Alchemy and the Collective Consciousness
Alchemy was mysterious at one time, only because it was born in a time when only the rich and elite were educated ... But that is not 2006! Anyone with a computer and a fairly good search engine can learn anything they would like to know!
I went looking for ALCHEMY when more than one person referred to my recovery and the transformation of a person's life as ALCHEMY. My only context was something I heard in church about how we are all turned into the finest gold when our sins and flaws are burned away ... I understood the concept of TRIAL BY FIRE ... of the old being transformed into something new ...
So what is ALCHEMY? Let's see ...
Alchemy
Alchemy is an ancient path of spiritual purification and transformation; the expansion of consciousness and the development of insight and intuition through images. Alchemy is steeped in mysticism and mystery. It presents a system of dreamlike, esoteric symbols that have the power to alter consciousness and connect the human soul to the Divine.
Alchemy is part of the mystical and mystery traditions of both East and West. In the West, it dates to ancient Egypt, where it was developed it as an early form of chemistry and metallurgy. Egyptians alchemists used their art to make alloys, dyes, perfumes and cosmetic jewelry, and to embalm the dead.
The early Arabs made significant contributions to alchemy, such as by emphasizing the mysticism of numbers (quantities and lengths of time for processes). The Arabs also gave us the term 'alchemy', from the Arabic term 'alchimia', which loosely translated means 'the Egyptian art'.
During medieval and Renaissance times, alchemy spread through the Western world, and was further developed by Kabbalists, Rosicrucians and astrologers. It functioned on two levels: mundane and spiritual. On a mundane level, alchemists sought to find a physical process to convert base metals such as lead into gold. On a spiritual level, alchemists worked to purify themselves by eliminating the "base" material of the self and achieving the "gold" of enlightenment.
By Renaissance times, many alchemists believed that the spiritual purification was necessary in order to achieve the mundane transformations of metals. The alchemists relied heavily upon their dreams, inspirations and visions for guidance in perfecting their art. In order to protect their secrets, they recorded diaries filled with mysterious symbols rather than text. These symbols remain exceptionally potent (even today) for changing states of consciousness.
The Chemistry of Alchemy
Superficially, the chemistry involved in alchemy appears a hopelessly complicated succession of heatings of multiple mixtures of obscurely named materials, but it seems likely that a relative simplicity underlies this complexity.
Goals
"Transmutation" is the key word characterizing alchemy, and it may be understood in several ways: in the changes that are called chemical, in physiological changes such as passing from sickness to health,in a hoped-for transformation from old age to youth, or even in passing from an earthly to a supernatural existence.Alchemical changes seem always to have been positive, never involving degradation except as an intermediate stage in a process having a "happy ending." Alchemy aimed at the great human "goods": wealth, longevity, and immortality.
Alchemy was not original in seeking these goals, for it had been preceded by religion, medicine, and metallurgy. The first chemists were metallurgists, who were perhaps the most successful practitioners of the arts in antiquity. Their theories seem to have come not from science but from folklore and religion.
But the first ventures into natural philosophy, the beginnings of what is called the scientific view, also preceded alchemy. Systems of five almost identical basic elements were postulated in China, India, and Greece, according to a view in which nature comprised antagonistic, opposite forces--hot and cold, positive and negative, and male and female; i.e., primitive versions of the modern conception of energy. Drawing on a similar astrological heritage, philosophers found correspondences among the elements, planets, and metals. In short, both the chemical arts and the theories of the philosophers of nature had become complex before alchemy appeared.
Modern Alchemy
The possibility of chemical gold-making was not conclusively disproved by scientific evidence until the 19th century. The official attitude toward alchemy in the 16th to 18th century was ambivalent.
Conventional attempts at gold making were not dead, but by the 18th century alchemy had turned conclusively to religious aims. The rise of modern chemistry engendered not only general skepticism as to the possibility of making gold but also widespread dissatisfaction with the objectives of modern science ... in a way that amounted to a renunciation of what many had considered the most important question of science, the relation of man to the cosmos. In modern times alchemy has become a focal point for various kinds of mysticism.
Alchemy's Accomplishments
The most persistent goals of alchemy have been the prolongation of life and the transmutation of base metals into gold. It appears that neither was accomplished.
Alchemy's Interpretations
Charlatanism was a prominent feature of European alchemy during the 16th century. Some of good the discovery of new substances and processes and the invention of new apparatus was certainly accomplished by alchemists, but most of it is more justifiably ascribed to early pharmacists.
Finally, a new interpretation was offered in the 1920s by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who, judged alchemical literature to be explicable in psychological terms. Noticing the similarities between alchemical literature, particularly in its reliance on bizarre symbolic illustrations, and the dreams and fantasies of his patients, Jung viewed them as manifestations of a "collective unconscious" (inherited disposition).
( This information, in it's complete text is offered on: Alchemy - Philosopher's Stone and Alchemy - 2 , a part of Crystalinks Metaphysical and Science Website )
Dreams?
- Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- William Butler Yeats - They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? - Dostoevsky
- I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine?
- Thoreau - I cannot be awake
for nothing looks to me
as it did before,
Or else I am awake for the first time,
and all before has been a mean sleep.
- Walt Whitman - Our mind has its history, just as our body has its history. Our unconscious mind, like our body, is a storehouse of relics and memories of the past.
- Carl Jung
(From www.healingdreams.com)
I gave myself a headache with the full description of alchemy and it's ancient references. Alchemy went in search of a way to "make" gold, and in the process, it found it's soul ... in the exploration of the elements and the practice of mixing those elements to what end ... they did not know ... but they bent the rules and stretched their minds and guarded those explorations and recipes (formulas) in ancient symbolism and the study of their symbols have proven more interesting than their actual scientific discoveries, which for the most part, were just wrong ...
Would any of us drink mercury or lead today? Of course not! But emperors in China did, in the hopes that they would achieve immortality ... Which makes mewonder if China's famous wisdom came from making mistakes and learning from those mistakes before most civilizations had evencome into being ... Possible?
If Alchemy'sonly purpose had been to create gold, it failed, but if it had been to stimulate discovery, it succeeded. The vague and smokey images of a man over a boiling pot of vitriolic, sulfuric minerals in search of gold, immortality or a specific remedy ... and the same man who would record his progress in images that made sense to him at the time ... is a source of discovery, in itself ...
Alchemy did not create gold but those alchemists produced gold, if you measure riches in thoughts and recorded images.
Those images are interesting to me, but I don't find them fascinating enough to call myself an alchemist or even an initiate. Ancient images that contributed to the collective consciousness are the business of the same archeologists that study Egyptian hieroglyphics or any other ancient manuscript.
It is enough for me to understand the compliment of my friends:
On a spiritual level ... to purify themselves by eliminating the "base" material of the self and achieving the 'gold' of enlightenment.
I understand that in those smokey, dark places, where we abandon the ideas and agreements and beliefs that never really worked for us, we discover our authentic selves which is the REAL GOLD in each of us!
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