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Special Issue on shamanism and Magic vol2. No. 4. 1981 Ralph Metzner - Blog Wikipedia - Who is In the following essay written for The Laughing Man, Dr. Metzner presents an overview of the near-extinct, medieval European magical practice that was the primitive precursor to modern science. The practice of alchemy, suggests Metzner, is actually an evolutionary, spiritual system -a practical, yogic technique of personal transformation. Derived from such diverse sources as Chinese Taoism, Christian gnosticism, Hermetic philosophy, and shamanism, alchemy echoes many of the magical themes elsewhere addressed in this issue: the spiritual death and rebirth of the magicianhealer, the wielding of elemental powers and healing properties, cooperation with Nature's laws as the key to transformation, and a worldview in which matter is approached as an immense, responsive, and living being. Alchemy is a tradition, a teaching, that has a reputation of being very obscure, mysterious as well as mystical. Among many people trained in scientific attitudes and beliefs, the general assumption is that alchemy is a kind of regrettable medieval superstition, related to prescientific notions and practices of magic and occultism-a superstition that had one good outcome in that it led to the experimental research of modern chemistry. Following the investigations and writings of modern students of esoteric philosophy and comparative religion such as Arthur Edward Waite, Titus Burckhardt, Mircea Eliade, and above all Carl Jung and his followers (such as Marie-Louise von Franz), we must now recognize alchemy for what it actually is and always has been-a practical, yogic teaching of personal transformation and the evolution of human consciousness. In particular, credit must go to Jung, four of whose collected works are devoted to alchemy, for establishing and documenting convincingly that the alchemists' experiments were conducted primarily in the sphere of consciousness and that the alchemical literature represents a veritable treasure trove of archetypal material from the deeper strata of the collective unconscious. The word "alchemy" has been given two different etymological derivations. Some authorities derive it from the Arabic al-kimiya, which in turn is based on khemia, the Greek name for Egypt, "the black land"; the ancient Egyptians' name for their country was Kh'mi, "the black earth." So, al-kimiya would then be a term signifying "the Egyptian teaching," or "the Egyptian art," or "the art of the land of the black earth." An alternative derivation of the word relates it to Greek khumos, meaning "chyme" or "juice." This provides an obvious connection to chemistry as it is usually conceived. Both of these derivations are interesting in that the teachings of alchemy do relate very much to "water" and to "earth," to fluid and substance, as substrates of the living processes of Nature. The historical development of the alchemical tradition represents a complex interweaving of strands from many cultures, using many languages: Shamanic practices of ecstasy; Egyptian mining and metalworking crafts; classical Greek, Latin, and Judaic mythology; Mithraic, Orphic, and Eleusinian Mystery teachings; Chaldean and Babylonian astrology; the Hermetic literature (which can be considered the philosophical, rather than applied, experimental, or practical basis of alchemy); esoteric Christian, especially Gnostic, doctrines; the Kabbalah; Islamic Sufism; as well as traces of or parallels to Indian yoga, Chinese Taoism, and other oriental traditions. Classical Greek philosophy contributed in major ways to the development of alchemical teachings, especially through the doctrine of the four elements, which in turn became, during the Middle Ages, the foundation of medical practice and temperamental psychology through the theory of the four humors. The Hermetic alchemical philosophers interacted vigorously with and contributed to the development of Christian theology and mysticism. This is most clearly seen in schools such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, and in individuals such as Thomas Aquinas, Jacob Boehme, John Dee, Francis Bacon, and Paracelsus. For devout Christians, including many alchemists, the search for the philosophers' stone, or tincture of immortality, became synonymous with the quest for union with Christ. And the extraction of gold from ore was analogous to the purification and extraction of spiritual Christ-consciousness from the dense corporeality of the physical matter-body. In addition, alchemy and its sister science astrology were subjects of absorbing interest to the founders of the scientific methodGalileo, Kepler, and Newton (whose extensive alchemical notebooks have recently been published by Dobbs). The use of mythological symbolism by the alchemical philosophers must be understood as coded wisdom teachings pertaining to the perennial philosophy and the evolution of consciousness from animal to human to divine.1 It is important to remind ourselves that the alchemical teachings developed at a time and in a cultural context in which Descartes's sharp conceptual division of the world into res extensa and res cogitans did not yet exist. Not that the ancients did not know the difference between consciousness and matter, but that somehow the distinction or separation was not as rigid and definite as it has since become. This can tend to make it quite difficult for the modern mind to think in the same way as the ancient mind. Jung repeatedly stresses the point that the alchemists "projected" unconscious psychological contents onto matter-a position for which he has been taken to task by Burckhardt. It is true that the term "projection" already implies a degree of separation, a gap to be crossed, that did not exist for the alchemists and mystics of antiquity. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that for alchemy, the internal world of consciousness and the external world of physical matter were experienced as a continuum, interrelated and interwoven. In this way, an "experiment" was also an "experience"-something is experienced "in here" as well as being observed "out there." It is fascinating that the French language still preserves the connection between experience and experiment in that the same word, experience, serves for both. 1. This is the sense demonstrated by modern students of comparative mythology, including Eliade, Zimmer, Campbell, and again of course Jung. So the alchemists, preparing chemical solutions in their vats or metallic mixtures in their furnaces and observing the progress of the material transformations, were simultaneously experiencing internal, visionary, psychic, altered states of consciousness. Some of these may even have been psychedelic experiences induced by involuntary or intentional absorption or ingestion of psychoactive gases, plants, or minerals. Chemical experimentation was like tantric yogic ritual: slow, deliberate, with a maximum of empathic awareness and sensitivity to the changes in matter rather than the kind of detached, quantitative, observational rigor that we have come to associate with experimental methodology. The science of consciousness transformation was practiced simultaneously and synchronistically with the science of metallic or chemical transmutation. Alchemy may be regarded as the qualitative, psychological, introverted spiritual component of what was once an integrated "natural philosophy," from which chemistry later emerged, limiting itself to quantitative, physical, extroverted observation. In a parallel fashion, astrology (which described the synchronistic relationship of planetary forces to natural and psychological events and patterns on Earth) was separated from astronomy (which confined itself to the increasingly precise measurement and observation of celestial objects and events "out there"). A further parallel might be made in the relationship between numerology, the psychological, symbolic approach to numbers, and orthodox mathematics. The alchemical philosopher-scientists approached physis, or matter, with the reverence and awe due an immense living being. They approached matter as Terra Mater, Earth Mother, like the shaman smiths of the Bronze Age, studying and worshipping her infinite mysteries. In so doing, they departed from the abstract speculations of the Greek philosophers such as Demoeritus, whose atomic theory foreshadowed modern conceptions of matter as composed of lifeless particles. They also countered the orthodox Christian view which regarded matter somehow as tainted, corrupt, or fallen, much as the physical body of man was regarded as sinful or even evil. To the orthodox Christian, Satan was the "Prince of this World," whereas to the alchemist, Earth was the mother, the virgin, the nourisher. Everything starts, in alchemy, with the prima materia, the primal mother matter, the ground of being, the matrix out of which the elements differentiate. This is the mulaprakriti, or root substance, of the Indian philosophers, out of which the three gunas, or fundamental qualities, are formed. Psychologically, in Jungian terms, this is the primal, deepest level of the collective unconscious, out of which, in an individual, the four functions, corresponding to the four elements, differentiate. In this primal state, the elements are in chaos, turmoil, a massa confusa. There are graphic alchemical drawings and woodcuts that portray the original chaos of unformed consciousness: huge, fiery, billowing clouds, smoke, gigantic boulders bouncing around, the Zodiacal animals (symbolizing aspects of our personality) fighting one another. This is the chaotic condition of man in the ordinary, pre-philosophical, prealchemical state: internal conflict, struggle, chaos, darkness, confusion. One of the objectives of the opus, the alchemical work, is to bring harmony and order out of this chaos. To accomplish this, one of the essential operations used in the opus is separatio, the separation of the elements as a prerequisite to their unification. Paracelsus says: "The impure, animate body must be purified through the separation of elements, which is done by your meditating on it." Through internal observation of our own imaginal thought processes (what Jungians call "active imagination"), we become aware of the distinguishing features and characteristics of the constituents of our psyche. We recognize the solid, dense, chunky "earth" of bodily structurebone, muscle, tissue, joint, flesh. We experience the wave-like fluidity of "water" as we swim in our inner sea, the mare nostrum of blood, lymph, humor, hormone and the associated feelings. With "air" we encounter the gaseous state, the uprising breath, with its expansive, dispersing motion, inspiration, ideas, conceptions, thoughts that fly like the wind. With "fire" we sense the electricity of our nature, the nervous vitality, the sparking, flashing of perception, intuition, imagination. Alchemy is experiential psychophysiology, the consciousness of biochemistry, the physiology of consciousness in reverse. It is psychophysiology from the inside, using symbols, myths, and chemical procedures to describe one's experience. One of the most significant clues provided by the alchemists in their deliberately veiled and symbolic language is the repeated indications that the athanor, the vessel or furnace in which the alchemical work is carried out, is none other than the human body. Like their Tantric counterparts in India and like the Taoists in China, the European alchemists recognized and understood that the process of psycho-spiritual evolution or enlightenment takes place within the body.2 The alchemical practices symbolized as separation and transmutation of the elements (which are comparable, in modern terms, to meditative approaches to the internal functions and processes of the body-mind) can be understood to have quite profound implications for psychosomatic healing, particularly selfhealing. The alchemical doctrine of the elements gave rise to the theories of the four humors, which dominated Western medicine and the psychology of temperament for about 1,500 years.3 The humors are fluids and may be considered to be four sub-varieties of the "water" element. In modern terms they correspond probably to fluid systems such as blood, lymph, gastric secretions, and endocrine hormones. More precisely, we should say they correspond to these varieties of fluids as experienced, i.e. in consciousness. Balancing the humors (transmuting the elements from impure to pure, to a state of harmonious integration) therefore means to consciously blend the internal psychosomatic processes via meditation. This leads to temperamental "good humor," to health and well-being, to longevity through the reduction of stress reactions and nervous tension, and to a more harmonious interaction among the psychological functions of thought, feeling, sensation, and action. 2. See "Taoist Shamanism" by Ken Cohen in this issue, especially pp. 50-51. 3. Its relatives are still an integral part of indigenous medical systems in India, Tibet and China   In the summer of 1980 I had the opportunity to teach a course on "Alchemy and Depth Psychology" at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.4 The class read and discussed alchemical texts and their modern, psychological interpretations, examined the symbolic and mythic art of the alchemical philosophers, and pondered, contemplated, and meditated on the meanings of these expressions and symbols. We discovered that the class itself turned into a kind of collective alchemical experiment, in that many of the participants had experiences in dreams and meditations of an alchemical nature and observed changes in their lives resulting from these experiences. Different class members chose, or were internally guided to choose, different alchemical processes to focus on, such as separatio, solutio, calcinatio, coagulatio and so forth. Each person's chosen process turned out to be a significant factor in their present personal learning and growth. The student who wrote about sepia ratio was experiencing internal conflict, separation, and disintegration, and began to understand it as a necessary prelude to the process of reintegration and unification. The person who researched the theme of solutio felt that she was immersing herself in the alchemical world, as a result of which many of her habitual, defensive, rigid ways of looking at and thinking about things began to dissolve. Solutio in alchemy is the process by which the hardened, encrusted, crystallizations of experience, the rigid thought forms and emotional armorings, become softened and made fluid and flexible. Alchemical solutio is akin to Christian baptism, and emotional healing through catharsis, the release of feelings flooding through the nature. 4. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of students at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the preparation of this article, especially Jane English and Michael Flanagin. The paper is based in part on a presentation at the Institute's symposium on Applied Mysticism East/West, San Francisco, March 22, 1981.   The student who chose to explore calcinatio began having a series of dreams involving intense purification and transmutation processes through fire. "I was in a large vat of oil with a woman. On the far side a fire began to burn spontaneously. I began to run out of the vat, but the woman I was with fell and needed my assistance. We were surely in danger of burning alive. The flames were approaching closer. I stopped running, went back and pulled the fallen woman up to the ladder and safety." The dreamer interpreted this dream to refer to the purification process akin to yogic tapas, or spiritual "heat" generated through the practice of austerities. The interaction with the woman was an indication to him to confront and accept his anima, or feminine psyche. The student who wrote about coagulatio assembled a vast amount of material surrounding the concepts of hardening, congealing, thickening, grounding, bringing into earth, applying, forming, and embodying. Nature and body are seen as the coagulatio of the spirit. And spirit can be experienced as released in the solutio of matter. Solve et coagula was a repeated maxim of the alchemists. Coagulation was also involved, for this student, in the process of creative expression. It involved bringing ideas and feelings into the form of symbols or words, externalizing subtle, inner experiences into physical embodiment. The interaction of spirit and matter, in the external world of Nature, and in the interior microcosm of man, is one of the key themes in alchemical writings. In the famous Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes, we are told to "separate the earth from the fire and the subtle from the gross, softly and with great caution." The subtle fire is the fire of spirit, the subtle Presence of pure awareness, which must be disidentified (separated) from the gross earth, the physical body, and from the world of sense objects. The Emerald Tablet goes on: "It rises from earth to heaven and comes down again from heaven to earth, and thus acquires the power of the realities above and the realities below. In this way you will acquire the glory of the whole world." Awareness rises upward to the highest realms, the dimensions of enlightened consciousness ("heaven"); it then descends again to the realms of physical world ("earth"), as well as the intermediate worlds of the psyche. Thus awareness brings "heaven down to earth," and is able to function in the higher realms of spirit as well as the lower realms of the material world. So the opus, the work, of alchemy is transformation: the transformation of lead, which is heavy, dark, dense consciousness, into gold, which is shining, reflective, malleable, conductive consciousness, through a process akin to extraction or purification. The purification and other processes are carried out in a vessel, a furnace, an oven, that is the body, the human microcosm. Therefore the work is a psychophysical transformation, involving changes in somatic structure and function as well as changes in consciousness. The alchemists also combined metallurgical and mining symbolism with organic, biological symbolism. The opus is described as a growing, living process, akin to the fertilization and birth of a child. Earth is the mother, from which the miners extract the golden essence, the spiritual seed. Paracelsus says: "Nature does not produce anything that is perfect in itself; man must bring everything to perfection. This work of bringing things to their perfection is called alchemy. And he is an alchemist who carries what nature grows for the use of man to its destined end." The process is often described as the ripening of a fruit, and there are drawings of "the philosophers' tree" on which the fruits are the different metals and/or planetseach of which corresponds to a different aspect of man's nature in its developed or perfected form.5 5. We may also note the close relationship of alchemy with astrology. The planets correspond to metals, which correspond to features of the human being. There are, in other words, patterns of correspondence between "heaven," the macrocosmos, "earth" or Nature, and "man," or the human being. The planets do not rule man's fate, as simplistic distortions of the ancient science would have it. The zodiac and all the celestial bodies are within. Mars is that aspect of you that is fiery, aggressive, forceful, and dynamic. Saturn is that part of you that is stable, mature, conscientious, disciplined, and deliberate.   The opus, then, is very often compared to a kind of higher embryology involving the conception, development, and birth of a new creature-a child, often called the filius philosophorum, the philosophers' child. This is the new being, the regenerate man that you become as a result of the process of transmutation. This new being is the offspring of the two polar opposites of our nature: "The sun is its father, the moon is its mother." It comes alive through the androgynous union of the male and female principles within. "The wind carries it in his belly" (as the Emerald Tablet continues). Now wind and air generally symbolize mind, the realm of thought. The process is first embodied as an idea, a concept. You have to start with the idea. Then the idea becomes earthed or grounded: "The earth is its nurse." The child of the philosophers is nourished, fed by Nature, grown in the body of earth. The process of spiritual unfoldment for the alchemical natural philosophers had to be a natural, organic process. We have to study Nature and obey her laws in order to discover her secrets and help bring her ripening processes to perfection. We have here in the alchemical world view a perfect blending of the religious and scientific attitudes and purposes that later became so completely divorced. The principle of duality or polarity, the coincidentia oppositorum, appears in many variations in alchemical literature. We have already mentioned the interaction of spirit and matter, the dissolution and coagulation. There is also the marriage, the coniunctio, the union of Sun and Moon, Sol and Luna, the masculine father principles of radiance, light, heat, and energy with the feminine mother principles of magnetism, mystery, beauty, feeling, and water. The inner marriage as described in alchemy, sometimes as a "chemical wedding," is akin to the Taoist's blending of yang and yin, or the Tantric yogi's fusion of Siva and Sakti in the pingala and ida energy channels of the subtle body. Sometimes the alchemical marriage is said to be between the King and the Queen: these are the male and female aspects of the person, the ego. The King is often shown being purified, purged in a hot bath or furnace, freed of black dross, sweating out the impurities, the attachments that link ego to the world of sense objects. Sometimes the marriage is described as being between a red man (air rubeus) and a white woman (mulier candida): the red, fiery, martial, choleric masculine and the purified, innocent, virginal, venusian feminine. These are all aspects of what Jung would call unifying with the anima, female psyche, or the animus, male psyche. An alchemical text titled The Sophic Hydrolith tells us that the philosophers' child, the outcome of the opus, is "the most ancient, secret, natural, incomprehensible, heavenly, blessed, beatified, and triune universal Stone of the Sages." Of it, Gerhard Dorn writes that "this child of the two parents, of the elements and heaven, has in itself such a nature that the potentiality and the actuality of both parents can be found within it." This outcome, or fruit, of the alchemical opus is sometimes referred to as a tincture or panacea or elixir, in other words, something of a fluid nature that has healing properties. This clearly relates to the medical and longevity interests of the alchemists. As we have seen, sometimes it is referred to as a child, an offspring, a new person, a transformed human, man or woman, an enlightened individual. Sometimes, most often in fact, it is referred to as a "stone"-in other words, a very solid substance; it is not gold, but very common, and yet in some way very hard to obtain, invisible but omnipresent. "Our stone is found in all mountains, all trees, all herbs, and animals and with all men. It wears many different colors, contains the four elements and has been designated a microcosm." It is all around, and most of all it is within. It would appear indeed that "stone" refers to a state of consciousness, something akin perhaps to the "diamond body" of Vajrayana Buddhism; an inner essence of the human being that is fluid and changeable like an elixir, often compared to mercury or quicksilver; but also indestructible, hard and solid like rock. It is like the Brahman-Atman of the Upanishads, the self-luminous immutable essence within every human being, and within the macrocosmos. Paracelsus says: "There is nothing in heaven or in earth that is not also in man. In him is God who is also in heaven; and all the forces of heaven operate likewise in man. "In man, the ability to practise all crafts and art is innate, but not all these arts have been brought to the light of day. Those which are to become manifest in him must first be awakened.... We are born to be awake, not to be asleep! ... The earth brings forth all things and holds back nothing, not even the least thing; all the more should man help the gifts that God has sown in him to prosper. . . . Man should always keep this in mind; he should not fall asleep, but in daily effort should strive for his summer lest it be always winter round him."   Selected References Burckhardt, Titus. Alchemy. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971. De Rola, Stanislas Klossowski. AlchemyThe Secret Art. New York: Crown Publishers, 1973. Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Grossinger, Richard, ed. Alchemy: PreEgyptian Legacy, Millennial Promise. Richmond, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1979. Jung, Carl G. Alchemical Studies, vol. 13, Collected Works. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Mysterium Coniunctionis, vol. 14, Collected Works. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Alchemical Active Imagination. Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications, 1979. Waite, A.E., ed. The Hermetic Museum, 2 vols. New York: Weiser, 1974 (orig. published 1893).

"The perfect among the sages is identical with Me. There is absolutely no difference between us" Tripura Rahasya, Chap XX, 128-133 ...All copyright materials are used under authority of the Fair Use statute and United State Code, Title 17 ... ... ..Forum Disclaimer Beezone is NOT associated nor endorsed by Adidam - The official church devoted to Adi Da. (see more) The writings and interpretations on Beezone are free and done solely for educational and instructional purposes. Beezone is not meant to communicate the official word of Adi Da or his official church.