WRITTEN IN STONE
THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY
No Stone Left Unturned
What knowledge flows from imageless primordial experience?
Our cosmology is our map of the soul and the symbolic structure of meaning. The ancients translated the Bowl of the Heavens into an earthy drought memorialized in Grail legends as a drink of immortality, preceding Christianity. While they may not have become immortal, they had a timeless experience of immortality, renewal, and resurrection.
It wasn't so much the sacred cup but more importantly what it contained that fired visions and devotion through direct spiritual experience. This is the secret or hidden environment of our ancestors that modern archaeology has revealed without doubt. It's not that old cultures used one or another drug, but used them all in a variety of ways of ingestion, sometimes in combination.
https://in.rbth.com/blogs/stranger_than_fiction/2017/01/09/how-russian-scientists-cracked-the-secret-of-a-riga-veda-era-drink_676758
There is ample evidence of psychotropic brews, including cannabis, hashish, poppy, ephedra, and acacia, as well as magic mushrooms and 'washed' ergot, an ancient analog for LSD. Some cultures included holy blood and wine in their brew. Such 'spiritual wine" inspired visions and action for entire countries.
These visionary states led to numerous heavenly flights which led to philosophies, mystical secrets and sects, and rites pregnant with symbolic meaning. Herbal lore and medicinals remain part of folk crafting wisdom. The chemical philosophy is the lost core of such traditions and their supernatural power.
Such tales are confounded with royal bloodlines as the main practitioners of such rites on behalf of their client states. Controversies over ancient drug rites still split bloodline members who consider such simple and obvious explanations anathema.
Such practices also lie at the root of Persian and medieval alchemy and the descriptors of the "philosopher's stone." Archaeologists have uncovered strong evidence from Paleolithic times 120,000 years old.
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/pakistan-cannabis-discovered-in-prehistoric-tomb/
http://www.astrosurf.com/macombes/laoupi-gods-in-heaven.pdf
We labor in vain to decode them without such knowledge. Even without such substances there are powerful means of transformation and rebirth which were not lost, but made relevant to each culture that encountered them throughout the centuries. They follow tales of eagles, dragons, royal blood, and gold. They drank soma and hoama to become immortal. They also used the DMT analog found in acacia trees. Botanical experts, they left 'no stone unturned.' 'Written in stone" takes on double entendre.
History and the history of religion cannot be understood without acknowledging such practices from Zoroaster to Paracelsus. These philosophers were literally 'stoned.' And these nomads spread their rites, with possible roots in Vedic and pre-Vedic times, throughout Eurasia (Yezidis, Zoroaster, Phyrigians, Thracians), into the Bronze Age at such sites as Gonur Tepe, an ancient mandala-style settlement. The same themes recur again and again from Sumer to Britain (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, Thrace, the Danube). They boldly declared, "We drank Soma; we became immortal," said the Xiongnu and Vedics.
https://scfh.ru/en/papers/we-drank-soma-we-became-immortal-/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonur_Tepe
Even without a spiritual basis, ancient drug use may have been stimulated by primordial fears of comets and destruction, much like the threat of annihilation by the atomic bomb led to drug experimentation in the 1960s, and the trend for ayahuasca pilgrimages for healing in today's uncertain world.
What was formerly sacred can be considered transgressive in today's world. But more than mores, the transgression is movement from the ordinary to the non-ordinary world, with its own joys and sorrows.
"[T[he "Stone of Antiquity"... is an ancient Egyptian process and is a technique older than the first Egyptian Dynasty. The Osirian Myth greatly reveals this secret as Acacia trees grew and flourished around the grave of Osiris. Thus the Spirit of Osiris being absorbed by the roots of the Acacia tree. The ancient Egyptians extracted the “Blood of Osiris” from certain species of this tree. Later in the Christian era the Elixir was also called “The Blood of Christ”. The Masonic Order further reveals the Acacia as the sacred bush marking the grave of the Master Builder Hiram Abif. This bush is known as the bush symbolizing our immortality. Moses saw it aglow on mount Sinai which spoke to him as God. The ancient mystery schools of antiquity gave it to their initiates. Not so far as Cagliostro's time, he introduced this "Blood of Osiris" into his Masonic Rite of Initiation." --Steve Kalec
https://adeptinitiates.com/blood-osiris-dmt/
A series of books, such as Cannabis and the Soma Solution and Liber 420, by Canadian author Chris Bennett are the most scholarly and comprehensive reports, including previously untranslated materials that have persuaded other academic and field researchers.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cannabis_and_the_Soma_Solution/-AMCBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=,Chris+Bennett+BOOKS&printsec=frontcover
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Liber_420/LJNcDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=,Chris+Bennett+BOOKS&printsec=frontcover
Such psychotropic or entheogenic compounds, alone or in combination are the missing puzzle piece in the story of alchemy. Alchemical texts are riddled with pictures of mushroom homologues, some of which even suggest doses with how many mushrooms are shown (Heinrick). It all bears strongly on worldview and the life we really want.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150522-scythians-marijuana-bastard-wars-kurgan-archaeology/
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/220-1607/features/4560-rites-of-the-scythians
http://www.astrosurf.com/macombes/laoupi-gods-in-heaven.pdf
http://www.monsalvat.no/blood.htm
No Stone Left Unturned
What knowledge flows from imageless primordial experience?
Our cosmology is our map of the soul and the symbolic structure of meaning. The ancients translated the Bowl of the Heavens into an earthy drought memorialized in Grail legends as a drink of immortality, preceding Christianity. While they may not have become immortal, they had a timeless experience of immortality, renewal, and resurrection.
It wasn't so much the sacred cup but more importantly what it contained that fired visions and devotion through direct spiritual experience. This is the secret or hidden environment of our ancestors that modern archaeology has revealed without doubt. It's not that old cultures used one or another drug, but used them all in a variety of ways of ingestion, sometimes in combination.
https://in.rbth.com/blogs/stranger_than_fiction/2017/01/09/how-russian-scientists-cracked-the-secret-of-a-riga-veda-era-drink_676758
There is ample evidence of psychotropic brews, including cannabis, hashish, poppy, ephedra, and acacia, as well as magic mushrooms and 'washed' ergot, an ancient analog for LSD. Some cultures included holy blood and wine in their brew. Such 'spiritual wine" inspired visions and action for entire countries.
These visionary states led to numerous heavenly flights which led to philosophies, mystical secrets and sects, and rites pregnant with symbolic meaning. Herbal lore and medicinals remain part of folk crafting wisdom. The chemical philosophy is the lost core of such traditions and their supernatural power.
Such tales are confounded with royal bloodlines as the main practitioners of such rites on behalf of their client states. Controversies over ancient drug rites still split bloodline members who consider such simple and obvious explanations anathema.
Such practices also lie at the root of Persian and medieval alchemy and the descriptors of the "philosopher's stone." Archaeologists have uncovered strong evidence from Paleolithic times 120,000 years old.
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/pakistan-cannabis-discovered-in-prehistoric-tomb/
http://www.astrosurf.com/macombes/laoupi-gods-in-heaven.pdf
We labor in vain to decode them without such knowledge. Even without such substances there are powerful means of transformation and rebirth which were not lost, but made relevant to each culture that encountered them throughout the centuries. They follow tales of eagles, dragons, royal blood, and gold. They drank soma and hoama to become immortal. They also used the DMT analog found in acacia trees. Botanical experts, they left 'no stone unturned.' 'Written in stone" takes on double entendre.
History and the history of religion cannot be understood without acknowledging such practices from Zoroaster to Paracelsus. These philosophers were literally 'stoned.' And these nomads spread their rites, with possible roots in Vedic and pre-Vedic times, throughout Eurasia (Yezidis, Zoroaster, Phyrigians, Thracians), into the Bronze Age at such sites as Gonur Tepe, an ancient mandala-style settlement. The same themes recur again and again from Sumer to Britain (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, Thrace, the Danube). They boldly declared, "We drank Soma; we became immortal," said the Xiongnu and Vedics.
https://scfh.ru/en/papers/we-drank-soma-we-became-immortal-/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonur_Tepe
Even without a spiritual basis, ancient drug use may have been stimulated by primordial fears of comets and destruction, much like the threat of annihilation by the atomic bomb led to drug experimentation in the 1960s, and the trend for ayahuasca pilgrimages for healing in today's uncertain world.
What was formerly sacred can be considered transgressive in today's world. But more than mores, the transgression is movement from the ordinary to the non-ordinary world, with its own joys and sorrows.
"[T[he "Stone of Antiquity"... is an ancient Egyptian process and is a technique older than the first Egyptian Dynasty. The Osirian Myth greatly reveals this secret as Acacia trees grew and flourished around the grave of Osiris. Thus the Spirit of Osiris being absorbed by the roots of the Acacia tree. The ancient Egyptians extracted the “Blood of Osiris” from certain species of this tree. Later in the Christian era the Elixir was also called “The Blood of Christ”. The Masonic Order further reveals the Acacia as the sacred bush marking the grave of the Master Builder Hiram Abif. This bush is known as the bush symbolizing our immortality. Moses saw it aglow on mount Sinai which spoke to him as God. The ancient mystery schools of antiquity gave it to their initiates. Not so far as Cagliostro's time, he introduced this "Blood of Osiris" into his Masonic Rite of Initiation." --Steve Kalec
https://adeptinitiates.com/blood-osiris-dmt/
A series of books, such as Cannabis and the Soma Solution and Liber 420, by Canadian author Chris Bennett are the most scholarly and comprehensive reports, including previously untranslated materials that have persuaded other academic and field researchers.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cannabis_and_the_Soma_Solution/-AMCBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=,Chris+Bennett+BOOKS&printsec=frontcover
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Liber_420/LJNcDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=,Chris+Bennett+BOOKS&printsec=frontcover
Such psychotropic or entheogenic compounds, alone or in combination are the missing puzzle piece in the story of alchemy. Alchemical texts are riddled with pictures of mushroom homologues, some of which even suggest doses with how many mushrooms are shown (Heinrick). It all bears strongly on worldview and the life we really want.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150522-scythians-marijuana-bastard-wars-kurgan-archaeology/
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/220-1607/features/4560-rites-of-the-scythians
http://www.astrosurf.com/macombes/laoupi-gods-in-heaven.pdf
http://www.monsalvat.no/blood.htm
Below: Alchemical image of the Divine Sophia as a Tree of Learning and source of the Elixir of Life. As such, she was known to alchemists as Sapientia, Lady Wisdom, Lady Nature, Alkimia. The multi-walled enclosure around her may suggest the multi-banded cosmos of the archons. Metaphorically, it represents the alcove of learning, then the exoteric, mesoteric, and esoteric chambers of divine instruction. She was a mother and fertility goddess, who as the goddess of the water of life, presenting all living beings to drink the life-giving water of the haoma, the Elixir of Life, which flowed forth from the tree of life.
philosopher's stone
The Philosopher's Stone forms in the heart from "wisdom Light" and enlarges perceptions which radically alter one's view of self, others, and cosmos as it is projected back into the re-enchanted world.
Make a round circle of man and woman, extract therefrom a quadrangle and from it a triangle. Make the circle round, and you will have the Philosophers’ Stone. --Carl Jung, "Psychology and Religion,"
CW 11, par. 92
"Just as the alchemists knew that the production of their stone was a miracle that could only happen "Deo concedente," so the modern psychologist is aware that he can produce no more than a description, couched in scientific symbols, of a psychic process whose real nature transcends consciousness just as much as does the mystery of life or of matter." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 296.
Just as some alchemists had to admit that they never succeeded in producing the gold or the Stone, I cannot confess to have solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery.
On the contrary I am darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem-things too big for our horizons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
It is said of the Stone: habet mille nomina [has a thousand names] which means that there is not one name expressing the Mystery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers' stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
There can hardly be any doubt that not a few of those seekers had the dawning knowledge that the secret nature of the stone was man's own self. This "self"was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a "hidden nature" dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 94.
“I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation into the phenomena of chemical change.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 482, Para 564.
"As consciousness descends deeper into the darkness, the ego's light becomes inferior to a deeper light that appears from the Philosopher's stone as the alchemists call it. The stone is the opus, the work of our lives, and in psychological terms represents the Self (the center and totallity of the psyche) as it comes to manifestations in our lives. This Stone is not fixed; it is a living dynamism continually flowing between and transcending in all dimensions." -- Monika Wikman, Pregnant Darkness
Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work: he is the prima materia, the caput corvi, the nigredo; as dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again as the lapis.
He is the play of colours in the cauda pavonis and the division into four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught—a symbol uniting all opposites (fig. 148). ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Pages 288-295.
"Jung's final work on alchemy, Mysterium Coniunctionis, concentrates on the conjunctions that occur to mark the end of one stage and the beginning of the next: 1) the mental union which marks the culmination of the nigredo; 2) the union of mind and body, which marks the culmination of the albedo, and 3) the union of mind, body, and ultimate reality, which marks the culmination of the rubedo and the production of the philosopher's stone." --Robin Robertson, (Indra's Net, Quest Books, 2009) .
CW 11, par. 92
"Just as the alchemists knew that the production of their stone was a miracle that could only happen "Deo concedente," so the modern psychologist is aware that he can produce no more than a description, couched in scientific symbols, of a psychic process whose real nature transcends consciousness just as much as does the mystery of life or of matter." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 296.
Just as some alchemists had to admit that they never succeeded in producing the gold or the Stone, I cannot confess to have solved the riddle of the coniunctio mystery.
On the contrary I am darkly aware of things lurking in the background of the problem-things too big for our horizons. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
It is said of the Stone: habet mille nomina [has a thousand names] which means that there is not one name expressing the Mystery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers' stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.
There can hardly be any doubt that not a few of those seekers had the dawning knowledge that the secret nature of the stone was man's own self. This "self"was evidently never thought of as an entity identical with the ego, and for this reason it was described as a "hidden nature" dwelling in inanimate matter, as a spirit, daemon, or fiery spark. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 94.
“I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation into the phenomena of chemical change.” ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 482, Para 564.
"As consciousness descends deeper into the darkness, the ego's light becomes inferior to a deeper light that appears from the Philosopher's stone as the alchemists call it. The stone is the opus, the work of our lives, and in psychological terms represents the Self (the center and totallity of the psyche) as it comes to manifestations in our lives. This Stone is not fixed; it is a living dynamism continually flowing between and transcending in all dimensions." -- Monika Wikman, Pregnant Darkness
Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work: he is the prima materia, the caput corvi, the nigredo; as dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again as the lapis.
He is the play of colours in the cauda pavonis and the division into four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught—a symbol uniting all opposites (fig. 148). ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Pages 288-295.
"Jung's final work on alchemy, Mysterium Coniunctionis, concentrates on the conjunctions that occur to mark the end of one stage and the beginning of the next: 1) the mental union which marks the culmination of the nigredo; 2) the union of mind and body, which marks the culmination of the albedo, and 3) the union of mind, body, and ultimate reality, which marks the culmination of the rubedo and the production of the philosopher's stone." --Robin Robertson, (Indra's Net, Quest Books, 2009) .