The Alchemist’s Journey

Through Time, Space and Forever

The following 16 pages is a section of Chapter One from the 22 chapter work.

It recounts the story of Western alchemy, weaving backward and forward between ancient connec-
tions, psychological insight and realizations, as the dominant opus, a myth of our time, is exposed in
its limiting factors on soul and psyche. But as well an alchemy of transfigurative and awesome com-
pleteness surfaces from the sands of time and the depths of the unconscious, where for too long
it has been hid.

A sort of Harry Potter for Wizards, warlocks and saints who want to know how they got there and
what they now must do.

(Note: I keep records of all photos and images, not my own that I use, in and out of copyright.)
 PLATE 1
An Alchemical Journey: ‘contrara natura
PART ONE: ‘THE BASIS OF THE WORK’

Prima Materia: An Opening Sequence

Introduction

The 22 manuscript illuminations of 1582, the Splendor Solis represent the stages of individ-
ual transformation by alchemy. ’Salomon Trismosin [the creator] clearly identify the
alchemical quest as both a spiritual and physical process’ (Wasserman, 1993:94). The first
four plates represent the first four stages of the beginning of the interior alchemic Work.
The next seven plates show the story of the ‘Alchemical Allegory’. Seven further stages
depict the ‘Transformation within the Retort’, or Vessel, and the last four plates signify the
‘End of the Work’ and its final culmination’. 1

These stages are reinterpreted from a metapsychological position. New psychological, cul-
tural, consciousness, and historical information now allow the separation of magic, myth,
the mental, and cultural bases of components of psyche of components that have been
extremely difficult to extract and heal. Even Carl Jung had trouble with the same and other
series of alchemical images, trying to relate them back to archetypal psychology in order to
discern the path of individuation through life. Now I take this opportunity to meld history,
psychology, anthropology, society and cultural life to bring a whole new interpretation to
bear on the struggles of the soul to realize interior life, even as it operates in the world and
falls under the spell of the prevailing myths. The umbrella-term of this marriage of branches
of knowledge is metapsychology. Its interest is to grasp the limiting factors and the whole.

The purpose of such a new excavation is because whole mind, body, spirit and conscious-
ness demand it, from the core of the innermost being. It is one of the deepest earth incarna-
tion desires, to get to the truth of existence by following the trail of existing myths,
archetypes and structures of mind, in order to allow consciousness to know and soar free of
culturally conditioned factors and mental frames, as it must, where nothing holds back
emergence of the complete ascent.

The Alchemic Images and What They Tell

Alchemical images are symbolically rich, generally carefully conceived and executed, not
only for their allegorical narrative about an internal journey, a psyche-ic adventure, but
because part of their function was educational. They tell the story of a dramatic process of
inner transformation and their meaning can be read on many levels of interpretation. As
such, interpretation may range between psychology, the historical, the biology of the

1. PART ONE: THE BASIS OF THE WORK The Vessel, Container in 7 parts
Plate One: An Alchemical Journey: ‘contrara natura’ - The Initiate Approaches the Temple Nigredo/Physis in 7 parts
Plate Two: The Alchemist - The Vessel, Container
Plate Three: The Crusader-knight, and the Stance of ‘the Return’ - The Ego Sets Out
Plate Four: Intercourse of Solar King and Lunar Queen - Conjunction of Opposites
Plate Five: Exploration of the Foundations of Nature - Digging into Matter
Plate Six: Autumn - Eyeing a Rejuvenating Bath - A Vision of Renewal
Plate Seven: Drowning King in the Waters & Young King on the Bank, Rejuvenated - Dying to be Reborn
PART TWO: CONJUNCTION; TWO AS ONE; DISMEMBERMENT, then CLEANSING in 4 parts
Plate Eight: The Ethiopian, Out of the Mud, & the White Queen
Plate Nine: The ‘Whitened Ethiopian’ as Hermaphrodite
Plate Ten: Dismemberment of the Body of Salt, Element Earth
Plate Eleven: Cleansing by Heat & Fire in the Alchemical Bath
PART THREE: THE METAPHOR OF THE RETORT: History as Nightmare, The Allegory of Change Without and
Within in 7 parts and images.
PART FOUR: THE ‘END OF THE WORK’: Transformation Inside and Out in 4 parts and images.
unconscious and prehistorical antecedents, particularly in reference to the Goddess or
Mother of All.

Within alchemical work 'the theory of correspondence is taken to the ultimate degree’
(Wasserman, ibid., p.26) and the entire basis of its work was predicated on the belief that
matter and psyche are malleable substances that can be worked upon to bring about desired
results or end-products. The intensely subjective work of alchemy had an objective face and
the mind was clearly worked upon to change it, even its substance.

The sixteenth century was already towards the end of the alchemical era per sé in terms of
its major preoccupation, which was the negotiation between a medieval mind, still steeped
in traditions of pre-history, engaged in religious and philosophical contact with powerful
foreigners, and forging a bridge between the fallen Roman empire, Christianity, the Neo-
lithic past, and a modern mind, and ‘New World’, ahead.

So the sixteenth century Splendor Solis, which is the main study of this work, sits between
the dynamic processes of an alchemistry of mind in process, and the ‘End of the Work’ of
the alchemic change on mind, body and spirit. It is recapitulates centuries of work in mind,
and a historical archive of the psyche under transformation as well as an allegory or story at
a more superficial level. The ‘End of the Work’ resulting in eliciting what I term (2003) the
“Western mind-space container’, represented and metaphored by the alchemical vessel,
with its distillation and extraction of content contained within the metaphored retort. The
process of alchemical transformation is both archetypal and metaphorical, while its major
domain of activity occurs in the psyche-somatic or numinous or deep within.

Images give a unique insight into processes within that were steeped in the archetypal and
numinous matter of inwardness which resulted in the end-product, a fully distilled solar orb
of sovereignty, as it turns out, which was in fact, the sun-king extracted from nature and
matter, (see Plate Twenty-Two). Crafted in the hermetically sealed alchemic and laboratory
vessel, or retort, the work of alchemic men’s metaphoric imaginations as well as external
chemical procedures in a laboratory formed a union of intent.

The end-result reveals no mere play of fumbling premoderns, but a process of self-actualiz-
ing men set to liberate the mind from the most ancient Mother, and also from nature and
all ‘vital referents’, that is energetic ones. The goal was to instate a return to the sky-god of
Genesis in which men become the new gods of creation, having shaken the carbon of earth
from gravityless feet.

Campbell (1989) suggested there is a nightmare of history from which it is time for con-
sciousness to wake up, particularly in the West. My question is ‘why is it so difficult to wake
up?’ Perhaps the answer is strongly hinted at in the processes of Occidental alchemy which
progressively move in a direction of inner dualism which becomes instated deep in the
Western psyche. The Splendor Solis series and other images highlighted in these chapters
are examples of the transformation, it is difficult to come to grips with, even now.

Peeling apart the romance of characters like Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn, or the
Knights of the Rosy Cross, when scholars like Yates take on the historical analysis of the end
of the Renaissance and its alchemic undertows, there is a barely hidden tremulous vibrato, a
quavering. Alchemists were fast becoming scientists, because the Inquisition had gone
within. Body and soul were separated, the Western alchemy of the esoteric-to exoteric kind
was done. Isaac Newton and Robert Fludd could mingle alchemic nature ideas and aggres-
sive dominance stance over nature (and the Orient with it). So by the time nineteen to twen-
tieth century neophytes wished to go down that winding path of transformation, including
Waite and Jung, for instance, looking back to the sign posting already littering the way,
most of the way had already been closed and darkened.

What this suggests is that it is difficult to awaken within because at the most esoteric levels of
our dominant alchemy which for Jung was the deepest expression of the workings of con-
sciousness within psyche (1953), there is this split between mind and matter, spirit and
nature remaining, and which is not resolved into a ‘whole’ and integral being, but into a
‘holism’. The Enlightenment ‘One’ was achieved through the sacrifice of the body and vital
being, nature and world-body, Mother and her children. Yet the reconnection of psyche
and soma within is seen today as necessary in moves towards ‘whole being’ and that is a
strong part of what the New Age and human development movements are most intrinsi-
cally about.

‘Awakening’ means awakening from imprisonment in our cultural consciousness and

aspects of its over-arching closed psyche as much as contacting spirit guides or beginning
the process of following one’s intuition. Consciousness can only awaken from the nightmare
of its own history of split-being within by the elucidation of the procedures of the history of
broken being. Alchemic processes involve deepest archetypal associations, that is why they
have been chosen to throw light on the subject of awakening from nightmare or sleep. But
whether we want it or not, it is not just our individual mind and consciousness that is awak-
ening to a more spiritual life, but it is about the whole universe awaking up in us. It is a col-
lective deal. So we’d better be prepared for it. For this, the job we face, which many of us
feel keenly I believe, even if we don’t know exactly what it all means yet, means we had bet-
ter take to heart the old adage and take it well: ‘Know Thyself’. Opening up is painful, but
being closed is not a function of survival in a new world of higher vibrations and the pleni-
tude of new knowledge with deepening and widening interior experience to match.
Plate One: It Begins
Two men in debate approach a large and stately temple with
high arches. A river flows within its precincts, in which a
rich, red carpet is unrolled down an inner wall, and on which
sun and moon shields rest, and between which is an iron hel-
met from a suit of armour surmounted by a starry cloak, tri-
ple crescent moons and a golden crown. Steps lead upward
and inward to the interior of the temple, while the shields are
hidden from the view of the two approaching men. It is
assessed that by entering the temple they will be leaving the
outer world in the process of discovering or finding some-
thing which is as yet only hinted at. A border rich in nature
symbols, flora and fauna surrounds the scene and suggests
that the blessings or beneficence of nature abounding, sur-
rounds the task at hand. The words over the entrance to the
sanctuary reads ‘Arma Artes’, the ‘coat of arms of the art.’)
The solar orb in the shield above the helmet is serenely in the
highest position, shining out. The men will come through
the arch to the left. In terms of the biology of the uncon-
scious, they are entering by the left hemisphere, the side of
reasoning, which fits in with the two men in discussion, using
language and thinking to work out the aspects of the under-
world. The side on the East, right is hidden from view as the
temple precincts go deeper within. The steps also enter from
the West, left hemispheric thinking, and right side of the
body action and the direction of seeking the prima materia
or primal material is East, or right hemispheric side, door to
the underworld, memory, the past and the left side of the
silence within. (Note: orientation of the figure in the dia-
gram, right below. The images, being created for the viewer,
or as introspective devices of the artist, are like mirrors in
which the initiate sees his own psyche: it is my premiss the
image is so constructed, and are interpreted facing this way.
Above: The left-right orientation of the
body shows the switch of brain to
body is a fundamental polarity that is
commonly metaphored and symboli-
cally appears in projected images,
regardless of individual anatomical
understanding. This aspect is kept in
mind when relating to the alchemical
opus in which the alchemist is dynami-
cally involved with the inner polarities
in psyche and attempting to reconcile
them into a new relation of ‘oneness’.
Both the structure and the function of
these two 'half-brains' in some part
underlie the two modes of conscious-
ness which simultaneously coexist
within each one of us. ... The left
hemisphere ... is predominantly
involved with analytic, logical think-
ing, especially in verbal and mathe-
matical functions. Its mode [is]
linear... sequential. [and] depend ant
… on linear time ...
the right hemisphere … language
ability is quite limited. This hemi-
sphere is primarily responsible for our
orientation in space ... body image ...
arts, crafts ... processing information
more diffusely... holistic and rela-
tional... integrating many inputs at
once.’ (Ornstein, 1977:67-8.)
The sun and moon symbols on the red wall are in a North-South axis and indicate the sun
has the supreme role, of light. Beneath the knight’s helmet and on the shield is the moon,
but it is transfixed, and has grotesque faces in its eyes, and its poking tongue is another
face; this is a play on the anciently destroyed Medusa/Gorgon, often depicted on the shield
of Greek gods, and stiffly represents the head of snakes, and a cast down lunar power.
The blue starry cloak, like hair, or fronds, billowing out from the black helmet are remem-
brance of the Queen of the Night, and the starry skies of the Sumerian and Babylonian
Inanna-Ishtar and her girdle:

The Sumerians [c.2000BC] and Babylonians were fascinated by the stars. ... Nightly from
the roof terraces of their houses they must have watched the great constellations wheeling
around them, as they came to identify the most brilliant stars and gave the zodiacal belt the
names and images that have endured to this day. Both Inanna and Ishtar were worshipped
as Queen of Heaven. Their principle images were the moon and Venus, the morning and
evening star, which may have given rise to the image of the eight-pointed ...'Radiant Star'...
Ishtar in ... seals is often shown with a circle of stars around her, as she personified the
zodiac ... the zodiac was called ‘Ishtar's Girdle.’ (Baring & Cashford, 1993:200).

In the alchemical image it seems like the starry cloak decorates the iron helmet as if might
be a trophy from some battle; nonetheless, both stellar girdle and moon are below the sun
above.A set of three nested crescent moons sit on top of a golden crown. These is remem-
brance of Diana, fertility cults, bovine worship, essentially the world of feminine divinities
and figures often grouped as three. Prior to the symbol of the bull being associated with
masculine symbolism, in the Neolithic era, it represented the horned uterus of ancient cos-
mic womb worship (Gimbutas, 1989). Cow horns, bullflowers and bull-horns found in Neo-
lithic birthing rooms were not coincidentally found there. The crescent moon was
associated with lunar cycles in both planting and menses, while it also resembled the female
anatomy of womb and fallopian tubes: the most ancient bulls horns are both menses’ lunar
symbol and a reference to the womb that gives birth to all. (See below, ‘Birth-giving God- Human physiology show
dess Shrine’, c.5800BC.) It was a feminine symbol of generation or creation power.) the systems of the body. A
tion is drawn to the reprod
tive system for its bull-h
and horns form.
Left: 'The Birth-giving Goddess; c.5800BC,
Anatolia. The shrine is dedicated to birth ... the (Image: Sherwood, 1993)
goddess is outstretched in the stylized birthing
position and 'seems to have given birth to the
three bulls' heads placed beneath her'. In this
culture the act of birthing is prolific in imagery.
(Baring & Cashford, 1993:56).
The act of birthing, female anatomy, and the
intensification aspect of several bulls horns,
symbols of the fallopian tubes/female repro-
ductive organs; might have been to intensify
the sacred nature of birthing in association to
the Goddess who gives birth to all (Gimbutas,
1989:252-256).

In the Splendor Solis image the three crescents of old adorn the head of the helmet, within
the golden crown; but the symbolic nature of these objects represents a symbolically stated
balance of power and sovereignty, as well as the future ahead for the neophyte who walks
and discusses or argues with his colleague the way by which he may attain the alchemical
gold and the solar condition.The entire scene is surrounded by the richness of nature, the
man and his restless walking is still in the background, and so the primal scene is set as they
come closer into frame and towards the river flowing onward into the temple. The alchem-
ical journey is hence, a moving away from the nature outside to an inner mysterious world,
basically a womb within. They are entering the ancient world of the Goddess in pursuit of
psychic change.

To Enter the Sanctuary — Or Not

Grassy knolls flank the rivulet leading down to the underworld; its path is only suggested in
the s-shape of its serpentine flow. In the alchemical quest, the river’s ‘season of spring is a
season of sacrifice, its river of life a stream of blood ’ (Fabricius, 1976:17).

A river that is a stream of blood indicates that it is the body that is being spoken about, the
soma, and its own underworld; it is the abode of the goddess, for it is she that gives life, sus-
tains life and supports its essence through procreation and generation. At the same time, the
wall-hanging, edged with gold that is a support for the ‘arms of the art’ is blood-red. The
symbolic motifs are forged on a background of blood, which may mean warfare, violence or
child-bearing and menses.

The border of abundant foliage suggests the alchemist is entering the temple in the spring in
the bloom of youth which is reminiscent of the ancient son-lover Dumuzi or Tammuz of
the Sumerian Goddess Inanna or Ishtar (Baring & Cashford, 1991); the son by virgin birth
of the goddess-mother Ninhursag, Astarte, Artemis, Demeter, Aphrodite, Venus - the cos-
mological goddess-mother. Tammuz and Dumuzi mean ‘Faithful Son’, and their title was
‘the Green One’ (Baring & Cashford, 1993:207. The Goddess was the vine, the son the fruit
(grapes); or the Mother was the Tree of Life, and her son the fruit (dates); the sons of the
goddess were the fruits of the year and were organic, vegetative. They came out of the
Great Mother, ‘the primordial waters of space’ (ibid., p.208).

When the grape vines were cut and pruned, the renewal of vegetation was associated with
the renewal of the soul, which was intimately associated with the birth and resurrection of
the year god - the male god that was born and died every year, going down into the under-
world at winter, being reborn in spring and the new growth season (see Campbell, 1973,
[1949]),

The horned moon and the milk-bearing cow is a cosmological symbol of life, seeding the
earth, fertilization, ‘poetically illustrated through the metaphor of the cow the bull, and
their calf, liturgically represented within the precincts of the early temple compounds -
which were symbolic of the womb of the cosmic goddess Cow herself (Campbell, 1986
[1962]:41). Inanna, Astarte, Ishtar, Isis, and Hathor all wore horned head-dresses suggest-
ing goddesses of fertility, the womb and ‘everything that governed the generation of life’
(Baring & Cashford, 1993:460). They appeared in Sumerian (c.2500BC), Mesopotamian,
Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Canaanite and Near-Eastern goddess worship.

'The bull was connected with the moon from

the earliest times ... Upper Paleolithic cave
painting and engraving[s]’. Spain and Las-
caux, France c.15,000-10,000 BC. (Gimb-
utas, 1989: 280).

Horned cows, bisons, bulls were all part of the principle of the feminine generation within
the abundance and deep immersion of humans into nature and natural processes like birth
which were imbued with numinosity, magic, ‘mana’, and a sacral character. The bulls horns
were also associated with the male principle, the god - the goddess’s son, as well as the power
of regeneration and birth at Catal Huyük, 5800BC (Baring & Cashford, 1993:84), adorning
walls of dwellings and shrines; the son, brother or husband of the Mother was also the ‘Bull of
Heaven’ and in these contexts is always in relationship to the Mother as compatriot, associate
and life-giver.
Left: Ninhursag, Sumeria, Great
Mother of all life wears the bulls-
horns; full of fertility-power. On
her lap is her son, who will be
king. He stretches out his right
hand to drink the elixir, but turns
to his mother as if looking for
permission; she holds him for-
ward to take it. Behind them is
the Tree of Life. 3 tall vessels act
as sacred containers of life-force,
strength and power (see Bar-
ing& Cashford, 1993:191).

In the primal Sumerian mother-son union, the son had to descend into the underworld so
that the earth may renew in the yearly cycles: for he was the fruit. This myth had several var-
iants: in the Babylonian, Ishtar goes to the underworld to rescue Tammuz from his sleep (of
Winter); in the Sumerian, Inanna sacrifices Dumuzi to go the underworld instead of herself,
and in a third, the god (as Enki) is asleep in the underworld and his mother Nammu has to
awaken him (Baring & Cashford, 1993:219). There was, accompanying, significant ritual and
associative participation of humans with the cyclical seasons, and lament at the end of sum-
mer, From Sumeria and Babylonia, to the Near East and then Mediterranean, the height of
summer harvests was replaced by the end of fruits. grains and corn on the bough, plenty was
at an end, harvesting complete (June-July) and Dumuzi was lamented.

Everywhere the same myth of the virgin goddess whose son-lover dies a sacrificial death and
is reborn after she goes in search of him in the underworld was ritually celebrated. ... When
he was ‘lost’ to life much later in Syria and Greece, a wooden effigy of the god was laid in a
boat or raft and set afloat on the waters. As it sank Dumuzi-Tammuz descended into the
underworld. ... The difficulty of awakening the god from sleep and bringing him back to life
was part of he ritual drama of the myth of the goddess. ... The imagery of the archaic myth is
[later] transposed to the context of the human soul (Baring & Cashford, 1993:221-3).

In the alchemical journey, the son takes a similar journey into the underworld, back into pri-
mary associations and primordial connections, which through the passage of the millennia
have undergone many modifications. For instance, as mythology and human consciousness
moved further away from nature, the content of the underworld became more frightening for
subjective consciousness as it moved’ ‘farther and farther away from a sense of the wholeness
and sacrality of life. ... The more the known and the unknown, light and dark phases of life
are split apart and associated with good and evil, the more terrifying the dimension beyond
death becomes. ... The ultimate legacy of this fear is reached in the Hebrew Lilith and the
Christian image of hell and the devil’ (ibid., p.224). For this, though ancient or archaic sym-
bols are employed in the sixteenth century alchemical opus they have already gone through
some radical transformations, yet the journey is significantly about relationships of age-old
opposites, oppositions, and of masculine-feminine relations of balance and power in a psy-
che-ic inner world.

Outside the temple in the plate, in the distance is seen water and craggy mountainous
regions without foliage or growth. This suggests two things, both the season of winter and
that the temple which is being approached is set on a very high place. The perspective from
inside the temple suggests it is set at the highest point in the landscape, which precipitously
leads away to valleys and regions far below. The ambience of the castle setting is where the
ancients built the temples to the goddess. They were set in high places. ‘Throughout the
Neolithic world a mound or mountain was symbolic of the goddess ... and in the Bronze
Age ... the focus of the temple was the sanctuary at the summit, where the sacred marriage
rite was enacted’ (Baring & Cashford, 1993:185). The opposites engaged in a conjunction
and culmination, a fusion within a sacred rite, and earth was restored to harmony and bal-
ance.

Seen in this light, the image of the two alchemists is the less ancient image of the age-old
saga of the male approaching the temple of the goddess. The enframed image is within a
deep perspective; the temple precinct takes up the foreground and its entrance is suggested
is what is foremost in mind. Considering the three bovine ancient symbols of father and
mother bull, plus calf, as emblems of the most ancient goddess, they appear in this first
image of the opus atop the golden crown of a starry wig or hair-frond that is emblematic of
Ishtar, the Queen of the Night herself. The male initiates, in order to be transformed need
to enter the womb of the primordial goddess; they are fearful if they will die or live. Is this
one of man’s most ancient traumas, or is it only the rather lately won egoic consciousness
that is fearful of death or defeat in being immersed in the unconscious?

Return to the Underworld

The ‘putrefaction’ stage of the opus is the compost stage, when the green of nature ferments
and returns into the earth. It is associated with Tammuz and Dumuzi returning to the
underworld in order to come back budding and renewed the following season. Rebirth is
only possible if nature is renewed, after an initial dying away, following the natural cycles.
Fabricius (1976:16) quotes ‘Hali’ the ‘Philosopher’ who wrote ‘the green is reduced to its
former nature ... things sprout and come forth in ordained time ... putrefied and decocted in
the way of our secret art’. Traditional Chinese medicine, pharmaceutically complex and
aware of subtle energies, for at least 2000 years, relies on the processes of collecting herbs,
drying, extracting essences by cooking until decoctions are ready to treat various mala-
dies. The process is firmly embedded in nature and natural processes as applied to signs
and symptoms of the body which is part of nature, whose laws can be read in the body sys-
tems; there is a natural order that tends towards balance and order, as well as cyclic decay
and regeneration, microscopic and macroscopic (Tao) (Jingfeng, Jian, et al, 1995). Who was
‘Hali’ ? Kalid ibn Yazid, Omayyad prince (660-704) claims Fabricius, 1976:216. Was his
knowledge from a Greek or Babylonian background?

In general, alchemistry which follows a ‘natural way’, by following ‘natural cycles’ is East-
ern. The Western heritage, ‘philosophy’ is most noticeably that which begins to bring a ten-
sion into the relationship between man and nature. Fundamentally, the Eastern (except for
certain ascetic yogis) retain the natural world and does not attempt to jettison it, but instead
seek ways of balancing closer within its natural order. (Traditional Chinese medicine and
Feng Shui are examples.)

Regeneration alchemically also depended on a reduction to a primal material, so metals, for

example, were reduced to a formless state, thereafter they could be moulded into ‘any form
the alchemist may choose’ (Fabricius, 1976:17). With this simple admission, similar to the
Jungian (1953) description of the yogic alchemic process, some factor or active agent out-
side the process is actually working upon the reformulation of the extracted material into
any shape. When the alchemical process is associated with the chemistry of gold, one could
expect modelling of jewellery or ornaments, for example, but when the process is associated
with psychology/psyche it is saying that the adept can act upon any material within to trans-
form it into any other shape, psychological or physical. This suggests that all material, inner
and outer is malleable and subject to the controlling factor of the master alchemist’s will or
mind.

Out of the swirling chaos of the prima materia, ‘form’ arose in the shape of the four ele-
ments fire, air, water and earth. By blending these ‘simple bodies’ in certain proportions,
God finally succeeded in creating out of the prime matter the limitless varieties of life. ...
Transmutation is an obvious consequence of this theory: any element may be transformed
into another through the quality which they have in common. Thus, fire can become air
through the medium of heat, just air can become water through the medium of fluidity. ...
From this belief it follows that any kind of substance can be transformed into any other by
simply changing its elemental proportions through the processes of burning, calcination,
solution, evaporation, distillation, sublimation, and crystallization. If iron and gold are met-
als consisting of fire, air, water and earth in differing proportions, why not attempt to
change the elemental proportions of iron by adjusting them to the proportions of the ele-
ments of gold? Here we have the germ of all alchemical theories ... based on this theoretical
background that the alchemists sweated over their furnaces (Fabricius, 1976:8).

This metallurgy was projected upon by inward unconscious psychic factors (Jung, 1953)
which made of it a psychological process; or taking it much further, once the process of
alchemy was envisioned as applying to the substance of humans themselves, at any level, it
could be imagined as a science of great psyche-ic and even physical transformational possi-
bilities. Perhaps in the Occidental alchemy this possibility was entertained early because
alchemists as clerics, and ‘womanless men’ (Noble, 1992), had an ecclesiastical bias against
women, the flesh, and the devil, which in the medieval mind all occupied something of the
same rungs of manifestation due to Biblical exegesis, and the myth of the Fall of Man due to
Woman and her relationship to a serpent (Pagels, 1979).

One of the greatest achievements within the opus is the creation of the homunculus (the
baby in the vessel) and its creation in vitro, outside the womb of a woman. The great
achievements of recent medical science are testimonies to this possibility envisioned in an
earlier alchemy, but as well by the potential for men to give birth to creation, and wrest
finally the last great power away from the ancient Goddess cultures, the primary function of
birth, as individual and cosmic Mother, and the primacy of nature to create. From the Yah-
weh of the Judeo-Christian Bible, a masculine deity, without partner, or equal, brings forth
the whole creation by his hand and eye. This Iron Age demi-God myth which was raised to
ultimate potency becomes the residual desire in the alchemy of the West, to be like ‘Him’.
The Western alchemistry, while it may owe a great deal to the Eastern subtle alchemies of
inner transformation of the spirit, owe nothing to them of the direction it veered off on; its
trajectory was away from nature, absolutely away from the Goddess , particularly as equal,
to a sole transcendental control and rulership, not immanence and not a return to unity or
at-oneness with Her.

The dualistic universe is the ‘battleground of opposing forces’ resolved by the ‘putrefying’
movement of death and rebirth’; by returning to the prima materia; by the ‘circulatorium’
or circulatory movement backward, and ‘to return to the source of all creation, or “God”’
(Fabricius, 1976:17).

Text accompanying plate one of the alchemic series Splendor Solis contain the phrase:
‘opus contra naturam’ (Fabricius, 1976:16), which infers the alchemical opus is going
against the flow of nature. Lull writes ‘you should know, dear son, that the course of nature
is turned about’ (from ‘Compendium artis alchemiae’, in Fabricius, p.10); the body is dis-
solved in a movement back into a primal substance. The distilling apparatus that the alche-
mists will use is a bulb-shaped vessel with a neck, an object for free association
psychologically. Fabricius claims the pear-shaped vessels are ‘female matrix’ and that the
Hermetic vessel was called a ‘uterus’ which the philosopher’s son will be born out of. Hence
the entire process of this alchemy is charged with a specific tension, the goal is not unifica-
tion with the feminine principle in order to instantiate a golden, stellar or cosmic world of
psyche-ic oneness with Her or with nature as implicate order, but entrance on a meditative
and psychological path of extraction.
This delineates the opus: the extraction of ‘mind-space’ out of the terrestrial and cosmic
which includes a new womb that will be created in the process by a cabal.The meditative
aspect of the opus reveals the alchemists’ understanding of their ‘work’ as a psychic process
of transformation also, unfolding ... with the chemical process of transformation. In such a
manner the alchemical laboratories took on the function of psychological laboratories as
well. The effect was the symbolized chemistry of alchemy which, is in the last analysis, rep-
resents an alchemy of the mind’ (Fabricius, 1976:11).

The process might have been happening ‘in mind’ but it

bore a particular relationship and stance towards the
body as well, and that attitude was one of mounting
estrangement which possibly made the sensed process
even more precarious as mind withdrew from somatic
engagement. There were inherent dangers for the start-
ing-out alchemist; the ‘unconscious’ was the great
unknown and it was implicated with the somatic world -
physis, with all its dangerous associations, lingering in a
psychic, clerical atmosphere where nature was feared for
its power to induce oneness with it, instating panic for a
feared loss of the egoic consciousness struggling to eman-
cipate itself from dependency on ‘Mother Nature’ herself Minotaur, painting by G. F. Watts, 1877.
The illustration above from a text on Mary
in all her guises, terrestrial, unconscious, pagan and cos- Shelley’s Frankenstein intimates the monster
mic. All this movement was predicated on desire (Source: Tropp, 1976.) The sacred bull of
the Goddess (with feminized face) had
emboldened as well as chastened by religion, to rule, as become a figure of revile, associated with
the labyrinth - physis, womb, and the coil of
Genesis informed. life, symbolic of the dark ostracized outsider
or ‘other’ who can never return to be in
1 one’s conscious living of life.
Entry into the temple of initiation is essentially entrance
into the underworld of ’Her’ domain, as well as a descent
into cavern or grotto, which will lead potentially to encountering the Shadow. The Shadow
may bear an archetypal likeness to the beloved bull of old, from Crete, the same one which
becomes the Minotaur in Greek myth. Just as other horned beasts, like rams or goats, com-
panions of shepherd Tammuz (Dumuzi) connected to Baal, son of the Old Testament God-
dess (Asherah), become the horned devils in an emerging dualistic universe. There,
connection back to nature and the ancient Great Goddess become subverted and shadowy
and the dark images of the Gothic imagination, European Romanticism and the existential
Mary Shelley’s Franken
stein, [1818]. Illustration
1. .On the other side of the brightly lit exterior world of consciousness, what is within is considered ambivalent and Moser 1994 .
potentially threatening. The controlling ego-personality and what that consists of and contains manoeuvres and
‘rebalances’ to contain that which is in the underworld, or out of sight; to enter physis is to go down into that darkness
to confront one’s own interior shadowy side
arts to follow, all bear witness to the trail of the divine sunk in the murky well of interior
being.

Yet, behind all projections of inner woe, remain both an image of the ostracized Mother
and womb of all, as well as one of a child lost in the wilderness. The nurturing womb-space
is historically and psychically purged, and gradually emptied of content and of vital matter.
As it is, the streams flowing back to an ancient and ever-flowing source are almost extin-
guished and the soul lapses to despair and decay. At the same time, the procedure of Occi-
dental alchemistry was just that removal of the mind of men from the body and
remembrance of the Mother of matter and from the profusion of nature in a psyche-ically
connected sense. Not only that, a gradual instatement of a new mind and consciousness will
take her place and assign attributes of her to a new containment vessel (a wombless one),
one where the child knows no such mother, unless she is borne of the laboratory will.

To follow this story of a change in collective psyche is

to witness in hindsight the loss of the vital world, pri-
mordial origins and connection back to the garden of
paradise, with the terrestrial garden within. It is also to
understand something of the nature of the problem of
dualism which brings about the ‘nightmare of history’.
This is regarded on two levels — as a process of history
out in the world and of a process of the history of the
transformation of psyche, within, the very history and
nightmare the intensest current inner work must even-
tually come to grips with and face.

That is, one deals with the problem on both sides, indi-
vidual and collective, of mini-society within, and
macro-society without. It is wonderful to wake up to
the inner truth and beauty of the fact ‘one is every-
thing’, the cosmos is ‘I’ and ‘we are the universe’, each
and everyone of us. That is like the first incredible
break-out from the chains of being small and limited
egos, of minds of social conditioning just beginning to slough off.

But there is barely any vocabulary for dealing with the reality and history of the Western
transformation of civilization on the psyche as it moved out of the slumber of consciousness
in the Dark Ages and earlier. But there is a thread running from the almost Paleolithic Ages
to the present time of the fastness of all souls to a different kind of energetic alchemic bond.
The agriculturalist eras are painted as dull and bovine in comparison to the growing scien-
tific eras to follow. But as the West followed an alchemy of extraction, not integration, its most inner
paths are psychic trails sand-blasted into the subconscious and unconscious by the forefathers of
Western civilization. Ultimately, when we speak about transformation and the New Age, and the
coming culmination foretold in the Aztec calendar, we must clear, as part of the cleansing process,
deeply embedded cultural consciousness, individual and collective, where it does not serve the mean-
ing of the whole. So how are we going to do this? There is a short answer and a long one; here I will
begin with the first …