ALCHEMY, ART OF REDEMPTION

André Savoret



Saying exactly what True Alchemy is is not so easy!...

For many, it is the art of transmuting metals into gold.

It's a bit like saying that zoology is a science that focuses on butterflies! Now, the alchemist is neither specially nor necessarily a "gold maker", although he may possibly be, for a given purpose. I would even say that one can operate transmutations without being the least bit of an alchemist. Transformations? Nature does it all day long, to our noses and our beards! ...

For many modern researchers, on the other hand, the essence of alchemy can be summed up in one or more "techniques"; to find these techniques would be to finally get your hands on the authentic key of the sanctuary.

Certainly, like any applied science, alchemy has its particular techniques. And some of these techniques, when it comes to metallic alchemy, can be compared to a certain extent with those of chemistry. I will only point out that a laboratory boy can know how to manipulate without being on the level of a chemical engineer. To lower alchemy to the level of the sleight of hand it may involve is to deny oneself a deep understanding of it.

On the very, essential nature of alchemy, others have an erroneous idea. Such as those who represent it as a branch of tantrism or those who confuse it with magic.

In fact alchemy is not only a technique, not only a science, even a philosophy, although it is all that in certain ways; it is, above all, a spiritual way.

And it is this spiritual substrate that must first be grasped if we want to situate it without deviating too much from the truth.

As for practicing it without losing your purse, your health or your reason, that's another story! ...

This substrate on which it is based appears to me under two complementary aspects, whose expression on the human level could be written: Fall and Redemption.

This is why alchemy finds its most complete form among adepts belonging to one of the traditions which point out, at the origin of our access to this world, the fall, the decline of the universal Man, that the Genesis names Adam. It is therefore, specifically, in Judaism, Islamism and Christianity that these followers are recruited.

This fall which made man and matter in our world what we know today, I am aware that ancient Mazdaism alludes to it, that ancient Egypt was not unaware of it, that the Druids professed; these traditions did not externalize knowledge of it, because it touched, as Fabre d'Olivet pointed out, the formidable problem of evil, which it was forbidden to discuss in public. Orphism also left revealing myths about the fall, that of Demeter and Proserpina and also that of Prometheus. But the explanation was reserved for mystics of a certain grade and the initiates faithfully kept their oath of silence.

I said that Egyptian wisdom was not unaware of this great drama of the Adamic fall and, consequently, that alchemy was familiar to it. Through Moses, she transmitted these teachings to the Hebrews and, later, to the Arabs through the Coptic intermediary.

By this Adamic fall, what was incorruptible substance was, to use the language of the apostle Paul, sown corruptible. The glorious body of Adam crumbled, darkened, crystallized into innumerable appearances, within a closed universe, although immense in our eyes, subject to the implacable laws of fate. But, at the same time (if I dare to use an improper expression) the work of Redemption, the reintegration designed by the Word began.

This reincrudation, this regeneration - by whatever name it is baptized - continues and will continue through all the states of what we call matter, from the most subtle to the grossest and through all the forms that the creatures drawn into the fall of universal man, from vibrios to planets, from elementals to cosmic geniuses.

To grasp the processes most accessible to the understanding of earthly man, to intervene on them consciously by hastening them and by removing the obstacles which hinder them, this is the whole program of essential alchemy, which one can envisage , from our point of view, under two complementary aspects: a work of purification that those who claim the fine title of alchemist must operate on themselves; and a charitable application of the principles of this same work abroad, in order to co-operate in the eventual reintegration and hasten its completion.

metal leprosy

One of these applications of principled alchemy, the one whose golden brilliance has masked the light of others, is metallic alchemy: to cure what the old Masters called the "leprosy of metals", after having first cured his own leprosy, his own blindness, here is the program of alchemy in its best known application. But human greed centered its impure desires around this work of purification, so much so that little by little, alchemist became synonymous with "gold maker".

The unregenerate earthly man, who has woven a mental, astral and physical cocoon for himself which no longer allows it to filter through, as Saint John says, "the Light which enlightens every man coming into this world" is, by this fact, unable to understand the true meaning of alchemy: he searches for formulas, "tricks", "knacks", imagining that all alchemy resides in some laboratory description. Above all, he seeks, as long as he is not enlightened from above, wealth, power and longevity; he dreams of continuing to reign in darkness and not of serving in the light.

This is why he generally retains of alchemy only these two results, although secondary ones: the powder of projection and the elixir of long life...

In doing so, he forbids himself to find anything other than pimple powder. And when, by dint of torturing metals against the direction of their normal evolution, he succeeded in reproducing one of these minor works, which the masters of old called "small particulars", he is not far from consider himself Rose-Croix or, if he still has a semblance of modesty, at the very least "Rosicrucian".

He forgets that the essential Work, the one that commands all the others, is what the Rose-Croix called the Ergon, the Work par excellence, this work of which the "Me" is the raw material and of which an aspect of the verb is Agent. The material work, the Rosicrucians called it the Parergon. To be Rose-Croix implies that one can carry out the Parergon, that is to say the metallic transmutatory Work, but that not necessarily one has actually carried it out or even undertaken it.

On the other hand, being Rose-Croix necessarily implies that one has undertaken and carried out the Ergon, the hard and daily work on oneself, the true Work of the Phoenix, which must give the deathblow to old Adam or, to use another terminology, to the Torrent man. To pursue first the golden mirage of metallic transmutation is to put the cart before the horse; it's wanting to make a dead tree produce fruit or, if you prefer, to make a wildling not grafted produce tasty fruit.

Thus all the operations described by true alchemists must be understood simultaneously in the physical and the spiritual, one in no way excluding the other.

There is at the center of things, as Eckartshausen says, an incorruptible element, pledge and generator of incorruptibility.

This primordial element must be freed from the "Cimmerian shadows", that is to say from the impurities with which it is clothed and which disguise it from profane eyes "with delicacy and extreme caution", according to the charitable advice of the Emerald Tablet. Thus, the purified and revived substances are gradually brought back to their incorruptible substrate.

For such a transformation, a dynamic and mysterious agent, which received many names, is indispensable, it is even its knowledge and its judicious use which are absolutely required for any truly alchemical operation. As far as spiritual alchemy is concerned, there is no disadvantage in naming it: there, this agent is Love and its inexhaustible source is the Word, in its function of Redeemer, it is different if it is is about metallic alchemy. In this domain, the alchemists are excessively discreet. None of the energies used by chemists (including nuclear energy) can be substituted for it.

This Eau Ardente, this Manne Rosante, is neither an alcohol, nor an acid, nor electricity or nervous fluid, as conjectured by occultists or magists of the last century. Which proves, by the way, the gulf that separates these three disciplines. Obviously, it is no more the seaweed called Nostoch and, even less, the dew of May, a simple analog image, which deceived me during the long years when, imagining myself "doing alchemy", I did not I only did very poor chemistry.

I will only say that its use leads to a resurrection, to a "new birth" in the mineral order or in the physiological order. I will add that the smallest chemical laboratory is teeming with complicated and expensive instruments and overflowing with innumerable products. You have to have crossed the threshold of an alchemical laboratory to fully savor the contrast: a few very simple containers and instruments, a modest cooking stove and a dozen mineral bodies. As the great Christian alchemist and mystic of Eckartshausen wrote: “with the simplest means can be brought about the most admirable achievements”.

One of the forms of Yoga

Thus, neglecting the details, I could give a general definition of alchemy, as it results from reading the classics in this art, Basile Valentin, Jacob Boehme, Nicolas Valois, not to mention too recent names: it is the art of erasing the consequences of the Adamic Fall, both in the microcosm and in the macrocosm, both spiritually and materially.

It is obvious that this definition is valid, strictly, only for the West, where the way summed up by the word alchemy has been codified, oriented, specified in a special direction, so that one can hear elsewhere, under this same term of alchemy or hermeticism, distinct doctrines and practices.

I am not unaware that China and India have built techniques that are sometimes described here as alchemical. Which is not always correct.

The Tan or "cinnabar" of the Chinese is used to make a certain elixir of immortality, unless it is only the veil or the pretext for some more impenetrable process in our eyes. It would be a mistake to confuse it with the elixir of long life, as the alchemists understand it. There is hardly any resemblance between them except in the term which is used to designate them.

On the other hand, parallel Hindu processes constitute one of the many forms of Yoga. We are still quite far from traditional alchemy. It is basically the retention and circulation of the breath and its internal content: the Prana. We can also compare the Water and Fire of certain Eastern treatises with the elements bearing the same names in Western books: it only takes a little ingenuity and a penchant for syncretism!

We are here in the magic domain, and even in tantric magic, but not in alchemy. Water and Fire, from which the secret Embryo is born and sustains itself, represent the two complementary energies of the subtle armature of the human being, which India calls Ida and Pingala, energies whose support, also double, is our vago-sympathetic nervous system.

Traditional alchemy cannot be confused with Ways which belong to a different domain, and which can lead whoever wants to follow them without preparation and without an experienced guide to consumption and madness, erotic or not. The processes of personal magnetism are equally inoperative: more than one student has had the disappointing experience of this, after having thought he had found the word of the enigmatic alchemy in the transfusion of a portion of his own vitality into the hermetic vase. Apart from being ineffective, such a technique is not without its dangers. And I dare not say that it has not regrettably contributed to hasten the end of Albert Poisson who used it.

Besides, alchemy, even operative, goes beyond the framework of the mineral kingdom. I will take as an example the "universal remedy" of the Druids, both Panacea and Elixir of Knowledge, prototype of the Sôma of India, drawn alchemically from the mistletoe of the oak, by means of the secret agent of which I have already speak.

higher energy

Thus, in alchemy, as in many other fields, there are more called than chosen. Beware of false vocations! ... Some believe themselves to be an alchemist, in all good faith, who risks ending their life in the shoes of a simple “prompter”. What the Ancients summed up in this aphorism: “Not all wood is good for making a Hermès”. A double understanding aphorism, moreover, since it alludes to the difficult choice of the Subjectum artis.

Let us now specify somewhat the metallic Great Work, since I have spoken enough about the other, the spiritual Great Work. It consists in bringing back a metal or a metallic salt to an undifferentiated state, which is properly a de-specification of the body, by means of a higher energy, more universal than those employed by modern chemistry. Having become an accumulator of said energy, the body in question, its corruptible elements eliminated, is then oriented towards another re-specification (generally that of gold) and can communicate this specification or "dye" to other metallic bodies put in fusion.

If the operation is stopped at a certain, non-operative stage, this same body provides the adept with the famous "Universal Medicine" or "Panacea", which, infusing this energy into debilitated organisms, revitalizes them while detoxifying.

A third use of this body constitutes what has been called the Elixir of the Rose-Croix, giving the psychic senses of man a particular penetration. On its effects, its advantages and its dangers, Sir Bulwer Lytton wrote decisive pages in his Zanoni . But this is the bridge that could connect alchemy to magic - and I will be allowed to say no more.