SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY & ALCHEMICAL ART

"We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitarian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconscious psyche and matter are two things." --Professor Wolfgang Pauli


Alchemy is an irreducible fusion of science and art that also happens to be therapeutic or growth-promoting and hints at illumination. The process begins with doubts and lack of conviction but time spent on self-knowledge is amply rewarded. Both practical and spiritual alchemists are contemplative researchers versed in the science of personal transformation and the art of inner magic.

Spiritual alchemy is a grand experiment you perform on yourself with critical introspection and objective investigation. It takes place in your living laboratory. You can discover your deeper nature as a multidimensional synthesis of subjective/objective, qualitative/quantitative, mind/matter, wave/particle.

The responsibility of each individual is to bring about their own transformation and be free to 'reincarnate' now metaphorically, to fully embody that transformation. The outer is the inner, and the inner is the outer. Lived reality is only experienced reality and is always transformed before it is experienced.

Alchemy increases your capacity to relate to inward-flowing content. You can regenerate yourself. You are the world and the world is you. You can deny or affirm the sacred. By changing yourself, you change everything. You can be a light unto yourself, lit by yourself. You are the cosmos and the cosmos is you.

Alchemists sought the experience of Unus Mundus, the one world united through material, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects. Science illuminates the spiritual quest, and spiritual tech illuminates the deep nature of matter and our nature. Paradoxically, when we look into the depths of matter, we look into the depths of ourselves.

Scientists and mystics report similar phenomena in their models and phenomenology. Spiritual technologies, the software of sacred penetration and amplification, virtually predicted the fine nature of matter as nothing but a complex illusion - what we have come to understand as a hologram. Mystics have also always emphasized the primal nature of Light, and claimed that we are in fact made of light itself. Science has confirmed this in numerous ways.

"The secret of alchemy is this: there is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call a 'field of force.' The field acts on the observer and puts him in a priveleged position vis-a-vis the Universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work." ~ Fulcanelli, 1937

“The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.” ~ Opticks, Sir Isaac Newton

“Ultimately, the Stone should be considered a catalyst to instruct the body code to overcome its inherited weakness and rebuild a better, stronger vital metabolism that is not just self-repairing, but building to an optimal state of health. . .The Stone has the seed of all DNA in an archetypal form and gives the correct, original instructions to the potential new cells. This enables generations of mutation/adaptation of the organism to self-correct.” ~ Dr. Ross Mack

In the 20th Century, Carl Jung described alchemy in terms of depth psychology and shed new light on an old science. Contemporary 21st Century alchemy can be viewed as a dynamic process in terms of Chaos Theory and its related sciences. Dynamics is a revolutionary universal tool, a novel practice which helps us grasp the processes of development in ourselves, in nature, in our world and the cosmos. Dynamics is a synthesis of recent scientific advances and theories: system dynamics, living systems, general systems, chaos, edge-of-chaos, complexity, emergence, complex adaptive systems, quantum gravity, attractors, homeodynamics, and self-organization.

Alchemy is the Great Work, a process of separation, transformation and integration. This is just as true of the substances worked experimentally in the retort as it is of the personality undergoing the transformative process. The mindbody is a crucible for refining the vehicles of consciousness. By altering your own consciousness, you alter your relation to the universe, and this changes your world.

Alchemy is an accelerated pathway to self-mastery, to self-realization. It is an alternative, pre-scientific spiritual and philosophical interpretation of life, encompassing its physical, emotional and mental aspects. It is an elegant worldview still relevant in contemporary life. The alchemist is the catalytic agent of this spiritual chemistry.

There are many ways to articulate the dynamic process. Process is a way of doing, not what is being done. Alchemy is a process-oriented path, emphasizing awareness of internal experience over external striving and emphasizing a connection with the sacred. It demands self-honesty, self-responsibility and an overarching desire to live life as a spiritual path. More than simply developing self, the alchemist transforms chaos to Cosmos.

There are three primary aspects of alchemy:

1. Alchemy as theory, is a comprehensive philosophical vision of the cosmos, built on the universal correspondence system.

2. Alchemy as practice may be viewed as a creative discipline, an art-form, involving one in the imaginal realm of soul-making.

3. Alchemy, as a transcendental search or quest, has the primary goal of liberation from the world. This is the knowledge of immortality, through the union of opposites.Paracelsus described alchemy as the voluntary action of man in harmony with the involuntary action of nature. If the center of the creative process takes place in the "heart of man," his intentions take on profound significance. They can now affect, or influence, the destinies of the cosmos. Attainment of this state is known as the production of the Philosopher's Stone or Diamond Body.

The Philosopher's Stone may be equated with the Body of Light (Photonic Body; Scalar Field Body), the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for the experience of spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. It is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the royal union of the Sun (+) and the Moon (-).

Polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative, male-female, god-devil, spirit-matter, mother-father, etc. This marriage creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image of a magical or divine child.

One of the alchemical goals is to create an eternal body for post-mortal continuation of the spirit and the soul, a radiant body of coherent photonic Zero-Point energy, a Rainbow Body. The process of making the Philosopher's Stone is a repetition of the creation myth via imagery. The imagery reverses the evolutional direction. It begins with animal images, then proceeds through images of plant life to more fundamental forms. The final goal is symbolized by metal, stone, or crystal.

The deep nature of the Photonic Body, the energy body, is this same Light. We all have a light-filled body, but more are real-I-zing that Light is our truly fundamental nature. We can embody the evidence of that Brilliance. We are nothing but Brilliance; "Nothing", but Brilliance. Transformation is real-I-zation at ever-deeper levels of existence. Yet psychological resistance is as real as electrical resistance.

Absolute space is the womb of creation and the physics of virtual photon fluctuation reflects not only Nature, but our nature. Spiritual traditions have spoken about emanation within the Divine and Illumination since the dawn of human history. But only now are we learning just how literal that experience of Light is, and the interactive mechanisms it engages in our holistic psychophysical Being.

Photonic Human
http://photonichuman.weebly.com/
LIGHT IN OUR CELLS
Biophotons In Plain English; Homo Lumen
What are photons ? / What are biophotons ? / What is the origin of biophoton emission ? / The coherence of biophotons / Regulation by the biophoton field / The network of light metabolism / The present state of the discussion / Biophoton theory and alternative medicine / Biophoton theory as a basis for a scientific theory of life appropriate to nature / The new concept of the cell / The big network / From the molecular to the field perspective 

Photophysical Processes: Photons are light particles or packets of energy that escape from their storage in cells.  When energy is released from a molecular construction, photons appear. Biophotons (ultra weak photon emissions) are emitted from biological organisms as weak EM fields in the optical range. Usually, that kind of energy stays in the body for metabolic processes, which transfer matter from one kind of molecule to another.

Some transfers use energy, others release it. Usually there is not enough energy to release a light particle. But the body sometimes releases measurable photons from a large surplus of energy derived from oxygen. Molecules seek a balance in energy exchange, so biophotons are only released when there is imbalance between entropic and negentropic processes. Cells use photon flux to carry information.

DNA emits EMF in the light spectrum. Light emission signals functional state. A highly-organized well-tuned body produces very few biophotons; an untuned body or disorganized system releases more. A sick body has low organization and high emissions of photons. For example, cancer cells and healthy cells display differences in biophoton emission.

Unrelated processes can generate random photon patterns, all unrelated to one another. Well organized systems have less chaotic photon emission levels. They are more coherent. Living systems need to find that synergy that is neither too loose nor too tight for rapid adjustment.

Healthy biophotonic processes facilitate communication among systems, regulating life processes. The coherent biophoton field structures and organizes the body. Some of these coherence properties are consciousness-like. The coherence of the biophoton field is likely related to the ground properties of the physical vacuum. DNA emits EMF in the light spectrum.

Outer Body Experience

An outer body experience is one of vastly expanded awareness. We aren't out of the body but recognize our vast potential connections as oceanic experience. We are wave upon interpenetrating waves of virtually infinite potential. Alchemy is all about enhancing psychophysical imaginal capacity. We can tap the holographic memories of our existential blueprint, becoming transparent to transcendence, rather than operating well below our optimal capacity at the plateau of consensus reality or 'normalcy.'

Felt-sense is our physical awareness of life processes. The body takes precedence in bottom-up processing. Felt-sense helps us know what is at the edge of our thinking. We learn to articulate our implicit knowing. Focusing attention inward in the body, we learn to sense fear, tensions or openness in centers in our energy body. There is no disowning, but a re-embracing and expansion of the body in amplified identification, including cosmic zero-point.

Old Millenium notions, (medieval, classical and Theosophical), of astral projection meant consciousness left the physical body in the subtle body of light and was free to roam the astral plane or travel to other places on Earth. It involved dissociation from the physical body to which the aspirant remained attached by a Silver Cord. It probably developed from Near-Death Experiences (NDE), the shutting down of certain brain processes in biological crisis, commonly including a tunnel of light.

New Millennium soul travel is a slightly different approach, requiring no disowning of the gross material body in order to incorporate subtle aspects of the universal. In this sense, it stays perhaps closer to the alchemical phase state, One World. Rather than entering a trance state, the aspirant remains lucid, engaging in breathing and visualization practices. To journey outward or inward is essentially the same. Transmodern "etheric travel" means folding space and time, travelling without moving about one's conceptually expanded Being. It has been called cosmic consciousness.

We can view ourselves as all parts of the gestalt, including the primordial ground as well as any systems within it. There is simply no sense of separation. It is a subtle but important shift in awareness. We can experience the whole spectrum of the taxonomy of altered or discreet states of consciousness (Tart), the "heavens and hells" or bardo states (Leary, et al) of other models. The field patterns of the finest organization of energy and matter also affect the evolution of the cosmos. You are a nonlocal quantum field entity in coherent connection with All.

The unfathomable ocean of our virtuality is a dynamic energetic infusion, an expanded sense of NowHere, a leap of faith into the Abyss. We are challenged to fully comprehend the truth of our existence. This is how we become more than we formerly thought we were. As William James said, "My experience is what I attend to." Negative time extracts massergy from the limitless ocean of roiling subspace making negentropic or syntropic transformation in a nanosecond a real potential.

The quantum vacuum is a highly anomalous universal energy realm of pure potential. We are that nondual dynamic "ocean of active information" in wave form. It is both the source and destination of all matter in the universe, and thus of any form of consciousness which may emerge through its autopoeitic process. The human brain, with its pronounced and constant state of chaos, could receive and amplify such signals, expressed both consciously and unconsciously in our biophsyical self and our ephemeral thoughts and intuitions.

We integrate through our immediate experience of paranormal potential. We can live as uncollapsing quantum superpositions in that bountiful ocean of soul and spirit. Distractions cease, replaced by the direct impact of oceanic expansion of the energetically superdense quantum vacuum -- purely informational scalar force.

We are modified physically in this way by breathing as the negentropic potential (bioplasma) of cosmos. Scalars are massless and vectorless -- neither ‘light’ nor ‘matter’, but longitudinally propagating fluctuations below the energy-threshold of particle pair-creation. This produces a self-generating cosmological feedback cycle which translates into interference patterns created by the motion of charged particles modifying the local topology of the vacuum. The modified vacuum field modifies in turn the motion of the particles and your being is transmuted.

In a system driven beyond equilibrium, the subtle interconnectedness beneath its surface emerges to reshape the system itself. Even visual images can be derived from non-visual sources. Metaphorms are ways of implying likeness between things, such as the macrocosm and microcosm, the cosmos and the weird world of the quantum and subspace domains. Alchemy tells us, "As Above, So Below." In this way it anticipated our discovery of scale-invariant fractals. What is true for subspace is true for superspace.

Our brain imposes its dynamics on everything we make--from concepts about the universe to techniques used to test or represent these concepts, from chaos to order. Process morphs connect us with everything we create and are influenced by. Metaphorming is a principal means of exploring the world, relating information from one discipline to another, connecting potentially all sources and forms of information. Metaphorms are expressions of nature's unity.

Science also uses metaphorms. In Bohm's causal interpretation of QM, we inhabit an ocean of "active information"--the ever-flowing, ever-changing pattern of the meaning of life itself. The entire inner and outer environment includes the whole field of electromagnetic information, which patterns our electronic bodies. But we also are subject to the patterning effects of the whole of existence, a global pool of information, a pool of being, which is paradoxically rooted in non-existence.

Physicists, artists and alchemists are metaphorming when they create words or images for describing novel relationships or creative visualization. Visual metaphorms, in particular, inspire hypotheses, and vice versa. Alchemists, scientists and artists take two facts or experiences that seem separated, and find a likeness in them, and create a unity by showing the likeness.

All science-art is the search for unity in hidden likenesses. Sometimes they reveal themselves in synchronicities. Synchronicity is a bubbling up of ever-fresh forms, patterns, and connections that transcend all boundaries between mind and matter, the physical and the spiritual.

Alchemical Essays by Dr. Ross Mack – Review for Alchemy Journal

Review of ALCHEMICAL ESSAYS:
The Living Process of Alchemy
Iona Miller, 1-1-09

“The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.” ~ Opticks, Sir Isaac Newton

“Ultimately, the Stone should be considered a catalyst to instruct the body code to overcome its inherited weakness and rebuild a better, stronger vital metabolism that is not just self-repairing, but building to an optimal state of health. . .The Stone has the seed of all DNA in an archetypal form and gives the correct, original instructions to the potential new cells. This enables generations of mutation/adaptation of the organism to self-correct.” ~ Dr. Ross Mack


In ALCHEMICAL ESSAYS (Salamander & Sons, 2008), Dr. Ross Mack distills the quintessence of the alchemical art creating a Meta-Syn of philosophers for our time. It can be difficult in such an esoteric subject to transcend language barriers and satisfy both the novice and the accomplished practitioner. But he has done just that in this tastefully-illustrated, well-crafted volume, weaving a tapestry of depth and richness with subject matter elements and process-oriented guidelines. The qualitative Mercury, Sulphur and Salt presented herein make a luminous mixture.

Dr. Mack will cut 20 years off your learning process, raise your aspirations, sooth your troubled soul, and ground your practice in an expanded notion of our ancient art, which is a secret therapy, as well. One reading may lead you to ponder, while another brings a “Eureka” moment, and still another sparks an obsessive quest. Alchemical Essays inspires one to truly seize the noble fruit. He will expand your synergetic consciousness of the heart of the Art and the secret Heart of Nature.

Dr. Mack’s passionate work is a balm for both the experimental and spiritual practitioner. This nonlinear book can be reread in fractal reiterations in its entirety or section by section over a period of years for inspiration on higher octaves. Its symbolism stimulates us at an unconscious level. We all know that revelations have their own mysterious way of emerging once the aspirant and the time are ripe. If you have the drive, Dr. Mack’s directions will give you traction.

The aesthetic approach of art is as inseparable from alchemy as its experimental nature. Alchemy is the soulful language of transformation and transmutation, a way of life rooted in eternal cycles. It is a personal experience of the Laws of Nature that invites the materialization of Wisdom. Energy is matter in volatile form and the natural mechanism of creation. Matter and mankind pass through archetypal transitional states. Alchemy amplifies this process, changing our fundamental psychophysical makeup. Even our failures have value.

Alchemy itself is a prescription for the Nigredo depression, the modern malaise of dark futures and consumer conformity. It defines a perennial frontier where eccentricity elbows out enough room to thrive in unconventional ways of thinking, acting and being, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Alchemy leads us to experiment, break boundaries and transcend categories, including those of science, art and belief. Intuitively knowing more than we know we know, some navigational part of ourselves functions as Mercurial guide.

This magical art connects private consciousness with the unified global field of awareness. The world is animated and all things are interconnected. The spiritual technology of today’s alchemy offsets the alienating effects of modern technology and helps create a totally new environment in the same sense that great art does – a development in the pattern of human experience. Alchemical media widens our experiential field. It offers the perennial promise of rebirth at an enhanced level of functional adaptability.

If you are looking for “Trade Secrets,” you will find many here whose brilliant articulation only come through a lifetime of effort. Mack shares his qualitative perspective on the alchemical memes of our day, including Ormus, life extension, resonance, frequency, fields, dark matter and energy, the ether, energy, DNA, cyclic transformation and the true nature of the Stone. You will also find a deep respect for the living powers of alchemy and an indispensable love of Anima Mundi as the ultimate Soror Mystica.

Imagine, instead of buying a cure at the store that we actually collect all the raw materials required from the ground up, create and assemble our own equipment, make our own chemical ingredients according to the old ways, and draw our own experimental conclusions. The authentic practice of alchemical art requires all that of us, and more. It requires we consciously open ourselves to the Universe and its expansive manifestation mirrored within ourselves. It makes psyche matter.

Mack describes the Minor and Major work in all the alchemical traditions, including Hermetic, Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Islamic. He gives a thorough treatment of Spagyrics and Ayurvedic craft. But this is no dry history, nor list of symbols, nor retelling of parables or outworn myths. His philosophical flights range from the subtleties of New Physics, (such as light, time, superconductors, and Bose-Einstein Condensate), to the practicalities of creating and perfecting one’s lab apparatus. He distinguishes internal, spiritual and plant alchemy, describing various methodology and applications.

It’s not easy to write such hyperdimensional text, even though this form of deep coding was the forte of the alchemists of history. Precisely what separates the modern alchemist from science is a deep and abiding desire for Nature’s enigmatic truths, including emotional, philosophical and spiritual meaning. Unique aspects are part of our personal journey toward individuation, but the operations of alchemy describe the transpersonal milestones we share in the progress of our Great Work. Ultimately, we make the grand experiment on ourselves.

Both artists and alchemists claim a variety of ways of proceeding with their work. The product of each endeavor is an expression of one’s intentional creative effort. Ultimately, there is no recipe for the creative process, which requires the cooperation of the universe to achieve that flow state, but there are means available to foster certain outcomes. Your next correct choice emerges from strengthening your experiential connection to creative source.

Dr. Mack has chosen a stunning menu of alchemical fare that invites the reader not simply to read the recipe but to heartily relish the dish – your own deliciously “cooked” self. These essays cover a select array of notions that enfold the essential aspects of alchemical theory and practice.

Happily, this is a fluid articulation, without the obfuscation of dated language in a presentation that is perhaps one of the best contemporary works of its type. In short, Dr. Mack’s fluent style makes enjoyable reading that speaks to us on the level we are ready to receive, helping us see the invisible world. As base metals are turned into gold, our soul is regenerated. Anyone can attempt to recount the history of alchemy, but it takes a mature practitioner to shed new light on the the subject.


Iona Miller, a writer, hypnotherapist and artist, is co-author of THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (Phanes, 1994), and moderates “Alchemy: the Royal Art” at alchemical.tribe.net/ . A selection of her alchemical essays can be found at spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com

Being-in-Soul:
A Post-postmodern Approach to Alchemical Art

“Nothing is possible without love, not even the processes of alchemy, for love puts one in a mood to risk everything and not to withhold elements.”
--C.G. Jung

By Iona Miller

ART MANIFESTO 2009
“Psyche cannot be totally different from matter, for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines.” --Carl Jung, AION

“To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the soul of the world and its objects…From this point of view, the psychic reality of the world’s soul becomes available from the images. There is no way to separate our soul from the souls of others – and by “others” I mean people as well as everything that we can consider an environment. It is, thus no longer possible to work with the classical notion of individuation and its rhetoric of “my travel,” “my process,” “my journeys,” the blind frenetic pursuit of an inner Self, and to ignore the individuation of the soul of the world and its objects. The care of the soul does not necessarily mean introversion or denying the reality of the world, its substance and objects. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self, and exclude the world.”
--Marcus Quintaes on James Hillman’s Polemics in Archetypal Psychologies (Marlan, 2008)


Post-Postmodern Alchemy

The topic of ancient and medieval alchemy was, arguably, rescued from obscurity largely through the efforts of C. G. Jung and a few others. Jung gleaned psychological illumination from alchemy and other spiritual technologies. As modern alchemists we can build our lived understanding of alchemy with psychological insights as well as experimental work.

The structure of our inquiry is malleable. Whether there is point or purpose to life, alchemy is an organic way of amplifying meaning and giving value to life. You create it and the universe responds. You and the cosmos resonate as One, making psyche matter.

Alchemy describes, demonstrates and illustrates the participatory field as central to the conscious condition in nature. As alchemists we intentionally engage the participatory field of consciousness to perform the Opus, or Great Work. The concept of this field allows us to redefine consciousness. Intentionally interacting with the experiential process allows us to transform consciousness.

As exemplified in alchemy's prime directive, "Solve et Coagula," the raw material of self and world is deconstructed to facilitate emergent self-organization at a higher level. This is nature's way, as chaos theory has shown us. Nature is a dynamical balance of order and chaos. The edge of chaos is the point of emergence for new behaviors, enhanced capacities and transformed identity.

The edge of chaos, where critical systems adapt and evolve, is the most effective place to be. Alchemy challenges us to remain at the evolutionary edge, mutable to the transformative process. The alchemical perspective is not merely deconstructionist, but paradoxically regenerative -- cyclically regenerative. In this sense, alchemy is post-postmodern though it radically predates that philosophy.

There is theory and practice in science, and two applications in alchemy -- spiritual alchemy and experimental alchemy involving literal lab work. Spiritual alchemy is a theophanic metaphysics, revealing a sacred presence within its process. You can work either the spiritual or practical method separately or both in concert. Like mystics of all paths who have gone before, we make the experiment on ourselves. Our potential exceeds what our conscious awareness alone could ever make of us. There is an autonomous domain of soul.

Jungian, Archetypal, Imaginal and Transpersonal psychology deal clearly in contemporary language with the same process and mystical philosophy we find in alchemy. Archetypal or Imaginal psychology is a relativistic, polytheistic orientation rather than monotheistic. It recognizes multiple points of view in the latent infinity of psyche. To be an alchemist requires learning the language of alchemy, becoming conversant in its terms and operations. But these are concepts and metaphors until they are grounded with practice, planted in the earth (coagulatio).

Regenerative Medicine

Soul based therapies claim imagination and images as primary concerns, describing a nonlinear dynamic process of being-in-anima. Archetypes are self-similar, acting like cyclic and strange attractors of the soul field. Their fractal-like reiterations perturb us at every functional level of being. They are the focal points of psyche held in subtle webs of entangled interaction.

Alchemy appeals to those who wish to pro-actively go beyond conventional boundaries, without being self-defeating or self-destructive. Cultivating relationships with archetypes make us eccentric and therefore individualistic. Madness is a relative term that also means a high degree of intellectual independence. Alchemy also represents a rebirth of artistic responsbility, honoring craft, proficiency and individual initiative. The truly creative are always reinventing themselves and can not help but follow their uniqueness.

Psychological life has a metaphoric and phenomenological character expressed in images. Archetypal images impact us in multidimensional ways. In Vol. 9 of his CW, Jung said, "That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to attract, to fascinate and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation." We learn as much from our experimental failures as successes. That is how we find our creative edge.

As we move within the transformative elements of alchemy we radically switch perspectives. By seeing through and mirroring the fractal elements of alchemy we learn to recognize the nigredo, the albedo, the rubedo and coniunctio when they arise. We get a feel for the Solar and Lunar, the Mercurial, the Venusian, Martian and Saturnian energies and what feelings and images come with them. We see through the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual synchronicities the outer world presents that mirror our inner lives. The uncanny and extraordinary becomes familiar, more expected than not.

There are ancient elements at work in our psychic lives. Astrological, kabbalistic, metallurgical and even chemical elements are metaphorical, archetypal, symbolic forces operating in a holistic system. Imaginal psychology draws on the sacred potentials of alchemy, spiritual traditions, somatic practices, creative arts, mythology, indigenous wisdom, humor, deep ecology, literary and poetic imagination. The opus of soul work includes mystical philosophy, cultural history, and social critique.

More than academic commentary, alchemy is an applied art of affinities, a revelatory 'psience' with self (body-spirit) as laboratory. The aim of psychophysical renovation is regeneration of nature and restoration of youth. Healing, rejuvenation and longevity are attributed to the Elixir, the liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone. The creative force of the divine is 'living water.'

The body's energies are used for transformation. The true elixir of illumination is the body's own DMT, the spirit molecule, stimulated from the pineal gland by meditation. But the ultimate alchemical regeneration is a marriage of heaven and earth that builds a vehicle for consciousness after death -- the incorruptible Diamond Body.

The nature of embodiment is biophotonic light. This lightbody embodies the highest aspirations and the attainment of immortality. Withdrawn from becoming, the natural mind abides unmoved in the radiance of primordial awareness. We can call this transubstantiation Homo Lumen. (Miller, Photonic Human)

Soul Healing

Image is a direct expression of soul. Alchemical images articulate a different reality of soul, that is neither mind nor matter -- imaginative consciousness. The being of nature is Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. Mind and heart, sensuality and aesthetics flow from this root of psyche as imagination -- the primary element and mode of experience. Psyche continuously creates and pours forth emergent images that matter. Body is the physical form of spirit, the somatic source of imagery that helps us grow spiritually and creatively.

Mythic events burst through the status quo. Myth forces a certain "truth." We cannot escape myth. Myth reveals the character of reality yet it is not of this realm. Myth must be uncovered. It is a primal active force in the world and the missing dimension in the dynamic interplay of politics. Myth is a common unifying principle. Myth permeates our understanding of our past, present and potential.

Myth is a conceptual schemata embodying core metaphysical concepts and moral wisdom. Myths do cultural work. All societies live by myths. In myth-building any words or symbols can be modified from their original meanings to suit their new roles in a matrix of varied forms. The material world has a mythic nature with its dangers and ambiguous promise. Myth creates the vision of a future perfect world. We are largely unconscious of mythic operation and affects.

Thus, alchemy, the art of understanding nature and our own nature, is a way to mirror and care for the soul with chemical, psychophysical, mythical, and cosmological aspects. Soul as center of our inquiry and practice speaks to us meaningfully through the imagery of alchemy, the wisdom of the heart, through which we remember our naked connection to the cycles of nature and rhythms of the Earth. The universal couple is the ever-passionate Alchemist and seductive Soror Mystica, Anima Mundi revealing herself. Image is the esoteric lover, the intimate other that offers us healing and gives us meaning.

The Alchemical Field

Alchemy is a poetic process of active imagination in which we can act and suffer in a creative way. Discovery excites us. Aesthetic response is an awakening that drives us. To pursue alchemy, we must love it, utterly. Vulnerability opens us to breakthrough that fosters commitment. We surrender our hearts to the creative process that moves us into liberation. We respond to the impetus to realize our full potential. Thus, alchemy is an aesthetic education that leads us beyond normalcy into our gifts and talents. As such, it is a compassionate act of self-care.

Reality is in-formed by soul's metaphorical weave of mythical narrative. Soul (anima) is an active intelligence that forms or plots our fates. Being-in-Anima (esse in anima) is to be ensouled. Soma Sophia, the Body of Wisdom is inherent dwelling within the body of Anima Mundi.

Psyche is immersed in imagination, metaphor, poetry and myth, including scientific and spiritual technologies. Fantasy deliteralizes the illusory concreteness of matter. Images and fantasy are the carriers of meaning. The language of alchemy provides archetypes for the world as it is phenomenologically constructed. Inspiration replenishes the world, the wasteland of the nigredo.

Alchemy is a Way of being in soul with its own common language that anchors the narrative of each alchemist's life. We are deepened through the instruction of these inherited cultural symbols. Alchemy is a language of the soul, a matrix of transformation that coordinates our efforts. It allows us to play with ideas about the nature of reality and our own spiritual and practical nature. Alchemy configures our soul, aligning us with a deeper life. The identity of our story is welded to the identity of our character.

Arcane Meaning

There is a unity of existence underlying psyche and matter, mind and body. We live life in terms of our story. We construct a reality accessible only through that alchemical language of earthiness and the transcendental, the mundane and the intangible. Alchemical metaphors appear spontaneously in the psyches of all individuals, largely unnoticed. But alchemy naturally includes work with dark matter and energy. It is this darkness that makes it the occult pursuit of Light.

We can consciously choose to notice and see through alchemical metaphors forming an intentionality. Do we choose alchemy or does it somehow choose us? Some are moved toward alchemy as something to live in and through, a way for soul to find itself in life, to find the multidimensionality of the "one that is many." A momentary insight can capture a lifetime of experiences.

Pondering the burning questions of life leads to self expression that functions as a reciprocal feedback loop between the sacred and profane. We penetrate the Mystery even as the dynamic impulse penetrates us. This inspiration is why we make art and explore our spirituality. Intentionality is contemplative focus (meditatio) which opens an inner dialogue with the cosmos.

Our works lead toward bliss when they are life-changing. We change the context of our lives. Raising the alchemical heat increases the intensity of being. It enables us to drill a hole to the very center of ourselves, following the injunction VITRIOL: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. ("Visit the Interior Parts of the Earth; By Rectification Thou Shalt Find the Hidden Stone.") This is the true meta-syn, the elixir of life.

Choosing alchemy as an artful lifestyle transmutes chance into fate. We live life in terms of our alchemical story which makes meaning possible. Literal events become metaphorical enactments, deepening events into meaningful experiences with poetic suggestion. Alchemy is a cosmological myth ("As Above, So Below") that reunites us with the sacred, with the divine. We are involved with the world in a new way, no longer inhibited by reductionistic culture. The Philosopher's Stone is a non-dual state of consciousness.

Jung felt that art is a healing response to collective cultural norms. The alchemical art connects the individual psyche to esoteric history and underground currents of occulture. Alchemy's ideas are tools that help us animate the literal and superficial by moving us immediately beyond literal objectivities into the mythic perspective of ambiguity, multiplicity and inherent meaning. The alchemical art lies in inducing the synchronistic unification of psyche and matter as a numinous reality. It is a resurrection of spirit in the realm of matter that raises consciousness by reframing our personal history.

Aesthetic Arrest

Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception. That flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.

We dissolve in the mysterious ground of being, the sublime wellspring of creativity. The mind goes still as primal awareness expands into wholeness. Something without physical form shines forth from the hidden world in that very moment. These luminous experiences, true works of art, drive us onward in the Quest. We are struck with divine inspiration and the passion to see it through to completion. Sensuous cognition of beauty is a revelation, an astonishment that captivates our rapt attention.

Aesthetic arrest blows apart the illusory differences between the sacred and the profane. We are inspired in the a-ha moment, utterly dissolved in the momentary ego-death of its solutio that tears asunder illusory nature. This aesthetic experience is an act of surrender that is an epiphany. It makes us gasp for air and sparks a cascade of pleasure.

We become a part of the truth we seek at the paradox of participation. The alchemist lives at this paradox. The greening of the wasteland restores artistic expression. Voegelin calls each participant in therapeutic process and practice a simultaneous part and whole of a reality of consciousness like a marriage, polity, or cosmos. Alchemy speaks of the Royal Marriage, or paradoxical cosmic conjunction (coniunctio) of opposites.

We are directly connected to beauty and wholeness. We know what it means to exist rooted in the mysterious creative ground of being. As artists we are mythmakers, dreaming the alchemical dream onward. Myth is transparent to transcendent process in the Now-Here. In sublimatio we reach escape velocity. In aesthetic arrest, the phenomenal field disappears as we come to our own Zero Point. Any artistic expression produced by this personal experience is likely to lead others to their own, as the alchemists have led us with their secret fire.

Soul is made by narrating events in terms of myth, the metaphoric and symbolic dimensions of our experience. Poetics brings the archetypal into participation with the mundane by tending the currents of life. The alchemist in us is an imaginative variation of our mundane character through which some of us come to recognize our life story. Our enlivened art speaks from and to our depths. Alchemy is a direct way of knowing -- experience-based knowledge -- a gnosis.

Jung Love

Jung was enamored with alchemy -- the spiritual impulse, hidden wisdom and experiential matrix he found there. Jung was self-initiated by his own mercurial occult spirit. Occult practice was at the core of Jug's theory, clinical practice and inner experience. By revitalizing alchemy he participated in its mysteries. Occult ideas were circulating widely among Central European intellectuals before World War II and they captured Jung's imagination.

Following an influential dream, Jung collected an entire library of alchemical works. He compiled alchemy’s universal truths in several of his works including Psychology and Alchemy, Alchemical Studies, Mysterium Coniunctionis, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Aion, and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.

Jung codified the encrypted language of alchemy in terms of our human transformation process, including irrational consciousness. Yet, Jung’s is not the only interpretation of those elements, including the Quest and the Great Work. While initially we might learn about symbols, we have to learn how to work with them, to work within them since they contain us, rather than being contained within ourselves. The alchemist is a living symbol, an ensouled personification of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone.

Jung’s second-generation followers adhered fairly strictly to his monist view of alchemy. Highlights of this period include now classic works by Marie-Louse von Franz and Edward Edinger. Edinger gave us Ego and Archetype plus Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. The works of von Franz include Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy; An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.

Other Jungian contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance. Another Jungian contribution is Mircea Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. Their work was referenced and paralleled by contemporary alchemy scholars like Frater Albertus, Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, Richard Grossinger, David Fidler, Adam McLean and other modern commentators.

Revisioning the Psyche

Moving beyond Jung's popularized but static definitions, 3rd generation psychotherapeutic practitioners were far more innovative than preservationist. They overthrew Jung's old order with new hermeneutic understanding beyond the progressive, heroic Self, which is a concept not an image. In this they were true to the vital and reflective Mercurial Spirit.

Revisioning the whole mindscape, James Hillman created a less heroic post-Jungian psychology first called Archetypal Psychology and later Imaginal Psychology. It freed the psyche from what had become a conservative fundamentalism with a party line and right and wrong interpretations. It brought back living process and moved interest out of the containment of the cloistered therapy room into the living, breathing World-at-Large by reframing the psyche and deliteralizing concrete reality.

Once a person has focused intention a break with the form of ritual can lead right to its essence. A similar process is happening in the practice of alchemy, which has come to include more than scholar/practitioners and laboratory experimentalists. Globally, new subcultures are engaging in spagyrics, fire circles, artistic metallurgy, social networks, art shows and performance as well as other volatile tranformative practices, which have escaped the retort into the world. Alchemists no longer have to wok in isolation. But alchemy is no psycho-spiritual franchise, but a deeply individual process.

Alchemy's process-oriented spirituality has come down to earth. As depth psychology has drawn from the spring of alchemy, so too can we gain the wisdom of our art from psychological practice. Their common language allows us to break free of conventional constraints on our thought, experience and behaviors to enter the mythic dimension in new expressive ways.

We do so as soon as we recognize the poetic element behind identifying ourselves as alchemists and what that means in the narrative of our life stories. Alchemy is the kind of language we employ describing the intimate engagement between psyche and matter. It is the original mindbody medicine.

The Way of Alchemy

Alchemy is not just a 17th century sacred cow, embodied only in hoary texts, enigmatic laboratory procedures, and static pictures. Soul is made in the fractal reiteration of the deepening of experience – all experience – which molds character (narrative identity) with mythologizing. Alchemy is one of these dynamic means of moving beyond deconstruction into soul-making – a phenomenological approach.

Alchemy is a creative encounter with chaos and a struggle to understand the nature of healing. Chaos is the Universal Solvent. Healing springs from deep within. All apparent structure is hidden in chaos, and in chaos there are hidden forms. As we deconstruct our fictional selves, we find that deep within there is a primordial consciousness of pure Being. Connection with this wellspring is the Source of life and creativity. Chaos is the crucible of creation. Through alchemy, we move deeper into the images, and then become them, rather than merely interacting with them.

Alchemy, like therapy, is a practical Way of making life into a flowing story, and that story is necessarily illustrated to convey what cannot be said in words, to include what happens in the gaps in consciousness. The alchemy of by-gone centuries is as inappropriate today as obsolete science. Naturally, there is value there but we don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of its extant literature to apply its wisdom and gain its treasure.

Post-postmodern alchemy has broken the retort and escaped into the world at large, into bigger stories. We craft a personal narrative by recognizing and reiterating mythic claims, metaphorical enactments through reflective speculation, experimentation, projection, meditation, dream, image and fantasy. Reflection deepens into experience and expression through artful means of what never happens but always is.

Soul is an active intelligence because myth leads to practical moves. Soul is made through suffering the process and by taking up myth as a poetic perspective – a dramatic complexity of multiple metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of experience. In this sense, alchemy cannot be separated from life. The narration is one of life’s possibilities, of our alternative selves as realizable potential, including discordant elements, into meaningful story lived in and through the alchemical process.

If we are truly Mercurial, we oscillate in our thoughts, are enigmatic in our language, inconsistent with ideas, and resistant to any fixed definitions or propositions. Perhaps only archetypal imagination serves this mercurial nature. It is explored and embodied best through artistic expression of archetypal images, making the universal particular and moving archaic symbolism into the immediate present, rather than relying exclusively on stale retrievals and intellectual commentary.

Soul-Making

What soul does is make fantasy images. Alchemy is a psychological metaphysics, a worldview that takes the soul further into mythopoiesis, producing images, events, and phenomena. Analysis and discourse (deductive and inductive reasoning) merely turns the libido into a narcissistic reflection of itself, when it could be embodied or manifested, even beyond self-evident intuition.

Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.”

Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Breaking our containment in the ancient practices through artful means releases libido into the world, into the drive, which loves the world, even into erotic desire for anima mundi.

Meditatio

There is no more important aspect than brain chemistry for alchemy. Meditation and contemplation are a crucial part of the attention-focusing alchemical process. We can meditate with or without an object of contemplation, freeing our minds from its own content to enjoy the natural mind. We "reboot" ourselves from this primordial awareness, the Source and Zero-Point of consciousness.

Current research in meditation and neurotheology has shown tangible psychophysical benefits from meditation. Neurotheology is the biological basis of spirituality (Miller, 2008). Both alpha and theta brainwaves facilitate healing and benefit higher-order cognitive functions. When we phase lock at these frequencies, we also phase-lock with the resonant frequencies of the Earth (Shumann's Resonances, Miller, 2004).

The latest research shows significantly larger grey matter volumes in the right frontal cortex, right thalamus, left interior temporal gyrus and right hippocampus of meditators. Emotional regulation and response control improve with mindful behavior. Brain resonance CDs (binaural beat technology) can facilitate alpha and theta by driving the brain toward cascades of this harmonious response, removing any doubt of achieving the desired conditions.

Once you know the brain neurology and the resonant nature of the mindbody connection, you can make up your own mind about your mystical or anomalous experiences. It is our evolutionary legacy; we are the product of our environment and precisely tuned to it. The holistic nature of the body reflects the Nature of the Cosmos; our nature is not separate from Nature. There is great value in discipline, practice, and service which exercises the full spectrum of our human potential.

Wholly Daze

In creativity and meditation we seek in a fully conscious way, willfully cooperating and facilitating the process not only of connecting with God, but experiencing oneself in the process of “becoming” god. The ego no longer perceives itself as a separate expression of consciousness, but as the same essence as All.

Of course, we can never fully complete that process. No one can fully embody God, but we can move toward it. The succession of conscious states is toward higher integration, not toward lower dissociation. The process of integration in growth toward positive values has the complementary virtues of being obvious in fact and transcendental in implications. It means we evolve from reactive creatures into an integrated part of the spiritual dimension.

The task of meditation is essentially letting the body fall as deeply asleep as possible while the mind remains focused. In fact, if it were not for the opposite function’s presence, even in the mystical state, we would fall asleep. The REM or dream state is similar: there is extreme cerebral excitation, even though muscular activity is inhibited. Hemispheric synchronization producing long, slow alpha and theta brainwaves with high amplitude is another factor. The deeper the meditation, the slower and stronger the waves.

The energy “rush” of meditation comes when either the arousal or quiescent state “spills over” into stimulating its complementary system. When both parts of the autonomic nervous system go online simultaneously, the limbic system goes wild with emotion, absorption and oceanic bliss. This is reflected in the gender based, male-female imagery of the kundalini serpent power and the yin and yang of the Tao.

When both systems go into maximal discharge, this neurochemical flux is subjectively perceived as Absolute Unity of Being, boundlessness, timelessness, and sacredness. Our relationship to humans, earth, and cosmos is one of a relationship to the Other. Our first formative influence is the experience of empathy. And empathy needs a face. If we find that face in our personal experience of God, who shall say nay? Beyond that lies only the yawning infinity of the Void.

Meditation may modulate pineal activity, eliciting a standing wave through resonance effects that affects other brain centers with both chemical and electromagnetic coordination. Resonance can be induced in the pineal using electric, magnetic, or sound energy. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain. This may result in a chain of synergetic activity resulting in the production and release of naturally-produced hallucinogenic compounds.

Neurotransmitters bridge the mindbody gap. They are the chemicals which account for the transmission of signals from one neuron to the next across synapses. They can motivate or sedate, excite or calm us. Some brain chemicals are part of the key to our spirituality. Brain function is implicated in openness to spiritual experience from spiritual acceptance to the supernatural. An understanding of neurological processes helps you evaluate your subjective experiences.

Embodying the Vision

Alchemy cannot be a closed system of static dogmatic thoughts. It is a way of reimagining and creating metaphors from different points of view or narratives that open the field of infinite meanings. Each reiteration creates new networks, new meaning, new insights, embodiments, metamorphosis and transformation.

Participating in this process means mythologizing our own chaotic character, even pathologizing. Depth psychology tells us if we don't let in the Trickster and other gods, they can become physical or mental diseases. Yet if we become ill, we should not blame ourselves with "New Age guilt."

It is a truism in therapy that art expression clarifies and releases emotional flow. The classical alchemists nearly always illustrated their works, making universal pictures with themselves as point of reference. Alchemy would be a dry discourse without its images, without the discipline of images that leads to flow, to solutio.

Alchemy begins and ends in the quest for eternal life. It is a spiritual technology of rebirth using natural methods that in their effect transcend nature by amplifying that which is immortal within us. It does not exist in nature but must be prepared by Art. Art is a form of manifesting, making and objectifying the world - spiritual physics.

Artists and mystics are aware of their own internal space and thus able to enter it, playing the mindbody like a musical instrument. Looking inside, they see the true nature of reality and can express that literally and symbolically. We all possess the creative potential. All creative acts are a marriage of spirit and matter, reaching down into the body as the source of our essential being and becoming.

Today, we might describe this resonance as accessing energy that regenerates the mindbody. Healing is an aspect of creativity; nature is within and without us. The Magus does not dominate reality but develops embodied psychophysical equilibrium, clarity, wisdom and compassion.

Creative work originates in the body and is projected out into the world. The projections are then internalized into awareness. The bodymind of the artist is an alchemical vessel containing the creative flux during the process of transformation. Awareness and consciousness form a continuous alchemical movement. The creative gold is generated and embodied in the alembic of the mindbody.

The mindbody is the same substance as the Cosmos and contains and reveals its mysteries. Meditation masters speak of an inner Light that pervades the physical and energy bodies. Now science investigates it as biophotons. Through quantum physics we can watch that matter/energy/information devolve back into the unstructured void from which potential emanates.

Mystics have often equated this pervasive Light/Sound with primordial Consciousness and the source of life as well as matter. Quantum bioholography shows the DNA literally produces coherent light, which transduces to sound that directs the formative processes of life. Radiant energy is radiant energy. Whether we look outside into our environment or inside into ourselves we find primordial Light.

Alchemy reduces all to the first state, the ground state of being - original experience that is timeless, infinite. The classical Void, the quantum vacuum is a carrier of information. The energy body or the field body entangles us with the negentropic potential of the zero-point field. Radiant light literally emerges from this mystic void. Primordial structuring processes are common to both psyche and matter, working in the gap or empty interval between intention and action.

So, alchemy refines the way the mindbody generates and processes inherent light as medicine. It refines the aspirant's ability for tapping and amplifying Medicine Light. This primordial state is the luminous ground of our being, hidden deep in the heart of things.

All other goals are subordinate to this prime directive which includes meditative techniques for continuing consciousness after death. This Philosopher's Stone is also the Universal Medicine, the regenerative Elixir of Life. The greatest mystery is the LIFE IN DEATH: we don't die but continue in transcendent form.

This is the virtual secret of man and nature. The human body is the athenor that contains the fire and the First and Last Matter which are "One" with the vessel of transformation. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone.

“It was a mineral substance, dense and opaque; it was melted and became transparent glass and then became much finer glass. And then this later had been subject for the first time to fusion and projection of the white Elixir, it became incandescent crystal. It was fused a second time and the Elixir was projected on it; it became diamond. Place it on the anvil, strike it with a hammer, it will dent the anvil and the hammer but it will not break.

Strike it with a piece of lead and it will break into cubiform fragments. That is the true sign that it really is diamond, but if it has become diamond it is also a sign that the diamond was hidden int he essential depths of the mineral substance, because, in fact, the composition of the later is the result of two well-known principles, mercury and sulphur, according to what is established in physics.

And this diamond, separated from the crystal, this crystal separated from the glass, this glass separated from this mineral opacity, is homologous to the ‘Resurrection Body’ of the faithful believer in the Paradise of the Future Aeon (that is o say jism B, the essential archetypal body, the corpus supra coeleste, the ‘diamond body’)”

--Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa’i (d. 1241/1826) (excerpt from Article IX, Henry Corbin’s Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth)
 
REFERENCES

Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Marlan, Stanton, Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in Honor of James Hillman, Spring Journal Books, New Orleans, 2008.
Miller, Iona, THE DIAMOND BODY: A Solid State Mandala - An Alchemical View of the Philosopher's Stone, O.A.K., 1984. http://zero-point.tripod.com/diamondbody/dbodytoc.html

Miller, Iona, "SOMA PINOLINE: Blinded By the DMT Light," 2006 http://www.popocculture.com/50/soma-pinoline-blinded-by-the-light
Miller, Iona, "Neurotheology" 2008; http://neurotheology.50megs.com/
Miller, Iona, "Schumann Resonances and Human Psychobiology," 2004, http://biophysics.50megs.com/guest_book.html
Miller, Iona; “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” Chaosophy ’93, 1992. www.asklepia.org/chaosophy...ophy3.html

Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (based on The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago, 1994. http://the-modern-alchemist.iwarp.com

Miller, Iona. Photonic Human, 2006 http://photonichuman.50megs.com/
Miller, Iona; “Introduction to Alchemy 101,” 1985. spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com/rich....html

Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.

_____________________________________________________________________

ALCHEMY BOOKS:

Aion: Research Into the Phenomenology of the Self,
C.G. Jung Collected Works
A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Obed S. Johnson
Alchemical Active Imagination, M-L Von Franz
Alchemical Mandala, Adam McLean
Alchemical Medicine, Paracelsus
Alchemical Studies, C.G. Jung
Alchemical Symbols and Secret Aphabets, C.J.S. Thompson
Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger
Alchemist's Handbook, Frater Albertus
Alchemy, Franz Hartmann
Alchemy, Child of Greek Philosophy, Arthur J. Hopkins
Alchemy, the Secret Art, Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola
Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger
Archidoxes of Magic, Paracelsus
Atalanta Fugiens, Joscelyn Godwin, trans.
Aurora of the Philosophers, Paracelsus
Azoth or the Star in the East, A.E. Waite
Coelum Philosophorum, Paracelsus
Collectanea Chemica, Philalethes
Concerning the Alchemical Degrees, Grades & Compositions, Paracelsus
Concerning the Spirits of the Planets, Paracelsus
Cosmic Alchemy, C.C. Zain
Crowning of Nature, Adam McLean
Elixir of Enlightenment, A.H. Almas
Forge and the Crucible, Eliade
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Betty Dobbs
Goethe: the Alchemist, Ronald Gray
Golden Game, Klossowski de Rola
Grail Legend, Jung & Von Franz
Hermetic Tradition, Julius Evola
Internal Alchemy: the Natural Way to Immortality, Master Hua-Ching Ni
Jewish Alchemists, Raphael Patai
Jung on Alchemy, Nathan Schwartz-Salant
Mirror of Alchymy, Roger Bacon
Mystery of the Coniunctio, Edward F. Edinger
Orders of the Great Work: Alchemy, M.P. Hall
Origin and Structure of the Cosmos, Robert Fludd
Papers Toward Radical Metaphysics: Alchemy, Charles Ponce
Paracelsus: Selected Writings, foreword by Jung; N. Guterman (Tr.)
Philosopher's Stone, Michio Kushi
Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy, M. Junius
Preparation of the Sophic Mercury, Philalethes
Psychology and Alchemy, Jung
Quest for the Red Sulphur: the Life of Ibn' Arabi, Claude Addas
Robert Fludd, Joscelyn Godwin
Rosary of the Philosophers, Adam McLean
Science of Alchemy, William W. Westcott
Secret Tradition in Alchemy, A.E. Waite
Secrets of John Dee, James Gordon
Spiritual Alchemy, Mikhael Omraam
Splendor Solis, Godwin, McLean
Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic, Chang Po-tuan, Thomas Cleary (Tr.)

ARCHETYPAL IMAGINATION in SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY:
The Art of Alchemy in Archetype, Imagination and Soul

By Iona Miller, 2009
“Psyche cannot be totally different from matter, for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines.” --Carl Jung, AION

“To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the soul of the world and its objects…From this point of view, the psychic reality of the world’s soul becomes available from the images. There is no way to separate our soul from the souls of others – and by “others” I mean people as well as everything that we can consider an environment. It is, thus no longer possible to work with the classical notion of individuation and its rhetoric of “my travel,” “my process,” “my journeys,” the blind frenetic pursuit of an inner Self, and to ignore the individuation of the soul of the world and its objects. The care of the soul does not necessarily mean introversion or denying the reality of the world, its substance and objects. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self, and exclude the world.”  --Marcus Quintaes on James Hillman’s Polemics in Archetypal Psychologies (Marlan, 2008)


Post-Postmodern Alchemy

The topic of ancient and medieval alchemy was rescued from obscurity largely through the efforts of C. G. Jung. Following an influential dream, he collected an entire library of alchemical works. He compiled alchemy’s universal truths in several of his works including Psychology and Alchemy, Alchemical Studies, Mysterium Coniunctionis, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.

Jung codified the encrypted language of alchemy in terms of our human transformation process, including irrational consciousness. Yet, Jung’s is not the only interpretation of those elements, including the Quest and the Great Work. While initially we might learn about symbols, we have to learn how to work with them, to work within them since they contain us, rather than being contained within ourselves. The alchemist is a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone.

In the Following Treatise We shall Discourse on the Origin of the Stone of the Philosophers and the Art How to Produce It.

The Philosopher’s Stone is produced by means of the Greening and Growing Nature.

HALI the Philosopher, says thereof: “This Stone rises in growing, greening things’. Wherefore when the Green is reduced to its former nature whereby things sprout and come forth in ordained time, it must be decocted and putrefied in the way of our secret art. That by Art may be aided, what nature decocts and putrefies, until she gives it, in due time, the proper form, and our Art but adapts and prepares the matter as becomes Nature, for such work, and such work provides also, with premeditated Wisdom, a suitable vessel.

For Art does not undertake to produce Gold and Silver, anew, as it cannot endow matter with its first origin, nor is it necessary to search our Art in places and caverns of the earth, another way to work and with different intention from Nature, therefore does Art also use different tools and instruments.

For that reason can Art produce extraordinary things out of the aforesaid natural beginnings such as Nature of herself would never be able to create. For unaided Nature does not produce things whereby imperfect metals can in a moment be made perfect, but by the secrets of Our Art this can be done. ~Splendor Solis

Jung’s second-generation followers adhered fairly strictly to his monist view of alchemy. Highlights of this period include now classic works by Marie-Louse von Franz and Edward Edinger. Edinger gave us Ego and Archetype plus Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. The works of von Franz include Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy; An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.

Other Jugnian contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance. Another Jungian contribution is Mircea Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. Their work was referenced and paralleled by scholars like Frater Albertus, Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, Richard Grossinger, Adam McLean and other modern commentators.

But the 3rd generation of psychotherapeutic practitioners were far more innovative than preservationist. In this they were true to the vital and reflective Mercurical Spirit. Revisioning the whole mindscape, James Hillman led a revolt against the ossified orthodoxy that came to be called Archetypal Psychology and later Imaginal Psychology. It freed the psyche from what had become a conservative fundamentalism with a party line and right and wrong interpretations. It brought back living process and moved interest out of the containment of the cloistered therapy room into the living, breathing World-at-Large.

A similar process is happening in the practice of alchemy, which has come to include not only scholar/practitioners and laboratory or experimentalists, but globalized cultural forms of spagyrics, fire circles, and other volatile practices, which have escaped the retort into the world. It has brought alchemy’s process-oriented spirituality down to earth.

The Way of Alchemy

Alchemy is not a sacred 17th century cow, embodied only in hoary texts, enigmatic laboratory procedures, and static pictures. Soul is made in the fractal reiteration of the deepening of experience – all experience – which molds character (narrative identity) with mythologizing. Alchemy is one of these dynamic means of moving beyond deconstruction into soul-making – a phenomenological approach.

Alchemy is a creative encounter with chaos and a struggle to understand the nature of healing. Chaos is the Universal Solvent. Healing springs from deep within. All apparent structure is hidden in chaos, and in chaos there are hidden forms. As we deconstruct our fictional selves, we find that deep within there is a primordial consciousness of pure Being. Connection with this wellspring is the Source of life and creativity. Chaos is the crucible of creation. Through alchemy, we move deeper into the images, and then become them, rather than merely interacting with them.

Alchemy, like therapy, is a practical Way of making life into a flowing story, and that story is necessarily illustrated to convey what cannot be said in words, to include what happens in the gaps in consciousness. The alchemy of by-gone centuries is as inappropriate today as obsolete science. Naturally, there is value there but we don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of its extant literature to apply its wisdom and gain its treasure.

Post-postmodern alchemy has broken the retort and escaped into the world at large, into bigger stories. We craft a personal narrative by recognizing and reiterating mythic claims, metaphorical enactments through reflective speculation, experimentation, projection, meditation, dream, image and fantasy. Reflection deepens into experience and expression through artful means of what never happens but always is.

Soul is an active intelligence because myth leads to practical moves. Soul is made through suffering the process and by taking up myth as a poetic perspective – a dramatic complexity of multiple metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of experience. In this sense, alchemy cannot be separated from life. The narration is one of life’s possibilities, of our alternative selves as realizable potential, including discordant elements, into meaningful story lived in and through the alchemical process.

If we are truly Mercurial, we oscillate in our thoughts, are enigmatic in our language, inconsistent with ideas, and resistant to any fixed definitions or propositions. Perhaps only archetypal imagination serves this mercurial nature. It is explored and embodied best through artistic expression of archetypal images, making the universal particular and moving archaic symbolism into the immediate present, rather than relying exclusively on stale retrievals and intellectual commentary.

Soul-Making

What soul does is make fantasy images. Alchemy is a psychological metaphysics, a worldview that takes the soul further into mythopoiesis, producing images, events, and phenomena. Analysis and discourse (deductive and inductive reasoning) merely turns the libido into a narcissistic reflection of itself, when it could be embodied or manifested, even beyond self-evident intuition.

Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.”

Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Breaking our containment in the ancient practices through artful means releases libido into the world, into the drive, which loves the world, even into erotic desire for anima mundi.

Embodying the Vision

Alchemy cannot be a closed system of static dogmatic thoughts. It is a way of reimagining and creating metaphors from different points of view or narratives that open the field of infinite meanings. Each reiteration creates new networks, new meaning, new insights, embodiments, metamorphosis and transformation. To participate in this process means mythologizing our own chaotic character.

It is a truism in therapy that art expression clarifies and releases emotional flow. The classical alchemists nearly always illustrated their works, making universal pictures with themselves as point of reference. Alchemy would be a dry discourse without its images, without the discipline of images that leads to flow, to solutio.

REFERENCES

Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Miller, Iona; “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” Chaosophy ’93, 1992. www.asklepia.org/chaosophy...ophy3.html
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (formerly The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago, 1994.
Miller, Iona; “Introduction to Alchemy 101,” 1985. spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com/rich....html

Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.

"The alchemical operations were real, only this reality was not physical but psychological. Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul, and the salvation of the cosmos.” Carl Jung, 1952 Interview at Eranos. ~Image and Quote thanks to Jung Hearted

"Before I discovered alchemy, I had a series of dreams which repeatedly dealt with the same theme. Beside my house stood another, that is to say, another wing or annex, which was strange to me. Each time I would wonder in my dream why I did not know this house, although it had apparently always been there.

Finally, there came a dream in which I reached the other wing. I discovered there a wonderful library, dating largely from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Large, fat folio volumes, bound in pigskin, stood along the walls. Among them were a number of books embellished with copper engravings of a strange character, and illustrations containing curious symbols such as I had never seen before.

At the time I did not know to what they referred; only much later did I recognize them as alchemical symbols. In the dream I was conscious only of the fascination exerted by them and by the entire library. It was a collection of medieval incunabula and sixteenth-century prints....

The unknown wing of the house was a part of my personality, an aspect of myself; it represented something that belonged to me but of which I was not yet conscious." ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections Page 202.

INTRODUCTION TO ALCHEMY
In Archetypal Psychology
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/alchemy-101.html

by Iona Miller, 1986
&
Alchemical Imagination: Making Psyche Matter

"Search the anima mundi means to me across the world as a tribal hunter ... a gold digger. Means to scrutinize everything carefully and 'divine' as it says, the specific genius loci. To do this we must be sensitive to the representations of the world ... " --James Hillman, The pleasure of thinking

Prepared as a class for Spring Quarter 1986, Rogue Community College.  This class provided feedback and interaction which fed into my Phanes Press book, THE MODERN ALCHEMIST: A Guide to Personal Transformation, Miller & Miller (1994), covering both therapeutic healing and spiritual development through a series of alchemical plates from the Book of Lambspring, as a typical metaphorical process. 

Alchemy is much more than the historical predecessor of metallurgy, chemistry and medicine -- it is a living form of sacred psychology.  Alchemy is a projection of a cosmic and spiritual drama in laboratory terms.  It is an art, both experiential and experimental.  It is a worldview which unifies spirit and matter, Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin.

Jung spent the better part of the end of his life studying the subject of alchemy, which has been called the search for the godhead in matter.  In typical "Jungian" style, his interest in alchemy developed from a vivid dream about an ancient library full of arcane books.  Later, after much searching, Jung came to posses such a library. Alchemy reflected in symbolic form the same sorts of imagery Jung saw in his practice in neurosis, psychosis, dreams and imagination.  Jung insisted that the psyche cannot be understood in conceptual terms, but only through living images or symbols, which are able to contain paradox and ambiguity.

Alchemy reflects the process of personal transformation in the metaphor of transmuting base metals into gold. Jung was amazed to find that the images and operations he encountered in the old alchemy texts related strongly to his theories of psychoanalysis and the unconscious.  Therefore, his main research project at the culmination of his career was around this topic of alchemy and how it related to the dynamics of consciousness.  Jung saw in alchemy a metaphor for the process of individuation, and the morphing and mutating imagery of that process which emerges from the stream of consciousness. 

Alchemy can also be viewed as a system of self-initiation.  Jung often turned to the images of alchemy, mythology and religion to help describe psychic life.  For an image to be a living symbol it must refer to something that cannot be otherwise known. Jung elaborated most of his alchemical analysis of the psyche in three major volumes of his Collected Works.  They include Alchemical Studies, Psychology and Alchemy, and his final volume Mysterium Coniunctionis. 

Since the publication of these there have been other works of alchemical interest produced by notable Jungian analysts.  Among these are the following 2nd generation Jungians:  1).  Foremost are the works of Marie-Louise von Franz, who wrote Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.  2).  Edward Edinger has given us the classical text, Ego and Archetype, plus Anatomy of the Psyche. Other contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance. 

A 3rd generation has arisen in depth psychology which considers imagination or 'the imaginal' to be the primal reality.  Essentially unknowable, it can only be experienced through images by which it is expressed.  It draws constantly on ancient elements of psychic life, which still abound in the modern world, such as ritual, gods and goddesses, dreams, alchemy and possession as well as aesthetics, etymology, humor, sensuality, poetry, etc. James Hillman has written extensively on Anima Mundi  in Spring, the Journal for Archetypal Psychology, and it has many alchemical articles such as "Silver and the White Earth." Then there are the classical texts of alchemy, themselves, of course. There is a vast array of alchemical texts, with staggering varieties of ways of expressing the alchemical process, psychologically and experimentally. 

Many of them curiously contain homologues of the magic mushroom Amanita muscaria, (see Clark Heinrich's Forbidden Fruit).  Among these texts are The Book of Lambspring, Aurora Consurgens, Codicillus (by Raymond Lully), Splendor Solis, Theatrum Chemicum, and the Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly.  Liber Azoth and De Natura Rerum (among others) by Paracelsus are foundational.  Other classics include The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkrutz and Rosarium Philosophorum which Jung used to illustrate his work The Psychology of the Transference. Finally, there are the modern translations of older works by A.E. Waite which include Turba Philosophorum, The Hermetic Museum, Lexicon of Alchemy, and The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus.  Even newer are the compendiums such as The Secret Art of Alchemy by Stanislaus Klossowski De Rola and Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus. 

There is a whole catalogue of astute alchemical literature available from Phanes Press, including in particular those with commentary by Adam McLean, such as The Alchemical Mandala, Splendor Solis, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.  Another Jungian contribution is Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible.  For lesser known treatises, Jung's bibliographies are a gold mine.  Jung wrote the foreword to the Taoist classic on alchemy, The Secret of the Golden Flower. Most of us, unfamiliar with the subtle nuances of alchemical practice, view it as the historical predecessor of our modern sciences, like medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, etc. 

But, according to Jung's research, it seems to be much, much more.  It is a curious fact that there is no single alchemy for us to examine.  It is a cross-cultural phenomenon which has been practiced in various forms by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Christian Europeans, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Taoist faiths.  All of these use symbols to depict a process of transformation, whether this process is thought to occur inside (introverted) or outside (extroverted) of the human body.  Although there are many types of alchemy, the main split is between intro- and extroverted forms.  The deciding factor is the direction of the practitioner's creativity.

In his book, The Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger summarizes the basic components of the different alchemical paths, which he dubs 'planet science.'  These include the following:

1.  A theory of nature as made up of primary elements.
2.  A belief in the gradual evolution and transformation of substance.
3.  A system for inducing transmutation.
4.  The imitation of nature by a gentle technology.
5.  The faith that one's inner being is changed by participation in external chemical experiments.
6.  A general system of synchronistic correspondences between planets, colors, herbs, minerals, species of animals, signs and symbols, parts of the body, astrological signs, etc. known as the Doctrine of Signatures.
7.  Gold as the completed and perfected form of the metals, in specific, and substance in general (Alchemy is the attempt to transmute other substances into gold, however that attempt is understood and carried out).
8.  The existence of a paradoxical form of matter, sometimes called The Philosopher's Stone (the Lapis), which can be used in making gold or in brewing elixirs (elixer vitae) and medicines that have universal curative powers (panacea).
9.  A method of symbolism working on the simultaneity of a series of complementary pairs: Sun/Moon, Gold/Silver, Sulphur/Mercury, King/Queen, Male/Female, Husband/Bride, Christ/Man, etc.
10.  The search for magical texts that come from a time when the human race was closer to the source of things or are handed down from higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, guardians, or their immediate familiars during some Golden Age.  These texts deal with the creation or synthesis of matter and are a blueprint for physical experimentation in a cosmic context (as well as for personal development).  They have been reinterpreted in terms of the Earth's different epochs and nationalities.
11.  In the Occident, alchemy is early inductive experimental science and is closely allied with metallurgy, pharmacy, industrial chemistry, and coinage.
12.  In the Orient, alchemy is a system of meditation in which one's body is understood as elementally and harmonically equivalent to the field of creation. (Between East and West, the body may be thought of as a microcosm of nature, with its own deposits of seeds, elixirs, and mineral substances).
13.  Alchemy is joined to astrology in a set of meanings that arise from the correspondences of planets, metals, and parts of the body, and the overall belief in a cosmic timing that permeates nature.

Thus, alchemy deals fundamentally with the basic mysteries of life as well as with transcendental mysticism.  But its approach is neither abstract nor theoretical, but experimental, in nature. Just who were the alchemists, and why are their contributions important to us today? 

The alchemists were the leading explorers of consciousness in medieval times, and their research led to a vast improvement in the conditions of life.  Among the more famous are Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Nicholas Flammel, and Sir Isaac Newton.  Their contributions not only improved the lives of their contemporaries, but influenced the thought of many philosophers of the same and later eras, such as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, John Dee, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Vaughn, Bishop Berkeley, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, and Goethe.

The contribution of these eminent alchemists are staggering: Albertus Magnus, alone, wrote eight books on physics, six on psychology, eight on astronomy, twenty-six on zoology, five on minerals, one on geography, and three on life in general from an Aristotelian point-of-view.  He was a Dominican friar who was canonized a saint in 1931.  Paracelsus was a Swiss born in 1493.  His accomplishments were many and include being the first modern medical scientist.  He fathered the sciences of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, hypnosis and homeopathy.  He wrote the first medical literature on the causes and treatment of syphilis and epilepsy, as well as books on illness derived from adverse working conditions.

Even with his accurate scientific bent, his work is also in close accord with mystical alchemical tradition.  His was a worldview of animism, ensouled and infused by a variety of spirits.  He wrote on furies in sleep, on ghosts appearing after death, on gnomes in mines and underground, of nymphs, pygmies, and magical salamanders. invisible forces were always at work and the physician had to constantly be aware of this fourth dimension in which he was moving.  He utilized various techniques for divination and astrology as well as magical amulets, talismans, and incantations.

Paracelsus believed in a vital force which radiated around every man like a luminous sphere and which could be made to act at a distance.  He is also credited with the early use of what we now know as hypnotism.  He believed that there was a star in each man, (Mishlove).  This sentiment was echoed by 19th century magician and alchemist, Aleister Crowley, who said, "Every man and every woman is a star."  This alludes to the essential Self, but is also literally in  that our elements were forged in some distant supernova. Kepler developed the laws of planetary motion.  But he developed his theories on the basis of explorations into the dimly lit archetypal regions of man's mind as surely as on his mathematical observations of the planetary motions.  He was clearly a student in the tradition of earlier mystic-scientists such as Pythagoras and Paracelsus. 

Thomas Vaughn, Robert Fludd, and Sire Frances Bacon number among the 17th century Rosicrucians who practiced not only alchemy but also other hermetic arts and the qabalah. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematical genius, as well as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.  He discovered the binomial theorem, invented differential calculus, made the first calculations of the moon's attraction by the earth and described the laws of motion of classical mechanics, and formulated the theory of universal gravitation.  He was very careful not to publish anything which was not firmly supported by experimental proofs or geometrical demonstrations; thus he exemplified and ushered in the Age of Reason.

However, if we look at Newton's own personal notes and diaries, over a million words in his own handwriting, a startlingly different picture of the man emerges.  Newton was an alchemist though after his death his family burned many of his arcane manuscripts in an attempt to hide the fact.  He devoted himself to such endeavors as the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life.  He was intensely introspective and had great mental endurance.  He solved problems intuitively and dressed them up in logical proofs afterwards.  He, himself, was astounded by the startling nature of his own theories. 

Gravity is a problem that still hasn't been dealt with satisfactorily by scientists. His followers, however, emphasized exclusively his mechanistic view of the universe to the exclusion of his religious and alchemical views.  In a sense, their action ushered in a controversy in psychical research which has existed ever since.  Since Newton's time, all discoveries suggesting the presence of spiritual force which transcended time or space were ironically considered to be a violation of Newton's Laws -- even though Newton himself held these very beliefs! It is interesting to note, that today scientists actually can turn small amounts of lead into gold through particle acceleration, since they are only one atomic weight apart, but the energy expense is prohibitive.  Despite the advances in science, the "unknown" is still projected into the realm of matter, and the alchemical quest continues. 

Science is still debating over what is physical, what is psychic and what is metapsychic.  VonFranz, in Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, states that "In Western cultural history the transpsychic has been described sometimes as "spirit" sometimes as "matter."  Theologians and philosophers are more concerned with the former, physicists with the later."  Since the dawn of the 21st century, many physicists openly speak of the spiritual nature of Reality, especially in the quantum realm -- the microcosm and foundation of the macrocosmic world.

VonFranz points out that "what was once regarded as the opposition between spirit and matter turns up again in contemporary physics as a discussion of the relation between consciousness (or Mind) and matter."  It bears on such questions as the bias of the observer, and the theories of relativity, probability, synchronicity, non-locality, not to mention the whole field of parapsychology. 

Multidisciplinary studies such as quantum consciousness, quantum chaos and quantum cosmology have manifested Jung's prescient vision.  Jung really returned us to the alchemistic viewpoint when he said, in Aion, "Sooner or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closely together as both of them independently of one another and from opposite directions, push forward into transcendental territory. ...Psyche cannot be totally different from matter for how otherwise could it move matter?  And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche?  Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible.  If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts.  Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines." (Jung).

As vonFranz notes, "There is therefore no concept fundamental to modern physics that is not in one degree or another a differentiated form of some primordial archetypal idea."  These include our concepts of time, space, energy, the field of force, particle theory, and chemical affinity. Laws in physics are subject to scientific revolutions and there has been a major breakthrough in paradigms shifts about every 20 years, or each generation.  One of the most influential recently is Complexity or Chaos Theory. 

VonFranz says, "As soon as an archetypal idea that has been serving as a model no longer coincides with the observed facts of the external world, it is dropped or its origin in the psyche is recognized.  This process always coincides with the upward thrust of a new thought-model from the unconscious to the threshold of consciousness." This is basically the process of weeding out "scientific errors."  "...scarcely a thought is given to what they might mean, psychologically, once they are no longer fit to serve as a model in describing the outer world."  This certainly happened to alchemy, until Jung revived an interest in it..  "It is only today, when we know that the assumptions of the observer decisively precondition the total results, that the question is becoming acute." 

Physicists have become increasingly conscious of the extent to which psychological circumstances influence their results.  This "hard problem" of the subjectivity of our personal experience is the crux of consciousness studies and a sticking point in all neurologically-based descriptions of brain-mind dynamics, whether it is based in the quantum, holographic, electromagnetic, or chemical interactions. Other experimental-minded persons have sought the mysteries of life and divinity within their own bodies, since ancient times.  Some employed entheogenic plants and elixirs, while others manipulated the paradoxical switch of the sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal systems through yoga or magick.  

Whether known as Yogis or Adepts, their goal was basically the same, as we shall see. Some modern schools of the Hermetic Arts see an identity between medieval European alchemy and the eastern practice of Yoga.  They see a metaphysical or symbolic correspondence between the planetary and metallurgical attributions of alchemy and the chakras.  Yoga is also experimental in nature; the experiment is performed on oneself. 

The qualities of the metals correspond to the planets and chakras as follows.   Lead Saturn Sacral Plexus Iron Mars Sexual Ganglion Tin Jupiter Solar Plexus Gold Sun Cardiac Plexus Copper Venus Pharyngeal Plexus Silver Moon Pituitary Body Quicksilver Mercury Pineal Gland Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium.  Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis. 

We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas.

Mercury..........Sattva
Sulphur.........Rajas
Salt..........Tamas

The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative.  The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action.  The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas.  These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body.  Another "alchemical" way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh).

The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines.  The Indian elements are known as Tattvas.  They are:  Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth).  Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation.  Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed.  This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers.  The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a "secret fire", which is often compared to a serpent or dragon.  Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power. 

Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon.  Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist's soror mystica or yogi's yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage. 

The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body.  One equates with the sun, another with the moon.  They are called idapingala.  The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination.  The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus. The yogi seeks to arouse the latent power of the Kundalini serpent so it rises up the chakra centers until it opens the third eye of mystical vision and illumination. 

Alchemists apply slow heat to their alchemical vessel to sublimate and refine the contents therein.  The yogis use breath control, the alchemists bellows to control the fire.  Interestingly, yogis employ breathing exercises called "breath of fire" and "the bellows." In summary, the points of correspondence resulting in the alchemical production of a new kind of human being (one made hale or whole) are as follows:

1.  Both systems agree that all things are expressions of one fundamental energy.

2.  Both affirm that all things combine three qualities:
a. Wisdom, Sattva, superconsciousness or Mercury;
b. Desire, Rajas, compulsion or Sulpher;
c. Inertia or Tamas, darkness, or Salt.

3.  Both recognize five modes of expression: Akasha, Spirit or the quintessence; Tejas or Agni, fire; Apas, water; Vayu, air; Prithivi, earth.

4.  Both systems mention seven principle vehicles of activity called chakras by yogis, and metals by alchemists.

5.  Both say there is a secret force, fiery in quality, which is to be raised from one chakra or metal to another, until the power of all seven is sublimated to the higher.

6.  Yoga says 1) Prana or Surya, sun,  2) Rayim, moon, and 3) Sattva, wisdom are the three agencies of the work (or ida, pingala and sushumna).  Alchemy says the whole operation is a work of the sun and moon, aided by Mercury.

7.  Both systems stress preparation by establishing physical purity and ethical freedom from lust, avarice, vanity, attachment, anger and other anti-social tendencies.

8.  Both allege that success enables the adepts to exercise extraordinary powers, to heal all diseases, and to control all the forces of nature so as to exert a determining influence on circumstances.

In short, what both alchemist and yogi do is 1). to recognize what goes on in his body, and 2). to use his knowledge of the control exerted over subconscious processes by self-consciousness to form a definite intention that this body-building function shall act with maximum efficiency creating increased vitality.  This supercharge of libido then wakens the spiritual vision of the pineal gland to full activity (in some modern interpretations overriding inhibitory mechanisms for the production of endogenous DMT). 

The Great Work of alchemy consists of stabilizing this vision of Light into a full realization.  The by-product is that the body-building power of the subconscious changes the alchemist him/herself into a new creature. Jung asserted that the medieval alchemists were unaware of the natural process of psychological transformation which went on in their subconscious.  Therefore, they projected this process into their experiments as a science of the soul. 

In other words, they projected an inner process outside of themselves.  Had they been more conscious in their intent or more sophisticated in their psychology like the yogis, they would have been more consistently successful at producing the coveted lapis or Philosopher's Stone, a sort of "quantum Tantra." But why is a study of alchemy relevant to our modern lives, even if we have a spiritual orientation?  We are not daily occupied with pseudo-alchemical experiments like the alchemists, or are we?  In many metaphorical ways we are thinking like alchemists all the time. 

Also, Jung observed that the dreams of his clients repeatedly stressed the main alchemical themes, especially the conflict and union of opposites.  One of the main symbols of reconciliation of this conflict are various mandala forms, present from alchemy to Tibetan Buddhism.  The alchemical symbolism is widespread in dreams of modern individuals, and can shed light on these more primitive aspects of our subconscious life.  It is important for our understanding of our own unconscious, and how it transcends and subverts us. 

Plato enjoined us to "Know Thyself."  In Alchemical Active Imagination, vonFranz states, "True knowledge of oneself is the knowledge of the objective psyche as it manifests in dreams and in the manifestations of the unconscious.  Only by looking at dreams, for instance, can one see who one truly is; they tell us who we really are, that is something which is objectively there.  To meditate on that is an effort towards self-knowledge, because that is scientific and objective and not in the interest of the ego but in the interest of "what I am" objectively.  It is knowledge of the Self, of the wider, objective personality." We could view alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy, which originally had the meaning 'to heal,' and the implication of  'service to the gods.' 

Psychotherapy basically means service to the psyche, and offers us a way to reconnect with out unconscious, thus experiencing wholeness.  It also opens an avenue to increased physical health, since those ailments which remain unconscious often manifest as psychosomatic diseases.  Knowledge of alchemy's symbolism can lead us to psychological insight in terms of our own conditions, especially that reflected in dreams. Alchemy may be carried out as either a physical or mental operation. 

The Jungian orientation is primarily mental, though it often takes a physical form or expression.  For example, you might choose to ritually 'act out' certain aspects of the Great Work in active imagination.  The Jungian interpretation that alchemy is a passive and unconscious process comes from a basically mental, or Greek orientation.  The type of alchemy that aims at rejuvenation or preserving the physical body is descended from the physically-oriented Egyptian alchemy.  The main traditions of conscious, inner spiritual alchemy come mainly from the Islamic and Oriental philosophies.

Jung's original interest in alchemy came from a dream he had of a library filled with arcane tomes from medieval times and the Renaissance.  During the next 15 years he spent collecting this library, he learned to recognize the major symbols of the unconscious.  He was reading about them in alchemy books and hearing about them in his patients' dreams and fantasies.  Their projections recurrently told him of an inner quest, a sealed vessel, the conflict of opposites, a philosophical tree, a fountain of eternity, a golden flower, a Stone, a sacred wedding, etc. Slowly Jung familiarized himself with their alchemical meaning.  Then he, himself, became a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone -- a guide to the depths of the unknown.  In his case this power manifested as the ability to heal at the psychophysical level -- in other words, to release any blocks hindering the natural process of growth and transformation.  When proceeding in the direction of their individuation his clients' harmony was restored, self-equilibration returned.  Jung equated individuation with self-realization. 

We should be careful here not to dichotomize between "mental" and "physical" too much or we will lose our proper alchemical perspective.  Alchemy cannot be reduced to a metaphor of psychological or philosophical transformation -- it requires first-hand experimentation. Grossinger says that "what Carl Jung recognized was that the stages of the alchemists also corresponded to a process of psychological individuation.  The psychic stages were as precise and rigorous as the chemical ones by which they became imagined.  Furthermore, they generated a physical and even quantitative terminology for an undiagnosed tension of opposites in the human psyche arising from male and female archetypes, a struggle they sought to resolve by the creative unity of the chemicals in the Stone."

 Alchemy sought to unite Spirit (male), and Matter (female) through a Royal Union (coniunctio) to create their synthesis in the homunculus, hermaphrodite, or lapis.  This is an alchemical metaphor or version of the generic process of spiritual rebirth. The entire body of alchemical literature covers many variations on the theme of the Great Work.  No single person will ever express all of the operations and symbols described in alchemy, just as no single person ever embodies the totality of the Self. 

We each have unique experiences of the common roots of humanity or the collective unconscious.  Thus, the various operations of alchemy come in different order for the various practitioners.  The alchemical writings seem to contradict one another about the evolution of the process.  Some claim to have made the Stone and lost it, over and over -- like the elusive revelations of a psychedelic trip.  Likewise, in dreams we sometimes find the symbols of the end-product (like a mandala, or flower, or child) appearing at the beginning of the process.  They symbolize what is latent and seeks manifestation.

Nevertheless, in both alchemy and Jungian psychology there are classic stages in the process of individuation or personal experience of the unconscious -- psychic milestones.  One major recurrent theme in modern dreams is the symbolism of the planets, which correspond with the alchemical metals.  These metals, or planets (astrology), archetypes (depth psychology) or Spheres (QBL) can be understood psychologically as the building blocks of the ego, which forms itself from fragments of these divine archetypal qualities.  These spiritual principles seek concretization through the unique experience of an individual ego.  This links spirit and matter; it comes down to earth. The sacredness of the Opus, or Great Work, is the central idea behind alchemy.  It is a holistic perspective.  One must be self-oriented, rather than ego-oriented.  The adept is also diligent, patient and virtuous. 

In other words, in order to create the Stone, you must have that integrative potential within yourself for self-realization -- for becoming whole or 'holy.'  It requires an inward seeking, just like the process of individuation.  It is a solitary task for no one may follow where you go.  But there may be guides who will help inspire your faith and dedication to the task.  Others have been to the territory you will explore, but none will accompany you.

The secret of alchemy is that it is a personal journey of transformation, and cannot be explained but only experienced.  It is "eating the dish," not just reading about it in an alchemical cookbook.  Its effects must be channeled into spiritual growth, for if alchemy is used to gratify personal desire the work is lost.  This means the ego gets inflated with its own importance when the real power source lies within the Self.  This naturally produces a regression back into an unconscious state, back to the prima materia, raw psychic material. 

The instinctual urge for growth and transformation lies within us.  For this urge to be considered evolutional requires that the ego must cooperate quite deliberately and consciously with the Self.  This leads toward self-realization. The main purpose of the Opus is "to create a transcendent, miraculous substance which is variously symbolized as the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, or the universal medicine (panacea). 

The procedure is, first, to find the suitable material, the so called prima materia (lead), and then to subject it to a series of operations which will turn it into the Philosopher's Stone (gold)." (Edinger, 1978). The First Matter is a homogenous unity of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt.  It is therefore 'three,' but can also be expressed as 'four' elements, which are again essentially 'one.'  Jung felt that the secret of the psyche was contained in this question of the 'three' and the 'four.'

 In alchemy it is expressed as the axiom of Maria Prophetessa:  "Therefore the Hebrew prophetess cried without restraint: 'one becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.'"  Today, physicists echo this statement when they call 'plasma' both the fourth and first state of matter (the others being liquid, gas and solid). In Jungian psychology, the prima materia is the original undifferentiated condition of ordinary consciousness, which is really unconsciousness -- subjective awareness. 

Mystics of all times have repeated that in the ordinary state we are all asleep or even "dead" to the true Reality.  In psychology the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth).  In Jungian theory we have a dominant function and limited access to one or two others, but the fourth function is inaccessible, elusive, maladapted, or hard to integrate.  It is what keeps us from "getting it all together."  Thus, we are out-of-balance.

Balancing the four functions means achieving an integrated personality, harmony and well-being.  This requires undergoing a symbolic process of the union of opposites, which is what both alchemy (and Tantra) and Jungian analysis are all about.  Both alchemy and Jungian psychology require a period of depth analysis (solutio) to distinguish the original, undifferentiated contents. 

The ego learns what part of the personality comes from itself and which parts from the Self.  It reflects on its own component parts (subpersonalities) and learns to see itself as a small part of a greater whole, the larger unity of the Self.  Edinger says, "The fixed, settled aspects of the personality which are rigid and static are reduced or led back to their original, undifferentiated condition as part of the process of psychic transformation," i.e. back to a state of 'innocence.'

Further, Edinger compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy.  He gives some hints:     

(1)  It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all.  This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life.  Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.     

(2)  Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap.  The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah.  Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable.  Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.      

(3)  It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one.  This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition.  Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity.  It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers.  With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.  

(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form.  This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity.  It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos.  It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.

The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on.  The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from myth, religion and folklore.  The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious.  There is no set number of alchemical operations, just as there is no set number or order to archetypes. However, certain of the operations seem to recur more often in the literature and experience.  We could consider these as the skeletal frame of the alchemical process.  Their order switches around also. 

Edinger lists seven operations which seem to typify the major transformations of the alchemical process.  These include: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio.  Other major operations include nigredo, albedo, rubedo, solificatio, multiplicatio, projectio, separatio, circulatio, and more. We can detail the nature of each of these operations later. 

For now, it is enough to grasp the overview which is best stated by Jung, himself, in Mysterium Coniunctionis: 

"...the alchemist saw the essence of his art in separation and analysis [solve or solutio] on the one hand and synthesis and consolidation [coagula or coagulatio] on the other.  For him there was first of all an initial state in which opposite tendencies or forces were in conflict; secondly, there was the great question of a procedure which would be capable of bringing the hostile elements and qualities, once they were separated, back to unity again. The initial state, named chaos, was not given from the start but had to be sought for as the prima materia.  And just as the beginning of the work was not self-evident, so to an even greater degree was its end.  There are countless speculations on the nature of the end state, all of them reflected in its designations.  The commonest are the ideas of its permanence (prolongation of life, immortality, incorruptibility), its androgyny, its spirituality and corporeality, its divinity and its resemblance to man (homunculus)."

He goes on to point out what this might mean psychologically.  We could view it as conflicting drives originating on the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels creating splits in the personality.  Jung says that, "The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to this problem of opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition.  The repression of one of the opposites leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words, to a neurosis.  The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims at uniting them permanently.  The images of the goal which then appear in dreams often run parallel with the corresponding alchemical symbols." He reiterates the value of accessing the alchemical symbolism for increasing insight. 

"Investigation of the alchemical symbolism, like a preoccupation with mythology, does not lead one away from life anymore than a study of comparative anatomy leads away from the anatomy of the living man.  On the contrary, alchemy affords us a veritable treasure-house of symbols, knowledge of which is extremely helpful for an understanding of neurotic and psychotic processes.  This, in turn, enables us to apply the psychology of the unconscious to those regions in the history of the human mind which are concerned with symbolism."

Each of the operations of alchemy functions as the center of focus of an elaborate symbol-system.  Other symbols which are related to the operation cluster around the theme of the operation -- they share a common essence.  These central symbols provide basic categories which we can use to understand our own personal psychic life, and even the transformation processes of others. 

Taken together, the alchemical operations illustrate almost all of the full range of experiences which are involved in the process of individuation. As Grossinger points out, "Alchemy is thus a form of chemical research into which unresolved psychic elements were projected.  The alchemical nigredo, the initial phase of the operation which produces 'black blacker than black,' is also an internal experience of melancholia, an encounter with the shadow."

But this is also the necessary first stage in Jungian analysis -- confronting that which has been rejected or repressed is essential to becoming whole.  This realm of the shadow can often provide more real substance for the spiritual quest than mimicking the teachings of a spiritual master without really changing oneself.  Though stumbling around in the dark seems frustrating, if it is honest and heartfelt, and one really grapples with the shadow problem, the way is cleared for progress that will be sustained by a firm foundation gained in the early phases.

Throughout the alchemical process, the lapis functions as an inner guide by presenting itself in diverse symbolism.  It symbolizes the growing manifestation of your latent potential for wholeness.  It frequently manifests in mandala symbolism.  This includes such forms as a revolving wheel or the zodiac, the petals of a magnificent flower, or a serpent eating its tail.  As a grand union of opposites, it symbolizes the unification of king and queen, man and wife, conscious and unconscious, personality and society, etc. in a royal union called the Marriage of the Sun and Moon in alchemy  Alchemy is a means of understanding our unconscious projections of archetypes into the world. In "Spiritual Development as Reflected in Alchemy and Related Disciplines,"

Rudolf Bernoulli summarizes the basics of extroverted and introverted alchemy.  He says, "There are two kinds of alchemy: one strives to know the cosmos as a whole and to recreate it; it is in a sense the precursor of modern natural science.  It aspires to create gold as the supreme perfection in this sphere...The other alchemy strives higher; it strives for the great wonder, the wonder of all wonder, the magic crystal, the philosopher's stone."

"This is not a substance susceptible of chemical analysis.  It does not represent a spiritual or psychological state that can be reduced to a clear formula.  It is something more than perfection, something through which perfection can be achieved.  It is the universal instrument of magic.  By it we can attain to the ultimate.  By it we can completely possess the world.  By it we can make ourselves free from the world, by soaring above it.  This is alchemy in the mystical sense ...The goal is reached only when a man succeeds in creating the ...stone within himself, and this is made possible only the intervention of the 'inner master.'" i.e. the Self. Psychologically, the union of body and spirit or of conscious and unconscious can be safely attempted only when both have undergone a purification brought about by the earlier stages of analysis, in which the conscious character and the personal unconscious are reviewed and set in order. (Psychic Energy, p. 452-3).

In the alchemistic literature there is evidence that the mysterious coniunctio took place in three stages.  The first is that of the union of opposites, the double conjunction, which chiefly concerns us here.  The second stage effects a triple union, that of body, soul, and spirit; or, as it is said elsewhere, "the Trinity is reduced to a Unity."

In the Book of Lambspring, published in 1625, this triple union is represented first by two fishes swimming in the sea, pictured with the legend, "The sea is the Body, the two fishes are the Soul and the Spirit", and later by a second picture showing a deer and a unicorn in a forest, with the following text: In the Body [the forest] there is Soul [the deer] and Spirit [the unicorn] ...He that knows how to tame and master them by art, and to couple them together, may justly be called a master, for we rightly judge that he has attained the golden flesh.

The literature offers far less material about this more advanced stage of the work than about the simple coniunctio, and still less about the third stage, the union of the four elements, from which the fifth element, the "quintessence," arises.  However, Jung's latest works are largely concerned with the problems of this fourfold coniunctio, through which not only are the personal parts of the psyche -- ego and anima, or ego and animus -- consummated, but these, in a further stage of development, are in turn united with their transpersonal correlates -- wise man and prophetess, or great mother and magician (under whatever names these superordinate elements are conceived). 

The subject is by no means simple, but it amply repays careful study. Further definitions and descriptors of the dynamics of alchemy can be found in my book THE MODERN ALCHEMIST, (Phanes Press, 1994) which is divided into two major parts, each representing an 'octave' of the famous alchemical dictum, "Solve et Coagula":

I.  Metamorphosis of Soul; therapy or personal growth, and 
II.  Personification of Spirit on spiritual development.

Chapters in Part I include:

The Prima Materia on Persona, the social mask
The Nigredo on the Shadow, or chaos, depression and inertia
The Union of Opposites, on Anima or the archetypal Feminine
Participation Mystique, on Animus as the archetypal Masculine
Solutio, the operation of liquification and the Adversary archetype
Coagulatio, the operation of embodiment, archetype of the Great Mother
Sublimatio, operation of ennobling, archetype of Wise Old Man
Albedo, Rubedo and Coniunctio, the miracle marriage of opposites Part II covers the following: Solificatio, operation of the sun and the Hero archetype
The Philosopher's Stone on the lapis and shamanic Mana Personality
Puer/Senex on the dynamics of youth and maturity, magickal child archetype
The Transcendent Function on the Self or God-Image in the soul
Devouring Father on the conception of divine child
Anima Consciousness on the return of the Feminine and Incubation
Individuation and Rebirth on spiritual rebirth phenomena
Ultima Materia on culmination of the Great Work in the Adept or God-Man/Woman    

ALCHEMICAL IMAGINATION: MAKING PSYCHE MATTER
We should now proceed to find a neutral, or unitariian, language in which every concept we use is applicable as well to the unconscious as to matter, in order to overcome this wrong view that the unconscious psyche and matter are two things.   -- Professor Wolfgang Pauli

In the alchemical search for the God-head in matter (Kether in Malkuth), Paracelsus contended that matter was a living counterpart of the creating deity.  A system of correspondences is the foundation of alchemy.  The conception of a primal event manifested in different fields is fundamental to alchemy.  The process in the retort vessel is analogous to the process of transformation of the psyche.  Through alchemy, we can perceive the parallels between microcosm, universe, and man.  Alchemy is based on the assumption that the equation world = man = God is Truth. The metaphorical perception of alchemy grew a new taproot in the Jungian school of psychology.  It emphasizes the process of psychological transformation. 

This is the Opus, or Great Work of alchemy in one of its contemporary forms, through there are still alchemists who work with elixirs, nostrums and potions or in experiments with metallurgy, preferring the concrete form.  Alchemy is called the Great Work because that which "works" is that which has the active power to transform.  The experiments are performed on oneself. This experiential act renews the alchemical philosophy which is primarily concerned with the union of psyche and matter.  There is an indissoluble unity in alchemy between theory and practice.  They are explicate aspects (which are experienced through a metaphorical sensory perception) of the Quest, or attainment of 'immortality' through the union of opposites. 

Thus, the goal of the Opus is precisely this union, which is known variously as the Philosopher's Stone, Royal Marriage or Unus Mundus (experience of one worldview uniting the psyche/body/spirit). Paracelsus described alchemy as the voluntary action of man in harmony with the involuntary action of nature.  If the center of the creative process takes place in the "heart of man", his intentions take on profound significance.  They can now influence the destiny of the cosmos.  Attainment of this intentionality is known as the production of the Diamond Body, the stabilization of emergent magical perspectives and abilities.  In modern terms, it means out-of-the-box thinking and being, a departure from mundane or ordinary consensus reality, but not in a dissociative or psychotic way -- but in a way that approaches Reality more closely. 

In modern consciousness studies, it can be likened to quantum consciousness, or a flow state. Alchemy strives for the experience of spiritual rebirth via the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage.  The sacred marriage is characterized as the union of the Sun (+) and Moon (-).  These polarized positions may be symbolized variously as positive-negative; yang-yin; male-female; god-devil; spirit-matter; father-mother, etc.  The sacred marriage, or coniunctio, creates a bond by which opposites are united in an image which transcends both original potentials. 

The whole art of alchemy is contained within the image (implicate order) of a magical or divine child. There is an inherent paradox in alchemy:  all the while stressing redemption of the physical body, or matter, alchemy is actively striving toward creation of a subtle, immortal body, which has no apparent physical basis (magical child = body of light). This central problem in alchemy is the spiritual redemption of the physical body, which has effectively been cut off from our spirituality in modern life by our culturally-rooted mind/body split. 

Alchemy requires resurrection of the soul of body.  The challenge one encounters in developing and "owning" this fresh worldview is to "see through" to a unified vision of mundane physical processes with spiritual values and vision.  This develops awareness of the psychophysical ordering processes inherent in matter -- in our matter.  The solution is to visualize the physical body as a living metaphor -- a metaphorm -- for psychic transformation.

For the true alchemist, according to vonFranz (1979),

"...the mystery of the structure of the universe, was in themselves, in their own bodies and in that part of the personality which we call the unconscious, but they would say in the life of their own material existence. ...They thought that instead of taking outer materials you could just as well look inside and get information directly from that mystery because you were it.  After all, you too were a part of the mystery of cosmic existence, so you could just as well watch it directly. Even further, you could ask matter, the mystery of which you consist, to tell you what it is, to reveal itself to you.  Instead of treating it like a dead object to be thrown into a vessel and then cooked in order to see what came out, you could just as well take a block of iron, for instance, and ask it what it was, what its kind of life was, what it was doing, how it felt when melted.  But since all these materials are within you, you can also contact them directly and in that way they contacted what we would now call the collective unconscious, which to them was also projected into the inner aspect of their own bodies. They consulted these powers directly through what they called meditation and therefore most of these introverted alchemists always stressed the fact that one should not only experiment outwardly but should always insert phases of introversion with prayer and meditation and a kind of yoga.  With yoga meditation you try to get the right hypothesis, or information, about what you are doing or about the materials.  Or you can, for instance, talk to quicksilver, or to iron, and if you talk to quicksilver and iron then naturally the unconscious fills up the gap by a personification.  Then Mercury appears to you and tells you who the sun God is.  A power, the soul of Gold, appears and tells you who and what it is. (Marie-Louise vonFranz, Alchemical Active Imagination, Spring Pub., Dallas, 1979).

So, we see that basically the dynamic impulses of the original alchemists and modern physicists is the same -- to have a dialogue with matter and to find out all that is possible about how the creative process (God, to some) works. This Opus, or Work, is understood as taking place in a sealed retort vessel.  The nature of this vessel is the original of the common-use term, "Hermetically sealed."  This containment insures that none of the ingredients will be lost, and also provides a container in which the contents ("raw perceptions and emotions") are slowly heated, or cooked (calcinatio). 

The initial material (prima materia) then goes through several stages of transformation, defined as operations, or experimental stages.  Only that which has been properly separated can be united. These are not always presented in the same sequence in alchemical texts.  Most, however, include forms of calcinatio (heating); solutio (dissolving); coagulatio (congealing); sublimatio (ennobling); mortificatio or nigredo (blackening); ablutio (whitening); separatio (separating), and coniunctio (uniting).  There are also operations of refinement, circulating, multiplying, and reiterating.  Each stage displays typical colors and properties or qualities. The meditatio, or meditation, consists of inner dialogue with the alchemical figures:  Saturn=lead; Luna=silver; Sol=gold; Mercury=quicksilver; Venus=copper; Mars=iron; Jupiter=tin. 

Because the process of alchemy does not extend into the Supernal Triad of the Tree of Life, it yields Self-Realization, not God-realization.  It is a path of immanence, rather than transcendence.  This does not exclude transcendence from happening through God's grace, however.  Then Kether is in Malkuth, the beginning (prima materia) and end (ultima materia) are paradoxically a co-temporaneous One. In alchemy, the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World acts as the soul-guide to the highest region.  We experience An-imaginal (anima-ginal) Reality -- the world ensouled as living divinity, consciousness in its material unconsciousness.  The putrefying contents of our psychophysical existence are elevated through insight and revisioning to the very means of our rebirth, and the unblocked, clear perception of our existential Reality.

Always remember that the body is of vital importance in any alchemical operation.  To transcend somewhere out of the body is not alchemical practice; rather, imagine the body NOWHERE, or now-here, fully present as the psychophysical self and its multi-dimensional holographic projection.  Alchemy views our human condition as a psychophysical "Cosmosis,"

"As Above; So Below", hence we are permeated with and of the same essence and substance as the divine.: "...a physiological mythology juxtaposed with a cosmogonic mythology.  In between is the psyche itself - the arcane substance, the subject factor - which achieves a personified level in the divinities of mythology.  It is the psyche's own image-making activity, its self-creation through symbols, that is central to this model.  It represents a process of the "psychization of instinct," the transformation of instinctual and biophysical phenomena into psychic experience.  These phenomena can then to a certain extent be brought within the range of conscious will and reason.  In this process instinct loses some of its primordial autonomy.  It is an opus contra naturam, so to speak. ...Alchemy accordingly gives us a model for the psychology of projection; it points at once "upward" and "downward."  It is radically symbolic in its insistence on the "arcanum."  And finally, in the obligation it imposed for the careful elaboration of theoria, it included the formation of apperceptive concepts and symbols as a fundamental part of the opus." (Robert Grinnel, "Alchemy and Analytical Psychology", Methods of Treatment in Analytical Psychology, Spring Pub., Dallas, 1980).

We can correspond the alchemist's metals and operations with the spheres of the Tree of Life: The prima materia is the original starting condition of the Probationer or Neophyte; in Malkuth, the earthy sphere one meets mortificatio, putrefactio, calcinatio;  The Saturn Path, THE UNIVERSE = lead; which brings us to the lunar sphere, Yesod, and its alchemical attributes of silver and albedo.  The mental sphere of Hod or Mercury (quicksilver; Mercurius) is balanced against the emotional sphere of Netzach, Venus (copper; benedictas veriditas); they are joined by the Mars-path, which is clearly rubedo, the "reddening."  This path is bisected by the Sagittarian path, ART/TEMPERANCE, which is the formula of Solve et Coagula, culminating in the solar sphere of Tiphareth (gold, Sol, Lapis, solificatio, Minor Adept; self-actualization).  The Mars sphere of Gedulah (Strength) is also linked with iron, while Chesed or Mercy is tin. We can examine what happens in initiation to the body/soul at the level of Malkuth for example, more closely. 

The process of alchemical initiation begins with the stage known as mortificatio, or psychological masochism.  It means the death of the old personality for the the sake of the rebirth of the new renascent form or self-image.  It means the disintegration of the conscious personality.  It is specifically a spiritual or religious crisis in the life of the individual, where ruling ideas lose their meaning. Needless to say, this can be a depressing state of being, a loss of meaning.  This classical depression is imaged in terms of "blackening" and has, therefore, to do with the Shadow.  Depression necessitates a confrontation with one's own shadow, (self-defeating and self-destructive urges and patterns), not only as your personal inherent "evil", but as one's unlived life also for good. 

The actual process occurs as pathworking of XXI, The Universe, which corresponds through its Saturn attribute with the nigredo. To derive pleasure from punishing one's body is a curious pathological image.  But, read metaphorically, we can see how we virtually flog our selves in a variety of ways, almost compulsively.  We do it through stress, through overwork, through role-bound drives, through "shoulds" and "ought tos" -- we keep ourselves in virtual bondage.  At least by mid-life, we ask the classic question of our consumer society, "Is this all that there is?"  Our over-developed egos desperately try to maintain control over everything and everyone, but ourselves - and this tendency runs wild in our self-defeating and self-destructive addictions, including escapist consumerism. 

We are so used to trying desperately to dominate our reality, and what we really need to do is "let go" of our outworn rigidities. Intuitively we know that the one who dies still in the fast lane with the most toys doesn't necessarily win. We sense there is more to life and long to connect with it, to be reined in by it.  The unheroic, self-humiliation and putting ourselves down with negative self-talk, is a form of masochism with a potentially religious aim: to gain forgiveness through a mode of redemption.  This dedication to suffering -- to amplifying suffering -- produces meaning, compassion, humility, and healing.  But it is an alchemical stage, not a way of life -- not suffering for suffering's sake.  It is a discipline of the soul which contradicts the ego attitude, but those with chronic depression seem stuck in this stage, unable to escape the black mood.

Seeking its archetypal background, we see there is a relationship between ritual flogging in initiation ceremonies and the intoxication of masochistic mortification.  The same might be said of piercing or tattooing as behavioral expressions of this archetype, finding pleasure in the pain.  The participant is entranced, connects with his/her pain, and enters the transformative process through a breaking of boundaries.  The combination of humiliation and pleasure and unknownness yields an experience of ambivalence, a primal condition of psyche.  It heralds a submission to the divine. "Mortificatio is a psychological operation, not a moral one.  We cannot apply a moral frame of reference to it; it is neither good nor bad, better nor worse.  It is a necessary, just-so operation. 

One alchemical text advises, "Take the old black spirit and destroy and torture it..."  Another philosopher tells us that "The tortured thing, when it is immersed in the body, changes it into an unalterable and indestructible nature."  So the operation is necessary, not to make us morally better or spiritually purer, but rather to change us.  When we immerse masochistic material in the body of fantasy, psyche and psychic reality become indestructible.  The operation is necessary, not for the sake or moral ego-strengthening, but to make hard psychic reality.  If we could fully realize this, that mortification is a way into the weighty, heavy matter of the soul, it might help us get past the momentary cringe.  For we cringe and shrink at the moment of realization, at the reality of psyche where there is no ego-control, especially in its ugliness or banality." (Lyn Cowan, "On Masochism," Spring 1979, Spring Pub., 1979, p47).

If you can see that the world is beautiful, but have lost the ability to feel that beauty, of course your moods are going to swing from sullen inertia to active despair.  The ego feels out of control, and there is seemingly no meaning in life, so why exist at all?  You feel fragmented, alienated from yourself.  This is the beginning of the work, and a major reason people seek therapy or a mystical path to let go for renewal.  When your ego can no longer pursue only its selfish concerns and addictive demands, the Self forces us into a depression to shake up the stagnant order of things.  It brings a burning awareness of your shortcomings and inadequacies.  To get to the root of these, we need to process old traumas and negative core beliefs that severely limit us. 

The Self appears on the inner stage as the shadow and confronts us with our inferior traits. Once we experientially comprehend the purposeful dynamics of the Nigredo, the depression begins to lift.  But in order for this happen, we must accept the blackness as our own instead of blaming it on outside situations or other people.  Then we begin to discover that it is our own withdrawal and loss of feeling about our own shadow natures that is the source of the darkness.  When we turn our attention toward it, we see we are not suffering a mere personal ill, but one with transpersonal dimensions.  In other words, this is a plight common to all of mankind, and a milestone on the path of individuation.  It is a natural part of development. [for more on shadow and nigredo,  also see my Modern Alchemist] T

he Nigredo in Alchemy, Path 32 The putrefactio or nigredo represents the rotting stench of decay from the ego's outmoded attitudes and lack of adaptability.  It occurs at the time in the life of the aspirant when the strain of the environment or pressure to achieve has become intolerable.  In time, the attacked alchemist comes to realize that he must willingly subject him/herself to change. 'Raven's head' is the traditional name for the stage of the process whose technical name is the nigredo.  The nigredo is symbolized by multiple references to black substances, and is associated with the Shadow archetype, or repressed contents of the personal unconscious. 

The nigredo implies a time of anxiety, melancholia, sleeplessness, and restless volatility.  This stage of discomfort with the status quo is necessary to initiate the alchemical process -- the dissatisfaction and discomfort turn up the psychic heat.  Thus, we see there is an inherent value and meaning in this depression.  In our modern world of antidepressants and tranquilizers many people fail to follow this mood toward its positive goal, and despair or become doubly disappointed after the medications begin to fail on them after a time. Psychologically, we experience in this phase a chaotic state of conflict between hostile psychic elements. 

There is a tendency toward regression, helplessness, inertia, or losing consciousness of the motivating factors of behavior.  We don't want to do a thing; even rise in the morning; what's the point!?  Any emotional response to the situation is practically impossible.  We are too numb, too down, too paralyzed.  We don't know where to turn if we could.  In modern terms, it is equivalent to the concept of psychic dissociation, which is the root of neurosis and psychosis ("falling apart"). There is always psychic suffering when we "fall down."  And this is like falling down a psychic rabbit hole, like Alice into a totally unknown, disorienting world.  We fall inexorably into a psychic black hole.  It is not an adventure, but an abduction into the underworld of the powerful subconscious forces, and they seem to mean us ill, to torture and disempower us, while we are helpless.  This suffering may even persist for a lifetime if there is technical blunder in the Work, a failure to respond to its spontaneous call to action. 

The alchemist must "pick him/herself back up."  Then, there will be further transmutations from the instinctive psyche. This stage corresponds, again, to the encounter with the Shadow.  The ego and the Shadow must eventually be reconciled.  The restlessness and disorientation are the product of an initial collision between conscious and unconscious factors.  This is the beginning of a descent into darkness, or the unconscious. As long as the psyche struggles in the nigredo, it will be emotionally attached to the literal aspects of any situation.  Fascinated by "facts" and the "materialness" or "medicalness" of any condition, the alchemist fails to extract the symbolic aspect which would allow him/her to break through into a fresh mode of perception. 

Typical manifestations of this stage include long dreams, confusion, and a drained or depressed mental attitude.  The symbolic attitude is presented when the nigredo is perceived as part of a mystery process -- a curse with a hidden blessing, or grace at its core. Missing the point, the eye of the aspirant caught up in the nigredo looks for what is "wrong."  It ruminates on such physical questions as, "Is it an organic or neurological problem creating these manifestations of depression in me--is it clinical depression?"  It will then propose such treatments as pills, body work, or dance therapy. 

Grossness casts a veil or cloak of physicality over the subtle body of the alchemist and he fails to realize it is his soul which is sick unto death.  The "cure" will not come through antidepressants, tranquilizers, vitamin therapy, geographic escapes, or rejuvenating drugs and cosmetics, or exercise and endorphins. The elan vital, or life energy has been pulled into the unconscious, leaving the ego frustrated and discontent.  The emptiness and sterility of this condition may be the result of placing too much emphasis on "getting it together in the work-a-day world, leaving the soul cut off from the well-springs of life.  The feeling of being drained, or over-extended may become so powerful that one is forced into a breakdown which demands the time for introversion and recovery of energy reserves. The ability to see through to a value in depression (to experience the meaningfulness of the feeling of meaninglessness) has a prognosticative purpose.  Attaching meaning to depression allows an emotional participation which unblocks the flow of psychic energy. 

Depression is not a loss of meaning, but the feeling of loss of a sense of meaning. One is reminded of King Arthur during his "wasteland" period, wandering in the wilderness before the finding of the Grail.  There we learn "the King is the land, and the land is the King."  And when it comes to the Grail to ask, "Who do these things serve?"  Meaning comes through deepening the process. "This whole experience is like a journey through the wilderness and it often appears in dreams under the symbol of the "Night-sea Journey."  But when the problems of the personal unconscious have been met and dealt with in analysis, a sense of inner unity and renewal is usually found.  This is often accompanied by glimpses of deeper values, of the Self, for instance, that are frequently couched in the terms of religious symbolism.  The analysant feels that he is once again reconciled with himself and with God so he can go back to this ordinary life with renewed zest.  The wilderness is no longer barren, his life blossoms and bears fruit." (M. Esther Harding, "The Value and Meaning of Depression," Bulletin for the APC of NY; Analytical Psychology Club of NY, Inc., 1970; p. 10.)

Path 32, connecting Malkuth with Yesod, the Sphere of the Moon (corresponding with dreams), can be the path of renewal which transmutes the alchemist from his sense of confusion and despair. "Following this state of darkness, the alchemists report that light begins to dawn, due to the rising moon, which psychologically means the beginning of insight gained through paying attention to the unconscious, to the night happenings, to dreams and so on, which throw a light on one's inner condition.  The moon also refers to Eros, relatedness through feeling.  In other words, when the nigredo, the blackness, has been accepted and taken to oneself, instead of being blamed on outside situations and other people, one begins to see that it is one's own withdrawal and loss of feeling one's own shadow, that is the true cause of darkness. 

Then the moon rises and in recognizing that one is suffering... that is the feminine eros; the lesser light begins to shine in the darkness of the night." (Harding, 1970). That moonrise in Qabalistic terms, means access now to the sphere of Yesod, the Moon.  The stuckness is over, though other bouts with depression may bring further growth and insight on a higher arc.  Further alchemical transmutation will bring one into the warmth of the sun, the greater light, which means there is an increase in the light of consciousness (Tiphareth stage).  Thus one traverses astral world or the mystical realms of the Sun (Tiphareth), the Moon (Yesod) and Stars (The Universe). "And so one meaning of the experience of depression is that our wholeness, or individuation, the Self, can no longer wait while we follow egotistic ways or even seek for legitimate ego fulfillment, and so the Self brings us, drives us, into the wilderness of depression...and communication between earth and heaven is even then about to be revealed to us, if only we will attend to the vision."  (Harding, 1970).

 It is an experiential journey, this experiment on oneself with the elements of nature.  To really "get it" we must do the work to get the benefit.  The method works if we do.  At this stage we can greatly benefit from watching and participating in our imagery process by entering the stream of consciousness, the dreamtime.  Dreamhealing, a form of shamanic dream journeys, also known as CRP (Consciousness Restructuring Process) can be very helpful in this process of letting go and connecting with source, with flow and the well-spring of life.

Alchemical Essays by Dr. Ross Mack – Review for Alchemy Journal


Review of ALCHEMICAL ESSAYS:
The Living Process of Alchemy

Iona Miller, 1-1-09


“The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.” ~ Opticks, Sir Isaac Newton

“Ultimately, the Stone should be considered a catalyst to instruct the body code to overcome its inherited weakness and rebuild a better, stronger vital metabolism that is not just self-repairing, but building to an optimal state of health. . .The Stone has the seed of all DNA in an archetypal form and gives the correct, original instructions to the potential new cells. This enables generations of mutation/adaptation of the organism to self-correct.” ~ Dr. Ross Mack


In ALCHEMICAL ESSAYS (Salamander & Sons, 2008), Dr. Ross Mack distills the quintessence of the alchemical art creating a Meta-Syn of philosophers for our time. It can be difficult in such an esoteric subject to transcend language barriers and satisfy both the novice and the accomplished practitioner. But he has done just that in this tastefully-illustrated, well-crafted volume, weaving a tapestry of depth and richness with subject matter elements and process-oriented guidelines. The qualitative Mercury, Sulphur and Salt presented herein make a luminous mixture.

Dr. Mack will cut 20 years off your learning process, raise your aspirations, sooth your troubled soul, and ground your practice in an expanded notion of our ancient art, which is a secret therapy, as well. One reading may lead you to ponder, while another brings a “Eureka” moment, and still another sparks an obsessive quest. Alchemical Essays inspires one to truly seize the noble fruit. He will expand your synergetic consciousness of the heart of the Art and the secret Heart of Nature.

Dr. Mack’s passionate work is a balm for both the experimental and spiritual practitioner. This nonlinear book can be reread in fractal reiterations in its entirety or section by section over a period of years for inspiration on higher octaves. Its symbolism stimulates us at an unconscious level. We all know that revelations have their own mysterious way of emerging once the aspirant and the time are ripe. If you have the drive, Dr. Mack’s directions will give you traction.

The aesthetic approach of art is as inseparable from alchemy as its experimental nature. Alchemy is the soulful language of transformation and transmutation, a way of life rooted in eternal cycles. It is a personal experience of the Laws of Nature that invites the materialization of Wisdom. Energy is matter in volatile form and the natural mechanism of creation. Matter and mankind pass through archetypal transitional states. Alchemy amplifies this process, changing our fundamental psychophysical makeup. Even our failures have value.

Alchemy itself is a prescription for the Nigredo depression, the modern malaise of dark futures and consumer conformity. It defines a perennial frontier where eccentricity elbows out enough room to thrive in unconventional ways of thinking, acting and being, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Alchemy leads us to experiment, break boundaries and transcend categories, including those of science, art and belief. Intuitively knowing more than we know we know, some navigational part of ourselves functions as Mercurial guide.

This magical art connects private consciousness with the unified global field of awareness. The world is animated and all things are interconnected. The spiritual technology of today’s alchemy offsets the alienating effects of modern technology and helps create a totally new environment in the same sense that great art does – a development in the pattern of human experience. Alchemical media widens our experiential field. It offers the perennial promise of rebirth at an enhanced level of functional adaptability.

If you are looking for “Trade Secrets,” you will find many here whose brilliant articulation only come through a lifetime of effort. Mack shares his qualitative perspective on the alchemical memes of our day, including Ormus, life extension, resonance, frequency, fields, dark matter and energy, the ether, energy, DNA, cyclic transformation and the true nature of the Stone. You will also find a deep respect for the living powers of alchemy and an indispensable love of Anima Mundi as the ultimate Soror Mystica.

Imagine, instead of buying a cure at the store that we actually collect all the raw materials required from the ground up, create and assemble our own equipment, make our own chemical ingredients according to the old ways, and draw our own experimental conclusions. The authentic practice of alchemical art requires all that of us, and more. It requires we consciously open ourselves to the Universe and its expansive manifestation mirrored within ourselves. It makes psyche matter.

Mack describes the Minor and Major work in all the alchemical traditions, including Hermetic, Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Islamic. He gives a thorough treatment of Spagyrics and Ayurvedic craft. But this is no dry history, nor list of symbols, nor retelling of parables or outworn myths. His philosophical flights range from the subtleties of New Physics, (such as light, time, superconductors, and Bose-Einstein Condensate), to the practicalities of creating and perfecting one’s lab apparatus. He distinguishes internal, spiritual and plant alchemy, describing various methodology and applications.

It’s not easy to write such hyperdimensional text, even though this form of deep coding was the forte of the alchemists of history. Precisely what separates the modern alchemist from science is a deep and abiding desire for Nature’s enigmatic truths, including emotional, philosophical and spiritual meaning. Unique aspects are part of our personal journey toward individuation, but the operations of alchemy describe the transpersonal milestones we share in the progress of our Great Work. Ultimately, we make the grand experiment on ourselves.

Both artists and alchemists claim a variety of ways of proceeding with their work. The product of each endeavor is an expression of one’s intentional creative effort. Ultimately, there is no recipe for the creative process, which requires the cooperation of the universe to achieve that flow state, but there are means available to foster certain outcomes. Your next correct choice emerges from strengthening your experiential connection to creative source.

Dr. Mack has chosen a stunning menu of alchemical fare that invites the reader not simply to read the recipe but to heartily relish the dish – your own deliciously “cooked” self. These essays cover a select array of notions that enfold the essential aspects of alchemical theory and practice.

Happily, this is a fluid articulation, without the obfuscation of dated language in a presentation that is perhaps one of the best contemporary works of its type. In short, Dr. Mack’s fluent style makes enjoyable reading that speaks to us on the level we are ready to receive, helping us see the invisible world. As base metals are turned into gold, our soul is regenerated. Anyone can attempt to recount the history of alchemy, but it takes a mature practitioner to shed new light on the the subject.


Iona Miller, a writer, hypnotherapist and artist, is co-author of THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (Phanes, 1994), and moderates “Alchemy: the Royal Art” at alchemical.tribe.net/ . A selection of her alchemical essays can be found at spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com

ALCHEMY BOOKS:

Aion: Research Into the Phenomenology of the Self,
C.G. Jung Collected Works
A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Obed S. Johnson
Alchemical Active Imagination, M-L Von Franz
Alchemical Mandala, Adam McLean
Alchemical Medicine, Paracelsus
Alchemical Studies, C.G. Jung
Alchemical Symbols and Secret Aphabets, C.J.S. Thompson
Alchemical Tradition in the Late Twentieth Century, Richard Grossinger
Alchemist's Handbook, Frater Albertus
Alchemy, Franz Hartmann
Alchemy, Child of Greek Philosophy, Arthur J. Hopkins
Alchemy, the Secret Art, Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola
Anatomy of the Psyche, Edward Edinger
Archidoxes of Magic, Paracelsus
Atalanta Fugiens, Joscelyn Godwin, trans.
Aurora of the Philosophers, Paracelsus
Azoth or the Star in the East, A.E. Waite
Coelum Philosophorum, Paracelsus
Collectanea Chemica, Philalethes
Concerning the Alchemical Degrees, Grades & Compositions, Paracelsus
Concerning the Spirits of the Planets, Paracelsus
Cosmic Alchemy, C.C. Zain
Crowning of Nature, Adam McLean
Elixir of Enlightenment, A.H. Almas
Forge and the Crucible, Eliade
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Betty Dobbs
Goethe: the Alchemist, Ronald Gray
Golden Game, Klossowski de Rola
Grail Legend, Jung & Von Franz
Hermetic Tradition, Julius Evola
Internal Alchemy: the Natural Way to Immortality, Master Hua-Ching Ni
Jewish Alchemists, Raphael Patai
Jung on Alchemy, Nathan Schwartz-Salant
Mirror of Alchymy, Roger Bacon
Mystery of the Coniunctio, Edward F. Edinger
Orders of the Great Work: Alchemy, M.P. Hall
Origin and Structure of the Cosmos, Robert Fludd
Papers Toward Radical Metaphysics: Alchemy, Charles Ponce
Paracelsus: Selected Writings, foreword by Jung; N. Guterman (Tr.)
Philosopher's Stone, Michio Kushi
Practical Handbook of Plant Alchemy, M. Junius
Preparation of the Sophic Mercury, Philalethes
Psychology and Alchemy, Jung
Quest for the Red Sulphur: the Life of Ibn' Arabi, Claude Addas
Robert Fludd, Joscelyn Godwin
Rosary of the Philosophers, Adam McLean
Science of Alchemy, William W. Westcott
Secret Tradition in Alchemy, A.E. Waite
Secrets of John Dee, James Gordon
Spiritual Alchemy, Mikhael Omraam
Splendor Solis, Godwin, McLean
Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic, Chang Po-tuan, Thomas Cleary (Tr.)

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