Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4

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Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4.
Volume 2 No.4 July-August 2001
ARTICLES
The Alchemy in Spiritual Progress Part 4
Alchemy: the Cosmological Yoga Part 4
Feminine Alchemy
FEATURES
New Releases
Laboratory Notes
Alchemy Lectures
EDITORIAL
From the Editor
Submissions
Acknowledgements
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 Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4.
The Alchemy in Spiritual
Progress
Part 4: Conjunction
by
Nanci Shanderá, Ph.D.
In the last three articles of this series, we’ve
explored the first triad of alchemical
transformation consisting of Calcination,
Dissolution, and Separation. These three stages
are the lower, earthbound processes of spiritual
evolvement. In order to be fully spiritual and
whole, we as humans must be grounded on the
earth plane, accepting our human experience as
a necessary and exquisite part of awakening.
This idea is not accepted in many of the world’s
religions, where it is taught that spiritual perfection is attained by denying and rejecting things of the
earth, whether they be the human body or the earth itself. These beliefs imply that things of the
physical plane have no value - some religions teach that our bodies are to be reviled and the earth a
place of devilish seduction.
Alchemy’s “motto” is “As Above, So Below,” meaning that things of the earth are intrinsically
interwoven with the heavens. Alchemists and shamans seek the balance between the two and from
that balance, they effect transformations and healings. The symbol of the World Tree, found in many
mystical traditions such as the Kabbalah, demonstrates that to be whole, we must have our branches
in the heavens, but our roots in the earth, with the trunk as a highway flowing between the two states.
The fourth stage of alchemical transformation is Conjunction. It can be related to the chakral system
where the heart is the fourth center of awareness. The heart can also represent the World Tree -- they
are both a central “clearing house” where the spiritual meets the physical and blends and harmonizes
them so that higher states of consciousness may be integrated.
In Conjunction, we bring together the work done in Calcination, where the ego was burned to ashes, in
Dissolution, where the emotions became more fully integrated and accepted without the ego’s
interference, and in Separation, where we discovered what was of value in our lives and let go of
anything that wasn’t. All of this is essential groundwork for the experience of Conjunction, where we
are called to a higher way of relating to ourselves, to others, and to the world. It is a coming together,
Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4.
or
Heiros gamos
, the Sacred Marriage, of all that we are, have been, and will ever be. It brings us face-
to-face with our Soul’s essence. Purpose takes on a new meaning. As a result of having been humbled
in the first three stages (I like the image of being on one’s knees before the majesty and power of the
Soul.), we are made ready to accept this marriage on deep inner levels of being.
This might manifest as a new attitude toward ourselves and others. If Separation set the stage for us to
quit a meaningless job, for instance, we may be inspired to begin doing what we always wanted to do.
In the conjunctive state of consciousness, there are fewer fears. The old “shoulds and shouldn’ts” are
absent, or at least less powerful. Life takes on a new joyousness, laughter is more present. There is a
sense of delight and excitement about the most mundane of activities because we experience acting in
partnership with our Soul.
In Conjunction, we begin to have a delicious taste of who we truly are. We get a glimpse of our
authentic Majesty and our eternal connectivity to all that is. Because this state is centered in the heart
of compassion, we view ourselves with far more acceptance and love. This allows us to lovingly
understand that the “mistakes” and ways of being in the past were “grist for the mill” - necessary
practice for the greater consciousness yet to come. For example, if we have always battled with low
self-regard, we can begin to perceive it as a self-regulating mechanism within that prevents us from
integrating and manifesting our Majesty until the time is right. My spiritual mentor, Brugh Joy, M.D.,
teaches that the greater the pain / depression / low self-esteem / limitation / etc., the greater the gift.
When I share that with my
students for the first time, I delight in the blank or confused looks on their faces because this statement
holds the power to throw them into a perception of their world they have never considered before. To
regard ourselves as not terrible after all but actually in the process of incubating a great and unique
talent or gift to share with the world is mind-blowing for most people.
Conjunction poses questions for us that require choices about where we go from that point. The state
of Conjunction is a pleasant enough place to be, but it also urges us to press on in our journeys so that
we may at some future time come full circle and once again, touch into the heart’s full rapture, each
next time expanding the experience in greater magnitude. While looking at Conjunction in your life,
review your capacity for compassion toward others and yourself. The Sacred Marriage means being “in
a state of love with” yourself and all your aspects, and with Life Itself. It may be time for you to practice
the art of laughing at yourself non-judgmentally -- you may be surprised at how delightful it is!
Next time, we will surrender to the heart’s urgings and move on to the fifth stage of alchemical
transformation called Fermentation / Putrefaction, where we taste again the sacred fires in Calcination,
but this time to a more finely-tuned degree. It is where we review what we have experienced while we
are pulled into the more intense fire that creates the fermenting process that refines us further by
urging us to die to old ways.
Nanci Shanderá, Ph.D. is a Mystery School teacher and spiritual counselor and dreamworker at
EarthSpirit Center in Eagle Rock, California. This article is excerpted from her book in progress:
Digging for Gold: the Art & Soul of Spiritual Experience
. She can be reached at 323-254-5458. Her
website is
.
Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4.
Alchemy: the Cosmological Yoga
Part 4: Tantric Alchemy
by Maurice Aniane
It is clear that human love can be expanded to higher levels by
alchemical ideas about cosmic sexuality. It is also clear that desire
– experienced in detachment and innocence – could help the "red
man" and the "white woman" of alchemy to capture at its very
source the “femininity” of matter. This union in the service of the
Great Work, however, was not easy. It implied at least three
requirements. The first seems to have been an uncompromising
purity and an extreme spiritual sensitivity, so that pleasure “might
never close up on itself,” but might awaken an ever-expanding
love and become less and less individual. Such love leads from
the beauty of the body to that of the soul and finally is reabsorbed in "the love of God who created
beauty." Thus the unity of all the states of love" could lead from the embrace that blindly transmits
death to the deathless, which, following the deep play on words of "the courts of love," awakens the
sense of eternity.
The second requirement was therefore to transpose this love into cosmic love. In the end, it was no
longer this man or that woman but the Sun and the Moon which were united "to give birth to God." "In
this second operation," wrote Flamel to a painter who had illustrated one of his works, "you have to put
together two natures, the masculine and the feminine, and you have married them; that is, they form
but one single body, which is the Androgyne or Hermaphrodite of the ancients. Thus the
hermaphroditic state is the aim, that is, the secret origin which impels man and woman toward one
another. In order to prepare this "passage to the end" the alchemical marriage was not presented as a
vague fusion, but as a meeting face to face slowly transformed by the "Art" into a union of
complementaries.
The third requirement of this love, the union of complementaries, relates the steps of the alchemical
work to the relation of man and woman: the "dissolving" of the negative masculine in the positive
feminine, the "fixation" of the negative feminine by the positive masculine. However, it is less a
question here of successive phases than of a constant interaction that brings about more and more
noble "crystallizations" (distillations) of love, until the final transmutation is achieved. This interaction is
the key to the "operation with two vessels," between which a vivifying and perfect circulation has to
take place: these "twins" were so arranged that the product distilled from each, its "angel," might pour
in order to purify it into the opaque part of the other (yin/yang). A creative exchange which also seems
to have constituted one of the foundations of Provençal love: "Everything takes place," writes R. Nelli,
"as if Provençal Erotica had tried to graft onto man the dominant 'quality' of woman: compassion for
the body, 'mercy'; and onto woman courage and masculine virtue." (This graft, which seeks to
actualize the androgyne in each partner, is wonderfully symbolized by two miniatures in a fifteenth
Alchemy Journal Vol.2 No.4.
century manuscript which Jung has reproduced in his work,
Psychology and Alchemy
: during the
"mortification" which is a preparation for the marriage and which
strikes both sexes simultaneously, the
Tree of Life is seen to grow out of the belly of the man and out of the head of the woman; as if man, in
order to become worthy of an authentic union, had to awaken the feminine part in himself, has to
renounce the reasoning of the head in order to feel the motion of his entrails; and as a woman had to
awaken her masculine part by freeing herself from the sensual and maternal despotism of her belly to
take part lucidly in the vocation of man.)
Finally, it may be that alchemists knew, not only of the marriage properly so-called, but of certain erotic
"techniques" similar to those of Tantrism and intended to awaken the energy of sex without allowing to
be wasted in seminal emission The texts often present the Greco-Roman symbol of the naked Diana,
which they liken to the Soul of the World, the vision of which is the goal of "the work in the whitening."
Now we know that the Medieval "pure love,"
that is love without carnal union, included the
contemplation of the Lady in the nude. As in Tantrism, where the "denudation of the virgin" symbolizes
"purification," the garments here represented the outer appearances. This practice implied a complete
sublimation: the texts predicted that the profane who dare to gaze lustfully at the "naked Diana" would
share the fate of Acteon -- transformation into an animal (the Stag) which would be devoured by the
dogs. So alchemy may have employed a Tantric
maithuna,
that is a ritual sexual union in which the
sperm, in the moment of emission, is abruptly stopped and must "reascend," so that the highest
concentration of life which it embodies might immediately enter into movement on the psychic plane
and provoke a liberating shock to the whole psycho-spiritual being. In fact, in a Hermetico-Kabbalist
text, the
Asch-Mézareph,
we find a hint of a procedure of this kind in the reference to the biblical
symbolism of the thrust of Phinea's spear: "The lance pierces at the same time the solar Israelite and
the lunar Midianite at their moment of their union and
in locis genitalibus
(in the genital region)
.
”
The
point of force of the iron, acting on Matter, cleanses it of all its defilement. Here the Israelite is nothing
other than masculine Sulfur and the Medianite should be understood as the Mercurial Water. Phineas's
lance not only kills the masculine Sulfur, but also mortifies his wife; and together they are transmuted
by mingling their blood in a single act of generation: it is then in fact that the miracles of Phineas
begin.”
Just as alchemy has allowed the sacred character of the flesh of the world to be maintained beneath
the lofty asceticism of Christianity, so Tantrism seems to have been born from a lucid systematization
of the concepts which underlie the deeply poetic and chastely carnal rites and myths of Hindu daily life,
but which Vedantic speculation neglected more and more in favor of an apparently discursive and
discarnate expression of the mystery of unity. These common roots, this partly analogous role, explain
why the attitudes of Tantrism and alchemy converge. Both take the material body as their point of
departure in order to transfigure it, since it is nothing other than the spiritual body identified with its own
objectification by the process of cosmogonic "desire". Thus the "diamond body" of Tantrism
corresponds to the
corpus glorificationis
(glorified body) of Latin alchemy, and the symbol of the
diamond is identical to that of the "stone," which is also a diamond. It is because the two traditions
have a similar conception of Nature: alchemy is clearly a "Shaktism" that assumes, even in its final
obscuration, the immanent power of the Divine Principle to save man – according to the Tantric view –
through the same means that habitually cause his downfall. Finally in both cases its is the same
assumption of positive sexuality, which stops on the cosmic plane in alchemy and begins
in divinis
for
Tantrism: the opposition of Sulfur and Mercury thus appears as a relatively contingent application of
the metaphysical polarization between Shiva and his Shakti.
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