Alchemy Journal Vol.1 No.1

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Alchemy Journal Vol.1 No.1
Volume 1 No.1 Winter 2000
ARTICLES
Cosmological Yoga Part I
On Paracelsus
FEATURES
Announcements
Laboratory Notes
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Alchemy Lectures
EDITORIAL
From the Editor
Submissions
Acknowledgements
 Alchemy Journal Vol.1 No.1
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Alchemy: the Cosmological Yoga
(by Maurice
Aniane)
Part 1: What Is Alchemy?
Alchemy in most ancient civilizations is none other than the
science of the sacrifice of terrestrial substances, the liturgy for
transfiguring those crafts that deal with "inanimate" matter. We
find it everywhere from archaic Mesopotamia to ancient China and
in India throughout the ages. In these traditions, "mythological" in
form, alchemy is not restricted to any particular place: if the Spirit
is everywhere, obviously it is also in a stone; when the one and
only light, that of Divine Intelligence, is manifest in the sun, in an
eagle, and in honey, it is surprising that it is also manifest in gold,
that every metal is gold which does not know itself, and even in its
ignorance is a "state” of gold? If man has no other role than to
worship in the undivided sanctuary of his body and of nature, is it surprising that he should "transmute"
lead into gold? Neither can sanctity be divided, and the "miracle" of transmutation reveals its
omnipresence.
Alchemy in the metaphysical and mythological traditions had no more importance than the dance
which expressed the sacred nature of rhythm, showed the worshipful circling of the dancers to be the
same as that of the stars, and, in the sudden immobility of the body, "transmuted" time, the sleep of
lead, into the pure gold of a moment of eternity.
However, alchemy was destined to have a special
significance in the realm of the "monotheistic" traditions, and particularly in Christianity. Apart from
traces of folklore that still exists in some rural communities of Europe, alchemy, or, more generally,
Hermeticism, seems to have been the only cosmological doctrine to survive in the Christian world. It
has therefore been called upon to play a major role "beneath the surface" in a religion that stressed
"contempt of the flesh" and shunned cosmology.
In fact, during the early Middle Ages and up to the beginning of Gothic Art, alchemy was not opposed
to Christianity but completed it. Through it, the Eucharistic effusion radiated even into the heaviest
states of matter. It was no longer only bread and wine that were transubstantiated, but stone, lead, the
lime of bones and rocks. Vivified by Christianity, alchemy gave the latter a "technical" application in the
"psychocosmic" realm, which Christianity had neglected because its aim was not to establish man in
the world but to lead him out of it.
So alchemy could not have survived in the West without the tremendous initiatic effusion of
Alchemy Journal Vol.1 No.1
Christianity: just as the archaic house only exists because of the chimney by which it communicates
with "heaven," so there is no possible cosmology except around the "central" state, through which one
can find a way out of the cosmos.
However, without alchemy Christianity could not have been
"incarnated" in a total order: there would have been monks and saints; but there would not have been
the sacred idea of a nature which could endow the arts and crafts, and heraldry, with their character of
"lesser mysteries." In a time when we are weighed down by heaviness, it is perhaps urgent to remind
Christianity that it not only accepted but, in the centuries of its noblest incarnation, animated a true
"yoga" of heaviness and matter.
Despite the insistence of historians of science, alchemy was never, except in its degenerate aspects, a
primitive chemistry. It was a "sacramental" science in which material phenomena were not
autonomous, but represented only the "condensation" of psychic and spiritual realities. When the
spontaneity and mystery of nature is penetrated, it becomes transparent. On the one hand it is
transfigured under the lightning-flashes of divine energies, and on the other it incorporates and
symbolizes those "angelic" states that fallen man can only glimpse for brief moments, when listening to
music or when contemplating a human face. Symbols are not meant to be "stuck onto" things: they are
the very structure, the presence, and the beauty of things such as they are in the process of perfection
in God. For alchemy, which is the science of symbol, there was no question, as has sometimes been
said, of a "material" unity of nature, but of a spiritual unity – one could almost say a spiritual
Assumption of nature. For nature, ultimately, is none other than the place of a metaphysical principle:
through man it becomes the body of the Word and, as it were, the bride of God.
This Assumption of matter is the key to the alchemical work, which simply helps substances "to plunge
into the Father-nature," that is, to incorporate, according to their mode of being, the greatest possible
spiritual light. "Creatures must plunge into this Father-nature and become Unity and the only Son, "for
nature, which is God, seeks only the image of God." "Copper, because of its nature, can become
silver, and silver, by its nature, can become gold: so neither one nor the other stops or pauses until this
identity is realized." For gold is the most perfect of metals, the one whose luminous density best
expresses the divine presence in the mineral realm: through spiritual continuity each metal is virtually
gold and each stone becomes precious in God. This transfiguration of nature – memory of Eden and
expectation of the second coming (
Parousia
) – can at present only take effect in the heart of man, the
central and conscious being of the creation. Indeed, that being so, "the eye of the heart" can see gold
in lead and crystal in the mountain, because it can see the world in God.
Alchemy, like all the ancient sciences, was therefore an immense effort to awaken man to the divine
omnipresence. Its importance is to have emphasized this omnipresence in the darkest heaviness:
there where the pseudo-mystical, "idealistic" perspective would be least likely to look for it; there, on
the contrary, where, according to the analogical inversion of a "sacramental" vision, the divine
omnipresence "contracts” and most strongly withdraws into itself.
If the production of metallic gold has
sometimes been achieved, then it was simply a
sign
. It was no more of a miracle than that of a saint
whose look transforms a sinner. Just as the saint sees in the sinner the possibility of sanctity, so the
alchemist-sage saw in the lead the possibility of metallic sanctity, that is, of gold. And this vision was
"operative."
But the alchemist did not seek to make metallic gold. That was not the true meaning of his work. His
purpose was to unite his soul so intimately with that of the metals that he could remind them that they
Alchemy Journal Vol.1 No.1
are in God, that is, that they are gold. The medieval alchemist actualized the Word of Christ to the
letter: he proclaimed the good news to all creatures. "The stone is the Christ," all the Hermetic texts of
the Middle Ages hopefully repeat. Through his vision of Christic Gold, the alchemist could transmute
every "imperfect metal." But he did it only rarely, for as a saint, he knew that the time for cosmic
transfiguration had not yet come.
The true role of the alchemist was twofold: on the one hand, he helped nature, suffocated by human
decadence, to breathe the presence of God. Offering up to God the prayer of the universe, he
anchored the universe in being and renewed its existence. The texts call him
king
; as secret king, he
confirmed the order of time and of space, the fecundity of the earth producing grain and diamond, as
did the kings of ancient societies, like the emperor of China up to the beginning of the twentieth
century. In the second place, the alchemist, on the human plane, "awakening” substances and gold
itself to their true nature, used them to prepare elixirs which gave "longevity" to the body and strength
to the soul: "drinkable gold" was a gold
awakened
to its spiritual quality, and reflected in its order the
"immortality medicine" as St. Ambrose said of the Eucharist.
The true role of the alchemist was to
celebrate analogically a mass whose species were not only bread and wine, but also all of nature in its
entirety.
A Meditation on Paracelsus
(by Mary Hurst)
The alchemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus,
(1498 to 1541) was a great physician, chemist and philosopher. He discovered, for example, that
substances that make us sick can also, in small quantities, make us well, or protect us from further
infection. He worked hard all his life to teach the truth to a reluctant medical establishment, and died at
43, probably at the hand of someone who wanted him silenced.
In studying the story of his life and achievements, intriguing insights about his personality have been
coming to me between the lines of what I read. What I am
discovering is that, while there is nothing funny about Paracelsus,
his work, or the story of his difficult life, I still catch myself smiling,
and at times I almost want to laugh. Paracelsus was deadly
serious about his work, yet he had a sense of humor. The man’s
in-your-face style as portrayed in his writing and teaching makes
me applaud, as we do any time one of the “little guys” tells the
rude truth to authority. Paracelsus was a great “ranter,” but he
was no puritan, like his contemporary Savonarola, the reformer of
Florence. He was exuberant, full of “entheos” — the God Within
— alive and lusting to get inside the clockwork of the world to
discover what makes things tick. He was both self-aggrandizing
and humble in the face of the great mysteries. He was completely
devoted to spreading what he believed to be the truth, yet with his
over-the-top pronouncements and denunciations I suspect that, at
some level, he was putting us on. Of course, the medical
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establishment of his day did not see it that way. In fact, our word “bombast” comes from his name and
is a perfect description of his oratorical style.
Art historian James Elkins (
What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting Using the Language of
Alchemy
) notes that, “After one seminar Paracelsus had infuriated so many doctors and druggists that
he had to flee for his life in the middle of the night.” Imagine him pouring sarcasm and verbal vitriol
onto the professors and doctors at the University of Basle, as he accuses them of doing more harm
than good with their antiquated and dangerous “cures.” He tells them that their beliefs are not based on
actual experience, and challenges them to “get off the couch and get to work,” to stop reading ancient
texts and go out and discover the world for themselves. Rude and fearless, he burnt the classical
medical works of Galen, Avicenna and others to make the point that the ancient “cures” were
worthless. Paracelsus had reason to fear the maddened doctors, but even more reason to fear
retribution by the Catholic Church, on watch constantly for heresy.
Again, I find a certain tongue-in-cheek quality in his attempts to avoid accusations of blasphemy by
writing a history of alchemy that grounds it in the Judeo-Christian faith. As always, the wildest
assertions of Paracelsus were stated flatly as unequivocal truth. In “The Aurora of the Philosophers” he
begins with the assertion that Thoth (the ancient Egyptian bringer of wisdom who became a god) was
in fact Adam. In his version, the Pillars of Hermes were not pillars but two stone tablets that contained
information on all the natural arts written in hieroglyphics.
Skipping ahead in history, Paracelsus writes that, after the Deluge, Noah discovered the tablets
“under” Mount Ararat — perhaps an echo of the Ten Commandments of Moses, found on Mount Sinai.
This “universal knowledge” descended through Abraham, Jacob and the other Patriarchs of Hebrew
tradition, and became the intellectual property of Wise Men called Magi, such as those who visited
Jesus at his birth. According to Paracelsus, this is the true alchemical tradition, and “the Art” as
“discovered” by the Greeks was corrupted. This point of view may reflect his beliefs, but it also neatly
supports the Church’s position that the ancient Greeks and Romans were the original “pagans” against
which the early Christians rebelled. Paracelsus insisted that the Greeks (in particular the Sixth century
Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras) were not true wise men because they “would not
admit disciples belonging to other nations than their own.” Paracelsus’ words were supported by his
actions: for example, he gave his lectures in “the common German tongue instead of Latin,” which
scandalized doctors and professors at the University of Basel, where he taught in 1527. According to
Paracelsus, the wisdom of the Greeks was “mere speculation, utterly distinct and separate from the
other true arts and sciences.” He notes that this flawed science “flourishes with the Germans, and
other nations, right down to the present day.” He tells us that European science has been wrong-
headed all along, Q.E.D., from ancient Greece to “modern” Europe! I theorize that Paracelsus’ attitude
toward the Greeks may also have come from an unconscious personal bias. According to James
Elkins, Paracelsus (like the young Pharaoh Akhenaten, another important figure in alchemical history)
had a pear-shaped body and misshapen face with protruding lips. In contrast, Pythagoras was known
for his beauty and long hair. In his work and in his person, Pythagoras embodied the Greek ideal of
beauty and order that excluded Paracelsus by implication. Like Paracelsus, Pythagoras was a self-
promoter, however he was rewarded for his scientific and mathematical discoveries, while his less-
favored descendant was frequently run out of town on the sixteenth century version of a rail.
An ugly genius, Paracelsus suffered ridicule for his appearance as well as his beliefs; one can imagine
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