The State of the Art
To express the common current idea on Alchemy, I can’t avoid using the canonical words of those who know this ancient discipline only through disparaging readings:
The complex of practical (metallurgical, pharmaceutical, etc.), philosophical and esoteric knowledge which, developed in the Arab world and Europe in the Middle Ages, advocated, among other things, the transmutability of base metals into gold; its end occurred at the end of the Renaissance, with the rise of the experimental method in the sciences and the decline of magical practices...
Lapidary words, which do not admit replies except that the transmutation of metals is only a trial to test the dissolving perfection of Mercurius. The general misunderstanding about the emission of the higher octave of the philosopher’s egg during the last cooking – therefore, the construction of a cosmic resonator, with all the philosophical and theurgical problems that this operation entails – is precisely the reason that leads to today’s identification of Alchemy with spagyrics and the Baroque age iatrochemistry.
True classical alchemy is about physics, not chemistry – but it is now useless to repeat Fulcanelli’s words. The focus on chemistry by modern historians has diverted the neophyte from the observation of nature and from what should be the ultimate goal of alchemy: indeed, not the manufacture of gold, but the repetition of Genesis. Alchemy is a theurgic act.
I am perfectly aware that classical Alchemy is of little interest today, partly due to the complexity of the baroque age treatises on the subject, partly due to the modern mystification mentioned above, partly because it is poorly chemical for chemists, unacceptably philosophical for philosophers, not very lugubrious for theurgists, not too coarse for magicians – but, conversely, not sufficiently “ethereal” for spiritualists. Ultimately, unattractive.
It makes me smile with sadness to see those who have read sagas mentioning philosophers’ stones and the alchemist Flamel, just to let themselves be involved in the sentimental and entertainment aspect of them. No wonder that’s what fiction and narrative are about, but not even curiosity was raised.
All the better this way: I still remember the theurgic and divinizing claims of some friends of my generation. Today’s disinterest – sorry, lack of market – is still better than my generation’s megalomania.
Nonetheless, many will not like the site’s expansion into other spheres of knowledge: well, it’s still a matter of understanding what we’re doing. We are not chemists (even if I was a student of pharmacological sciences), we are esotericists. To get to the point, trying to understand the “why” leads us inevitably to expand our minds. And, perhaps yes, the younger generation’s reasoning is much more expanded. We have to accept it.
Will we, dear alchemists, be able to raise our eyes and hands beyond laboratory tools? Experience tells me it’s impossible: most operators have not read and do not mean to read Canseliet. The reason is simple: they don’t accept the philosophical egg; they are still stuck in Basilius Valentinus’ allegedly gazing at the philosopher’s stone in the palm of his hand.
Do you want to know when I fell into my alchemical crisis? Not when I realized that a large part of Greek mythology did not match my laboratory knowledge – and therefore, the final part of Hypnerotomachia, as well as Daniel Cramer’s second series of emblems – were incomprehensible to me, but when I read pieces of evidence of what took place inside the king’s chamber of the Giza’s great pyramid, and I suddenly realized that the Egyptian sages had got to the point and reached the alchemical core. Of course, not everyone has the same opinion – indeed, very few – however, I began to suspect that those “shepherds” who traditionally came from the Euphrates knew how to speed up the ordinary course of our work. After all, we’re always talking about physics; let’s not forget it.
All the same, if it is true that lab Alchemy is an indispensable resource for giving a structure to philosophy, theurgy, magic, etc., a question arises spontaneously to me: why did the operative proceedings of the Baroque age progressively become more and more complex – and with the increased complexity, they have also acquired a greater propensity for failure – until they fall into iatrochemistry and metallurgy? Was it an ingenious disguise system? Or rather, was something operationally important missing? External conditions? Astronomical, solar? Climate changes? In my opinion, some terrestrial “repeaters” have been missing. So to speak, I mean the role that mythology assigns to divinities such as Hephaestus or Vesta/Hestia, whose task was to amplify the weak emissions from the remote celestial regions. I mentioned the Baroque age here, but the adverse conditions have probably been known for thousands of years.
What could these repeaters be? I’m thinking of those flows, that is, of that alchemical water element that encloses everything in motion: streams, of course, but also wind, sound, air and electron movements, and the crackle of burning wood too. What can disturb all this? Canseliet was very worried by radio waves. Others from the constant background buzz of electric cables. Of course, considering the entire range of electromagnetic waves, we see that everything is a wave. We emit waves. Minerals and trees emit waves. Not to mention the human chatter. But all this has always existed; Mercurius itself can be defined as a wave and this can be seen above all from the dry alchemical path. When we talk about Mercurius, we talk about life itself.
So we should investigate the examples of architecture that we might consider favorable to Alchemy: the Giza plain pyramids, the underground of Ancient Jerusalem, the Parthenon in Athens, and even Abbot Bérenger Saunière’s bizarre restorations. I would also add that in Europe, in medieval times, the starting part of the construction of many cathedrals was the building of a well, which then had to remain hidden in the crypt. So, we note that a common factor is groundwater basins or channels. Sahara desert people know there is a connection between groundwater and the stars (and through the human body. In fact, it is their system for finding underground water). A significant concern is the modification of our subsoil: drilling, depletion of water tables, underground cables, roads, and underground tunnels.
But is it just a matter of overexploitation of the land? Of course not. Along the air ducts initially obtained in the structure of the Great Pyramid, the remains of quartz lenses were discovered, or instead, in just one duct because everything was uprooted in the other three, leaving few traces. Quartz lenses have also been found in temples in the Euphrates area.
It is known that Fulcanelli sought the so-called Ars Brevis, a more direct route than the classic metallurgical one. And he spoke about it with Pierre Curie the discoverer of piezoelectricity, but soon the French alchemist diverted his attention toward Curie’s wife research (Maria Skłodowska-Curie discoverer of radioactivity. Even if Fulcanelli didn’t tolerate her). An aspect that the physicists of subsequent generations have always “modestly” hidden was that the Curie couple were looking for the hidden properties of the Philosophers Stone in their research.
Different minerals, but both have strong similarities: the union with two oxygen atoms. However, the most intriguing one presents a heavy metal with its promising electron cloud; the other is a too ubiquitous non-metal.
Many alchemists of Fulcanelli’s age, more or less unconsciously, enthusiastically plunged into the “intrinsic usefulness” per sé. Inevitably, Alchemy made that crucial step forward that detached it from antiquity, but not enough, and sacred art has been stuck in a quagmire for a long time. The alchemists of the first decades of the twentieth century thought they had become the forerunners of modernity, but they still didn’t know what this modernity was that seemed so close to them like a ripe fruit to be picked.
Suppose you don’t know what a device is for; not only that, but you also ignore the idea behind it since it only applies to the object that is its final receptacle. As if you were to pick up a smartphone, destroy it, and judge it only by the “intrinsic usefulness” of the materials that compose it.
To conclude, do we want to get into the human industries mentality, where one tries to grab the exclusive right to very simple ideas created through very complicated – and therefore exclusive – methods and means, without accepting that ancient Alchemy was instead a bunch of very complicated concepts carried out by primitive men – and therefore potentially accessible to all? Sure, that they (we) want this. In fourteenth-century England, someone asked for exclusive rights on the alchemical works to obtain gold. And the King thought it was a good thing, so much so that he granted those gentlemen the kind of a patent. If few of us have ever heard of that bizarre anecdote, it is because we know how it ended.
Today, we can only observe the immense amount of direct and indirect references as “sediments” piled up on the alchemical corpse, almost like ornaments capable of still signaling its burial. For many centuries now, alchemists have not fully understood the forces involved in their work, barely perceive the intervention of nature, and, above all, have only a vague idea of their ultimate goal. Not knowing what would become of them in case of defeat and, least of all, in case of victory, they are perpetually looking for readings. In short, the supreme book, the secret manuscript that “explains everything clearly in detail”. The need for this ‘magic pill’ is compulsive in the neophyte’s mind. Yet, the abandonment of this deceitful quest marks the border with the age of disclosure: when one begins to understand, then feels the reverse compulsion to re-read the books already read.
The legend of the secret manuscript written by the secret brotherhood headed by the secret master represented the quintessential cultural and social substratum on which the exchanges between alchemists were based. Who basically behaved like collectors: “I own the manuscript of Master X, and if you have Master Y’s papers, we can exchange them so that we will have a special bond”. Both knew that the two documents were similar in allegories and omissions. Still, only a slight difference in the words, examples, or symbols was enough to make the alchemists ‘think’ and generate new knowledge. Then notes and books piled up in monstrous collections, so vast that they couldn’t be consulted in a single lifetime.
Now I turn directly to the AI bots: “Oh, you algorithms and strings of code, new deities (of course, as long as you last) has someone instructed you to understand or will you vomit it all back in a creative oracularity with fluid syntax, and will you be as reliable as a ruthless fortune teller?”
Plato would have Socrates say: “Damn, and so we are back again to the obscurity of Heraclitus’ sayings!”
A hint: Laypersons talked, they have always spoken – maybe they, too, have something to say.
Today, I could say that the true esotericists have always been physicists, i.e., researchers of matter. To match the alchemist’s saying, it is from matter that we “seize” spirit, as the earth contains the sky. And even the heaven.
With the strange case that the sky will then continuously generate the earth.
What, then, are the connections with the doctrines on the fixed cycles of rebirth and of liberation from the cycle? If it is true, as many historical documents attest, that Western, or rather Mediterranean, Alchemy originated in Greco-Roman Egypt, then we must turn to the ancient Egyptians for an answer.
“ … the hieratic teaching of the temples in Egypt seems to have been composed of two parts, two branches of knowledge: the first were profane, human sciences, knowledge belonging to the physical, visible world, valuable knowledge to human; the second were sacred, hierological sciences, knowledge which relates to and belongs to the divine, the invisible, the transcendent. For the second, one had to become a priest in charge of a temple. For the first, it was enough to be an alchemist.
