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.

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 we speak are ultimately languages of the air. Ultimately, air is moved by that which has the property of moving. Dust, nourishment of life, primary matter and bridge between different densities. For the ancients,  the peculiar airborne alchemical “humidity” was not caused by terrestrial waters but by the proximity of the moon. In fact, the “space” between the moon and the earth was called “air“. While the upper part was called the aether. The latter has very little to do with the modern conception: in fact, it is closer to fire than to a void.

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”.

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.

Ultimately, only the Earth, or what exists in the world of living things, can unite heaven, sky, and earth, since the earth contains the sky. In fact, for alchemists, it is from matter that we manage to “grasp” the spirit. However, with the strange circumstance that only the sky can continually generate the Earth.

The alchemist’s task is to amplify the weak cosmic fire from heavens, to skies, and to earth.

Greek mythology charges Hephaestus with the task of increasing the intensity of Zeus’s feeble cosmic fire. Are we talking about fire as a 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.

The symbol of the “skin tunic” concerns the “thickness” of the ray, the result of which the Greeks called “pneuma”.

Since the pneuma is a kind of lower soul, it is through it that multiple connections are established both with the world of matter and to amplify the stellar influences within us. The pneuma was also called “fish bladder” or, by Iamblichus, Ochêma. Paracelsus considered it a natural internal alchemist, an enveloping medium that bears many similarities to the astral body. Mind that fish do not have bones but cartilage, which is quickly dispersed.

For Paracelsus, it was not a matter of simply penetrating a medium, but rather of finding similarities, called “signatures”.

Alchemy works on the “bones” of metals, that is, on the unalterable salts. 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.

Breastfed by Hera-the-air, Hermes, the contradictory polymorph, is Zeus’ main servant. When the “liar” par excellence, turns into the King’s mouth, he cannot lie. Hermes/Mercury is not the god of alchemists, he is Alchemy tout court. If Athena is the deity of pristine Wisdom, and Hephaestus is the amplifier of the weak cosmic fire, Hermes is the context, the assumption, and the element. If we fail to understand the god Hermes, we will never be able to interpret Alchemy.

Hermes, the mace-bearer, leads the procession and marks the time. Hermes, the dealer, shakes the rod that makes us remember.

Ancient myths suggest that those space-noise-creating toys 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.

For the ancients, what was sacred had to be reduced to the form of a toy.

The human inclination to spread memory, and mind, 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, and, in this way, shape a thought, or rather, a memory.

The collision of gold ions causes a tiny “big bang” that the ancients would not have been ashamed to offer to Saturn.

Sacrifice is the metaphor of a banquet that the earth offers to the sky and that sky cannot refuse, thereby finding mutual sustenance. The separation of philosophical disciplines has relegated the sacrifice of metals to an inferior rank. Yet, metals and humans both possess a “little individual alchemist” that the Greeks called pneuma, the Neoplatonists ochema, and the Theosophists the etheric body. This concept of a “third between the two” expands the boundaries of alchemy to the heart of theurgy. In fact, I define alchemy as a “sacrifice” on metals, that is, a banquet/encounter from which the deities cannot escape. This encounter—and it is evident in the final part of the alchemical works—opens a “private channel” that, at the level of the human senses, is based on sound.

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 a residual imprudence, I decided to collect in a brief, orderly and organic way what I could say about Alchemy, 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 hope I have left nothing but a bunch of semantic bits to the AI statistical oracles. Not even tangible sounds.