Alchemy And Mysticism Quotes

There is no quarrel between science and spirituality. I often hear people of science trying to use it to prove the nonexistence of the spiritual, but I simply can't see a chasm in between the two. What is spiritual produces what is scientific and when science is used to disprove the spiritual, it's always done with the intent to do so; a personal contempt. As a result, scientists today only prove their inferiority to the great founding fathers of the sciences who were practitioners of alchemy. Today's science is washed-out and scrubbed-down and robbed of everything mystical and spiritual, a knowledge born of contempt and discontent. Or perhaps, there are a few who wish to keep those secrets to themselves and serve everyone else up with a tasteless version of science and the idiots of today blindly follow their equally blind leaders.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen or diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their souls. … It is rewarding to watch patiently the silent happenings in the soul, and the most and the best happens when it is not regulated from outside and from above. I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference.” 

Some mystical concepts are an alchemical experience.

As above in consciousness, so below in matter

The infinite possibilities that exist in any given moment cause infinite possibilities in response. The wording is correct here; the possibilities exist already, and have already caused the existing possibilities of response.

The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That's when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

Transcendence is more about the personal act of not engaging the enemy, finding a way out of the cage that is being designed for you at a particular moment by others, circumstance, or your own bad habits and ignorance.

Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse. Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.

the outcome, if successful, in both alchemy and individuation is a union of opposites—the coniunctionis or transcendent function—leading to alchemical gold, the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, or, in Jungian terms, the Self.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our suffering we allow or impose on ourselves simply in search of our worthiness to accept our own respect and appreciation.

Do not loose hope.Start now whether you are. Accept full responsibility for your actions, and trust the Mystic Law of the Universe.

Remember. Materialism is just another bullshit faith. Poetry is fucking alchemy.

The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

The ability to remain constant, whole and playful, even while working technically, concentrating and upholding urgency, is essential to achieve a state of balance that will allow for this to happen. This has to come to life, and cannot stay just an idea or hope or intention or imitation, or ignored. The guarantee and proof that this balance and power is real is in its actualization. That is, that it manifests in functional reality. As in any intention, whether that be vague or specific, an ambition or desire, a goal or state of being, a question or hope, a curiosity or purpose, there exist natural and unnatural obstacles to its realization.

What you have to do to achieve what you want necessitates the creative actualization of the totality of your being as it is. Nothing more, but also nothing less.

Transformation, on the other hand, is creating beauty from horror or destruction (or, for beginners, an actually pleasant evening with the usual family problems).

The art of the alchemist, whether spiritual or physical, consists in completing the work of perfection, bringing forth and making dominant, as it were, the “latent goldness” which “lies obscure” in metal or man. The ideal adept of alchemy was therefore an “auxiliary of the Eternal Goodness.” By his search for the “Noble Tincture” which should restore an imperfect world, he became a partner in the business of creation, assisting the Cosmic Plan. Thus the proper art of the Spiritual Alchemist, with whom alone we are here concerned, was the production of the spiritual and only valid tincture or Philosopher’s Stone; the mystic seed of transcendental life which should invade, tinge, and wholly transmute the imperfect self into spiritual gold. That this was no fancy of seventeenth-century allegorists, but an idea familiar to many of the oldest writers upon alchemy—whose quest was truly a spiritual search into the deepest secrets of the soul—is proved by the words which bring to an end the first part of the antique “Golden Treatise upon the Making of the Stone,” sometimes attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. “This, O Son,” says that remarkable tract, “is the Concealed Stone of Many Colours, which is born and brought forth in one colour; know this and conceal it . . . it leads from darkness into light, from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune.

It takes a relative amount of courage just to get out of bed each day. There are those who are stronger in their courage, and they help to compel us along a little further in the fulfillment of our faith.

Why is gold called זהב (zahab)? Because there are three principles contained in it: the masculine, zakhar, and the ז (zayin) points to that; the soul, and the ה (he), points to that [obviously the feminine, since the consonant he in the mysticism of the alphabet has always been interpreted as such]; … and ב (bet) avouches its duration, as is written [in the Torah, which starts with this letter]: “in the beginning.

After his break with Freud, Jung pursued the connection between the unconscious and the occult and found example after example of ancient mystical and occult symbols in the dreams of people who had never encountered those symbols in waking life. He came to believe that below the repressed memories of individual life, there exists a collective unconscious full of archaic images that appear in myths, legends, and the traditions of occultism. By bringing those images into consciousness, it is possible to achieve individuation: a state of psychological balance and wholeness as far above ordinary sanity as neurotic conditions are below it.

Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practiced at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.

Life will give you what you need once you will do something with it. It may not give you what you want so as to be as comfortable as you want, as Nature’s concern is need as it relates to evolution. In my humble opinion, Nature is too kind, but, as I say, the game is big, and the challenges and temptations absolute. And this is a fascinating aspect of the totality of beauty; it gives more than is only necessary. The generosity is mind- and heart boggling.

One could make a nice link between imagination and spirit. To make that link, all we need is some inspiration. Essentially, imagination has the innate potential to compel or inspire and to set in motion causation. That’s why it exists.

People who are not skilled at mathematics tend to view the output of second-rate mathematicians with an high level of credulity, and attach almost mystical significance to their findings. Bad maths is the palmistry of the twenty-first century.

The best conductors work in such a way that the orchestra doesn’t understand why it plays how it does – they just have no room to think about what they are doing. The process is almost a little bit mystical: you just – you are emotionally involved, and you know, it just happens.

Can you tell us about Ama: Playing the Glass Bead Game with Pythagoras? Sunday Times Interview "Both Hesse and Tolstoy were my first spiritual gurus. Through their deep insights and soulful messages, for the first time I experienced the world of spiritual growth and deep contemplation. Many artists have inspired my writings, the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Lao Tzu and Giordano Bruno. Pythagoras lived on the crossroads of civilisations, as I see us, and he has given us his fascinating research into music and numbers. With my deep respect towards ancient worlds, Pythagoras with his ancient Egyptian mystical knowledge had to be my protagonist.

The Arabian scholar and mystic, Ibn Sina (980 - 1037), declared that 'romantic love (al'-ishaq) is not peculiar to the human species but permeates all things, heavenly, elemental, vegetable and mineral, and its sense is neither perceived nor known; it is rendered even more obscure by the explanations made to account for it.

If your curiosity reaches a breaking point (compelled actually means that you only have the remaining choice to act on it, having tried all the other options before), and becomes fascination with mystery or truth, you find what you need. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s a tragedy, maybe it’s an explosive recognition that, “My God, I’m still alive.

Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper – You walk a paradoxical path, understood by none but you and your Patron. His Chosen, but not his believer; his ally, but not of his Order; and a bearer of his Legacy, yet a blasphemer in the eyes of most. You have the ears of a Primordial, yet you choose to remain dedicated to the alchemy that first made the Malefic One known to you. Allows one to combine the natural treasures of the world to make potions and pills, transmute one material to another, and employ a slew of other mystical means to be discovered. This rare type of alchemist specializes in the production of poisons, contrary to the craft of potions. As a heretic, the Legacy of the Malefic Viper is no longer contingent on retaining any blessing from the Malefic Viper, yet as his Chosen, you are closer to him than any other mortal. May you walk your own path—be it that of a Heretic or a Chosen, or one entirely unique to you and the Malefic One. Stat bonuses per level: +15 Will, +15 Wis +14 Vit, +10 Int, +10 Tough, +10 Free Points.

My take on personal evolution is largely about the spirit of connecting and disconnecting things, relating to what I call “the gap” or time and space between things. It is also about becoming practical in all this, developing the power and precision to simply bring the grand ideas home, to compress the paradigm of perception/choice/action/result into a single gesture.

Transcendence is a word I don’t use often; I prefer transformation. Why? Because the essential game is about using what is in front of you and in you exactly as it is, but finding a way to do something with that that is surprising and an expression of inspiration and intuition. You engage reality and make something out of it that only you can, alchemizing limitation, conflict or what appears to be bad into something else.

Opinions differ on the details, but most serious students today recognize that alchemy was, and is, a spiritual pursuit, and that whether or not an actual outer physical transformation takes place during its operations, if these are carried out correctly, an inner spiritual one does. “Aurum nostrum es non vulgi” (“Our gold is not the vulgar gold”), Gerhard Dorn, one of Jung’s favorite alchemists, said. The “gold” the true alchemists sought was inner transformation.

Occult Freemasonry likely derives from the Rosicrucian or "Rose Cross" rites popularized in Protestant regions of Germany...The core of Rosicrucianism is mystical parables and morality rites or liturgies that teach occult lessons for the enlightened. The central mystery is alchemy, or the belief that one can create gold from lower substances. This is the heresy of naturalism -- manipulating nature to produce something above nature -- just as Satan attempted to transcend his nature in order to become God.

For Ibn ’Arabi, whose most beloved teacher Abu Madyan was identified as being the stone, the continual revelation of God’s word is a living, breathing creation. Those highest saints, who are known as the malamatiyya, the blameworthy of this world, the ‘hidden’ or kafirun of God are the embodiment of all the systems of concealment and disclosure, jafr, ta’wil, taqqiyah, et al. The Qur’an is not just a book, it is a person. The texts of al-Kimia are not simple words which when put together produce magical formulas, they are alive.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our suffering we allow or impose on ourselves simply in search of our worthiness to accept our own respect and appreciation. I’d written before some years ago that we often cause suffering in another so that we can then love them, as in, “You have suffered for me, so I can love you now.” The eventual shock of realizing the sacrifice made for you destroys the walls of self-righteousness and protection. The suffering sacrifice of another creates the willingness and capacity to do the same. Finally, love and respect (respect is part of the body of love) come from the recognition of something else already given up for them. Within the individual, you or me, a similar process takes place toward oneself. It is as if we know some- where that we are not worthy of our own love or respect until we have earned the right to it, and that is mainly through some kind of suffering. That suffering may be generic, as in a life lived in which tragedy after tragedy accumulate, or it may be specific, as in the constant sacrifice of other easier things for a being or vision. Or, perhaps more correctly, it is either consciously chosen or not.

Again and again and again. A transmutation is required to effect the spiritualization of matter. Whenever living beings disappear, they leave behind a subtle essence, or ‘body’, which in esoteric Islam is called the jism mithali. Solve et coagula, dissolve and coalesce, in other words, ‘to make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body.’ This is the basis of al-Kimia, nothing more simple can define the term. One and one do not make two, the One divides and multiplies, yet remains One. There is nothing lost by dying; spirit and matter constantly transmute in form and formlessness

Preceding the birth of every religion, there was someone who was an incarnation of this process: imagination causes inspiration causes intuition causes beauty, which causes imagination…the dynamic that takes place in the dimension of spirit. That is, for whatever reasons that will remain mysterious, although they are suggested in various schools of thought, someone got the cause thing down right, and the rest flowed. After the fact, an effort was made, almost always by others, to control both the impact of this and the possible benefits from it. Ambition and desire took over. Where you had an exact presentation, or manifestation, of beauty and truth, somebody began using it for other purposes.

In his visionary treatises or recitals fashioned after the recitals of Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi uses marvelous symbol and imagery. In the recital titled ‘Aql-surkh or ‘The Red Intellect’ he encounters a personage whose countenance is red. When he asks why he is this color the personage replies that he is a luminous Elder and is really white, but that he was thrown into a black pit, and when mixed with black, every white thing connected to the light appears red, like the sun at its setting or after the dawn. When asked where he comes from, the personage replies that he resides beyond Mount Qaf, and he tells Suhrawardi, who appears in the recital as a trapped falcon, a symbol of the intellect, that his nest is there too, but he has forgotten it

Second, I love him because by means of love and ascetic discipline his soul conquered reality—hunger, cold, disease, scorn, injustice, ugliness (what men without wings call reality)—and succeeded in transubstantiating this reality into a joyous, palpable dream truer than truth itself. He discovered the secret so sought after by medieval alchemists: how to transubstantiate even the basest metal into pure gold…. [Through] the miracle of mystical alchemy, he subdued reality, delivered mankind from necessity, and inwardly transformed all his flesh into spirit….

When clients come to me wanting immediate results, I almost always tell them to clear their clutter. Clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy. It is one of the fastest ways to completely transform your life. It can work in seemingly magical and mystical ways. Your health improves, your abundance levels increase and relationships improve by clearing clutter.

Essential to the order of things is the principle of correspondences. Hidden connections underlie diverse phenomena that impress the mind with similar qualities and associations, such as colour, shape, weight, movement and even names with similar sounds and spellings. The material world, operating as it does according to God's design, can be studied to understand His will (‘as above, so below’). The universe becomes a multilayered tableau of symbols. Chemicals and stars, for alchemists and astrologers, are symbolic and can be aligned with other symbols – mathematical, alphabetical, mythic and cosmic – all considered to be mystical. Humanity's divine spark inspires us to seek reunion with the Divinity. Toward this end, the Hermetist employs alchemy, astrology and magic too. Magical formulae are based on the correspondences already noted: a ritual to induce creativity might be addressed to the Sun and might entail lamps, gold, ‘Apollonian’ music and a sunny mood.

Krulak wrote back that the United States did not need the Marine Corps; the Army and Air Force could do anything the Marines could. The Marine Corps flourished, he said, because of what “the grassroots of our country believes we are and believes we can do.” He said that America had three beliefs about the Marine Corps. First, when troubles come, the Marines will take care of them and do so at once. Second, Americans had an “almost mystical” belief that when the Marines go to war, their performance will be “dramatically and decisively successful—not most of the time, but always.” And third, Americans saw the Marines as masters of an “unfailing alchemy” that converts “unoriented youths into proud, self-reliant, stable citizens into whose hands the nation’s affairs may safely be entrusted.” He ended by saying that although America did not need the Marines, it wanted them. But, he warned, if Marines ever lost the ability to meet the high, almost spiritual standards of the American people, “the Marine Corps will then quickly disappear.

We have said that “Alchemy was the attempt to demonstrate experimentally on the material plane the validity of a certain philosophical view of the Cosmos”; now, this “philosophical view of the Cosmos” was Mysticism. Alchemy had its origin in the attempt to apply, in a certain manner, the principles of Mysticism to the things of the physical plane, and was, therefore, of a dual nature, on the one hand spiritual and religious, on the other, physical and material.

Do something kind for another person. Proceeding with this selfless gesture, while not feeling at your best, shows that you are in control of your emotions. It is not the other way around.

The Baal Shem Tov, a legendary eighteenth-century Jewish mystic, taught that to master our sorrows, we must know how to be fully immersed in emotion, yet not ruled by it. I call this process the alchemy of the dark emotions: knowing how to stay connected to the energy of painful emotions, to attend to and befriend it, to surrender to it, mindfully, without being overwhelmed. This is how we listen to the language of the heart.

Of course, the self-righteous demand and expectation for love, and exactly how it should be expressed, is not the most streamlined method for producing it in another for you. That is, it does not compel or create the love itself. You’re neither loving nor producing that which would compel the love toward you. You’re compressed between them both and incapable of accepting either. And rightly so. Which then accelerates the accumulating suffering.

Through the realization of the potentials and possibilities within and outside of you, one connects imagination with reality. What could be becomes so. You transform what exists, causing not only its evolution, but determining to a large part the course of its evolution. It’s a kind of alchemy in that what you create has not existed before, you give birth to other potentials and possibilities, which continues and expands the program. Perhaps more importantly, the very core of existence is touched and celebrated, that being creation itself.

Your purpose, and its specific expressions, expands and accelerates as it becomes more similar to Nature’s purpose. The tools you need to apply it you collect along the path in discovering what that is. Time is there to provide you with the “opportunities” to find more creative responses to things like frustration, confusion and self-righteousness. As you gently, oh so gently and delicately, adjust to the requirements that exist in your actual circumstance, you are given the tools needed to surpass them.

The composite of what you know to do—that which compels you, that which you are naturally already drawn to, that which exploits the unique potentials inside you, that which you know you are capable of doing, that which will build a bridge between imagination and reality—causes a relationship that obliges sacrifice.

Because as you become better at everything, as the innate skills actually manifest in reality, the bar rises for the next jump. The core demand for evolution is relentless, and respect, happiness, love and joy are irrevocably tied to it.

One of the great images to come down to us through Zen Buddhism is the encounter between an enlightened master and an advanced apprentice during the course of a shared meal. The apprentice, becoming fed up with the stress and waiting and the master’s apparent disregard for him, demands an explanation without complication of exactly how to become enlightened. The master asks, “Have you finished your rice?” “Yes,” says the apprentice. “Then go wash your bowl.

The seed of all this is imagination. But when you think of imagination, it helps to view it more as it exists in the rest of nature, rather than as we tend to see it in humans. That is, that imagination is actual and a need, immediately searches for expression, and con- sequently, is intimately connected to yearning and its instantaneous application. This is also the case in human beings, but we generally associate it with unnecessary, or extra, expression, such as an ability to make something more attractive or stimulating (the current view of art, for example), or the creative use of “free time” (time left over after you have done what you had to do).

In an animal’s or a plant’s expression of imagination (let’s leave out the rest for now, so we don’t have to deal with the question of consciousness in, for example, minerals), there is always purity in the connection between need and evolution. That which is created is a response to reality and very specific, essential concerns. This then is the origin of the union between what is so and mysterious harmony—truth and beauty. The bridge between them is inspired intuition and the actions it causes. Or, imagination causes inspiration causes intuition causes beauty, which then causes imagination again…

In the quest for a functional and direct interaction between imagination and reality, and the evolution of them both, there is in place a natural resistance, which I have referred to as Creative Resistance, because it demands just that: creativity. Much of this calls for redefining, or refining, one’s relationship with time, and all the qualities and skills that will only come from engaging time more creatively and effectively. As such, part of the bargain is about acquiescing to a rhythm that is subtler and has more definite purpose to it than one’s subjective preferences.

The exact proportion and combination of the qualities within you, as they are, even while you search and struggle for them to be different or better, is a unique beauty.

Mystical Alchemy is a personal science, a sublime and effective system of Self-Initiation. Only you, as a single individual, can calculate and follow your way up the Great Mountain of Hermetic Attainment. It is entirely a matter of your own practical application and devotion. All essential guidance is within you, in the inmost center of your heart where your own Holy Guardian Angel, or Inner Self, resides. To depend upon any other thing than your own Holy Guardian Angel to accomplish the Great Work is to insult your Angel who is with you to instruct and guide you. All essential wisdom by which to achieve the Great Work is to be ascertained only within you; nowhere else will you find the Truth.

ALCHEMY. One of the terms used in the popular book, Jesus Calling, it is an ancient mystical art of the occult.

Colours also played their part in the naming of Hagrid and Dumbledore, whose first names are Rubeus (red) and Albus (white) respectively. The choice was a nod to alchemy, which is so important in the first Harry Potter book, where ‘the red’ and ‘the white’ are essential mystical components of the process. The symbolism of the colours in this context has mystic meaning, representing different stages of the alchemic process (which many people associate with a spiritual transformation). Where my two characters were concerned, I named them for the alchemical colours to convey their opposing but complementary natures: red meaning passion (or emotion); white for asceticism; Hagrid being the earthy, warm and physical man, lord of the forest; Dumbledore the spiritual theoretician, brilliant, idealised and somewhat detached. Each is a necessary counterpoint to the other as Harry seeks father figures in his new world.

Magic is a practical science,' he began quickly. He talked to the wall, as if dictating. 'There is all the difference in the world between a formula in physics and a formula in magic, although they have the same name. The former describes, in terse mathematical symbol, cause-effect relationships of wide generality. But a formula in magic is a way of getting or accomplishing something. It always takes into account the motivation or desire of the person invoking the formula—be it greed, love, revenge, or what not. Whereas the experiment in physics is essentially independent of the experimenter. In short, there has been little or no pure magic, comparable to pure science. 'This distinction between physics and magic is only an accident of history. Physics started out as a kind of magic, too—witness alchemy and the mystical mathematics of Pythagoras. And modern physics is ultimately as practical as magic, but it possesses a superstructure of theory that magic lacks. Magic could be given such a superstructure by research in pure magic and by the investigation and correlation of the magic formulas which could be expressed in mathematical symbols and which would have a wide application. Most persons practicing magic have been too interested in immediate results to bother about theory. But just as research in pure science has ultimately led, seemingly by accident, to results of vast practical importance, so research in pure magic might be expected to yield similar results.

Perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding of the images—symbols—inherent in religious texts throughout the centuries. Lux (Latin for light) in most all spiritual paths is the end goal of the spiritual experience. Regardie discusses the importance of understanding the role of lux in initiation. Certainly, to reach and attain direct contact and communion with the Light of God is the goal, if ever there was one, of spirituality. This shows that the function of initiation, in seeking light, is shepherding oneself into a process of labor. It is an alchemical endeavor, just as the ancient alchemists were initiates themselves. Turning the lead within oneself into gold—chrysopoeia—is the prime goal. The whole aim of magic, alchemy, and mysticism is to purify one’s soul through illumination of the divine light, which is in fact an inner light. This is initiation.

Perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding of the images—symbols—inherent in religious texts throughout the centuries. Lux (Latin for light) in most all spiritual paths is the end goal of the spiritual experience. Regardie discusses the importance of understanding the role of lux in initiation. Certainly, to reach and attain direct contact and communion with the Light of God is the goal, if ever there was one, of spirituality. This shows that the function of initiation, in seeking light, is shepherding oneself into a process of labor. It is an alchemical endeavor, just as the ancient alchemists were initiates themselves. Turning the lead within oneself into gold—chrysopoeia—is the prime goal. The whole aim of magic, alchemy, and mysticism is to purify one’s soul through illumination of the divine light, which is in fact an inner light. This is initiation. One cannot receive the light, cannot receive initiation, just by wanting it. Desire alone is not sufficient. One must condition oneself accordingly so that the light of spiritual illumination may be received, for the light will not fill a container that is impure. Initiation is a state of mind. It comes as a result of discipline, rather than circumstance. It should not be our base desires which drive our life, but Will. This Will is a will not of our own but of the Divine.

You are the magician with alchemical powers and this comes with the ability to control, transmute, and maneuver elements. Basically what I'm conveying is that you are the master over your anger, your life, the way you go about these goals with your emotions, and what you create with them.

Anger is a means to achieve a goal. When I first read this sentence, it hit me like a ton of bricks. But at the same time, I felt that it went hand-in-hand with an idea I've grown to realize about anger. I've recognized that it is an emotion that can be utilized and transmuted into alchemy.

Yes, it's important to feel your way through life and to completely embrace these various emotions; including anger. But we cannot dismiss the underlying goal. So what do I mean by this? Well, exerting anger negatively is usually a cover-up for what's really happening deep down inside.

It [anger] functions as a made-up tool; either for destruction or construction.

You are the magician with alchemical powers and this comes with the ability to control, transmute, and maneuver elements. Basically what I'm saying is that you are the master over your anger, your life, the way you go about these goals with your emotions, and what you create with them.

That’s the way of the colonizers. They divvied their arts up so much that they were left with nothing but ashes, and when even that started to fail, they combined alchemy and science into Mechomancy, hardly requiring any art at all. But the mystical arts have been around far longer than their machines and constructs. The Possibilities will always balance out, somehow, some way. And when the reaction is powerful enough—” “You get the Great Rust,” the Skylark says. Miss Fox nods. “Or the Spanish flu. Or the Johnstown floods. Really, this land has been telling folks for a while to get their business in order, and we just keep on legislating nature, as if the Possibilities care what a bunch of men in some building in Washington have to say about them.

When Nicholas Flamel – one of the few who, according to the mystics and alchemists, was supposed to have discovered the Philosopher’s Stone – bought a papyrus [19] book in Paris, reputedly “at a small price,” it was a baptized Jewish physician, not a kabbalist, who in 1378, in the pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela, disclosed to him the meaning of the writing and therewith the secret of alchemy.

All those strange parables, where the philosophers talked mystically about a stone, a moon, an oven, a vessel – all that is Saturn [i.e., all talk about humans]; because you must not add anything extraneous, except for what emanates from itself. None in the world is too poor to undertake and execute the Work. The seven grades of alchemical

In the Harry Potter Universe, alchemy is a branch of magic. It’s an ancient science, which deals with the study of the four classical elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Magical alchemy also concerns itself with the transmutation of substances. So, it’s linked to chemistry, potion-making, and the magic of transformation. Dating back to antiquity, alchemy is fused with philosophy, and mixed up with metaphysical and mystical conjecture. Even in the 20th century, there were still some members of wizard kind who actively studied magical alchemy. And, should there have been sufficient demand, alchemy was taught at Hogwarts, to those sixth and seventh year students who chose it.

What was alchemy? It was metallurgy wrapped in mysticism. The pursuit of the spiritual by way of the material. The great and noble effort to master the elements in order to achieve purity, perfection, and divinity.

imagine if you could dance with a tree, floating over the water on a mystic dance floor shared only by you and your tree in alchemy, all amidst a warm morning mist wrapping itself around your legs, up to your belly, as your own impression surrounds you in a dance within your own mirrored reflection, you and your dancing tree...how cool would that be? totally mystifying

I am, I suppose, a mystic. I have never been at home in organized religion, but have had to find my own path and decipher my own truths. Without either Jung or alchemy, though, my efforts would have failed.

The lesson in this path is taught sufficiently by the trump of the Hanged Man, a personal favorite. The Hanged Man is one of the better teachers of all the trumps on how to train the human mind (Hod) to work from the spiritual perspective. Since the figure on the card is being hung upside down, this indicates that the values of the higher world are most often the reverse of the lower. The Hanged Man gives an indication of serenity through chaos, as his face is placid despite being strung up and his head about to be submerged in a body of water in the Thoth Tarot. This explains why most mystics throughout time have been thought to be insane: their ideas and values are normally at odds with dogma and culture, and they are revolutionaries and radicals. Most often, when engaging with the higher spheres of consciousness, one encounters realities that far surpass culture’s understanding of what is and is not acceptable. The Hanged Man encapsulates the expression of mystic action, which is rarely understood in conventional culture. When these spiritual ideas and values are expressed, the prevailing mindset of society often misinterprets these expressions, becomes afraid, and retaliates either through crucifixion, persecution, or banishment. Hence, the secrecy of occultism. Crowley calls this path and trump the “card of the Dying God,” and perhaps he has a point. Path 23 is the roadway where old ideas are purged to make way for a new, higher perspective in accordance with the spiritual Will of the universe. Turning one’s point of view upside down, in reverse, a pachakuti, is the magical formula of seeing the world via the perspective of spirit. It is the prime elixir of alchemy.

Another very popular form of magic, now and for many centuries to follow, was the whole range of alchemy which had attached itself to the more purely mystical philosophy of early Daoism. The Way of the Daoists had been a method of transcending life, of getting in touch with some form of eternity beyond life. Among their humdrum successors this ideal often became lost in the more common quest for eternal life itself...

Now if Newton had been a very plain, very dull, very matter-of-fact man, all that would be easily explicable. But I must make you see that he was not. He was really a most extraordinary, wild character. He practised alchemy. In secret, he wrote immense tomes about the Book of Revelation. He was convinced that the law of inverse squares was really already to be found in Pythagoras. And for such a man, who in private was full of these wild metaphysical and mystical speculations, to hold this public face and say, ‘I make no hypotheses’ – that is an extraordinary expression of his secret character. William Wordsworth in The Prelude has a vivid phrase, Newton, with his prism and silent face, which sees and says it exactly. Well,

Helen smiled, and Gödel, dabbing at his lips with the linen napkin, launched into another of his ontological proofs. Even as far back as his days in the Vienna Circle, he had rejected the positivism of Bertrand Russell and his cohorts for taking much too dim a view of intuition. Gödel freely admitted that the intuition of a concept was not proof; he argued that it was the opposite. “We do not analyze intuition to see a proof, but by intuition we see something without a proof.” Recently, however, he’d gone beyond that conclusion, too, and asserted that there must then logically be a realm unknowable to our simple senses, where ultimate truth resided. Although Einstein found such mystical speculation unpersuasive, its proponent was not so easy to dismiss out of hand. After all, whose portrait did he himself have hanging on a nail in his study upstairs? Isaac Newton, who had devoted countless hours to the lunatic aims of alchemy.

This is not the time you stop believing. You simply can’t afford the luxury of skepticism. And what must you believe with every breath, until you do believe? How about the mystical alchemy of style and Spirit? In the past a woman’s spirituality has been separated from her lifestyle. But now you know this doesn’t make any sense. Never did. Never will.

The observer effect puts our everyday perceptions and assumptions in a blender. It dictates—if we’re to be honest with ourselves, sober in our thinking, and not reactionary in our emotions—that the world we see is NOT the ultimate reality, but merely a projection of it. From this perspective the manifest world is revealed as what Hindu mystics referred to as maya, illusion, the imaginal outpourings of minds—like children naturally playing in magical constructs that seem eminently real—simply doing what minds do.