a new birth, a further evolution in the incarnation of a more all-embracing, integrated and expansive consciousness.
The figure of the shaman is related to both the figures of the artist (see my article “The Artist as Healer of the World”) and the wounded healer – (see my article “The Wounded Healer,” Part 1 and Part 2). The archetypal figure of the shaman is the primordial medicine person and carrier of healing. The figure of the shaman (arche)typically takes on the illness that is in the community into themselves and literally becomes sick, as if they have “caught” the disease of who they are trying to heal. This process can become animated through the choice of a seasoned shaman, or it can happen spontaneously and unintentionally in a budding shaman who is unusually sensitive to the underlying contradictions and spiritual illness that pervade the social and cultural fabric which connects us and in which we are embedded. A fully cooked shaman, in internalizing the illness in the field, allows the sickness to fluidly move through them without getting stuck in them, which is the mark that distinguishes an accomplished shaman from a novice.
By embracing, assimilating, and metabolizing what has gotten triggered in them, however, the shaman is able to heal themselves and in so doing non-locally sends healing to the whole “community.” In our current moment in time, as interdependent members of an ever-more interconnected global village, our “community” is the entire planet. The shaman is operating in the realm of the collective unconscious, a “no-place” where information travels in “no-time,” faster than the speed of light. There is no part of the universe that is separate from the whole, which is to say that a change in any part of the universe is resonantly registered in no time whatsoever throughout the whole universe. Though the healing effects of the shaman’s process manifests “over time,” the shaman’s self-healing, transcending the seeming limitations of space and time, instantaneously insinuates its in-form-ation and informing influence faster than the twinkling of an eye throughout the entire universe in ways that can only be imagined.
OUR MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IS CRAZY-MAKING
I tried telling the doctors that I wasn’t manic-depressive, but rather was having a shamanic initiation and spiritual awakening (as this couldn’t have been more obvious to me); but this only confirmed their diagnosis in a diabolically self-perpetuating feedback loop. In essence, the more I authentically expressed my experience, the more I was convincing the doctors that I was crazy. It was like I had stepped through the looking glass and found myself in a dimension of existence that was truly bewitched, as if I had entered a domain which felt, qualitatively speaking, under a curse of black magicians. It felt like I had shamanically journeyed into the underworld and wound up in some sort of weird, perverse hell realm where reality was inverted in a way which was get-me-out-of-here crazy. Little did I realize at the time, however, that this was all part of the deeper awakening process through which I was going.
What the psychiatrists were doing was truly maddening. By myopically seeing people’s behavior as being pathological, the psychiatrists literally drew out the pathology in the person, which only further confirmed to them the correctness of their diagnosis in a self-fulfilling prophecy, as if they were both under a spell and casting one at the same time. To again quote Laing, “Anyone in this transitional state is likely to be confused. To indicate that this confusion is a sign of illness, is a quick way to create psychosis. ..A psychiatrist who professes to be a healer of souls, but who keeps people asleep, treats them for waking up and drugs them asleep again…helps to drive them crazy.” To the extent they are projecting their own madness outside of themselves, the psychiatrists are unknowingly complicit in evoking the very madness they are hoping to cure, which is nothing other than an expression of the psychiatrists’ madness. Representative authorities of “the academy,” the doctors’ madness was a reflection of the madness which has become normalized, institutionalized, imprinted, and incorporated throughout our modern world. The doctor’s madness was the personalized signature of our collective madness.
TRAUMA AS A PATH TO AWAKENING
I tried to explain to the psychiatrists that I WAS sick, however, but just not in the way they were imagining. I had a creative, psychological illness, which is to say that my seeming madness was an expression of my creative self, alchemically transforming an underlying perturbance in the field of consciousness so as to heal itself. I wasn’t manic-depressive; rather, I was “perturbed,” in that my “emotions” were “disturbed” due to being the recipient of over-the-top abuse at the hands of a desperately sick, sociopathic father. I was suffering from a shamanic illness, as I was in trauma from the malevolent, mind-numbing abuse to which he had introduced me. My shock was due to the transmission I had received from my father, who by unwittingly and compulsively acting out his unresolved abuse, connected me as a link in a chain to an unbroken lineage of violence and abuse extending far back in time and throughout space. Like countless other recipients of abuse, I had been directly introduced to the dark side.
Shattered by the experience, it was like I had become broken. Dropping down into the darkness of the unconscious underworld, a part of me had died. Imprinted by the trauma, I would never be the same, as from that moment on the trauma had altered and reconfigured both my psyche and my destiny, simultaneously severing and initiating a connection to a deeper part of myself.
Trauma is a normal, healthy response to an insane and intolerable situation. If we put too much pressure on a bone and the bone breaks, the bone is not pathological. Paradoxically, trauma is a form of madness which is an expression of sanity. “Shock” is our healthy response to experiencing an event that is awe-full. The shamanic archetype becomes catalyzed in us by a severe emotional and spiritual crisis, oftentimes organically growing out of unresolved abuse issues from childhood – this was certainly true for me.
There is an intimate correlation between being traumatized, abused, and wounded, and having a shamanic initiation/spiritual awakening. Trauma is an experience that is overwhelming to the ego, in that it can’t be assimilated by the ego in the typical way. The trauma initiates and catalyzes the deeper process of the archetype of the shaman to begin to form-ulate and crystallize itself in the unconscious of the future shaman. This precipitates a deeper part of the psyche to become mobilized, as the shaman journeys deep inside themselves, flying on the wings of their creative imagination to address and become acquainted with what has gotten activated within them.
The shaman’s descent into the darkness can be agonizing, a veritable crucifixion. Part of the (arche)typical shamanic experience is to become dis-membered, which is a cooking and smelting of psychic contents that have become rigidified, ossified, and have outlived their usefulness. To quote Jung, “The shaman’s experience of sickness, torture, death and regeneration implies, at a higher level, the idea of being made whole through sacrifice, of being changed by transubstantiation and exalted to the pneumatic man – in a word, apotheosis (elevated from an ordinary person to a “God”).” The goal of the shaman’s death and dismemberment experience is to “re-member” themselves, which like true soul retrieval, brings all of their dissociated parts back together into a more integrated synthesis.
TRAUMA ON STEROIDS
An accomplished shaman, which I certainly am not, allows themselves to be “dreamed up” by whatever the situation in the field requires so as to help the field to get back into balance and harmonize. An accomplished shaman has developed a “container,” both within themselves and in the seemingly outer world around them, in which to process what has become animated within them. I certainly hadn’t developed this container when I was committed, as I was a novice, and quite young (in my mid-twenties). By being so out of control and over-the-top enthusiastic (“en theos” means to be filled with spirit) about what was being revealed to me, I had let go of control and was unwittingly expressing and giving shape to the spirit of madness which was non-locally enfolded throughout the greater field of consciousness, which is to say inside of all of us. I had a ways to go, however, to learn how to integrate, contain and more skillfully and artfully express what I was realizing so as to not freak people out so much.
Because they allow themselves to be dreamed up by the field, an accomplished shaman can embody and incarnate in crystallized form the unconscious madness in the field so that it becomes clarified and brought into consciousness. A shaman can reflect back the madness to the madness itself by taking over the madness and allowing themselves to creatively express it such that it is revealed in a new light. From the point of view of the collective madness in the field, when the would-be shaman acts out the madness that is in the field, the would-be shaman themselves are seen by the collective as being the ones who are mad. This is a potentially dangerous situation when the collective madness controls the levers of power, whether the psychiatric system or our current administration (please see the first chapter in my book, “The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis”).
Being “institutionalized,” I had fallen into a situation where the psychiatric community had power over me. They were in a position to unconsciously enact the “will to power” of the archetypal shadow through their own unconscious, unresolved power issues, with me as one of their guinea pigs. Being unaccomplished in shamanism and very vulnerable, I was eaten alive by the darker forces that I had unwittingly evoked in the psychiatric community. For example, once my lucidity was violently shut down, I began feeling depressed, which was a “normal” thing to feel under such horrible circumstances. My feeling depressed inspired the psychiatrists, however, to solidify their diagnosis of me as manic-depressive, and they then prescribed an anti-depressant to “help” my depression, adding to the anti-psychotic and lithium they already had me on. It was like I had re-created my family-of-origin trauma, only this time on steroids. Enacting a timeless, mythical process, I had gotten swallowed up by the darkness, and my task was to transform the darkness from within the darkness itself.
The experience was so traumatic that after my last hospitalization, in 1982, I couldn’t work for a year and had to go on disability and live with my parents, the original agents of my traumatization. I was living a nightmare. After the “care” of the mental health system, I had become truly “sick.” My illness was like a particularized, acute “break-out” of an underlying, more fundamental systemic illness, which pervaded both my family system as well as the field of consciousness itself. I had become the “identified patient,” the scapegoat who was carrying the family’s, and now the mental health community’s projected, unconscious shadow and madness.
My saving grace was never falling into and “buying” the viewpoint of the doctors that was literally being “sold” to me as it was forced down my throat. It couldn’t have been more obvious from my vantage point inside myself that I was having a spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation; fortunately I never lost sight of this, even during the darkest of times, which allowed me to trust the process through which I was going.
I was one of the lucky ones, however, as I was able to extricate myself from the stone-age horrors of the mental health (sic) community as soon as I was able. Tragically, many others are not as fortunate, and their potential spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation process becomes aborted as they become bound and captive to the psychiatric establishment. The psychiatric system and the pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma) are co-dependently intertwined with each other in a genuinely pathological, mutually profitable, and crazy-making relationship. This is not to say that there aren’t many good, well-meaning people who work in the psychiatric system, only to point out that the underlying system has become corrupted. In essence, the sick part of the psychiatric system/Big Pharma is in the business of “making crazies” so as to support its pathology, which is to be guilty of genuine “mal-practice.” To people who have fallen into the black hole and become caught in the double-bind of the psychiatric/Big Pharma “field-of-force,” it is a very dangerous situation, as if an insect had gotten too entangled in a spider’s web to extricate itself. I was lucky to escape with my sanity intact.
Fortunately, soon after getting out of the last hospital I began meeting my spiritual teachers, some of the greatest living Buddhist masters from Tibet and Burma, who, unlike the psychiatrists, helped to evoke the healthy part of me. When I described to them what I was subjectively experiencing, instead of being pathologized, they reflected back to me that I was beginning to remember what in Buddhism is called our “true nature.” In finding my teachers, I had dreamed up the part of me that was seeing and relating to the part of me that WAS awakening. Having someone else bear witness and reflect back the healthy part of me created a bridge that helped me to see it, too. It was as if my teachers became engaged with me in an intimate relationship which helped me to not get stuck in the trauma of it all, to not get caught in being “sick.” By simply relating to the healthy part of me, which was an expression of their own level of health and wholeness, they helped me to step into and incarnate the part of me that was well. My teachers and I had instinctively created a supportive, nourishing container between us which cultivated healing. As if figures in a fairy tale, they had gotten dreamed up to help me learn how to “dis-spell” and transmute the darker forces with which I had been wrestling.
THE PSYCHIATRISTS ARE THE CRAZY PART OF MYSELF
The would-be shaman has to pass through the experience of madness without getting stuck in it. In the experience of madness the shaman descends into the underworld of the unconscious, where they have to come to terms with the darker parts of their being. My confrontation with the psychiatric community was a projection into real time and space of a darker part of me that “pathologizes” myself, as if my inner process was playing itself out in the seemingly outer world. Like “dream characters,” the “pathologizing psychiatrists” were the part of me that I had dreamed up into materialization who judged me and saw me as “sick,” who thought there’s something wrong with me that needed to be fixed.
Seeing the psychiatrists as characters in my dream, which is to say embodied reflections of aspects of myself, is to recognize these animated, living figures existing within myself as aspects of my mind. Recognizing that the psychiatrists were symbolically re-presenting, in full-bodied form the part of me that both pathologizes and is pathological helps me to see my own complicity in my experience with them, and to step out of feeling victimized by the psychiatrists and blaming them. Recognizing the psychiatrists as a part of myself enables me to forgive them, as well as myself.
Not only was the boundary dissolving between inner and outer, and between dreaming and waking, but the boundary was dissolving between self and other. I became aware that in the most deeply fundamental way I did not exist separately, in isolation from the psychiatrists, but rather in co-relation with them. Being each other’s dream characters, we were both reciprocally “dreaming each other up” to pick up and play out roles in each other’s unconscious process. We were interconnected parts of one another, intimately bound together in destiny. We did not exist “apart” from each other, but were “a part” of a greater, unified and unifying being that was becoming revealed through our interplay.
With the psychiatrists, I had synchronistically dreamed up a novel form of the very essence of the abuse which precipitated my awakening in the first place. Something was being revealed to me, however, through the analogous reiteration of my inner process fractally explicating itself in multiple arenas of my life, be it with my family or the psychiatric community. What was this recurring pattern, like a recurring dream, an expression of inside of me?
The psychiatrists were acting out an unconscious shadow aspect of the human psyche that projects itself outside of itself to avoid relationship with itself. Projecting the shadow is a universal, archetypal dynamic that exists deep within the collective unconscious of humanity. This unconscious shadow dynamic of projecting the shadow is a pattern which is playing out in all of our lives, both inwardly and outwardly in relationship with others, in a multiplicity of guises. To the extent the doctors reflex-ively and non-negotiably refused to self-reflect and insisted on projecting out their shadow was the degree to which they were abusing their position of power and rank simply because they could, which is a morally indefensible act. By projecting the shadow outside of themselves and then being in denial about doing this, the psychiatrists became possessed by the very shadow they were projecting. They then unconsciously and destructively acted out the shadow in a self-reinforcing, crazy-making ritual – a genuine abuse drama - which created “dis-ease” for everyone concerned.
To the extent that the psychiatrists were not in conscious relationship with their own madness, it was as though they had entranced themselves into thinking that the madness they were projecting outside of themselves was “objectively” true, located in their patients, since in their patients’ illnesses they had all the evidence they needed to prove the correctness of their diagnosis. By projecting the shadow, the psychiatrists were unwittingly creating a self-fulfilling prophecy which perfectly served to hide from them their role in helping to create the very situation they imagined was outside of themselves. The insanity of what the psychiatric system was unconsciously playing out was itself a crystallization of the more fundamental pathology that pervades the underlying field of human consciousness. Through my interaction with the mental health community, the mental health, or lack thereof, of our human community was revealing itself for all who have eyes to see.
In seeing the deeper, unconscious shadow that was animating the psychiatrist’s behavior, I recognized it as a process I know all too well. Seeing it out there as embodied by the psychiatrists helped me to see by reflection this same abusive behavior of projecting my own shadow outside of myself in myself. If this is a dream, I was dreaming up the psychiatrists to play out this unconscious part of me so that I could see and potentially integrate this asleep, crazy-making, abusive, and mad part of myself.
WE ARE NATURAL BORN SHAMANS
The shamanic archetype is one of the major processes that is becoming animated in the collective psyche of our species. We’d have to be truly “disturbed” if our emotions aren’t disturbed by what is playing out currently in our world. And yet, the darkness is a “disturber of the peace” in order to (potentially) create a higher-order integration of the psyche and its contents. Just as dreams are the unconscious’ way of balancing a one-sidedness in an individual’s psyche, the shamanic archetype is the dynamically evolving pattern of healing that is being constellated in the collective unconscious as a compensatory response to the trauma that is playing itself out on the world stage.
We are truly a species in trauma. Traumatized, we traumatize each other as we re-traumatize ourselves, collaboratively re-enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul on the world stage. Seized by something greater than ourselves, we are possessed by our compulsion to re-create our trauma, as we perform a holy liturgy en masse, structuring and ritualizing our experience as a way of potentially transforming it. And just like trauma, where the re-solution is hidden in encoded form in the very pathology, we are collectively re-creating our trauma in the world theater as if we are participating in a sacred mass in the holiest of temples, so as to potentially awaken ourselves. The madness of trauma is its own revelation, and how it manifests depends upon whether or not we recognize what is being revealed to us through what we are compulsively and unconsciously acting out as history.
Having the shamanic archetype activated in the collective unconscious means that we can re-contextualize our problems, our trauma, and our own madness. It’s been very helpful for me as I continually deepen my own healing to remember that my experience of trauma in myself is simultaneously a microcosmic, personalized fractal reflecting the greater trauma resonating throughout the collective field. This realization allows me to not personalize the moment of feeling the trauma, or concretize myself as being traumatized, but allows me to give myself over to and embrace my experience.
We all have a part of us that is mad to the extent that we are not fully, totally awake, and who among us can truly claim this degree of enlightenment? Thinking that we are not mad is an expression of our madness. How can we not have a mad part of us, as we are not separate from the world, which has clearly gone mad? (see my article “Diagnosis: Psychic Epidemic”). The world’s madness is a reflection of our own; we have all collaboratively dreamed up the world’s madness. Instead of pathologizing ourselves because of our madness, which is a mad thing to do, we can embrace and own it but not identify with it nor judge it. In a truly radical act, we can interpret our madness in a way that is sane.
Recognizing that we are picking up the madness that is in the field which resonates with, is an expression of, and constellates the madness within ourselves, is to step out of personalizing our experience, and step into the point of view of identifying ourselves as would-be shamans. We then can envision ourselves from this more expansive point of view to have, like a shaman, the intention to take into ourselves the madness in the field, which ultimately is our own madness, so as to creatively assimilate it into our wholeness in our own unique manner as a way to help serve the field. Recognizing the part of us that is a natural-born shaman is the very act that calls forth and manifests, as if by magic, the part of us that truly IS a shaman.
Recognizing that the madness within us is both ours while simultaneously being an expression of the field is to snap out of our self-limiting and self-alienating identity of being separate from the universe. Instead, we can recognize our deep intimacy with the universe, which is to say ourselves. This very recognition allows us to embrace our mad part as an aspect of our vast wholeness, our monstrous totality, thereby snapping us out of the infinite regression and self-generating feedback loop of acting out our madness as an unconscious reaction against looking at our madness. Crazy as it seems, embracing our madness is the very act which helps to actualize and make real our basic sanity. Compassion spontaneously arises as both a cause and effect of this realization.
We are being invited by the universe to step into our shamanic “garments” and consciously participate in our own evolution. Instead of our ritual implements being drums and rattles, however, as “modern-day shamans” our accessories might be something like the keyboard of a computer or the tools of multi-media, as we work to inspire change in the underlying consciousness of the field by a simple keystroke or the creative use of a video camera or website.
The formless bodhisattvic archetype of shaman/healer is thirsting for instruments to express and actualize itself in embodied form. Recognizing, and assenting, saying “Yes,” to the deeper shamanic calling that is pulsating through our veins inspires us to breathe life into and incarnate the living figure of the shaman within us. Following our calling with religious devotion, we sacrifice ourselves as we offer ourselves in service to a power greater than ourselves. Co-operating with our deeper shamanic calling constellates the universe to support us in our endeavor, as the universe itself is the sponsor of our calling. Like shamans in training, we are each being called to connect with the spirit which animates our being, a process that can only take place within the psyche, mediated by the human heart and fueled by the power of love.
Paul Levy is an artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, he is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dream-like nature of reality. He is the author of “The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,” which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2008
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/we%20are%20all%20shamans.htm

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 1 reply

have you had alchemy-related synchronicities?

2008-06-01T18:16:12Z

i have!...once. on the day that a friend gave me a videotape copy of the jazz musician Sun Ra's movie Space Is The Place, i also found the book The Morning of The Magicians by Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier in a used book store, particularly interested in the section on alchemy. i should back up & mention that Sun Ra maintained that he was an entity who incarnated on Earth from Saturn. (whether he meant this literally or metaphorically i can't say.)...so i bought the aforementioned book, & you can imagine my astonishment when i turned to part 5 of the alchemy section & read this passage: "the old alchemical texts affirm that the keys to the secrets of matter are to be found in Saturn. by a strange coincidence, eveerything we know tyoday in nuclear physics is based on a definition of a "saturnian" atom. according to Nagasoka & Rutherford, the atom is a central mass exercising an attraction surrounded by rings of revolving electrons."

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 5 replies

The Current Evolution of the Alchemical Fire Circle

2008-04-12T20:27:53Z

Aloha Friends and Family!
As we prepare for a summer full of ecstatic exploration, sacred engagement and re-union around the Fire, I'm dropping in to share some writing I've been working on, in partnership with Spinner, Magnus and Joshua. As many of you know, we have been collaborating on a unique experiment called "Fires Rising" in Pennsylvania for the last 4 years, that has focused on delving deeply into traditional and modern alchemical metaphors and processes. We're aware that many stories have been told about the magic and mysteries of those fires - and that some of what you have heard may not have made sense. When new visions unfold and new experiments are run, they are often challenging to understand from outside the laboratory in question.

The document; "The Current Evolution of the Alchemical Fire Circle", is a summation of the goals the four of us have had, the learnings we gained over the last three summers, and is an indicator of the direction toward which our collective highest vision has us aimed. The document was written primarily for the purpose of coming to consensus with each other on what our current understandings and agreements are of this particular version of "The Work" going into Summer 2008.

If we haven't played together for a while, this is a way for you to at least get a glimpse into what the four of us have been brewing.

Many of the principles detailed also inform the Vegas Vortex Mayfire and Hawaii Fire Tribe Gatherings, and will be foundational to two new laboratories we are beginning to work in this year as we seed the Alchemical Fire Circle into the Free Spirit Gathering in Maryland ( http://freespiritgathering.org/fsg/index.html ), and the Wisteria Corn Stalk Festival in Ohio ( http://www.wisteria.org/cornstalk.htm ). Of course, we'd love to see you at Mayfire ( http://www.vegasvortex.com ), Fire Tribe Hawaii ( http://www.firetribehawaii.org/ ), or Fires Rising ( http://4qf.org/_FiresRising/index.htm ) as well!
Please visit http://vegasvortex.com/pages/evolutionfirecircle for a .pdf of the article.

Thank you for your interest :)

The four of us remain deeply curious about what learnings are happening among the other diverging and converging events in the Family of Fire, and we hope to read similar reports in the future.

May we all grow our Oneness through Diversity!

Spinner, Jeff, Michael & Joshua

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Making [up] HISTORY - so-called "Lost Book of Nostradamus"

2008-03-15T21:59:39Z

Was anyone else totally disappointed in the over-hyped "Lost Book of Nostadamus"?

Written when Tarot iconography and Qabalism took root in Europe, it seems fully of typical, if poorly rendered symbolism.
But the "experts" insist that the typical Tower card IS 911 -
as if the seer couldn't have depicted 2 towers if the vision were true.

Typical alchemical symbolism is totally overlooked - alchemy got no nod.

The last 7 plates they did backflips over to describe an apocalypse were a planetary series.

They read the top half of pictures and ignored the rest of the iconography.
They arbitrarily attached quatrains to the pics.
They said Nostradamus KNEW that IMAGES were the medium of the century...
and on and on...
they claim he couldn't possibly have painted them himself, when a child could have done so, even copying from any emblem book.

And how many times were works attributed to otherwise famous authors?
First they say his son did the art, then claim it is at least a copy, once removed --
and if so, who KNOWS what the original looked like?
AND, it was unbound MS, so anything could have been slipped in...
and the final text was, much later.

But fake HISTORY Ch. can sell a zillion copies of its spurious report which is an AIRBAG of disinfo...
and make so-called history.

Anyone want to give their rendition of these plates ... vs. the wild speculations.

Iona

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 4 replies

ORMES?

2008-03-15T08:42:31Z

Has anyone heard of Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements? Dr David Hudson's research?

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 1 reply

Iona's new alchemy Super Portal link

2008-03-07T00:45:37Z

Alchemy SuperPortal 2008 at

http://spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com

Spiritual Alchemy, Alchemy 101, Universal Solvent,

Nigredo & Depression, Saint Germain, Modern Alchemist,

Psychogenesis Artshow, Conscious Alchemy

enjoy,
Iona

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Goldmine of Manly Hall on Alchemy lectures

2008-03-07T00:41:08Z

bit torrent giant download of MPH lectures on Alchemy and more.

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/31480180/Hidden+Mysteries+Of+Egypt?tab=summary

enjoy,
Iona

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Serpent Grail = Stone?

2008-03-06T23:59:58Z

Anyone care to comment on the Serpent Grail version of the Philosopher's Stone?
The poison is the cure.

io

Using a "sacred" chalice initiates drank a mixture of venom and blood from the same snake in ceremonial worship of the serpent deity.
By taking this elixir the cult’s initiates were cured of disease and, it is claimed, their lives were prolonged. Indeed, Gardiner believes that this is the root source of the Elixir of Life legend.

The Serpent Grail also offers a unifying theory regarding snake imagery and symbolism that is present throughout the religions of the world. It demonstrates an alternative reading of myths and fables such as St Patrick driving the serpents from Ireland and show how the shadow of the serpent cult can still be seen in both Christian architecture and ceremonies. As Philip Gardiner himself said after a recent research trip to Rome: "Rome and especially the Vatican is littered with serpent imagery. Inside the Vatican statues and sculptures link the serpent to both the grail and the Ark of the Covenant. Even the name Vatican bears the etymological imprint of the serpent: Vati = place; can = serpent." Finally The Serpent Grail looks at modern scientific research to provide the proof for the historical theories. Today scientists from all over the world are discovering healing and life-extending properties in the complex proteins that make up snake venom – from treatment for tumours and cancers to relief from high blood pressure. "In the United Kingdom, the Cancer Research Campaign has welcomed research into Contortrostatin (CN), a protein found in the venom of the Copperhead Viper, which has proved effective in combating metastasis (the spread of a malignant tumour from its original site). In experiments on mice, CN reduced the spread of tumours by 90 per cent."

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 3 replies

The Alchemy of Psychedelics; new angles for a paper

2008-03-06T23:51:31Z

Hello all,

I'm writing a paper for about alchemy and would like to focus it on the connections between it and psychedelics. However there's already a lot of work done in this area so I'm trying to find an original angle on it.

I'm using a lot of Jung, drawing on Mckenna and some other sources but haven't found anything the jumps out at me so I thought I would open it up for ideas and see what I can hash out here.

Any thoughts?

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 5 replies

ormus gold

2008-03-06T23:47:26Z

Any one have experience with the white powdered gold either producing or ingesting?

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 1 reply

Any of you experience Flamel College Program?

2008-03-05T06:39:29Z

Just curious before I invest in that specific course.

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 6 replies

Philosophers of Nature

2008-02-29T06:13:22Z

Has anyone here had recent contact with this group? Their website and email are defunct. I'd like to know if their snail-mail address is still viable. Thanks.

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Alchemical Fire = biophotonic Light

2008-02-28T16:29:08Z

Alchemical fire shares much with the Tibetan Buddhist notions of Primordial Field and Clear Light; and in physics terms with our biophotonic nature. http://photonichuman.50megs.com

The Secret Fire Part III

How do we find this fire or this image that dwell within us?

Our Fire needs to be worked on and tended to; it must be cared
for and fanned into flames. It needs to be awakened through psychic
exercise and mystical zeal. Vigil must be kept through aspiration,
prayer, invocation, visualization, concentration, imagination, tantric
breathing, longing and love for that which is the Divine in oneself.

What happens to us when we awake this fire in us?

From a Mithrian Ritual

" Oh Primal Origin of my originator; Thou Primal Substance of my
substance; First Breath of breath that is in me; First Fire, God-given
for the Blending of the blendings in me, of fire in me... . Translate me
now... by virtue of the Deathless Spirit . . . in order that I may become
reborn in Mind. . . . Initiate, that the Holy Breath may breathe in me;
in order that I may admire the Holy Fire."

Translate me now, means convert me, transform me, transmute me,
which is the power of the alchemists Stone.

How does our fire transform or transmute us?

Thomas Aquinas says, " The Stone is One, the medicine is one,
to which we add nothing, only in preparation removing superfluities. "
Such is the magic operation of our fire. It is a purifying and life giving
substance which needs our assistance. When we let it express itself it
will do all the work in her nature.

How would we then remove the darkness from this lantern ?

We would have to raise the intensity of our fire by kindling it, fanning
it and tending to it. Our Fire would then do all the work that is in its
nature for us. Our Fire would burn away the dross, the impurities, the
sooth and the darkness.

The Turba Philosophorum, it says of the Stone, " Cook it, therefore till
it be deprived of blackness, and whiteness appear."

Solomon Trismosin in Splendor Solis says " Heat turns every black
thing white." All we need to do is purify our consciousness with the
"Secret Fire".

So how do we find this Secret Fire?

Simon Magus, the great magician says, " The hidden aspect of the
fire are concealed in the manifest, and the manifest is produced in
the hidden". The closest thing to us that is manifest is our body and
Our Fire is concealed within it.

Georgius Venetus says, " Whosoever liveth, doth subsist by virtue
of its inward heat."

Basil Valentine says, " Natural heat preserves the life of man.
If his body loses its natural heat his life has come to an end".

Paracelsus says that life is a process of combustion. He said,
"if I said I cannot burn, it is as much as if I said, I cannot live."

In "Alchemy Unveiled" By Johannes Helmond,
This inner fire is called the Fire of Nature__

" The Fire of Nature is the Central-Fire of the Philosophers, which is
hidden in the Earth, and is also called the Central-Sun. "

" It is a fire, solar by nature, yet a little coarser than that (the fire) of the
heavenly Sun. This is why it is also called the Son of the Sun. He is the
archeus of nature who moves and digests the matter, when he is given
his Freedom; he does all the work in her (nature). In the interim, the
Central-Fire lies hidden under a hard shell, still weak and unable. It is
only a Fire in potentia, that will show its power as soon as it is awakened
through the external Fire. The Alchemists call it IGNIS, or at times, call it
their red Lion or Gabritius. It is the fire of the gold, the true goldsulphur,
the soul of the elements, the light of nature. Without its influence, the
intelligence would be weak, the power of the imagination would be
dead, the spirit would be unfruitful and the body would be lifeless."

He continues to say,
" The Son of the Sun deserves to be drawn out of the darkness;
to purify him and to bring him to a more mature position."

In alchemy we come to many references to darkness as the Saturnian
aspect of our being, this is nothing else than our unconscious aspect of
our being as is related to the soul being subdued by matter as the
hardness of our minerality, meaning our terrestrial aspect, the body.
The inner light is being imprisoned in the very depths of our being very
much as being locked up in the darkness of a dungeon. To be liberated
from this darkness are man's deepest desires.

This is a very traditional concept as far as the Hermetic Philosophy is
concerned and goes back to ancient of times. But let us look at the words
of a modern psychologist.

Carl Jung says,
"I understood that within the soul from its primordial beginnings there
has been a desire for light and an irrepressible urge to rise out of the
primal darkness. The longing for light is the longing for consciousness. "

Rosicrucian say that, "Light is an attribute of Being, for Being is always
luminous in the radiation of its energy caused by its ceaseless effort to be."

We have often heard it said that God is light. This is more than just a
metaphor. It is very striking when we consider that in mysticism it is said
that God is absolute, and in science and physics it is said that light absolute.
In mysticism it is said that God lies beyond the manifested world of matter,
shape or form, beyond space and time, In science and physics, so does light.
Our capacity for consciousness, then, truly must be an experience of that
which is the divine ?

TO BE CONTINUED

Steve Kalec

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 5 replies

The biophotons in the alchemical process

2008-02-28T16:22:02Z

The functions of the biophotons in he alchemical Work is explained here:

http://www.world-mysteries.com/PhilipGardiner/forbidden_letters_24.htm

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Alchemy explained

2008-02-28T10:25:56Z

Alchemy seems explained in the Forbidden Letters to Philip Gardiner:

www.world-mysteries.com/PhilipGardiner/forbidden_letters.htm

Here is a list of quotes that'll make it easy for you to understand the whole process (taken from a Forum):

——————————————————————————–

In his 1945 Festschrift for Gustav Senn, Carl Jung said that the Stone of Alchemy was ‘a great embarrassment to the alchemist, for since it had never been produced, no one could say what it really was.’ It was said it was ‘born from a living thing’ and ‘extracted from man,’ and ‘its connection with immortality was attested from very early times,’ but, again, ‘no one could say what it really was.’

For Jung the most probable hypothesis was, that that stone represented ‘a psychic experience.’ This suggests that he indeed missed ‘the deeper level of alchemy and thereby of resurrection.’
[de Renzi, Fenelon, de la Censerie]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

“I too have approached several alchemists about the Letters, and they all have been in favour of them; that what is being divulged in them is true. One said that the secrets of Alchemy are no longer secret. Simple as that.” [Gary Osborn on July 12 2007]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

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]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

‘Following this thread, we found evidence that Alchemy is a demonstration of the physics at work in the galactic core [which resides in our microcosm, according to the Paris 4/Jonathan Rice].The true inner core of Alchemy appears in this light as the ability to apply the physics of creation to the task of personal immortality.’ [Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

And this is very important too: if you produce that stone and were consumed and reproduced through that fire, you will achieve individual and physical immortality, and nothing less. Something for the End of Time therefore. Who ever died was not an alchemist and did not produce the stone.

By the way, your man is a gay man. Born on the 17th of January. In possession of that very special balance in microcosmic male and female forces. A balance never possessed by heterosexual men. And your stone is Christ (He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is near the fire is near the Kingdom). Also: 1 Peter 2:4.
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

‘In view of the recognized frequency of this phenomenon [of homosexuality], its interpretation as a pathological perversion is very dubious. The psychological findings show that it is rather a matter of incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic archetype, coupled with a distinct resistance to identify with the role of a one-sided sexual being. Such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost.’ [Carl Jung “Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept,” CW 9i, par. 146./italics by me] [see footnote 1]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

It has been proposed by the Paris 4, although with reservations [see footnote 1], that only certain homosexuals [see footnote 2] possess the necessary balance of the microcosmic male and female [see footnote 3] to safely conduct the forces of resurrection[see footnote 4]. Resurrection being phase one of the Great Work of Alchemy: the furnace of Kundalini. A work serving deification of a human being from within, and possibly, through such a human being then, of all of creation in the end too, if creation is in reality microcosmic, and the world hence…

‘… my projection.’ [Schopenhauer]

This is intriguing, homosexuality being a requirement for apotheosis, since so little seems known about the cause of homosexuality. Because in spite of the fact that…

‘… the accumulation of evidence from independent laboratories across the world has shown that the biological differences between gay and straight people cannot be ignored…’ [Wilson and Rahman in Born Gay/BG hereafter]

… and we also know that…

‘…sexual orientation is largely determined by the time of birth, partly by genetics, but more specifically by hormonal activity in the womb arising from various sources…’[BG]

…it remains a mystery…

‘…how homosexuality could survive in the face of evolutionary forces*, especially given its genetic component.’ [BG]

[*Alchemy is evolution proper. [The CE2] [see footnote 5]

In their brain…

‘…gay men are found to be more like women, and lesbians show similarities to men.’ [BG] The brain of gay men and lesbian women…

‘…seems to be cross-sex shifted in certain respects, more than those of heterosexuals.’ [BG]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

Summarizing the resurrection.

1978 : Pope John Paul (de labore solis = of the work of the sun) comes to power. During his reign 90% of the work of the sun in our gay man is taking place.

March 1986 : testicle-pain starts (the work of the sun starts)

July 1986 : testicle-pain is at his height and stays at his height till a about a week after the resurrection (September 4 1986)

End of august till September 4 1986 : our gay man becomes a child. That is, psychologically during certain minutes. During those minutes, and to his own surprise, he even produces a child’s voice. (pupulus nudus means the naked young boy and this reminds us of the words of Jesus too: you must become like a little child again if you want to enter the Kingdom of God.)

September 4 1986 (little after midnight ’silentio noctis’ ( in the silence of the night): resurrection.

a) Our man is on the floor on his back. He had his eyes closed during the whole resurrection. A ‘thread’ (very thin) is closing around his neck. The head is decapitated by that ‘thread’.

b) The stone is produced about where the liver is. The stone ignites the Kundalini fire (the fire can actually be heard) and starts to move about, increasingly violently. Fire getting stronger. Arms and legs break into pieces.

c) The snake is driven out. Our friend doesn’t know where it went. Up the spine, but after that: no clue. (Into the earth?)

d) The wheel starts to spin and is raised to the forehead.

e) One starts to descend into the earth. After 2 minutes our man ‘fell asleep’ or passed out in another hypnagogic way. Hypnagogic, because he couldn’t remember that moment the morning after. If you lose consciousness you remember. So he ‘fell asleep’.

f) 10.30 in the morning. He woke up. Coccyx and back of the head firmly attached to the floor. As said before, it took him about 30 minutes to free himself.

g) September 5 1986 : the top-chakra opens.[The Paris 4]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

… like the authors of those letters do. What’s more, all the mysteries of alchemy seem solved. From the ludus puerorum to the decapitation, and from the role of the stone to the alchemist having to visit the center of the earth. Everything fits, and fits neatly. Even the Phoenix is explained, being a metaphor for the human body consumed and recomposed in kundalini-fire.’
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

For you will remember too that in certain grail-lore heads are taken of and replaced by other heads. Now, we are not talking about the head of flesh to be taken of. That would be lethal ofcourse. It is the microcosmic, subtle head, interwoven in the head of flesh that is taken of and replaced after the fire by a new subtle head (the Christ).

We are closing for today. If you search in alchemy, at one point you will find the expression V.I.T.R.I.O.L. (= visit the centre of the earth and by rectification you will find the stone). The alchemist- writers are quite mistaking here. We recommend our 16 words from our first mail: first the stone is produced, then the journey to the inner earth starts. The stone is found in the body, not in the earth. Mind you, everything is, in the end, found in the body. If an alchemist travels through the earth, he’s doing that in the microcosmos of the body. Remember what we said: the real sun and moon (and earth) are in you. Not outside. And this explains why our friend could still hear common street noise outside his apartment when he traveled to the centre of the earth over 19 years ago with tremendous speed.

It will be more than clear to you now that nothing ‘Christian’ has happened in the year 33. Let alone something crucial. The acts of Jesus are as fictional as the acts of Parzival.[The Paris 4]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

“Anyone who thinks that the Paris 4 Letters are a fraud or a forgery is simply not paying attention.”
[Jay Weidner]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

14.

“Nonetheless, the real history of the world seems, in verba Jungi, to be ‘the progressive incarnation of the deity’. When Jung spoke of this incarnation though, he was speaking of a gradual one, and of the masses, where he should have spoken of the existence of a sudden one in the individual, the alchemist.” [JRA]

15.

“If the testimony of the Paris 4 is true, and I have no reason to assume it isn’t, are we then living in the ‘Latter Days’? Petrus Bonus, who still thinks one is to be resurrected from a grave by the way, Petrus Bonus tells us that the old philosophers discerned the Last Judgement in the germination and birth of the Stone of Alchemy, the agent to the Kingdom of God.” [JRA]

16.

“This is what the Kingdom of God is like: a man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” [Gospel according to Mark]

17.

“[That Kingdom] grows quite the way Jesus tells us it grows; like a plant, in the body, with the full grown chakra’s as the flowers in the end.” [The Paris 4]

18.

“The Paris 4 confirm that that seed sprouts and grows by itself. They tell us their gay man had no active part in his Work of the Sun. It was all done by the inner alchemist.” [JRA]

19.

“All by itself the soil produces grain. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” [Mark]

20.

“But where does all this leave us, ‘ordinary’ people, not having been decapitated by Kali Ma? Are we the tares from Matthew 13 perhaps?” [JRA]

21.

“The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

The servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field [on September 4th 1986/Fox]? From whence then hath thy field tares? He said unto them, an enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.” [Matthew]

22.

“Because every tree [i.e. spine and brain/Fox] that does not bear good fruit [i.e. chakra’s/Fox] will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” [Matthew]

23.

“Without a parable he didn’t speak to them; but privately, to his own disciples, he explained all the things.” [Matthew]

24.

“It is clear that the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven are about alchemy. - But ‘why secrets?’(Nietzsche)” [Wood]

25.

“For whosoever hath [i.e. lightbody] , to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables.” [Matthew]

26.

“Is Spitzer right then when he claims that ‘a metaphysical theory is bogus, if that theory tells us that we are all, potentially or not, children or priests of God, and equal before Him?’ Or are we to trust the CE2 who wouldn’t be surprised ‘if the gold of immortality is fetched by some for the benefit of many?’”
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

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.[de la Censerie on the Forbidden Letters]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

[29]

‘In the human body is concealed a certain metaphysical substance which needs no medicament, being itself an incorrupt medicament.’ [Gerard Dorn]

[30]

‘The Naassenes considered Naas, the serpent, to be their central deity. (…) Eden, they said, is in the brain.’ [Carl Jung]

[31]

‘The Sethians, Hippolytus says, compared the Father with the cerebrum and the Son with the cerebellum and spinal cord.’ [Carl Jung]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

19.

“You will be given ‘the right to eat from the tree of life [spine and brain/Bernier] that is in the garden of God,’[Revelation 2] and ‘of the hidden manna.’[Ibid] A purely microcosmic manna, dispensed by the human brain. After all, ‘Eden is in the brain,’ (Carl Jung quoting the Naassenes) and ‘the Father compared with the cerebrum.’ (Carl Jung quoting the Sethians)”

20.

“The nuptial union in the thalamus [Greek for inner chamber or bridal chamber/Bernier] signifies the hieros gamos (the alchemical wedding of the microcosmic male and female) and this in turn is the first step towards incarnation, towards the birth of the saviour who, since antiquity, was thought of as the filius solis et lunae (the son of the Sun and Moon), the filius sapientiae (the son of Wisdom), and the equivalent of Christ.” [Carl Jung]

21.

“The word thalamus (bridal chamber) is Greek. We are told that the thalamus received its name in the second century from Claudius Galen, an Ionian Greek anatomist and Christian who had studied at the Great School in Alexandria, Egypt and was a doctor at the gymnasium attached to the local sanctuary at Asklepios.” [Gary Osborn]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

One of the respondents nevertheless went so far as to say that…

‘… the Forbidden Letters by the Paris 4 are the conclusion to the mysteries of alchemy.’
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

‘You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.’
[Ibn Rumi]
——————————————————————————–

quote:
——————————————————————————–

‘In short, my friend, build a temple [meaning a Lightbody/Hume] from a single stone.’ [The alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis]
——————————————————————————–

http://www.world-mysteries.com/PhilipGardiner/

P.S.

The two best articles IMO are the ones by de la Censerie and RFC.

——————————————————————————–
Edited by - AYPforum on Oct 07 2007 08:41:10 AM

AYPforum

USA
327 Posts
Posted - Oct 07 2007 : 08:41:10 AM
——————————————————————————–

Moderator note: Topic moved for better placement

torino

USA
2 Posts
Posted - Oct 22 2007 : 10:36:55 AM
——————————————————————————–

Two new articles have been published:

http://www.world-mysteries.com/Phil…etters_23.htm
http://www.world-mysteries.com/Phil…etters_24.htm
Plus the Second Newsletter by the Paris 4:
(left column of : http://www.world-mysteries.com/PhilipGardiner/ )

And here are some extra quotes taken from the ‘de la Censerie’-article:

quote:
——————————————————————————–
‘Within the visible body there resides a spiritual body which Boehme compares to an ‘oil’ which must be set on fire.’[Aniane]

‘And at night, Isis (’who belonged to the cosmology of Heliopolis’ [Baring and Cashford]) placed the child in a fire to burn away all that was mortal in him.’[Baring and Cashford]

‘Texts about ‘burning Horus’ and his salvation are extant in various Egyptian and Greek documents.’[Burkert]

‘Throughout the Middle Ages, pilgrims visited Heliopolis to view the tree in whose shade, according to the Christian texts, the Holy Family rested on their flight from King Herod. [Quirke]

‘You are born once with a soul and a body, and a third agent, spirit, can come in to save that body and soul by making it immortal in the Work of the Sun.’[Hanno Temming in his article on the Forbidden Letters at World Mysteries]

‘Through baptism by fire, man, who was before dead, is made a living soul.’[Aurora Consurgens]

‘Let the dead bury the dead.’[Jesus in Matthew]

‘I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.’[John the Baptist in Matthew]

‘Nothing depends on baptism with water. Baptism with water only symbolizes the fact that we were born through water, meaning biologically born. We need two births to be saved. The one through water which gives us our spine and brain, the Tree of Life, that infrastructure for the Work of the Sun, and a second one through fire, when God plants our Tree of Life in that fire ‘to stand everlasting.’ So it’s silly to say that you need to be baptized. You need to be biologically born through water, and to be born again though fire. That fire being the alchemical one called Kundalini, that water being the water of the womb. People who practise baptism and think anything depends on that confuse the symbol with the real thing.’[Fenelon]

‘Whoever is near me, is near the fire, whoever is far from me, is far from the Kingdom.’[Jesus in Thomas]

‘Kundalini either saves or destroys.’[de Beaumont]

‘You Christ, who are all fire, have mercy on me.’[Ephraem the Syrian]

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Amanita Muscaria; Herb of Imortality

2008-02-27T09:45:06Z

Donald E. Teeter's book, "Amanita Muscaria; Herb of Immortality" is now available in E-book format for free download at the Ambrosia Society's website. Please feel free to download it, make copies for your friends, and pass the word along. If you really dig the book and would like to help support The Ambrosia Society you can make a donation or just drop us a line and say thanks.

www.ambrosiasociety.org

"The Ambrosia Society founding members have been called to teach the secrets of the Sacrament to the world and to gather together a brotherhood of those who wish to serve the Sacrament. Eventually we hope to have Sacred groves to produce our own A m and our own Vineyards for The Sacred Wine, bakeries to grow and process the Living Bread, and Ambrosia Houses serving the Sacrament in every land. " - Donald E. Teeter

-RedBeard

Check out the time-lapse video of the Amanita resurrecting on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 1 reply

The Philosopher's Stone

2008-01-17T22:49:47Z

Alchemy meets Sacred Geometry...

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~clauspat/stone.htm

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Achemy & Alchemists on CCG

2007-12-22T19:24:13Z

Alchemy & the Alchemists. This ancient science is also a prodigious tool for self-knowledge and gnosis. We take a voyage into Alchemy’s origins, evolution and practices. We also delve into the some of the great Alchemists of history, including Saint Thomas Aquinas, Paracelsus and CG Jung. And we break it down into a poignant spiritual practice that is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago during the Classic Greek Era.

Astral Guest—Tobias Churton, author of ‘Gnostic Philosophy’, ‘The Gnostics’, ‘The Golden Builders’ & ‘Freemasonry’.

Topics Discussed:

--Alchemy history and Alchemy practices, many that help the transformation of the human soul.
--Great Alchemists of history and their contributions.
--How even Orthodoxy never stifled and often supported this ancient, Gnostic science.
--Alchemy as a psychological tool for mental healing.
--The Eucharist—perhaps one of the greatest Alchemical exercises in history.
--How the loss of the Alchemical spirit has made science into a soulless, dangerous practice, while making religion a leave-your-reason-at-the-door phenomena. And how to get back to the days when the secular and spiritual went hand in hand.
--Why Alchemy is making a comeback in these postmodern days.
--Tobias gives his unusual views on Gnosticism, gnosis and a just-discovered ancient Gnostic sect in the Middle East.

Alchemy isn’t just a superstitious science or the precursor to chemistry. It’s a way of life, or at least a way of making you an authentic life.

As always to access the program:

--Go to my homepage http://www.thegodabovegod.com/
--Scroll down until you see the Stickam screen (the eye with the bloody tear)
--Click the music icon and voila…'Coffee, Cigarettes & Gnosis 78— Alchemy & the Alchemists' will appear in its entirety!

There are over seventy shows for download at our homepage on all things Gnostic and its brethren in the Esoterica. We have some of the leading scholars and Gnostic sages of our days including Stephan Hoeller, Timothy Freke, John Turner, Marvin Meyer, Margaret Starbird, Bart Ehrman, Bierger Pearson, Acharya S., and Robert Price, just to name a few.

Continuing the fight to live the true essence of the Solstice and fighting back the commercial, fake tides of the Holidays, our rebroadcast is ‘CCG #60—Astrotheology’. Our guests were Irving and Andrew Rutajit, authors of ‘Astro-Theology & Shamanism’ and producers of the DVD, ‘The Pharmacratic Inquisition.’

Astrotheology is the earliest of all religions. Man once deified the sun and its celestial court for various reasons. As time passed, the heavens were turned into stories and personalities that later became our gods, including Buddha, Krishna and Jesus. We thread the needle in understanding how religious characters we assume to be historical are nothing but the heavenly bodies.

Topics Discussed:

--The birth of Jesus—nothing more than a symbolical play on the rebirth of the sun and the dance of the stars.
--The philosophy Astrotheology, including the influence of astrology, astronomy and a new concept called Archeostronomy.
--Evidence in the Bible itself that reveals that Jesus is nothing more than a sun god.
--Why exactly did man forget that their religions originated as the worship of the heavenly bodies.
--How the procession of the zodiac ages affected humanity’s attitude, including what to expect from the upcoming Age of Aquarius.
--The possible truth that many of the ancient wars were not based on real estate or religion but actually the supremacy of their calendars.
--Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls that points to much of Judaism revering the heavens instead of just one god.
--How the Mystery Religions kept the secret of the reality of the Divine throughout the ages.

Abraxas

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

FRATER ALBERTUS LEGACY PUBLICATIONS

2007-12-13T20:45:08Z

For those interested you may now purchase individual copies of Essentia Magazine, or in sets of a specific year. Also available are hardcover copies of Amo. For more information and prices please go to http://www.spagyria .com/specials/ FraterAlbertusLe gacyPublications .asp

Iona

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

Liquor Hepatis

2007-11-30T21:51:22Z

Liquor Hepatis

Liquor Hepatis was the name given to a sulfurous liquid used by the
alchemists. Considered the arcanum of the soul, Liquor Hepatis was
prepared by distilling a solution of sulfur, lime, and sal ammoniac.
The early alchemists secured lime (calcium oxide) by heating
limestone and made sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) by gently
heating camel dung in sealed containers. The distillation for Liquor
Hepatis produced a combination of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia
gases. Since no solids precipitated, alchemists considered this an
ascending reaction only. That was a significant fact to the
Egyptians, who associated the Liquor with the soul. They believed
the soul resided in the liver, and the reddish-brown color of Liquor
Hepatis convinced them they had isolated the soul's essence. The
name comes from "hepar," the Greek word for liver. The Liquor exuded
an unnatural, pungent odor that the alchemists found quite
mysterious. They assumed it was due to an ethereal presence
concealed in the sulfur and activated by the fertile principle in
ammonia. To the Egyptians, the odor symbolized a soul or a
spiritized presence hidden within the liquid. They solidified that
presence by adding wax and fat to Liquor Hepatis and turning it into
a thick paste. The emulsion became known as the Balsam of the
Alchemists or Balsam of the Soul. The possibility of coagulating an
invisible potential into a second body, like a balsam, became a
basic tenet of alchemy.

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

alchemical gold and such

2007-11-30T21:24:52Z

lifes lessons and really understanding them
extacy(the drug)
a hot shower
good sex
laughter
being loved and feeling it

list your own

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 0 replies

The Basilisk

2007-11-08T00:40:51Z

Forgive the x-post; just looking for some topics.
io

The Symbolic Basilisk
Posted by: "elksnisandrew" elksnisandrew@yahoo.com.au elksnisandrew
Tue Nov 6, 2007 6:10 am (PST)

The Symbolic Basilisk

Much has been lost in translation from the Golden Age when simplicity
was more easily grasped. The Basilisk mythology contains some of the
most extremes in crucial loss of meaning, some of which will be
recovered here.

To illustrate the extent of misunderstanding it is easier to refer at
first to a more obvious area of animal sacrifices for the purpose of
offerings and purification both in the Hindu Vedas and Old Testament did
not originally refer to the killing of physical animals, but to the
clearing of foreign parasitic elementals and entities from the human
energy bodies, etheric and astral fragments of dead relatives. This is
what was meant by purification of the soul and the sacrifice which had
to be offered in order to achieve it. As these parasites' were
referred to as parts of the human animal soul, hence animal entities
which were meant to be offered to the `fire' referred to as the
Great White Light for dissolution rather than transferring to another
human host . When original knowledge started to become lost that texts
were interpreted literally rather than symbolically and animals were
slaughtered as part of offering and purification rituals. So the
essential knowledge of the Cockatrice/Basilisk was lost.

The basilisk had become a symbol of sin and hell, had been drafted into
heraldry, and had been used as a decorative feature on castles and
churches, like a gargoyle. Basilisks were finally pictured with bat
wings, and arrow-point on the ends of their tails, and either horns or
antlers.

This fall from a higher mode of knowledge is the central theme of
Basilisk Mythology. It is what happened to the Divine Feminine as it
fell into its negative interpretation. When the Goddess becomes a
Divine Beast.

For it is of such a character that if it is seen by a man before it can
see him itself, the cockatrice must die, and vice versâ. In the event
of the cockatrice getting the all-important first look, it will dart
venom from its eyes, deadly enough to kill any living creature.

The more dominant personal modality of awareness kills its less dominant
opponent. At a time of rampant religious inquisitions by fanatics who
thought they had a god given right to kill others over differing
opinions, the basilisk mythology is a warning to approach the
unconscious with the cunning wisdom of the Higher Self. As the same
history is being repeated in our present age the Basilisk serves again
as a relevant warning.

The price for not taking it as a warning is the potential loss of
immortality and succumbing to the second death, the fragmentation of the
astral soul.

This little lizard is held to be the king of serpents, hence its name.
The wart or hood on its head was thought to resemble a crown.

The kingly aspect and crown refers to the high potential for personal
transformation or death.

The basilisk cockatrice is symbolic of the personal unconscious in
which reside the feminine mysteries of eternity and great power, and
potential to produce the elixir potion of immortality by marriage with
its male counterpart, the normal male consciousness co-operating with
its own Higher Self. It is also comparable to being the earliest
representation of Mephistopheles and the Jungian Shadow.

A neglected unconscious becomes a tyrant master and the unconscious
fantasies dominating the everyday consciousness reveals the danger of it
externalising by becoming the evil eye's capacity to kill and
destroy balanced relationships. At a time of rampant religious
inquisitions by fanatics who thought they had a god given right to kill
the basilisk is a warning to approach the unconscious with the weasel
cunning wisdom of the Higher Self.

In alchemical symbology it is the black primal first matter which is
difficult to find from which the philosophers stone is made, or in many
other black stone mythologies such as the Cthulhu myth has its door way
as the black alter stone, and how essential to enlightenment are the
dark fiery wrathful deities of the Buddhists.

As a great power it is feared by ,most individuals who fail to discover
a positive way to engage in a productive relationship with it. They lack
the wisdom and cunning and the necessary skills of the weasel to ever
gain any advantage from the basilisk. The weasels cunning is the Higher
Self which assists the normal everyday male consciousness to get the
vital life force to achieve a transformed astral soul which becomes the
immortal body of the Higher Self.

The basilisk could only be killed by a weasel (which knew the secret
that Rue was poisonous to the Basilisk) who wet his teeth in the rue
plant's juice.

The weasels knowledge of the herb rue being a poison to the basilisk
should suggest to us that herbalism and alchemy play an important
assisting role in dealing successfully with the basilisk. The vital life
force is enhanced by alchemy improving the capacity for thje physical
human brain accessing the higher consciousness which is the Holy Grail
Golgotha in which the opposites of duality have to be brought together
to transform the astral soul from one which fragments at death to one
which becomes an immortal body for the Higher Self. We know from living
life in nature that the feminine aspect is responsible for creating all
new life, yet we have written Her out of common awareness and historical
existence. Now we have to face Her as the basilisk of the unconscious
mind, night terrors, the night Mare.

Basilisks are usually magically rather than normally bred. It is a
creature that is born from a spherical, yolkless egg, laid during the
days of Sirius (the Dog Star) by a seven-year-old rooster and hatched by
a toad.

The dragon was, of course, usually associated with the magical element
of Fire. In an experimental context the dragon could also represent the
application of heat or fire to produce magical personal transformation
as well as practical in cooking your dinner. Astrology also uses
"Modalities" : Fixed, Cardinal and Mutable. A winged dragon was sometimes
used to represent Mutability (change) , a wingless dragon Fixity
(stability). The serpent Ouroboros eating its own tail is frequently
found in alchemy. It represents the unity of all things and the circular
nature of the universe where things surprise you and return to bite you
on the bum.. Ouroboros also represents the universal unity of duality
<http://amazon. com/gp/product/ 0595322611? ie=UTF8&tag= dragonorama- 20&link\
_code=em1&camp= 212341&creative= 384065&creativeA SIN=0595322611& adid=d4b33\
04b-b25c-4b89- a72a-395857c231f 1> , the bringing together of opposites to
form a coherent whole. The basilisk mythology is the continuation of the
secret magical universal green language which is only magical because
it hides invisible symbolic meanings behind literal external facades.
Universal as a sphere, defining magical knowledge as a dog protecting
boundaries. Brought into existence from the sevenfold scale of
consciousness which spans from the frogs earth to the roosters heavens
singular clear purity. In the ancient past the basilisk symbolised
everything which moved people into great fear superstition and dread
before a visible threat became real, its capacity to bestow life or
death. It still does the same today as can be seen by the literal
interpretation given earlier inspires fear, but the symbolic knowledge
inspires hope and peace. The basilisk mythology is essential survival
information for the soul packaged under an innocent label as a
child's fable, as an external image which would escape violent
church authorities who refused to allow any modality of the souls
progress which made them irrelevant and redundant.

Sphinx head of woman, body of lion would kill you if you didn't know
the answer to her riddle.

The sphinx is a comparable mythology to the basilisk suggesting the
requirement of cunning wit and perception in comprehending the personal
unconscious to avoid death of the soul. The deadly breath of the
basilisk is the powerful challenging effect of the basilisks fire
element that turns away the ordinary person from even just entertaining
a small preview notion of its magical capacity for transformation power
and mystery. Its breath is similar to the breath of fire breathing
dragons suggesting the fiery nature inherit in the basilisk. Before it
acquires its capacity to kill with a glance, the fiery nature is an
aspect of the Quintessance nature of ISIS the divine feminine and the
Shekhinah of the Hebrew Kabbala.

The killing capacity of the basilisk by its glance.

When you are provided the life opportunity to see it into its prime
innocence and creative potential you refuse it and also to see your own
unconscious then by your denial of eternal life itself it kills you
with the rage of a woman spurned. Later in life when mid life crisis is
upon you the negative power of the basilisk has increased due to your
neglect, the only thing that can save you is introducing the basilisk to
your Higher Self the positive self mirrors that which neutralises the
negative self.

The tragedy of the human condition is that all it requires is one
single honest active human partnership to transform from the toxic
basilisk to the transcendence of uniting the human astral soul with the
higher Self. It is ignored by the male orientated patriarchal everyday
normal awareness, so as the unconscious it deteriorates and rots into a
deadly menace and killer of the personal soul by creating the very
opposite of what it was originally intended. But before it kills the
personal soul it externalises its toxicity creating the present
crisis of the humanity.

Pliny the Elder described it simply as a snake with a golden crown.
Basilisk are attested by a host of learned persons, such as Plyny,
Galen, Dioscorides, Avicenna, Scaliger, and others.

The wise in all generations have known the truth always. When an
individual deciphers the grand cosmic riddle and gets the cosmic joke
humour is accompanied by compassion. Apart from mythology and the worlds
sacred texts these wonderful powers of the basilisk are attested by a
host of learned persons, such as Plyny, Galen, Dioscorides, Avicenna,
Scaliger, and others. Occasionally one would question some part of the
tale.

Jonston, a learned physician, sagely remarks, "I would scarcely believe
that it kills with its look, for who could have seen it and lived to
tell the story?

The wise who went deliberately in search of the basilisk took with them
a mirror, the true Higher Self which reflected back the only reality
which would satisfy and disarm deadly evil capacity of the basilisk by
neutralising it by its opposite, and by a kind of alchemy and poetical
justice voided the basilisk with her own weapon. In contemporary
psychology self observation and mirroring are methods used to reframe
personal inner toxic conditions, methods to slay the basilisk. It is
the dragon which hordes immortal jewels and riches, which patriarchal
cultures fear and misinterpret as the enemy of mankind for thousands of
years. This position has constantly been poisoning mankind's own
unconscious.

A basilisk can live for at least 900 years given an adequate food
supply, and as it can eat most vertebrates (including humans), this is
not difficult to achieve.

The vampiric archetype Gods are basilisks, monsters of our own creation.
The unconscious has to be loved and married by its opposite the rational
everyday male awareness. If it is not seen and engaged by the everyday
awareness then the unconscious putrefies and deteriorates back into its
more dangerous primaleval roots where it expresses itself as the
negative version of the Divine Feminine. Now justifiably it is to be
feared as a self for filling prophecy which by neglect it falls first
into a lower octave of degenerated life force symbolised as the wurm
worm, where its attracts other perverse energies which become parasites
which feed off the vital life force of the human body. The neglected
unconscious becomes a vampire basilisk. Either now voluntarily perform
the alchemy and expose yourself to the Divine Fire of the Goddess or
later involuntarily She as the basilisk will expose you to it.

Mark 9.49 For Everyone will be salted with fire, and every sacrifice
shall be salted with salt.

Mark 9.44 Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 9.46 Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 9.48 Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

.

Mark 9.50 Have salt in your selves and peace with one another.

[Basyllikus the Dream Thief]
<http://monsters. monstrous. com/basilisk_ and_toad. htm>

Even the look of its eyes could kill.

Shelley, in his "Ode to Naples," full of the enthusiasm excited by the
intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at
Naples, in 1820, thus uses an allusion to the basilisk:

"What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blaspheme

Freedom and thee? a new Actaeon's error

Shall theirs have been,- devoured by their own hands!

Be thou like the imperial basilisk,

Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!

Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk,

Aghast she pass from the earth's disk.

Fear not, but gaze,- for freemen mightier grow,

And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe."

The basilisks were called kings of serpents because all other serpents
and snakes, behaving like good subjects, and wisely not wishing to be
burned up or struck dead, fled the moment they heard the distant hiss of
their king, although they might be in full feed upon the feast.

Illustration by American artist Mahlon Blaine of a basilisk, from
Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers (The John Day Company, New York, 1929).
"...When the pale night has fallen, then the basilisk comes slinking by.
It is she who in a most curious fashion was birthed by the cold Moon,
eternal spirit of infertility, and mothered by the arid sand herself, no
less fertile than the Moon. She is the secret of the desert. Some say
she is an animal, but that is not true. She is a thought and she grew up
suddenly where there was neither earth nor seed. She is a thought sprung
out of envious eternal infertility, and she must therefore take on a
chaotic form, unknown to orderly life. And that is why no one can
describe this creature, for she is as indescribable as nothingness

But what was to attack this terrible and unapproachable monster? There
is an old saying that "everything has its enemy"- and the cockatrice
quailed before the weasel. The basilisk might look daggers, the weasel
cared not, but advanced boldly to the conflict. When bitten, the weasel
retired for a moment to eat some rue, which was the only plant the
basilisks could not wither, returned with renewed strength and soundness
to the charge, and never left the enemy till he was stretched dead on
the plain.

Acid and alkaline neutralise each other. Everything is resolvable, now
is not too late. The wise cannot be as easily killed and renew their
strength by the art of alchemy which cannot ever be eliminated.

.

[Basilisk]
<http://www.pantheon .org/areas/ gallery/folklore /folklore/ basilisk. html>

"2012 The Season of the Basilisk".

The chikens come home to roost. The Basilisk spirit that has apparently
been operating since the beginning of time but which has been completely
unknown in the history of man. This spirit is given permission by God
every year to have a heightened power and authority from the 17th of
Tammuz to the 9th of Av in the Jewish calendar (remember God operates
on the Jewish calendar according to the prophets)."Apparent ly during
certain cyclical seasons, a tremendous increase in power is given to
this spirit to cause what is hidden to be revealed.
Dragons in Alchemy
Alchemy is a mixture of art, science and philosophy. Although it is
often associated with magic, it was a serious attempt to understand the
universe. As such it was an early forerunner of modern sciences such as
chemistry.

Lacking our modern vocabulary
<http://amazon. com/gp/product/ 0415117399? ie=UTF8&tag= dragonorama- 20&link\
_code=em1&camp= 212341&creative= 384065&creativeA SIN=0415117399& adid=a5a6b\
f82-a1da-48bb- b6f8-b5f2c65b1be 9> of science, the alchemists had to
invent their own which naturally reflected the beliefs of the time. It
was deeply symbolic and revolved around concepts such as the "four
elements". The creation of a new, allegoric vocabulary of symbols also
allowed the alchemists to preserve their secrets from outsiders.

Because there was no standard, concrete terminology for alchemy
<http://amazon. com/gp/product/ B000P8VU9W? ie=UTF8&tag= dragonorama- 20&link\
_code=em1&camp= 212341&creative= 384065&creativeA SIN=B000P8VU9W& adid=fd02b\
006-7f1b-46c4- 9e9a-807e8c2d398 b> , symbols often had multiple meanings
and were used in different ways. There is no single "meaning" of the
dragon in alchemy, it was used for a variety of different purposes. In
addition, alchemy was based around a synthesis of symbols to form a
whole rather than the analysis of individual symbols.

posted in Alchemy: The Royal Art - 2 replies