Approaches to Alchemy
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All,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
While I have a fairly good grasp of basic Kabbalah and Tarot, Alchemy remains a subject I have hardly engaged at all. Upon first observations, it seems the world of alchemists divides into two basic camps - ceremonial and practical - ie. those who use alchemical symbolism as a basis for ceremonial work (including sexual), and those who conduct laboratory operations and experiments to create medicines and metals, if not also improve themselves in the process. Some do both, and some see both as different reflections of the other; and you will also find the "mine is the real way and that other is the fake way which is just symbolic of my way" attitude... from both camps!
So I have 3 questions for those of you who have practiced either or both of these methods:
1.) What perspectives do you have on this division and how did you decide which to practice?
2.) What books would you recommend as starting points?
3.) What specific Thelemic materials deal with alchemy, more or less overtly?
I have perused Frater Albertus' handbook, Mark Stavish' intro book and David Goddard's book. Frankly, laboratory work has little appeal to me at this time (I'm trying to limit my time sitting on my butt), but Goddard's work seems to have a hit-and-miss reputation (and there's the contention that he is simply republishing Servants of Light material without crediting them), and I have yet to encounter another detailed ceremonial system such as his that might provide a starting point for solitary non-lab work. This more or less leaves me with the impression that either non-lab approaches, ie. ceremonial approaches, amount to "interpretive dance" applied to lab alchemy (which may or may not "work"), or that hard-core alchemists have seriously closed ranks to present lab alchemy as the sole public face of the subject so they can control it's spread and usage by those who would harm themselves or others with true ceremonial alchemy.
Anyone have any insight here?
Thanks!
Love is the law, love under will.
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93 luceo156!
I have worked with vegetable alchemy in the past. This primarily centers around taking an intention & working it out in the form of a tincture. Say, for instance, you were attempting increase Astral-awareness or the vividness of dreams. A Lunar tincture would be desirable as a means to this end. Damiana, being attributed to Yesod, is sufficient for this purpose. You would, during a lunar hour(1am, 8am, 3pm & 10pm) of the first Monday of the Sign of the Crab, infuse the damiana with enough brandy to cover it. Leave it for the duration of the sign, & on the last Monday of Cancer, during a proper hour, strain out the damiana & bottle the tincture.
93 93/93
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93 KRVB MMShCh!
@KRVB MMShCh said
"93 luceo156!
I have worked with vegetable alchemy in the past. This primarily centers around taking an intention & working it out in the form of a tincture. Say, for instance...
93 93/93"
Thanks so much for responding with such a straightforward example. Did you obtain positive results? If so, what compelled you to stop doing this work, ie. why not keep doing it if it's working?
93 93/93,
L -
I got great results - though is became cumbersome at times. If I needed a result but didn't have the tincture then I had to wait sometimes up to 6 months before I could go through with the operation - it just wasn't practical after a while. I learned more making the tinctures than I did using them. I'd definitely recommend this method as an introduction to practical alchemy. 93's
- as a post script I should add that those hours are only relative to Luna on a Monday - if you were to use then on a Wednsday, for instance, they would be hours Mercurial.
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Hey, there is alot of good stuff on alchemy out there I think. Just not much of it is free. Personally, I see both those camps of alchemy really being unified. But, that's my take. For good learning materials check out adam mcleans alchemy website. Also The Path of Alchemy by Mark Stavish is a pretty good book on it.
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I recently took a class in alchemy with Brian Cotnoir. It was fascinating. His book is an introduction to the practice:
Alchemy (The Weiser Concise Guide Series) by Brian Cotnoir and James Wasserman
A good website he referred us to is:
www.levity.com/alchemy- T
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Brian’s a good friend of mine
1.) What perspectives do you have on this division and how did you decide which to practice?
The whole point of alchemy is to unite the inner and outer. That’s why the alchemical texts state that prayer is a key ingredient to be performed in tandem with the labwork (ora et labora). The idea “as above so below” = inner processes mirror outer processes in Nature. If the prima materia is not transformed and purified in the proper steps this leads to confusion of the planes. On the other hand when the Great Work is completed, the alchemist may then “call God his brother”.
I was interested in labwork years ago, but decided against it. Why? It requires finding or renting a lab space, buying expensive materials and is very time-consuming. There’s a reason why alchemy was called the “royal art”. It was reserved for aristocracy who had the funds and leisure to carry out the work or alchemists lucky enough to find a patron. So for practical reasons I've focused more on the inner alchemy. But at one point I was studying ayurveda, which is based on alchemical principles.
2.) What books would you recommend as starting points?
Stash Klossowski - The Golden Game (just alchemical engravings with commentary by Stash), Frater Albertus, Brian Cotnoir’s book is a good starter for labwork. I find Dennis William Hauck’s The Emerald Tablet useful, but it addresses the inner alchemy. His website is a decent supplement to McLean’s: <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.alchemylab.com">www.alchemylab.com</a><!-- w -->
3.) What specific Thelemic materials deal with alchemy, more or less overtly?
I find AC’s alchemical allusions to be confusing, especially in describing the shift from 7=4 to 8=3. Liber Cheth suggests nigredo to albedo, but you see the Adepts undergoing calcination in the City of Pyramids, which is the operation under Saturn and should be much earlier in alchemy - the first step. Then how does one reconcile this dessication before rekindling in the City with the Universal Water of Life? I can’t discern an alchemical step by step process that correlates to the ascent on the Tree.
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@h2h said
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I find AC’s alchemical allusions to be confusing, especially in describing the shift from 7=4 to 8=3. Liber Cheth suggests nigredo to albedo, but you see the Adepts undergoing calcination in the City of Pyramids, which is the operation under Saturn and should be much earlier in alchemy - the first step. Then how does one reconcile this dessication before rekindling in the City with the Universal Water of Life? I can’t discern an alchemical step by step process that correlates to the ascent on the Tree."it may be so that Alchemical Work correspondes ''only'' to the Work under Tipharet - the goal of it being to create Gold.
3 main stages are on the Midle Pillar - nigredo:Malkuth, rubedo:Yesod, albedo:Tipharet. -
Hey, first post here by the way...
I'm replying here because I can hopefully help you on your way without too much struggle should you decide to go down the practical path. One of the problems with the practical path is getting started and what to persue.
But first I'll answer your question on the difference between practical and ceremonial alchemy. There is no difference. The desired result is exactly the same, it is just the journey getting there that is different.
The body is a lab and what you do in your outer lab is simply a macrocosm of your bodies cellular process. Some things the body has difficulty in processing, this is where the lab comes in.
If you are looking for alchemical ceremonial magick, you have found it. It's basically the work of the mystical schools which you are studying right now. It is true that there are alchemical ceremonies more exlusive to practical alchemy, a bit like how Fr HHH described. There are also such practices as visualisating the operations, the philosophical egg meditations and the whole process of alchemy is infact a long ritual. However the types of magickal ceremony aren't nearly as advanced as say in the Golden Dawn (golden = gold, dawn = sun) or Aurum Solis (Aurum = Gold, Solic = Sun, it's all alchemical). It still is an interesting thing to look at and practice.
As for starting points which is the reason I made this reply because it could potentially save you a great deal of time and effort which could be spent on more practical things...
I recommend the course material from Jean Dubuis and Le Philosphers of Nature (LPN). He goes into practical and ceremonial alchemy in very great detail from the herbal kingdom to the metalic.
Now if you want to go down the practical route, I would recommend you getting some strong elixirs from the very beginning. The usual primers for herbal work I don't believe are alchemical in the sense that they are not alive. I tend to think of them as high nutrients because they are progressed from regular herbal medicines as far as purity and material goes but don't have the ability to transform. I think you should skip this stage because I don't believe this to be alchemy, perhaps spagyria but not alchemy.
My recommendation of route of attainment:
- The red herbal tincture
- The herbal stone
- The herbal Alkahest
- Move into the metalic realm
You can find the above I recommended by reading right to the very end of the herbal/metal/mineral course from the LPN and then doing the Red herbal/mineral tincture described almost at the very end. This is actually just as easy to do as the primer operations but the results are real and not perceived. This will enable you empower yourself each day while progressing onto the more complex operations. Then make the herbal stone. Then the herbal Alkahest which will enable you to multiply the alkahest and even though they say nothing of this, ingest that but in very tiny quantities (this is where I'm at). Then move onto the metalic realm and go striaght for the high tinctures.
Remember that understanding is very important and it's not a recipe book, you can learn how to make your own products and how to improve upon other operations, for instance, incorporation the mineral realm into the herbal alkahest.
It certainly is a very great path, even if you just want to make the intial red tincture I described and supplement your magickal practices with that. It is thoroughly worth it. It's just a frigging pain in the ass sorting out all the bs in all the hundreds of books either giving you too weak operations or too practically tough when really what you want is to get some decent tinctures up and running quickly while you tech up to even higher stuff.