What is Alchemy?
“A gardener has to have a knowledge of the unseen root of the tree before he can be expected to give his concentrated effort to watering its root so that the whole tree remains fresh and green.” – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi from the introduction of “Transcendental Meditation””Of the Means of Arriving at the Secret The requirements necessary in order to arrive at this Secret, are: the knowledge of Nature and of one’s self. One may not understand the first perfectly, or even the second, without the aid of Alchemy. The love of wisdom, the horror of crime, and of falsehood, the association of the wise, the invocation of the Holy Spirit; not to add secret to secret, to attach one’s self only to one thing (because God and Nature delight in unity and simplicity), such are the conditions necessary for obtaining the divine revelation. Man being the epitome of all Nature, must learn to know himself as the summary, the miniature of Nature.
There are fundamentally four definitions of alchemy today. (1) Alchemy is an ancient tradition of sacred chemistry by which one discovers the truth about the nature (both spiritual and temporal) of reality, its structure, laws and functions. (Traditional school of thought.) (2) Alchemy has nothing to do with chemistry (essentially) but is in fact a spiritual psychology veiled in archaic chemical symbolism. (Jungian or neo-Jungian school of thought.) (3) Alchemy is sex magick traditionally veiled in archaic chemical symbolism. (Western sex magick school of thought.) (4) Alchemy is whatever I say it is because nobody knows what it is. ((Generally) The new-age school of thought.) The first definition of alchemy is the original and traditional definition. The alchemical tradition extends back over 5000 years. Other definitions outside of the traditional one, have only become popular in the last 200 years. The second definition is based on two premises. That traditional alchemical literatur
Alchemy is a precursor to modern chemistry which was widely practiced all over the world through the 1800s, when more modern chemistry began to displace it. This discipline involved a study of the chemical properties of various substances, with a mystical bent. Ancient alchemists laid the groundwork for the scientific field of chemistry, establishing some basic principles which continue to be used today. Alchemists also discovered a number of things with practical applications, from some of the elements to the chemical process used to tan leather. The practice of alchemy appears to be quite ancient. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and early Arab community all engaged in alchemical investigations, and some exchange of information between these groups seems to have occurred as well. Alchemists had a number of goals in their work. Many of them were looking for a process which would turn base metals like lead into gold or silver. They also pursued a panacea, also known as a cure-al
Alchemy Is a Craft (from “The Alchemy of Craft” in A Way of Working by D.M. Dooling) The gold of alchemy was simply hastened perfection, inner and outer, the divinization of matter and man. This idea is certainly not strange to any craftsman. “When a man undertakes to create something,” wrote Paracelsus, “he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him.” In order that it may be expressed, that it may resound, the Word must be made flesh; immortality must be incarnated outwardly in gold and inwardly in the development of a subtle body within this ordinary body: the “glorious body” or “diamond body” of oriental tradition, the “spiritual body ” of the Christian. This “becoming” is what alchemy is about. Its process can also be expressed by the traditional formulas of initiation: the suffering, death, and resurrection of the god or the neophyte, represented by the substances in the crucible or by the material of the craftsman — the sy
