Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4

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Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4.
Volume 5 No. 4. Winter 2004
ARTICLES
Alchemical Art
Cooking for the Collective Unconscious
The Emerald Operation
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EDITORIAL
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 Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4.
Alchemical Art
by
Laurel Price
My art is an alchemical process
for me. My paintings are
invocations of the energy I
desire to access or express. I
seek to transform and be
transformed by the process of
painting. Art for me is a direct
way to access the right brain,
archetypes and the collective
unconscious. Images emerge
from my unconscious and I
begin to paint. I have no idea
beforehand what desires to be
born on the canvas. My
paintings are in a process of
becoming, just as I am. I could
choose to change them at any
time. Artists and alchemists
both used many of the same
chemical ingredients. I prefer to
use oil paint as a medium,
combined with gold, silver and
copper leaf. I like to use
complimentary colors to create
energetic and dynamic tension,
like yin and yang.
"There is only one religion, but
a hundred versions of it" -
George Bernard Shaw.
I see alchemy as the perennial philosophy. Art is free and full of endless possibilities; therefore nothing is
Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4.
irrelevant to me.
I use both Eastern and Western imagery in my paintings. I was not formally trained as an artist but feel
compelled by an inner need to create. I have been influenced by transpersonal psychology, Jung, Taoism,
psychedelics, astrology, shamanism, chi gong, mythology, nature, mysticism and life itself, all of which led
to my interest in alchemy. My paintings are the visual fruits that grow from my quest for self-actualization.
They are a record of my journey.
Phoenix
(shown at left)
Oil and gold leaf on board
.
Phoenix was my first oil painting. It was
created at a turning point in my life. Both
of my parents were gone, and I felt the
need to re-examine my life and my past.
I decided it was time rediscover my
childhood dreams, one of which was to
become an artist, something my parents
had always discouraged - thinking artists
were "bums.” I decided from then on I
would do what my inner self desired to
do. It was now time for me to give birth
to my Self.
Phoenix is about rebirth. It is about rising
from the ashes of the past and creating a
new life. It is about the regenerative
capacities of our soul and spirit. The
Phoenix is consumed by the flames and
emerges triumphant and transformed.
After each ending is a new beginning.
The light returns. The Phoenix rising
from the ashes is an apt metaphor for
the Winter Solstice, which is a
celebration of the rebirth of the sun after
a long, cold, dark winter. The fire
element represents male yang energy,
desire, intention, enthusiasm, will,
creativity, personal power, passion,
action and the force of the spirit. We all
have the capacity to recreate ourselves. It is never too late to follow our dreams!
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." –
Goethe
Lotus
(shown at right)
Oil on canvas.
Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4.
The Lotus was my second painting. I studied psychological astrology at The Centre Of Psychological
Astrology, London, U.K. I discovered that I am a Plutonian, with Pluto conjunct Moon in the 8th House, in
opposition to Sun in Aquarius conjunct Venus in Pisces in the 2nd. I also have Mars in Sagittarius. With
such an abundance of intense fiery energy, my Lotus painting is my attempt to invoke my neglected Venus
in Pisces.
I have always been very yang. Like many people in our culture, I was afraid my softer, yin, feminine side
would be perceived as weak. After have developed a strong inner core, it was now time for me to explore
this more gentle side of my nature. Lotus is about opening our heart, being receptive, blossoming and
unfolding in a quiet gentle way. It's about allowing ourselves to feel vulnerable. It is about nurturing
ourselves and others. Paradoxically, it takes a lot of courage to open ourselves to life! The Lotus is about
emerging from a state of unconsciousness into consciousness. It is about allowing our true inner beauty
and authenticity to shine forth, without armor and without masks. Most of all, it is about Love.
Laurel Price
is an artist who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Her web site is:
and she can be emailed at:
alchimia1@mac.com.
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Cooking For The Collective Unconscious:
An Alchemically Enlivened Recipe
by
Craig Chalquist
We are the metals' first nature and only source
The highest tincture of the Art is made through us.
No fountain or water has my like
I make both rich and poor both whole and sick.
For healthful I can be and poisonous. -- Rosarium philosophorum
Ars requirit totum hominem. ("The art requires the total man.") -- Hoghelande, "De alchemiae
difficultatibus"
Coffee, toast, cake, pancakes, sloppy joes, scrambled eggs, and turkey with stuffing. At one time that
summed up my cooking feats. Given that and the unevenly developed sensation function typical of an
introverted intuitive type, no wonder dreams often find me fumbling with pots and pans, or even being
clobbered by them. Although I doubt a home economics course would help any of me but my stomach to
grow inwardly, I looked into alchemy to amplify the cooking symbolism produced by my unconscious. And
what is alchemy?
The Search for the Stone
Alchemy Journal Vol.5 No.4.
Once upon a time, introverted philosophers steeped in Mesopotamian astrology and pre-Socratic thought
began learning Egyptian chemistry. In many ways, they were forerunners of scientific experimentalism.
Working, often alone, in their mystically decorated laboratories, staring lovingly into their bubbling
contraptions, their aim was to bring into alchemical (from the Arabic al kimiya) being a fabulous living
amalgam called the Philosopher's Stone and thereby discover their own brand of salvation.
Legend had it that this Stone could transmute ordinary metals like lead and brass into gold; that it
obliterated sickness and restored health; that it bestowed on the artifex ("artificer": the alchemical adept)
long life and physical regeneration; that it provided a self-replenishing well of secret knowledge. Men and
women dedicated their lives and sometimes lost them in their mystico-scientific endeavor to unearth
Mercurius, the alchemical Spirit in the Stone, and thereby tap what Marie-Louise von Franz has called
divine power in matter. There are wannabes and charlatans in every field. Some alchemists sought gold in
order to be wealthy. But others had an amusing term for these money-chasers: "puffers," so named to
caricature them as greedy kneelers blowing hard on the futile fires heating their simmering retorts.
The true alchemists believed in something else. They believed that all things evolve. And not only things
classified as living. The alchemist recognized three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal.
Corresponding to the sacred compounds Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, each kingdom slowly
metamorphosed into the next, base metals like iron growing eventually into gold, all minerals gradually
becoming plants, plants animals. To accelerate this evolution: this the alchemist saw as his most holy,
scientific responsibility. Although these researcher-contemplatives never found literal gold or immortality
(the usual disappointment at rainbow's end for those who live out what should be lived in), they located
something more precious than metallic wealth: an unintended glimpse, coded into their elaborate
formulas, of the psyche's deepest patterns.
Nevertheless, for millennia the written works of the alchemists gathered dust in old libraries, the elaborate
treatises scattered, discredited, and forgotten. Alchemy looked to the hyperrational eye of science like
ersatz chemistry, a superstitious dabbling in physical impossibilities, just as mythology seemed a
collection of dead explanations for natural processes. To the jealous eye of religious orthodoxy, alchemy
was heresy pure and simple, a kind of do-it-yourself Gnosticism. So the potent imagery dreamed by artifex
and soror mystica ("mystical sister": female alchemist) in their laboratory-shrines shuffled sadly from
history's spotlight, leaving behind a handful of obscure terms like opus, reflux, and hermetic seal. Until C.
G. Jung.
You can't read much of alchemy, or of Jung, without learning that he saw in alchemy's rich, magical,
medicated symbolism the outlines of individuation, the lifelong enrichment of consciousness and its
actualities by contact with the unconscious and its potentialities. Jung found in alchemy the bridge
between Gnosticism and psychology and the historical counterpart to his concept of the collective
unconscious. He discovered that the artifex, the alchemical researcher who preceded both chemist and
psychologist, projected into matter's dark mystery the search for the Self (from the Hindu atman or spark
of God), archetypal center and organizer of personality, symbolized by the trapped spirit Mercurius (or his
windy forerunner Hermes, derived in turn from the Egyptian Thoth) and the Lapis Philosophorum, the
Philosopher's Stone that could extend life, heal all sicknesses, and transform base metals into gold. And,
for the true philosophers, not the base gold of the "puffers," but the essence of metals: "Our gold is not the
ordinary gold." Nor was their wisdom the ordinary wisdom.
So over steaming retorts the meditative alchemist dreamed deep visions and wrote them down as
chemical transformations. Although every artifex used his own methods in his own way, the opus
alchymicum, the work to cook the Lapis, divides roughly into four basic procedures or regiminia: the
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