Alchemy was born when everything was lost.
The ancient knowledge was divided into various streams that flowed so far from each other.
Everything can only be understood in its entirety.
Unfortunately, due to our mind’s field limitations, we walk in segments, and if we go too far, we get lost in an explosion of points. Beyond the knowledge acquired from individual sciences, and despite philosophical views continuing to fluctuate from one system to another, we are left with the task of understanding, unless we transform ancient learning into meaningless chaos.
Métis
Her name meant Wisdom, but also a skill – or the intelligence of cunning – Métis was exercised on very different levels, but always for practical purposes: the bricklayer, the politician, the helmsman, the weaver. All protean realities that did not lend themselves to the immutable reasoning of abstract philosophical conjecture, and one which philosophers hastened to reject as ‘non-knowledge’. Even today it is incomprehensible to us that ancient symbolism is based on the practice of ancient crafts. Furthermore, the scholar must accept that a good percentage of esoteric symbolism reflects the science of matter, i.e. Alchemy.
Theurgy
If the word Alchemy is relatively recent, so is the word Theurgy. First attested in the fragmentary Chaldean Oracles and widely respected and used by later Neoplatonic philosophers, the meaning of Theurgy is disputed. Although it means “work of God” or “divine work”, it also designates a set of ritual routines coupled with a lifestyle based on ethical and intellectual practices. The aim of Theurgy was contact, assimilation, and, ultimately, union with what was defined as “divine”. In some ancient cultures Theurgy was considered such a complex discipline that it became a “sacred game”. Indeed, an actual “sacred hunt”, given the difficulty for the deities to capture a human being.
Sacred Game
Had it not been a real sacred game, we need to deepen why the ancient Celtic and Hittite deities who presided over the Chthonic world were often portrayed with gaming boards. However, the prohibition of practicing on the ritual board for purely recreational purposes was well known. It is easy to say that the gambling part of this priestly game soon entered the popular imagination: a ritual that puts the living in contact with the underworld can only be defined as “taking a huge risk” or at least “enduring a great fright”. Which humans, needless to say, find very exciting
Alchemy is Physics.
A bare hands Physics, within the reach of the Neolithic, but Physics nonetheless.
Unknowingly, Alchemists called their physics a “living organism”.
Alchemy works in a strange way, to the point that its goals seem alien to common belief. Neolithic historians tell us of a primordial vision of the world without disconnections or separations, where the air was imagined as teeming with life, however ineffable. They told us that the ancients did not have our conception of time as an ineluctable vector, but rather of an eternal present that must slavishly repeat the instructions received from legendary beings. Paradoxically, a modern alchemist today has the opportunity to better understand the archaic worldview through the discoveries of physics: particles, quasiparticles, wave functions, spintronics, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, protyposis, and even the properties of sound. Through the complex mathematical and engineering representations that constitute the substantial difference between us and the ancients, perhaps we can grasp that “private channel” concept which best defines Alchemy.
Stars vs Sun.
Only at night the stars can dive into the most inaccessible recesses of the Earth’s crust.
The stars and the sun may not act in unison, but in competition with each other.
It’s strange for us today to know that, at certain times of the year and day, the alchemists’ stellar ocean could actually circumvent the sun’s influence on Earth. Were it not for ancient knowledge, it would have been easy to imagine day and night as two separate realms: during the day, the blinding sun ruled, while at night, a blanket of stars completed the earth. This is the first alchemical axiom, the basis and foundation of all operations.
The second axiom is based on the moon’s inclusion in this competition: during the day, the sun prevents the stellar Spiritus Mundi from approaching the Earth and leaves it hovering in the upper atmosphere. At night, thanks to the moon, stellar influences can descend to penetrate the most inaccessible recesses of the Earth’s crust. It is well known that ancient agricultural calendars indicated stellar cycles rather than the Earth’s orbit around the sun.
The third alchemical axiom concerns the non-division of heaven and earth, in fact the alchemists grouped all the movements of the cosmos and the earth’s core in a “philosophical sea”. From this concept comes the definition of “alchemical machine or world machine” which appears so scandalous and inappropriate to spiritualists.
Air, oscillating and teeming, weaves at the loom and builds palaces.
For alchemists, air movements are “pantogenesis” or generators of all things.
Take Care, Alchemist, not to cut the ties.
For alchemists there were no clear boundaries between objects, but a continuum so dense that it could be cut with a knife, although invisible, ethereal and formless. The main concept is that the life principle or soul is itself windy or is carried by the wind. The languages
Water, everything that flows and grows.
Mind, the deities were called “those who flow”.
Water, in all its forms, is originally shaken. And this causes its perpetuity.
It cannot be interrupted, nor can it originate in the middle. If this happened, no one could call it water any longer. From the fast roar of waves, to the slow and imperceptible rustle of a puddle, it was shaken at the origin. And the shaking continues in its midst. From here, the ancient ritual of libations. The role of water in Alchemy is to return the spirit to its earth. Once contaminated by water, earth acquires the property of “flowing”, and, consequently, it takes on the solvent function of water. The whole operation is called “returning the spirits to the earth”.
Earth, everything that can exist only in the world of the living.
When sky is repeated on earth, alchemists call this resonance the “Philosophers’ Stone”.
Yet, Earth is the secret refuge and the “storehouse” of the stars.
Alchemists knew very well that the earth was not the center of the cosmos. But they also believed that the center of the earth was the
receptacle of stellar influences. This made the earth their alchemical “stove”, their athanor, the place where the sidereal Spiritus Mundi was embodied, the place where everything met. Ultimately, the place where everything became “terrestrially adapted”. Alchemical earth is supreme, not because it is made of earth or stone, but because it “repeats” the universe. The alchemist’s quintessential earth is Mercurius, which can emerge from many alchemical paths. It is said that stellar influences are stored there. Earth, everything which unites sky and earth exists in the world of the living.
Fire, unruly–unrestrained–unstoppable.
Simply, the spark. Yet we can define it as ‘that which gives a form’. More than an element, it is a directive.
The alchemist’s task is to amplify the weak cosmic fire from heavens, to skies, and to earth.
Are we talking about fire as an alchemical principle or ordinary fire, the kind that burns, so to speak? If alchemical works are accomplished through burning fire, it is because we need to generate changes in the state of matter, thus bringing to the surface the spirit of the world, the Spiritus Mundi. As for the other fire, that produced by the “seed” of time, we only know that it is the “carrier” of information, uncontrollable and growing, symbolically represented by ordinary fire. Although it is called a “spark”, it needs to be “swollen” by the moon and amplified on earth. Greek mythology charges Hephaestus with the task of increasing the intensity of Zeus’s feeble cosmic fire.
Alchemists has few tools except the moon, the earth, and the sun.
And let none dominate the other.
Virtually all alchemical processes are veiled by the metaphorical use of the three nearest celestial bodies.
When the sun flees, the moon takes it and delivers it to the earth; when the moon is scorched, the earth hides it; when the earth dares not make its voice heard, the moon gives it its voice and reaches the sun; if the sun is evanescent, it is through the moon that it lives eternally on the earth. Alchemists conceal all their operations by donning the masks of the sun, earth, and moon. Destruction, liquefaction, solidification, changes in state, gravity, cooling. The philosophers’ stone is the earth of the sun and the sun of the earth, like is metallic gold. The soul of the world and the spirit of the world are the sun and the moon, respectively. And the moon, finally, dissolves and transforms everything.
Even though Oceanos consumes among a thousand whispers…
Fish do not have bones but cartilage, which is quickly dispersed.
The symbol of the “tunic” concerns the “thickness” of the ray, which the Greeks called “pneuma”.
Although they appear to be operations on matter, alchemical works are ultimately processes that not only alter the states of matter, but also disturb and influence the surrounding air.
Hermes, the mace-bearer, leads the procession and marks the time.
Bones are the most unalterable part, where the signature remain for a long time.
Hermes, the dealer, shakes the rod that makes us remember
X
“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle”.
And then we went out to see the stars again – Dante Alighieri, final verse (139) of Canto XXXIV of the Inferno.
Ancient myths want those space-creating toys to render the Aura that surrounds all bodies.
The charm of a spinning top comes from its ungovernability and noise. Their rotation can attract or repel, that is, create or cause it to be absorbed into the bottom from which life emerged. As the spinning toy turned, it produced sounds that seemed to be animal cries, or moans or laughter, from whose interpretation the theurgist could have prophetic visions, even assimilating them to the sound of the celestial spheres. Here we are only hinting at the ancient Philosophy and barely mentioning the triad Apollo-Hecate-Hermes, where Hecate has similarities with the ineffable deity of Aura, and is powerful beyond measure because feared even by Zeus. Her famous spinning top was the instrument with which oracles evoked her.
The Inferno/Hell of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy symbolically represents the alchemist’s forge.
The humble Materiarius.
Materiarius in Latin means unskilled laborer with purely executive duties.
For the ancients, what was sacred had to be reduced to the form of a toy.
The human inclination to spread memory on the surface of objects reached unrivaled heights in the Baroque age, when cabinets of curiosities were a mixture of museums of the absurd and reservoirs of knowledge. There, libraries with manuscripts hidden for centuries were opened to those who had something to reveal, and the craze for esoteric erudition began, perhaps comparable only to the Alexandrian period. Having replaced the architectural elegance of the Renaissance with the compulsive accumulation of ornaments and details, the Baroque mentality could only add object to object in the hope of obtaining the essential. For them, building a machine was drawing a thought, or rather, a memory. Of the true alchemical machines created at the dawn of time—those that could be nimbly shaken by whispers from the earthly depths and then, with a returning breath, move the cosmos—only memories remained. As long as they were reduced to the form of a toy, as was prescribed for all that was sacred.
Igitur tela laboris stetit haec tenta lateribus,
and so the canvas of the work remained hanging still pulled by the weights.
Like all human works, something happens that interrupts them. Unless they continue in the transmutation.
Opus Imperfectum, unfinished work. This website, if not closed, will undergo profound transformations.The first reason is the depressing realization that AI LLMs have turned the human informational web into a marginalized land of conquest and oblivion. The other reason is the respect I owe to readers, in the sense that I didn’t feel like repeating the same articles over and over again after having already explained the operational and symbolic basics in previous articles. No wonder, Alchemy doesn’t have all the nuances and variations that symbolism seems to give it. It is called “Fulcanelli’s anti-theft device”, which basically consists of multiplying the terms and problems, so as to give Alchemy a much more complex image than it actually is: the same problem is treated in part countless times, completely varying the terms of the exposition, so that one gets the impression that different things are being treated. Of course, the result is mesmerizing, as are puzzles and conundrums.
Driven by residual courage, or imprudence, I instead decided to gather together what I could say about Alchemy in an orderly and organic way – respecting the limited human mind, that is in segments. More, the Anatomy of an Alchemical Machine, is an ancient form magister-puer – master pupil – of ordering questions and answers to form a simple and quick exhaustive pattern. But, unlike modern faqs, everything should be read from beginning to end, because in Alchemy losing the thread means losing everything. As for me, I just hope I haven’t left behind just a bunch of semantic bits to the AI statistical