Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. I trust that you were all able to spend at least a little bit of time meditating on the mining of the two ores and hopefully some more of their wisdom has been revealed to you. If it hasn’t been yet, don’t worry, everything comes in its own time for each of us, one day all of it will make sense. I never truly understood the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” until I spent years meditating over alchemical artwork. Today we will be moving from the detailed golden mirror and the miners within, and we will be turning to an even more detailed and complicated image that is as beautiful as it is mysterious. Our plate today takes the appearance of a beautiful gold and stone bath or fountain as the frame with the central miniature like a fresco that would have been painted on a bath wall.

To begin the 6^th plate in our series we will take a look at the border as always, and unlike many of the other borders in this series, this one will be relatively simple to cover. The border of this plate is a golden fountain or bath room and we will be starting at the bottom with four women bathing in a pool, they are being attended to by their two assistants, their pool is being filled by a golden fountain, and behind them is a plaque that reads 1582. The earliest copies that we have of the Solis date back to the 1530s so this could have been an image of their vision of the future, a reference to a date or “prophecy,” or just a date used to help the text age better to the reader, it isn’t all that clear today. The walls of this bath form the sides and top of the border is made up of the crown molding of the room along with the Putti (cherubs) and horse statues that we see on both sides of the ceiling. These help maintain the imagery from the previous plate with some of the natural joys of life. The walls that make up the sides are ground floor rooms behind the pillars and balconies with people peaking over and around each one.

I think that these show the alluring aspects that most people attribute to the early stages of alchemy. If you believe that all alchemy is, is the ability to turn lead into gold, then most of the things you picture alchemists doing is melting metals, so I think that the people watching the women bathe are meant to be reminiscent of the crowds who show interest in the early stages of the alchemical work. We mentioned in the last discourse that these next several plates would be covering the seven operations, this one being the calcination stage, these are some of the more frequent, flashy, desirable operations to those who only have a passing fancy for the Great Work. Taken as a whole, I think this entire border represents the flashy and alluring aspects of “basic” or material alchemy and the possible fanciful future that could be won if we were to have a world that runs on alchemy, an ideal alchemical future.

Moving inwards to the miniature, we can see a tall tree growing through a golden crown and fed by its own stream, this tree is being tended to by a man in black, while there are black and white crows at the top of the tree. At the bottom, receiving a golden branch from the worker in black stand two men dressed in red and white. Since it is the largest part of the central miniature, let us start with the tree and what it represents. The tree itself is the tree that produces the “golden boughs” that allowed Aeneas and Silvius, the two men in red and white, to pass through the underworld without being hurt or joining the souls there. This fits perfectly with the subject of the book as a whole, the plates are showing us the work that is taking place after we have created the stone and perfected ourselves, so this tree would be something that we have already created and know how to use, as we, like these two men, have also already overcome death. The man in black that is tending to the tree and cutting off the golden branch is needed because the products of the Great Work need to be continuously tended to. So, the tree that you have created which allows you to be unscathed by death must be consciously taken care of, you can’t just create it and leave it to grow on its own. Putting this into mental alchemy terms, we created better personality traits in our previous work but we cannot just rest on that success or we will likely slip back into old habits, so we must continuously and consciously tend to these personality traits in order to make them permanent pillars of our personality.

Back to our artwork, the clothing color of this man tending to the tree is quite interesting as it represents the first stages of alchemy as well as him standing on this first of seven steps on his ladder which represent the seven planets, metals, or operations, and as I mentioned previously, we learned in the last plate that these seven will be covering the operations. So, it appears that we are going to be applying the seven operations again to the product of our previous works. This is also a common theme in alchemy as every time you complete one work you will likely need to restart the processes all over again to help recurse that fractal. Adding to the symbolism showing that we will be moving through the three phases of the great work again, the gardener in black is handing the golden bough to the two men in red and white, showing movement through the phases and that it may not always be in the exact same order each time, just like their robes. The two men that the worker is handing the branches to are also supposed to be representing the alchemists who have completed the great work previously as we can also see from their clothing.

Moving upwards to the very top of the tree we see our final symbols for today, the flock of birds that are flying away. While I mentioned before that these birds are crows it probably sounds incorrect because there are obviously grey and white birds and even one that looks like a bald eagle, but I assure you they are crows. These birds are carrying forward the symbolism of the gardener’s clothing; they begin as black crows because the crow is a very common symbol for the first stages of alchemy, but it is most specifically associated with calcination, traditionally the first operation, and the one where you burn your material to ashes. But as I just stated, these birds are in a state of transition between black and white, in our reference text it says that these color changes are because the operation is completing the black stages and turning to the white stages but I would humbly disagree as we are still dealing with the earliest operations of alchemy and we still have more steps before we transition to the white stages. Instead of this transitional imagery, I would argue that the change from black, to grey, to white simply gives a full description of the calcination operation. When we are dealing with calcination, most people think that we are just burning the material until it is used up and when most people think of burnt material they think of black carbon or charcoal, but that is not what we are talking about with calcination. Calcination burns the material completely until it is pure white ash. In addition to the colors of the birds, their placement at the top of the golden tree fits perfectly with the idea of calcination, the birds in the image would look exactly like smoke or ash rising off a burning tree.

I believe that this image is explaining to us that after we have created this golden tree and we have overcome death, we must first continue to tend the tree so that it can produce the benefits that its creation provides, but then we must also begin to calcinate the tree itself, in order to start the work on the next level of our alchemical fractal. We don’t need to worry that the tree will be destroyed in this process because it is a perfected product of the alchemical process, it is another version of the stone, so putting it through the alchemical process again will not destroy the tree, it will give off its “ash” in another way for us to use in our next processes. We need to remember that when we are dealing with alchemical operations at different levels, the products will not be the same as they are in physical lab alchemy and we need to be prepared for that.

I want to stop here for the day as re-calcinating the stone can take some time and heavy meditation. We will be returning in November with plate 7 and The Drowning King, I think this plate will have a very interesting take on dissolution that many of you will enjoy. I want to say thank you again as we transition to these monthly issues. I have missed having unlimited time for research and writing on this publication, but it has been really nice being able to do the work that I am doing, and the alchemical research and education that is pulling me from writing is wonderful to see happening in 2026. I want to thank each of you for the energy and support you have provided me through this publication and all of the other work being done, each of you have played a part in some of the most incredible alchemical work going on in the world today. Thank you so much for your time and I hope the next month finds you well.

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Resources:

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

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As I have said in the past a few times, This publication has become a product of a nonprofit I have started, The Pelican Society, which is a 501(c)3 historical preservation nonprofit in the United States. I have been wanting to get this organization off the ground for a long time but I have also wanted to have the best team possible before I did that. Over the last two years I have met a community of alchemists that I would happily argue are some of the most talented alchemists in the world today, and this community is continuing to grow in members and knowledge. I hope that we can get some issues of “An Emerald Tablet” written by a few of those members, but we will see how that goes in the future. Luckily, since it is in such early stages, The Pelican Society will not be impacting this publication too much, but that cannot be said about my next topic.

I have been lucky enough to have retired from my previous career working with EMF frequencies and turned to full-time alchemy research for the last 5 years, and this has been the greatest period of growth of my entire 16 years of alchemy study, but that time has come to an end. I will not be pulling back from alchemy research or academic research in general but I have taken on some more professional work within my field. I am very grateful for the opportunities that have been given to me with the position that I have been working and for the ability to continue my own work and research as well. But with that being said, the additional time requirements for this position have shown me that I will not be able to maintain a weekly publication at the level I want it to be at while also giving the time and efforts to this position that are required of me now.

In the light of these big changes, I believe that the best direction for this publication to go is to move to one guaranteed post per month with some bonus posts put in when I can fit them. I know this is a big change from the previous 4 posts per month, but I think it will not only benefit me, but it will help keep the quality of the work at the level it should be, and provide the study of alchemy the respect that it deserves. Also this will open the doors for other kinds of posts, things like podcasts, shorter form publications, and longer more academically formatted papers. Luckily, An Emerald Tablet has nearly 100 discourses available for everyone to catch up on if you feel a need for alchemy in the mean time. Also remember, each of those discourses are just the starting points for these concepts, so as you learn more and more, take that knowledge out to the world and to other alchemical texts and apply it, that is the only way to gain the deeper wisdom that alchemy promises.

I thank you so much for your time today and I hope that these changes are not too disappointing to hear. I truly think that even with the quantity going down, the quality will get much better as we move forward. Thank you again for all of your support in everything that we do, I look forward to seeing how this publication and the community grows in the future, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. We have been making good progress through the Splendor Solis for the last month or so and we are going to keep that energy up this week as well. As we have been reading through, we have covered how the Solis is going to be taking us from the completion of the Philosopher’s Stone and the perfection of our soul to the next level of the fractal where we use the principles we have learned, to purify and perfect the entire universe. Today we will be taking a look at the fifth plate and while it looks very different from the ones we have already looked at, it continues the same ideas that we have already been covering.

To begin, we have a different border than we have gotten used to covering with our other plates, instead of having a gold or saffron border that is decorated with plants and animals, we can see our central miniature is held within a golden mirror frame. While the mirror is quite detailed and covered in decorations, they aren’t that strange for a golden mirror of the time. The Solis is dated to around the 1500s and it would have been common to have pillars, birds and angels covering something as fancy as a golden mirror. When I say “angels” I am referring to the chubby, naked, male, sometimes winged babies that are at the top and in different spaces all over the frame. These babies are often called “cherubs” in medieval artwork but they actually predated that and are called “Putti” (sing. Putto) and they were often used in medieval European artwork to depict the profane passions of man. The earliest we can see them depicted are on roman children’s sarcophagi from the 2^nd century where they are normally taking part in activities that the deceased either liked or maybe would have liked if they had gotten older. These associations with the babies doing mundane activities probably morphed over time into the putti taking part in all of the mundane, profane, basic, worldly activities that we have all seen them doing in renaissance art. This variety in their actions has caused them to not have one specific meaning really, they purposely look like angels or cupids, so they are often associated with love but also with heaven, peace, prosperity, fun, and joyful times. This makes sense to me, whenever I see these little figures in artwork, they are enjoying the earthly pleasures that we all love to enjoy when we are not seeking spiritual truth.

At the bottom of the frame, we can see a king and a queen surrounded by other members of the court, the king is King Ahasuerus and the queen is Queen Esther. This is from the Jewish and Christian story of the book of Ester where she finds out about a plot to kill all of the Jewish people, but she then tells the king of her heritage and exposes the plot, saving her people. One of the important ideas that is discussed in this book, and in subsequent theological discussions of the book, is how god can work for his plan even when he doesn’t seem to be present. I believe that this is what the author is alluding to in this portion of the image. There are not any real overt religious images in this plate, but while doing the work of the plate that we will discuss later, you must be aware of the work of the divine behind the scenes the entire time.

With that understanding as we go forward, it is now a perfect time to look at the central miniature. This week our miniature is a circular landscape with the sun peeking through the clouds at the top and the crescent moon floating on a body of water at the bottom, in the center we can see a mountain being mined by two miners. With these two miners working on opposite sides of the mountain, we can assume that they are mining for two different ores, which will become important in just a moment when we get to our interpretation. Luckily for us, the plate we are looking at today has much less detail in the imagery so we can move on to our interpretation quicker than normal.

Since we don’t have our normal border, we don’t have to explain what the plants and animals mean, we only need to ask ourselves why we are seeing a mirror here instead of our normal border and paintings? I believe this serves the same purpose that mirrors serve in many esoteric schools, in many schools a mirror is used when meditating because it can help and examine your personal temple, yourself. When the mirror is used in the case of the plate we are looking at, I believe it is telling us that we must take time to meditate on the image that is held within the mirror. This image contains nothing supernatural, it only shows two men doing normal mundane work, kind of like what the Putti are doing as well, but we have to remember the point of the painting at the bottom of the mirror, god is present and working his plan even when no one knows he is there or mentions him, just like in the book of Esther. That shows me that even if there is nothing overtly spiritual, even if every single person within the image is doing mundane activities, we must remember that the divine, the universe, the cosmic, god is still ensuring that its plan is being carried out, that the universe and humanity is still being brought toward reuniting with the universal oneness. While this might seem like I am reading a little too hard into this frame, we have to remember that this does fit perfectly with the previous plates, we are reading a book after all, and not just a collection of individual plates.

Inside the mirror we see the two men mining two ores that we mentioned before. It is not necessarily clear at first which two ores are being mined, but looking at the writing around this page and using what we understand from the previous pages, we can come to understand that these two ores are sulfur and mercury. However, do not be fooled by these simple terms, we are not talking about the simple chemical compounds, we are talking about the Philosopher’s sulfur and mercury that we mentioned last week as well. These two compounds refer to the soul and spirit, respectively, and when we put them into the place they belong in this page we are talking about the perfected soul and spirit that we have created through our work but raising those to the point where we understand we are a soul inhabiting a body and we use our efforts and incarnations to try to assist the rest of the world in raising up in vibration along with us.

It is important to get our understanding of this plate correct in our minds because this plate begins a small series within the Solis that explains the process of transmutation, since we have already mastered the transmutation that creates the stone, and the transmutation that created the stone within us, we need to understand that this is explaining the method used to bring us to the next layer of the fractal. This is why the image is shaped like a mirror when it contains this imagery, we are beginning the set of plates explaining the process of transmutation but this is a new level of the process that we have never done before and so we must meditate on the process deeply before we can move forward. The difficult thing about this page is that it is a mirror and that means that you must meditate on the topic, I cannot explain the intricate details that you will need to fully grasp before moving forward. And once you come to understand the truths that you find within, you will realize, like everything with alchemy, that there are more truths hidden deeper inside. This is the reason the men are mining for the Philosopher’s sulfur and mercury, because they need to find and understand it at the level that it requires being met at.

With this being said, I will stop the discourse here so you can take your time and meditate over the image. I know that if you spend your time pouring over this image you will find something hidden that opens your mind a little bit more and it will prepare your understanding for the rest of this set of plates, and for the planetary plates which follow. Thank you so much for your time again this week and all of your support and excitement for this series. Good luck in your meditations going forward, and may the next week find you well.

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References:

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

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Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. We are quickly moving along through one of the most famous alchemical manuscripts in the world, the Splendor Solis, by taking one plate per discourse and working to understand what the symbolism behind the image is saying. We have recently looked at the first three plates, and we have understood that the information we are getting is pertaining to a spiritual nature and that it is going to be taking the Great Work that we have done and raising it up to the next level of the fractal. Today we will be looking at the fourth plate as it takes us one more step deeper in detail, which is pretty common with this work, we will also be circling back to one of our earliest series, the Chymical Wedding of the white queen and red king.

Beginning as we always do, with the border, we are met with the sacred gold or saffron field housing a relatively simple collection of flowers and birds. Our plants are pretty basic; we have a collection of wildflowers and different varieties of roses, both categories of plants are often used for their beauty and their association with the spirits of nature, while the rose brings the image to a deeper level of spiritual wisdom. We have mentioned this many times in this series and many more times in previous discourses, but the rose is often considered the “holiest” flower in symbolism, these show the love and beauty of god, or the mind, consciousness, or soul of a man, or the perfection of the plant kingdom. At the top of the border, left of the word that we will get to later, is an orchid flower. We saw this plant in the second plate that was filled with love and romance imagery, which I find quite interesting that the next time we see it is on the plate with the king and queen. As we said when we came across this symbol in the second plate, the orchid is often associated with romantic love or sexual desires. It is always nice to have more evidence to reinforce the concepts we are dealing with.

Along with our simple set of flowers, our border is filled with a simple flock of wild birds sitting among them and one eating a caterpillar. We have also covered these animals as many times as we have covered the flowers, so this should be a very short recap. In many traditions birds are associated with the element of air, they are often thought to be spiritual beings or special beings that are able to travel back and forth between the heavenly and earthly realms. Just like the roses and other flowers, these are reinforcing the idea that we are dealing with spiritual information and not just mundane knowledge. Also, as you already know and are probably tired of hearing me repeat, these birds are used to show that if you are able to read the language of the birds, the language of symbols that alchemy is written in, you will be able to gather the deeper truths held within.

This border has a few extra things to cover that we have not seen before, most of the information that we will cover about what these portions contain will come from the book by Skinner that we referenced in previous discourses. I honestly cannot recommend this book enough if you are interested in the Solis, I was gifted the book by a coworker and I have enjoyed it much more than I expected to. Back to the text on the border, the top one reads “Particularia” and the bottom one reads “via universalis particularibus. Inculsis.” The top reads somewhat like a header, simply saying “particulars,” at the bottom we have our other text that gives us a little information about the particulars, and that reads “the particular is derived from the universal way, and included in it.” This concept might sound familiar to those who have studied medieval alchemy texts, but it also may sound familiar to those of you who have studied the Tao or one of the other similar philosophies as well. The idea of this is that things move from less ordered into more ordered states, the cosmic consciousness, the sea of consciousness, the Tao are all a form of unity that includes everything in the universe and everything that makes up everything in the universe. This is probably a little difficult to fully understand, it is quite hard to explain, but that is the point, the Taoists have a saying that goes “the Tao that can be explained is not the true Tao.” This means that this unity is so far beyond what we can wrap our brains around because it requires an understanding of the universe that is completely different from how we experience it. This unity then precipitates down from that universal energy all the way down to the atoms that make up every single thing in the universe. In this way, every atom comes from the cosmic essence that alchemists sometimes call “the Logos” and every atom is included within the universal consciousness. The particular is derived from the universal way, and it is also included within it.

At the very bottom of the plate we see a frieze that runs all the way across, it shows the battle of Achilles and Hector, Achilles capturing the basilisk, and Achilles visiting Diogenes. This set of images is quite interesting to me and I don’t think I have fully wrapped my mind around its full meaning but I do think that it is very interesting that the basilisk is a common medieval alchemical image and Diogenes has long been a well respected philosopher. The basilisk often represents the Prima Materia and the capturing and conquering of this image is used to show mastery over the Prima Materia. Additionally, since I don’t believe in coincidences, I do not think that it was accidental that the capturing of the basilisk and the mastery of the Prima Materia is used as the foundation of the rest of this image and the foundation that must be in place before moving upward to the next level of the fractal.

Now that we have fully covered the border of this image we can take a look at the central miniature, which continues the trend of each miniature getting more and more detailed with each turn of the page. In this central image we have two figures facing each other and for those who have studied alchemy for a while or those who have read the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz they should look very familiar. Starting on the left we have the White Queen, she is standing atop a white sphere that I have seen described as the moon, a white sun, a living ball of milk, or a ball of lead. All of these interpretations of what it is are very different but if we look at their meanings symbolically, they can pretty much be read in the same general way, so I don’t think that the debate on what the image is matters as much as the fact that we are usually interpreting it in the same way, give or take a little for each person. In the queen’s hands is a ribbon that says “lac viramium” which means “virgin’s milk” which I think is where the idea that the ball she stands on is “living milk” comes from. Above the queen we see another ball which I have heard called a moon or a white sun, but taking all the symbols in the image into account, I think this is probably a moon, as it would fit in the sentence being written much better than a white sun would. Dennis William Hauck, one of the greatest alchemists in the world today, also notes that the way that the queen is standing appears to suggest “a sensation-based way of experiencing reality.” I personally cannot argue with this interpretation but I do not see the pose that he is referencing, I think that reading her entire image from top to bottom alludes to that idea but I guess I don’t know enough about poses in artwork to recognize that. However, I think that this is a great example of how alchemical artists have layered the meanings they are trying to convey so many times that even if you miss one you will probably catch one of the others.

Moving to the right, we see the red king, standing in fire with a blazing sun above him, in his hand we see another scroll that reads “coagula maasenculium” or masculine coagulation. Dennis Hauck also has an interpretation of the red king’s stance; he says that it “suggests a thought-based approach based on doing or knowing something about reality.” Again, I cannot disagree with this statement as the entire image does seem to point to that idea, the red king is a purely masculine figure, the fire and the sun also repeat this same sort of meaning, in alchemical imagery this doesn’t normally reference the sexual masculinity that most people think of but it is just another way to describe the polarity between rationality and intuition. As we said, the queen was more sensation based understanding or understanding through intuition and a relationship with the things we are looking at, and the king is the more logical and rational way of understanding.

I think this is the point that we are trying to get at in this plate, the “Rosarium Philosophorum” backs up the conclusions we have been coming to as we read through these pages as well. It says that the meaning is that the great work is about the union of the Philosopher’s sulfur and mercury, this is the same conclusion we came to in the last page we discussed and with the white queen and the red king being in this plate, we again see the union of these two forces. But I think that that is a little confusing for those who might be newer to the Work, it can be really hard to understand the union of these two forces when described in gendered terms. I think that the difficulty in differentiating the sulfur(soul) and mercury(spirit) make understanding what is going on very difficult and that is why another way to explain it was used with the genders of male and female, but I think this also did a disservice to the Work in the long run. So many people think that this means the union of male and female in the way that we would all normally think, maybe you need to reproduce, or you need to find a partner, or you need to blend genders and gender norms in order to do this work but that comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are talking about.

We have covered this before in the law of gender, but when we discuss gender we do not mean man or woman, but we mean a polarity in the way we have + or – in electricity. When we say feminine knowledge, we mean understanding in a way that is mostly intuitive, maybe it is a gut feeling about something, or it is from intuition, but it is often difficult to explain because only you really have the experience to understand how you know these things. On the completely other side of the spectrum is masculine knowledge, knowledge from logic, rational, or experimentation which sometimes manifests itself esoterically as an intellectual understanding without the emotional and intuitive elements that make that knowledge useful. In order to properly move this work from one fractal to the other you have to be able to unite these two forces, you have to be able to use your masculine and feminine faculties together in a perfect union in order to fully understand the Work with your entire being, body, soul, and spirit.

We will stop here for today so that you can work on integrating the meaning of this beautiful and profound image. The idea of masculinity and femineity and the unity of the two in alchemy are difficult topics to fully understand, the use of the two genders to differentiate the energies creates some difficult biases to overcome in our minds when we first begin to read them, but as we study, we gain a deeper and more perfect understanding of the words and we can see what they are actually trying to convey.

Thank you so much for your time and attention today and I truly hope that you are all enjoying this series. I have gotten some wonderful feedback from some of you and I greatly appreciate it. Additionally, I have seen an influx in readers as we have been working our way through this series and many say they have been recommended the publication by other readers, I just wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you, I know that alchemy is not a topic that everyone wants to read about and I have been perfectly happy just getting these discourses to the few who are interested in them, but it seems that the Great Work is already multiplying our efforts and a lot of that is due to the work of each one of you. Thank you so much again for your support and time each week, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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References:

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

Subscribe now

Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. I greatly appreciate your feedback and how much you have all enjoyed this series so far. The series always get much better reception than the singular topics, but I am very glad that this one has seemed to resonate with so many of you. Today we will be turning the page to the next plate, plate number 3, and trying to interpret the symbols held within. As always, we will begin with the outer border before moving in to the central miniature and luckily for us, much of the border is working to reinforce and repeat the same information as the previous pages.

We begin our border as we have with each of our plates so far, and how we will with almost every plate in the work, with that beautiful gold or saffron color. We should all be able to remember what this means at this point, and we can give a little less time to these colors moving forward, but just to reiterate once again, these colors are intended to show that the information within the image is passing on some sacred wisdom like that associated with the gods. It might seem silly that I keep bringing this up again with each page but these borders can kind of work in the same way as headers do today, they look like basic ornamentation on the page to those who don’t know how to read it but to those of us who can read, they serve a very important purpose and give valuable information for interpreting what is held within the rest of the page. Inside the field of saffron we see several plants and animals, and we appear to have turned from the concept of love between the king and queen back to a somewhat simpler border.

Starting with the plants, we can see several different representations of roses and daisies, each appear to be of different varieties and colors. Both of these flowers call to mind a high level of purity and respect but also love and care. The rose is also used to show the soul, consciousness, or spirit of a person which provides more explanation to the saffron color. We are going to be receiving wisdom that will be pertaining to our spiritual sides, and by incorporating these teachings fully we will allow the rose in our soul to further bloom. We also see the thistle again which promises peace and happiness which comes with spiritual evolution but also brings images of protection as well. We discussed this with the first plate, how the thistle can show that the work inside is protected or warded against the use of those who do not understand, but I think it also shows a second level of security, because when you are working within universal laws and you are growing your rose, you are safe and protected and able to focus fully on growing and not split your attention between growth and survival. There is another flower at the top left that caught my attention from the very beginning because it is very beautiful but I am not a plant expert and while I have tried to find the closest match I can to this plant, I was unable to, if you know more about the subject and would like to educate me, please let me know. As I searched through different pictures of similar plants, I found a striking line of symbolism that connects visually similar plants to the ones shown in the image. Many of these delicate, drooping, and cascading flowers are often related to fairy realms, the home of the gods, or other spiritual subjects. While I cannot say for sure, yet what the symbolism is until I can confirm what the exact flower itself is, I find it interesting that similar flowers further carry on the idea of spiritual wisdom that comes from the realms of the gods.

As for the animals in this border it is a lot more of the same that we have seen in the last two plates as well. We have several assorted songbirds which often symbolize the same general concepts, things like air, spiritual topics, and signifying that the reader will need to be able to read the language of the birds in order to fully understand. I do find it worth noting that the top and bottom of the border are bookended with an owl and a peacock, as these birds are both very common alchemical symbols. The owl we know invokes the wisdom and silence that we will both need to understand but also that we will gain from doing this work. The peacock being a symbol for spiritual sulfur and the Philosopher’s Stone show the completion of the physical work and the movement into the more spiritual portions. We already know that this work is supposed to be happening after the alchemist has already created the Stone and is taking their work into the next layer of the fractal and we can see this by the way the peacock is present and that it is taking in more sustenance as it moves forward.

As we leave the somewhat simple border behind, we can be grateful for the small amount of symbolism we had to cover there as we have a lot more to cover within the central miniature. Taking it in as a whole we see a knight standing on two fountains, he is holding a sword and a shield with seven stars around his head in a crown. The fountains he is standing on look like they are filled with gold and silver liquids that are pouring out and flooding the landscape in the background. There is a lot of information held within this single image so let us try to take it top to bottom to make it a little easier to understand.

Starting with the crown on the head of the knight, he has seven stars that connect to the golden crown, in many images they look to be mixtures of different amounts of gold and silver which could be very interesting but I will need to do more detailed research before I put this out there. However, notwithstanding the colors, I am sure many of you have already noted that the image of seven stars is a common alchemical theme. In alchemy we have many repeating series of sevens and some of the most well known are the seven operations and the seven planets, the seven planets being what this crown is eluding to. The alchemist has already mastered the Great Work enough to create the Stone, so he has been crowned with a crown showing his mastery over the seven planets. As we move down just slightly, we notice the breastplate on his armor has four colors displayed quite prominently, black, white, yellow, and red. Some of you may have noted that the colors black, white, and red contain a lot of alchemical symbolism as they pertain to the three stages of alchemy and may be wondering why the yellow color is there, some of you that have studied a little longer or are familiar with the works of Heraclitus may already know why that color has been added. Heraclitus believed that the work should be divided into four stages and not just three, he taught that between the white and red phase was a yellow stage where the peacock tail would emerge and the sulfur(soul) within the material would be separated from the mercury(spirit). There are a couple of thoughts I want to place here because I have found them incredibly fascinating as I studied each page in detail. First the prominence of the peacock in the borders of these pages as well as the use of the quaternary, or four part, alchemical colors is used to drive home a certain concept. The yellow or citrinatis stage of alchemy is rarely used in general alchemical education, in fact many of those I speak with who study the Work are unaware that there even is a fourth stage. I can understand this for a few reasons, so I am not trying to say that these alchemists are less advanced; first as I said, the black, red, and white stages are the most common depiction of the Great Work, for the majority of alchemical art they will only use those three stages because they were the most widely accepted and most easily recognizable stages, also in practical alchemy as well as spiritual alchemy the yellow stages is very short lived and is kind of like crossing the border between the white and red stages. When you are working with plants for instance, the yellow stage would simply be the rising of the oils during the fermentation process which is traditionally called the peacocks tail. But, due to the prominence and repetition of these images in several borders and the fact that the yellow stripe is shown in equal width to the others makes me think that the author is trying to explain that in this greater Great Work that he is trying to show us, the yellow stage is going to be longer, more prominent, and more important to the perfection of the final product. I also think that this idea is carried on further in the Latin text on the shield the knight is holding.

The text on the red shield the knight is holding reads in Latin “Ed duabus aqui una[m] facite Qui quaeritis Sole et Luna facera. Et date bibere in mico uro. Et uidebitis cum mortuum. Dein de aqua terra facite Et lapide multiplicastis” which roughly translates to “out of two waters make one, you who seek to [use] the sun and the moon. Give it the sparkling burning [liquid] to drink. And you will see that it is dead. Then, out of the water, the earth is made and the stone is multiplied.” There is a lot being said here and I will do my best to break it down into simple terms; first the artist is speaking to us, the alchemists, we are the people who seek to use the sun and the moon, and the mixing of these two waters that he is describing appear to be eluding to the two fountains that the knight is standing on top of. These fountains look like they are filled with gold and silver liquids that are mixing before pouring out and covering the earth. The shield then says that we should give this mixed water the “sparkling burning liquid” which is sometimes thought to be acid according to skinner but I would argue, by taking the entire image and the preceding pages into account, that the artist is more likely telling us to add the spiritual sulfur to the mixed gold and silver waters, also likely the spiritual gold and silver since we are using a spiritual sulfur and working on the greater Great Work. Then once these two compounds are mixed “out of water, earth this made, and the stone is multiplied” or from the mixture of liquids, a solid will coagulate and will produce more of the highly perfected stones we are looking for.

This is probably kind of confusing but I think that if we look at the image we can get a feeling for what exactly the artist is trying to say, because as I have meditated on these words I kept coming back to the image and each time it made more and more sense. As we are doing this very high level work, we have created a Stone, we have perfected ourselves in the process and we are now dedicated to using this work to perfect the world and everyone around us. So when we mix the waters of the spiritual gold and the spiritual silver with the spiritual sulfur, it will seem like it grow from nowhere until it over flows the container in the same way that the “elephants’ toothpaste” experiment does in elementary science classes. As this liquid overflows it will begin to flood the earth and everyone around us will be affected by the flooding of this powerful and sanctified liquid. From this exposure to the liquid, many Stones will begin to coagulate out. As more and more of us begin to study these deep concepts in alchemy and we continue to put them into practice in our daily lives, the more we will spread a sea of positivity and wisdom out to everyone around us. The deeper the sea of alchemical wisdom and the more people that are exposed to this golden sea, the more people will begin to perfect themselves and find their own stone within them. In the buildings that are now flooded by the golden liquid in the painting, some of those people could be undergoing their own alchemical processes, and as they grow, they too could become the Knight standing on top of the two fountains where they could spread their own knowledge and start the whole process over again.

We have discussed this subject several times now in these images. The symbolism written onto the page is continuously showing us that it is trying to get some extremely high level wisdom across, something that goes far beyond the creation of a simple Philosopher’s Stone but is focused on the evolution of everyone around them. The alchemist has learned how to perfect himself and many people may think that once this goal has been reached, they can sit back and finally relax, but this plate is showing us that once you have reached this level your mission and your desires will have changed to focusing less on the perfection of yourself and more on helping everyone around you so we can all be on an equal playing field.

I want to stop here for the day, I have so many things I could say about this image and this subject in general but I don’t want to just flood you with my recent hyperfocus. That being said, I have been enjoying sharing this journey with you all and it is nice to be able to ramble about such deep and interesting topics to so many people who love to learn and discuss them as well. I think that this week’s discourse will give each of us a lot to think about and if we give it the time and care that it deserves, we will be able to come back next week with a much deeper level of understanding, which we will need because there we are getting into more and more detailed and difficult images as we move forward.

With that being said as well, I need to give a warning moving forward; as I said last week myself and my colleagues have founded a nonprofit organization for alchemical preservation and I have also taken a professional position in the field, so these obligations will be taking up some more of my time than they were previously. I will still work to get these discourses out weekly but please be patient if they move to different days or they move to every other week. I appreciate your understanding if these changes have to be made but I will work to try to avoid that as much as possible. Thank you so much for your time and your support, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

Subscribe now

Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. From the feedback I have received, it sounds like this series has been well received so far, if this is the first issue of An Emerald Tablet that you are receiving, we have recently begun a systematic walkthrough of the 22 images, or plates, in the book, the Splendor Solis. Today we will be moving forward with the slightly deeper understanding of the work that we gained last week. As a quick reminder, we covered the first plate last week and it works as a form of title page, showing that the manuscript will contain important spiritual wisdom that will explain how to turn the gold that you have just created into the spiritual or philosopher’s gold. Today we will be moving to the second plate and while it is a very simple image, it contains a lot of information. As a quick note before we get too far, the original manuscript does contain text, we will not be addressing the text much in these discourses as we are dedicated understanding the images themselves, however we may reference the text briefly if it is applicable to what we are discussing.

Let us begin with the border where we see the often-repeated saffron coloring. This, as we noted last week, signifies the fact that the information that you will gain from this book is meant to be of a high spiritual level. It is important to remember when reading these images that the border often provides the foundational information for understanding the central image itself. The border of this plate gives us some valuable context for the rest of the image and it does so with several different kinds of symbols like plants and animals. In order to keep things organized, let us take a look at the plants first.

While there are many different kinds of plants in this border, some of the ones we can easily identify are tomatoes, orchids, strawberries, daisies, and chrysanthemums, all of which allude to the same meaning. That meaning being reproduction and sexuality. Tomatoes have long been considered a symbol for sensual knowledge, love, and reproduction because of the number of seeds inside and also because of the acidic nature of the fruit. These connotations have transcended locations and practices as many traditions include symbolism or use of tomatoes in imagery and rituals pertaining to love and sexuality. The next flower we see are orchids, with their name in old Greek meaning “testicle” they also convey the same meaning that the tomatoes have started this whole border off with. However, along with the idea of sensual knowledge that the tomato brings, the orchid also adds to that with the idea of spiritual perfection. I believe that this additional accent put onto those symbols is very important to this image so as we move forward, I want you to try to remember that we have not only been seeing a lot of sexual imagery, but there is a strong undertone of perfection or wisdom as well, as this portion is often overlooked. Moving down to the bottom of the image we can see a large strawberry, and you may be surprised to find out that the plentiful seeds on the outside of the fruit cause this berry to symbolize reproduction. But something I find very interesting in relation to the text around this page is that the strawberry is not fully ripe but is in the process of ripening which is mentioned in the text that accompanies the image, we will address this a little later. But, just like the other plants, the strawberry is closely associated with holy things such as the blood of Christ and the trinity in Christian iconography, and is said to grow in the fields of Elysium or the place where the gods live in the Hellenistic faith. Our next two flowers take a turn from the idea of reproduction specifically but that does not mean that they are meaningless to the image, these flowers are important in the translation of the full picture. First, we will look at the daisies, these small white flowers are some that many of you may be aware of the symbolism associated with them as they are popular in flower arrangements and gardens today. These flowers symbolize innocence, loyal love, purity, beauty and respect, which I think are extremely important when reading symbols that point toward sexual energy. This is saying that what we are talking about is not a purely physical form of love or reproduction, looking to the Greek is my favorite way to explain this idea because the language has a wonderful way to separate different kinds of love. We are not looking for the “Eros,” or erotic kind of love between romantic partners in this image, we are looking for the “Agape” kind of love, which is pure and innocent, but it is not unconditional. This form of love requires loyalty and respect; it is only going to be present when it is treated properly. This is carried a little further with the final flower we will speak about, the chrysanthemum, which often symbolizes gold, the sun, longevity, and eternity. Gold and the sun are reminiscent of the perfection and respect that the daisies mentioned before but also gives clarification that the perfected love we are looking for is eternal, it is not going to change based on our whims or anything short of being treated poorly and disrespected. This is a perfect love, the full coagulation of love that we will speak about later.

Moving on to the animals on the border we are initially met with many of the same birds that we were on the first plate; songbirds which show that we are dealing with spiritual topics and that they are hidden in the language of the birds, woodpeckers symbolizing wisdom as well by invoking the god Odin, and the owl which has long been associated with wisdom and silence and invokes the goddess Athena. These are simple and beautiful reminders of the two important facts contained within these pages, they are important spiritual wisdom, but they must be explained in the language of secrets and codes. At the bottom of the image, we see two pairs of animals that we have not seen in the previous plate, and they continue the imagery of the plants. To begin, the peacock and the peahen are common alchemical symbols as they are often associated with the philosopher’s stone, the rising of oil/soul/sulfur from the first matter, and the spiritual sulfur. The peahen is less common than the peacock but having them both together is a symbol of a perfected love, it is another version of the Queen that we have worked with previously in the Great Work. The final large animals that we will talk about, the deer, are similar to the peacock and the flowers in that having both sexes does invoke the same ideas of love and reproduction as the rest of them, but deer are closely associated with the gods in many traditions. In the Celtic tradition and many around Europe, the deer is said to be a part of the fairy realm that is able to move between the spiritual realm and the physical. This is also seen in many indigenous traditions in North America, so it should be noted that the love that is found between these two animals is going to be one that also consists of a deep spiritual portion. These two couples are often equated to the kings and queens of their respective realms.

We will finish our border with two final animals, the only two insects on the plate, the fly and the butterfly. I think that these two symbols are a fascinating extra reminder of what we are talking about. In many cases in alchemical works there are many, many, many layers of repeated symbols so that at some level you are able to understand what is going on. The fly in this case is often a symbol of something that is often attracted to the mundane or the corrupt things in the world. They are often found swarming around things in nature that stink, and that is the same idea they are often used to convey when they are used in art. The butterfly on the other hand, is a common symbol I am sure you are familiar with; it is a common symbol for transformation. As we all know, the butterfly emerges from the cocoon or chrysalis after moving from the caterpillar stage, through a liquid stage, and finally being reborn as something completely new. I believe that these insects provide some very important context, the love and the knowledge we are discussing in this image are the kinds that must be transformed completely from their mundane form where we chase after the dirty things in life to the new, beautiful, and purified version.

With this important distinction now being driven home again, we finish the border of the plate and we can begin to look at the central image. This image is quite simple as much of it is blank space and filler. We see a hermit or philosopher holding a large flask that is partially filled with a gold liquid and from the flask is coming a black ribbon with some Latin text on it. Behind him we see that he is standing on a cliff or hilltop overlooking a village. The robes our philosopher is wearing retain the color imagery from the previous plate, the red and blue show that he has completed the red stage of the Great Work and has earned his red robes, and he is wrapping them with the cover of the blue robes often associated with the heavens and the knowledge or wisdom of the gods. The vase he is holding and pointing to, and the ribbon coming out of it are the vocal points of the image and the last things we will be focusing on today. The flask filled with a golden liquid is what the philosopher created in his previous work; it is probably the product that earned him his robes. I think this is shown additionally through a slightly altered version of the symbol for “elixir” at the top of the flask. The symbol is normally a circle with a cross in the middle separating it into 4 quarters, it is then topped with a triangle with a dot in the center. The top of the flask does not exactly match the symbol, but it is very close and having it on top of the Grand Elixir only strengthens the argument in my opinion. Now the ribbon coming out of the flask is very interesting, it reads “Eamus Quesitum Quasuor Elememtorum Naturas” which means “let us investigate the four elements of nature.” This text coming out of the flask reads like the breadcrumb leading the alchemist on a new quest following the fractal nature of the Work and moving deeper in our understanding. The completed elixir was the goal at one point, but once it is created, we can either end our work there or realize that there are greater tasks we can now work on. In the text that accompanies the plate, it explains how alchemy is a “greening” or ripening process, and it is shown again by the strawberry we mentioned previously. That is a wonderful example of how the Great Work works and what I believe this ribbon refers to. It took years and an extensive level of mastery for the alchemist to create that golden elixir in his flask, but now he is entirely enthralled and focused on this new quest that he has been offered. Now that he understands how to create the stone, he can take that new level of understanding and go back and begin looking at the elements of nature and gain new truths from them. One of the important truths about nature that I believe we gain from this image, placing all of the symbols and the text together, is that alchemy is a science of transforming nature but it is not commanding nature or ruling over it as a tyrant would. It is working within the framework of universal cosmic law and changing the timeline in which natural processes occur. We must operate in the language of secrets, and we must unite the masculine and the feminine or marry the king and queen, but this cannot be a purely physical union it must be a union that takes place on all levels, it has to be transformed from the dirty mundane love to the beautiful pure love that respects others and is respected in return.

I want to stop here today, I know that there could be many more pages written about each of these plates, and luckily there already have been many books written discussing these works. I do not want to overwhelm any of you, or quite honestly me, by trying to cover in great detail every single aspect of the images we are looking at, but if your interest has been piqued I highly recommend reading any of the other works covering the Splendor Solis. You can never learn too much information. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions in the comments or discussion below and I look forward to covering the third plate next week.

As for a little housekeeping information here and updates for those of you who are interested, you may have noticed a small change on my bio and that is that An Emerald Tablet is now a product of “The Pelican Society,” this is a 501(c)3 that has been created for the preservation of alchemical history and the rigorous academic research of alchemical theories and practices. This has been a project that I have worked on with an incredible team of alchemists for a very long time and I am so excited to say that it has finally come to fruition. I hope that this means we will be producing a lot more content for you in the future as well, we have already been in talks about more Substack content from other members of the society, but also audio and video content that is a little easier to digest and we can break down these difficult concepts into simpler terms. I cannot wait to share this information with you once I have some more concrete answers in place and I thank you so much for your patience in the process. I cannot wait to see you again next week when we discuss the fascinating images found on plate 3, thank you so much for your time and support, and I hope the next week finds you well.

Leave a comment

Resources:

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

Subscribe now

Welcome back, dear reader, I hope the last week has found you well. Our last discussion introduced our next new series with the basic information about the Splendor Solis, today we will be taking our first real step into the meaning of this book with the first plate. This series has been a difficult one for me to really plan out, I don’t want it to just be me explaining what you see in front of you, I feel like that is something you can do without my help. At the same time, I don’t want to just regurgitate the many pages that have already been written about this book or just read off the meaning of different symbols, again, you can find both of those things on your own. What I want to do with this series is continue our education in the Green Language. We have covered many different symbols in our previous studies and these symbols work like hieroglyphics, they don’t just mean words, they mean concepts, and when you put multiple of them together, they can create sentences and stories instead of just pictures. So, my goal is to take us from being able to read single symbols in the Green Language, to knowing how to read full pages and books. To achieve this, we will be covering some of the symbols in the page and what they mean, then we will work to combine those images into what the page is trying to say. With that being said, I think the first plate is a great place to start, because it contains a lot of simple symbols used to create something like a simple title page.

With so many things to look at let us begin where it makes sense, at the top and with the outer border. At the very top of the page, we see the Phrase “Arma Artis,” Latin for “the weapons (or arms) of the art” which works kind of like a title for the work. This book contains the tools that you need in order to conduct the mystical Art. As we move out from the title and we begin to take in the full border of the image we are met with the saffron or gold background that holds all of the other images. Saffron, and to a lesser degree the color gold, invokes the idea of wisdom and spirituality. This is the reason that many Buddhist and Hindu monks wear saffron colored robes and anoint the images of gods with saffron paste. The use of it so prominently on the border of many plates is likely to denote that the information held in this text is meant to provide the correct reader with some deep spiritual wisdom. I feel this interpretation is further backed up by the fact that all of the next images we are about to cover are then found inside this sea of saffron or gold wisdom. We are going to break these symbols down into some groups so that we can keep track a little better, since we covered the title and border itself, let’s move to the next most numerous images, the plants.

There are a lot of different plants in the border, some of the ones that I can immediately recognize are roses, apples, peas, thistle, and what I believe is Datura. Roses are a common symbol that I am sure we are all somewhat aware of, the symbol is well known for love today, but it has also always been associated with human consciousness. The rose is a lot like the lotus when it comes to its meaning in art, it shows the triumph of perfection and the spirit over the basal form of nature and earth as something so beautiful grows from something so plain. That same imagery is carried forward into the human consciousness and alchemically it is associated with the growth of the pure spiritual consciousness from the material form of the body. Apples, being a part of the rose family as well, help further focus the idea of spiritual growth in this image as well. The apple is very closely related to a mental, spiritual, or other sort of awakening in western art for hundreds of years. Since it’s use in the images of the garden of Eden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it has often been used as a way to show that the work is going to provide the reader with a piece of information from the divine that will change them from their base self into their more complete self, and the use of the rose at the same time tells us that the spiritual information that is being given to us will help the development of the soul from the material body.

Peas take us in a slightly different direction, while the pea is used as a symbol of reproduction, abundance and fertility, those specific concepts don’t really apply to the image we are working with, but their other meanings apply much better, growth and prosperity. If you use the information in here that will cause your soul to grow and advance from the simple medium of the physical body, you will be blessed with growth and prosperity, these are something that alchemy has always promised. The last two plants we are going to discuss were a little surprising for me to see on the plate, but the longer I studied the more sense they made. The thistle is often very quickly associated with warfare and passive protection, which makes some sense in alchemy, the information in the book is supposed to be very well protected, that is the reason it is written in a language of symbols and not in common German. However, thistle is traditionally said to cure depression, the smell of the plant and a wine made from the flower are said to have the ability to make people feel better and cure what used to be called melancholy. I find the dual meaning of this image very interesting and it’s prominence near the monkey at the bottom seems to show that the information inside is protected and, if you rush into it without thinking, it will come to bite you in the end, but if you come to the work with the proper knowledge and the proper respect, you can find the information held within to help you find that peace and joy that we are all looking for. The vine and bell-shaped flowers at the top that I think are datura are some of the most interesting symbols within this plate in my opinion, and mixed with the meaning of the thistle it brings the picture together in a different way than I originally expected to see. The bell flower as a general flower is often said to mean humility, constancy, and gratitude which are qualities that I would expect for you to learn in this book, as we said with the thistle, it is supposed to help bring joy and remove sadness and these traits of the bell flower would come along with that change. But the fact that they resemble datura, a powerful poison that can also work as an entheogen in the right dose, is fascinating to me. This book is regarded as coming from the teacher of Paracelsus who pioneered the idea that the dose makes the poison, and the image contains a hallucinogenic entheogen that can either awaken or destroy you based on the dose? That doesn’t seem accidental. I believe these images together are showing that first, the work can and will awaken and open your mind and soul if you use it properly, but if you rush into it and use it for any other purpose than the exact purpose it was created for, you may drive yourself mad or worse. This may seem like I am reaching for meaning to those who are not very familiar with the way alchemy works, but this warning is repeated over and over on a regular basis in works of alchemical knowledge.

After the plants, we have several animals within the border of this plate, the most obvious of these are the many different kinds of birds, and the monkeys. Monkeys in the west often bring up symbolism of humanity in its natural state. I think this comes from the way evolution works in the mind of the common man and the way Christians used them in their art in the past as symbols for humanity before they received the grace of god. However, since this is a very old piece I think we should go with an older meaning of monkeys in art and that is intelligence, decisive action, playfulness and wisdom. In Egypt, the birthplace of alchemy, monkeys and apes were disciples of the god Thoth, the god of wisdom, magic, and writing. Monkeys and apes are also capable of learning to use tools just like people and so they have long been used as analogs for humans in art.

Between these monkeys and all around the border, we can see many different kinds of birds, each one with their own meaning. The first we will note is closely related to the monkeys we just spoke about, the owl. This bird has been associated with wisdom, cunning, and silence for thousands of years. The owl is the only bird that can fly almost completely silent in the night air and this was the same way the wisdom of alchemy is passed, silently and in the dark of night. Right in the center of the bottom is the heron, a beautiful and graceful bird that has been closely related to the ibis in alchemical imagery for a very long time. The ibis was another animal related to the god Thoth, and I don’t think it is an accident that a heron and monkeys appear together in this work when the ibis and baboon were both the animals most closely related to wisdom at the time alchemy was created. Another easily recognizable bird in this work is the woodpecker, a bird related to another god of wisdom and magic, Odin. It is connected to Odin, and also Mars, because of the pecking sound it makes, the sound is said to sound like, bring, or warn of thunder in different traditions and the way it can stick itself to a tree is reminiscent of the way Odin hung on the tree in order to gain the wisdom of the runes. That is three different birds that are used in more than three different traditions to signify the same thing, wisdom. I believe that these birds of wisdom and the group of songbirds elsewhere in the border are noting to anyone reading that the book contains wisdom but it is written in the language of the birds, the green language of symbols. The border seems to be saying that the plates within are filled with spiritual wisdom that can bring peace and joy that is unsurpassed, but there are warnings as well. You must be able to read the language of the birds, and you must come with a pure heart and the proper reverence or you will receive the wrath of the wisdom contained within. As the border of the plate, this is a very general statement, almost like reading the inside cover of a book before you buy it today, the image in the center of the plate gives us a more detailed explanation of what is hidden within.

In the central image of this plate, we see two men standing outside and looking into a room where a blue shield topped by a helmet covered in blue and a crown is surmounted by a golden sun, this image is a little strange but it does give us a much more detailed description of what is in this book. First the main colors in the center, the red and the blue. The red color that the top sun is in front of is a popular symbol in alchemy, it is the rubedo, the red and final stage of alchemy. Red is a color of vitality and fire but also of the sun, the image that is right in front of it. These two together likely show that the red is signifying the rubedo stage that was used to create the gold sun in front of it. Below that sun we see the helmet and shield that are all covered in blue, the opposite color of red but not another alchemical stage. Instead, this color is classically related to wisdom, loyalty, peace, and spirituality, These are all going to play a part in the explanation of the second sun that is on the blue shield, but first let us cover the helmet and crowns, they are very important to being able to properly translate the image.

The armored helmet is used to symbolize the things a real armored helmet is used for, protection, power, invulnerability and anonymity or secrecy. Being placed atop the shield would show that the bottom sun is being protected and possibly kept secret by the protection of the armor, the blue over the top of the helmet shows that the protection is not just a mundane level of protection, but it is a royal, spiritual kind. This is added to by the presence of the crown and the three silver moons. The crown is used to show royalty, power, eternity, and authority the triple moons on top show that it is a crown for someone of a very high level of royalty. All of these symbols make sense when they are seen together but the way they are positioned and read are actually wonderful examples of how the green language works, I think you will see that as we discuss the suns next.

The two suns in this image are quite different, and they are actually saying a lot about what is held within this book. As we said before, the top sun is mounted on the red background. This gold is likely the perfect gold that was produced by transmutation with the philosopher’s stone. This can be seen not only by the red background but also the amount of detail on the face and the rays of the sun, a highly detailed sun like this would be used to show gold of a very high purity level. The lower sun however, is where the image really gets interesting. The sun on the bottom of the image has three suns inside its face, reminding us of the three moons on top of the crown, and this sun is the purpose of this entire book. This sun, being held on a blue shield and topped by a helmet with a blue cover and a gold crown with three moons is the goal of the Splendor Solis. It is the spiritual sun! This highly detailed sun is held on a blue shield; it is an extremely pure gold that is of a spiritual nature. But something that is this important must be protected too, and that is the purpose of the helmet. The blue and the crown on top of the helmet are showing that this protector is royal as well because we need protection from something of equal footing as the philosophical sun.

This is the entire point of the book; this is the sacred wisdom we were told we would find within the plate and the reason for the warnings of the border. This book is about the fractal nature of the Great Work, it is taking the purest gold created by the Stone and realizing that that is still not the true goal of our work, there is another level for us to reach. So many people will be able to reach their goal in alchemy, especially mental alchemy, and they will be able to correct certain aspects of themselves then they will stop working, but this is only half the job, as soon as one thing is completed, we will find a higher state to obtain and a new goal to reach toward. This is another reason I felt that this book would be a great place for us to move next, not only will we be practicing the green language, but we will also be deepening our understanding of the fractal nature of the Work. Now that we have this understanding of what we should expect to find within this text we know the lens we must read all of the following plates with. But I want to stop here today as this has become a very long discourse and I want you to be able to integrate all of this information over the next week and have some time to study the image on your own.

I thank you so much for your time today and for all of your continued support. We will return next week with the second plate and a little better understanding of how to read them, I hope you enjoyed this breakdown, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Nozedar, Adele. The illustrated signs & symbols sourcebook: An A to Z compendium of over 1000 designs. Harper, 2010.

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor solis. Edizioni mediterranee, 2021.

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For those who aren’t familiar with the name, the Splendor Solis, Latin for Splendor of the sun, is an alchemical manuscript with our earliest known copy coming from around 1532-1535. Today we know of 20 copies worldwide, all from a little later in time and all with slightly different aspects to them. Part of the reason for these differences is because the book is what is called a “florilegium,” more Latin for a gathering of flowers, which is a name for a collection of texts and images into one manuscript from the larger body of alchemical knowledge out there at the time. Skinner covers this aspect in his book in a lot of detail as he works to unmask the true author of the work.[1]

We are going to be using the earliest copy of the book for our study, mainly because I am a historian, but why would we go to anything other than the original source? This oldest version came from Augsburg, Germany and many of the smaller pictures, often called miniatures, used inside the full-page images were done by famous German artists like Albrecht Dürer, as for who wrote or compiled the collection, we don’t really know. The book is attributed to Salomon Trismosin, who some might know as the Person who taught Paracelsus alchemy.[2] This is an important point in the paper at the beginning of Skinner’s book, he shows his research on the authorship and why he doesn’t believe it was Trismosin, again if the Solis is something you are interested in, I highly recommend his work. There is also some debate on the true age of the work itself as I said, the oldest we have is definitely from the 1500s but it is a compilation of works, so the author could be referencing something much older. However, for our purposes, it doesn’t really matter who wrote the book or when the original images are from because it is still a magnificent example of the alchemical imagery that was widely used in the middle ages, and that is what we are focused on.

Now that we know a little about what the book is, you may be wondering why an old book of pictures is important to our work today? Mainly it has been considered important because of who it is attributed to and the level of respect the Paracelsians gave to it, being written by Trismosin, the man who taught their teacher, they thought this book was very important. With Paracelsus being one of the fathers of pharmacology and being one of the most well-known alchemist from the middle ages, anything relating to him and to his particular flavor of alchemy have been treated almost like holy books for some of those who revere him.

What matters most to us in this series, however, is what’s inside and those are those twenty-two plates I mentioned very briefly before. The “plates” refer to the full-page images that make up the majority of the book, the term comes from the carved or engraved plates they were printed off of before they were painted and illuminated with gold. Each of these plates contains beautiful and intricate pictures that, to the uninitiated, probably look like random dream imagery, but to those of us who have studied and understand the symbols being used, it is so much more than that. Inside these plates are supposed to be all of the information needed to create the philosophers stone, the elixir of life, and perfect the human soul, but it is all written in the Green Language. Translating these plates into something that we can better understand is going to be our main goal for this series.

With the Splendor Solis being so well known for so many years and its beautiful and strange imagery being used in many textbooks and sites that discuss alchemy, the images have become the first thing many people are met with when they begin their journey. This may even be the case with some of you, that when you began looking into alchemy it was because of one of these strange images, or maybe this discourse is your first step into alchemy. I can completely understand this, I have seen some of these paintings over and over again my entire life, but if I am being completely honest, I don’t think that the Solis is the best text to start with when it comes to alchemy. Yes, it has all of the information you need for The Work, and there are so many sites on the internet that will give their take on what the plates mean that it is a very accessible first step. But it is a book of images, images that are entirely up to the interpretation of the viewer. Even this series that we are starting is going to be my singular take on the symbolism of the work, yes, I have been studying these symbols for longer than I have been studying alchemy, yes, I am currently surrounded by reference books dedicated to symbolism, but that does not mean that I am giving a definitive translation of the Solis or that my take is the correct one. We are going to be translating a language of images which discuss many concepts that each in themselves could take books to truly cover. But I think that after covering symbolism in the way we have, that the Solis is a beautiful next step along our path of understanding.

In our next discourse we will be covering the first plate of the Splendor Solis, for those who want to take a look at it before we begin. If you don’t, don’t worry, I will be sending a copy of the image with each discourse. One more note before we leave today, these symbols we are going to cover do not have a singular meaning and, in many cases, they have different meanings depending on the location and culture that the reader is from or familiar with. I am sure, with readers in close to 30 countries, that there will be some very interesting interpretations of some of these symbols. If you have information you would like to share, please feel free to comment or join the discussions, we would all love to hear from each of you.

Thank you all so much for reading this introduction, I am so excited to dive into this sea of symbolism together with you all, and may the next week find you well.

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[1] Skinner, Stephen. Splendor Solis: The World’s Most Famous Alchemical Manuscript. Watkins, 2019.

[2] Skinner, Stephen. Splendor Solis: The World’s Most Famous Alchemical Manuscript. Watkins, 2019.

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References:

Skinner, Stephen. Splendor Solis: The World’s Most Famous Alchemical Manuscript. Watkins, 2019.

When I meet new people, especially those with an interest in esoteric topics, and we begin discussing what I do for a living, the first question I normally get is; why alchemy? My answer is always the same; because I want to make the world a better place. I know this answer is going to confuse most people and lead to the next question, but it is the truth and the core of why I do what I do, so I still say it every time. I think the confusion comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what alchemy is and so I think a good place to start today is dispelling these misunderstandings so we can all start on the same page when we get to how we can make the world a better place. The two main misunderstandings I want to discuss are the ones I mentioned above, that alchemy is just some early form of chemistry or at best proto-psychology.

I think the idea that alchemy is proto chemistry is the main reason people get so confused by my answer, they assume I do this because of some love of history, chemistry, science, gold, medicine, or eternal life because these are the only products of alchemy that they know about. I can’t blame them, this is all most schools teach about alchemy, it was kind of like chemistry before we figured out how to record things properly and use the scientific method. But this isn’t the entire picture, alchemy and chemistry have existed side by side for roughly the same amount of time, one was just called chemistry in England and in the west that is the side of history and science we care about. Instead of one being the precursor to the other, the only real difference between the two is that one deals purely with the material side of science and the other takes forces into account that are not subject to currently understood Newtonian laws of physics. People like to equate the two with astrology and astronomy, but it is more accurate to compare them to Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Newtonian physics being the school of physics based on the laws that Issac Newton created. Quantum physics, however, has pushed to the boundaries of what Newtonian physics can allow and has found that at these edges, the standard laws we understand about physics begin to break down. For instance, researchers have been publishing papers showing that when studying atomic particles, they exist in a superposition of two places at once, and only when they are observed do they choose where to appear in material space.[1] This is something that has been discussed in the form of hermetic laws for thousands of years, and we are just now beginning to be able to prove it using modern science.

The second misconception is that alchemy is some sort of proto-psychology. The work of Carl Jung has been of incredible benefit to alchemy, thanks to him we have the symbols, elements, operations, every aspect of alchemy, mapped out onto the human psyche and experience.[2] This framework for mental alchemy is so solid that it is used by some psychologists under the more acceptable professional title of Jungian psychology. Jung’s work is the basis for the meditations we have been discussing in the last two papers, because using his framework we can find negative aspects of ourselves and transmute them into something better. While Jungian psychology is not typically considered to be evidence based, if we use the methods we discussed before, which also incorporate aspects of exposure therapy, we do begin to bridge the gap between Jungian and more academically respected evidence-based methods.

Now that we have a basic understanding of how alchemy is different from chemistry and from psychology, you are probably still wondering how any of this makes the world a better place? Because doing some fancy chemistry and making myself a better version of myself sounds great, but it doesn’t make the world a better place. But when we think that way, we are forgetting about the axiom “as above, so below.” The work we are doing is supposed to be fractal. The work that you can do in an alchemy lab is factually alchemy and it is capable of creating the stone and the elixir of life, along with all of the incredibly effective medications that Paracelsus created. I would never discount the benefit of physical alchemy and that while I am not saying it is a replacement for speaking to a doctor, a skilled alchemists can produce very high quality medicines that are specific to each patient. Some of these are even still used today in wholistic, traditional Chinese, North American first nations, and Indian medicine. So obviously there are reasons to use laboratory alchemy and benefits from using it well, but that is not its only use.

Also, the way that alchemy maps onto the human psyche does fit for a lot of people due to how broad it is and how it establishes psychological archetypes that are foundational aspects of the world we live in. There have been many people who have applied Jung’s version of psychology or a combination of Jungian and other evidence-based care who have been able to correct from a disordered form of thinking to an ordered way of thinking. Again, showing that there are valuable benefits from practicing this form of alchemy, but also establishing the framework for how the fractal nature of this Divine Art works from the lab to the alchemist.

This whole conversation has probably been reminding you of a concept I have mentioned in many of these discourses, that the lab work the alchemist does should be mirroring the psychological work that is happening within him. While he watches his plant matter being burned down to its most pure, white ash, the alchemist will be able to see how it is a micro version of the changes he went through at one time or another. Maybe it makes him reminisce about how a difficult situation once burned the impatience out of him, and how he should probably start to work on the stubbornness that keeps nagging at him too. Understanding the fractal relationship of the work is important for bringing the laboratory work into your sanctum, and bringing the higher self, created in the sanctum, back to the lab table to further perfect all of your work, rinse and repeat. But the fractal nature does not end with the perfection of your own soul! As you learn to perfect your soul and intentionally bring a better person forward every day, you start to zoom out to the next level of the fractal.

Once you truly begin to put that work into action, every person you meet will have a marginally better day. The people who are close to you will notice that you are working to be a better version of yourself and will hopefully notice the positive changes as they come up. The strangers you meet will likely have a better interaction with you and at the very least you won’t contribute to their bad day, you might have even improved it. If you do that enough, and if you express honest love for everyone you meet, then the people you interact with will begin to be in a better mood too. Do this long enough and maybe we can bring back the genuine care and empathy for our fellow man that we seem to have forgotten.

To break it down to it’s most basic form, if one person can have ten good interactions a day, then ten alchemists who are working on themselves can interact with 100 people a day in a positive, constructive way. If all of nearly 500 of us reading this decided to work on ourselves and focus on being better people than we were yesterday, and we make it a goal to have good interactions with every person we contact, how many days could we brighten? This publication is read in over 25 countries; if there were little pockets of peace, love, kindness, self-improvement, and harmony scattered in roughly 10% of the countries on our planet, how quickly could our world become a more peaceful, loving, and empathetic place to live? We can all agree that we live in a world where love and kindness exist within the “aether,” and when the conditions are right, they materialize out in one way or another. So the more people that can get on board with alchemy, and with committing to be better than who they were yesterday, and being a genuinely positive influence in the lives of those whom they interact with, the more nucleation points we can create to allow that peace, love, and harmony to precipitate out more often and spread even faster. Once that chain reaction has started there is no stopping it. And let’s be honest, what have we got to lose? We already live in the world that we live in, if it doesn’t work, we are being nice for no reason, which I don’t think sounds like that bad of a thing. But, if it does work, we might just get stuck living in a better world, where people are kind to one another, where people care about you and you care about them, where people can live the lives they want instead of spending all of their time struggling to just survive.

This is the point of alchemy. Yes, there is some gold, and a stone, there is medicine and the elixir of eternal life. Yes, you can make yourself a more perfect version of yourself and unlock what some might consider “supernatural” abilities, but these are not the point of alchemy, these are just byproducts. The true point of alchemy is the perfection of every human being and the entire world around us. Alchemy is for everyone, and as you move forward in the work, you realize that “for everyone” is not just about accessibility but it means it is for the benefit of everyone as well.

I hope this all made sense, I have spent 16 years developing this reason and when I get going on the subject, I can get pretty passionate. This is what it is all about, this is why I have been trying to spread the idea of alchemy to everyone I meet for so long. It is not because I really think old school chemistry is fascinating, it is not because creating symbols and images that map onto the human psyche is a really cool way to help me deal with my own struggles, both of those are cool but I don’t think they’re worth nearly the amount of time I have spent on this. The only thing that makes alchemy worth the thousands of years that have been poured into it and the massive impact it has had on the world is its natural ability to be able to make everything it touches better, and that can include the entire planet if we all work together.

Thank you so much for your attention today, it has been wonderful to be back and working again after being gone for so long. I spent a lot of time while I was gone explaining why I love alchemy so much and the way it applied felt like the perfect way to finish this series too. I truly hope that this has helped you understand the purpose of alchemy and the greater reason we are here on a much deeper level. I know I find myself going back to read some of my older discourses while writing, so I can ensure that they all align, and some of you have mentioned that you go back and reread some topics as we move forward, I hope now if you go back you can gain some new ideas and concepts to work with now that you understand the purpose of alchemy a little better.

As for our next topic, we will be going back to the roots of this publication again with a commentary on an alchemical manuscript. Starting next week we will be covering the Splendor Solis in depth and this will take about 21 weeks to complete. If you are unfamiliar with the work, that is totally fine, we will be starting with an introduction as always and we will be taking one plate a week and discussing the imagery, symbolism, and meaning in depth. There has been a lot of requests to go back to a long series that covers a single alchemical text and I think this one can lend itself to a lot of discussion. It also perfectly encapsulates many of the topics we have covered lately, so it will be a wonderful next step.

Thank you so much again, for your time, dear reader, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Hiller, Jack H. “On the Natural State of Subatomic Particles: Implications for Superposition & Quantum Entanglement.” Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 13, no. 3 (2022).

Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and alchemy. Routledge, 2014.

[1] Hiller, Jack H. “On the Natural State of Subatomic Particles: Implications for Superposition & Quantum Entanglement.” Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 13, no. 3 (2022).

[2] Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and alchemy. Routledge, 2014.

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Our last discourse covered a very basic form of alchemical mediation and how we can implement that into our daily lives. Our focus today is going to be on taking the next step and using our newly found meditation practices to work toward a more perfect version of ourselves. The most basic way that I have found to do that through meditation is by holding the events, emotions, thoughts, or fears that you are wanting to work on and then, when you are ready to, working through them.

That might sound a little confusing to those of us who don’t have a degree in psychology or aren’t fluent in the tiktok mental health scene. I know when I have been told to “hold space” for things or to “be mindful” or doing something “without judgement” I was genuinely confused about what they meant, until recently, and if I ever asked someone, they would just use other psychology terms without defining any of them. Because of this I want to try to put what we are talking about today into the most easily understandable terms I can.

Since we have learned to sit quietly and to notice what is going on in and around us with each of our senses (or being mindful), we can now move one step further and take a single event, emotion, or thought, hold onto it and work our way though it.

All of us have had something happen to us that has caused a level of anxiety, fear, or trauma, these are the events that we are talking about “holding space for.” It is probably better to start working with an event that is not incredibly difficult to think about just because it is difficult to meditate if you start with a panic attack, but in the end it is up to you, sooner or later you will get to those hard ones if you keep going with the process. For an example today, we will assume that as a child I was bitten by a dog and it has caused a lot of anxiety since, while I work on this alchemical form of meditation, I will remember the event in as much detail as I can, like I am watching a movie. It is pretty common in the early stages to notice your heart rate or blood pressure rise or feel parts of your body tense up during this part, for me, I can often feel my neck tense up and pulse when my heart rate and blood pressure rise when I think about stressful events. As I notice those things happen, I want to only notice them and let them float away the same way you let thoughts move through your mind like clouds. Noticing these can help you stay grounded and keep an eye on your own anxiety level, but you don’t want to focus on them. I would try my best to view the event from a different angle each time I rewatch it, every meditation that is focused on this alchemical experiment would slowly dissolve the event as you watch it. The more you repeat this experiment, you will notice that the unconscious reactions, like a racing heart, will start to happen a lot less often. The hard part to work through after that is to view this event “without judgement.” When the dog bit me it hurt, of course I thought that getting bit was bad, getting hurt is bad! But as I rewatch the bite it will stop seeming like such a bad thing, the bite doesn’t hurt when it happens now and my heart races even less each time, instead of being a traumatic event it is now more like just a thing that happened. Most of the things that happen to us are not automatically good or bad, most of them only have the connotation that we place upon them, and these feelings that we place on them are what cause the anxiety that we feel.

Once I feel like I have dealt with my feelings around the dog bite adequately, one trick that has been recommended from our experimentation is to place yourself back in the 1^st person point of view of the event and reliving it with a different, optimum outcome. This technique can help me deal with the fear and anxiety about the dog bite and now that I have relived it with a different outcome, I can have less anxiety when I am in situations with dogs and have better reactions around them in the future. This aspect is one that not everyone does but the alchemists that added in that step thought it was beneficial enough to recommend adding it.

Once we have worked through the little things we can move on to bigger and more triggering situations and learn more and more about how we react the way we do and why. The better we know ourselves, our past, our traumas, our desires, our fears, our triggers, the better we can anticipate our thoughts, actions, and reactions in any given situation and consistently choose better courses of action. We are making habits within ourselves and creating neurological connections in our brains to have the reactions and coping mechanisms that we want to have.

For those of you who have studied psychology, this may sound familiar to you. What we are doing here is basically exposure therapy for your mind. We have found that what we once thought was completely set in stone, the layout of a person’s brain, is a lot more plastic (or movable, not actual plastic) than we thought and because of that plasticity we can rewire how the brain works and reacts to things.

When I mention exposure therapy to people they often think of therapy for phobias like spiders, where you put your hand closer and closer to a spider through each session until your fear is manageable. When we look at the example of me with the dog it makes perfect sense to think of it that way. I got bit by a dog; it was scary and now I avoid dogs because dogs are scary. Because I avoid dogs, I can’t really expose myself to them very well, by doing these exercises I can imagine that I am in a situation with a dog without actually being there. Once my brain is ok with the new connections I have made, I can try to take those new connections for a spin. Maybe I walk past a dog park, safely on the other side of the fence while monitoring my body for the signs of stress that I know to look for. If I can do that a few times and not be afraid, maybe I can walk into a Petsmart without having a panic attack. Each time we reach a new plateau we can re-evaluate our next step and choose how to move forward next.

I want to stop here for this week because we have covered plenty of information to think about for a week. In fact, in order to get the best results from these two discourses, I recommend you come back to read them again later. I promise that if you come back to these pages after completing some of the exercises you will find new, even more helpful information. As for the next discourse, I am sorry to say that there will not be another until early June, I will be spending the next several weeks doing some international traveling for my work and research and cannot commit to posting each Monday when I don’t know when I will have internet. With that being said, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that when I return, I will be coming back with a lot of research that I would love to share. Thank you so much for your time, I wish you the best of luck in your meditations, and may the next week find you well.

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Resources:

Abramowitz, Jonathan S., Brett J. Deacon, and Stephen PH Whiteside. Exposure therapy for anxiety: Principles and practice. Guilford Publications, 2019.

Bogart, Greg. “The use of meditation in psychotherapy: A review of the literature.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 45, no. 3 (1991): 383-412.

Breedlove, S. Marc, and Cynthia L. Jordan. “The increasingly plastic, hormone-responsive adult brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 6 (2001): 2956-2957.

Browne, Amber D. The Little Book of Hermetic Principles: Heal Your Energy, Seek Enlightenment, and Deepen Your Understanding of Your Mind, Body, and Spirit. Simon and Schuster, 2022.

Bunge, Mario. “Minding matter: The plastic brain.” In Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 159-180. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2010.

Crick, Francis HC. “Thinking about the brain.” Scientific American 241, no. 3 (1979): 219-233.

Jäncke, Lutz. “The plastic human brain.” Restorative neurology and neuroscience 27, no. 5 (2009): 521-538.

Mokusen, Miyuki. “The psychodynamics of Buddhist meditation: a Jungian perspective.” The Eastern Buddhist 10, no. 2 (1977): 155-168.

Odajnyk, V. Walter. “Gathering the light: A Jungian view of meditation.” (2011).

Odajnyk, V. Walter. “Zen meditation as a way of individuation and healing.” Psychological Perspectives 37, no. 1 (1998): 122-131.

Perez-De-Albeniz, Alberto, and Jeremy Holmes. “Meditation: Concepts, effects and uses in therapy.” International Journal of Psychotherapy 5, no. 1 (2000): 49-58.

Robjant, Katy, and Mina Fazel. “The emerging evidence for narrative exposure therapy: A review.” Clinical psychology review 30, no. 8 (2010): 1030-1039.

Rothbaum, Barbara Olasov, and Ann C. Schwartz. “Exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder.” American journal of psychotherapy 56, no. 1 (2002): 59-75.

Rubenstein, Elias. The Hermetic Experience: From Mystery to Self-Knowledge. XinXii, 2024.

Simmonds, James D. “Vaughan’s’ The Book’: Hermetic or Meditative?.” Neophilologus 47, no. 4 (1963): 320.

Smith, Jonathan C. “Meditation as psychotherapy: a review of the literature.” Psychological Bulletin 82, no. 4 (1975): 558.

Stein, Murray. Minding the self: Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality. Routledge, 2014.

Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. “The Plastic Brain Creates.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 55, no. 3 (2007): 1045-1053.

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Over the last several months I have been finishing my grad school work for my masters degree and, since the study of alchemy is rarely taken seriously, I have been putting as much time as I can into school to try to bring some of that academic respect to our field. The benefit of that to you, dear reader, is that I have been able to do a lot of research recently and now I just need to translate that work into digestible discourses for this publication.

With that being said, I want to repeat something that I have said before in notes (tweets on the substack app, for those without it), taking all of that research and the ongoing or upcoming research will take some time because we are a small team and I refuse to use AI in my writing process or researching process. I have worked with it and continue to run tests with it but it fails every time when it comes to in depth historic alchemical sourcing, so I do not trust it and will not use it. This is just one of those firm stances I have taken to try to bring that academic rigor and respect back to our art.

Next, you may have noticed I said we are a small team and that it is not just me anymore. I've mentioned in the past that I have been working to build a team of talented, professional, and brilliant alchemists, and that has been going wonderfully for the last two years. We have been working on creating a nonprofit organization for some time now and when the paperwork comes back from the federal government, I will have more news to announce. But rest assured, there are amazing things growing in the dark right now and very soon they will he brought to the light. This has been such a long learning experience for me but I cannot wait to share this with you all when it is ready.

Finally, we left off in our studies after covering beginner methods for alchemical meditation, next week An Emerald Tablet will be returning right where we left off, with the next steps for intermediate alchemical meditation. If you are new to meditation or just want a refresher, I recommend picking over the previous discourse before next monday.

Thank you all so much for your support and for reading An Emerald Tablet. I can't think of a better thing to share with everyone than the wonder and magic of alchemy. May you go in peace, and my the next week find you well.

In many of our previous discourses we have mentioned meditation being key to alchemy and especially mental alchemy but one of the first questions that comes after I say this is often “HOW??” How is sitting still in the lotus position and making sure my mind is completely empty going to help me do anything at all, let alone reach inner perfection? I totally get that question, I asked that too for at least the first five years of studying alchemy and the only answer I could come up with is, it isn’t. Not because meditation isn’t useful but because that concept of what meditation is is completely wrong. That is like picking the verse “Jesus wept” and then trying to ham fist the entirety of the Abrahamic religions into it, you aren’t going to get the full picture, and you are absolutely going to misunderstand the finer points.

So, if we aren’t supposed to just sit here and make our mind completely blank, then what are we supposed to do? If you have ever typed that into google or read a book about meditation, I am sure that you were met with the answer “mindfulness” like that will explain everything you could ever need to know, and if you are anything like me, that probably lead to a whole new set of questions. Mainly, what is mindfulness? The answer that you will always find is that it is “being fully present in your current time and place” but as far as I know I am always present where I am and yet I am not perfect, so what am I doing wrong? While being “fully present” is exactly what you are looking for, a good way to think about that is while you are meditating, you spend that time being fully aware of everything going on around you. At the beginning this is really difficult for most people, your mind is constantly trying to fill in the void so that you don’t have to spend time thinking about things that might bother you. Instead try picking one of your senses and gently focus on noticing any stimulus that arises within that sense.

Let’s walk through this to make sure we are all on the same page. You have chosen the location and position that is the most comfortable so that you are not having to focus on your body position and can choose to either close or open your eyes and begin taking deep breaths through the nose. Because it is our first time trying this method, we will focus our attention on the sense of smell as it is a little easier to control the smells around us at this time and that sense is closely related to the memory. While you take deep breathes through the nose, notice any smell that comes along with that breath, maybe you are burning incense, or you brewed coffee that morning, maybe you have a roast in the crockpot for dinner, you are just noticing these smells without attaching any emotions to them and without making any judgements against them. I like to burn incense when I meditate and I have taken the time to focus on that one smell for the entire duration of the exercise, after spending 10 minutes a day for several days focused on and meditating on that incense I noticed I was able to pick out different smells inside of the main fragrance, I noticed patterns in how the incense burned and how the smell of the smoke would tell me what was happening within my incense. After a while I realized I had developed some sort of a relationship with the incense I was using. I could tell which stick, powder, or brick would burn the best for that day, not because I studied incense and understood how those compounds combusted, but because I had seen how the conditions of those pieces affected them when I burned them before. Doing this with each of your senses repeatedly can help you become more aware of the things around you and to start recognizing and putting together patterns which is incredibly helpful on this journey. It is helpful to remember that before you can master or perfect the universe, you first have to master your own body and spending this time within your own body is the best way to gain that mastership.

Sometimes, people find it difficult to focus their entire conscious mind on something like a sense without being distracted by their own thoughts, for this there is something that can help, the use of a mantra. When using a mantra the word is repeated over and over to keep the conscious mind focused on one thing so the subconscious mind can be receptive. It is like doing a hobby you are very good at to distract your objective senses and letting your subconscious mind wander while in a flow state. Most of the time I mention this method to beginners they are familiar with the Om, a Sanskrit word that represents the ultimate reality which is commonly used as a mantra in Hindu or Buddhist forms of meditation. Another mantra that is common and closely related to the Om is Om Mani Padme Hum, a Tibetan mantra roughly meaning “the jewel is in the lotus” (similar to the alchemical V.I.T.R.I.O.L.) and each word also contains meaning in themselves, the universe, compassion, wisdom, and grounding. This mantra is often sung instead of simply said which at least in my opinion, makes it a little more effective if you really struggle with occupying your conscious mind.

However, the mantra does not need to be in some south or east Asian language to be effective, and you don’t need to pay someone a ton of money for them to hum around you and tell you what your secret mantra is. Any word can be a mantra for you, but I do recommend a few things to think about if you are choosing one; start simple, a single word with as few syllables as possible, and try to make it positive, in my experience positive mantras work much more effectively than negative or indifferent ones. Constructive ideas such as peace, love, harmony, and community are great mantras to try, remember we are trying to perfect ourselves and the world around us and we can only do that through positive concepts.

This all might sound too easy and I want to remind you that at this time, that is the point. Meditation should not be something that stresses you out, if you have always had a hard time “just clearing your mind” and you never had the attention span to meditate, maybe try again with these thoughts in mind, and maybe cut down the amount of time you’re trying as well. Ten minutes of meditation is just too long for beginners, but most of us can find 2 minutes a day that we can intentionally sit down, breathe, and calm down after a long day. These are the most basic steps to begin meditation, and you won’t be ready to move on to the next step until you have mastered those 2 minutes, so it is totally ok to practice it over and over for a long time, no one is going to be grading your work. If you don’t learn to be ok with sitting alone in the quiet with your own mind then you can’t really move on to the later work of dealing with difficult parts of your psyche, so take your time and make sure you are getting some good quality reps in with your meditation work.

I want to stop here for today before we get into more complicated ideas within meditation. This is a concept that I struggled with for a long time, and it was mostly due to my own misunderstanding of what the whole idea even was, so if I can make the entire process a little easier for the next person then I will have done my job. In our next discourse we will start where we left off with explaining how we can work on and deal with the difficult parts of our psyche using meditation, after that I want to go into a few traditional forms to show how the practice can be scaled up along with your skill level or belief system. Thank you so much for your time today, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Over the last year we have taken time and patience to build a strong foundation of alchemical theory and principles, we have talked about the seven hermetic principles, the seven operations of alchemy, the three parts of wisdom of the entire universe, and we have delved into different esoteric practices in order to give a unified framework we can view our world through. But once I can establish this worldview to people I am met with the same questions; if I am not interested in chemistry then why does any of this matter? How does any of this apply to me? And, most of all, what do we do with alchemy now? The “simple” answer is that we use it to make ourselves better and to make the world a better place. Because this can be confusing transition to make, we can make it easier by taking it slow and breaking it down, so this discourse and the ones following are going to be dedicated on “practical alchemy” and how to use what we have been learning about to achieve the goal of the Great Work.

We know that alchemy is made up of strange symbols, confusing allegories, and chemical reactions but how do those things transfer into making me or the world better? Carl Jung is the best person to go to when trying to figure out how alchemy translates into psychology. The vast majority of his work was spent making these connections that many of us in the field take for granted today, and as a reward for his work he is constantly ridiculed for being a mystic. I don’t want to do him the disservice of trying to oversimplify his works here, that is something I have time planned for another deep dive in the future, but I highly recommend that even if you are only interested in the chemistry side of alchemy you read Jung on Alchemy or Psychology and Alchemy and see how he unites the two sciences into a single unified practice. His basic principle is that the imagery and the terms used perfectly match the steps needed for a person to “perfect” their mind while also operating on the level of the subconscious in order to bypass conscious thought.

One of the most famous alchemical mantras that he applied this framework to is V.I.T.R.I.O.L. or visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying, you will find the secret stone. Jung describes this allegory as a silent retreat into your inner self that mirrors the difficulty and struggle of a journey to the center of the earth. Through this journey inward, facing your shadow, or the parts of you that are negative/ uncontrolled/ unwanted, and passing your psyche through the seven stages of the alchemical process you can take the basic and immature parts of your nature and turn them into well-adjusted reactions and a well-stocked mental health toolbox.

Now, we said at the beginning that the “simple” answer of what to do with alchemy is not just to make yourself better but to also make the world a better place as well, so how do we do that? There are a few ways and depending on your level of skill and dedication, some of those ways could be the ceremonial magic forms we talked about previously, but the easiest and most material way to do that is by making yourself better, like we already said. The personal work you do as an alchemist makes you a more levelheaded, evolved, mature, kind and loving person than you were when you started off and when a person like that interacts with another person it rubs off on them. If you are constantly moving through the world as someone who is intentional in what they do, someone who is a present and active force, and operate with the best intentions toward everyone around you, you will notice that things around you will start to look a little brighter and happier. If more people around you see that and begin to start applying those things to their own lives; growing from old habits, paying attention to patterns around them, maturing, being intentional and active in their lives, and caring for others, then the whole world begins to change for the better. We know that the Hermetic Axiom states, “as above so below” but many forget about the “as within so without,” all it takes for the world the be the perfect place it could be is for each of us to work on ourselves and grow from where we were yesterday. Quantum mechanics has shown in recent years that there is no such thing as objective reality, the universe you see is completely filtered through your own perception and by changing that perception you can change the world around you. By deciding to view the world through a lens of alchemy and seeing the problems ahead of you as Prima Materia that you can break down and reshape into good and constructive results, you stop seeing problems as hurdles that slow you down and more like tests to see if you did the homework right, and since you’ve spent so long doing the homework you can do the test without any stress at all. This reshaping of your mindset and the way you view the world is the same “transmuting of the archetypes/ elements/ demons/ spirits” that alchemists have spoken about for centuries or the basis for some of the ceremonial transmutations done by certain groups we spoke about, just to bring the symbolism from the last year full circle.

Now that we have started to cover what the purpose of all this is for, making the world a better place, and how it is done, journeying to the center of the earth, we can start to discuss what journeying to the center of the earth means. If we wanted to put it into one word, the journey can be simply broken down into “meditation” however for anyone who has meditated on a regular basis you may be thinking that doesn’t help at all. In the west, most of us think of meditation as sitting with our legs crossed and our eyes closed, maybe humming the om, and trying as hard as you can not to think, but that is an oversimplification that has done more harm than good I think. Meditation is different depending on the philosophy a form is based on, the specific practice being done, and the person doing the meditation, no two people are going to do it exactly the same so trying to make it a one-size-fits-all sort of thing rarely works out. Because meditation takes so many different forms and they all have their own benefits and drawbacks I won’t try to squeeze them all at the end of this post but we will be taking the next few discourses to cover different kinds of meditation and ways add them into your daily life to make these alchemical principles you’ve been studying more tangible, and so you can see the benefits of alchemy in your daily lives.

This is where we will pause our discussion for this week, I know that the concepts above will boil over and over in your minds for the next week and I truly hope you will be able to see the positive changes in your daily lives. Remember it is the tiny things you do that build up into big changes. I want to take the end of our time here to thank you again for your time and your help in responding to the surveys, I love having a chance to interact with you. I will be trying to push more products out soon and I have even been considering adding an audio podcast portion in order to try to break down more difficult ideas into simple usable tools. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Bartlett, Robert Allen. Real alchemy: A primer of practical alchemy. Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 2009.

Knapp, Peggy Ann. “The Work of Alchemy.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 575-599.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and alchemy. Routledge, 2014.

Jung, Carl G., and R. F. C. Hull. “Basic concepts of alchemy.” In Collected Works of CG Jung, pp. v12_227-v12_241. Routledge, 2023.

Jung, Carl Gustav, and Nathan Schwartz-Salant. “Jung on alchemy.” (2024): 1-228.

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Let us begin with the basics, what is a wave? A wave is a “propagating disturbance in one or more quantities” or it is a motion made by a source that spreads out through a substance. Think about one of the most common images of waves, ripples on water, the ripples begin from a central source when something impacts the water and they spread out across the whole body until the end is reached or the energy is dissipated, making the medium of the water move up and down. Another common wave is that of sound, which is a ripple made in the air from the source, the person or thing making the sound. Both of these kinds of waves have to have a medium to move through; the ripples in the water must have the water in order to create a ripple, otherwise we would be seeing constant ripples in the air around us with each movement, in the case of sound waves there must be air for them to propagate (spread out) because we know from physics experiments that sound waves cannot exist in or move through a vacuum.

Now that the extreme basics of waves have been covered as the disturbance that spreads out through one or more mediums, what is causing the waves? Simply put, vibrations cause waves and waves are evidence that vibrations exist, in the same way that ripples on water are proof that the water was disturbed. A vibration is the “oscillatory motion around an equilibrium point” or the slight movement around a central point. It doesn’t have to be repeated or at a specific interval to be a vibration, those traits would further describe what type of vibration that it is. If I slap my desk right now I would be producing a set of vibrations; one set of vibrations is slow and travels through the wood of my desk, causing the things sitting on it to bounce and shake, another set of vibrations is much faster and leaves my hand, travels through the air and makes my ear drum shake so I can hear the thump and the rattle from all of the objects that moved. My hand caused part of the desk to move around an equilibrium point, or vibrate, and that vibration caused waves that propagated, or traveled, through the desk and air, one or more mediums and affected all of the things along their path of propagation.

When we look at modern science and the study of quantum physics, we can see that the scientific view of the world has been changing to reflect these concepts. We used to believe that the universe was made up of tiny particles, sometimes explained as tiny balls of elements or atoms that are bonded together to create the form that we see. Current models show that these particles don’t really exist, they are just showing themselves in one of their possible states, kind of like a Schrödinger’s particle and that the things we see are made up of the interaction of the vibrations in many different fields. These fields are like oceans of potential energy made up of many different substances like, the proton field, electron field, the Higgs field, and so on. As each of these different oceans of energy interact with each other, the waves crashing into one another create the world we interact with. Many of us have seen the example of how gravity is supposed to work, they will stretch a cloth out and place a large ball in the middle to show how the mass of the ball changes the gravitational forces around it, this is similar to how these waves work. If we were able to dent the cloth with our finger and then flick it forward across the plane, we could show that what is moving is the wave, your finger worked as the vibration creating the dent, then the wave moved out forward. And if we were to send 2 dents toward each other, when they interacted, we would be able to observe several different reactions; they could bounce off one another, cancel each other out and disappear, or even become a deeper dent. These different reactions between the waves is what causes the different materials we interact with on a daily basis.

This may sound very familiar to anyone who has studied hermetic philosophy because the two schools of thought are nearly the same. Hermetics do not refer to the different quantum fields when they describe the medium in which these vibrations take place, they use the term æther. Æther or aether is the hermetic ocean of potentiality that everything happens in, and while they do traditionally only use a single field as a universal medium, some modern Hermetics are willing to accept that there may be several overlapping fields involved. It has even been hinted at in ancient writings when the alchemists describe how the intersections of universal laws, the alchemist, and him observing the vibration causes things to condense out of the sea of potential that is always there. Once these interactions happen, what we call material reality precipitates out of the potential energy of the aether, meaning that everything we see, interact with, and are, is simply the sum of the waves of many different vibrations.

As we come to how material reality falls out of the aether like salt in a solution, I want to pause for the time being. These concepts are very intricate, and I have tried to distill them down to their most simple form, if you are interested in diving deeper into this topic I encourage you to, but do so with discernment because it is a difficult topic and easy to be lead down the wrong path on. I also want to take a moment to apologize for the delay in posts recently as I did not intend for there to be as long of a break as there has been. That being said, the posting schedule for An Emerald Tablet is likely to change soon as the actual physical alchemical work going on is requiring more time than before. Right now, I have no idea of what that new schedule is going to look like, but I will be sure to pass out that information as soon as I can. I thank you so much for your time today as well as your patience and I hope the next week finds you well.

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This concept may not seem completely foreign to you when it comes to studying alchemy, not only do alchemists believe that elements vibrate, as we mentioned in our study of Hermetic laws, they believe that the entire world is made of vibrations. While it can get much more complicated than these, some of the most basic concepts include that fire gives off heat, earth gives off cold, when two elements interact or are hit against each other they release sound waves, the sun emits both light and heat, radioactive elements give off radiation waves in their kind, and so on. These vibrations are easy to grasp, we have interacted with many of these vibrations before, the part that gets a little more complicated is when the vibrations or effects gets too small for us to really notice and that is when we can turn to modern science to confirm what alchemists have been saying for years, that every element, or atom, vibrates. Atomic science confirms that every atom is vibrating all the time and the vibrations are different based on the atom you are looking at, lead vibrates differently than gold. Taking this one step further into the realm of quantum physics, scientists have stated that not only are the atoms vibrating but they exist as vibrational waves themselves until they are observed as particles. Understanding that atoms are constantly giving off vibrational waves it makes sense that these waves can potentially affect objects around them in the form of radiation, magnetism, and chemical reactivity, and more.

This field of quantum physics is only beginning to grasp some of the biggest mysteries of our universe and is incredible to study but luckily, for our purposes, alchemists have been documenting these vibrations for thousands of years. So, what are some of the things we have learned about them? First is the simplest, the vibrations effects weaken the greater the distance from the center of the object. This should be somewhat obvious because we know that forces like magnetism and radiation get less effective the further you get from the object. Next, when looking at how objects interact, what the two elements are made of matters. Using magnetism as an example again, we know that magnetic waves only affect other materials that are ferric, or contain iron, but there are other examples that show how these waves can effect things differently as well. When we look at the element of fire being applied to other elements in alchemy one of the first things we may think of is placing lead over the fire and melting it. We know without question that the effect of the energy waves on lead changes it from hard to soft and liquid-like, but if we place clay in that same fire, it does not become softer or melt. The energy transfer from the fire to the clay makes it smaller and harder than it was originally.

A third thing that has been posited from research that happened hundreds of years ago is that the vibrations are apparently stronger the closer the element gets to the center of the earth itself. I have not found a specific reason or mechanism for this yet, but I am actively looking for it, if any of you have any information on this quality of elemental vibrations and would like to, please share it below. The final thing we are going to cover about these waves is something we know about every wave, but it gives us a little more information on why the interactions between different waves work in the way they do. That is that the direction of travel and makeup of the waves as they interact causes interference, this interference can cause the waves to be amplified, drowned out, or changed into another wave completely. Looking back at our previous examples of lead and clay being added to the fire, we can see how the way the waves interact can cause two completely different reactions within the material. The way these waves interact follows the same logical and mathematical rules for propagation that we see effecting radio waves today and if an alchemist were to understand these interactions and how to manipulate them, he would be able to create any number of effects that could appear like magic.

With everything on the planet sending out vibrations and each of those vibrations interacting with each other, the earth has what could be considered a “noise floor.” If I were to plug in a EMF spectrum analyzer to visualize all the radio waves in an area, there would be a set of lines at the bottom that represent the sum of all signals and noises that set the lower limit of what is detectable. When I was back in radio school, they explained this like pretending you are at the mall and you hear the general noise of everyone talking around you, that is the noise floor, if someone speaks directly to you that would be a specific spike on the analyzer. The reason this noise floor is important is because this is the vibrational storm that we live in, and not only do we live within it, but it is this baseline that the energy from the sun and other celestial bodies is interacting with on a constant basis. The interference between these two massive energy emitters and the waves they are producing is, in its most simple form, the way astrology works on the planetary scale. The sun releases waves which travel through the universe, these waves bounce off a planetary body and are completely changed by the noise floor they interacted with on that planet, sometimes visible through the change in the color of the light. These reflected rays then travel to earth where they interfere and interact with the waves produced by your body, the elements of the planet, and the general noise floor of the planet itself before being reflected again until they lose their energy. Because this cycle is happening on our planet and in our universe at all times, we can infer that things are always happening and the vibrations are always changing even if we cannot see the effects of them with our own eyes.

I want to pause here for this week because we have stepped into several difficult alchemical, scientific, and mathematic concepts that can be overwhelming for some. I hope I was able to keep them as simple and general as possible, but I do understand they can be difficult. Because the study of vibrations and waves can be so complicated, yet it is so important to the study of alchemy, I want to take at least the next week to give a bit of a deeper dive on the way vibrations and waves work. I think that having a basic understanding of these concepts will help cement several of the ideas we have discussed over the last several months, not only astrology and theurgy, but going all the way back to the hermetic law that states everything is vibration. Thank you so much for your time today, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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References:

Adamson, Peter. “Abū ma’šar, al-kindī and the philosophical defense of astrology.” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 69, no. 2 (2002): 245-270.

Battistini, Matilde. Astrology, magic, and alchemy in art. Getty Publications, 2007

Burnett, Charles. “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology:‘the Forty Chapters’.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1993): 77-117

Dobbs, Roland. Electromagnetic waves. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.

Forbes, Robert J. “On the origin of alchemy.” Chymia 4 (1953): 1-11.

Langermann, Y. Tzvi. “Magic, Causality and Intentionality: The Doctrine of Rays in al-Kindī.” (2002): 256-258.

Lykken, Joseph D. “The standard model: Alchemy and astrology.” arXiv preprint hep-ph/0609274 (2006).

Newman, William R., and Anthony Grafton, eds. Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe. MIT Press, 2001

Rehman, Mutazid Waliur. “AL-KINDI AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 2, no. 2 (1920): 97-107.

Wiesner, Hillary Suzanne. The cosmology of al-Kindi. Harvard University, 1993

Willard, Thomas. “Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences.” Handbook of Medieval Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter (2015): 102-19.

York, Michael. “Magic, Astrology and Alchemy.” In Science and Religion, pp. 238-252. Routledge, 2014.

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As we said last week, astrology has been practiced for thousands of years by dozens of civilizations, some of the most noteworthy are the people of Chaldea, India, and China, but throughout those civilizations one question has been repeated by those who are not initiated into this science, how do the stars effect people and events on earth? Each practice had its own explanation, but alchemy worked to provide the most scientific and repeatable explanation, this led them to the conclusion that it operated in the same way as light energy leaving the sun, through particles or waves.

The first method, where energy operates in the same way as light particles, is the simplest to grasp. As we know, the sun sends out all kinds of energy in every direction, on earth we receive heat, light, and other forms of solar radiation, all which react differently with objects on the planet. When the light rays leave the sun, they can travel all the way to earth where they impact your body, and each different color of light reflects so others can see what you are wearing. The slightly different ultraviolet rays don’t visibly reflect but instead they hit your skin and begin to give you radiation burns (sun burns), UV-A rays going deeper into your flesh causing long term damage while UV-B is only able to burn the outside layers of the skin. Another energy traveling along with the light is heat, this does not visibly reflect so we can see it in the same way the light does but it hits the outside of your skin and over time sinks in deeper and deeper the longer that it is contacting you.

Along with these rays, alchemists postulate that there is another form of energy being radiated from the sun, this is a vitalizing force that gives us the energy to do things, kind of like the way light gives energy to plants through photosynthesis. This energy can come directly to us from the sun with the light or it can travel through space, hit other celestial bodies (the moon or other planets), and bounce back toward earth with their frequencies altered by their impact with the other celestial bodies and the distance that they have had to travel. We can see part of this energy from the sun reflected by these bodies and how this reflection has altered in the form of light, and when the light bounces off the moon and hits your clothes, they are a much paler color. Your clothes did not change colors as the sun went down, the light hitting them is altered by the reflection off another surface.

As for the second theory for the mechanism of operation we have the wave theory, which is somewhat similar to the particle theory but provides a separate medium in which the waves travel. This medium is what the alchemists termed “aether” and it is said to be the foundational building blocks of the physical world. Everything in the universe is said to be made up of aether, whether it is a person, a planet, or the “empty” space between them, the only difference is the amount that the aether has solidified or condensed to create the more solid objects. This allows for a substance for the waves to move through in the same way that sound waves can move through air, each wave could then make contact with the celestial bodies, bounce off, and travel in the new direction until it makes contact again.

The best way I have found to visualize this is by picturing a billiards table that has been filled with water. Each time a ball is moved it creates waves inside the water, those waves travel around and bounce off other balls, creating new waves until the energy is fully dissipated and the waves appear to die off. Scaling this up to a universal scale we replace the balls with the celestial bodies and the water with the aether. The sun then releases the solar energy, this time in the form of waves through the aether, and those waves travel through space until they impact earth or another planet where they are altered by the material make up of the planet and reflect back out into the universe carrying new properties.

Regardless of if the energy operates as a particle or a wave, as they travel through the universe bouncing around, they pick up minor fluctuations in their frequency, and every fluctuation changes the properties and effect that the energy has. These small differences within the frequencies allow materials to absorb or reflect them at different rates giving rise to the alchemical idea that the planets have specific effects on their matching metals for instance.

If we take a specific ray and follow it around space maybe we can make this a little clearer. In this example we see a wave of solar energy leave the sun, this wave is at its original frequency and at the highest power level it will see at the point of transmission. The wave moves outward through the aether toward earth but impacts the planet mercury, when they reflect off mercury, they are going a little slower and have changed frequency slightly because of the effects of the properties of planet. When those waves impact earth they have been changed from the original sun waves so they have different effects, the direct sun energy may be a better frequency to be absorbed by gold while the new slower mercurial frequency cannot enter gold, but it can enter a softer metal like mercury. These frequencies also pass through a person, just like every electromagnetic frequency in the universe, and each of the different signals will have a specific small effect on the body and mind that it contacts.

According to some astrologers who focus on creating birth charts, these waves traveling through the universe at the moment you are born will impact with your body and mind and set the foundation for how your first neurons connect in your brain and help set the foundations for your personality. Others argue that the one-time impact of waves is not enough to affect your personality so greatly, they say that it is more likely that while a baby is growing for 9 months, they are absorbing all of these waves, and the culmination of these waves are what creates your basic foundational personality and traits. Currently there is no solid answer for which option is more accurate and it is possible that there are other variables we are not considering, I personally think that it makes a little more sense that the culmination of rays would have a greater effect on a new born than the singular set of rays on their birth day but that is just speculation on my part.

We will pause here for today; I know that this explanation of astrology can be somewhat complicated and I do not want to make it harder than it already is. For those of you who would like some visualizations for these ideas, I recommend looking up videos of radio or sound wave propagation, the videos are all over the internet and are really easy to find, they may make it easier to grasp these concepts if you don’t have a background in radio waves. In our next issue we will be discussing another set of waves that alchemists have speculated have a large effect on the celestial energies and those are the waves that come from the earth itself. I hope to see you in our next discourse, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Adamson, Peter. “Abū ma’šar, al-kindī and the philosophical defense of astrology.” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 69, no. 2 (2002): 245-270.

Battistini, Matilde. Astrology, magic, and alchemy in art. Getty Publications, 2007

Burnett, Charles. “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology:‘the Forty Chapters’.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1993): 77-117

Forbes, Robert J. “On the origin of alchemy.” Chymia 4 (1953): 1-11.

Lykken, Joseph D. “The standard model: Alchemy and astrology.” arXiv preprint hep-ph/0609274 (2006).

Newman, William R., and Anthony Grafton, eds. Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe. MIT Press, 2001

Rehman, Mutazid Waliur. “AL-KINDI AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 2, no. 2 (1920): 97-107.

Wiesner, Hillary Suzanne. The cosmology of al-Kindi. Harvard University, 1993

Willard, Thomas. “Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences.” Handbook of Medieval Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter (2015): 102-19.

York, Michael. “Magic, Astrology and Alchemy.” In Science and Religion, pp. 238-252. Routledge, 2014.

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Generally speaking, astrology is the study or the belief that someone can gather insights and information about the lives of people and events on earth by studying the apparent position of different planets and celestial objects. A person may look at the position of the seven alchemical planets or in more modern practices the nine planets along with the sun, moon and sometimes other celestial bodies to either predict events that will happen or see how those celestial bodies affect the mind and body of the subject. While the way astrology is practiced in the west today may appear that it is a homogenous practice, there are many different manifestations of astrology that have been studied for millennia around the world and are still active.

Astrology has existed since humans first looked up at the stars and noticed that they follow logical, repeated patterns and has established itself as a scientific pillar in nations such as China, India, Chaldea, as well as the Arabic and Egyptian empires. At this time the practice of astrology and astronomy were not different sciences. Studying the planets themselves and how they moved meant studying the patterns in people and current events that happen alongside them. The Babylonians were the first masters of the sky that we know of, they tracked the stars and recorded their movements in extreme detail. They were the first to create the twelve-sign zodiac and for thousands of years, from the Babylonian to the Chaldean empires, led the world in astrological and astronomical research. You may even remember from our previous discourses on the planetary metals that the names for many of the days of the week still relate back to the Chaldean planetary days.

The Chinese also became known for their study of the stars during the Zhou dynasty. The school of Chinese astrology is quite different than what we see in western astrology, and that may make sense to those of you who have studied your own signs before. Instead of having twelve signs for one year that can be split into four elements, the Chinese zodiac contains a sixty-year cycle that can be split into the five alchemical elements of fire, water, wood, metal, and earth. Western astrology uses the aforementioned twelve-sign annual cycle that it received from ancient Greece, who owe their knowledge of the stars to the Arabs who taught them.

In my understanding, modern western astrology focuses heavily on a person’s birthday and where the sun was during that time. This can be more detailed when creating a full Birth Chart which marks where each of the celestial bodies were during the person’s birth. The birthday is also how a person can find out their zodiac sign, one of the 12 zodiac houses established by the Greeks and each of these signs will have a series of personality traits that are more or less present in the individuals such as stubbornness or flexibility among others. Based on the sign a person has, an astrologer can give them their horoscope which predicts events based on how the position of the planets and the way they interact with our thoughts, emotions, and energies. I understand that there is much more nuance and detail-work involved with astrology but without trying to make this a class on the zodiac I hope that our explanation here will suffice.

As an alchemist and not someone who studies astrology in the same way as the modern astrologer I am fully aware of my ignorance on the subject, but through all of my research I have not been able to find an explanation of the mechanism of action in astrology. I don’t mean this to be a criticism but simply a statement and maybe later someone will be able to explain it to me. One theory I have heard is that the planets are moving in logical patterns that take an exact amount of time to repeat and these patterns link up with certain psychological patterns in human beings or weather cycles on earth, for example eclipses happening just before a famine starts. By tracking the two patterns you can use the stars to predict the next step in the pattern. This makes a lot of sense, and I can see this being an important aspect of astronomy and astrological predictions in history but I don’t think this explains every astrological prediction so there must be some other mechanism involved.

When it comes to alchemical astrology we have been given at least part of a mechanism of action in the form of vibrations. As we will be diving deeper into the subject in our next discourse, I will keep this explanation short, but the general idea is that the sun radiates many different energies from itself and when those vibrations reach a large planetary body they reflect back toward us. When we look up we can see the reflection of some of these energies as the bright un-twinkling lights of planets that are often a different color than the sun, but this is only the visible light, the other vibrations are coming in as well in a slightly different frequency and these different frequencies affect humans and objects in different ways.

We will stop here for today too to allow for this information to sink in and let you research astrology on your own in more detail if this has piqued your interest. The world of astrology is complex and has almost as many ways to practice as there are believers in its power and if there is one that has appealed to you, I wish you luck in your studies. If you have studied astrology in the past or have any insights you would like to share, please comment below and I look forward to learning more. Again, thank you so much for your patience over the last several weeks and for the good energy many of you have sent my way. I look forward to seeing you soon and may the next week find you well.

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Resources:

Battistini, Matilde. Astrology, magic, and alchemy in art. Getty Publications, 2007.

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Lykken, Joseph D. “The standard model: Alchemy and astrology.” arXiv preprint hep-ph/0609274 (2006).

Martin, Clare. Alchemy: The Soul of Astrology. The Wessex Astrologer, 2021.

Newman, William R., and Anthony Grafton, eds. Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe. MIT Press, 2001.

Ptolemy, Claudius. “Ptolmaic Astrology.”

Riley, Mark. “Theoretical and practical astrology: Ptolemy and his colleagues.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 117 (1987): 235-256.

Willard, Thomas. “Astrology, Alchemy and other Occult Sciences.” Handbook of Medieval Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter (2015): 102-19.

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To begin with, a word of caution, theurgy is a complicated and intricate process no matter which practice is being followed, and this is doubly true for alchemy. The magical dangers of Solomonic, Abrahamic, and Elus Cohen practices are more spiritual and nebulous for those who do the work, and it can be hard to wrap your brain around energetic, karmic, or spiritual ramifications but in alchemical theurgy there is the added danger of things exploding, so as always, safety should come first. When someone is cleansing themselves and their work space, drawing circles, and speaking phrases the problems that can arise aren’t likely to be life threatening, for the most part the actual steps are safe and simple and the magician is only in dangers of having their soul pulled to hell or otherwise marked by evil forces, and that is only scary if the magician believes that those are real possibilities. In alchemical theurgy, the tools we are using are chemicals, ores, crucibles, fire, distillation apparatuses and other dangerous lab equipment so it is vitally important to learn and follow all the instructions and warnings as closely as possible.

Alchemical theurgy is the system of magic that is used in alchemy, it may seem counterintuitive that alchemists would study magic but if we remember Clarke’s third law, “any technology (or science) that is sufficiently advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic.” To someone who has no idea how to create spagyric tinctures for instance, an alchemist creating a medicine that can cure an illness definitely seems like magic. This magical practice is different in each school of alchemy, some may focus on herbalism and creating tinctures or medicines, some on metallic operations and creating gold or other elements, while others focus entirely on the mental and spiritual evolution of spiritual alchemy. Regardless of the way it is done and the materials used, the general goals of alchemical theurgy are always the same: the evolution of the soul of the alchemist himself, the elevation of the soul of all humanity, and the reunion of the soul of the alchemist (and eventually all humanity) with the universal soul. This set of goals is one thing that separates alchemy from the other, more “material” schools of herbalism, medicine, chemistry, metallurgy, or other sciences. Back to our example, if a worker is creating a spagyric tincture for the purpose of helping cure someone, but they are not creating that tincture with the intention of spiritual evolution, then they are practicing herbal medicine but have not taken their work to the level of alchemy. This is not to say that the other schools are less than or below alchemy, they simply do not serve the same purpose and therefore fit into a different niche.

The steps that the alchemist follows are very similar to those followed by the herbalist or the other magicians we have covered over the last several weeks and sometimes even appear to bridge the magical and scientific practices, blurring the lines between them. As we have said in each case, education is the first step. No one that decides to study Solomonic magic should attempt to summon Lucifuge on day one and expect results, let alone positive ones, and this is exactly the same for alchemy. If a new student of alchemy were to decide to try to turn lead into gold using mercury without any education, they would not only fail but would be putting their lives at risk in the pursuit of failure. As we gain this knowledge of alchemy, we quickly learn the next important step to the theurgical process, purification. We have discussed how purification is done in other practices, these sometimes include ritual baths, prayers and meditation, using incense to cleanse tools and so on, and in alchemy these steps are continued but with the added step of ensuring the space and tools are properly cleaned for laboratory use. The tools will need to be cleaned with the proper lab detergents in order to ensure that there are no contaminants present that could affect the reaction, and they may also need to “smudged” with incense or prayed over to ensure the correct vibratory state has been reached, but the order in which this is done, how it is done, and the prayers used will differ based on the school the alchemist learned from, the alchemist himself, the day and time the operation is being done, and the operation itself, showing exactly why education must be the first step and that it cannot be taken lightly. In addition to the physical purification being conducted, the spiritual purification that was done in the previous practices is still just as important in alchemy as it was in the others. To conduct the operations properly the soul of the alchemist must be at the proper level and, to reach the goal of personal and collective spiritual evolution, they must maintain this purity of intention throughout the transmutation.

To try to visualize this we will look at a general example of an alchemical transmutation through the lens of theurgy. We will assume that our alchemist has already studied all of the materials needed in order to prepare for this transmutation and is well aware of the safety measures that need to be observed. He will then begin by ritually bathing and burning incense while meditating in order to elevate themselves to a place where they can properly begin the work and to unite with the master that is within them. Next, the purification step continues as the alchemist cleans and their tools to the required laboratory standards and then conducts the rites to purify the spiritual portion of the tool. As we said before, this can take the form of meditating or praying, burning incense, or applying holy oil over them. It may seem counterintuitive that this takes place after the physical cleaning of the tools but when things are applied to the tools after cleaning it is frequently directed to be added in a place or way that it will not affect the results or in a way that it assists in the operation or works as a catalyst. Finally, when everything is clean and prepared the alchemist can add his lead ore into the crucible and turn the heat up to begin the actual calcination. In order to keep the metal inside alive the heat is often turned up much slower than it is when we are smelting metal and so the alchemist has more time to observe the process, this observation is extremely important, and it makes up much of the theurgic operation being worked. As the ore heats, melts and breaks down the alchemist watches and meditates on what is happening in front of him and how that compares to the processes that are happening inside of him at the exact same time. Sometimes this can be dramatic visions that lead the alchemist to an epiphany or it can be as simple as watching the fire and thinking about a time when you went through a hard trial by fire and how that was difficult and broke you down, but in the end, turned you into a better more perfect version of yourself. This meditation on the operation being conducted and how it compares to the life of the alchemist, that which is above being like that which is below, is when the alchemist gains insights from his master into how he can correct his own negative personality traits and become a more perfect version of himself. One of the most important lessons that the alchemist learns early in the process is that this inner work on himself will help him become a better person, in turn being a better member of the community, and helping others grow and perfect themselves as well, thus elevating the overall soul of humanity. This gives the alchemist the motivation to try to better themselves, which is incredibly difficult and painful and to silently assist with elevating the lead of humanity into its more perfect golden state. This general process is followed with each of the seven operations, allowing the alchemist to go deeper and deeper into himself and cleanse and remove even more negative traits, further raise their vibratory frequency, and ultimately to reunite with the universal soul once they have reached a high enough frequency.

I know this explanation is very general, but these are the general steps used in the different operations of alchemical theurgy: purification of yourself and your tools, working one of the seven operations while the alchemist meditates on the laboratory process and the internal process, and the creation of a product or the elevation of the soul of the alchemist. We want to keep things general at this point in our studies but in the future, we will go into a more detailed explanation of an operation.

Today we bring our weeks long study of theurgy to a close, I truly hope that looking at it from so many angles has made such a complicated concept a little easier to understand. I am sure we will return to the practice of theurgy in the future as we build a better and better understanding of the Great Work. Our next topic of discussion will be trying to tackle the last part of wisdom of the whole universe, astrology and how that applies to the Great Work. We will likely discuss a small amount of modern astrology because it is the most common form practiced today but our main goal will be focused on alchemical astrology which is practiced somewhat differently. This series will not begin next Monday as there will be no post next week so that I can focus on finalizing some schoolwork, luckily this will allow the idea of theurgy to sink in fully and allow for less confusion as we switch series. Thank you so much for taking this journey through theurgy with me and I hope the next week finds you well.

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References:

Baker, Ike. Ætheric Magic: A Complete System of Elemental, Celestial & Alchemical Magic. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2025.

Cheak, Aaron. "Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium." Aaron Cheak (2020).

Ebeling, Florian. "Alchemical Hermeticism." In The Occult World, pp. 74-91. Routledge, 2014.

Garstin, EJ Langford. Theurgy, or the Hermetic Practice: A Treatise on Spiritual Alchemy. Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 2004.

Hauck, Dennis William. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy: The Magic and Mystery of the Ancient Craft Revealed for Today. Penguin, 2008.

Regardie, Israel, and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. The Philosopher's Stone: Spiritual Alchemy, Psychology, and Ritual Magic. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2013.

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The terms we will be using in this discourse may be confusing, but I will do my best to clear them up. First, Elus Cohens, and all its other possible spellings, refers to the original Hebrew name for these men which translates to Elect Priests. The full name of this group is the Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe, or in French Ordre des Chevaliers Maçons Élus Coëns de l’Univers, but we will just use the term “Elus Cohen” to make our discussion easier today. The Cohens are a Christian mystical and kabbalistic group whose main goal is the “reintegration” of the magician and of humanity in general. Reintegration is a term that Martinez de Pasqually (the founder of the movement) used for the person’s soul reentering the universal soul, the best way I can understand this idea is similar to the Buddhist concept of a soul being like a drop of water and it returning to the ocean of the universal soul. The way this would be accomplished is through a set of very intricate magical operations in which angels are invoked to assist the magician with the evolution of their soul and the soul of humanity. The rituals of the Elus Cohen require so much dedication that the priests are secluded from the world and spend the rest of their lives conducting the meditations and rituals.

After the death of Martinez de Pasqually, his teachings were broken into two schools of thought, one practiced by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz whose practice is continued today as the Rectified Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (not to be confused with the Scottish Rite which is more popular in the United States). The second school of thought was passed down through Louis Claude de Saint-Martin who is the founder of the many Martinist movements throughout the world. Both of these schools and each of the different bodies that ascribe to them are initiatory groups, as I said before, the path that Willermoz taught is part of Freemasonry and is only open to invited Master Masons who profess the Christian faith, in addition, many Martinist groups require membership in a Masonic lodge or other initiatory path, and because of this much of the public information is questionable, at least. We do have well researched and high-quality works written about the Elus Cohens, but they mainly come from Masonic or Rosicrucian historians whose works can be difficult to fully understand to uninitiated readers, allowing for easier misinterpretation. The history of these groups are incredibly interesting and I highly recommend anyone interested in theurgy and high magic to read any of the books listed in the references below, but the purpose of our discussion today is not historical but theurgical, so what does the theurgy of the Elus Cohens look like?

As we said above, being an Elus Cohen begins with acceptance into one of the initiatory groups which would feed into the proper practice. In this process the person is educated and trained in the intricate symbolism, belief systems, actions, and over all rituals through a process that gradually builds on itself over time. Once that person shows they are ready, they will be put through initiations which place the information they have been learning into action around them, so they come to a deeper, more personal understanding of the cosmology they are working within. In the operations of the Rectified Scottish Rite, the magical spells of the Elus Cohens are reserved until the absolute highest degrees, and often to a small select group within those degrees and therefore require many years of initiation and dedication before ever learning the magical operations. During this time of education, much of the student’s focus is on their spiritual purification and evolution. This evolution is meant to bring the spirit of the student to the highest level possible so it can be closer to the angelic spirits that are going to be invoked. The purification process takes the ones of our previous magical systems and turns them up to eleven, they dictate how to cut your hair, the clothing to wear, what you eat, when you wash, and over all they take so much time and dedication that the student takes on a rigid monastic life, sequestered from society. Many of these rituals are added slowly over time, as the person moves through the initiation process and if they decide to dedicate themselves to this work full-time, they will begin to learn and take on these rituals as their own until they lead to this fully monastic lifestyle. The highest degrees of the Elus Cohen are said to spend the rest of their lives working these operations every day until they reach their own reintegration so they can try to raise the collective soul of humanity to a higher level.

Many of these operations require a group of priests to be present for them to be conducted properly, some practices say they need to present in person, and some say that the priests meet on the spiritual plane, but they always require a group in order for them to be done properly. The priests would set up a room with several ritual items in specific places, draw circles, “circumambulate” or walk in a specific direction around the room, light candles, burn incense, and invoke the names of certain angels that they wish to bring into the space. These angels are supposed provide wisdom to the priests and help elevate their spirits to a higher level, bringing the priests closer to their goal of reintegration. The exact rituals are incredibly difficult to find because they are behind the doors of different initiatory organizations and hidden behind symbol or allegory, but what we do find are incredibly complex magical and theurgical practices.

The magic of the Elus Cohen is probably the most complex form of theurgy that we have discussed in our series so far. While the names and symbols may be similar among all four of the different systems we have spoken about, the Elus Cohen take the operations and raise them up to an incredibly high level. The initiatory requirement for all of these different organizations and the sequestering of this knowledge to the highest degrees of the organization (and often only a small group of members within the highest degrees), is only the beginning of a long process of purification and education.

Now that we have a very basic and general understanding of the magic of the Elus Cohen, how does this compare to alchemical theurgy? While the goals may not be exclusively alchemical, the two processes do parallel and intersect in many ways. To begin with, the initiation and education that you must go through are quite similar, even though alchemy doesn’t always require initiation into a formal practice, initiation into the Great Work is required in one way or another before advancing along the path. The education portion is probably obvious to you at this point, whether working with angels or elements it is vitally important to know what you are working with, the operations that need to be done, the possible outcomes, and the safety measures that should be set in place before any work is begun. Another similarity between the two is the purification process that is undertaken. The actual steps followed will likely be different between the two schools of thought but the intent, dedication, and attention to detail that is followed are incredibly similar. As we said before, the purification process that the Elus Cohen go through will eventually take over their lives and lead them into something like the way a monk lives, spending all of their time and dedicating each of their activities to the greater singular goal of their life. This is very similar to the purification that the alchemist will go through, it doesn’t normally start with sequestration and intense daily rituals but as you dedicate yourself more and more to studying the Great Work you will notice that it occupies more and more of your life and that your entire life shifts so every action is dedicated to creating to stone and sharing that stone with other people. If the purification process of both practices works correctly the mind and soul of the worker will be directed and focused onto a singular goal. The goal of the Elus Cohen, reintegration of the soul and the evolution of the soul of humanity and that of alchemy, the creation of the stone and using that to assist in the evolution of the soul of humanity are two paths to the same goal. In our previous discussions we spoke about invoking these angels for the acquisition of knowledge and abilities, often for the benefit of magical workers, but in this case, we are using the same tools for the advancement of humanity as a whole, taking the practice to a higher level. This difference is what separates the magic of the Elus Cohen from the high magical practices we spoke about previously and puts it much more in line with the alchemical theurgy that we are searching for.

I will stop here for today and again recommend if your interest in these groups has been sparked, that you read any of the works in the references below, seek out other references on the organizations, or try to reach out to someone who is affiliated with one of the groups. The history of these groups and their beliefs are incredibly complex and difficult to fully understand without a foundation on which to understand the allegories and symbols, but they are very interesting and much less well known even among experienced mystical practitioners. Through this dive into different theurgical practices I have learned quite a lot about different magical systems, much more than I have had a chance to share with you here, but we will circle back around to these subjects again in the future as we gain more understanding. In order to finalize our discussions on theurgy next week, we will be taking the knowledge we have collected over the last several weeks and apply that to alchemical theurgy itself so that we can come to a fuller understanding of the practice.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this short series as much as I have enjoyed working on it and now, I would like to ask for some of your input on the way it has been written. Long time readers may have noticed some changes to the way the posts have been written lately, previous posts contained footnotes to direct readers to specific references in case they wanted to read them for themselves and were written in a more academic voice, but in recent posts I have stopped adding those in in favor of a more relaxed, conversational writing style. This has been as a test to see which style appealed to readers more and makes complex ideas easier to understand, so I am asking that if you have an opinion on which writing style you prefer, to let me know in the comments below and we can work together to make the study of alchemy accessible to as many people as possible. Thank you so much for your time and input, and I hope the next week finds you well.

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References:

Ambelain, Robert. "MARTINISM." (1946).

Blitz, Edouard. Ritual and monitor of the Martinist Order. E. Blitz, 1896.

Clelland, Waeges, Adams. The Green Book of the Elus Coens. Lewis Masonic. 2021

Giudice, Christian. "Martinism in Eighteenth-Century France." In The Occult World, pp. 182-187. Routledge, 2014.

Papus. Vaughan, Piers A. Martinezism, Willermozism, Martinism & Freemasonry. Rose Circle Productions, 2020.

Ravignat, Mathieu G. The Original High Degrees and Theurgical System of the Masonic Elect Cohen Knights of the Universe. 2019.

Roggemans, Marcel. History of Martinism and the FUDOSI. Lulu. com, 2008.

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“The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage” is a set of three books that are attributed to Abraham of Worms who lived in Worms, Germany around from around the mid-1300s to the mid-1400s. The book is written by Abraham or Abramelin to his son Lamech, Lamech was his youngest son and these books, and the magic contained inside were his birthright. The practice is based in Hebrew theology and is Kabbalistic in nature, it is sometimes considered “Christian kabbalah,” but this is mainly because of its frequent use by Christian mystics from the medieval times on. The author does give certain instructions for Christians or Muslims in case they are given the book, but its foundation is entirely in the ancient Hebrew tradition. Our current versions mostly come from a translation by Samuel L. Macgregor Mathers who was known for doing many translations of esoteric and mystical texts. While this work is much less well known than our previous subject of interest, the keys of Solomon, both have been instrumental in the history of western esotericism. Both systems were practiced by Aleister Crowley and the “Abramelin Operation,” as it is sometimes called, was highly influential in the magic and rites of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The book is quite similar to the keys we discussed previously in that it is mainly a set of instructions for a single operation. This operation is very in depth and takes at least six months to complete. The book gives very intricate instructions for purification rituals that must be completed before the work begins. During these rituals the user is repeatedly reading the book, praying, and meditating on the scriptures in order to produce in themselves the mental and spiritual purity needed to be able to complete the operation. While they are undergoing the purification process the user must also acquire a space to do the operation, preferably in the country away from people but if they are in a city they will need to acquire an apartment with a garden and other very specific requirements in order to properly conduct the ritual.

Once the preparations have been finished the six-month timeline can begin, however it is very possible that the operation can take up to eighteen months. During this time nearly every action you take and everything you do is set out in the book. It will dictate what food you eat and what clothes you wear, the way and frequency in which you wash your body, your clothes and how often you change your clothes (two sets of clothes, changed on the sabbath of each week), and even when you can share a bed with your wife if you are a married man doing the operation. Once you complete the six months of daily rituals, meet all requirements physically and spiritually, and have repeated the required prayers, you are blessed with the object of the operation, being able to summon your “Holy Guardian Angel.” Once this spiritual being is summoned, they are able to provide you with the knowledge of how to summon any other spiritual being, the steps for this are also listed in the second book of the three in case the user wants to confirm or double check the information from his angel against the book. This section will likely look very familiar to anyone who looks at book two of Abramelin after reading the books of Solomonic magic, the names of the spirits are nearly the exact same. It is simply the mechanics of the operation and the way in which you interact with the spirits that are different, as Abramelin specifically calls out the Solomonic operation several times in his books.

I find it very interesting that the names of the spirits, their positions, and the knowledge and abilities that they are able to provide are so similar between the Abramelin Operation and the keys of Solomon. According to Abramelin himself, his way of summoning the spirits is the proper way and the way that was used by Solomon was a perversion of the true tradition. This is also why he sets a rule that under no circumstances should this book or the information in it be given over to anyone in political power, specifically called kings or princes in the book, because of their proclivity to abuse the power that is contained therein. In another direct attack on Solomon’s form of magic, Abramelin says that any form that uses the summoning circles or the seals drawn by Solomon should be considered entirely evil. He differentiates these by saying that Solomon basically found a work around to control the spirits through working with the devil and not with his guardian angel.

How then, does this form of magic compare to our subject of focus, theurgy and specifically alchemical theurgy? Most of those who study these arts would consider the magic of Abramelin to be “theurgical kabbalistic high magic” for several reasons. One of the most important is the level of purification and attunement that the user must undergo in order to complete the operation, as we said before the act of purification is key to theurgical practices. Abramelin states several times that the purification is vital as the spirits will not speak to someone profane. Another reason that the operation is considered theurgy is because of the extreme intricacy of the operation itself. The user will have every day directed for them once they have decided to undergo the operation and they are given a warning that once it is begun it should not be stopped unless absolutely necessary for the users health. Some of those who have studied this operation even believe the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel can be done in a way that the user and the angel merge and become one and would therefore reach the level of henosis we have spoken about before. This point reads somewhat ambiguous to me in the book, at points the instructions say that the angel can be called to you at any time or place of your choosing and would therefore be separate from the user, and in other portions the instructions make it sound as if the angel has become part of the user and is always present with or in them, similar to how some Christian groups speak about the holy spirit entering believers.

When we look at this operation through the lens of alchemical theurgy it looks much closer to the practice we are aiming for than any of the previous practices we have looked at. The process of purification is very similar to that which we see in alchemy. When conducting an alchemical operation, the steps may not be exactly the same as those presented by Abramelin but the intended goal of purification is the same. It is purifying your body and spirit and showing the higher powers you are working with that you are worthy of conducting the operation. This purification includes both that of the user’s body and spirit, the location being used, the building, the tools and any other items that may be used during the operation.

If we look at the goal of the work, the summoning of the “Holy Guardian Angel,” we can further see how the Abramelin Operation compares to alchemical operations. The purpose of summoning your angel is to be able to gain whatever information and wisdom the user wants. The angel is said to give the user all forms of wisdom they possess and, for anything they do not know or have power over, they will provide a foolproof way of summoning any other spirit so they can provide the desired information or power. This information can include “the knowledge of all sciences” and while it doesn’t specifically say alchemy is included in those sciences, I can only assume that it would be. The goal of obtaining knowledge does put this into the same general area as alchemical theurgy but the knowledge being more than just alchemy and the ability to gain the powers that were given to Adam in the garden, I would not say that the Abramelin Operation is not alchemical theurgy but a highly specialized form of Hebrew kabbalistic theurgy. I think that it is possible to use the Abramelin Operation as alchemical theurgy if you do it with the specific intention of gaining alchemical knowledge but that would likely be related to the “dry path” of alchemy and could be very dangerous to the user.

We will stop our discussion here for today as this work is quite intricate and not as well known among the general public as the keys of Solomon is. I highly recommend anyone with interest in magical practices or esotericism in general to read this book, as it is another very interesting take on a similar practice as Solomon’s but because it requires so many extra steps it often gets left on the shelf. The next form of theurgy that we will be looking at will be even less well known than the works of Abramelin, next week we will begin discussing the theurgical practices of Martinez de Pasqually is known as Martinezism and which led to two other practices known as willermozism and martinism. Thank you so much for your support and attention and I hope the next week finds you well.

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Resources:

Arpe, Peter Friedrich, and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. "Abraham of Worms."

Bogdan, Henrik. "Ars Congressus Cum Daemone: Aleister Crowley and the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel." Entangled Religions 14, no. 3 (2023).

Butler, Alison L. "The revival of the occult philosophy: cabalistic magic and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn." PhD diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000.

Cantú, Keith. "Abraham von Worms. The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation. Compiled and edited by Georg Dehn. Translated by Steven Guth. Foreword by Lon Milo DuQuette. Lake Worth: Ibis Press, 2015." Correspondences 4 (2016).

Franchetto, Andrea. "Temporary and Imaginal Sacred Space in the Textual Transmission of Modern Ritual Magic: The Temple of Abramelin (15th–20th century)." SpatioTemporality/RaumZeitlichkeit (2024): 77.

Gilbert, Robert A. "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn." In The Occult World, pp. 237-246. Routledge, 2014.

Gonzv, Migene. The Kabbalah & Magic of Angels. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2024.

Pasi, Marco. "Varieties of Magical Experience: Aleister Crowley's Views on Occult Practice." Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 6, no. 2 (2011): 123-162.

Regardie, Israel, and John Michael Greer. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2016.

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. Courier Corporation, 2012

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