Philosophical Alchemy

Series of three classes by MBM.  October, 1932

Lecture I

….House of imperishable knowledge.  Not made with hands.  Rooted in big things.  Foundation, eternity.  Plumbed (?) by laws and by principles.  Rears itself up to higher places, against the sky.

     Most knowledge is perishable.  The need for permanent values.  A pity that we do not realize more the need of imperishable knowledge.  This is a kind of house we are slowly building in these classes.  Some of you have begun building this house.  Will have assembled a few stones; have listened in on a number of classes.  Some of you have begun setting the stones together, with the mind.  Some of you out of curiosity; but I hope you are not leaving it that way.  Some of you have gotten the flavor of the delight in setting this house up.  Our philosophical background contributes stones.

     What kind of stones is alchemy going to contribute?  What will it add to our great house?  The implication is that all great philosophies – in the sense that they are philosophy, not man-made — contain some of the same kind of stuff, yet outwardly formed a little differently.

     Alchemy has, in our modern day, rather an unsavory reputation.  (Was) called the black art.  We will see why.  But alchemy is really the chemistry, and preceded chemistry.  Alchemy is the search for the secrets of the super-chemistry of the visible and the invisible worlds.  The alchemists do in their philosophies, their approach to this great quest, many things in common with other approaches to the great eternal quest.

     One is, that they believed that in the ideal, which they called by various names: gold, the elixir of life, and the philosopher’s stone — these three were believed to contain supreme power and good — a power of converting that which they touched to a similar nature.  Even Bacon says something of that sort.  He believed profoundly in alchemy, and believed that in the philosopher’s stone was a power that, when it touched other metals, had the capacity to turn them to supreme good, which would be called gold in the language of metals.

     So alchemy is the search for the secret chemistry of the visible and invisible worlds.  Chemistry is called the science of the substance side of things, and the transformations which the elements of that substance undergo.  The alchemist knew that, but saw it primarily on a higher octave, for he believed in the powers of an invisible world.

     This evening we will take a kind of historical view of our subject, so that we have a background on the various processes which we must study.

     Before we go to that historical survey let us make a venture on the name chemistry, or alchemistry.  We might find a key to why alchemy has been called the black art.

     Some of you know that the name for Egypt was Kemet.  Geber (Jabir) was an Arabianalchemist.  The pre-historical beginnings of alchemy go far back — part of the records to the third, fourth and fifth centuries B.C.  Suggests that the source of the name Kemet, the name of Egypt, meant the Black Earth.  And the main source of what we have through the Arabs unquestionably came through Egypt, or the Land of the Black Earth.

     Since one of the great sciences of the Land of Cham (Chem) was what is now known as alchemy, it was logical that it received the name of Cheme.  Kempt, or Cheme, also means the black of the pupil of the eye in Egyptian.  The black points in the eye are like a pathway into the inner world, and leading out into the outer world.  (spellings uncertain. GB)

     It is significant that the same word is used for the Black Earth and the black pupil of the eye.  Hence there is a certain folklore logic that presently this Black Land, or Kemet, or black, the black art, or the chemical art, is the source for our queer expression of this type of magic as the black art.  Since it had enormous power it carried its way down the centuries; and we think it was called black because it was secret.  No; that is later.  It derived its real name from the source of the word Cheme.  The names come from a variety of races (see bibliography); there were people of all lands working in alchemy.  Many monks, down the centuries.  Many belonging to the church.

     Geber is partially mythical.  Three books that he wrote are left.  A dynamic figure.  Was copied.  Was practiced in art and literature, philosophy and alchemy…..School of Geber.  Those who followed him were called pseudo-Geber.  How the crowd drags words down.  A meeting in 1846 of the Mendelian Society attached the word Gibberish, trash, to the word Geber, who wrote in code.  To most people that was what he wrote.

     With Albertus, a new type of thing developed.  He was a Dominican, a student of the natural sciences.  He practiced alchemy.  Albertus is known by two other names: Albert de Groot and Albert v. Bolstadt.

     Roger Bacon, a ruthless exposer of shams.  A student of natural law.  You know the price he paid for showing things were due to natural law; sought to debunk miracles by proving natural laws.

     Aquinas: couched much of his writing in alchemical terms.  He was probably a pupil of Albertus.

     Lully: a Spaniard.  He had lived a wild life.  Had fallen in love with a woman who was already married.  Tried to persuade her to run away with him; and one day she invited him to her home and in the presence of her husband, opened her garment; her breast was eaten by cancer.  This so affected Lully that he was a changed man.  From that time forth he went into an entirely different type of activity.  Was later stoned to death by the Arabs whom he tried to convert, and from whom he learned much of the secrets of alchemy.

     Flamel: a poor scribe, who suddenly became wealthy.  Had had a strange visitor, an adept who had taught him to make gold.  He practiced alchemy, although he did not say he made gold, and wrote along alchemical lines.  His book a philosophical summary, does not suggest physical alchemy.  There is often a mixture between the physical side of alchemy and the philosophical side.  The two are interwoven all the way through.  It is as though the physical alchemists, that is, those who were looking for material gold, like the philosophical alchemists chose to use the same language; and that language is a symbolical language.

     The language is now couched in mystical terms and now in terms of metals; now in terms of processes which could not go on literally with metals, and which you will say could not go on with processes in the soul.  Later we will be able to separate these a bit, but do not be dismayed when, in your first approach to alchemy you are being introduced to an alchemist who seems to have a record of making material gold, and see that he has written many books which unmistakably have philosophical titles.  The two are interchangeable.  The philosophical alchemists worked from above down; physical science works from below up.

     The alchemists — all those who were worthy of the name, had a philosophical vision of the universe.  They believed in one primary element from which all other elements were derived.  Modern chemistry is just beginning to say the same.  The alchemists, as philosophers, knew these things philosophically; and they strove to find the way of working them out in themselves and in the metals.  The modern scientist, on the other hand, pooh-poohs all philosophy or philosophical theory.  He thinks he is a far superior being, and he starts from the bottom up, gathers his facts, and frequently gets nowhere.  If alchemists and chemists could combine we might get somewhere.

     When the alchemists worked, the equipment of laboratories and factual knowledge was not adequate to deal with the phenomena which the alchemists rightly theorized should bring about certain results.  So the alchemists are working from above down, know so and so must be, because it is based on principles; the chemists put all that aside and use only things of this dimension.  The chemists today are coming to a view of the conclusions that were known to the alchemists, that not always can be of physical demonstration.

     Valentine: a Benedictine.  In their tinkering saw a correspondence with certain other processes, that belonged to the soul.  He says that, when he emptied the dregs of life, knowing the limit of human suffering, he put aside the world and put in all his spare time on alchemy; and adds that, as he worked in alchemy he saw how God shadowed out eternal things.

     There you have immediately an illustration of the duality of alchemy — the material processes and some immaterial processes.  And, via the principle of correspondence, he saw the relationship between the two – how God shadowed out eternal things in the metals with which he worked.

     Ripley.  A monk.  Was given the privilege by the Pope to go away and study alchemy.

     Paracelsus: about the time of Columbus.  A big change comes in our process of alchemy with Paracelsus.  He was a medical man.  Was born in Einsiedeln, later called back to Basel, to teach.  He, like Bacon, so forcibly exposed the duplicity of the medical world, and paid the price.  He was fearless.  Did much to clean up the medical world.  Introduced a new concept of alchemy.  Saw it now as partially alchemy, but also alchemy as applied to the human body; or metals to be used as drugs; and a new form of chemistry, or alchemy, was born.  It goes by the name of istro-chemistry.  There is a doubleness in alchemical activity.

     Maier: He defended the Rosicrucians (the original Ros) a brotherhood of wise men, by his pamphlet, circulated about this time, saying that there was a brotherhood of very wise men who called upon those in the world who were interested to band themselves together to start a rejuvenation of the world, to heal social ills, etc.  He asked, further, that those who were interested should likewise write some little pamphlet or leaflet which should make them known, in turn, and the brotherhood would communicate with them.

     He stirred up tremendous interest in medieval Europe.  There were many answers, but they did not receive answers in turn.  Whereupon there was tremendous criticism of this society.  The pamphlet said that hundreds of years ago somebody named Rosenkreuz had lived, and had a way of life.  Thus, the Rosicrucians were in bad repute.  Maier was one of the defenders of the Rosicrucians.  You will see later why it happened so.

     Helmont: he should have been included in the list.  He introduced a new concept – in the idea of gas.  Before that, what we call gases were a different kind of air.  From this time on there is a shift, and the concept of gas entered into the picture.

     The alchemists who were philosophical were right but had not yet the means of doing what the modern chemist had, were constantly finding out more specifically about the substance side of matter; and gradually the way was being set up for a material science.  We have, first, a philosophy — for that is what alchemy really is, then a breaking down bit by bit, yet logically, a degradation into the material science, where it becomes lodged, and where it still is.  There are tentative gestures, now here now there, to break away from these lodgings in material facts.

     The 17th century Rosicrucian Society published several books.  The pamphlet was published in 1614.  A little later “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz”.  A Lutheran strain appeared – Andraea – his name is cross-wired with the history of the Rosicrucian Society.

     Vaughn: an Englishman, born 1622.

     Helvetius: Swiss.  You should know something of his strange story.  An eminent physician, to the Prince of Orange.  In his writings he tells this story, of a simple person who came to his house.  Helvetius had written against the alchemists.  Helvetius scratches off a little fragment of the little stone.  The implication is that there was a group of people behind, and that there are therefore alchemists, and what are known as adepts.  Perhaps it was an adept who came to our poor man scribe and taught him to make gold.  Anyhow, all through this tradition of alchemy, you run, every now and again on the story of an invisible (not known as one of a brotherhood) who walked about but are not what they appear — are really the influences who mold all (?) these (?) things but who look gray.  cr. the dybbuk.

     To complete our story, after the guest was gone, Helvetius in great excitement, immediately got busy, his wife helped him, got the little bit, with the proper kind of wax, and then carried on.  He said that, to his enormous surprise, there was a very strange sound, a great sizzling and a sudden transformation within the pot (?); and presently he discovered that the lead had been changed to gold.  It first became a peculiar green.  Many chemists tried the gold and it stood all the tests . That is in the historical records.  The chemist knows elements can be transformed, and even made into gold.  Too expensive as yet.

     The basis of this transformation is on a universal substance.  The alchemists believed in what they called prima materia.  Most physicists do now, too.  In this prima materia was all power.  If there is a single source for all substance, from which it has gone into differentiation, and if man could find the secret of that differentiation and possibly control it, he could make substances according to his will.  In that will is all power.

     By the same token, the alchemists, or man in his higher part; soul, spirit, has come from One Substance – one Spirit, one source, or condition, in which was Source-nature, would also be all power.  Even the orthodox religious folk in their creeds and trite talk, will speak of Spirit as being all powerful and the desirable Good.

     The alchemists knew the principle of correspondence, and they knew, philosophically, mystically, occultly, that all substance of what we call the visible world has one elemental nature, prima materia.  They knew also that all humanity had one Source, one prima materia, called Spirit.  In this Source, obviously, must be all dynamic, since in it is the power of all differentiation, which has continued down the ages.  So it must be frightfully dynamic.

     They sought therefore to approximate, or come ever closer toward this Source materially.  Hence the correspondence.  Whether you should say the alchemist is one who believed in intensive soul culture, for the sake of spirit; or whether you should say the alchemist believed in the unending quest for gold, you are really saying the same thing.  For many of the philosophical alchemists tinkered in their laboratories working out the correspondences on the physical side to what we call the processes of intensive soul culture.  For alchemy, in its physical side, is the short cut, the understanding way, to move toward the Source from which we came.

     Therefore the search for prima materia, or for the dynamics of prima materia, is true on both the physical and the philosophical side.  But the question is: Is prima materia the same as gold?  No.

     Generally speaking, at least in our approach, you might say you have to know the prima materia, and we do things to prima materia in order to arrive at gold.  Philosophically speaking, you have to know, and have separated in yourself, the elements which we may call the spiritual nature, before you can fulfill your lives, or build the philosopher’s stone.  So the philosopher’s stone, or the stone of wisdom, is the search for the fulfillment of what we might call the prima materia, the prima materia being the elemental nature in its beginnings.

     Some of the alchemists, especially the later ones, saw the three natures: body, soul and spirit, and saw that one was the overtone of another.  So that they saw an invisible body of the metal and the living substance which was, as it were, the soul of the physical stuff.  To get at that is to be able to mold the physical.  For each of these — body, soul, spirit — is more pure than the one which preceded it, seen from below up.  Therefore soul can mold body, spirit can mold soul.

     Therefore the alchemist sought, as it were, the soul of the metal, and you will find much literature of the alchemists in which they speak of the soul of the metal, which is that which they want to extract from the base metal.  And so they speak of the soul of lead, the soul of mercury, or any other metal with which they are working.

     Therefore, when you hear that, bear in mind that it means, as it were, the subtle body of the material body.  And that subtle body has a power stronger than the material body, which, if they can manage (it) will mold the physical.  Hence, they must, as it were, learn to extract that.

     I will close with a typical quotation, – from Thomas Vaughn.  It will give you a little of the flavor of the alchemical type of writing.  It is full of contradictions, apparently, but not if you will forge the key to understanding it.  It is of special interest apropos of the transliminal: “There is a mountain, situated in the midst of the earth, or the center of the world (In this dimension you cannot handle a paradox — or you call it a paradox.  Just in proportion as your mind has developed a grasp beyond this dimension, the thing you call a paradox supplements) which is not small and great.  It is far off and near at hand, but by the providence of God, it is invisible.  In it are hidden most ample treasures, which the world is not able to value.  This mountain, by the envy of the devil, who always opposes the call of God and the felicity of man, is compassed about with cruel beasts and ravenous birds, which make the way thereto both difficult and dangerous.”

     The ravenous birds are intellectual thoughts.  The bigger values are protected, until you can overcome these ravenous birds.  Beasts before the River Acheron.

 

Philosophical Alchemy

Second of three classes by MBM

October 14, 1932

 

(Sheet of 7 quotations from alchemists, used by MBM in this lecture are appended to the last typed page of original copy.  They were included only in part in the text, and only this part appears in the carbon.)

     A quaint saying: No torches or spectacles will help if people are determined not to see.  A bid for the special type of attitude which all inquiry into departments of research that are not three-dimensional requires.  Be careful that you don’t measure your standard of values by three-dimensional determinants.  They are the people who will not see.

     The symbolism which alchemy uses runs the whole range of available symbols.  Does not stay within one department.  This evening I will work with you for a time on some of the main symbols which alchemy employs.

     Why symbols?  All language that has to do with anything not three-dimensional, not of the material world, will require symbols.  So symbols are a kind of super-language.  The alchemist uses all types of symbolism; there is not one that is unique to it.  When it speaks of metals it means powers.  These powers are different degrees, or natures, according to the condition of the metal, and, of course, the metal itself.  Some metals, like lead, have a lower grade of quality, or at least a grade undesirable for gold.  Hence, lead has to be transmuted.

     Before we go to the symbology itself let us summarize what we might call the leading planks in the platform of the alchemist.  I have tried to compact these so as to give you a quick kind of a view which three evenings should provide.  These four as essentials, namely:

1. That there is a prima material.  That to know that material, is fundamental.  That, in that material, is the great power that is desirable.

2. They believed in what we know as the principle of correspondence, that is, as above, so below; as below, so above.  Or, that the characteristics that are found, as it were, in one octave are to be found, correspondingly, but not identically, on the next octave.  Or, that the things that are true of the soul and of the spirit are also true of the material world; and hence, the curious relationship in their work between what we might call philosophical alchemy and material alchemy.  One became an analogue of the other.

3. 3.That there is possible a superior transmutation of metals — not only lead, tin, etc. but their correspondents on other planes.  They believed this was possible.  How?  By the type of thing that we touched here at Pojodag in the short series on The Three Realms of Law.  The realm of nature is superseded, or controlled, by the realm of mind, or the law of mind.  Man, coming to understand nature, changes it, while working in accordance with nature’s laws.

     By the same token, to know the occult, or secret, nature — not only the physical metals but their correspondents — is to be able to work the transmutation; or to add the super-mind control over the nature of the metals.

4. That in the ultimate product: gold, the elixir of life, or the philosopher’s stone — in this ultimate product is the curious talismanic power of converting other metals by touch.  Think of what the metals correspond to on other planes.  The reason, therefore, for desiring these super-products is that in them was all power.

     But the alchemists knew that to possess this power without the qualities of the fine, mature soul, or spirit — if it had to do with the control of matter, would be disastrous.  It is even disastrous to know the powers and manipulation of forces, substances of another plane, if you haven’t the corresponding fineness.  Hence they clothed what they had to say in one code after another, deliberately mixing their language, often purposively transferring their symbols, so as to mix up the one who is not in on it.  The one who is already enlightened will understand the language, and use the content.

     These four were the planks for the material as well as the philosophical alchemists.  What occurs in nearly all cases is that the philosophical alchemist works correspondingly in the transformations of the chemical.  Just as we might work in chalk to make symbols of the things that we know on other planes — playing with the signs of things, as we said at exhibits here.

     The alchemists worked from above down.  That is, their vision included the general perspective, in which the details, not yet worked through by the alchemists, were contained.  They sought for the solution of their philosophical theses, not only in living but in chemistry.  And our present day work in chemistry proves that the leading alchemists were right.

     I will venture a few symbols with you.  Do not think only of prima materia as the first substance.  It is to be seen as the container of all else that has since been derived.  Hence is known as Father and Mother.  Hence, also, as the Philosophical Chaos — the elements not yet ordered.  In this first Substance are the seeds of the four elements, or what is known as Earth, Water, Fire, Air.

     What is the difference between a philosophical element and a chemical element?  … an element that has a correlation in regard to the human being.  They are primary natures.  Earth does not mean the earth out in our gardens.  It means those characteristics of it in your three-dimensional plane.  By the same token, water is not the water as in my glass but the psychic correspondent, its next octave, working upward—  which is just as unreliable as this water.  Water also is productive of good and hence has certain beneficent qualities.  Therefore, water, earth, fire, air are not chemical elements but essentially, or primarily, factors in the Creative processes — the tools which the Creative Hierarchies use.

     In this Prima Materia are the four elements, but in them are again, in each, four.  You may read of sixteen elements.  This prima materia is the raw stuff, the beginning of life; and in alchemy you must make a sharp differentiation between that and ultimate materia.

     So prima materia is at one end and ultimate materia at the other.  Ultimate materia is the philosopher’s stone, the goal, the elixir.  The whole process of an alchemical transmutation lies between these two poles.

     We will now take up three metals as they relate, not only to man, but to all nature: salt, sulphur, mercury:

     Salt, broadly speaking, means the body of things.  That is where we begin; body, soul, spirit.  Salt is, first, body, but it is also represented by the environment that is heavy.  Seven words, all of which relate to the same thing: lead, salt, Saturn, brass, earth, antimony, dragon.

     Why is it that transmutation, alchemically, is said to begin with lead?  Because lead, at least at the time the alchemists worked, was the heaviest known metal, and therefore represented the pull which earth has, gravity, as on man.  Every one of us are pulled down by the lead in us.  We are sometimes heavy as lead, not when the body is heavy but when we are weighted down with the attachment to things.  Then we are alchemically lead.  By the same token, earth symbolizes this lead in a more inclusive sense.

     Salt represents the totality of that area in each human being.  Brass symbolizes lead, slightly modified, but still in a very impure state.  The dragon is the personified pull of gravity.  The dragon, the pull of gravity on lead.

     Antimony is a power of condensation which the alchemists of old used.  It brought about a kind of deposit.  By the same token, Saturn, the constrictive planetary influence, associated with lead, is that which contracts, presses, pains, wounds man, in his earthy, or salt, state.  A little later we will see that salt is the most ancient principle, and the most beneficent, and that we cannot build without salt.

     Sulphur, broadly speaking, is the symbol of the soul.  That is too general.  Sulphur, often equated with fire, is the activity principle in man.  You know the part that psychic interest, desire, curiosity, etc. plays in the human evolution.  We will equate that activity power with sulphur.  Those of you who were in the Old Testamentclass will equate it with the figures, the female figures, starting with Aisha, “the mother of all living” — the activity, fire, energized, which moved the whole process after the Garden of Eden stage.  Fire, like salt, is valuable, but has to be purified.

     Mercury, or quicksilver, that which moves so quickly, is born from sulphur and salt.  It is incipient spirit.  It is actually mind, or spirit at work in man as mind.  Therefore quicksilver is necessary, as is sulphur, and of course as is salt, to the making of gold.

     All of these, in the beginning, are in their impure state and have to be transmuted.  (see sheet of quotations from the alchemists.)  The alchemist emphasizes reverence, prayer.  Prayer, a conditioning process; in some cases is able to build up a relationship.  With mind, you begin to reach out with specific relationship — not to Deity, but this prayer speaks of the sincerity in the heart and mind of the potential alchemist, and begins the task of setting up a relationship.  If the work (is) to super-this dimension it requires something super-this dimension to carry it on.

     Perishable and imperishable knowledge!  If you don’t know the difference you will never know the first thing about alchemy, and it will seem to you like sheerest nonsense.

     2nd quotation: The soul has those qualities which move downward, or subdivisions which go down, and the divisions which go up, Mind emerges from that knowledge.

     Mind is not intellect.  Intellect really means the intellectual faculties which are related to this dimension, – the facts of science; and by that I mean science in its broadest sense — all assembled and organized knowledge.  Mind, not intellect, emerges from the knowledge of the difference between perishable and imperishable knowledge.  It is a test as to whether we have minds or intellects.  Mind emerges from that knowledge and, as a beginning, chooses voluntary suppression of the body.  Body is corruptible, perishable, temporal, the world of illusion as against the permanent world, the real world.  “Everlasting splendor” means enduringness of the noumenal world, – and the well-being of the higher part of sulphur.

     3rd quotation: How can you reduce yourself?  In philosophical language you work outside of the limitations of time.  This has to do with a grasp rather than what we might, in terms of time and space, call an immediate present.  You have to know that you are a soul, or, if you like, a light spark.  You have to know yourself as that, first materia, a king’s son — an element, a point, a light spark, starting out from the beginnings and moving toward the ultimates.  In cognition, when it is genuine, time and space are not — just as ? work, metaphysically, with the dream state.  You can’t begin with the alchemical work until you have cognized, in the deeps of your being, that you are an element that is imperishable: soul, light spark, or spirit.  You would not move toward Larger things if you did not believe that – that you were primarily spirit and soul.

     Fourth: Sulphur is necessary for the development of Mercury.  If sulphur is desire, the psychic principle, you will do nothing to develop mind until you have first desire.  So also is silver.  Some alchemists working today, in physical laboratories, use silver, which element is a symbol for the soul; therefore an aspect of sulphur, for the making of gold and for the philosopher’s stone.

     Fifth: If sulphur is to be seen as the psychic world, and its activating motive desire, on the Ladder of the psychic world, using Pojodag language, the part of sulphur that must be cleared away is from (rungs) 1 to 5; and the sulphur that stays is from 6 to 10.  The driving power of desire through the whole human evolution.  From wonder (the 6th rung) on is the higher sulphur.  That sulphur must be purified from, for instance, curiosity.  By the same token, in our first statement of what is desire.  (I believe MBM was referring to the first quotation from the alchemists, that of Basil Valentine. GB.)

     Sixth: What is the occult, hidden nature.  Our brass means the alchemists’ brass, the lead which has already become somewhat changed — washed, with water — solution, – with a liquid; wash it free from ambition, hypocrisy, vanity.  How does the psyche do that?  Purgation.  Repentance.  Unless you regret being a hypocrite, for instance, you won’t change.  Unless you see, and are pained, over the stupidity of arrogance, you won’t repent.  If you turn back from these things, you are washing your brass with water.  Unless you do that you are not taking the first steps.

     You must first know your prima materia.  What is your brass?  Then you already know that lead can be transformed, that you are a little bit more than the physical body.  That is the little tincture of lead into brass.  If you do not know that leads to moire, you won’t wash your brass – your occult brass; that is, you don’t proclaim your repentance.  If you regret this or that quality you have already made a little brass out of lead.  Hence, you go further about washing the brass.

     I could pause over all these words in the quotations.  But I will pause over the fourth, incerate has to do with wax, the substance made by the bees.  The accumulation of the work done over a period of time in earth.  That which is collected by the bees to contain their honey.  Bees are known as ox-born, which connects up with the great tradition of philosophical astrology, because of the exaltation in Taurus, etc.  But, anyway, bees gather honey, and the form side is wax.

     The symbol of the form side of what you have done must surround this metal.  One must carry out what he thinks, in his everyday living.  The form side, in other words, must reveal the actuality of these processes.  Or, your livingness must prove your sincerity.

     Then, of course, that is, in turn, burned off.  Content becomes the form side.  If you then become connected with your good works they remain with you, and you get no further.  But if your good works are incidental you won’t be held by the credit which you are beginning to accumulate by the righteous — right with the law – life that you are living.

     “Fix the volatile and volatilize the fixed.”  Volatile means to fly.  That which flies must be made fixed, and vice versa.  The first approach to that, in the division of the elements is: earth-water go down and fire-air go up.  You have, therefore, to make that which is of this dimension a perfect tincture of that which is of another; or tincture earth-water with fire-air.  And you have to make your fire-air demonstrate in the fixed principles of this dimension.  The six-pointed star; the nature which goes up and the nature which goes down are interlaced in equilibrium.  A very difficult art, and far along in the process.

     7th quotation: Salt, dragon, etc. (the terms) are not identical but all are associated.  Saturn represents the constricting power that obliges you and me to face the facts of this dimension.  Out of that, since this is a phase of a training school, comes learning.  That is the “good salt”, or the making of good salt.  Salt, in nearly all cases, when taken from the earth, has to be purified.  So salt in us, and in the alchemical processes, has to be purified.  When it is purified it becomes the fruit of Saturn.

     This salt of Saturn, which is the essential side, the essence side of this dimension, that is the Child, or Son, the masculine power of Nature.  This nature, which is the Son of Nature, permeates all things.  It is the essence, minimum, of all manifestation — the fruit, or condensed side, distillation, of all experience.  This reigns everywhere, rules, and always will rule; interpenetrates everything, flexible, enters into fusion.

     Salt, the most ancient principle of the Stone, is our goal.  Why is salt the foundation, or base, of that stone?  Because this sentence takes into perspective the basic concept of our human evolution and its purpose: Self-consciousness wrought out of individual experience.

     Your state after going through the human evolution is quite different than if you had never entered the human evolution.  You will have a knowledge and a perception of things wholly different than if you had never been treated by the alchemy of Saturn.  That is the very foundation of our human evolution, the salt of our human experience.  So it is the principle that was seen as inherent in the ideal pattern (of) Genesis I and II.  That is the purpose, substructure of things relating to man.  Therefore Wisdom; but cannot have without salt.  Its more inward nature is never revealed.

 

The notes on this page refer to the alchemical

symbolic design appended to this discourse;

on following page.  GB.

 

Reading from bottom of symbol: The solar power and the feminine power (crescent attached to disk) feminine power and masculine power, in code.  The energizing and the receptive and reproductive power of Wisdom.  When you have those two: spirit and the human evolution, the philosopher’s salt, then you have that which “nothing is more useful….”  When he has gotten to the fruit of the human evolution, then he finds that, for the continuation of the evolution, there is nothing more valuable.

     Read from the top down, and up again; from above down, and up again.  The descent of the light spark and its ascent; an immense process, but where do you begin?

     Mating of the moon and sun.  Sun, the symbol of spirit; moon of soul.  What occurs? Some production.  Saturn.  Has to do with form.  A new kind of activity.  This symbol has to do with the alchemical changes of either the Cosmos or the individual soul.

     Mercury, the main figure in the symbol . The implication is that Mercury, which is really mind, intelligence at work, is the very keynote, or fundamental background, of the whole thing, inside of which a special Pattern is worked out.  As though you said: in the Great Mind is held all of this Pattern, in detail; the work of the Great Architect embraces it all.

     Starting at the bottom: cohabitation of spirit and soul.  Brings with it limitation, problems, something that becomes concrete.  The thing that has become the form to which Saturn has given birth, via cohabitation of soul and spirit, is the being, or elemental nature that contains salt, sulphur, Mercury.  A repetition on another octave.

     So the process has to do with the alchemical changes in man, the individual, the three-fold man.  Man has come, through sun and moon, through Saturn, to the human.  Now his main state is salt, sulphur, mercury.

     The arms now move in two directions (antimony, Jupiter.)

– – – – – – –

 

The 7 quotations from leading alchemists are also attached to this lecture.

What is required:

1. “First, there should be the invocation of God, flowing from the depth of a pure and sincere heart, and a conscience which should be free from all ambition, hypocrisy, and vice, as also from all cognate faults such as arrogance, boldness, pride, luxury, worldly vanity, oppression of the poor, and similar iniquities, which should all be rooted up out of the heart.”

                                 Basil Valentine

2. ”True knowledge begins when after a comparison of the imperishable with the perishable, of life and annihilation, the soul – yielding to the superior attraction of what is eternal – doth elect to be made one with the higher soul.The Mind emerges from that knowledge and as a beginning chooses voluntary separation of the body, beholding with the soul, on the one hand, the foulness and corruption of the body, and on the other the everlasting splendour and felicity of the higher soul.”

                                  Frater B.C., called Sapiens

                                  (Alchemist quoted by Vaughn)

 

3. Typical Excerpts from Alchemical Treatises

“Metals cannot be transmuted, unless they be (first) reduced into their First Matter.”

                                  Clavicula – psuedo-Geber

4. ”Sulphur is necessary for the development of mercury.”

5. ”To make gold all impure sulphur must be cleared away.”

6. ”Take the occult nature, which is our Brass, and wash it that it may be pure and clean; dissolve, distil, sublime, incerate, calcine and fix it; the whole of which is nothing else than a successive dissolution and coagulation to make the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed.The beginning of the whole work is a perfect solution.”

                                  Albertus Magnus

7. “The Salt of Saturn, the Universal son of Nature, has reigned, does reign, and will reign naturally and universally in all things; always and everywhere universal through its own fusibility, self-existent in nature.Hear and attend!  Salt, that most ancient principle of the Stone; whose nucleus in the Decad guard in holy silence.  Let him who hath understanding understand; I have spoken it – not without weighty cause has Salt been dignified with the name of Wisdom; than which, together with the Sun, nothing is found more useful.”

                                  Khunrath in Amphitheatrum

“The Dragon .. ., is salt in the impure state . …”

                                  Albertus Magnus

 

 

Alchemy

Class III

MBM   October 21, 1932

 

. . . . . . .You know that, with two, three or four evenings we have just begun to scrape things…. .Open up perspectives … .lest, in our approach so far I seem to have stressed philosophical aspects.

     Will speak briefly on an example of laboratory alchemy.  That type of alchemy is still being practiced in a goodly number of places.  I will refer to an illustration that I myself know something of, the work of Mr. and Mrs. Ingalese in Los Angeles.  They were interested along the lines of philosophical research, and presently their interest drew them along the lines of medical research.  They wondered if medical research.and their philosophical studies could be combined.  This led them to the study of laboratory alchemy.

     There are two phases to the transmuting of metals, or the correspondent on the physical plane of the changing of the earthly soul into spirit, or the changing of lead into gold.  The other is what is sometimes called the philosopher’s stone, sometimes the elixir of life.  That branch relates to healing.  They turned to that branch.

     They studied     subjects.  The inside nature of metals.  In 1911 they began their laboratory work.  They set up in Los Angeles an elaborate establishment.  The police looked in; what were they trying to do?

     In order to make any kind of transmutation they had to find the secret of what is known as the oil of the metal.  That is not easy to make.  Since they wanted to work toward the elixir of life they started with gold — to make the oil of gold.  They gave it up.  Same process with other metals.  Continued work with copper.

     After three years they made their first discoveries.  Mr. Ingalese worked out in the world.  He told me he was getting a substance that was getting rather dark . . . . . After a time they (?) learned how to make the oil of copper.

     The soul of a metal, or the life side of a metal, much as the life side and the soul are two aspects higher than the physical body that are in a sense, the essence, or oil, of the physical.  So, via the principle of correspondence, the alchemist has long learned in chemistry, where it is only futile (?), that there is an oil, or essence which must be prepared, before he can do anything.  That is getting toward prima materia.

     They found that, with copper, and later sulphur.  They worked eleven years, at much expense to themselves.  They got something like the philosopher’s stone.  It corresponded to what had been written about it.  Mr. Ingalese says that in the book of Paracelsus, an alchemist, are found all the essentials.

     Their presumption was that they had something like the elixir of life, the power of transforming the physical condition — sickness to health, lead to gold, earthly soul to spiritual soul.  Those are correspondents.

     They decided they would have to try it out.  Tried it first on the cat.  It became lively.  Experimented on themselves; then on a few others.  Some medical men knew about it, too.  (Kept silent) to protect their names, but in private were interested in occult matters.  Took it in small doses.  … A renewal club (?).  Data collected.

     Why is not (this material) in the public library?  Orthodox science and orthodox journals are very wary about fanaticism, or any findings contrary to their own; don’t want it to be broadcast or (those concerned) to become famous.

     The (elixir) was tried (on some patients who were in a dying condition.)  A relatively few who passed out.  One patient had been dead for half an hour – (was then given) several doses.  That person lived for many years.

. . . . . . . .

     Now we are turning back to another phase of alchemy, where I will push a little further with you some of the philosophical and mystical processes that have their correspondent on physical levels.  Alchemy, knowing the laws, is able to utilize them to bring about transformations on nature.  Thus, alchemy is super-mind law; and the mind law modifies the natural law.

     I have chosen to continue the work with steps in the process itself.  And, in marking the steps, to show some correspondence with experience that some of you have had.

     Ripley (15th century; see bibliography) wrote an interesting book, in which appeared a section called “The Twelve Gates.”  (It referred) to twelve steps, as if they, in turn, were gates into larger things.  Alchemical change.

1. Calcination.  Purification by fire.  Do you remember, last week I spoke about a fragment on “washing brass”?  In a sense, cleaning up brass is not the first stage.  It corresponds, in Pojodag work, with the big purgation.  That is the preliminary cleansing and is not the beginning of the process.  When, later, there comes the fire, when the soul consciousness really starts, then you have the beginning of a process, as Ripley has outlined it.  Not now repentance but, in a sense, the fire that comes from realization.

(the remaining steps will be explained later in this discourse. GB.)

     The remaining steps are: Solution, Separation, Copulation, Putrefaction, Congelation, Cibation, Sublimation, Fermentation, Exaltation, Multiplication, Projection.

1. (1st step)Many words have been written on the fire: sacrificial, Cosmic, spiritual.  But in all cases, with the exception of certain ultimates, fire is hot; and so it does a certain amount of searing.  Also, it illuminates.  So you know that this calcination means realization.  And that burning aspect of realization makes you aware that you are lead.

2. Solution.  Mixing something with a liquid, until it gets into a relatively homogeneous mass.  So our Solution here has to do with a kind of disintegration of the totality of one’s being, or the totality of the metals, or elements, with which one is working; till they are, as it were, dissolved and mixed.  They must be in this fluid state before you can separate them.

     Another aspect is: that the resistances that have been built around the persona (those are supposed to be gone in the first purgation) but the barriers around the soul, have to be dissolved and mixed up in your mixing bowl.  After that comes your Separation.

3. Separation.  Not really after.  We are dealing with something that is super — therefore with paradoxes.  These steps are not to be seen serially.  Sometimes you go from 1 to 3, then one back, and on to 4, etc.; they are not to be seen in this order.  The alchemists don’t seem to agree; he touched his beloved science from the angle of his own experience and type; therefore always make those allowances.  Literalism is bad.  It works less and less as you get out of this dimension.  This order is correct only broadly speaking.

     So, after that Solution, you begin your Separation.  That process of Separation, in its first flavor, is in the separation of the functions.  Emphasis is put on the very great importance of that.  If you do the work you know you have, literally, to work with yourself as a being of many parts — body, heart, mind, yes, but each, in turn, is divided.  You have to begin (on?) these areas that are hidden, and separate them, so you can say: this is this and that is that.  In the laboratory you can’t get a result until you know what you are doing.  By the same token, in super-alchemy, where the laboratory is occult, you must know with what you are dealing.

     Hence, you must separate the parts of yourself.  In the last analysis, the household of the self is the work of the alchemist.  Disassociation.  In the outer world, by breaking off the habitual ties, fixations, etc; barriers you had to break down.

4. 4.  A joining, as in gender.  What does that mean, alchemically?  You have not only to know that you are body, heart, mind, body, soul, spirit, objective and subjective, extravert and introvert, that you move centrifugally and centripetally, but that certain aspects of you are at one time feminine-passive, or feminine-receptive, or feminine productive; other aspects, masculine.  It has nothing to do with the body, you are aware.

     And you have to know how to bring the stimulating, energizing, masculine factors in yourself into conjunction with the feminine-receptive, so that the feminine becomes productive.  The feminine-passive is out of the picture, so far as the process is concerned.  You must learn, bit by bit, the secrets of that mating.  Because, in the last steps, that mating is very important.  You have it, in ultimates, in the Book of Revelation, in the Church as the bride and Christ as the groom.  That is an allegory, and it has to do with a superlative conjunction.  The conjunction that appears in our series here is the first time in the alchemical process that you are meeting it.

5. Putrefaction.  Sounds queer; means decay.  A turning black.  Skull.  It belongs to this stage.  This putrefaction, which is a kind of dissolution, is to be seen very differently than the solution of our second step.  This putrefaction must be especially purified by a high degree of mercury.

6. Coagulation.  Means a congealing, in a sense, by the removal of heat.  Crystallization.  But not the ordinary process of crystallization.  The processes are never repeated.  The motif may be repeated — variations —  but not repetitions.  (Alchemy) lifts it from octave to octave, till he brings about his elixir, or philosopher’s stone.

     This distillation, or removal of heat and settling into something relatively solid, is the first big effort at fixing the volatile.  You often come across it in alchemy.  You also have to learn how to be cool, as well as to be hot.  You must be able to do at will, now this, now that.  When you study these steps you will see that what you are learning is not the doing of the steps, but the becoming by the doing.

 

7. Cibation.  Really the putting into the crucible, or the retort, new material.  You are getting a fresh start.  The science of meditation gives you a flavor.  In certain of the steps I have taught you in meditation you will find a correspondent: you go out for fresh material.  You have, as it were, in your process of changes, both within yourself and in the retort, to add certain elements which were missing in the original accumulation of materials.

8. 8. Means to raise; lift up on to another octave.  A change at this stage.  A certain kind of refinement.  Not what we ordinarily mean, but to raise.

9. Fermentation.  Calcination, solution, putrefaction, fermentation.  They sound alike but are not the same.  Fermentation is a chemical change brought about, or which, in the process of this fermenting, effervesces; throws off certain gases.  In the throwing of those of the nature of the remains is quite extraordinarily changed.  You remember the apple juice that ferments, and changes.  The grape juice.  It is quite different afterwards.  Of peculiar importance — an inward transformation, caused by certain elements now within the retort.

10. Exaltation.  Not sublimation.  Has more to do with a certain concentrate in elevation.  Sublimation means a lifting up to another octave, after the step in fermentation.  Exaltation is like a concentrate in a sublimation.  Sublimation is a transfer.  In Jungian psychology, sublimation means, broadly, the transfer, more or less willing, of the energy which has been running disorderly in the life of the patient, to something that is acceptable to society and the human environment of the patient.  But not exaltation.  It is as though the essence of the thing that was lifted up is there — the concentrate rather than the mere lifting up.

11. Multiplication.  How the gold put into the crucible transforms the nature of the substance put in the crucible so it multiplies itself.  Being next to something else, it multiplies what it was next to.  That has to do with powers that are developed.

     From one point of view, these powers do not come after.  They are in process of growth all along.  A simple illustration: you, as you are doing work here, become changed; and the influence of that affects your environment.  That, in a small way, multiplies the influence which has already been working through the process in you.  An early illustration.  That, on a very high, and almost ultimate, level is what it means here.  You will find it used by great leaders, the Buddha, Jesus.

12. Projection.  Means the ability to throw this transmuting power a great distance.  Do not always think of distance as in terms of this dimension.  The ability to do that, or to transmute something into gold.  That is an ultimate test of one who has attained mastery, and is the sign of the adept.

     Bear those steps in mind when you read, but they won’t be in that orderly procedure.

(Here MBM uncoded an alchemical design showing two figures, masculine and feminine, in a glass crucible, but I have only a fragmented note on it.  A transparent receptacle…You will remember the figures which go into the glass crucible, and decay. …..the open tomb, or Resurrection; rebirth; has to do with the philosopher’s stone.  Probably relates to the old Rosicrucian Parable created by Silberer and studied by the class.  GB.)

     A few riddles:  I am trying to give you material on which you can chew for some time to come; to make you as familiar as I can with alchemical procedure.  Also with the actual writings, so that when you come to them it won’t be so difficult.  (They speak of) seven cities, metals, days.

     The Smaragdine Tablet.  Emerald Tablet.  A green stone, on which the secrets of Hermes were supposed to be written.  A reference to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, would bring it into the Hebrew tradition.  Many stories about it.  The Smaragdine Tablet, which is written in small characters, contains the sum of all Wisdom, and is primarily alchemical in nature.  The implication is that the things that are said are so sealed by Hermes in the saying of them that only those can understand who are beginning to be entitled to it.

     (from the Tablet.)  “I speak of great things.”  The alchemist stresses them; and here Hermes says he is not speaking of any fictitious things, or things that are a fiction — the things of the phenomenal world.  He is speaking therefore in terms of principles and laws that are eternally true – imperishable.

     “What is below is like that which is above.  And vice versa, to accomplish the miracle of one thing.”  That is alchemy.

     “And as all things were produced by the mediation of One Being, so all things were produced from this One Thing by adaptation.”  We have all heard of the principle of Correspondence, but it is “all for the miracle of One Thing.  Important words: produced by the mediation of one Being.  Mediation and adaptation.  Being and Thing.

     If you have had cosmogonies or the philosophy of number you ought to have some idea about this: the “One Being”, the Creator God.  The Mind God is not the Creator God.  Different levels.  “Comes from One Thing by adaptation — Thing, in the supreme sense. You might call that Wisdom-stuff, – Wisdom as stuff, substance.  A reference to things far beyond this plane.  From that one stuff all things came.  From the number One, Two, Three came all things.  In the Nought is contained all.

     “Its father is the sun, its mother the moon.  The wind carries it in its belly.  Its nurse is the earth.”  The Four Elements.  “It is the cause of all progression throughout the earth.”  Mystically, the original Wisdom of the great Plan continues the work for the fulfillment of its purpose throughout the whole Day, that we call human time.  And it will bring about its results for the accomplishment of One Thing.

     “Its power is perfect, if it be changed into earth.”  Why are you down here in earth.  We are here to complete our evolution.  We are to fulfill the human evolution, to become Sons of God.  Its correspondence is in all the traditions.

     The first thing is to penetrate the outside, metallic surround of the metal.

. . . . . . . .

The following pages are notes taken at the symposium led by MBM after the close of this series.  GB.

 

 

Notes on Symposium following the series of

three classes on philosophical alchemy.  Led by MBM.

Perishable knowledge concerns the phenomenal world, the imperishable, the noumenal world.  The premise behind all study of imperishable knowledge is the continuity of life.  There is no point in any movement toward philosophy if you have only three-score and ten.  The other premise is the evolution of the soul — that the soul is capable of going onward in evolving processes.  That is the foundation on which any work toward larger things rests.  Think that through.  If you haven’t that then you are not thinking sequentially or logically.  Then there is a value in getting imperishable knowledge.

     Nearly all the things you do is knowledge that is good only in this dimension; is at an end with this dimension.  And the only good you get out of it is a certain kind of exercise that it gave you.  Change your radio.

     It is not that you want to take this knowledge with you, but you want the secret of making the transformations.  How can you learn the things useful for this vast journey.  Not that you want to take some knowledge along; it might not aid the evolution of your soul at all.  Therefore in the . . . . . of the soul it looks for those values and experiences that are contributive to eternal stature.

     What does alchemy contribute?  It teaches laws of transmutation on various levels; so that through alchemy we learn something of the process of transformation of the thing that life is.

     List the types of fire that you know: physical fire, sex fire, anger, consuming fire, ambition, psychic fire; sun fire; cosmic fire; sacrificial fire; ritual fire; purification fire; fire of the spirit; fire of the mind, or mental fire.  Fire is on every plane.  There are six or seven other leading types of fire.

     What are the characteristics of fire?  Heat, light, transformation.  (Transformation can be subdivided.  Greater stability of relationships of the energies (?) that made the fire.  The candle.  Disappearance of the substance of the candle.  Something that was a candle ceases to be a candle.  Flame, active.  Destruction is part of the transformation.  It is always …. the rebirth.  The disappearance of things as they were.  Ash.  Why, in the sacrificial fire or purification is ash used to scatter on the head?  A symbol of the destruction of the lower desires.  Ash is the sign of submission to that transformation.  It is done as the result of the sacrifice.  You have yielded to the destruction of the old.  Ash, the symbolism of the destruction of the old forms and the realignment.  It is a kind of death for the purpose of rebirth.

     There are many uses for fire even on this physical plane.  The schemology of fire on the way up was as fire is on the physical, only more so, so is fire, in many applications, on the way up.

Question: What is the secret fire?  What do you mean by saying it is secret?  Answer: Going back to alchemy.  The fire of sulphur.  What is sulphur?  Not exactly the psychic world.  Desire turned upward.  In the symbol it means the fire over earth.  The secret fire is not sulphur, but the fire of the fire.  Behind every desire, if you would trace it down, is the urge, or the fire, the life side of the soul, to evolve itself.  The secret fire of the soul is the innate, deeply buried desire of its essential nature to grow.

     How are you going to use that fire?  If it is buried, how can you get it to be operative?  The fire of the soul is locked up.  What releases it?  The fire of the sun helps to bring it out.

     The first thing, says Ingalese, is to remove its cover (cover) of the metal.  Then you fix it; and reduce that to a powder.  That is an essence.  And then the essence is turned into an oil.  In terms of ordinary chemistry this is sheer nonsense.  But it is done.

     It is only along those lines that you will find out what the flame is.  Because flame is a curious phenomenon of this world, with its true nature in another.  There are many baffling things in this dimension.  You must be in touch with larger forces to know the whole of the process.

     Therefore the alchemist starts out with prayer.  The implication of that is that there are forces, or entities, or realities, beyond this dimension which come into the picture.

A continuation of the alchem-astrol.

symbol appended to Lecture II.

     We go to the right.  Jupiter is expansive.  The little ring is a replica of the central one.  Things are growing.

     On the left is antimony — that which causes deposits; and deposits go to make salt, which is the foundation of the philosopher’s stone.  Here it means the process at work.  You can take it as antimony; also as the symbol of earth.  It means that the four elements of earth are dominant.  The soul, or the nucleus of life, is going through these two influences: antimony and Jupiter: the pairs of opposites.

     And all the while, in between, at the central point, is the moon (crescent) turned up, like a balance in a scale.  The fruits of the experience are being gathered up — the fruits of the experience of the sway between the opposites.

     Reading down.  As you learn from the opposites.  Involution and evolution.  Back where you started.  The three fundamental substances that, alchemically, make man.  All the while these two are doing their work.  The qualities are being gathered in the receptive cup, and are being presently taken into the great crucible where the marriage of spirit and soul, when it is released from matters, on many levels, we come to the bottom.  This is only the outer reading.

     What does the philosopher’s stone do?  It rejuvenates.  Gives life.  Heals everything.  Makes everything like itself.  Gives the secret of eternal life, of lives.  Gives you the key to the living of the eternal life.  And enables you to go through the steps of death and rebirth.

     The philosopher’s stone has its correspondent on many levels.  There is, for instance, the medical side — the oils that the Ingaleses were working with.  Then, that precipitate which causes transformations of baser metals into higher metals, ultimately gold.  It can be done with electricity.  But in many ways.  There are many ways of healing the physical body.

     The thing we should all watch is that we use the way which is consonant with the stage that we are in.  Stay in pitch.  The philosopher’s stone, on philosophical levels, is also that type of wisdom which enables you to make, or transform you, in knowledge and power.  In Christian writings Jesus is seen as the philosopher’s stone — that livingness of the Being, Jesus, who lived a Pattern in which is wisdom.  Thus he becomes the “stone which was rejected by the Builders,” but is accepted presently as “the hidden stone of the corner.”

     What is gold?  A symbol of spirit.  The purest metal.  Why has it become a symbol of spirit?  Until recently, it was supposed to be the most stable of metals.  It is not tarnishable; is not touched by things around it.  Spirit is inviolable.  It never takes on the effects of earth but, like gold, it is dependent upon earth.

     Spirit, though not violated by anything that the soul or body does, is nevertheless dependent…. Gold is found all by itself.  Spirit and the sun never come down.  It is not by chance that gold has been the treasured metal in all the races of the world.  Gold is ductile.

     Spirit is not spacial, as we know it (space.)  Then the peculiar ductility of gold might be seen as a correspondent to the omni-presence of spirit.  Gold leaf has an enormous capacity to be spread out, and still remain true to its own nature.  The omnipresence of energy, but not of Deity.  Most people do not know the difference between the radiations of a thing and the thing itself.  So there is a diffusion of many types of energy on different planes, but not the thing itself.  But gold does, of all metals, show its capacity of the curious ductility of spirit.  Its rarity.  Color.  Accessibility.  Can enter into situations where nothing else can.

     I will deal with spirit through its surrogate, the soul.  Have you never read stories of what we will call conversions where, in the midst of the greatest evil, some touch of something, soul life, entered in, was able to enter where any reason, persuasion, discipline or command could have done nothing?  Spirit enters into, because of the inherent pull of spirit to everything.  Since all is derived from sun, it permeates, can do what nothing else can.  Something stronger than gravity.  Pulls it toward the center of the earth.  The alchemists are working philosophers, from above down, and are trying to find the correspondent in this plane.

 

9th Century   GEBER (Arabian)   Most famous of Arabian alchemists.

                                 Many works printed under his name,

                                 but probably of later origin.

11th Century  AVICENNA (Arabian) Arabian influence introduced

                                 alchemy into Europe in 13th century

              ARTEPHIUS (Jew)

12th Century  ALBERTUS MAGNUS      Brought alchemy into touch with

              (Dutch) 1193-1280    the scholasticism of the Middle

                                 Ages.  Master of Thomas Aquinas.

13th Century  BACON, Roger

            (English) 12l4-1294    The greatest of medieval alchemists
(Franciscan)           and scholars.

              AQUINAS, Thomas      Probably a pupil of Albertus

            (Neapolitan) 1225-1274

              LULLY, Raymund

              (Spanish) 1235-1515  “Clavicula” – A dramatic life

                                 ended by stoning.

14th Century  FLAMEL, Nicolas

              (French) 1330-l4l8   His rise from poverty attributed

                                 to his knowledge of alchemy.

                                 “A Philosophical Summary”.

15th Century  VALENTINE, Basil     “The Twelve Keys”, “The Triumphal

              (German)            Chariot of Antimony”.

              RIPLEY, Sir George

              (English) 1415-1490  “The Compound of Alchemy, … the

                 (Monk)           Twelve Gates”

16th Century  PARACELSUS (Theophrastus B.von Hohenheim

              (Swiss) 1493-154l   Pioneer of modern chemistry

                                 “Concerning the Nature of Things”

              SENDIVOGIUS, Michael

              (Polish ) l566-1646 “The New Chemical Light”.

              MAIER, Michael

              (German) 1568-1622  “Subtle Allegory, containing

                                 the Secrets of Alchemy”.

              FLUDD, Robert       Introduced Rosicrucian brotherhood

            (English) 1574-1637   to the notice of English physicians.

              (Physician)

17th Century  Rosicrucian Society

              published 1616      “The Chemical Nuptials of Christian

                                  Rosencreutz.

              BOEHME, Jacob

              (German) 1575-1624  The Philosopher’s Stone in

                                 Boehm’s symbolism is the

                                 Spirit of Christ.

              ASHMOLE, Elias      “The Way to Bliss in Three Books”.

              (Eng. antiq.) 1617-1662

              Rosicrucians take lead and alchemy

              is again prominent among occult

              studies.

              Vaughan, Thomas 1621-1666

              (Welsh)

              BOYLE Robert        One of the first promoters of

              (English) 1627-1691 modern chemistry; member Rosicrucian

              (Nat. phil.)     Society.  Believed in transmutation

                                 of metals.  “The Sceptical Chymist”.

              HELVETIUS, John Frederick 1631-1709

              (Swiss)             ”The Golden Calf”.

18th Century  LAVOISIER, Antoine L.

              1743-1794 (French)

              INGALESE, Isabella and Richard – living in Los Angeles.

MBM ASSOCIATES

ANNOUNCE THE FIRST OF THE 1965-1966 SERIES OF LECTURES ON

THE HOUSEHOLD OF SELVES

This brief series will examine into the many selves in each of us.  Unless there is awareness of this fact of life, conflict among them is inevitable.  With increased consciousness one can discover the causes of this conflict.  Thenceforward there can be better, more effective management of the multiplicity of selves.  This series furnishes a guide to the solution of everyday human problems, in the light of philosophic psychology.

Conducted by Dr. Alice B. Greene

It is earnestly requested of those interested in this course, that they read the play, “The Servant in the House,” by Charles Rann Kennedy, in preparation.  A copy of this drama is available in practically all libraries.

Further data concerning this series:

         Date    –   Thursdays (for five successive weeks)

                                      beginning October 7th, 1965.

         Time    –   8:15 P.M.

         Place   –   102 Cooper Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey

         Fee     –   $8.00 for the series (No single admissions

                                    except for the first class.  If this is

                                    taken alone, the fee is $2.00).

ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED

 

__________________________________________________________

 

Registration for the series of five lectures on THE HOUSEHOLD OF SELVES beginning Thursday, October 7th at 8:15 P.M.  Fee for the series enclosed.

                                                        Name_____________________________

                                                        Address__________________________

Detach and mail to:

Mrs. W. L. Shriner, Secy.

102 Cooper Avenue

Montclair, N.J. 07043

 

 

Alchemy

. . . . . . .

After you have gotten a little used to the idea of alchemy, which I admit comes rather oddly in our modern day, you will find it, in very special ways, a science that relates to you; in contrast to the series we recently concluded on the Principles.

We might say that the Principles are magnificent (?), impersonal; they are operating everywhere.  They are hidden mechanics of everything; whereas alchemy is close-up, personal, intimate.  It moves into the secret places of your mind and heart — places that you may not even have admitted.  It is not operative like the Principles, unless it is put into operation.  So that we are really touching, if you like, a different field of investigation.  It is a field that is wholly legitimate for such work as we are doing at the School.  Because in classes like this we are opening up our understanding to fields that are perhaps questionable, or ancient, or have little to do with life, or connected with a specific group of people.  Try however to bring them (?) into relationship with the great drive of evolution.

Now there is one very important basic point that we should keep in our minds with this course, and, for that matter, with all (the) courses.  Let us then have a sense of unhurriedness (?) this morning, and let us look at the human evolution — you and me and all the others — through ages.

Now they are not all alike.  We are not all alike.  Like on the broad classification of the circles of humanity (chart) here on the wall.  Humanity are, or is, in many stages of evolution.  The majority are still asleep.  That is, they are not waked up (or waking up) to anything beyond the automatic, humdrum of their routine, which has been established by the peoples who have preceded them, and who follow the custom of that routine.

Now, there are, and always will be, those who are breaking out of that mass condition.  They are the ones who are waking.  And they are asking, as it were, a series of questions as they wake up.  Asking these questions is a sign of waking.  Those questions we might list: What am I?  Or, what is man?  How did I get to the place where I am?  What happened?  How can I get away from the place in which I am with all the annoying problems?  Is there a God?  What is beyond the physical plane?  How can I know?

Now these are the typical questions that the one who is waking asks.  But they don’t ask them in that sequence, or with equal stress on all the questions; nor with very much of a follow-through.  But those who begin seriously to follow through on any of these questions we may, to simplify matters for ourselves, broadly call seekers.  They did not just ask questions but they really sought answers.

And if you will again cast your mind’s eye over the ages of evolution you will see that some groups emphasized certain questions and almost bypassed others .  … not all with equal emphasis.  Some the student of Buddhism, asked, How can they get out of these dilemmas . . . . Buddhists who said that seriously.  The Buddhists sought the answer to that.  Following the leadership of Gautama . . . . They were genuinely seekers.  They followed through.  There were others who were not quite so concerned about that question, but a little about the world: What is it?  On the other hand, there were metaphysical approaches — groups that stressed those questions and put less pressure on the questions the Buddhists asked.

Now all the seekers, through the ages, fall into this general broad classification.  They emphasize now one or two questions and lessen their concern about others; or, in their approach see the emphasis on certain questions; and the groups that persist in pressing on to other questions more profound and metaphysical.

Now these groups, through the ages, invariably bore what you may call the earmarks of the age in which they thrived.  You will see what I mean in a few moments.  The conditions of thousands of years ago were more or less maintained until the Middle Ages, or what we call the Middle Ages…….

Now the alchemists are seekers, who grew in power and number in the Middle Ages; and they invariably, like the others before them, took on the imprint of.their time.  You need to cultivate the historical sense; and few do.

About this time there was an increasing turn to investigate things as they literally are, – not just based on speculation.  And the alchemists were one of the groups of seekers who carried that imprint.  Therefore as we open up our study of alchemy don’t let us take a group called alchemists apart from the whole pattern of human evolution, but let us first set them in their place in the stream of awakening humanity, out of which wakeners there were those who often followed through — who became seekers.

Now the alchemists, like all groups, had their training, (and) those who were relatively superficial and those who were ardent.  Characteristics of humanity.  We are not all alike.  Humanity is in different stages of evolution.  If you attempt to accept yourself where you are, and go on from there.

Now the alchemists profited by the characteristics of their time.  Not that there were not alchemists before the Middle Ages but that this was the time in which their       really developed.  So, in bulk, we associate them from the eleventh, twelfth century on.  The alchemists based their philosophy, on which they proposed to accomplish their work, their achievements, on principles.

So we may turn back again to our previous study.  With them, the principle of Correspondence was of primary importance.  They saw the world as a kind of organism, a unity if you like, and that all things within that unity corresponded one to another.  Therefore, to discover the laws that pertained to one thing was to discover the laws that pertained to other things.

The alchemists, like the other seekers, like the Buddhists in the reference I made before, sought a way to get out of the dilemmas in which they were caught – the sorrows, the handicaps, the limitations, the frustrations.  They wanted to overcome them, and, in the tempo of their time, when the things of the physical world were coming to the fore again, because this is a recurrent rhythm, they used the analogies of metals.

They saw the ideal of all accomplishment as the making of gold; and they started with what at that time was the heaviest of all known metals, lead.  Therefore, the changing of lead into gold is the gamut of their desire, their work, their hope.  But it is not as simple as that.  It sounds like a very stark sentence; and of course we are easily offended by it, or amused.  Or perhaps challenged.

Here we need to clarify ourselves in reference to certain divisions among the alchemists themselves.  I tried to indicate to you before how, in regard to these questions, the ones who were seekers emphasized one or two of these questions and bypassed others, – as the Christians do today.  In the same way, among the alchemists themselves, there were some who were extremely interested in the transformation of metals.  In other words, there were, and are to this day, those who seek literally to change metals into gold.  In the present year, – Oh yes, that has been done.  That is true.  And they found that it costs more to change metals into gold than the value of the gold when it is produced.  Hence it has no commercial value.

Here note please that the alchemists, because of their application of the principle of correspondence, never saw the so-called transformation of lead to gold as a thing apart from other significances.  Because then there would not be the principle of correspondence.  It would just be chemistry.

We have had, in this first morning’s work, to interrupt ourselves repeatedly to get certain ideas.  What is the relationship, then at this point, between chemistry and alchemy?  Chemistry is concerned with material, physical transformations.  The alchemists, for chemistry was not yet developed in their day, were concerned about the correspondence, and saw a revelation of profundities in the steps of transformation which could take place if they were working on the physical metal.  In other words, they never saw one department separate from the other.  In that sense alchemy has an enormous advantage over chemistry.

Chemistry, which has, in the material sense, grown so tremendously, opening up so many hidden places, is without its counterpart.  The alchemists knew relatively little about metals, for that day had not yet arrived, but they did know something about correspondences.

Now, on with our subject, having interrupted ourselves to get a little clearer about alchemy and chemistry.  Al, an Arabic prefix, was the chemistry.  From the larger point of view it is the chemistry, whereas chemistry without the prefix al is our physical chemistry — good, but it is not the chemistry.

So now, returning to our point of departure, to keep our mind clear, there is the recognition that there were alchemists who stressed the search for the literal transformation of metals, making them their major (?) and through that to find the powers that would relate to other objects.  But there were also other alchemists, to whom the literal changes meant nothing except an analogy; who were looking for the key to the same great riddle that the Buddhists and Christians sought: How to get out of the dilemma and fixation and limitations of the present situation in which they found themselves.  So that we have two types of alchemists.

I am telling you that because, if you begin to read in the field of alchemy you will be thrown hither and thither until you can recognize that there were some, as we shall see later, who found these two, not contrary, but supplementary, in a very nice balance; and it is some of their work that we shall study.

Now perhaps we should return for a moment to certain       and gather together what is on the wall.  (charts? quotations?)  The source of the word chemistry: a brief reference to history.  There are a number of threads that contribute to the building up of this modern word.  One is, that the land of Egypt was called Kem – alliterated differently by different interpreters, its spellings; but the meaning, Black Land, refers to the black soil which the alluvial deposits of the Nile brought down, making Egypt fertile, the granary of the world.  So Egypt was called the Black Land.  The science of alchemy was supposed to come from Egypt, from one of the Teachers of ancient times, Thoth, called by the Greeks Hermes.  Hence alchemy is often called the Hermetic science.  (It is) not from the Greek but, through the Greek, from the Egyptian.

And now, just for a little training in observation as to what can occur with words: Since this was a science which, loosely (?) began thousands of years ago B.C. in Egypt, the Black Land, it was, with great respect, called the black art.  But in later days the black art was a term of slur, slander; almost a kind of curse put upon a tradition which science related almost exclusively to physical things – cast upon another view of earth and evolution which was not just physical.  So it became a black art, and was classified among the sciences of occultism.

Please take one more contribution in our preliminaries, because we always, in starting a new subject, have to get set, equipped, with certain ideas, which afterwards become our tools:

From the more esoteric point of view, the approaches to life — not in our modern day, have been seen as consisting of two, in a way opposing, trends: the mystical and the occult.  Now, for our purposes at present: the occult is the search into the hidden laws, in order to manipulate those laws to bring out effects; whereas the mystical approach was to bring about changes in the self.  You may therefore help yourselves by seeing that the one is more objective and the other more subjective.  The one, related to the external world, the other, to the world of the self.

That is not a wholly fair division, but a beginner’s division.  In that division alchemy would be, and was in the beginning, a branch of occultism; especially when it came to the making of gold, or the Philosopher’s Stone, etc.  I have finished (?) with our preliminaries.

I think we have gotten enough equipment now to ask ourselves What is the object of our study of alchemy.  Now, because you have access to it, I am going to read again what you have read in the letter that was sent to you, quotation of ?????? “The object, or function, of alchemy is to initiate, or perfect, the human soul by the power of materials here on earth; for the supreme faculty      cannot by its own guidance aspire to the       ( didn’t get this quote. GB)

Now when you, in reading that paragraph, break it down in its meaning, it is a recognition of what here I have emphasized under the natural law and the mind law: that the natural law is not the end of man, and that it takes something more than the natural law to produce the changes that every one of us senses are possible, – perhaps yearns to bring about.  Every one of us is discontent.  The more your discontent the better it is, because that is necessary to become a seeker     are setting up this work on the basis that everyone who seeks needs help, to bring about the changes which they, either vaguely or more or less clearly, desire to accomplish.  Or, to follow through with souls, that we cannot perceive the Larger in our natural state.

Now of course some of you are going to protest.  You have all had intimations.  Those are not intimations of the Larger; they are titillations in yourself, desiring to wake up and come to the Larger.  They are not the Larger itself.  Any more than any of us who are untrained could look at some of those superb photographs taken through the lens at Palomar and comprehend what they tell to the trained astronomer.  You may say they are wonderful, breath-taking, but that is just superficial.  We know that.  And in the same sense we need to learn, with honesty and humility, that recognizes that any intimations that we may have are not reality, because we are not trained, but are the preliminaries that are striving to reach.       Like, if you and I are moved by photographs, we might take up that study, and take up that field; that would be following through.

So then the alchemist is recognizing the need of active search into the laws, and following through, in order to bring about changes.  In other words, lead does not become gold of itself.

We do not become spiritual beings of ourselves.  We can wallow in being nice.  And by and by that gets to be horrible.  Does not gain (?) mean (?) anything.  And perhaps then we have another kind of awakening.  Being nice is really quite futile.  We need to really know what are the laws; what is it?  How do we get out of the state in which we are?  Well, that is the kind of question that the alchemist asked.

He saw that this was a very profound, and a kind of secret, process.  Not something to be begun idly.  And you remember that warning of the early alchemists: “For if your desire leads you to practice . . . consider well what kind of man thou art, and what it is thou wouldst do.”

(after reference to the School.)  We do not rush into this blindly.  And the alchemist, knowing that there is great danger of that, with a peculiar like-mindedness wherever they emerged, seem to have written, with the most purposive cover, of their real task. . . . . . . . So that, if you do not know, you take the surface of what they say and do not know at all what they mean.  The deep practice.  “Cast not thy pearls before swine” — that is, before those who are not seekers.

Are there any here in the room who do not know what the symbol of swine means?  Swine is a symbol used by many peoples, many Teachers, throughout the ages, wherever there was, in the ancient day, the animal that preceded swine, the boar.  Because the boar illustrated, by boring, what man was not to do.  Remember, even now as you are sitting here, that that which sticks out on you, every one of you, is your nose — the thing which moves outward.  It is the thing towards which you are striving.  So the nose became the       .  And the boar’s nose, boring into the earth, was the symbol of what man should not do.  It was used in the East, the West, the North and the South.  It was scattered over the surface of the earth.

That, through the nose double-crossing of subjects, gradually put the taboo on the meat,.of the boar.  So those (?) of the Semitic races, for example, specialized in this past.            and did not eat pork to this day.  But it meant “point their noses into things.”  So, in order to understand these sayings we need to push into their meanings; and the superficial meaning “Cast not thy pearls” (the real meaning of it) does not open to people who are not awake, and the secrets, treasures, which belong to the Larger.  For the alchemists were, of all groups, masters in closing up; so that you could not get their . . . . . .

So it is very important to know whether, when you start, you really are sincere, and recognize that if you are not you may be doing something, as this quotation goes on, saying you have undertaken to become an               of the living language, in this voluntary process, where man’s mind begins waking up and asking.  That, if you are not the kind of man for which you may yearn, that work (?) you may do just the opposite.  (There must have been some quotation read here which GB did not get.)

(Something about the relationship to man the talking about metals, changing lead into gold.)

The alchemists had three primary symbols: salt, sulphur and mercury.  Now salt is not an egg, crossed in the middle, an oval.  Salt is a symbol for the earth, for the body.  But all salt is not alike.  For instance, in the Hebraic-Christian scriptures there are two kinds of salt discussed.  Are you familiar with them?  For instance, there is salt that is desirable.  And if that salt “has lost its flavor” wherewith shall it be salted? There is another kind of salt which is not to be accepted, and which does not enter upon…. ….

And we shall see, beginning next week, that salt, sulphur and mercury

are not just simple ingredients, reduced to their atomic structure,

but are of many grades.  Why?  Because we are talking about you.  How is the salt in me?  That is not only your physical body but it is the whole physical setup.  That is your salt.  Has it lost its real flavor?

All these are things which will come up in the course of the study of alchemy.

The second aspect is sulphur.  You need, of course, in the choice of this symbol to go back to the medieval times, with folk who were just beginning to examine.

Now sulphur produces heat, and sulphur is therefore a kind of fiery aspect of man.  But sulphur is also very varied.  You will read that alchemists speak about “our sulphur”, or “inferior sulphur, or a sulphur that is “first to be cleaned.”  I will go back to sulphur in a moment.

The third is mercury.  And mercury, from far back, has been a symbol of the mind.  Like the messenger in the Greek, where Mercury is the link between heaven and earth; between Zeus and humanity; between the Great Worlds and man.

Now these three are the necessary constituents for the Work.  Sometimes they (or I) referred to them as the Great Work.  Every one of these three is necessary.  And they say that they discover how everything that is necessary for the Great Work is here on earth; meaning in man, but also objective in our correspondence of things.

Therefore it depends upon “what kind of a man thou art” — what condition the salt is in; what kind of sulphur you have.  For, in a sense, these are body (salt); they are the physical, desires (?) and mental; what kind of desire you have.  And you will see, if we turn back to our second quotation: What is it that thou wouldst do?  That is a query as to what your sulphur is.  What do you want to do.  Have you pure sulphur, or is your sulphur mixed up with many of the chemicals of earth that need to be clarified?

Now you could begin to see perhaps just a little the correspondence which the alchemists saw between the work with literal metals and with man.  He needed the material world — himself; he needed his desire, and he needed the guidance of the mind.  But, literally too, he needed the physical materials with which the alchemists worked: the retorts with fire; and he also needed mercury to bring about the changes.  And the idea of the alchemist was that, as he found the key to one set he would find the key to the other.

So we have the main ingredients: salt, sulphur, mercury.  Learn how to make those symbols.  Use those symbols as your language.  Remember that the object is to bring about in man, by the transformation of these factors, the production of gold, or spirit.  Just as the objective from lead was to emerge gold.

Now, I think this has been a reasonably difficult morning to listen to.  And I am going to give the last five minutes to a breakdown for questions rather than push any farther.  We have had to cover little bits of data here and there, a crosspatch work.  It will not be that same way hereafter.  Intermission for a historical survey, survey (?) of the points of this morning.

We have tried to prepare our class this morning by the letter that went out.

In the little survey I have made this morning I do not for a moment expect to break down everyone’s resistance, or prior idea.  That is asking too much.  (Ideas that) have taken shape over years of time; supported by the general attitude of people, by scores of books.  “This is nonsense”, is the typical popular idea.  It is not so.  There is profundity there.

Now, one reason I might add here that, from the point of view of the training at the School, the study of the processes of alchemy is contributive, is that there are the most amazing correspondences to the steps of Tutoring.  In other words, in the training, after the personal problems have been reasonably put aside or mastered the      that we make is the awakening and releasing of the deeper self.  That is the grain of gold — and the confirmation of the integrity of the mystical science of alchemy is, as I see it, established by this intimate correspondence, in hundreds of cases in the training.  In the awakening of the deeper consciousness and releasing it to function.

In that, too, we are seeking, in the tempo of this time; whereas the alchemists were speaking in the tempo of their time.  As the Buddhists before spoke in the tempo of their time.  So be patient with us, and grant that no one’s ideas are going to be removed        but not removed in one hour’s class.

(class now open to questions)

Question: Did people know it was esoteric?  Answer: There were not books and magazines, so it was not generally known.  Nowadays a discovery appears in technical magazines.  But those who were working in that field had no doubt whatsoever, because they had evidence. Speaking of the Principle of Correspondence, you just can’t help (seeing) that there must be something to it.

There were about 20-24 leading figures.  No need of going into that now.

The upturned triangle has been for a long time the symbol of the flame.  The cross is the symbol of the elements, the earth.  So the flame, going up, is the aspiration, the search above the earth.

Salt is the division of that which belongs to the lower world and that which belongs to the upper world.  Mercury is the astrological symbol of the receptive to the Larger, through nous, upon earth.

Salt, as desirable, brings out the flavor.  Same idea as the leaven.  Leaven is almost synonymous with sulphur, because sulphur rises, as leaven does.  But leaven is undesirable when the desires that belong to earth are supposed to be cut off.  (At another time MBM spoke of the unleavened bread of the Israelites when, under the leadership of Moses, they left Egypt — earth, in that symbolism.  GB.)

Equal (?) occult and mystical process.  Because the old alchemists called it a science, and they discovered definite laws; but they were not going to release them.  They were not interested in transformation (of metals?) as we are coming to the sub-atomic world.  The point of it is that our scientists are working in the physical field exclusively.  They are not seeing its relationship to anything else.  It is as though, coming back to the analogy in the class on the Principles, we played with one octave, and denied any relationship to any octave beyond that.  But it is not so.  And the Principle of Correspondence emphasizes that analogy.  The physical world       as one octave.  Unhappily there are not yet many who are concerned (?) with the large perspective of what the alchemists called sulphur and mercury.

The alchemists accomplished extraordinary things.  Of course some of the things they accomplished have been taken up by other groups, and continued.  All of the questions asked by wakers are not followed through.  But they went into metaphysics.  That is why that third quote (on b.b.?)

(A question about purifying each of the three.)  Some were 99% mystical, (so that) the literal thing was almost incidental.  It was like an analogy, which they kept up to disguise.  Then there were some who literally worked in their laboratory, and for whom the mystical was relatively incidental.

(They) agreed, but often used different language.  There was not rapid communication in those days, so they did not work out a common terminology.  A thing might be called something different by another group.

(re lead and salt)  Salt refers primarily, not exclusively, to the processes in regard to man, on the mystical side.  Lead was the objective material that corresponded to it.  The heaviest in man is his material world.  Meets (?) most of his desires.  Aren’t most of your desires in relation to the physical world?  So you see the salt, on the one side, is loaded down, in reference to man.  Lead is the same thing — weighed down by gravity, on the objective side.  Mercury, as in the later Greek tradition, is the transformer, (the) agent.  It transforms the lower, and it becomes the higher.  It is through the mind that you bring about changes, whether in the physical world or if you do it on yourself.  It is the mind in you that is the wonderful thing that is eventually salvaged.  It is that which becomes nous; or what later traditions called spirit.

(re relation of mercury to gold)  Mercury is necessary to the making of gold.  But mercury also absorbs gold.  Principle of Correspondence.  It is the higher mind only that is capable of understanding the intuition (infusion?) of divine worlds.  Not intellectual mind.  As mercury literally absorbs gold.  And then it transforms it — and becomes gold.

I hope you have had enough of an introduction.  Please review the symbols (points?).  They become our tools for the future.

 

 

Alchemy

MBM   Lecture II   February 12, 1952

(this series was tape recorded)

Symbolism  We will start with a few ideas.  Symbolism.  The purpose of symbolism is to convey things that are not material or tangible; that is, ideas and concepts.  The symbolism of alchemy appeared also in astrology.  Astrology is to astronomy as chemistry is to alchemy.

Some basics in astrological symbolism.  There are only three letters, or words, in the whole symbolism of the planetary system: the circle, the crescent and the cross.

Circle  Continuous; whole.  Because continuous, can become a symbol of the eternal.  The utmost in symmetry, proportion, relationship.  All points equidistant from the center.  No differentiation.  Absorbed in a kind of one-ness, or likeness.  Fullness; completion.  Because of that symmetry and perfection, no disturbance or unevenness.

Crescent  Second of the words the crescent; symbol of the moon.  Fluctuation.  Continual change, or variation.  No stability.  Reflected light.  The sun (symbolized by the circle with a dot in the middle) has its own light; power, dynamic, light, etc.  Is related to the Source, the Nought.  (Pleroma, in the later Greek tradition.)  The moon, dependency.  The moon is related to the soul; the sun to spirit.  The soul is not the highest.  It is an in-between state that has its real dynamic from the sun.

Cross, the third letter.  Symbol for the” four elements, therefore matter, Creation, substance.  Body, soul, spirit (the three.)  The cross could also mean the material, the physical.

Venus:  Smoothing effect; the Larger operating over you in the physical sense.

Blocking of the line going out.  The line going out is the continual driving energy which comes from the Source.  The Reservoir of dynamics, which moves out into all things.  But continually meets the obstacle.  If the obstacle does not thwart it (?) but there is a continual bombardment against that obstacle (and?) there is a gradual penetration into that obstacle, which makes for the shape of our little design, the arrow. This energy is not animal energy, or soul energy; it is spiritual energy.  And it is only spiritual energy that can accomplish this.  Only the will and loyalty of Spirit can eventually conquer.

Mars, the “War Lord”, is the typical perversion, by the multitude, of a profound symbol.  The previous symbol, Venus, is associated with love.  Love, when you begin really to see it, is the spirit.  Actually, there is no other love than the spirit.  There are earlier attractions, which are a kind of education to(?) the spirit; but no love except in the spirit — except that which is of nous, spirit, (symbolized by the circle).  Earth loves, that come and go.  To a person, profession, etc.  These are furtive gestures.

Jupiter  Moon in front of the cross.    M0on (soul) energies leading; taking the initiative and pulling the  worldly things with them.  Known as the benign planet, Jupiter.  Does not present problems but seems to ease them up.

Saturn  Matter holding down soul.  The circumstances of your daily
life.  Soul waiting for the solution of the problems which are interfering with its career.  We can’t progress except we solve the problems around us.  They may be of family, business, health.  They may block you.  Suffering from inertia, – habit.  Those are all causes.which hold you down.  You may be too vulnerable to the pulls of earth, or which distract you from your soul’s business.

Now turn to a larger symbol.  And apply the cross, the triangle, (sulphur) and Mercury.  An all-over design of the symbol of Mercury: crescent, circle, cross. The moon receptive.  Mercury, symbol of the messenger.  Messenger of Spirit.  The Logos.

An old Rosicrucian design.

Symbol of antimony at the upper left.  If there are no obstacles there
is no growth.  In alchemy it is seen as good.       Anyone who wants
to go farther, to develop, will meet obstacles.  That is one of the
tests as to whether the individual means what he has undertaken;
whether he will go through those obstacles—through matter to the soul
life.

Below (the design) are sun and moon, bound together in one. (^J The mysteries of the soul and. the spirit are blocked, except as you go down.  (above it) the pattern of Saturn.  Saturn is called the bridge to the Larger Worlds.  The means of development—’Opposite to what the multitude knows of it.

This design also represents the work of Tutoring, which goes on below–or above*-the ordinary fields of consciousness.  (You) return, plus the treasures won, back and up; here ending in Jupiter. Then everything follows the lead of the soul.

The all-enclosing symbol is Mercury, doing the work of the higher: the will of Zeus, carried by Mercury down to the world of men. tie  must learn to work in terms of mind.

This symbol has to do with a conscious process.

Some leading figures in the world of alchemy.  See Redgrove’s “Alchemy, Ancient and Modern”; Pythagoras: “One Great Reality and Nine Accidents” – the one Prima materia, the one substance back of all things; the nine variations that came with it.

A Chinese concept: Number begins with one and becomes perfect at ten.

We pick up in the Middle Ages.  The climate in which alchemy came to its fullest.  Geber, an Arab, ninth century.  The list on our board (leading figures in alchemy) takes in all the European countries.  Avicenna, also an Arab, helped bring the beginnings of modern research into Europe.  Albertus Magnus brought alchemy into touch with Scholasticism.

Learning at this time was largely in the monasteries.  Monks.  Were not interested in chemical miracles but in the mystical miracles.  (More of this) next week.  Albertus Magnus, teacher of Thomas Aquinas.  Roger Bacon, one of the greatest of the medieval alchemists and scholars.  He is sometimes called the originator of experimental research.

Basil Valentine.  Benedictine.  Wrote “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony.”  He also wrote “The Twelve Keys.”

Ripley.  Canon of St.Augustine.  Also discovered the secret of transmutation.

Paracelsus; sixteenth century.  Born 1493.  The beginning of a turn.  Had a good education in medicine and theology.  Is considered the pioneer of modern chemistry.

Now a cleavage.  Moved more toward literal chemistry and the mystical allegory. Practiced occult powers.

Sendivogius.  A Pole.  Some, like Paracelsus, began to be interested in the healing of the physical body.

Flood.  English.  A physician.  He called attention to the Rosicrucians.  They have no relation to the Rosicrucian Society of today.  The (old) Rosicrucians were not organized as a society at all.  (Flood at?) Oxford.  The work of the old Rosicrucians is of primary interest.  They published at this time, about 1630, a book called The Chemical Nuptials of Christian Rosenkranz.  We do not know where he (C.R.) lived.  The Chemical Nuptials is an allegory on the processes of mystical transformation, told in alchemical language.

Jakob Boehme.  We are now fully in the Christian field.  He said the Philosopher’s Stone was the spirit of Christ.  That is taking it into the mystical.  On the other hand, Helvetius, Swiss, tells about an experience he had………

Actual processes of Alchemy and their relation to present day seekers.

Historical perspective.  Methods corresponded to the period of time in which those particular groups of seekers were building their systems, – mantras, Yog, breathe of earlier time.

Now the period of search being at the point where it is turning to the objective world for corroboration.  Began with Paracelsus.  Alchemy is a turning to finding things as they are rather than theorizing about them; experimenting without evidence.  And following the methods so developed.

Alchemy had a marvelous stabilizer with it — the working with materials.

The alchemists say: metals grow in the earth.  Mystical alchemy.

Metals as symbols before the days of alchemy.  Because they are something taken from the earth in the raw state, – the ore state, and something that man does with them makes them more desirable.  Implication of the natural man, with which we all start when we come to earth, and something that is changed when we do something upon it.  We, too, like the metals, grow in the earth.

Metals, the native powers in us, grow in the earth.  That is the first dynamic of the seeker.  Does not care about what (the) steps are.  If you do something, you are in the category of the seeker.  The degree not yet evident.

The natural state not desirable.

The turn in the historical perspective of the seeker is that he recognizes that there must be deep, radical changes in the self.  Not superficial affirmation, or that meditation can accomplish results, but a true chemical – alchemical — change in the self.

Here we are on modern ground.  Old systems become obsolete.

Quote from Albertus Magnus: “Take the occult nature, which is our Brass, and wash it that it may be pure and clean.”  THE FIRST STEP IN ALCHEMY.

When the alchemists speak of the changes in man they do not use lead, but Brass or Salt.  Lead is objective.  With sometimes reference to dragons.  Your hidden nature, which is Brass.

An old saying: We must get back to the prima materia; metals cannot be transmuted unless they are first reduced to the first matter.

What is your prima materia?  The soul?  The Christian would say that.  The alchemists do not mean that.  Maybe we won’t know, in the beginning.  Because the Brass needs to be washed.  We won’t know what it is until it is washed and clean.

How many kinds of water do you know?  Ice, salt water, fresh water.  The emotions.  As a drink.  As power; growing, cooling, cleansing, dissolving; swimming, sailing; transportation; quenching fire.  Weeping.  Diluting.  Many uses for water.

Other significance(s) symbolically: delight, happiness, song, laughter, refreshes.  It might be beauty: a concert, a sunset.

Cleansing—bath, washing.  Repentance. Prayer. Psychological purgation.  Water as growth.  Awakening to a desirable, – or undesirable, condition.  Confession.  Acknowledgment.  That must come before repentance.

Knowledge, – of all kinds nourishes growth.  Some kinds of knowledge more productive of growth than others.  Consideration of the growth in you.

These are some of the things that water can be, on other planes, in reference to you.

Turning back to Albertus Magnus, How are you going to wash that occult nature?  The old methods were not washing.  It was putting another layer over the dirt.  That is exactly what affirmation does.  That is what the old forms of meditation did.  They did not go for the occult nature, Brass, but, with the best of intention, they projected on the occult nature, Brass, with all the accumulation over it — they projected layer upon layer.  They did not come to prima materia.  THE OCCULT BRASS IS THE STATE OF YOUR OCCULT PRIMA MATERIA AT THE PRESENT TIME.

Brass is not a simple metal; it is an alloy.  It has been taken out of the earth.  It has been worked upon.  It is man — you — in a stage of evolution.  It is something which appears as gold, but is not.  It is the pseudo.  Nevertheless, it is very important.  It is precious to make it clean.

Now, the making it clean is the same kind of thing you do when you bathe.  You take off a layer.  Even the literal alchemists found they had to take the cover off the metal.  Some of the dirt in a bath works outward from the body; other is dust accumulations, of a different kind, from the objective world.  There are always those two.

The alchemist says: We must wash first.  You yourself have the desire to wash.  No one can wash their brass successfully without desire.  It is a way of indicating that the processes of occult development are closed, except to desire.

“The Dragon is a self-willed spirit, which has a poisonous nature, and destroys all that it touches.” — from one of the earlier writers.

Alchemy is the foreshadowing of the training which I am trying to establish.  What is the self-willed spirit in our understanding of man?  The personality, or the persona, – the you that has been walking around in the earth, and gotten its idea of itself and the world all these years, – until you begin to take off the “self-willed” spirit.  That is a part of what is to be washed off the Brass.

The Brass is the deep thing in you, covered over with so much accumulation.  The personal self has inevitably become opinionated.  It has its ideas.  It can make ultimatums about people, situations and things.  That is poisonous.  That is the Dragon, – so it destroys all that it touches.  Because if it touches the great Light back of these processes, it does not see or hear them (it?).

The steps of alchemy are a foreshadowing of the processes that will be the method of the higher development in the age we are now entering.  Not a perfect foreshadowing.

The Dragon is Salt in an immature state.  Salt gives quality, flavor, value to things.  It is the basic thing in you – this structure that begins in earth; but it is very impure, because it is mixed up, like the brass, with all the opinions, debris, accumulation of the ages.  And the more you read that is poisonous, or feeds the Dragon, the worse is your state.  Reading, from the occult point of view, is only useful when you have learned discrimination, and can find your way in the midst of things.

What is your hidden nature?  In a sense it is not the subconscious, though the subconscious seems to be hidden; but it is that layer of being which is beyond the subconscious.

From two sides come tributaries feeding the process of Tutoring.  The discovery of the role of the subconscious and the development of many of the techniques of psychoanalysis which are therapeutic — finely so — in the hands of skillful operators, of the subconscious, for the purpose of establishing the normal personality.  There is no occult purpose; no search for the occult brass; no idea of the Dragon, or the impure Salt.

Psychoanalysis is a means of therapeutic adjustments for the entanglements that arise from the subconscious.  But the subconscious is not the brass.  The area beyond the subconscious contains the brass.  This, therefore, means much washing.  Not a bath, but many kinds of wash.  AND IN THAT, FIRE HELPS.

There are many kinds of fire.  For many objectives, – even in the physical plane — pleasant, illuminating, kindling, warming.  Do not mix the purpose of water and fire with the types of water and fire.

The fire we know is the latest outbudding of fire.  It is a visible manifestation of another force.  The alchemists knew that.  That is why they spoke of Sulphur — a necessary ingredient in their processes.

What different types of fire do you know?  Desire to change the self a kind of fire.  Many degrees.  Refining fire removes the dross.  The fire of inspiration?  But that is objective.  Wonder?  Taking the emotions up, as a flame goes up, – away from the self.  But it works from the self.  Inspiration works upon the self, from outside.

Aspiration.  Enthusiasm.  The fire of the mystic.  (There are also destructive fires.)  Devotion.  Adoration.  A one-pointed dynamic — a kind of adoration which uses that power to move.  The typical mystic is an ardent seeker, and uses that fire to move upward.

There is a mental fire.  There is a ritual (?) fire.

Fire goes up.  Fire needs continually to be fed.  It is important to appreciate that.

In any process of transformation fire and water build together.  You need to glimpse that there are some very important differences between water and fire.  Fire you must take care of.

How are you going to feed the fire?  With your imagination, – to revivify the things you once saw?  Faith?  But faith can also be the biggest obstacle on the road.  As most people use it, it implies a set of ideas.

Modern science is not based on the ideas we have, but is a bold and continuous quest for what is there.  Most folk who have faith do not love truth.  But if you should say: faith as to the reality of great regions, or truths beyond you — that Yes.  Otherwise there is no point in the Quest.

Every soul, somewhere along its journey, will begin seeking.  And each will tend to seek, either in the remnants, the leftovers, of previous ages; or else they will search, if they are keen enough, for that which is in consonance with their own time.

 

Review

Keep repeating to yourself that phrase of Albertus Magnus: “Take our occult nature, Brass, and wash it and make it clean.”  Try to translate that from the literal expression into its symbolic meaning.

(Answer to a question) Water has a kind of is-ness, but fire needs to be fed.

 

ALCHEMY

Fourth Recording of series by MBM

February 26, 1952

We are coming into the heart of alchemy.

Historically, many different ways in which cleaning was used.

Note the progressive march toward the direct impinging upon man himself.

Alchemy, the forerunner of chemistry, was the mystical anticipation of our present age, and the work of Tutoring, because it started the examination of things directly, instead of making statements about them.

Many different ways of washing.  Seekers have recognized it as necessary.  Among the ancient Druids, – the Tolmen (stone with a hole in it).  The candidate had to move through the hole — forerunner of the “strait and narrow gate.”  Cleansing in the historical perspective.  Everything except the essential to be scrubbed off.

Initiation in the ancient Mysteries — candidate sent to the sea to bathe; bathe in the sea, instead of the little water — because the sea represents the immensities, – the great Realities, not little local things.  In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the journey to the sea for cleansing.  Idiosyncrasies of the self to be washed away.

(Mystery rituals among the Arabs)  Going to the fountain of the temple, ….taking it into their mouths: cleaning the personality.  But there was nothing that made the candidate do the things that correspond to the symbol.

But in alchemy, – working in the laboratory, they are foreshadowing the work upon the self — directly upon the thing, no longer the foreshadowing of a symbolic act.  A forward movement of humanity.  A few saw it before.

With the alchemists we are in a laboratory, and in a laboratory things are to be done upon the major stuff — the materia — the “occult brass” — the real self.

Where did water for the cleansing come from?  The first water is contrition: regret, sorrow, repentance, – various grades of dissatisfaction with the “brass”.  If you want to do something in alchemy “Consider well the kind of man thou art.”

Regret that is necessary to bring about change.  Otherwise don’t try it.

“From the heaven of the wise comes water” — the water of understanding.  Example of the woman at the well.  Three-quarters of the Scriptures of no significance, – but this is (significant.)  If you drink the water of which Jesus spoke it settles certain questions, thirsts, in your being forever.  To be corresponded with Aquarius, our present over-all sign.

“The Philosopher’s Stone weeps water.”  The Philosopher’s Stone, one of the objects (or objectives) of the work of alchemy: something that is man-made.  “Weeps.”  When souls are evolved far enough to make the Philosopher’s Stone they are no longer self-centered.  Not in the altruistic way of earth, but in the sense of Wisdom.  Because the water from above will have done its work.  There is then the sorrow, the ache, the longing to aid that process.

“Metals cannot be transmuted unless they be first reduced to their first materia.”  Metals grow in earth, is a concept.  Proposition that what occurs in man in earth is like the metals.  Metals are in the earth.  Man extracts the metal, and does things with the metal.  Endurance, tensile strength, etc.  The qualities in you that are metals grow in the earth.

Calcination

The first step in the actual process — not the preliminary, which is the washing — is calcination.

We will follow the steps of the English alchemist George Ripley,

in the “Twelve Gates.”

Calcination: that is, to reduce to a powder — to make friable by heat, whatever the metal is.  Nothing can be done until calcination has taken place.

Now no longer in the forecourts, as with the washing of the brass.  Means the breaking down into a powder by heat.

Leads us immediately to the problem of fire.  Without sulphur no alchemical process can be undertaken.  That sulphur is the desire in the self.

Many kinds of fire, too.  The first fire is the desire in the self.  First, the water of contrition, which is the basis for the desire to change.  But, in direct opposition to water, is fire — the desire to do the change.  If it is not very strong it has to be strengthened, or increased, so that the brass can be made friable, or reduced to powder.

In this desire fire, sulphur, we come immediately to a great conflict.  This is the resistance of the brass to the heat.  You can’t mix a bar of chocolate until it is melted.  Desire is rarely very strong in the beginning.  Partly because desire does not know what it is up against.  It is a kind of all-over enthusiasm, which has not had a chance whatsoever to measure itself against what it proposes to undertake.

“Desire the fire!”  It is possible to work upon desire — which is one kind of fire.  But if you do not add to the fire you won’t have fire enough.

How do you add to the fire?  All of you have used the earth to quench the fire.  You negate your desire.  To transform your being to the knowledge of anything Larger, grasp the steps of what I am discussing.  These things you can build up, or you can put out by earth.  We haven’t learned to carry the fire from torch to torch, as in the Olympic Games.  That is alchemy.

See to it that there is a segment of your being in which your desire to what you are doing is safely protected, while you go out in the world.  If you have learned to keep it burning you have learned an important step in alchemy.

You have to learn to keep the original fire, and add to it – by increasing your wonder, your regard, your reverence, the glimmerings of understanding that are beginning to come.  All of these feed the fire.

You can learn the preliminaries of alchemy from today on.  Think of the things you have had that are good.  Then gather up – keep the fire living where you can contact it at any time; then that you add to the fire by nourishing it. Not water; but treat the different chemicals in you according to their nature.  That is essential to alchemy.

“Increase the fire, and you will have the fire; and the fire will kindle a fire.”  If you are adding to the fire there will be some period, or condition, out of which fire — a new kind of fire – will emerge.  But of course that awaits your discovery.

“The fire of the wise burns in water.”  Another alchemical secret.  The fire that comes from above thrives in water.  The water also represents the heart world — the world out of which everything comes, even as the foetus.  Everything that is worthy, progressive, moves out of the heart: the desire that goes upward, the warmth, the good-will, the generosity, the extroverted feeling of all that the water can mean.  This must continually be subrosa to fire.  Fire cannot go without water, in the human stage.  You can’t live rightly without expressing the best that is in you — without expressing in terms of the heart, or water.

“Turn the fire into water; burn the fire in the water, and you will obtain a fiery water.”  “Boil the fire in the fire. Throw body, soul and spirit into the fire, and you will possess the fire.”  Fire consumes – the quickest means of transformation.

Corresponding factors in the self . . . . . Calcination.  There must be enough desire to want that which is to be — which is anticipated alchemically as gold, that everything is sacrificed to it.  Actually what occurs is that folk throw a little piece into the fire — a little piece of themselves.  Because they are still so attached to themselves.  Like themselves pretty well.  Melt the chocolate only a bit.  Even in Tutoring.  Possibly due to the Age.  There are few who are not loath to risk the transformation.

If you look at great figures in history we see that, in order to achieve what we later call their greatness, they sacrificed everything.  I think that the drive toward caution is very strong; and the fire is not great enough to take many beyond the melting of a little piece of chocolate.  We do not calcinate that way.  We are not, in that fashion, making the condition necessary to make gold.

The alchemists knew that there were no ways of avoiding the steps.  They had to be done fully — the laboratory the foreshadowing of the work upon man himself.  The real object is to change man from an animal, or earth, being to one of spiritual stature.

Every monad coming to earth has to be born in a race, family, place, time.  Those influences shape you.  At a time when you do have much power to resist; and you became the way you are — the personality.  But that is only the false ruler — the pseudo — that which has to be calcinated.  Has to be destroyed first.  The perfect way is calcination.

What is sacrificing?  In esoteric study it must always be placed opposite feasting.  They are two possible attitudes in every one of us.  If we are looking backward, like Lot’s wife, then for us it is a sacrifice.  But if our attention is forward, then what we are looking forward to becomes a feast.  Just as possible to measure the desire forward by the attitude of anyone, whether it is sacrifice or feast.  The greater the desire, the more the looking forward.  Even with worldly things.  Laws no less precise than those of physics.

The acceptance of the process – the throwing of the material into the vessel was made in the unconscious before in the conscious.

If the fire is strong enough it burns everything away, and you are left naked.  You wonder what is good in you, – and you have begun to touch your basic nature.  Not your personality.  That is the thing with which you have been cohabiting.

Why the decision in the subconscious before in the conscious?  All trees are not of the same size.  All monads, or souls, are not of the same age.  If there is a readiness in that monad to respond to these experiences, the other side in you, here called the subconscious, responds, regardless of the conscious.  The subconscious goes into the metal.  May give the air of eagerness — with the conscious resisting.  The personality puts up disguises.

The conscious self will be killed; it will be burned out between the deeper self and the “me.”  This was a foreseeing of what was to be.  A sort of blueprint; not yet the edifice; and then we see, – if the conscious self, which gradually replaces the personality, has the integrity, – to building according to the blueprint.

Is it not a fact that you have all builded your lives and your plans according to your personality?  That is axiomatic.  You could not have done anything else.  You stayed in the pattern or race in which your body was born — not you.  You didn’t have the boldness to break away.  The older you are as a monad, the more resistance you offer to race and family.  You sense somehow that they are not as important as they seem.  In fact, that they are not what they seem.

 

Solution

After calcination comes solution.  The solution is in the direction of what we have just begun to talk about: to begin to examine all the things by which the personality lived; to see whether they are what you thought they were.  That holds for everything: your religion, or absence of religion; a re-examination of political beliefs — now with an impartiality, not with the peculiar bias which is inevitably the method by which the personality examines.

The personality can only see out of its eyes.  It cannot do otherwise.  And that is why a Teacher is needed — a guide, a leader.  Because, of the self there is nothing that can be done.  The blind spot.

With that comes the breaking down of resistance.  You begin to list your prejudices, resistances, biases, inhibitions.  A strange business.

Again, what occurs in Tutoring, which never occurs in the laboratory, – is that folk are very gingerly in doing this.  There are few who are sincere in their undertaking.  They have ways of justifying pet foibles of the old personality.

In doing it — one stands naked.  But to be naked of inhibitions, prejudices, etc. is liberation.  Few people have the slightest glimpse of what liberations is.  You are all of you living in prisons — the prisons of your own ideas, environment, race, your time.  Liberation is a wonderful thing, – and that which is making for liberation.  The personality protests.  (Stories of the resistance of the personality.)

In myths and fairy tales, the stepmother, bad witch, malign forces which keep the hero down.  The folklore level of conveying these ideas.  The great fairy stories.  Ideas that you know were correct.  That is the personality.  Revalue them — dispassionately.  Begin your calcination, and your solution.

Solution, of course, is not something that is done all at once.  The personality is like the wall, or prison, that closes you in.  It therefore has blocked you from the functioning in any region beyond what the personality has rapport with.

Breaking down the personality — to calcinate and put into solution, a variety of sensitivities are uncovered, inevitably.  Because the prison walls are gone.  Otherwise you do not know what capacities you have — here and now.  An interesting by-product.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

We have covered the first two steps in the “Twelve Gates”.  Each “gate” opens into something else.

Continued contrition keeps on feeding the fire.

 

 

ALCHEMY

Fifth Recording

MBM   March 4, 1952

 

Necessary to understand what life is — deeply.  Glib phrases are narcotic: such statements as that life is spirit, or the soul in manifestation.  Honesty so important to any real study.  To understand steps three and four in alchemy we need to have some grasp of what life is.

We cannot give ultimate answers.  We can only come to know through a study of processes; to examine patiently the processes that seem to be a manifestation of life.  Important, because the processes of alchemy are the transformations of the processes of life.

Today we touch on more hidden aspects of our subject.  That is why we are challenged by an honest view of life.

Life appears to be energy, of various kinds, in manifestation, and that it goes through changes.  If you have watched those processes patiently you know certain fundamental facts about life, even though the mystery of life may still escape you.  You and I are manifestations of life, and yet we cannot adequately put the finger of our mind on just what that is.

For the purpose of our study this morning we are going to touch some of the points which have been noted in regard to life: Life is energy in manifestation, but at continually different stages.  Those stages can, apparently, be directed upward, or left to go their own way under the natural law.  We are talking specifically, not of the life in a flower, or the energy in a mineral, but the kind of thing that is us.

I shall give you the fruits of long research on this through the ages, and with it what, to some of you will be familiar — the analogy of the seed: that which is simple, a point of energy, – you, when your body was born in earth, like the seed that goes into the ground, to begin to reach out in many directions, through the body, in a number of interlacing and increasingly complicated physical needs and desires.  In some transformed way, they are still with you: the need for food, shelter, exercise, play.  And these made you stretch out in all kinds of direction, like the branches that grew out of the little seed in the ground, and presently became strong roots reaching in this direction and that direction, – a veritable underground forest.

This is energy in manifestation — you, – your story in manifestation.  If we want to know how you will purposively transform…..must first grasp something of what you did unconsciously: You developed likes and dislikes; things that gave you pleasure – sense pleasure, later other kinds of pleasures.  All the while mother and father and relatives are talking in your environment.  Forgotten, but not to the subconscious.  You will reproduce those things that made more of an effect on you.

The result is that the energy in you, the life in you, began to be identified, not only with needs but likes and dislikes….supported by your experience.  And the pseudo-wise words of your environment have built up your predilections — favorable and unfavorable prejudices.  Inevitably you have acted in favor of those predilections.  Normal, but not good.

Imagination developed.  Perhaps through fairy stories.  An additional glow.  Maybe little experiences of your own that came into the picture.  Trips.  Imagination has woven and re-woven the fabric around those incidents.

Maybe your thoughts began to come into play.  You adapted, or you didn’t adapt.  Companions and friends.

By this time you have a root system that is enormous.  Innumerable branches of your manifest tree.  In Philosophy they are called by the simple name, dismemberment.  A useful process.  Same as it is meant with the tree.  To get a multitude of experiences, and bring those experiences back to the trunk of the tree — to its foliage and fruit.  The tree does better than we do.  We rarely carry through the fruits of our experience.  We repeat.  We repeat.  Humanity, in its present stage, is in the unhappy stage, by the custom of repeating its failures, individually and collectively.

When it comes to a process such as alchemy, there are implicit certain ideas which, again, I must repeat: Alchemy moans consciousness, purpose, application of techniques, consistency or follow-through.  It means progressive achievement, – growing continually more aware of the complicated factors which inevitably constitute your experience and mine.  The further the tree spreads and reaches, so it will contact a greater area of soil and air.

We change then from the unconscious process — the pattern set; until we come to the awakening which constitutes the first step in the life of a seeker: the beginning to sense, however dimly, that life should not be accidental; that they should in no sense accept themselves as they are; nor their circumstances; but that these, considered as a science, become the way of an upward transformation.

Now we are at the point of alchemy.  ….Conscious, purposive undertaking to transform your own life — not someone else’s — in an upward process.  All we may know of life is what is discovered by the manifestation of those transformations.

At various stages of the alchemical process, which corresponds to the steps of Tutoring, there are points of vantage in which one has glimpses of the significance of life, and something more intimately of its nature than by mere (?) processes; but those are won by undertaking conscious transformations, instead of living from day to day, as is the custom among all nice people.  There are still nicer people than nice people.

 

Separation

That brings us to the first point in our study today.  This is the step of separation.

You are in a motley at the time of adulthood.  You forget some things, get wrathy about others, enjoy still others, and go out for more of still another kind.  You are all mixed up.  You have senses linked with feelings.  You like something, and you repeat it.  And you have, in regard to these desires, a conglomerate of reactions..  ..memories, and all the associations which your consciousness can contain.  You have a mixed approach.

The same thing with your imagination and your feelings.  Again a mixture of feeling and imagination, and subrosa memory.  The same thing with your thoughts.  “I feel we ought to do thus and thus”, instead of “I think.”  You probably don’t have a clean mental approach to any fact.  Because, unless you have faithfully gone through this next step, you could not have.  Sometimes it is not serious, sometimes it is.

In this third step, called separation, the main roots and branches of our tree, are to be pruned and separated.  A difficult process, the separation of the faculties.  Unless you have separated your faculties, by careful work on your memory and support of your conscious living, you do not have the delight of knowing what it is like for any one of your faculties to rise, clean, and free, and by itself.

When they begin to be separated you experience, here and again, that some faculty of yours leaps up like a great bubbling spring, and aids you.  Then comes a new knowledge about life.  All of us know too much about life in its sordid, mixed, unconscious states; that is what we have been living with.  But as a faculty begins to fly free, you know that that is your life, and you have had a taste of life altogether different than you have ever had before.  And therefore your judgment of what life is changes radically at this point.  Out of experience.  Something new has leaped forth from you.  Like Bach’s counterpoint.

There are times when the feeling faculty in you should be free to function, clean, buoyant and sweet, and leap up to the sky.  Most of us know the other kind of feeling.  We are angry, or sad.  But those are never clean, freed, separated faculties.  They are earth laden.

We all go through many more hells than we should because the faculties are not clean.  If you put comfort before truth, you won’t find truth.  It is to the courageous and the honest.  We are dragging terrific things behind us.

(Dream of the rooking chair dragged behind by a woman.)

When the alchemical process is started in the other side of being, which the world calls the unconscious, a series of steps are evolved, which follow the pattern as logically as these “Gates” of Ripley.

 

Conjunction

The fourth step is conjunction, or Gate of Conjunction.  Implies the opening up of something new (gate) — a means of putting together, a juxtaposition.  And implies that there can be, in the alchemical process, no coming together except that the parts are first cleaned by being separated.

In the world, starting with sex, there is conjunction of all kinds — without cleanness, without separation.  It is that way with.        , reading, etc. — not something chosen purpose – fully or consciously; so there is no real conjunction.  When there is conjunction, or a coming together out of cleanness, there is a realization, or a result, that cannot be known any other way.

Conjunction brings about a new state of life in the self.  That opens the faculties to realizations externally which could not be had before.  No man can really serve who has not first solved the major problems in himself.  In that, the processes of alchemy, or Tutoring, are different from the world.  A doctor may give a bit of advice which he himself would not follow.  It makes no difference whether you, or the world, do not see it.  I am talking about the sub-layer of life which is working with things as they are, not with pseudo’s.

When then the trainee begins to sense something of the life of a tree, it is in a wholly different category than that of the superficial person who says, “I have a rapport with a tree.”  He is entitled to really see outside of himself.  Most people see with their predilections.  Conjunction, linking, brings about new expression, – new forms of life — as a tree that is growing will send out new twigs, which, in turn, become branches.  Manifestations of the new life are inevitable.  . . . I know by this if the tutoree is honestly doing work.

Life, being energy, is active.  If it is activated, is led constructively, it follows a pattern.n Where is that pattern?  A hard question.  But this thing is definite: that if each one of us consistently follows the processes of evolution, there are definitesteps through which we will make that progress as assured as anything that man could set up in the physical world.  Here we are dealing with intangibles; but in the world of intangibles, in turn, we are meeting with powers that are invariable; and they coerce the one who is faithful to their patterns to a process of development which leads, unmistakably, onward, or upward.

The great transition at the beginning of a process such as alchemy, is the recognition born in consciousness of the reality of something that is intangible, – and leads on to very great desirables — beyond anything that the natural man can experience.

There are tests too — not objective but subjective.  But the power of life in him is being transmuted upward.  Transforming qualitatively the character of our energy, until, in that changed character, we who are it, and yet directing it, are able to glimpse immensities.

No one can view anything of the actuality of the immensities who has not separated from himself all the muddle that the rocking-chair indicates.  It is also the distorted and unclean glass through which we view life: the prejudices or predilections which make one person Islamic, or Catholic, or a Unitarian, or a theist, or an agnostic, are just part of that rocking-chair.  It takes honesty to accept that.  To know something of life one must get acquainted with it at first hand.  That first hand is the process of alchemy.

(Imagination may support a prejudice, or a sensation, or a memory.)

You do not finish a stage before you go to the next one.  Each step must be continued faithfully.. … Comes out of readiness of the highly complex factors in the self. . . . Always comes about.  Does not mean separation is over.  The old habits are so subtle they can come right back and lock up (?) again what you have separated.  All the steps go along.

If you are a growing being you must have the capacity for a wider range of functioning.  But your capacity is continually increased.  You don’t let go of one thing, to go on with the other.  Anything that achieves results must be an act.

When you have gathered up all your scattered limbs and drawn them back in, you no longer have attachments to any of the things to which you had attachments, – to which your roots went out.  You are really only free when you have made yourself free of all desires.  Discrimination.  There are fires that we should put out.  They have served their day.

Different degrees…. of soul’s age.  Those who have obeyed more effectively are older.  If you have gone through experience vigorously, positively, you are much older than the average run.

 

 

ALCHEMY

from recording No. 6 by MBM

as given March 11, 1952

 

Humanity learning the value of relationships.  In the former period too much consideration of details, – analysis.  Any number of groups still following that tangent of analysis.  A new wind blowing, -sometimes in strange places.  Relationships of the Far East to the West being forced on us; the state to the Federal government.  Things are not yet worked out — rugged individualism and the collective, progressive good of a whole society.

Worlds are made up of many things, – which make up relationships.  Think of that word much.  Not one mountain but many — valleys, etc.  It is just in their relationship that their important value consists.

This brings us to the theme of the historical perspective.  That is one way of gaining a sense of relationship.  No longer have the compulsion to find perfection in the old, nor anywheres along the line.  Have begun to see the pattern of evolving life.

Seekers inevitably used the mode of mind that corresponded to their time.  So we have no desire to go back to their methods.

Organ tone.  Alchemy started the research into things themselves instead of being content to follow the dictates, aphorisms, general statements, which was the best that could be done in the earlier day.

But alchemy is not the conclusion.  It is the forerunner of tutoring.  You will not find the answer in alchemy to the steps of the transformation of the self if it really desires transformation.

We need to add one more point regarding relationships: We need to have a clear sense of relationship between the earth and the pattern of evolution.  We need to get, again and again, until it is part of us, the conception of the whole pattern of life.

The earth, in the scheme of things, is but one classroom for monads in the process of growth — the third grade.  We must not expect too much of third graders.  Earth is for the third grade, except for those who come back in terms of organization, or in the role of Teachers.

What is the relationship of us here to the whole?  In the mass of humanity, as evolution proceeds, there become more who are ready for a clearer picture of the pattern of evolving life.  They cannot be content with themselves, or just the earth.  The forefront of humanity, reaching out for a more comprehensive study of relationships.  Egocentricity all right in its day, but a regression if kept after its day.

Humanity which comes to the third grade may, as a whole, not return to the earth, and others, who are ready, come in.  This is one reason why the humanity of earth will not, for a long time, be advanced — as with a third grade in school.  But there will be improvements in condition: rid of prejudices, tradition, – of the singularizing procedure that is without relationship.  Takes one idea and exploits it.  That will be gone.  The building too will improve.  But that is all you have a right to expect of the earth.

When you are through with this stage you won’t come back to make this humanity better unless you have a specific call for that. It won’t be for yourself, or any cult, or religion, or racial compulsion; but can only be out of the call of the pattern of the whole, and those who are leaders for that.

In the process of alchemy, and now in Tutoring, the main concept is that, as the transformation of the self takes place, it has powers and capacities to know and comprehend, beyond what it had before it began such a process.  Our alchemical studies too, to be seen not as something that concerns but a process of transformation consonant with the spirit of this age — looking deeply into the nature of man, working with it, – not by mantras, etc. but by actual contact with the thing itself.  That is what the alchemists did in their laboratories, but most of them left the laboratories with the idea that that was only a foreshadowing of something else.

It is alchemically true that if the oil of jade (the gold of China) be taken within — or if gold is taken within — it will extend the life a thousand years.  The emphasis is on what the Westerner calls immortality.  Don’t confuse with the continuity of life.  The transformation which comes alchemically takes life up, to a higher and higher level.  The idea of immortality is that ascending scale.

The ankh cross, the key to immortality — the two dynamics in man, – masculine and feminine, which, if working continuously, will make the monad ascend.

Two motifs to be studied today:

Even the word putrefaction has a connotation of the undesirable.  But in the process of change it is inevitable.

The steps up to now seem to have brought desirable results.  The reasoning mind would not understand.  Why should all that is good be destroyed?

With the four steps, not yet the end; not yet gold, or the mercury that is necessary.  The test of what we have, – whether it is more precious than what is beyond, is a search of our sincerity.  Can’t bring themselves to take the fifth step.  The Old Testament story of Isaac.  He was to be sacrificed.  Here the fruit of the father’s hopes.  Did he (Abraham) still have a loyalty beyond that?  A terrific test.  He had a vision beyond Isaac.  But it must be a test that is genuinely met, not with lip service.

This is the point of turning away for many.  The death that must take place before the new birth   The “black raven” of alchemy – the picture of death, of the putrefaction.  It is more than the preliminary, early giving up of superficial, traditional, family, racial attachments.  The gate narrows.  More and more you become what you are.  To relax and take ourselves as we are, is part of the death.  But it is a much more inward process.  Steps that are intangible.

 

Congelation

That which begins to harden.  In the world you have lost enthusiasm.  They can hardly bring themselves to carry on.  In putrefaction, which is death, life seems to vanish. Apparently the fire is going out.  Apparently there is no more desire.  When it comes to congelation, it is the very absence of fire which helps the process to this next step.  Therefore putrefaction is the inevitable forerunner of congelation.  But congelation is an inevitable step in the process.

Tests in the Mayan tradition – the House of Ice.  To see if he could still remain warm.  Not on the literal level.  Can you keep deep in the core of being what was gained in this difficult, dark period?  Does your desire now leave you?  Or is your loyalty still to Jehovah?

Test of the lighted candle in the cave.  Can you maintain the loyalty? – the indomitable will in yourself toward the process and the pattern through all the steps?  Are you still faithful?  A foretaste of the gold when accomplished.

According to the stage you are in, there is the work to be done.  In this condition there is no use to reach further – instruction in patience, which is the forerunner of understanding.  Patience in accepting the work of Law, which is what these processes represent, requires profound patience.  Not till after that patience has been acquired that you come into the Elysian fields beyond.  Lessons in patience gradually change all the alchemical conditions which are necessary for that magnificent vision of the pattern which is attainable only after you have that type of patience.  Not worldly patience.  But with the great process of evolution; millions of years, in which, however, every little thing we do plays a part.  If we consider them as unimportant we have missed the perspective.  We haven’t the sense of relationship which binds life together.

They lead to the stature which can grasp immensities, – make the tutoree a candidate for a much higher rank than just the passing over out of the physical, when the body is laid aside.  Relationship toward that which you have begun to grasp — toward which you have begun to transform yourself, put into expression in your daily life.

“The water opens; the earth shuts.”

As we make fluid and pulverize that which is now solid, and make solid that which is now volatile, is simply: Break up the things of earth.  And the things that are vague, – intangible to us now, are the things which should be made substantial.  That is an elementary way, but begin it.

What is it that congeals?  The beginning of the making solid of that which you have gone through, as a preliminary to a next step.  It has to do with strength, insight, understanding, fineness of your being; your thoughtfulness, forbearance — all these qualities which become substantial in your being.

They can only become substantial through the period of sad congelation.  But to be it, and to go through with it, is very different than to make the Jello – which you don’t experience.  In this work you are it.

The process comes about as inevitably as day or night, provided the preceding step has been accomplished.  Proof of where the tutoree is.  The steps are inherent.

 

 

ALCHEMY

Seventh Recording

MBM   March 18, 1952

 

“Common sense is the accretion of old ideas, accumulated in the mind before the age of eighteen”  …Alchemy beyond that.  Every new idea battling with that wall of prejudice called common sense.  Einstein didn’t follow common sense.

You are at the point of making astounding discoveries, but only if you can overcome those old ideas.  The great realities are not to be measured by common sense, or by our ordinary techniques.  Alchemy, through talking the language of metals that grow in the earth, was really applying the principle of correspondence.

Changes that are necessary in man before he can really develop.  Ordinary living is not development.  It is merely stagnation.  Most people don’t know it, – their nostrils accustomed to the stink of the swamp.  You have become a little loosened.  The atomic physicist is not at the end, but coming into a new world of mystery.

Same experience with the astronomer.  Powerful new tools.  Has not yet solved the riddle of space, or the galaxies.  New mysteries.  With both physicist and astronomer comes a note of profundity that the earlier physics and astronomy did not possess.  Something they can’t explain — the pi factor – in mathematics, that which is unresolvable….the mystery that leads on and on.

It was only as the physicist and astronomer equipped themselves with better tools that they could penetrate further.  Only as the alchemist, or the tutoree, equips himself with greater powers — not outside himself, but of his own self — that he is able to penetrate further.  Therefore, good mystical logic that, in the midst of alchemy, we should come to its close.  We have not yet the tools that will open up the inter-galactic spaces in ourselves.  We cannot, logically, go any further, except experientially; that is, through the development of powers in ourselves.

The first rhythm in the evolution of the self, in the twelve steps in Tutoring.  Difficulties met all along.  In the symbolism of alchemy that is called Saturn: blocking to the push upward of the growing monad.  As though you put a stone over the place where a seed is to come up.  The gardener does things analogous to the work of Saturn, such as pinching off the first shoot, and making it branch out.  That is the only way that which grows up straight can go out – the obstacle which will strengthen the plant and give you many times the bloom, or fruit.

Should think of the change which is taking place in that which is called salt.  Salt and Saturn curiously put together: the Salt of Saturn.  Salt is the human self in earth.  It is blocked, like the gardener pinching off the shoot.  In a thousand ways.  And you say, How terrible!  ”Those whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”  If you don’t like chastening, you don’t like to be loved by the Lord.

But if you begin to understand this salt and Saturn, so important in the process, you discover in that Saturn-influence the potential of development, and that without it there could not be development.  The blocking to your desires, to your searching, to your Quest, – you will begin to look at that differently.  For the salt of Saturn is a basic process, or ingredient, in Tutoring.  The gardener who loves his vine will pinch off the new shoots.  Those who are ready to take it profit by that.  But they profit by it only if they know what they are doing.  The human being is not as simple as a plant, and does not respond as smoothly.

In beginning to recapitulate something of alchemy, put aside that old common sense, and the idea that blocking is bad, or undesirable.  It may be painful, but that, rather, is a tempering process, necessary to conscious evolution.  When you come to a state where conscious evolution is possible, you come to a state where experiences are like tests: Can you take and use them, or do you see them as evil?

This does not mean that there is not much in the world that is undesirable, but that you understand the processes of the evolving self, and look at the experience quite differently.  These are experiences that are both objective and subjective.  “This is the ancient principle of the Stone, the most ancient principle: this salt, tempered by Saturn, is Wisdom.”

In alchemy, and in the process of Tutoring, we are shorn of the old common sense that wisdom is a collection of data, or is knowledge.  Because Wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom is something else, that can only come from successfully meeting the Saturn of the salt.

Our second step reminds us of sulphur, – the sulphur which is necessary.  For you remember that Sulphur is a fire that must be cleansed: not just any fire.  Many people have desire for good things, but that desire is so mixed up with other desires, for contrary things and experiences, etc. that the first type of fire cannot work.  When you learn of the processes of alchemy, – and Tutoring, which are virtually identical, the fire has to be made clean.  You have to search your heart and mind for what you really want, and what desires will stand the test; what fire comes out of “burning the fire in the water”; or in reverse.  Check on your desires.  In the fourth column of the Four Components, where the desires of people are listed, from worldly ideas up, your fire has to be single.  You cannot have 5900 conflicting desires.

In the process of pre-Tutoring, gradually some of the desires are cleared up and discarded.  Quite easily, because they are no longer desirable.  Through the accretion of the common sense ideas we hold on over-long to many attachments, as though they belonged to our current approach to life.  Check on yourselves.  All of that is necessary to make your sulphur contributive to the process.  The more single-minded you become, the better.

Then comes the third point, Mercury, – sometimes called Quicksilver – something that moves very rapidly.  The thing that moves very rapidly is your thought.  From the metaphysical point of view, it is the most rapidly moving thing about you, in your present state.  But that mercury which is born of salt and sulphur — that is, out of the things of the earth, and the needs and desires of the body; out of all the things that have developed on the heart side of you; out of that, presently, is grown the need to think.

A paradox: that, though everybody has the potential of mercury, or mind, it does not mean that they have mercury, or mind.  Mercury, too, must be prepared for the alchemical process.  Mercury first must learn how to think by itself.  Most of the thinking you have done in the past, your thinking, is altogether following salt and sulphur only.  Your opinions, your ideas, your reasoning, etc. have been in the direction of Einstein’s “common sense” — not really free and clean, as Einstein says one must be to really quest for the great Realities.

So Mercury must be released to function freely.  Not in sulphur, nor to anything of the past, no matter how good it seems.  In doing that, your mind is beginning to exercise.  Ordinarily, minds do not exercise.  They go through the motions that somebody else has made, either in school, college or taxtbook before.

The important thing is to learn to think honestly; that is, to begin to clean up the mercury: the mercury, or the mind in you, which are the equipment which you must bring into action in the beginning, must each go through its own preparation to be used, not to be accepted as is.

You see that alchemy was not a physical, but a metaphysical, science; following through to new discoveries, which the historical perspective swept into the scene, with inquiry into things as they are, instead of dictates about what they were.  Hence that wonderful correspondence between alchemy and Tutoring.

The work upon the self — and anyone can work on their salt, sulphur and mercury, without pre-Tutoring — these things are akin to equipping the laboratory with new tools.  The new equipment corresponds to the changes you are making in the self.  Or, the tools are changes which you are making, which are subjective, intangible, but very real, as everyone who makes them discovers.  The others, in the laboratory of the physicist, etc., are objective.

Cibation

The two steps which we are to follow today.

When you have really been watching a plant grow, you see how serenely sequential are the steps which follow one another.  The same thing with this process….one step inside the other.  The Lotus Map.  Each grows out of the other, and continues.  They don’t stop.  If it is continued in right proportion, its emphasis seems to shrink.  As with the physical body when something goes wrong.  Calls attention to the part that needs it.  By one who knows, not everyone.  Wo do not become careless of salt or mercury, we do not misunderstand Saturn; we continue to accumulate those little grains of sand which make the substance of Wisdom — which are not facts of this world, but of the intangible world, which is the enduring world, – this, the temporary world, the practice ground.

As we turn to the step cibation, the others do not cease, but the new factor now is completely normal to this stage as any step in the growth of a tree.  New material to be added.

The idea that imagination is to add the new factors is largely erroneous.  One of the old ideas of this tutoree (here quoted) was that everything comes from the self; that following through on “Man, know thyself!” is the full attainment.  Wherever that idea comes, you and I may quickly observe the lack of objective discipline.  It comes from the East, where objective disciplines are lacking.  But the West, which was beginning to be ready to accumulate something of other than material facts, grabbed Eastern ideas as the answers.  It has as little discrimination in regard to profundities as the East had in regard to objectivities.

Everything does not come from the self.  But, as the self is the means of evolution, and you can go no further than you have evolved, the self is, of course, of essential importance.  But one’s mind has to be large enough to grasp that, though this is of essential importance, it is not everything.  The atomic physicist and the astronomer know, through long discipline, of the place of objective facts.  Now, there are objective facts on the so-called subjective plane; and one of the discoveries which the tutoree makes, is that he turns in upon himself only to turn out again upon another world which is objective.  It is on the plane of what he originally called subjective.

Therefore the new ingredients must be largely from the objective world, even as the modern understanding of what is probably best illustrated through Einstein, has changed our understanding of the objective world.  No one, East, West or South, really evolves, except that they recognize, when they are through certain preliminary steps, the objectivity of other planes of life.  And it is from these that there come such transforming realizations.  These are the new ingredients, – the process of cibation, which make of the tutoree, or of your alchemical mixture, something radically different than it was before.

We in the West may come back to our own birthright…an operative one.  The East started things, but now a thorn in the side.  But the West, with its discipline in the objective world is capable of going so immeasurably further than the East that it is ludicrous, when you know, to exaggerate the value of the East.

These new elements, or factors, taken in in the process of cibation, give, like the new knowledge of interstellar space, a wholly new interpretation of things.  In turn, they lead toward sublimation.  Not that of psychoanalysis.  (Quoting the tutoree.)  Here there has risen to the top of our retort, or alembic, a kind of substance that is lifting up out of all the bulk that is in the alembic of the that something which belongs to the higher planes.  That now has been made palpable in the self.

And it is from that state of what has been developed at the top of the vessel, reversing the process of the below — something that comes from that that is so radiant, – a quality that cannot be described by anything that has been touched before, that presses through all the mixture, without distorting it, making it now luminous, – translucent, – giving it a quality it could not have, except through that transformation.

That is the glimpse of what is to be.  And is therefore a right point at which to halt our alchemical processes.  For, unless one is deeply attuned in the processes themselves, the rest becomes words.

The names of the last four steps are on the wall.

What we are to gather is the realization that, in the changing of the self through processes which are scientific, – which belong to the laws of the intangible world, there can be development in the self unknowable to the self in its ordinary state; and that there is through alchemy, and through Tutoring, the assurance that can come in no other way — the assurance of the gold, – something that is the desire of everyone, and in which one has the unfailing support of the deeper self.  Because the deeper self will have nothing to do with common sense.  That is only the personal self.  The deeper self is the only ally to the process.

This brings the process up to the period of the current history of the earth.  We come to the time, foreshadowed by the steps of alchemy, where the statements, or instructions, of a Teacher are not the primary factor.  For, in this process, as in alchemy, we take into account the self — not by any before determined rules and regulations, for every monad has its own past history.  There is no specific method, except in the broad pattern of these “Twelve Gates”, by which that particular monad is to be picked up and set on the road.

The answer to that wonderful and terrible problem is in the deeps of each one, buried under the personal subconscious.  It cannot be gotten at except the personal subconscious is successfully traversed, and can be kept subordinate to the other; namely, to the searching, to the quest, of the self which has become awakened to the reality of such a thing, in conjunction with the deeps in the self.

— – – – – – –

The one who is able to aid that process is the true Teacher, not the educator (?).  There are all-governing principles and laws, but the time has come when each one must take their own part in them, provided they are ready for them.

The great turn in the mystical science, gold (?) in the past, is just that — the consideration of the real history of the self, recorded in the deeps of the self — behind the area that we call the subconscious.  That then makes of the self something into which we enter, as literally as the substances which the alchemist puts into his retort.  Not dictations from outside, but we are calling upon that enormous and precious dynamic which is in each one, and which is the only real strength upon which anyone can stand or move through the ages.

We walk on the apparent strength of the personality.  But along come disasters, and down we fall.  But if this other side of being has been liberated; if we have begun to work it, and put it into action under the laws that govern it, then the self is truly evolving.

I read from Vaughn, both mystic and alchemist, and ask you to undo these lines as I read them:

There is a mountain situated in the midst of the earth which is both great and small.  It is far off, and it is near at hand, but, by the providence of God, it is not visible.  In it are hidden most ample treasures, which the world is not able to value.  This mountain is compassed by cruel beasts and ravenous birds, which make the way thereto both difficult and dangerous.

The mountain is something that rises up.  Great or small, according to your determination to climb.  If you close yourself to a thing it shrinks; but if you open and persist, it becomes enormous.  Far off and near at hand — but invisible; closer than your skin but, from another point of view, so far away, – unless you do something about it.  Invisible: because you have first to overcome the “common sense” that the physical world is the only reality, before you can approach it.

Ample treasures: as ample as you need.  The world does not value them.  You all have your inhabitants in that world, – puts its labor, and interests in physical things.  Treasures are all those potentials which are capable of becoming gold. . . . forces of the pairs of opposites – earth in opposition to heaven.  The earth always opposes heaven, – and always will.

There is no devil, but a lot of devilish folk.  By your “common sense”, your attachment to things; interlinking with people and movements and activities in the world — that is the envy of the devil against the treasures in the mountain.

Now, this mountain is surrounded by cruel beasts; these the appetites for earth.  The dragons — the things that belong to the body, – the lusts, the pride — the old symbol we have had here, – and the ravenous birds.  The ravenous birds that prevent the progress are the rational thoughts, the material thoughts, the habitual thoughts, the common sense thoughts, the crowd mores, thoughts, which will continually consume the super-rational.  An experiment: Can you have lunch and still hold dear and apart the things we havebeen discussing this hour?  Can you go through the day that way?  Interesting!  That mountain will go just as high as you can go.  It opens up as your vision opens up, – to ever opening vistas, to heights.

Vaughn’s beautiful, symbolic expression of what is found when we go into the deeper regions beyond the subconscious.

Reference in the “Pilgrimage into the Self.”  The allegories of Dante.  The same beasts.  The mountain which cannot be climbed until the obstacles are overcome.  They represent the impurities in the salt.  Saturn, the beneficent influences which help to take out the impurities.

The things of this world are temporary and incidental — except that we must make good use of them, and contribute our part, in decency; but the long-range objective is the important one.  Balance the short-range and the long-range.

(Perhaps in response to a question:  The process of Tutoring cannot continue without an instructor.  The idea of new phases (faces ?) on the road would in itself answer you.)

List of the four last steps in alchemy, from wall announcement:

Fermentation

Exaltation

Multiplication

Projection.

 

 

 

 

THE    SCHOOL    OF    APPLIED    PHILOSOPHY

154   EAST   63rd   STREET,  NEW  YORK   21,   N.  Y.

conducted by Source Teachings Society

TEmpleton 8-0050

 

MBM’S TUESDAY NOON CLASSES BEGIN AGAIN

ON  FEBRUARY 5th

These classes have grown to double their previous size as more persons have come to know of them and avail themselves of daytime instruction  under  MBM.

MBM has chosen “ALCHEMY” as the subject of this next series.   Are you surprised?    Do you believe that this famous medieval science which claimed to know how to transmute lesser metals into gold, is dismissed in ignominy by the discoveries of modern science?

Alchemy can never be banished or dismissed.   It is the name given in the Middle Ages to the secret science which has been the quest of the wise in all ages.

Continually through the long pages of human evolution there have been evidences of a SECRET SCIENCE – guarded from the multitude, but accessible to the genuine and earnest seeker.   Ancient rituals of initiation indicate knowledge of it.   The Lesser and the Greater Mysteries of the Hindus, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks all refer to it.   Some derive it from the Wisdom of Hermes of Egypt and it is thus said to be “hermetically sealed” from those not entitled to know it.   Again, it was called the “Royal Science”, the True Magic.   It was never a small or personal matter.   It was of the greatest consequence – more significant than anything else in life.

In the Middle Ages this SECRET SCIENCE was called ALCHEMY and A MOST WONDERFUL SET OF SYMBOLS AND CORRESPONDENCES TO THE TRANSMUTATION OF LESSER METALS INTO GOLD WAS USED TO DESCRIBE CERTAIN PROCESSES IN THE LIFE OF MAN.   The Alchemists sought to make the “Philosopher’s Stone” and find the ELIXIR OF LIFE.   How profoundly they considered this undertaking can be seen from the words of one of them (Vaughan):

-2-

“For if thy desire leads thee on to the practice, consider well what manner of man thou art, and what it is that thou wouldst do; for it is no small thing.   Thou hast resolved with thyself to be a co-operator with the living God . . . . have a care therefore that thou dost not hinder His Work.”

Another earlier writer (Psellus) writes:

“Its function is to initiate or perfect the human soul by the power of materials here on earth, for the supreme faculty of the soul cannot by its own guidance aspire to the sublimest intuitions and to the comprehension of Divinity.”

A late Greek philosopher says:

”There is a twofold death, the one, indeed universally known, in which the body is liberated from the soul; but the other is peculiar to the philosophers, in which the soul is liberated from the body.”

Now, the significance of alchemy is that here under symbol and allegory often made deliberately difficult by the alchemists, is a description of the steps by which men and women may become the masters of their lives.   This is not done by discipline alone, but by the use of right combinations of energy which the alchemist calls chemicals, mixed in certain ways that bring about the desired result.

What then are lead, salt, copper?   What is the “seed” of all metals?   What is a tincture, antimony?   Why are sulphur and mercury essential?   What is the GREAT WORK OF MAKING GOLD?

Note:   Tuition for the series of seven classes is $12.00.   If you plan to attend, please write or phone the secretary in advance.

January 24, 1952

 

All over symbol of Mercury

state of antimony

   Or Lead?

The mysteries of sun and spirit are blocked except as you go down the pattern of Saturn.

(to be read from upper left down, then up to upper right or the way for lead or antimony to Jupiter)

 

Saturn, the bridge to larger worlds.  The very means of devel-opment

The mystic work of tutoring

The deeps in you – sun symbol buried deep, not easily attained.