Communication

Communication is governed by Mercury-Hermes-Thoth and air. So you might consider that there is
a "trick" to it. In many ways, successful communication has to do with our new mind.
Most people can't read alchemy and understand it because it is often written in Green language
which requires an analogical mind capable, not of "thinking about", but merging with.
In successful communication, two must merge into one, like Gemini's twins.
Analogical communication also requires that we drop our preconceptions.

Not being able to communicate, misunderstanding, is a sign/curse/consequence of "the Fall".
And it is not a product of merely speaking different languages, as one might interpret the biblical
story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). We could have two "masters" of the English language
that still don't understand one another. On the other hand, we could have a St. Francis capable of
communicating with animals.

So what is communication and why is 'healing' our ability to communicate so important?

For me, when I saw how much communication is assumed to be happening and how much is actually
happening, I felt compelled to do something about it. Why communication breaks down is because
it is packed with subjective associations. If I ask three people to draw me a picture of a cock,
a chicken rancher may draw one thing, a porn star another, and a third may slap me and walk out of
the room: three different reactions to one suggestion. This is a simple example. As Gurdjieff taught,
things can be looked at from many levels:
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/articles/NArtEvCon.asp
So here we can see that we can't talk about man as if he were one constant expression, as if everyone
should agree on what a man is and what he can do. Man #1 is quite different from man #2 and
sees/interprets the world quite differently. Even more different is man #4, and #7 is nearly beyond
description!
So it is a great error if man #3 assumes that everyone else sees the world through the intellectual center,
or that this is "the right way" to view the world. How will #1 and #3 communicate? If these cannot
communicate, is it any wonder why "aliens don't make themselves known", or "if there is a god, why
doesn't he/she/it reveal itself?" Perhaps the question should be, "are we capable of receiving their
communication?" rather than assuming that they don't communicate.

So you can see that it takes a bit of self-knowledge even to realize that there is a communication issue,
let alone to begin to correct it.

Are we content to live in a world where we are rarely understood? Is that just the way it is?
Or is there some relatively objective level where we can meet and truly communicate and break this
spell of aloneness?

For me, the objective world exists, but the laborers are few.
Consider telepathy, or even sympathy and empathy, and other forms of NVC (non-verbal communication)
and Robert Monroe's "rotes"...

Consider why Alchemists, Gurdjieff, Robert Monroe, Castaneda, and many more "invented" "new"
languages to communicate their experiences... mercury, the second attention, Focus 15, Kundabuffer...
Why? Perhaps to try to get around the associative mind which assumes it already knows everything.


To be continued...

Answers

Quest-ions

There are questions that we answer,
questions left unanswered, and questions unanswerable.

The unanswerable are the best, and the hardest to accept.
What is life? Who am I? What is my purpose? Is there any meaning to it all?

The answer to these questions cannot be written, yet they can be discovered.
And once discovered, they disappear into the next moment of discovery.
Life leaves no footprints. Followers never live.

It's the unanswerable questions that destroy you, that triturate you,
that pound you to nothing. Who am I to interview infinity?

I have reached out to you, but grasped nothing.
I have visited you, searching for some reflection, only to be swallowed in utter darkness.
How can you forsake me when I am your only son?

So I walk into the wild, alone.
Alone? How can I feel so alone when I only exist relative to something else?
Unanswerable questions. You are driving me mad, you know.

I must live again.
And to live I must die.

Another unanswerable question... how to die?
But it can be discovered.

I love you Hermes.
I love you, you elusive, mother fucking, serpentine temptress, trickster...
The search is over.
You win.
I have no more burning questions.
The flame has gone out.
Nirvana

New Mind - Pt. 2

Generally, we are inclined to think materialistically. So we are tempted to think of
alchemy, Philosophical matters, in physical terms. But the Philosophers have warned us
against this repeatedly. Our gold is not the vulgar. Our Principles are not the vulgar.
Even the four elements are not the ones we grasp with our senses, or at least not only that.

Here Basil Valentine - "Neither be anxious to ask whether I actually possess this precious treasure. Ask rather whether I have seen how the world was created; whether I am acquainted with the nature of the Egyptian darkness; what is the cause of the rainbow; what will be the appearance of the glorified bodies at the general resurrection; what is the most indelible colour. Of you that rightly understand this little book, I will enquire whether you have seen that great salt sea, without any corrosion, raise a sufficiency of the moisture of all nature to the summits of the highest mountains..."

In "Catechism of Alchemy", Paracelsus asks, "What road should the Philosopher follow?

That exactly which was followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world."

So how do you imagine the Great Architect thought?

And with what substance did it create the universe?


Suppose that the most important aspect of alchemy is not the material, but the way one works it.
The essence of alchemy is solve-coagula, volatile-fixed, subtle-dense... Circulation.
And this is concealed by many names, hermetic pairs...
moon                               sun
mercury                          sulphur
female                              male
water                               fire
serpent                           eagle...

Whether two, or three or four, these are always in rotation/circulation.

A simple experiment:
Take anything, and put it to work/rotation.
If it is an earth, dissolve it and then congeal it...
If it is a salt, deliquesce it and then evaporate it...
If it is a metal, melt it and then let it cool...
If it is an air, cool it and then warm it...

Is this not how we observe all things to evolve, even ourselves...
through repetition, circulation, swinging to opposites...

"They told me this was bad. I avoided it for a while.
Then I tried it and it was good. But too much of a good thing can be bad.
Now it's neither good or bad. It is what it is. It's wisdom."


Add to this "theory" another essential of alchemy, that of death/putrefaction,
and that's alchemy in a nutshell.

Pitchblende

Albert Cau has studied the properties of pitchblende and uranium and believes it to be the subject of the sages:
http://albert.cau.free.fr/English/Pechblende.html

This information has been around for a while. What I post here gives some weight to the argument.

"The cause and nature of radioactivity is at once an atomic phenomenon and the
accompaniment of a chemical change in which new kinds of matter are produced.
The two considerations force us to the conclusion that radioactivity is a
manifestation of subatomic chemical change.
If man ever achieves this control over Nature, it is quite certain that the last
thing he would want to do would be to turn lead or mercury into gold—for the sake
of gold. The energy that would be liberated, if the control of these sub-atomic
processes were possible . . . would far exceed in importance and value the gold."
- Rutherford and Soddy

Wikipedia - "Radioactivity was first discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel, while working on phosphorescent materials. These materials glow in the dark after exposure to light, and he thought that the glow produced in cathode ray tubes by X-rays might be connected with phosphorescence. He wrapped a photographic plate in black paper and placed various phosphorescent salts on it. All results were negative until he used uranium salts. The result with these compounds was a deep blackening of the plate. These radiations were called Becquerel Rays.

It soon became clear that the blackening of the plate had nothing to do with phosphorescence, because the plate blackened when the mineral was in the dark. Non-phosphorescent salts of uranium and metallic uranium also blackened the plate. Clearly there was a form of radiation that could pass through paper that was causing the plate to become black."

Black - al khem.

Uranium - Ouranos - Heaven

Pitch/Pech = Perch:

"Perun (Slavic Jupiter/Zeus/Ammon) is strongly correlated with the near-identical Perkūnas/Perkons from Baltic mythology, suggesting the existence of an ancestral Balto-Slavic deity, which ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo European thunder god whose original name has been reconstructed as Perkwunos. The root "perkwu" originally probably meant oak, but in Proto-Slavic this evolved into per- meaning "to strike, to slay".

In Egyptian Mythology the goddess Neith is associated with many names that we find identify

our initial subject - Laton, Copper, crocodile, the Nile Perch...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neith

Alchemists have concerned themselves with the radiation/rays of the sun and moon. Perhaps an earthly

sun would not be the metal gold, but a substance that radiates like the sun - a black sun.

Before the discovery of radioactive materials, pitchblende was considered worthless and left in heaps

outside of mines for anyone to cart away.

Radioactive elements are known to cause mutations and transmutations. :)

Light

In many ways high alchemy is the science of light.
We see light as the first being emerging from the Void in Genesis.
One should understand this, not as the narrow band/spectrum of visible light alone,
but as the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. Light is also infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma, hertzian...
E=Mc2

"Oh Lord my God, Thou coverest Thyself with light as if a garment" - Psalm 104:2

In quantum physics, photons are the carriers of light. These, again, represent a certain frequency
of the EM spectrum/Ouroboros. Photons are a mercury of sorts, the way electrons communicate.
In mythology and alchemy and various religions, there is placed much importance on light -
the light of Gnosticism, of Kabbalah, the Lucifer, the Phosphorus...

Alchemy stresses the significance of colors in the work, and colors are light.
In The Alchemical Manuscripts series, "The Betty Story", we see a green light having mysterious
effects on alcohol.
Schwaller claimed that the secret manuscript which Champagne found was about colors.
Newton, the alchemist, also studied gravity, magnetism, optics, light...
Manfred Junius makes it a point to mention three types of tartar according to their relation to light.
And we know that one of the things that separates alchemy from chemistry lies in exposing the
matter to the rays of the sun and the moon.

So I just want to remind that when considering alchemy, one should contemplate this light.

Here is an interesting link to Karl von Eckarthausen's "Catechism"
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://cosmogono.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/karl-von-eckarthausen-catecismo.doc&ei=stPkTP7NJoS8sAPp8L2xCw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CF0Q7gEwCA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DEckarthausen%26hl%3Den%26prmd%3Div

The Emperor's New Mind

I would like to try to compile some evidence for the need to come to alchemy with a different
mind than you would chemistry, because we are so often looking for things, concrete substances - an ore, a mineral, a salt... whatever. Allow me to repeat here a summation of the words of Sendivogius:

We require a Mercury that is Homogenous, having no opposite nature, undetermined to mineral, animal or vegetable kingdoms.

"... a certain Truth, that God the great architect of all things did create the whole material world (for this we are now only to speak of and not of your antetype or intellectual world) out of nothing and in Time, yet not so that all your parts of this world thus directly were created, but only your first Matter, and that she hath been produced out of meer nothing, out of which afterwards the most principle bodies and that they by way of separation were produced and out of them were made all kinds of mixed bodies and that by way of composition."

"But the Cabal which from God hath recieved your Light of undoubted Truth, and knows your genuine sense of your [placed] Genesis, and keeps with Her, its true interpretation, she, though she doth admit three divers acts of creation equal to the forsaid acts received in the common schools viz:
1. A Production of Matter out of Nothing which probably is Creation.
2. The Division of the same Matter into single Bodies.
3. The Fabrication of the mixture out of those divers simple Bodies."

Notice the words "our antetype and intellectual world!" This is the dualistic mind which is
not suitable for alchemy. We need a mind devoted to God - that is Oneness - not religion or dogma. Listen to the words of the great Qabalist Carlo Suares, and believe it when they say alchemy, kabbalah and the study of stars go hand in hand:

"I begin our study by saying that the Qabala is a science and that The Sepher Yetsira is a precise and accurate treatise on the structure of cosmic energy, written in hidden code... 
The mystery of the Qabala is simply due to the fact that the cabalists are not aware of what its language is, and to their ignorance both of the analogical mode of thought characterising this language... In studying the Qabala, and The Sepher Yetsira in particular, one must be prepared to think in a new way, entirely different from one's usual, habitual manner, because its language is analogical and inclusive."

I had a teacher who used this very word - analogical - to teach of the two minds which we possess. It may be best understood in contrast to the rational, dual mind. The dual, or binary, mind perceives an object separate from itself, whereas with analogical mind subject and object are one - instead of seeing and thinking about a goat, for example, you are the goat, perceiving as it perceives. 

VandenBroeck repeats the same themes which he observed under Schwaller:
"true knowledge is inaccessible to the rational mind."
"Thus he (Schwaller) actively believed in oral transmission of a kind of knowledge best called 'gnosis'."

In alignment with the hermetic axiom, "As above, so below" (and vice-versa), we must also think of solve-coagula as "the hidden and the revealed". And you must know that gnosis is acquired through experience/initiation.
Knowledge is to Gnosis as rational mind is to analogical mind; as head is to heart, etc.

The best way I've heard it put, and this may be bumping it up a level, that really helps me to see it is by my friend Androgynus - what is human want compared to the Void's need/thirst/vacuum...

We'll come back to that when we discuss Genesis, which, as Suares tells us, is the recounting of the Involution/Evolution of the infinite unmanifest into manifest, spirit into mass. I will tell you the secret to understanding these things. You have to realise that the Bible code, just as the alchemy code, just as the mythology code... is not talking about many characters/matters, but about the involution/evolution of the One Thing. So we are back to Sendivogius' something from nothing.

If there were a beginning and a creator, then it had to create from itself since there was nothing else and it was/is omnipresent.
So matter is "god". Substance/salt is congealed soul/sulphur, which is congealed spirit/mercury.
At the high/short/subtle/fast frequency end of the electromagnetic spectrum, we call it spirit. At the low/long/dense/slow end we call it mass/matter.
But this is One Thing - Ouroboros; a Rainbow Serpent, a Tree of Life...

So when you contemplate Our Sea (R.C.), Al-khem - transcend the four qualities/elements and go to the black, infinite "Void" - Castaneda's "Dark Sea of Awareness". Recall Genesis: 
"And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be Light."
Now we're talking real alchemy. This is Universal Mercury, Aqua Vitae, Chaos of the Wise...


Thus John Reid says, "For our immediate purposes then, we will consider the energy of the sun and stars as the power outlets of God."
And Moby says, "We are all made of Stars."

Carlos Castaneda on the Eagle and The Wheel of Time

"The basic premise of sorcery for a sorcerer is that the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is. For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.
For the sake of validating this premise I will concentrate the best of my efforts into leading you into a genuine conviction that what you hold in mind as the world at hand is merely a description of the world; a description that has been pounded into you from the moment you were born.
Everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. We have no memory of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to anything else. From that moment on, however, the child is a member . He knows the description of the world; and his membership becomes full-fledged, perhaps, when he is capable of making all the proper perceptual interpretations which, by conforming to that description, validate it.
The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make in common.
The idea that the perceptual interpretations that make up the world have a flow is congruous with the fact that they run uninterruptedly and are rarely, if ever, open to question. In fact the reality of the world we know is so taken for granted that the basic premise of sorcery, that our reality is merely one of many descriptions, can hardly be taken as a serious proposition."


"The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness. Perception and awareness can be a single, functional, inextricable unit with two domains. The first one is the attention of the tonal ; that is to say, the capacity of average people to perceive and place their awareness on the ordinary world of everyday life: our first ring of power; our awesome but taken-for-granted ability to impart order to our perception of our daily world.
The second domain is the attention of the nagual ; the capacity to place our awareness on the nonordinary world. It's our second ring of power , or the altogether portentous ability all of us have, but only sorcerers use, to impart order to the nonordinary world.
What I have struggled to vanquish, or rather suppress in you, is not your reason as the capacity for rational thought, but your attention of the tonal , or your awareness of the world of common sense. The daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses."

"When I talk about time, I am not referring to something which is measured by the movement of a clock. Time is the essence of attention; the Eagle's emanations are made out of time; and properly, when one enters into any aspect of the other self, one is becoming acquainted with time.
The wheel of time is like a state of heightened awareness which is part of the other self, as the left side awareness is part of the self of everyday life. It can physically be described as a tunnel of infinite length and width; a tunnel with reflective furrows. Every furrow is infinite, and there are infinite numbers of them. Living creatures are compulsorily made, by the force of life, to gaze into one furrow. To gaze into it means to be trapped by it, to live that furrow.
Will belongs to the wheel of time. It is something like the runner of a vine, or an intangible tentacle which all of us possess. A warrior's final aim is to learn to focus it on the wheel of time in order to make it turn. Warriors who have succeeded in turning the wheel of time can gaze into any furrow and draw from it whatever they desire. To be trapped compulsorily in one furrow of time entails seeing the images of that furrow only as they recede. To be free from the spellbinding force of those grooves means that one can look in either direction, as images recede or as they approach."

http://www.scribd.com/doc/387479/Carlos-Castaneda-Missing-Chapter-From-Carlos-Castanedas-Eagles-Gift

The Experience of Oneness and Connectedness

I've been studying Alchemy and Spagyrics for... I guess 15 years or so, but more intensively and practically for the last four years. I'm 42 and i have to say that in my case Schwaller was pretty dead on when he told VandenBroeck that a man can do nothing until he's 42. I've been a student of everything metaphysical, at times in my life diving deeply into Yoga/Pranayama, Quantum physics, Carlos Castaneda, Gurdjieff, of course Alchemy, both Krishnamurtis and finally seeming to be content with Advaita/Nonduality. The many but brief experiences of connectedness I've had in my life appear to be 'fixing' themselves to some degree that I can now enter levels of connectedness by intending it. Allow me to describe this experience. 

I understand, first hand (direct experience) that the Ouroboros is solve-coagula. It is also 'One the All'. I know it as the electro-magnetic spectrum. The Australian aborigines call it The Rainbow Serpent, because it is a spectrum of waves - from the very small "cosmic" waves to the very large Hertzian waves. And the Serpent swallows its tail where the infinitely large and the infinitely small are no different from one another. This is my experience, not something I read in a book. 

So at various "levels" the serpent frequency manifests as various entities. For example, quarks are in there somewhere, and they get together and dream a proton, and protons, along with neutrons, electrons, photons... dream atoms, and atoms dream together to make molecules - let's say hydrocarbons, and HCs dream together to make proteins, which dream together and make amino acids, which dream together to make RNA/DNA, which dream an amazing variety of organic life, which at some point evolves into homo sapiens, who dream together to create communities, etc...

That in which we live, move and have our being.

Chlorophyll

While many an alchemist has endeavored to capture the rays of the sun as 
an high medicine, the plant kingdom had figured this out long ago 
(Photosynthesis = to make/synthesize light). 
Is it possible that chlorophyll is a green lion, devouring the sun?

The Philosophers' Stone in symbols

The simple version:

And the more extravagant:

Wouldn't you interpret this as a solar precipitation?
And is the alchemist in the middle split vertically to suggest nitre where we find the symbol for
salt in the simple version?

Here is a link to Dennis William Hauck's comments on the image:
http://www.alchemylab.com/smaragdina.htm

Gases in Alchemy

In alchemy, there is much focus on metals, ores, salts and solvents.
In this post we'll dedicate some attention to gases.
After all, vessels are hermetically sealed to keep these gases in,
for they are true catalysts.

Van Helmont is accredited with inventing the name 'gas':
"I have called this spirit gas, it being scarcely indistinguishable from the Chaos of the ancients."

In the above image from Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens, we see the Stone of the Philosophers existing in the air, the water and the earth.

Picture Gallery

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Here I've collected some images which convey the experience of Oneness and Connectedness.