Prolegomena to an Esoteric Alchemy
Alchemy is form of practical, embodied self-transmutation that overlaps with other forms of Magick and Esoteric work, a particular expression of ideas analogous to esoteric psychological disciplines, but peculiarly noteworthy as being the most physically grounded type of esoterism. It is an ancient science, art, and methodology of purification and transmutation, traditionally called the Royal Art (Ars Rex) and the “sacred divine art” (hieratheiatekne), the apex of the Hermetic Tradition. It may also rightly be considered a type of theurgy (“divine working”), an active, ongoing Work of attainment by means of inner Essence-transmutation in which the practitioner functions in an interdependent partnership with “divine” (higher or inner) forces and influences in his quest.
Just as Esoteric Magickal Work is focused upon personal development and attainment, with concomitant expansion and addition to one's being, Esoteric Alchemy is focused on self-transmutation, with entailment of a metamorphosis of previously existing base material. Esoteric work itself is sometimes referred to as a type of “psycho-alchemy,” an Alchemy practiced purely within the interior of the practitioner's holistic self with the aim of transmuting the contents found therein with the aid of external physical materials and implements.
Alchemy is also a precise corpus of technical processes united by the common aim of extracting the embryonic primal material of Essence from the accidental accretions of the practitioner's Persona with which it has become alloyed, by the means of successive operations of progressively finer purifications. It is an art and science of regeneration and fermentation which attains its culmination only subsequent to the successful completion of these preliminary stages. This completion can be a lengthy and often arduous process, the success of which is by no means guaranteed.
Alchemy combines several other aspects of Esoteric Magickal Work which have been covered in other chapters of this book and are partially reiterated here: it incorporates analogues to the Law of Opposition (binary law), the Law of Three (positive, negative, reconciling forces), the Law of Seven (Law of Octaves), as well as some key insights of various topics of occult knowledge such as astrology, divination, invocation and evocation, which have been discussed elsewhere in this book in more detail.
Alchemy utilizes a specific magico-esoteric language framework describing the art and science of transmutation of the personal Essence. All the alchemists' elaborate, complex external apparatuses and operations are intended to serve as structural supports, reminders, and pointers to the real transmutation that is to take place within the practitioner.
In Alchemy, the work of transmutation instantiates what is already implicit in the base substance of the practitioner. It takes spirit (Essence) itself as a substance, a material instantiation or hypostasis that subject to conscious manipulation and transformation in a quasi-material fashion with proper techniques to serve the alchemist's aims. Alchemy leads from the intentional conscious dissolution of impure psychic crystallizations by various processes to an ultimate recombination and resynthesis in the psyche (Essence) of the practitioner.
In addition, Alchemy involves a strongly cosmological framework that addresses the personal Essence as a subtle material substance that reflects in detail analogous characteristics of the Macrocosmos and Megalocosmos as a whole within itself. This Microcosmic Essence is axiomatically presupposed to be in need of undergoing various sequential operations in order to recover its hidden, higher cosmic nature through successive purifications and recrytallizations.
The effectiveness of Alchemy on the plane of Esoteric Magick work is entailed by the decisive concreteness of its symbols and methods which enforce a paradigm in which seemingly ordinary material objects and processes are interpreted and understood on an inward (Esoteric) and qualitative basis, while at the same time interior processes and concepts such as that of the alchemist's own Essence are interpreted and understood as models of external, quantitative things. The unique knowledge and understanding promulgated by Esoteric Alchemy is founded upon its method of understanding the alchemist's Essence dynamically, as an objective event-process-substance subject to conscious manipulation and transmutation before being reincorporated subjectively and interiorly.
Working with this aim in mind toward this end, it is important to utilize actual physical implements, as with other magickal tools in certain other types of Esoteric practice, to reinforce the embodied quality of the work. Mere study of the texts and teachings is only to be considered as a prerequisite to performance of the actual physical work, a necessary but insufficient preparation for practice.
Alchemical autocatalysis is the capacity of correctly combined elements under correctly and precisely organized methods to self-transform into higher substances and forces. In this sense, esoteric alchemical operations represent complex systems embodying a higher, supramundane consciousness of cosmic forces and truths. A factor of “chaotic dynamism” enters into the system analogously to the principle that obtains in homeopathy, in that a sequence of operations can catalyze a minuscule initial impetus and amount of material to produce powerful effects seemingly far beyond the original force applied.
Origins
and History
Alchemy has a storied history and has evolved through various incarnations over the millennia, dating from ancient Eygpt, Greece, and India, through the European Medieval period, on through to the modern era, in each era absorbing into itself basic background assumptions and philosophical paradigms of its environment but always maintaining a core identity holding to a deep structure of esotericism. Like Esoteric Magick itself, it has always been an ideological paradigm capable of working within any framework of local consensus reality regardless of its ontological presuppositions.
The origins of Western Alchemy date to the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BC - 300 AD), and it was called the Hermetic Art after the legendary Hermes Trimegistos (Hermes the Thrice-Great Magister), patron of all Esoteric arts. After the 7th century AD, the Arabic world absorbed the knowledge of Alexandrian alchemists and preserved ancient Greek texts which were later brought brought back to Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
Ancient Greco-Roman alchemists held to the various pagan philosophies and rites of their time; later, European alchemists (like most magick practitioners) were at least nominally Christian, while alchemists and magickians of the Arabic realm evinced Islamic beliefs, generally of the mystical (Sufic) variety. No one specific worldview is essential to the practice of Alchemy, nor that of Esoteric Magick in general.
Many ancient alchemists lived in Roman-occupied Egypt, especially Alexandria along the Mediterranean coast, wrote their texts mostly in Greek, and operated in a context of gnostic Neo-Platonism, a late pagan religious philosophy emphasizing monism over polytheism. Gnosticism itself was less a structured system than a broad, loose collection of various eclectic beliefs and practices, including in itself elements of Platonic, Egyptian, and Hermetic beliefs, as well as ideas that would in later times be interpreted as quasi-Christian, though heterodox.
Some early alchemists defined “alkhemeia” as a study of the detailed composition and potential metamorphoses of various natural substances, essentially a study of what we today would call complex chaotic dynamic systems. Such systems are ubiquitous in nature, and consist of complex interactions of motions and processes in which higher order and structure (including, ultimately, higher consciousness) seems to emerge spontaneously, but in fact such emergence obeys precise inherent natural laws.
Our modern word for chemistry derives from “chemeia,” a Greek term for “blackening,” which refers to the initial process of calcination (carbonization) of the first matter by means of carefully applied heat. In a broader sense, the terms “chemeia,” “chymia,” and later the Arabic term “al-kymia” refer simply to the art and science of applying a type of heat which we may interpret esoterically as the “inner heat” or friction that the practitioner of Esoteric Work must generate in order to autocatalyze self-transformation.
The term “alchemeia” also became etymologically associated with ancient Egypt, known as Khem, the black land, after the dark fertile soil surrounding the Nile River. In Greek, Alchemy was alternately known as “chrysopoeia” or “gold making,” a term which can be interpreted both mundanely (in its literal sense) and metaphysically. Esoterically, the science was itself an example of “teleopoeia,” or “generation of the final goal,” a process with a specific end to be aimed at.
Early alchemists generally worked within an eclectic, syncretic paradigm, often writing of their art as a synergy melding the technical knowledge of the Egyptians and the theological wisdom of the Hebrews, and frequently saw their exoteric work (chemistry) as intertwined with their esoteric work (alchemy proper.) Like ancient religions and esoterism, Alchemy was always a holistic practice, not merely an intellectual philosophy, incorporating astrological and numerological considerations in its processes with the aim of establishing the most auspicious times for conducting various operations, as well as requiring personal discipline and ascetic rigor on the part of the alchemist.
Around the onset of the Christian era, monistic philosophical views had already been in circulation for centuries, and some alchemists bridged the gap between the pagan world and the new beliefs and practices of Christianity. For example, Christian alchemists sometimes interpreted the alchemical heating vessel (the Athanor), or else the alchemical distillation vessel (the Alembic) as a baptismal font, and the tincturing vapors produced as the purifying waters of baptism; they utilized the Hermetic iconography of the “krater” (wine mixing bowl) to symbolize the chalice used in Christian communion, and so on, though exact symbolic correlations were not always consistent. Esoteric baptism in the supramundane waters (esoterically, the purifying forces) of the transcendent Pleroma (the fullness or totality of forces of the Cosmos) was another concept some alchemists theorized about, and can be seen to reflect quasi-Gnostic concepts in the same regard.
The European Scientific Revolution of the 15th-17th centuries was a golden era for the alchemical arts, and there was as yet still no clear distinction between Alchemy and mundane chemistry proper. Esoteric practitioners made use of the then-novel methods of careful observation of the natural world combined with practical experimental work to verify and hone their work and results, both in the physical and the esoteric realms. A symbiosis between philosophical and esoteric theory with physical experiment was one of the central features of Alchemy in this period.
Over time, ever-greater separation developed between practical mundane experimentation and esoteric workings, and the analogical connection itself became a purely sacramental practice bereft of practical experimentation for many Alchemists. In Esoteric Magickal Work today, each practitioner must endeavor to discover an individualistic approach somewhere on the spectrum between purely practical and purely symbolical, but more transformational force and effectiveness is to be found with greater use of traditional physical accoutrements and methods.
Five of the most noteworthy European Christian alchemists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance include:
1 Albertus Magnus Teutonicus (c. 1200-1280), German Dominican philosopher, scientist, and bishop; in addition to his work on Alchemy, composed many volumes on philosophy, theology, and astrology; a key preserver of the works of Aristotle in the Middle Ages. His few works on Alchemy focused on explication of the work of Aristotle on minerals, representing important early ideas about the Philosopher's Stone.
2 Rogerus Baconus, Frater Mirabilis (c. 1220-1290), English Franciscan friar, philosopher and theologian; his Opus Majus (1267) discusses many subjects in addition to Alchemy and speculations about Hermetic esotericism.
3 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), German theologian and alchemist, most well known for his influential Three Books of Occult Philosophy; its first part on Elemental Magick partly treats of alchemical concepts such as the Four Elements and the idea of a spiritus mundi or omnipresent world-force capable of manipulation by a knowledgeable alchemist.
4
Paracelsus
(Theophrastus von Hohenheim)
(1493-1541), Swiss theologican, physician, and alchemist.
5
Thomas
Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes)
(1621-1666), Welsh minister, philosopher, and alchemist; member of
the secretive Society of Unknown Philosophers; translator of the
Rosicrucian tractate Fama
Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis and
other occult and alchemical works.
Paracelsus is an especially noteworthy figure in the history of Alchemy in so far as he bridged the gap between ancient practices and the modern concept of chemistry. He saw “chymistry” as not merely a method for manufacturing medicinal substances but as a key to fuller understanding of the cosmos both within and without. Much as God or the Absolute was interpreted by the ancients as the “Great Geometer” of the Cosmos, it was interpreted by Renaissance Alchemists such as Paracelsus as the “Great Chymist” or “Great Alchemist.” Paracelsus also greatly promulgated the principle of “signatures,” by which the outward appearance of things in the natural world (including plants, gems, and metals) reflected their particular inward qualities and potentials.
Chemistry itself was for centuries practiced outside accepted orthodox institutions such as universities, and did not become fully accepted in academia until the 18th century, at which time its corollary, Alchemy, had already acquired a dubious reputation among natural scientists eager to separate their field from what had come to be viewed as outmoded, superstitious practices. Yet the character of both Alchemy and chemistry was eminently practical, and involved laborious physical efforts and intricate methods that rendered both disciplines insufficiently intellectual and theoretical for scholarly academic institutions until well into the 19th century.
Principles
Of all practitioners in the various subdisciplines of Esoterism, alchemists were the most concerned with the properties of physical substances in the Cosmos, their qualities and interactions with each other, since alchemists' operations directly exploited such properties, and observable results were expected.
Alchemy posits an evolutionary-developmental paradigm of Nature and consciousness by which all of Nature, including within it the human realm, evinces the intrinsic property of automatically growing in self-consciousness and “perfection” from a base matter into more differentiated and complex forms, but only up to a certain limited point. Beyond this natural point, further personal development requires conscious effort and precise methods, in accordance with the alchemical aphorism “Art perfects that which nature begins.” Art, here, refers to that aspect of Alchemy as a craft to be learned, one involving a series of precise, directed, and intentional steps; alchemists, like Esoteric practitioners in other fields, assist and foster the process of the Great Work through a sequence of such steps.
Alchemists traditionally modeled the Cosmos as a unified “plenum,” a fullness or continuum rather than a vacuum, filled with an invisible, occult substance that permitted corollary effects essential to any kind of magickal endeavor such as the doctrines of signatures and sympathy (interconnectedness and reciprocal interaction between things in the mundane and in the supramundane realm.) In earliest times this plenum was characterized simply as a vague idea of “spirit” (pneuma), but later alchemists found this concept too ambiguous and insufficiently substantial for their purposes. Modern esoteric practitioners have updated the idea further, correlating it with a model of a nanocosmic quantum field postulated to underly all macrocosmic phenomena and that makes magick and alchemical transformations possible.
The fundamental concepts of Alchemy are based on a metaphysical ontology which posits the transmutation of a base or primal matter (prima materia or protohyle), itself held to have a quality of arbitrarily vast malleability, able to be transformed into any phenomenal substance existing in nature, including consciousness. This substance is held to have been the original “chaos” out of which the Megalocosmos was formed, gradually metamorphing into the known elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) and with them the human-scaled Microcosmos. In this ancient, pre-Christian paradigm of Cosmic formation, Creation took place not exnihilo (out of “nothing”) but exmateria (out of a preexisting primal material.)
All other material and phenomena in the holarchical, fractally embedded Cosmoses including life can still be derived from this primal substance, given proper knowledge of processes and methods such as Alchemy purports to provide. In some respects the Philosopher's Stone, the culmination of the alchemical process, may be interpreted as a return to the Prima Material but on a higher octave in accordance with the evolutionary Law of Three (positive, negative, higher reconciling force.)
In the course of this long evolutionary process, alchemical theory holds that this primal matter also acquired impurities along the way, becoming an alloyed mixture of a primal Essence and various contingent components. Thus the Great Work (Magnum Opus) of Alchemy is concerned with purifying the alloyed, impure nature of the human Microcosmos, separating out impurities through a graduated process of purification and distillation which we here call the Octave of Alchemy (see below.) Such transmutation is a freeing or instantiating of what is already always implicit in the first substance in an impure (alloyed) form.
Through the Great Work, the alchemical practitioner imitates the processes of Nature while also assisting Nature in its own progressive evolution; at the same time Nature assists the practitioner's personal evolution and development, and these two interlocking reciprocal processes manifest a positive feedback loop as an integral part of the complex adaptive system that is the alchemical endeavor.
There had always been practical alchemists focused solely upon mundane but legitimate material results which were neither illusory, fraudulent, or esoteric, and who employed principles of physical chemistry and effectuated real transformations. Much of their work was artisanal in nature, involving a combination of widely known and accepted traditional methods along with idiosyncratic, novel recipes and processes that became closely-guarded trade secrets protected from competitors by the use of cryptographic writing and metaphorical symbolism. The most notable accomplishments of these alchemists involved the refinement of useful metals, manufacture of glass in rare colors, fabric dyes, and the distillation of effective chemicals including medicines. Much of this work was connected to the nascent jewelry industry, serving a middle class clientele with a high demand for inexpensive copies of real gems and metal that resembled gold. Alchemists' ability to create realistic gold-like alloys partially accounts for their legendary obsession with the physically impossible task of creating real gold from base metal; a realistic looking, gold-like alloy was a valuable commodity in itself for people in the market for inexpensible alternatives to rare metals. While some alchemists may have attempted to fraudulently pass off such alloys as real gold, many more likely worked in the legitimate costume jewelry marketplace.
Those mundane alchemists who also possessed an esoteric tendency or an modicum of interest in spirituality and higher consciousness could not help but ponder their methods and aims in psychological and magickal terms, and as they sought ways of expressing their ideas, would have found obvious metaphors and analogies in their actual physical equipment and paraphernalia, and went on to elaborate upon them allegorically to represent esoteric processes.
All such allegorical interpretation is well in accordance with the principle of likeness, the Hermetic axiom “as above, so below,” in which physical things serve as verific tokens and emblems of transcendental objects and concepts. Over time, with the advance of mundane physical science and chemistry, a gradual fragmentation of thought developed to the point that mundane chemists evolved into their own distinct discipline, while others became the purely esoteric alchemists of later eras. At the same time, alchemy acquired a negative reputation; its cryptic, obscure allegories encouraged misunderstanding and superstitious fear on the part of common folk, a misunderstanding encouraged by a deliberate intent on the part of mundane chemists to separate and distinguish themselves from the esoteric tradition.
Crowley
on Alchemy
From Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice (Dover 1976) Ch. XX (pp 184-188)
Alchemical writers agree on the fundamental theory on which they base their practices, though they describe the First Matter of their Work (and every process and reagent) by a multiplicity of occult symbols and glyphs. The sanctity of their spiritual operations demanded this symbolic veil as a cryptographic use of laboratory language.
In Alchemy, the Stone or Elixir resulting from one's labors is the “Real I” or Individual Essence inherent in the substance. A key alchemical principle is “to make gold one must take gold,” to gestate the seed or potentia of the primal material and accelerate its development
Part of this process involves the withdrawal of the essence of the First Matter from within its initial homogeneity (the matrix or ore), just as Initiation consists of the annihilation of the individual in the impersonal infinity of existence to emerge as an Eidolon of the Truth itself, unalloyed by alien elements.
Alchemists begin with the First Matter, a substance existing everywhere, which they subject to a series of operations to obtain the final substance representing the perfection of that original First Matter, with new qualities pertaining to a living being rather than an inanimate mass. The Alchemist takes a dead, impure thing, and transforms it into a live, active, thaumaturgic entity.
Alchemy can be compared to the processes of Magick and Initiation: The process of Initiation consists in removing one's impurities and finding in one's True Self (Real “I”) an immortal intelligence to whom matter is merely a means of manifestation; the Magician takes an idea, purifies it, intensifies it. In Alchemy, the effective element of the final the Philosopher's Stone is the Essence of its own nature, and the Great Work consists in isolating it from its accretions. The alchemical First Matter calcinates (blackens) and putrefies as the Alchemist breaks up its impurities, just as the Neophyte on the threshold of Initiation is assailed by corrupting “complexes.”
Ouspensky on Alchemy
“Alchemy is an ancient allegorical description of the human three-story (physical-emotional-mental) factory and its ceaseless inner work of taking in and 'eating' base substances (foods, liquids, air, and impressions) and transforming them at length into into finer, precious, ever more conscious ones.”
(from Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous)
TO BE CONTINUED
