The search for the Philosopher's Stone is no longer fashionable today. A 17th century alchemist, Alexandre Sethon (1), better known as the Cosmopolite, already wrote in his time: The Philosopher's Stone is considered a pure chimera and people who seek it are considered crazy.
This contempt, say the Hermetic philosophers, is an effect of the just judgment of God who does not allow such a precious secret to be known to the wicked and the ignorant. Formerly it was folly to most men; Nowadays it is nonsense. This science has fallen into such discredit that almost all of us are ignorant of its goal and its means.
If we open an old Alchemy book by chance, the style seems confused, the recipes bizarre, the chemistry fanciful and unfounded; we are astonished that so many men of past centuries could have spent their lives in such a chimerical study. This is the summary judgment that 20th century man makes on the teaching of the ancient Sages. We can ask ourselves, however, when reading these books, if we are dealing with charlatans hiding their ignorance under the appearance of pretentious jargon or with Sages jealously hiding their knowledge under the thorns of an obscure style in order to test the sagacity and constancy of the reader. Both hypotheses are true.
Most alchemists have only been usurpers of this title, coal blowers, as they used to say. These have wandered all their lives and ruined themselves in the pursuit of a chimera because they did not know the real material on which they had to work, nor the nature of the Philosophers' Fire. The happiest of them ended up discovering a purgative salt (2), a process for manufacturing porcelain or sulfur matches. They are the ancestors of modern science. Our men of science, all things considered, have advanced human knowledge on the same ground. They too are ignorant, whatever they say, of the true matter and nature of the universal Agent.
Their science has not given men knowledge, but error; nor freedom, but a greater slavery; nor has it enriched them, since their desires extend ever further.
But there are others besides the blowers; not all of them have been charlatans.
Certain alchemists of past times have signed their passage here below and attested to the reality of their science by true metallic transmutations (3).
Although the Art of the Sages has no confirmation to ask from modern science, let us note that our scientists sometimes salute in passing the "brilliant intuitions" of the ancient alchemists, since they made the discovery of the unity of nature.
“matter”, which the Art of transmutations in fact postulates (4). A modern defender of Alchemy writes these pertinent lines on this subject: Since we are talking about the Great Work, let us take the opportunity to return to a capital point already touched upon, that is to say on the abyss which adorns it with transmutation tests by physico-chemical means, tests to which atomic dissociation gives renewed relevance. First of all, let us note at what expense, with what waste of energy, in which titanic laboratories (which no private fortune could afford the luxury of financing) operate, in close ranks, our modern Fausts. This results in “transmutations” of the order of one ten millionth of a gram.
It is the mountain that gives birth to a mouse.
With regard to the Great Physical Work requires only a few fairly widespread bodies, a little coal, two or more very simple vases, none of the sources of energy that current science consumes in true ogress, and can be accomplished entirely by a single man with patience and length of time.
This is to obtain possibly massive transmutations.(5) And the author concludes his reflections with these words: Despite a barbaric terminology which grows longer every day, where ions, electrons, protons, neutrons, deuterons and other ingredients of nuclear cuisine play an impressive role, but matter remains an “unknown land”.
The chasms which separate modern science from the Great Work are absolutely impassable and this is the reason why our era has lost the nostalgia and almost the memory of it. As long as we approach Alchemy with the prejudices of a 20th century man, this science will be “hermetically” closed to us.
The Adepts say that their science is that of God himself; that without his inspiration, it is impossible to achieve the possession of this blessed Stone of the Sages which confers on the one who possesses it, health, wealth, royalty over all nature; who helps him in all his needs, who even assures him the inalienable possession of life, eternally fixed in himself (6).
Their piety, their faith, their love of the Almighty God radically separate them from our modern scholars who are not in the habit of asking for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. All the books of true Adepts are filled with exhortations to the reader to turn to God. The Prophet Daniel already proclaimed: Blessed be the name of God from everlasting to everlasting, for to him belong wisdom and strength. It is he who changes times and times, who overthrows kings and raises up kings, who gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the intelligent.
It is he who reveals the deep and hidden things, who knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him (7): Turn to God, my son, cries Alànus, turn your heart and your mind towards him rather than Toward Art; for this science is one of the greatest gifts of God who favors whomever he pleases.
Therefore love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself; ask God for this knowledge with persistence and perseverance and he will grant it to you. who knows what is in the darkness and the light remains with him (7): Turn to God, my son, cries Alànus, turn your heart and your mind towards him rather than towards Art; for this science is one of the greatest gifts of God who favors whomever he pleases.
Therefore love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself; ask God for this knowledge with persistence and perseverance and he will grant it to you. who knows what is in the darkness and the light remains with him (7): Turn to God, my son, cries Alànus, turn your heart and your mind towards him rather than towards Art; for this science is one of the greatest gifts of God who favors whomever he pleases.
Therefore love God with all your heart and with all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself; ask God for this knowledge with persistence and perseverance and he will grant it to you. and your neighbor as yourself; ask God for this knowledge with persistence and perseverance and he will grant it to you. and your neighbor as yourself; ask God for this knowledge with persistence and perseverance and he will grant it to you.
Leafing through old Alchemy books one could quote texts of this kind endlessly.
They also separate themselves from modern science by their love of secrecy.
Science today, multiple and complicated, is open to everyone. The Sages were jealous of theirs. If their art seems difficult to those who seek it, for those who know it it is so easy that it is child's play and hard work. That's why they took so much care to hide it. They wanted to prevent it from falling into the hands of the wicked, the proud, the mediocre. This Art only reveals itself in simplicity, purity and love.
It would be madness to feed a donkey with lettuce or other rare herbs, say several Philosophers, since thistles are enough for it. The secret of the Stone is precious enough to make it a mystery. Anything that can become harmful to society, although excellent in itself, must not be divulged and it must only be spoken of in mysterious terms. (Chemical Harmony). Today's scholars are not inspired by the same discretion.
I swear to you on my soul, cries Raymond Lulle, that if you reveal this you will be damned. Everything comes from God and everything must return to him; you will therefore keep for him alone a secret which belongs only to him. If you made known with a few light words what required such long years of care,
The Sages of old traveled the world wearing dark cloaks. Possessors of the divine secret, they nevertheless did not worry about appearing learned. The Vulgar trusts only appearances, which is why they are always deceived. The Adepts lived mostly ignored.
It was prudence itself! wanting to reveal oneself to the world, even to save it, is almost surely to condemn oneself to torture and death. The: Adepts left without speaking, except, sometimes, in enigmatic terms in the manner of the Parables. Few of their contemporaries suspected their secret. Now we no longer believe in it at all. Has our mind become so far removed from it that we have become incapable of turning towards it?
Many researchers, curious about esotericism, place Alchemy or the Art of transmutations among the occult sciences in the same way as astrology, magic, medicine, divinatory arts, etc. In reality, Alchemy is not one of the branches of esotericism, it is the key or the Cornerstone.
Some Adepts (8) have publicly carried out metallic transmutations while others have never done so. do. He who possesses the Cornerstone of the Sages discovers without difficulty the means of metamorphosing common metals into gold, as also the practice of all particular arts and the secret of all medicines capable of improving the mineral, vegetable and natural natures. animal, but this is given to him in addition as it is said in the Gospels (9).
To look first for common gold (10) is therefore a fatal error inspired by the most sordid of greed: it is the one which has led astray all the enjoyers of this world for whom projection powder was only a means of acquiring material wealth and the elixir of life, that of preserving a licentious youth. Even today, many people say: let us first seek to “earn our living”, then we will seek wisdom. The unfortunate people do not realize that those who want to earn their living ultimately lose it since everything ends up in the pit.
The misers are never rich, the Wise on the contrary possess the source of all goods, “material” goods as well as others. it is the one which has led astray all the enjoyers of this world for whom projection powder was only a means of acquiring material wealth and the elixir of life, that of preserving a licentious youth. Even today, many people say: let us first seek to “earn our living”, then we will seek wisdom.
The unfortunate people do not realize that those who want to earn their living ultimately lose it since everything ends up in the pit. The misers are never rich, the Wise on the contrary possess the source of all goods, “material” goods as well as others. it is the one which has led astray all the enjoyers of this world for whom projection powder was only a means of acquiring material wealth and the elixir of life, that of preserving a licentious youth. Even today, many people say: let us first seek to “earn our living”, then we will seek wisdom.
The unfortunate people do not realize that those who want to earn their living ultimately lose it since everything ends up in the pit. The misers are never rich, the Wise on the contrary possess the source of all goods, “material” goods as well as others.
The unfortunate people do not realize that those who want to earn their living ultimately lose it since everything ends up in the pit. The misers are never rich, the Wise on the contrary possess the source of all goods, “material” goods as well as others.
The unfortunate people do not realize that those who want to earn their living ultimately lose it since everything ends up in the pit. The misers are never rich, the Wise on the contrary possess the source of all goods, “material” goods as well as others.
Others consider the science of Alchemy or Hermeticism as a set of metaphysical and abstract symbols. This is indeed the tendency of our minds! Especially since Descartes, the human mind has followed an increasingly accelerated process of disembodiment which tends to reduce human knowledge into abstract formulas (11).
The growing influence of luxuriant Hindu metaphysics (12), poorly understood by many Westerners, has only reinforced this trend. The prejudice of abstraction has become a disease of our mind and the most ignorant man of the people makes abstraction (13) as Monsieur Jourdain did prose without knowing it, lives in the abstract and dies from it like a learned theologian or metaphysician, without ever having seen that it is the sun which illuminates and animates him.
True knowledge is not abstract, but operative and “embodied.” The masters of Alchemy speak of the Great Work, of the Operative Art and of the manipulations to which they engaged. There is something completely different here than a game of abstractions. No era, moreover, proclaims itself as materialist as ours, yet none has ever been so far from the true material realization proposed by Alchemy which is the Art of the transmutations of matter to bring it to a state of perfect fixity, excluding the alternative of generation and corruption which characterizes our sublunary world.
Finally, others see in Alchemy only a method of mystical realization, a sort of Western and secret yoga. We readily speak of mystical or spiritual Alchemy: these terms are correct, strictly speaking, in their literal sense but they have become equivocal following the abusive use that has been made of them (14). In order not to increase confusion, it is better in our opinion not to associate them with Alchemy. By studying the relationship between mysticism and alchemy, we reach the crux of the problem that concerns us; we will see how they unite and how they separate.
One cannot be an Alchemist without being a holy mystic, since the Stone is a gift of love from the Most High God, but not all mystics and all saints are alchemists. We can even say that proportionally, among the saints, the number of Alchemists is as tiny as the number of saints among common men. We only know three Alchemists among all the saints (15) that the Catholic Church has placed on the altars:
Blessed R. Lulle, Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas (16). There are in fact, for fallen man, two paths that lead out of this mixed world: these are Love and Knowledge. Love often goes without Knowledge but the latter never goes without Love.
Let us say in a few words that the Saint is concerned with the salvation of his soul through the union of love with God. He sometimes receives the premises here below in ecstasy, which is a rapture in the spirit, outside the body. It is, in fact, impossible for the mystic (17), as long as he is in the bonds of the corruptible body, to be entirely delivered from the consequences of the fall.
Ecstasy is not the beatific vision, it is like a foretaste of it; Moreover, it is only a passing state. The Saint only cares about his fleshly body (18) to seek to free himself from it as from a prison. His true realization is in spirit although he can work miracles in the sensible world, through the Holy Spirit. His mind is a mirror of pure water in which the sky is reflected here below; but the vase which contains it remains fragile, coarse and perishable.
A renowned yogi master was once visited by a disciple who asked him to instruct him. The master took him to a cell and asked him to stay there for a month (or a year, whatever) concentrating his mind on the idea that he was a buffalo. The disciple remained wisely in the cell from which he never left; they came to bring him his food every day.
After a month, the master came back to see him and noticed that his disciple had perfectly achieved the state of a buffalo. He opened the door for her and told her to come out. The disciple did not move. As the master was surprised, the disciple said to him: "I cannot pass through the door, my horns are too large." He had done the exercise so well that he actually thought he had become a buffalo, and he was, but in spirit. His body was still that of a man.
The Hermetic Art, on the contrary, has as its object the complete metamorphosis of the entire being, soul, spirit and body, in an indissoluble fusion which produces the miracle of a single thing, the Stone of the Sages. Provided from Here below with the glorious body of the Resurrection(20), the Adept who has completed the Great Work can leave this world whenever he pleases(21) without passing through any death, or if he dies, he resurrects the third day.
By what means can this be done?
By Hermetic Medicine which is none other than the eternal Christ (22), the only one capable of saving man from the curse that has weighed on him since the fall of Adam. This medicine not only heals minds but also bodies and all that part of nature that man had taken with him.
It is the good Pelican fully realizing, by shedding blood for those he loves, the promise of total redemption, which even delivers us from the physical consequences of the fall. Saint Augustine could therefore write very truly in the City of God: Our very true and very powerful purifier and savior has taken on the whole of man(23).
But who still seeks the Medicine of God and his Mysteries? Who believes it? This indifference and forgetfulness are the greatest curse currently weighing on humanity.
Moses teaches us in his Genesis that God, when he created man placed him in the garden of Eden where he lived in perfect contentment, having nothing to desire and praising God. Although mortal, he did not die because he had the enjoyment of the fruit of the tree of life.
This wonderful food had the effect of keeping him safe from illness, old age and death. When, at the request of the ancient serpent, he tasted the forbidden fruit, the venom of darkness and death entered him.
Access to the garden was henceforth forbidden to him so that he could not stretch out his hand towards the fruit of the tree of life to eat it and live forever (24). Because it was the only Medicine capable of restoring his original immortality.
He was thrown into the animal world (25). A part of nature was dragged into its fall: The ground is cursed because of you. It is through hard work that you will get your food from it all the days of your life (26). It is in this fallen and corruptible world that humanity now lives a precarious and fleeting life, subject to misery, to ignorance, to all evils, the main one of which is inevitable death which brings with it death. dissolution of all compounds.
Men are therefore weakened patients, vampirized by a slow and deadly consumption, but they are patients who are most often unaware of themselves, because it has been given to very few of them to see a man in good health to whom they can compare themselves (27).
But, although fallen and obscured, the nature of man has not been modified in essence and substance: he remains in him like a light buried in darkness, an unalterable core of immortality, like a living fire but asleep. It is a seed in the bosom of the earth cooled by winter. She is Sleeping Beauty condemned to sleep for a thousand years until Prince Charming comes to wake her. like a living but dormant fire. It is a seed in the bosom of the earth cooled by winter.
She is Sleeping Beauty condemned to sleep for a thousand years until Prince Charming comes to wake her. like a living but dormant fire. It is a seed in the bosom of the earth cooled by winter. She is Sleeping Beauty condemned to sleep for a thousand years until Prince Charming comes to wake her.
The nutrition which maintains an ephemeral life in us is an act analogous to that of generation(28). Eating is, in a way, a union of love(29). Adam, according to whether he ate the fruit of life or the fruit of death was begotten: in life or in corruption (30).
According to the famous sentence of Pythagoras, Sôma Sema, our fleshly body is a tomb. Engendered in corruption by the effect of corruptible food, the flesh(31) cannot in any way participate in immortality(32). Man therefore needs spiritual nourishment, separated from the corruption of the mixed world(33).
The first secret of the Great Work is to find it. No distillation, however learned, can extract this very pure quintessence from the mixtures because it is indissolubly united with their corruption. This is the Prima Materia.
There are two kinds of fire. One comes to the other to wake him up and set him in motion.
As the spring sun comes to awaken the seeds sleeping in the bosom of the earth, this entirely spiritual food, prepared by means of Art, causes the seed of celestial fire to germinate in us, deeply buried in the darkness of a filthy earth. and impure. It is therefore not enough to find this raw material, it must also be prepared with Art so that Art comes to the aid of Nature to bring it to the highest degree of perfection.
Everyone in the world experiences it, and yet it is unknown to us. Ignoring the Art of using it, our life remains ephemeral:
It is not like your fathers who ate manna and died; whoever eats this bread will live forever (34). This hidden manna, daughter of the sun and the moon, descends from heaven like the dew giving life to everything; but it must be grasped in its pure state, before it mixes with the mixed ones. Its nature is volatile and does not settle easily. Saints, mystics and yogis have succeeded in discovering it; but they ignored the art of preparing it to make the Ambrosia on which the immortal gods feed. (35)
Homer, in the Odyssey, teaches us the same mysteries, under the veil of a beautiful fable: these are; adventures of Ulysses and his unfortunate companions in the kingdom of Circe (36). Ulysses' companions precede the hero to the enchantress's mansion.
There she sings in a beautiful voice and weaves a divine web (37), one of those dazzling and fine works whose grace betrays the hand of a goddess. She brings them in; she makes them sit in seats and armchairs; then, having beaten them in her Pramnos wine, cheese, flour and green honey, she adds to the mixture a fatal drug, to take away from them all memory of the homeland.
She brings the cup; they drink in one gulp. Then the goddess strikes them with her wand and locks them under the toes of her pigs. They had the head and the voice and the silks; they looked like it; but in them persisted their spirit of yesteryear. Here they are locked up.
They cried and Circe threw them beechnuts, acorns and cornels to eat, the usual food for wallowing codions (38). Having learned of the disaster, Ulysses sets out for the mansion of Circe, the drug addict, in the hope of freeing his companions. He meets Hennés (39) on the way, coming to meet him, carrying a golden wand (40). The god warns him of the dangers he faces and reveals to him the existence of a medicine which will protect him from the fatal drugs of the goddess: Having thus spoken, the god with the clear rays took from the ground an herb which he taught me to know it before giving it: the root is black and the flower, milk white; moly, say the gods; it is not without effort that mortals tear it away; but the gods can do anything (41).
History does not say whether Odysseus' companions ended up comfortably organized in their pigsty; if they had invented an edifying and complicated morality, a social justice from which they hoped, wonders and scientific progress which allowed them to prepare in an increasingly perfected way the acorns, ashes and cornels that the druggist gave them . The poet tells us that in the end, out of pure mercy, Circe delivered them at the prayer of Odysseus her lover (42). They had; much fattened: Under their fat, one would have said of new spring pigs (43). The goddess rubbed them with a new drug which purged them of their poison and they resumed their primitive form: Again, says the poem,
The Christian Mysteries have no other object than this divine Medicine. The Gospels only speak of this: I have to eat food that you do not know (44). Here Christ is the living bread come down from heaven (45) and the Jews disputed among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat (46).
Elsewhere, it is a treasure buried in a field: The man who found it, hides it there again and in his joy, he goes, sells everything he has and buys this field or a pearl, having found a pearl of great price he went and sold everything he had and bought it (47). It is a leaven that a woman puts in three measures of flour, or a small grain of mustard 48. It is a seed that a man throws in his garden (49). He sleeps and rises night and day and the seed germinates and grows without him knowing how (50). It is in this little grain, this little seed, so small, that the entire Kingdom of God consists. However small it may be, it is the only thing necessary. Marthe, you worry, you worry about many things. Only one is needed.
Mary, chose the good part which will not be taken away from her (51). Mary therefore chose, that is to say, she made a separation: the good part is the light separated from the darkness, it is the balm separated from the poison. It is an industrious bee but in its own way, which is not that of the world: The bee draws from its breast a liquid substance variously colored and beneficial to men; striking sign for those who reflect (52). May the diligent scrutinizer of this science Know that bees have the industry to draw their honey, even from poisonous herbs (53). So what was Mary doing while Marthe was agitated?
She had a sister named Mary who sat at the feet of the Lord and listened to his word. (54) So there is the work of Marthe who is agitated in vain, who worries about many things, except the good one, naturally. It is the work of the world which continues, of the world whose works are evil (55). There is Mary's work which consists of remaining at rest and receiving the Word. Nowadays, can anyone who chooses to do like Mary easily defend themselves from a small inferiority complex (but only at the beginning) vis-à-vis so many serious, hard-working people who are useful to society? So what was Mary doing while Marthe was agitated?
She had a sister named Mary who sat at the feet of the Lord and listened to his word. (54) So there is the work of Marthe who is agitated in vain, who worries about many things, except the good one, naturally. It is the work of the world which continues, of the world whose works are evil (55). There is Mary's work which consists of remaining at rest and receiving the Word. Nowadays, can anyone who chooses to do like Mary easily defend themselves from a small inferiority complex (but only at the beginning) vis-à-vis so many serious, hard-working people who are useful to society? So what was Mary doing while Marthe was agitated?
She had a sister named Mary who sat at the feet of the Lord and listened to his word. (54) So there is the work of Marthe who is agitated in vain, who worries about many things, except the good one, naturally. It is the work of the world which continues, of the world whose works are evil (55). There is Mary's work which consists of remaining at rest and receiving the Word. Nowadays, can anyone who chooses to do like Mary easily defend themselves from a small inferiority complex (but only at the beginning) vis-à-vis so many serious, hard-working people who are useful to society? (54) So there is the work of Marthe who is agitated in vain, who worries about many things, except the good one, naturally.
It is the work of the world which continues, of the world whose works are evil (55). There is Mary's work which consists of remaining at rest and receiving the Word.
Nowadays, can anyone who chooses to do like Mary easily defend themselves from a small inferiority complex (but only at the beginning) vis-à-vis so many serious, hard-working people who are useful to society? (54) So there is the work of Marthe who is agitated in vain, who worries about many things, except the good one, naturally. It is the work of the world which continues, of the world whose works are evil (55).
There is Mary's work which consists of remaining at rest and receiving the Word. Nowadays, can anyone who chooses to do like Mary easily defend themselves from a small inferiority complex (but only at the beginning) vis-à-vis so many serious, hard-working people who are useful to society?
It is a Word, indeed, which comes in the morning breeze. In her are all the delights of the world (56). Some receive it well, but do not keep it or warm it in the gentle fire of the Philosophical Athanor. As he spoke thus, a woman, raising her voice in the midst of the crowd, said to him: "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you have success." Jesus replied: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it (57).
Truly, truly, I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. (58) The Prologue to the Gospel according to Saint John contains within itself the whole mystery of transmutations (59) In him was life, and the life was the light of men: but as for as many as received him, to them did he give power to become children of God.
He was a doctor in Israel; his name was Nicodemus. This one was not like those of his caste; he knew his ignorance and sought to learn. So he came to see Jesus but at night and in secret, for fear of the Jews (60), and Jesus taught him by what mysteries the children of Mary are generated: “No one unless he is born again of Water and of the Spirit cannot enter the kingdom of God. For that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The wind blows where it wants and you hear its voice (61); but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going: so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. » Nicodemus replied:
“How can this be? » Jesus said to him: “You are a doctor in Israel and you do not know these things (62)”.
It is from this Water, very pure substance, virginal quintessence of the Elements, that everything was made (63) by means of the Word of which it is the vehicle. It is dry water that does not wet your hands. Philosophers call it their Mercury, their quicksilver. Sometimes it is steam, sometimes water, sometimes earth.
She goes up to heaven and comes back down. He ascends from earth to heaven and again descends to earth and receives the force of higher and lower things. By this means you will have all the glory of the world and all darkness will depart from you. He separates the subtle from the thick, gently and with great industry (64).
If you want, you can hear me, said Mercury to the Philosopher. You see my shape on the outside, you don't need that. But as for you asking me about my center, know that my center is the very fixed heart of all things, that it is immortal and penetrating: and in it is the rest of my Lord (65).
The Words of Yahweh are pure words. Silver melted in a crucible on earth. Seven times purified (66).
Anyone who wants to make a forest is told that the oak belongs to the genus Quercus, that its male flowers are grouped in slender, hanging catkins, that its fruit is more or less ovoid, the base resting in an involucre shaped like a cup. , that its maturation is annual or biennial, that its leaves are deciduous and lobed or persistent and entire or slightly toothed, that its wood is heterogeneous. We list the various varieties: the peduncle oak, the sessile oak, the American red oak, the white oak, the cork oak.
With a little application, one can become very knowledgeable in this way.
But wouldn't it be better for this one if we gave him an acorn? He would sow it in a little soil; prepared and then he would let the sun and the moon, the wind, the rain, the seasons, time. The acorn would become an oak tree, giving rise to other acorns. Thus, he who knows how to wait manages to multiply the forest.
The true seed in the true earth is the whole art of Alchemy.
Finding an acorn or the oak that bears it after having prepared its soil is equivalent to discovering Ariadne's thread to escape the labyrinth. The beginning of the work is obscure, the Philosophers have carefully hidden it.
There is a time for everything, we do not sow in all seasons. The ancient Sages who established the foundation of Astrology had better things to do than horoscopes: determine the time of sowing, that of germination, of flower, of fruit, of harvest, of grape harvest; predict cold weather and hot weather, snow and fertilizing rain, know when and how the humble humus is made, when the earth hardens under the bite of the cold snake of winter, when it becomes nourishing and warm under the loving caress of the sun.
This is the Art. These are not images or poetic figures.
All the Wise Philosophers, all the Prophets of the East and the West have only established the initiatory mysteries and written the Holy Scriptures to transmit to men the elements of this agricultural Art (67). He who despises them despises his own life and will lose it.
But they only gave us their teaching in veiled terms: it is a box that travels on the back of a donkey through the centuries. The key to the box is in the power of
Almighty God who lends it to whomever he wishes.
The Sages of all times have known only one mystery: that of the Incarnation, Death and glorious Resurrection of the Lord of life. This is where they come together. This is where they are Wise. Under differences of temperaments, climates, expressions which mislead superficial minds, they have only known a small child lying in the hollow of an oak tree and his mother who brings him, first of all, with a gracious greeting.
There would be a lot to write about this but we; let us fear being drawn into making a large volume, instead of a modest attempt. And then, we are not trying to convince anyone. Did the Mysteries of Isis, Osiris and Horus in Egypt, those of Demeter and Persephone in Eleusis (68), those of Dionysus, the sacred meals of the Pythagoreans (69) have another purpose? Lao Tzu, Krishna,
All the mysteries come together in the Theophany of Bethlehem.
The Wise Seeker must consider the whole Great Work, writes Jacob Boehme, in relation to the humanity of Christ, from the moment he came out of his mother's womb. Mary, until her resurrection and ascension. The Magus must keep and observe this succession in close connection with the Great Work (70).
I am he who is who was and who is to come, says Christ.
Abraham your father rejoiced at seeing my day; he saw it and rejoiced. But it was a scandal for the Jews who took stones to throw at him. It is always like this.
Let the curious but unconvinced reader study without prejudice (that is what is difficult) the Ancient Mysteries, let him read with a friendly heart the Holy Scriptures of the East and the West. He will realize that there is only one teaching, more or less obscured among all the peoples of the world. It can be said in one sentence:
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Water is an excellent medicine, but we must know how to fix it, say the Philosophers: We draw from the earth which comes to us from above the perpetual movement, if it dissolves in its water, by means of the philosophical fire, after She took the form of chaos that the Clements had before the separation of Elemental things. (71).
When this precious material, daughter of the Sun and the Moon (72), is placed in the well-sealed philosophical vase, it takes on a very black color that Artists call Raven's Head. It is the alchemical putrefaction during which the union of the male and the female takes place (73). The color black is therefore the first color of the work.
Then, the material whitens little by little. It first takes on the gray color: it is Jupiter (tin) which succeeds Saturn (lead). When it appears, you can burn all the books, say the Philosophers. Finally, it is the color white, Artemis, Diana whiter than snow and who only shows herself naked to candid lovers of Science. The ancients gave Persephone (74) taken to the underworld by Pluto the name Pherephates: who feeds the turtledoves.
She is mother and nourisher, in fact, because the black color nourishes the white color, which comes from it, as the black root of the Moly grass nourishes its white flower. White color is therefore the main color of the work. It is the White Stone, it dyes metals silver. The white elixir is obtained from it, which is an excellent remedy for the spirits.
The material finally, after passing through various intermediate colors, changes to red. It is the red stone from which the red elixir is made, an excellent medicine for minds and bodies. It has the property of dyeing all metals gold.
According to the fable, Latona, pregnant with Diana and Apollo and pursued by the serpent Python, gave birth on the island of Delos that Neptune had fixed on the sea to serve as her refuge.
Diana, the White Stone who was the first to be born from black matter, helped give birth to Apollo or the Red Stone. White and red in fact come from the same root, black but white precedes red.
These are the three main colors that the Adepts observe in the alchemical vessel during the elaboration of the Great Work.
The little child that the Sages raise with care grows in age and wisdom. He becomes a very powerful prince: he straightens what was crooked, he heals the sick. He restores movement to the paralyzed, sight to the blind, life to the dead. He walks on water. He does all sorts of admirable things. He is a very excellent judge, an invincible prince who enriches his friends with the spoils of his enemies.
Finally, he is handed over to the Jews to be crucified. His flesh is truly food and his blood is drink; he nourishes his friends with it; he communicates to them his own life so that they become his brothers. On the third day he is resurrected gloriously and ascends to heaven.
Every time the Jews crucify him, he resurrects and his power is multiplied; ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. He is glorious and invincible. He is a faithful friend who helps his people in all their needs. He is enough for everything: Happy is he who has found the way to his palace: he will have nothing more to desire from now on.
We drank in memory of the Beloved a wine that intoxicated us before the creation of the vineyard. Our drink was there, full moon. He is a sun; a croissant makes it circulate. How many stars shine when mixed!
Without its scent, I would not have found my way to its taverns.
Without its brilliance, the imagination could not conceive it. Let it one day come to a man's mind, Joy will take hold of him and sorrow will go away. The mere sight of the stamp placed on the vases.
Enough to make the guests fall into drunkenness. If they watered the earth of a tomb with such wine, the dead would find his soul and his body would be revived. Lying in the shade of the wall of his vineyard, The sick man, already dying, would immediately regain his strength.(76)
The discredit in which these mysteries are left has always been a subject of astonishment for lovers of life. They concluded with Heraclitus that man, of himself, is not intelligent, that he cannot go spontaneously towards the Mystery, if God does not attract him. Men, left in the darkness of ignorance, betray and deride the holy words. As far as history allows us to judge, the last hundred and fifty years appear to have been those of the greatest degradation of the human spirit; our century above all is particularly rebellious to the teaching of the ancient Sages and this for precise reasons which we will endeavor to recall by way of conclusion.
The Gospels, and especially that of John, make frequent allusions to a fundamental opposition of the Prince of this World to the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus. But it is the Prophet Muhammad who gives us the entire solution to the problem of evil in a verse from the Koran: We commanded the angels to worship Adam and they worshiped him. The proud Eblis (77) refused to obey and was among the infidels (78).
Deceived by the appearance of the mud from which Adam had been made, Satan refused the mystery of the Incarnation. This is why since the fall, he has tried by all means to turn men away from Salvation Medicine. He distracts them by the very astonishing miracles that they accomplish under his inspiration, and which are in reality nothing more than an immense entertainment in the Pascalian sense of the word.
Satan is a very learned spirit of science. He knows that human knowledge is a powerful illusion that distracts men from the knowledge of God.
He is a renowned doctor. His medicine has also made such progress that we hardly know anything other than that and we no longer seek that of God and his saints (79).
He is a great theologian, very picky about the question of orthodoxy: he knows that it is the best way to separate men into rival sects and to divide what God wants to unite.
He is a subtle metaphysician: it is through this that the mind gets lost in its own thoughts, separates itself from the earth which nourishes and fixes it and gets lost in the clouds.
He rightly spreads the fear of the devil among the faithful. He knows that this fear very effectively distracts from the search for the mysteries those whose faith is uncertain.
He is a great politician (80), a diplomat, a strategist. By the lure of an illusory and purely external power based on violence, he knows how to make men forget that they had been designed (81) to exercise the Royal Art.
He is an ardent patriot. The term is also recent: it is one of his latest creations. For the men of three centuries ago, it was devoid of meaning: but they were barbarians ignorant of progress, who did not know how to wage war as well as we do. Patriotism is wonderfully effective in making men forget the memory of their homeland.
Satan has just invented a new disguise: He is a social reformer full of generous and attractive ideas and a distinguished economist. He is full of good will towards men, he wants to organize the pigsty better and better. He is interested in social justice, “structural” reforms, the defense of property, collectivism, and economic prosperity. He is by turns reactionary and progressive.
He is conservative, democrat, fascist, Marxist, what else? Everything brings water to its mill, everything that troubles, everything that confuses, everything that distracts from the One necessary. Produce, he preaches to us to increase your wealth and your well-being, consume to increase production.
Go and bring good words and civilization to “backward” peoples. Awaken their lust: that the sun, the olive and the date are no longer enough for them. Make them consumers, producers, slaves. He glorifies all works: human and the painful work of men in chains; he speaks of “redemption” through work.
Who said he was God's monkey? Perhaps in a lost corner, an isolated wise man is still content with the little garden that God has given him to share and lets the sun and the moon, the water and the earth, work for him. Let Satan not find out! He would denounce him as an antisocial being who has no sense of community. He would even invoke the Need to practice charity to force our wise man to fall into line, in the exhausting dance of fools.
The time is not far away when he who does not have the mark of the Beast on his forehead and hands will no longer be able to buy or sell. He even succeeded in making beggars disappear from our regions (82), but not the misery or despair of men.
In the name of Science, he profanes everything he touches. He violates the tombs (83). He dishonors women. Has he not just discovered artificial generation, this odious simulacrum of parthenogenesis? Man was a child of love (84). In a few years this will no longer be true.
Satan is an insurance advisor. It insures against all risks: theft, fire, unemployment, illness. He also does life insurance. It's a very productive little traffic, but it has never stopped anyone from dying. He has done so well that we have lost the meaning of this word: Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Are our incredible achievements not likely to seduce, if possible, the elected officials themselves? Our science, our technique are prodigies, compared to ancient times. And yet, every day we feel more alone, more worried about tomorrow, more abandoned, more deprived. What psychoanalysis could therefore break down the wall of anxiety that grips us? We believe ourselves to be civilized: we are only ignorant barbarians, armed with formidable techniques.
We are abandoned orphans who have lost even the memory of their parents and their heritage, falling more and more into a vulgar and crude world that was not made for them. No, we were collected and raised; by rebellious slaves, after having imposed their conceptions of life on us, they chained us to their illusory clubs. The song of the turtle dove no longer awakens the sons of Kings.
Man has lost the path that leads to his father's palace. He no longer knows that he was created to reign in joy over festivals and games.
For that which strives so passionately to find by its own lights. Happiness lost by the fall. But his lights are those of a rebellious slave. The poison is in him, and all his knowledge will never succeed in separating life from death. His work is as illusory as the children's sand castles on the beach: each tide dissolves them and yet they strive in vain to maintain them, after each disaster, a pretentious schoolmaster comes to encourage them to resume the same work according to a new, more perfected plan.
Isn't it finally time, for those who have understood, to stop this little game? With the benefit of time, the French Revolution appears to have been an important stage in world history. There is always in man an old source of revolt smoldering like a latent fire. But since the 18th century it has taken on the proportions of a vast fire which threatens the entire planet.
On January 21, 1793, the head of King Louis XVI, the last and unfortunate successor of the Pharaohs, the kings of Israel and Judas, fell in Paris under the blade of the guillotine. We simply note a fact: the Monarchy by divine right conferred by The holy anointing and the only legitimate foundation of political power disappeared forever (85). From that time on, men have collectively and publicly renounced what comes from above to turn only to what is below. Is this a coincidence? Since that time the Sages have no longer been talked about.
For a hundred and fifty years we have all suffered, without discussion, the deadliest of all dogmas, that of Scientific Progress (86). Where are its benefits?
The man ? internally divided, vampirized, thrown outside of himself into the infernal carousel of titanic tasks, periodically promised to apocalyptic massacres.
The society ? Dissolved, reduced to the sterility of human sand (87) which the winds accumulate and disperse at will in the desert. Matter, finally, disintegrated.
We are told with anguish of a Christian civilization under threat, when there is no longer any Christian civilization. There remains a vague scent of Christianity which is slowly dissipating. The smell that follows it is of another nature. The future is more uncertain than ever and we fear new mass graves. The Sages never say: Forge weapons, make alliances. Rather, they say: Convert to the love of God. He who created heaven and earth does whatever he pleases. He can also, if he wants, dissipate storms.
Man today is infinitely sad. He takes everything seriously work, poverty, wealth, pleasure everything, except freedom in love and joy he has fun, he is gloomy. As the imprisoned squirrel spins its cage, trapped in its own game, it becomes dizzy, Esau exchanged his birthright for a dish of lentils and we exchanged the almond, alive, for the bark dead.
And the devil having taken him to a high mountain, showed him in a moment all the kingdoms of the earth and said to him: I will give you all this power and all the glory of these kingdoms; FOR IT WAS GIVEN TO ME AND I GIVE IT. TO WHOM I WANT (88).
Satan, counsel insurer of lost humanity, where will you be when the day of judgment arrives? The day when everyone's work will be put to the test by fire?
... And it will be like a dream, a vision of the night... As he who is hungry dreams that he is eating, And when he wakes up his soul is empty; And as a thirsty man dreams of drinking. And when he wakes up he is exhausted and still thirsty. So it will be with the multitude of all the nations that walk! against the mountain of Zion...(89)
END
Notes.
1 He was tortured for years by the elector of Saxony Christian II who never managed to extract his secret from him.
2 Like Glauber. Glauber's salt is well known in pharmacies.
3 Louis Figuier, Alchemy and the Alchemists or Historical and Critical Essay on Hermetic Philosophy, Paris. Lecou, 1854. The author, a conscientious historian, very erudite but incredulous according to the prejudices of his time, finds himself visibly poisoned by the account he gives us of certain metallic transmutations carried out by Adepts of times gone by; all the more so since these experiments present us with guarantees of control which have nothing to envy of our modern methods. Figuier was still in the dogma, simple bodies in chemistry. By virtue of an a priori well in line with scientific prejudice, he considered the art of transmutations impossible, going so far as to deny the evidence of; facts he reported.
4 D. Mendeleiev (1834-1907) discovered at the beginning of the 20th century the chemical classification of bodies known as the Mendeleiev Table and which places simple bodies according to the constant gradation of their atomic weight. This intuition, rather than discovery, leaves room empty for several bodies anticipated by the scientist and which were actually discovered subsequently; it puts down the conception of the diversity of matter which prevailed during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Unity of “matter” was to be officially recognized in recent years with atomic theories where only the variation of intra-atomic elements determines this or that body.
5 A, savoret, What is Alchemy? Hengel, Paris, Ed. de Psyché, 7, rue Séguier, Paris 6, 1947.
6 Do not confuse “eternal life”, which must be taken in the most literal sense, with the survival of the soul after death. Death is the dissolution of a compound of which some elements can survive. But this is not eternal life for man.
7 Daniel, ch. II. 20.:
8 Like A. Setton in the 17th century who paid for this imprudence with his freedom and his life and Lascaris in the 18th century who had the skill to remain in the shadows and had the transmutations carried out by young people to whom he entrusted a little projection powder without telling them the secret.
9 Luke XII, 31.
10 It is properly the lacewing.
11 This tendency already existed in the MA with Scholasticism and the proud edifice of reasoning theology. The Adepts have always denounced her. Our “materialist” and blind science was born from a reaction. Is there no other attitude for the human spirit than to crawl like a caterpillar on the earth's crust and to lose itself in the clouds of the disembodied spirit? The famous saying is still true: He who wants to act the angel, acts the beast.
12 The term “metaphysics” was born moreover from the error of a copyist who titled in this way the reflections on being that Aristotle had written at the end of his treatise on physics; Metaphysics in fact means: what comes after physics. The ancients, contemporaries of Aristotle and Plato, never knew either the name or the thing that we know today under that same name. We do not remember enough of it when we read their works and this prejudice distorts our entire conception of antiquity. The ancients only knew Physics, a word formed from the root Phy, that which grows, or science of Nature. Their science was a true knowledge which had as its object the substance of things. Ours is a technique that only addresses appearances. To put an end to the metaphysical monster, let us further note that in the best sense of the term, it is a meditation which leads to an abstract knowledge of the essence or of the Father. But this knowledge remains purely speculative and abstract. True knowledge is found complete in the mystery of the Incarnation: He who sees the Son sees the Father and no one can go to the Father except through the Son.
13 The words themselves are emptied of their concrete meaning, there are only slogans whose power is such that they resist all the denials brought to them by the facts. These are the collective illusions skillfully maintained by all the propaganda that is so powerful today. H. taine already denounced this evil in the Origins of Contemporary France, as did Le Bon. On this subject, see the remarkable study by Mr. Marcel de Corte, professor at the University of Liège: Incarnation of Man (Psychology of Contemporary Morals). Editions Universitaires, Brussels, 1944. (Librairie de Médicis, Paris.)
14 The term “mystic” comes from the Greek mystikos, describing in the ancient mysteries those who had been regenerated by communing with Hermetic Medicine. In this sense we can obviously speak correctly of mystical alchemy. Spiritual, from Spiritus, breath, originally had the same meaning since man becomes spiritual by receiving the wind which blows where he wants; it is the regeneration that Jesus explains to Nicodemus (John III, 8). But these terms have so degenerated from their original meaning as a result of the obscuration of our minds that it seems wiser not to associate them with Alchemy. We talk too readily about spirituality, or the defense of “spiritual values of which no one knows what they could possibly consist of. This is yet another example of this modern tendency towards disembodiment,
15 Apart from certain apostles, direct disciples and contemporaries of Jesus.
16 The last two were concerned with Alchemy, but it is not absolutely certain that they possessed the Stone.
17 We use this word in the watered-down sense given to it today.
18 If he hopes to be clothed at the end of time with the glorious resurrection body, he does not care how this can be done.
19 It is useless to dwell on the triple constitution of man in soul, spirit and body, a heritage of Egyptian teaching. The Greeks said we, psyche, sôrna. These notions are familiar to the reader. We also know that there are two deaths: the dissolution of the material body which returns to the earth and that of the spirit which returns to the stars from which it came. After physical death, the saint passes through this second death without damage. Rev. II, 11.
In the Greek tradition, see Plutarch, On the face we see in the Moon.
A good summary of this treatise was made by J. Mallinger, Les Secrets esoteriques dans Plutarque, Niclaus, Paris, 1946.
20 Corpus Hermeticum, text established by A. nock and translated by A.-J. festugière, Soc. of Et. des Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1945, 2 vols. See especially treatise XIII: Secret Discourse on the Mountain. Matthew XVII, 1, 9. We draw the reader's attention to the fact that these two revelations take place on a mountain. Recent archaeological discoveries have made it possible to place the composition of the books of Hermes many centuries before Christianity, which clearly indicates the longevity of the Christo-Hermetic inspiration.
21 Genesis V, 21 — II Kings II, 1, 14 — John XI, 44 — Rev. XX, 6. The Jews who transmitted Egyptian teaching to us in the Bible were not more grateful to the holy land of Egypt from which they came, than their descendants, Christians and Muslims. Only the Greeks remembered Egypt. But the Hermetic teaching was more quickly obscured among most of them under the mass of mythological fables and philosophical subtleties.
22 Nothing could be written on this theme that has not already been written in an excellent way by an 18th century alchemist in a recently republished book: by Eckhartshaitsen, The Cloud on the Sanctuary, trans. A. savoret. Ed. de Phyché, rue Séguier, Paris. We refer the reader there
23 X, 37. Ed. and trans. perret, Paris, Garnier. Saint Augustine writes this sentence in a passage where he attacks a treatise by the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry, the de Regressu animae. He criticized him for seeking mystical escape, flight from the body, which is only a very incomplete realization compared to true Christianity which even offers us the rescue of our physical bodies. The argument of the Bishop of Hippo is perfect as an apology for Christianity. But it gives us a very inaccurate idea of the philosophy of Porphyry to whom the Egyptian mysteries and the art of transmutations seem to have been very familiar.
24 Genesis III, 22.
25 Idem, III, 21.
26 Idem, III, 17.
27 And he was transfigured before them: his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as the light. And behold, Moses and She appeared to them, conversing with him. Math. XVII, 2. The glorious body of the resurrection is not the astral body. John XX, 27.
28 The Cosmopolitan, Philosophical Letter, Trans. From German by A. Duval, Paris, 1671.
29 Man no longer knows how to eat or drink with love, while praying and praising God.
30 It is in this sense that we must interpret the countless passages of the Bible where we speak of the chaste and pure woman, the strong woman, etc., or, on the contrary, the prostitute, the adulterous and corrupt woman who would have no descendants, etc.
31 It is the mud that covers a lot of pure gold, the appearance deceiving. It is the dark and stained garment of which the follower strips himself at the Resurrection as the butterfly emerges from the caterpillar, let us note that the body of the butterfly is just as palpable as that of the caterpillar: the same is true for the body glorious.
32 John VI, 63. Paul I Cor. XV, 50.
33 The mixed ones are the sensitive productions that fallen nature offers us here below; these are the three kingdoms mineral, vegetable, animal that hermetic medicine aims to cure of their leprosy both in the microcosm and in the microcosm. They are subject to alteration through corruption. The simpler the food, the better it is. Multiplicity breeds death and simplicity, life.
34 John VI 58.
35 Certain saints were such condensers of life that their bodies did not know the corruption of death, and even in the tomb, they radiated life by healing the sick. It is a first step, so to speak, on the path to Resurrection. Let's mention at random: the Curé d'Ars, Bernadette, Soubirous, etc. The mainstream press recently spoke of a pious Syrian solitary, the monk Charbel, who died in the last century. His body seems to be sleeping and exudes the scent of a healthy man. Many healings took place on his tomb. Some doctors have removed pieces of viscera and brain from this glorified body in order to “scientifically” study this phenomenon! Our century no longer shrinks from any desecration! See on this subject II Kings XIII, 21.
36 Homer, Odyssey, Canto X. The poems of Homer and Hesiod are in reality treatises on Alchemy for the use of the Greeks and inspired by Egyptian Hermeticism. Ulysses is the Wise Artist, his companions, the imprudent researchers B whose blunders the hero must constantly repair, Penelope, the profane who undoes his day's work at night, Circe, there g Corrupt nature but which can be defeated and submitted to the desire for a Wise Artist, etc. Clement of Alexandria believed that the books of Homer and Hesiod were the Bible of the Greeks. Instead of pitting inspired books against each other as we usually do, it would be better to read them in light of each other. On this same subject, see Tobbie VI, 17 and VIII, 4.
37 This is the generation of mixed people.
38 X, 220, trans. Berard. Lib. A.Colin. Paris, 1932. See also Luke XV, 16.
39 The Mercury of the Philosophers, their Quick Silver. He is the messenger of the gods. He descends from Heaven and rises again; the Greeks made him the god of speech.
40 This is the hermetic caduceus.
41 Verse 302.
42 His magical charms had no effect on the hero who possessed the hermetic herb Moly; he had therefore easily imposed his yoke on him. Likewise the Wise Artist possessor of the hermetic secret exercises the Royal Art over all Nature. But it is royalty without violence. It is that of the gardener in his garden and of the bridegroom in the bridal chamber. Everything is done effortlessly. Secular science, on the contrary, acts through violence and constraint. The Adepts recommend that the apprentice follow nature, receive its lessons, work in concert with it, come to its aid without ever seeking to violate it.
43 Around 390 et seq.
44 John IV, 32.
45 John VI, 51.
46 John VI, 58.
Albert the Great, Marian Bible: in Ev. sec Math. 11, makes the distinction between mystical realization and Alchemical realization through the Medicine of life: The ninth degree (of the poverty of Christ) consists of giving everything, one's soul and one's own body to which the divinity is united, to give them to the food of the soul, under a foreign aspect (sub specie aliena says the Latin text, it is the Eucharistic mystery, exoteric and mystical food, food of the spirit and the soul). The Tenth degree, to give oneself, deity, in body and soul in one's own aspect as nourishment for body and soul with eternal bliss (sub specie propia: alchemical realization operating in an indissoluble union the transmutation of spirits and bodies to make it the miracle of a unique thing which is the Stone) as it is written in Saint-Luke XIV, 15: Happy is he who will take part in the banquet in the kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God, as it is said in the Gospels, is a little seed, a little seed that grows imperceptibly when it is sown in its soil. The Tenth degree is the summit of all achievement, the number of the Sun, the Hermetic Decade: By the coming of the decade, my child, the spiritual generation was formed in us. And we were deified by this birth (Hermes Trism. XIII, 10, op. rit.). It is also the great Christian festival of Saint John, the fire is kindled on the earth: The next day, John was still there with two of his disciples. Having looked at Jesus as he passed, he said: “Here is the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned around and saw that they were following him and said to them: “What are you looking for? They answered him, “Rabbi (meaning Master, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see. They went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned around and saw that they were following him and said to them: “What are you looking for? They answered him, “Rabbi (meaning Master, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see. They went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned around and saw that they were following him and said to them: “What are you looking for? They answered him, “Rabbi (meaning Master, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see. They went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. Jesus turned around and saw that they were following him and said to them: “What are you looking for? They answered him, “Rabbi (meaning Master, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see. They went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. Jesus turned around and saw that they were following him and said to them: “What are you looking for? They answered him, “Rabbi (meaning Master, where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see. They went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. They went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. Now, it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone. They went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. Now, it was about the tenth hour. This same number 10 which brings back to unity is also the summit of the Pythagorean Tetractys where Apollo, the fixed, the male, and his nine sisters, the Muses: the Volatile, the Woman are united. The union of the two produces the volatilization of the Fixed (or spiritualization of the body) and the fixation of the Volatile or corporification of the spirit, that is to say, the Stone.
47 Math. XIII, 44, 45. The Tibetans speak of the pearl in the lotus.
48 Mark IV, 30. // taught them thus by various parables according as they were Capable of hearing it. Luke XIIl 18, 20. There is also this text of Saint Paul, 1 Cor. XV 35, too long to be quoted in full but truly extraordinary in precision: What you sow is not the body that will be one Day, it is a simple grain, whether of wheat, or of some other seed: but God gives him a body as he wanted and to each seed he gives the body that is proper to it, etc. We refer the reader there.
49 Mark IV, 26.
50 Genesis III, 23: And Yahweh God brought him out of the garden of Eden to cultivate the land from which he had been taken. Ezekiel XXI, 35: It is in the place where you were created, on the earth where you were born that I will judge you... Idem, XXII, 24: You are a land that has no. not been purified, which was not .. washed by the rain in a day of wrath.
51 LucX,41
52 Quran: Surah XVI, 71.
53 Cosmopolitan, Treatise on Sulfur. Preface, Paris, 1679.
54 Lux Because it is not enough to receive the Word, we must also keep it.
55 Jesus said to them: The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I bear witness to it that its works are evil. John VII, 7.
56 And you will possess all the glory of the World, says Hermes Trismegistus in the Emerald Tablet. 57 Luke II
, 19. Idem , 60 John III, 1, 21. 61 Genesis III, 8: Then they heard the voice of Yahweh God passing through the garden in the breeze of the day.
62 The same Mysteries are taught in an almost identical way by Hermes Trismegistus to his son Tat in the secret discourse on the mountain (op. cit.). That which is carried above like fire, below like earth, that which is humid like water, that which blows everywhere the Universe like air... but how could you perceive it by means of the senses , that which is neither rigid nor liquid, that which cannot be squeezed or inserted, that which is apprehended only by the effects of its power and its energy, that which requires someone who is capable of conceive birth in God. And the Master concludes by saying Draw it to you and it will come. Philosophers in fact have a magnet with which they attract. water from the moon. The disciple asks this question again: Tell me this again:
63 Genesis I, 2. It is the Prima Materia separated from the mixed.
64 Hermes Trismegistus, Emerald Tablet. It is she who is the object of the Hermetic Philosopher's research, the precious material for his work.
65 Cosmopolite or New Chemical Light, Paris, 1669.
66 ps. XII, 7.
67 It was to Gentiles, no doubt, Hellenized people, that Jesus said: If your grain of wheat fallen into the ground does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
68 Now this was the teaching of Eleusis. Is it pure coincidence? John XII, 20.
69 Herodotus IV, 94, 95.
70 Every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that does not confess, not this Jesus is not of God. John I, ep. IV, 2.
71 Cosmopolitan. Philosophical Letter.
72 Philosophers also call it Flos coeli, flower of the sky, or Nostoch.
73 Speaking of the mysteries of Latona and Artemis, Plutarch writes: The aim of marriage is generation, that is to say a progressive march from darkness towards light. Fraçm. IX, 5 (ed. Didot, p. 18). See also Isaiah VIII, 23 to IX, 6.
74 porphyry, De Abstinentia, IV, 16. Ed. Nauck 254, 22.
76 It is impossible to quote in its entirety this wonderful love poem, the Praise of Wine, d 'Umar Ibn al Fâridh, whom his Muslim brothers had nicknamed the prince of lovers. (Trans. E. Dermenghem and Abdelmalek Faray, Editions Vega, Paris, 1931.)
77 Satan.
78 Koran, I, 32. Trans. Savary, Garnier, Paris.
79 D. bertholet, Christ and the healing of diseases Held, Lausanne.
80 John But it is no longer practiced today.
81 I am the Immaculate Conception, said the Virgin to Bernadette. O evocative power of the words which are given to us and which we no longer receive.
82 For Lao Tzu, beggars were the most estimable beings in the world while the most vile were the soldiers. The current world imposes the military state on all men but prohibits beggars. What can we say about a world where the beggar is no longer welcomed or understood? It is true that since the Middle Ages, this admirable profession has often been dishonored by unscrupulous individuals. We have abolished begging, but we have replaced it with this horrible institution which is the DP camps.
83 Did we not cry scandal at the exploits of the Carmelite excavators in Barcelona? What then can we say about the mummy unearthers exposed to the curiosity of the scoundrel in all the museums in Europe and elsewhere?
84 In principle at least.
85 Do not confuse the Coronation of the kings of France and the Tsars of Russia, with the coronation of the emperors of Germany and other sovereigns. The first two appear to have been the only theocratic monarchs that Europe has known. In Asia and pre-Columbian America, the names Son of Heaven, Son of the Sun, Son of the Sun and Moon also betray the alchemical origin of the power of the emperors of China and Japan, the kings of Siam and the Incas of Peru. .
Pride and violence always confuse the good core with its sometimes worm-eaten bark. According to Saint Paul, we must not reject what is good because of what is bad.
86 It has been rightly said that this is the opium of the crowds.
87 The expression is from E, Renan.
88 Luke IV, 5..
89 Isaiah XXIX. 7.