Prologue
The alchemical
tradition, incorporating hermetic philosophy and gnosticism, extends
chronologically, from pre-Christian times right up to the modem era, and
geographically, throughout Europe, Arabic countries (Egypt, Iran, etc.), and
even as far as India and China. The practitioners of the spagyric
art/science (from Greek spaein = to rend, tear apart, and ageirein
= to bring together) claimed matter as both the source of their wisdom (though
many had a spiritual orientation), and the salvation of their soul's desire.
In its simplest form, the transmutation of base metals (lead, mercury, etc.)
into gold was the primary goat, and the attempt to bring this about was taken
literally, and quite seriously. Running parallel with this effort was the
search for the philosopher's stone (the lapis, Latin = stone) and the
elixir of life ("drinkable gold").
Alchemy, as
proto-chemistry, later developed into the science of Chemistry at the time of
the Age of Enlightenment, while the more metaphysical statements of the
hermetic philosophers became the subject of philosophy and psychology.
Transmutation became an ultimate reality in the twentieth century at two
levels: psychologically, in the recognition of the alchemist's visions as
representations of developmental and structural transformations in the psyche
as given in the Jungian tradition, and physically, with the manufacture of new
elements through transmutation of already existing elements (for example,
hundreds of tonnes of plutonium are manufactured each year in the United
States alone) as a result of a more detailed knowledge of the structure of the
building blocks of matter (the atom), and an associated understanding of both
the immense forces which bind subatomic particles and the awesome energies
which may be released through nuclear fission and fusion. Thereby, late
twentieth-century humanity was launched into the nuclear age—a world very
different from that imagined by the alchemists.
The
Politico-religious World of the Alchemist
In an age-old
human world of values, aspirations, goal-seeking and the like, it is not
surprising that a kind of 'meritocratic' attitude should have emerged as a
fundamental aspect of human nature (this may be a human construction based on
an a priori instinctual pattern of survival). Existing side by side with other
political systems of increasing complexity as civilisations grew, this type of
meritocracy emerged in accordance with the notion that the measure of an
individual's merit (intelligence, strength, personality and character, talent
and skill, etc.) can only be proven in competition, or measured against
personal wealth.
Hand in hand
with the individual's "heroic quest" is the distortion of this necessary
striving for egohood and identity into an over-valuation in materialistic
societies of the 'object' as a symbol of personal power and spiritual strength
in highly prized (because rare) elements and other products of matter (gold,
silver, precious jewels, and so on). It is therefore not surprising that a
socially constructed type - the alchemist - should also have emerged: an
individual whose sole aim was to acquire wealth - whether this be measured as
aurum vulgi (common gold = material riches) or aurum philosophorum
(philosophical gold = emotional balance and wholeness).
Another split
was also reflected in the character of the alchemists. Human credulity and
avarice prompted many power-seeking and opportunistic rulers to seek out
successful alchemists who, having mastered the art of gold-making, were later
shown to be tricksters and charlatans leading both themselves and their
gullible sponsors either to financial ruin or narrow escape from vengeful
creditors (Holmyard 1957: 14; De Rola 1973: 12-14). Other less ambitious, more
honest practitioners of the art maintained a life-long and steady - if not
fruitful - attempt at transmutation through cautious efforts in the
laboratory, and avoidance of a public life, lest they be found out (Holmyard
1957: 14; De Rola 1973: 12-14; Aylesworth 1973; 39-41).
Secrecy was
especially important since all alchemists were regarded as heretics by the
Church for adopting the gnostic belief that spiritual salvation could be
achieved through knowledge of nature and matter, and speculative
interpretation of Scripture. Believing that human nature could be perfected in
a laboratory through chemical magic was an insult to Christian doctrine and
Church authority, where faith and spiritual interpretation of Scripture
was the only accepted path to God. Not that the alchemists in Christian Europe
were unchristian or antichristian - certainly they were not Godless. They
believed that the darkness of nature could only be illuminated by the light of
the Holy Spirit, Deo concedente (with God's Will), with the art itself
being an arcanum of the Sapientia Dei (God's Wisdom) (Jung 1973: 26,
52).
The Hermetic
Tradition
It is from a
religious position that the idea of correspondences was most highly honoured
amongst the more insightful of alchemists. Those that were well versed in the
hermetic teachings of the mythical Hermes Trismegistos - who supposedly lived
contemporaneously with Moses of Exodus fame, and produced many works on
alchemy, magic, philosophy and astrology - held the belief that a practical,
experimental approach to matter and an understanding of its nature, mirrored
or corresponded with the workings of the human soul and its nature,
culminating in a liberation from the earthly realm, "after knowledge and
experience of this world have been gained" (Bernoulli 1970: 319).
Fowden (1986:
22) notes that hermetic thought extends as far back as ancient Egypt to the
Egyptian Thoth (god of science, intellect, and knowledge) who was later
equated with both the Greek god Hermes (god of travel, communication, and
language) and the Roman god Mercury (god of commerce, eloquence and skill).
Fowden writes that since God was taken by the hermetic philosophers to be a
part of everything, it naturally followed that "sympathetic correspondences,
or 'chains'" existed between all things, held together by "divine powers" or
"energies":
affinities
[exist] between the most disparate areas of the natural realm, so that each
animal, plant, mineral or even part of the human or animal body corresponds to
a particular planet or god whom (or which) they can be used to influence,
providing the right procedures and formulae are known (Fowden 1986: 77-78).
Consequently, the equation of metals, animal natures and heavenly bodies with
human characteristics was inevitable. The colours of precious metals became
the 'soul' - the animating principle as merged with the metal's 'body' (the
mere physical quality of the metal); so too the human soul - character,
personality, mind - was a higher, more sublime component imprisoned in the
flesh and blood of the human body. The aim of the 'true' alchemist was
"dissolution of the body and the separation of the soul from the body" (Fowden
1986: 90). This secret was the 'absolute truth' about the soul and it
corresponded directly with the Philosopher's Stone - it was eternal, and to
have it meant not only knowledge of the mystery of life, but mastery over
matter and an ability to make gold.
Such a 'truth'
had to be guarded from the greedy and foolish masses. Therefore, as a means of
protecting themselves, and their knowledge, Holmyard (1957: 14) claims that
"alchemists used to describe their theories, materials, and operations in
enigmatic language, efflorescent with allegory, metaphor, allusion and
analogy" which often led interpreters to assume that the alchemists'
statements were sometimes of a "purely esoteric significance." However, their
'formulations' were made just as often unconsciously as they were made
deliberately. For the most part, the practices and materials were, as Holmyard
states, described esoterically, but the images, and the theories constructed
from these images, were spontaneous (unconscious) psychic products and were
represented by the alchemist as well as hand and eye would permit in ambiguous
and incomprehensible paintings and drawings.
Jung recognised
the value of these seemingly paradoxical and nonsensical images when he
discovered the connection between the unconscious psychic processes of the
alchemist and his experiments with matter (Jung 1970: 228, 242ff; 1989:
488ff). Although the tenth-century Persian physician Avicenna scoffed
at the literal-mindedness of the 'puffers' (so named from their constant use
of the bellows), and many disillusioned but enlightened alchemists closed
their laboratory doors for good to pursue the finer, more spiritual points of
the art, most alchemists were never aware of the psychic component in their
alchemical transmutations (Holmyard 1957: 90; Jung 1970: 217).
Understandably
so, since the unconscious content of the alchemist's psyche was not recognised
as personal (related to the ego) and was therefore seen in the laboratory
flask or vessel. Jung writes:
All projections
are unconscious identifications with the object. Every projection is simply
there as an uncriticized datum of experience, and is recognized for what it is
only very much later, if ever. Everything that we today would call "mind" and
"insight" was, in earlier centuries, projected into things, and even today
individual idiosyncrasies are presupposed by many people to be generally valid
(Jung 1989: 488).
The veritable panoply and diversity of imagery which constitute the
iconography of alchemy reflects the complex nature of the psyche -
particularly the unconscious - which communicates to the ego in images, since
they convey more meaning than the spoken word (not that language is not used
by the unconscious, but the image is universal and accessible to all people,
while language is limiting and particular to a people). As de Rola observes:
in their images
alchemists have spoken in ingenious and often very beautiful ways of things
about which they have never written. This pictorial language, in which not a
single detail is ever meaningless, exerts a deep fascination on the sensitive
beholder (de Rola 1973: 9).
Even today, images, mythical or otherwise, such as dragons, kings and queens,
ravens, lions, unicorns, royal marriages, peacocks, trees, and so on, can be
experienced to almost numinous heights in the human imagination (dreams,
visions, fantasies), and even in the visual arts, such as painting, sculpture,
and film.
The Magnum Opus
(The Great Work)
The first
principle of the opus was the Stone of the Philosophers. This Stone must be
"transformed and perfected by the art," becoming paradoxically, the lapis
philosophorum (Philosopher's Stone) (de Rola 1973: 10).
Psychologically,
the lapis refers to the psyche—its closest equivalent for the alchemist
being the human soul. In fact, the stone was called the "stone that is not a
stone," coming as it did "from God but not from God" (Aylesworth 1973: 36).
Although the terms, before and after transmutation, (first, Stone of the
Philosophers, then, Philosopher's stone) vary in word order, the lapis
is essentially the same, just as transformation in a person's personality is
detectable only through relationship, but not physically - effectively the
person is the same, but different, somehow.
The lapis
occupies an extremely high position in the arcanum of the alchemist, and as
such, tended to be referred to in the texts more often than the gold, which
was the transmuted base metal made possible by the lapis in the first
place. Specifically, the "transformed and perfected" Stone was attained by a
union of opposites symbolised by the hieros gamos (sacred marriage)
between Sol (Sun) and Luna (Moon) principles. These principles
were embodied in the anthropomorphic couple of King and Queen, which Jung
equates with consciousness and the unconscious, respectively. They are
antagonistic and polar opposites and may involve friction and violent reaction
when brought 'face to face'—the process of self-discovery is equally
demanding. This reaction was observable in the alchemist's vessel upon heating
a mixture of the standard ingredients Sulphur (Sun) and Mercury (Moon), and
was a highly volatile procedure symbolised by two dragons at war.
Should success
be attained, the royal couple would merge and become the hermaphrodite or
androgyne. Unfortunately, there were always difficulties, even disaster,
during the opus, and many stages, involving putrefaction, sublimation
(evaporation) and distillation (purification), were necessary to bring the
process to completion. Jung (1970: 228-232) observes that the "death of the
product of the union" might follow, which took the alchemist into the
nigredo (blackness) stage. A 'baptism' or washing may lead the alchemist
to the albedo (whiteness) stage, or the soul may return to the "dead"
body, or perhaps the cauda pavonis (peacock's tail) symbolism of many
colours might appear. This symbolism too, marks the advent of the albedo,
which is indicated by the 'presence' of silver - the moon condition.
The final stage,
the rubedo (reddening) or sunrise stage is reached when the highest
temperatures purge the product of its impurities. Once again the "red and the
white are King and Queen, who may also celebrate their "chymical wedding" at
this stage, symbolising a personality of even and balanced temperament and
exhibiting the best qualities of both natures—a 'golden' disposition (Jung
1970: 228-232).
The entire opus
is steeped in confusing symbolism, a conflation of real chemical reactions
with the alchemist's projections (it is known that the fumes from heated
mercury can induce hallucinations) - an undifferentiated merging of natural
events in the physical world with mental events in the psyche - which
generally produced an incoherent philosophy that could not, or should not, be
seen as referencing the same reality. The psychically real and the physically
real were one and the same to the alchemist, hence the difficulty the modern
mind has in deciphering these images. With the advent of modem depth
psychology a separation of these two factors became possible.
Epilogue
It cannot be
stated conclusively whether the ideals of the hermetic philosophers - the
'true' alchemists - were ever realised in practice. Throughout the many
centuries during which the alchemists have plied their craft only a few are
claimed to have discovered the lapis and actually transmuted base
metals into gold. One notable alchemist, a French scrivener of the 1400s,
Nicolas Flamel, and his wife Pernelle, are held to have amassed a vast fortune
in gold upon their discovery of the lapis, and there is documented evidence
recording the great many charitable acts performed on their part as a result
of such wealth (Sadoul 1972: 72-84).
As mentioned in
Investigator #54, a relatively new theory of '1ow energy
transmutation' by Kervran (1980), as distinct from the 'high energy'
transmutation described previously, challenges modem physic's conceptions of
matter. His theory sits alongside chemical theory and does not challenge its
precepts, but the physicist's theory of the atomic nucleus is challenged in so
far as it does not necessarily take extremely high levels of energy to create
one element from another. Numerous examples are given in Kervran's book.
The legacy of
the alchemists remains: from their hard work and personal sacrifice, extending
over thousands of years, arose the disciplines of modem medicine,
pharmacology, organic and inorganic chemistry, mineralogy and nuclear physics.
That which started in the imagination of the hermetic philosophers - the
psychophysical parallelism of the human being with nature, the dream of
transmutation, the discovery of many new elements, the nature of crystalline
structures, and genuine scientific work (including improvements in laboratory
techniques) - led to the empirical foundations of the world as we know it
today.
The testament of
the alchemists: advances in medicine (cures for venereal disease and other
ailments, smelling salts, sleeping potions and pain killers), waterproofing
for leather and cloth, rust inhibitors, luminous inks and explosives, and so
on, have all arisen from the imagination and the endeavouring human spirit. As
Jung has said: "the debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It
must not be forgotten that it is just in the imagination that a [person's]
highest value may lie" (Jung 1971: 63). This value, the alchemist's dream, may
well be the philosophical gold.
Borrowed
Article Copyright Permission Pending
© Lance Storm
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