Though there are Great Secret Magistries on the practical level as Elixirs of Life and Stones of many kind that are beneficial for health and vitality, for me Alchemy has always been first and foremost a Beautiful Majestic Philosophy, thus a Royal Art.
Let us also keep in mind the words of Fulcanelli in _The Dwellings of the Philosophers_” that the transmutation of base metals into gold cannot be accomplished until the philosopher (becomes the gold) himself”. Or the words of Paracelsus who said that we will transmute nothing if we cannot transmute ourselves first.
Claude d’Ygé in his New Assembly of Chemical Philosophers said, “Let him forebear, who believes that Alchemy is concerned sole with mundane, mineral and metallic nature of things. Let him forbear, who believes that Alchemy is purely spiritual. But those who understand that Alchemy is but symbol used to reveal by analogy the process of achieving ‘Spiritual Realisation’, in a word, that man is at once the prime matter and the athenor of the Work – let them pursue it with all their might.”
The words of Dygé are complemented by Jean Dubuis founder of _The Philosophers of Nature_. He said “The whole alchemical process occurs simultaneously with the inner and the outer. The physical purification of the body with the preparation from the alchemical laboratory refine the energies and make them more receptive to the finer vibrations of the Cosmic. The spirit increases its awakening and consciousness expands. This increased consciousness enables us to further penetrate into the elixirs of the laboratory which reach then higher vibrations and raise our self to a higher level. And thus the process continues and accelerates into an inner and outer spiral, into an evolution of consciousness.”
“Ora et Labora”, is the motto of the alchemists. Ora meaning to pray, from which comes the word, oratory. Labora, meaning to work, from which comes the word laboratory. Why the laboratory and what do the alchemists do in their laboratories? There is a beautiful and wonderful relationship that can be developed between the alchemist and his experiment through the laws of correspondences between the living animated symbols of the experiment and the inner awareness of the alchemist. In alchemy the true alchemist knows that he is always in the crucible with his experiment. What is happening to the substances in the experiment is transpiring also within himself through correspondence. John Reid III has written in his Minor Opus that the Alchemist can “see himself or see the universe in a boiling retort and may feel the boundaries fade between the flask and the Self”. Since he is raising vibrations by the purifying, cleansing and the exalting of his substances in his crucible or in his retort, through his attunement, a harmonious sympathetic resonance is had, and the alchemical process is spilled over into his being as an inner initiation. Outside lab work is objective work which will stimulate and set in motion inner subjective work through the alchemical law of correspondence through which the resolution of the Philosopher’s Stone in his consciousness will begin to be realized. The outside objective work stimulates an inner response and an awareness, or an inner initiation. Meister Eckhart has said “the whole reason of the work rests in that it take place in me. what avails it if it should not take place in me”.
In nature there is a truth which can only be realized with senses other than those of the flesh. Philosophers have always known the magic contained in this truth. They have seen this truth in the miracle of a tiny seed breaking through the earth having conquered death. They have seen it in the unfolding of a flower. It is seen when observing the rushing waves in harmonious symphony with the dancing palm trees on a sunny day at the beach. It is seen everywhere and it is found in oneself. The blessed alchemical marriage of the Sun and the Moon is a conjunction of physical fact with metaphysical reality, a union of the outer objective consciousness with the inner subjective awareness. Alchemy is veritably an art, and the alchemist must become sensitive to an inner receptiveness. Through such receptiveness, one’s awareness allows that the alchemist be cleansed by the work just as his matter is purified during his experiment. A true and authentic Alchemical transmutation occurs at the convergence of the two worlds, the spiritual and the material.
The Alchemist and his Laboratory
By Steve Kalec