The Philosopher’s Stone: Spiritual Alchemy, Psychology, and Ritual Magic - Israel Regardie 2013
Commentary (Cont.)
Book One Alchemy, Psychology, and Qabalah
Thomas Vaughan, in his Lumen de Lumine, describes the stage mentioned at the opening of the third section even more eloquently than Hermes: “Thou must incamp against them with the fire of nature, and be sure thou dost bring thy line round about. Circle them in, and stop all avenues, that they find no relief. Continue this siege patiently.”87
The “binding” that Hermes recommends must be a similar operation. It would refer to an advanced stage of self-immersion, when consciousness is withdrawn from all the avenues of sense and perception. A meditation or introversion which has become deep and profound could be described in very much these terms. And if we refer to oriental texts and philosophies of Yoga and concentration, we shall discover that it is in the deepest meditations that the spinal Spirit-Fire—which is called the Paraclete in the New Testament, Speirema by the Gnostics, and Kundalini by the Yogis—is aroused. It is in such a deep indrawn condition that the philosopher’s matter contends with fire.
The psychological approach hereto would be that in profound states of introversion, when there is no leakage of the attention on the objective plane, the focus of the entire field of attention is directed within. The levels of consciousness within the psyche itself become the object of perception. As a result of this inseeing, the contents of these levels became invaded by the stream of libido upwelling from the deepest levels of the Unconscious.
Since the Unconscious has a vehicle of its own type of substance, then the “washed bodies”88 refer to the vehicle of the Unconscious, and the “spirits”89 to the vital energetic current of libido.
4. In order once more to confuse the ignorant and unworthy, Hermes harkens back to the beginning in this inconsequential way. Unconscious of the existence of the Stone of the Philosopher’s within—no better term than Unconscious could have been devised to express this condition of ignorance—how else that mankind should defile this great seminal treasure, the seed of immortality. Hence the allusion to the dunghill.
We strain the psychological method to the point of breaking in our attempt to understand the reference to two Argent-vives. We know that the process of analysis affects not only the patient or analysand but also the analyst. Groddeck has gone so far as to say that it is the analyst who benefits or learns most. Jung also writes that:
the analyst is as much a part of the psychic process of the treatment as is the patient, and is equally exposed to the transforming influences. Indeed, if the doctor is more or less inaccessible to this influence, he is correspondingly robbed of his influence over the patient; if he is influenced only consciously, he shows a defect of consciousness which prevents him from seeing the patient clearly. The fourth stage of analytical psychology, then, demands not only the transformation of the patient, but also the counter-application to himself by the doctor of the system which he prescribes in any given case.90
There must be a mutual interplay and interaction between the Unconscious of both analyst and patient. For any lasting good to be done to the one, an effect must be produced in the other. Seen in this light, psychotherapy is a mutually conducted procedure of intense human value. No longer is it the cold distant scientific process envisaged some thirty years ago.
5. We now approach rebirth symbolism of a curious pictorial and eloquent character. That the union of male and female produces offspring in the biological world is a commonplace fact. But it has similar application in the psychological world. The union of an integrated psyche—the “crowned king”—with the principle of instinct and feeling—“our red daughter,”91 formerly latent and dormant within, must be a pleasurable and highly emotional experience. In literature written by mystics and religious enthusiasts we have panegyrics and emotional tributes to the bliss and ecstasy of the mystical experience or divine union. Just as the abreaction of repressed material is accompanied by an emotional storm, so the union of these two psychic factors is likewise characterized by an intensity of feeling, and by a release of enormous energy expressing itself in terms of Light and Fire. A gentle fire, not hurtful, is quite an appropriate expression for such an intensity of feeling. The psyche conceives a spiritual child—a son, conjoined with and yet superior to both its parents. It is not, naturally, an objective product visible to the eyes of the world. But it inheres within the psychic domain as an integral part of the psyche, as a spontaneous effort to transcend itself in a higher, more inclusive synthesis. Just as the crowned king is the Ruach centred in Tiphareth—the Sun is its Father—so the red daughter is a symbolic glyph of the instinctive world in the guise of a female form—its Mother the Moon. So the child is Daath, knowledge, the Ruach reborn as the supernal child of the Middle Pillar, the direct result of the overcoming of the red dragon, the child of Wisdom and Understanding. Once more I must refer the reader to the large coloured plates in Vol. I of The Golden Dawn.92
The continuance of a life attitude in a balanced rational manner, adhering throughout to the middle way, is calculated to produce an abiding peace, an inner contentment, and harmony. It is a sense of intense happiness and satisfaction radiating from some deep interior source. It is a realization of the harmony within accepting the harmony without. It is this tranquility of soul and spirit which is the true characteristic of integrity, of wholeness, of saint-like holiness. And it is this which stabilizes the newly formed Quintessence, the recently born child within.
The “boundary of hearts” is the object sought for and which satisfies when attained, remarks Mrs. Atwood.93 In this sense it represents the descent of the Light of the Supernals, an extraordinary heightening and clarification of consciousness. This heightening of consciousness accompanied by a deep intensity of feeling perpetuates and consolidates the attainment. As the text says, with reference to the Son, “Then is he transformed, and his tincture by help of the fire remains red as flesh.”94 It matures and ripens as an individual point of view—attaining full fruition as an habitual and not an occasional high outlook. Not only is this so but a marked effect is wrought on the invisible vehicle of consciousness. In a former quotation from Thomas Vaughan’s Coelum Terrae we found the following as a finale to an exalted panegyric: “All colours shine in me and all metals by the beams of the sun. I am the Carbuncle of the Sun.”95 Hence the colour change manifesting in the aura must be predominately a deep-red one, so that it glows and emits a brilliant rubified light.
6. Clearly the attainment spells the eclipse of the Dragon. Where light shines, no darkness can there abide. For being the basis of the instinctual life, harnessed and chained to the needs and clearly perceived ideals of the psyche, the dragon shuns the sunbeams and the daylight. No longer do its projections and compulsive automatisms haunt the light of consciousness. No longer is the personality tortured as by some foul and evil presence. Its needs and dictates, once so imperious, cease their urgency, finding their proper place within the natural economy.
The “occult treasures”96 are, as the text itself makes clear, no more nor less than the manifestation of the Son. He is the Stone of the Philosophers—not yet, even now, however, brought to final perfection. But at any rate the stage reached is so exalted as possibly to bring about the frequently encountered feeling that finality is reached. Using Christian symbolism, this would indicate that Christ has been born within the heart, manifesting the glory of his godhead within the entire personality.
Hermes further remarks that “the virgin’s milk is whitened.”97 The alchemical Salt, the astral substance of the interior design body, about to be glorified and made radiant, has not yet attained full maturity. The reference to virgin’s milk again demands a quotation which is highly expressive and illuminative from Vaughan’s Coelum Terrae with regard to the First Matter:
It is a most pure sweet virgin, for nothing as yet hath been generated out of her. But if at any time she breeds it is by the fire of Nature for that is her husband. She is no animal, or vegetable, no mineral, neither is she extracted out of animals, vegetables, or minerals, but she is pre-existent to them all, for she is the mother of them. Yet one thing I must say: she is not much short of life, for she is almost animal. Her composition is miraculous and different from all other compounds whatsoever. Gold is not so compact but every sophister concludes it is no simple; but she is so much that no one man believes she is more. She yields to nothing but love, for her end is generation and that was never yet performed by violence. He that knows how to wanton and toy with her, the same shall receive all her treasures. First, she sheds at her nipples a thick heavy water, but white as any snow; the philosophers call it Virgin’s Milk. Secondly, she gives him blood from her very heart; it is a quick, heavenly fire; some improperly call it their sulphur. Thirdly and lastly, she presents him with a secret crystal, of more worth and lustre than the white rock and all her rosials. This is she, and these are her favours; catch her, if you can.98
7. But the next verse carries us a step further. By itself; and with the passage of time, the Son grows and becomes reddened and full grown and mature. “The Son is invested with the red garment and the purple is put on.”99
This final stage is worthy of comparison with a description written by the great Gnostic poet Bardesanes. He describes in a poem the descent of the soul into the realms of matter, and its ultimate reascent. G. R. S. Mead translated it as Vol. X of his Echoes from Gnosis Series, and it is called The Hymn of the Robe of Glory. It is too long to quote in its entirety, but I give certain lines from the end:
I saw it (a bright robe sent by his parents) making itself ready.
I heard the sound of its tones,
And I perceived also in myself
That my stature was growing according to his labours.
It was spreading itself out towards me,
It hastened that I might take it on.
And I stretched forth and received it,
With the beauty of its colours I adorned myself.
And my toga of brilliant colours
I cast around me, in its whole breadth.
I clothed myself therewith, and ascended
To the Majesty of my Father who had sent it to me.
And I was with him in his kingdom.
And he promised me also that to the gate
Of the King of Kings I should speed with him,
And bringing my gift and my pearl
I should appear with him before our King.100
Lady Alchimia
The opening versicle of the fourth section can best be understood, I think, by quoting Mrs. Atwood’s footnote:
The fermenting light, by constant addition of the spirit, leavens more and more, increasing as it tends to the perception of the final cause in life. As Solomon, speaking of the Divine Wisdom, says, “Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honour when thou dost embrace her.” (Prov. iv, 8—9.)101
At the stage when the psychic integration has been achieved, it is needful that man should be so simple in his childlike and complete acceptance of life that he is attentive and obedient to the higher dictates of his heightened consciousness. To disregard such dictates would in the long run be tantamount willfully to destroying the communion established between the different levels of the psyche, and would imply a return to the former neurotic condition. But by obedience, as it were, to himself an unconditional acceptance of himself; he helps the Stone, his psyche. The result is that it helps him and protects him so that all his works prosper and flourish. It is considerably reminiscent in certain senses of that mystical treatise The Light on the Path, where we read:
Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. Look for the Warrior and let him fight in thee … He is thyself; yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself. Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him, —and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him.102
But to know him and to protect him first, as in the case of the Stone, is the essential that later he too may help and protect.
5. Venus is a goddess of the same kind as Hera, Isis, Rhea, etc. All are anima figures—love goddesses, and from the Qabalistic point of view are referred to the Sephirah Binah, the Great Sea and the Mother. Venus and Aphrodite in Greek mythology are depicted as having sprung from the sea. There is another series of correspondence which identifies Venus with the occult cohesive influence joining Chokmah to Binah, the interior Father imago to the Mother, Wisdom to Understanding. As such she must represent the love of the one for the other. And she represents as the higher love which is understanding, the means of entry into the interior Supernal life. We have here an adumbration of a religious or mystical technique of devotion. Bhakta or love is, according to many schools of mysticism, the supreme and ineffable means of divine union—that is to say of integration. Since Binah also is Shekinah, the Holy Spirit; the manifestation of which is always described in the symbolism of fire and light, such symbolism also pertains therefore to Venus, as the text itself advises. Love and fire and the means of integration have thus a necessary and categorical connection.
In Egyptian symbolism, Osiris was not only the husband but the brother of the heavenly Isis. From their marriage the divine child Horus was born. The text repeats the desirability of such an incestuous relationship, referring to the newly arisen as Venus’ brother and that nothing could be better or more venerable than that they should be conjoined.
From the practical point of view, the analysand, after having achieved a certain degree of integration through a union with his own instinctive and emotional processes, may well consider analysis and the process of development at an end. His too urgent emotional demands have become quiescent because understood, and his neurotic symptoms have subsided. But a higher principle still remains concealed and latent within. Mrs. Atwood’s footnote to this verse is: “And when she (Venus) appears, the artist is rejoiced, and thinks perhaps his work is finished, and that he has the treasure of the world in hand; but it is not so; for if he tries it the light still will be found imperfect, alone, and transient, without the masculine tincture to fix it in manifestation.”103
6. The attainment becomes fixed, as a permanent possibility by a further union. Just as the first stage comprised a unification of consciousness with its instinctual basis to form a united whole, so now the psyche must open itself to the Light and wisdom and understanding of the Supernals or to the primordial archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Such a union completes its nature, rendering it capable of enduring and persisting, since it has achieved a conscious union with its own eternal and immortal essence.
In occult symbolism, a male force is spoken of as a sudden, sharp, and abrupt force, powerful yet without the ability to persist. A feminine force on the contrary is slow, stable, receptive, and enduring. The one is the throne or seat of activity of the other, and the best results, so far as lasting effects are concerned, are obtained by uniting the two types of force. Hermes implies a similar union. For though the freed psyche, the king, is crowned and adorned with the diadem, it is only by being chained to the arms and breast of his mother—to Venus, his sister and wife, the higher soul—that his substance keeps together. The love of Venus acts as a cohesive force, for otherwise the power of the king’s attainment would soon be dissipated, and the virtue would soon depart from consciousness, which would thus exist without a firm foundation.
8. The simplest elemental attribution, discussed on a former page, helps a little here. Binah is the Great Sea, the element of Water, and is therefore blue, but because of its Saturnine attribution is also indigo or black. Chokmah is Wisdom, and the element of Fire, red in colour. Whilst Kether is the spirit of Life, the source of all things, circulating in all things, and is referred to the element of Air, and its colour is yellow.
The verse recalls Mrs. Atwood’s definition of the Hermetic Art. “Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the seeking out of The Sophia in the mind.”104
Hermes says, “Behold I have obscured the matter treated of, by circumlocution, depriving it of light. I have termed this dissolved and this joined, this nearest I have termed furthest off.”105 The Hermetic authors indulged freely in circumlocution and every artifice of cunning in order to deceive the unwary and those they considered unworthy of their art. It is this that has made the study of alchemy so difficult.
Elsewhere, the crow has been defined as the Bird of Hermes. It signifies thereby the animal soul, brain, or body consciousness itself. On the other hand, we would do well to consider every correspondence or association that the word calls up. As a black bird, the colour is significant. Black is the colour of death, of evil, of impurity. Uniting the two concepts, it is evident that from several points of view consciousness is considered black or evil in its natural state, because it is precisely that which blinds our eyes to God as the alchemists would put it, or which prevents us from perceiving the true nature of life. “The mind is the slayer of reality,” another mystical book observes, counseling the disciple therefore “to slay the slayer.”106 This evokes that difference between Occidental and Oriental views of religious aspiration which I had occasion to note above. It is a characteristic of the West to make goodness issue from that which is evil. If the mind blinds us to the true nature of reality, and is evil, does it behove us to destroy the mind itself? This idea was never compatible to the practical outlook of the Western religious philosophers. They argued to the contrary. We know that the ego has certain uses and functions. In its own sphere it is a useful instrument built up through long aeons of evolution for our benefit. Let us then proceed from where Nature left off and perfect by our own achievement the instrument with which she has endowed us. If our present ego is evil, let us cleanse and refine this ego, eliminating the evil, the dross, and confusion so that, where it failed in its prior state, it may serve us faithfully and well when placed in its proper sphere. Similar is the attitude of Hermes. Though the crow, the black bird of sorrow and foreboding and ill-omen, the mind in all its complacency and confused chaotic thinking, is evil, nevertheless what it yields following its deliberate decapitation is the beginning of this art. The child of so awful a parent must possess enormous possibilities.
The Black Crow with the Body and Twin Birds of Soul and Spirit
(Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Paris, 1659)
Another point of view, more mystical in nature, presents itself in interpretation of the phrase “what is born of the crow is the beginning of this art.”107 Referring to work by Porphyry, Mrs. Atwood justly observes in her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery that:
There is a twofold death; the One indeed universal known, in which the body is liberated from the soul; but the other peculiar to Philosophers in which the soul is liberated from the body; nor does the one entirely follow the other. That which nature binds, nature also dissolves; that which the soul binds, the soul likewise can dissolve; nature, indeed, binds the body to the soul, but the soul binds herself to the body. Nature therefore liberates the body from the soul, but the soul may also liberate herself from the body. That is to say, if she know how, and have the right disposition awarded, she may dissolve her own conceptive vehicle, even the parental bond, and return consciously (the elementary principles remaining, nor yet suffered to depart) under the dominion of another law to life. That was the way to “precious death,” spoken of by the Hebrews and Academics, this the “happy gate of blackness” celebrated by the old adepts; the “head of Hermes’ crow,” which is in the beginning of the work.108
The emphasis here is placed on the art of meditation which, carried to the point when Consciousness is completely withdrawn into itself, induces a trance state in which all bodily form and limitation is surmounted so that it ascends to an intimate contact with divinity. Plotinus of the Neo-platonic school, and the methods of the Hindu Yogis, illustrate this point of view perfectly. Meditation was the means employed to penetrate the barrier of consciousness, thus permitting the vital stream of life and living experience to well up spontaneously from the unconscious levels of the mind.
2. The horse is a universal symbol of the Mother. This again is an objective symbol for the Unconscious, the animal life, since it is from thence that Consciousness is born. Again, the horse in astrological symbolism corresponds to the zodiacal sign Sagittarius, which represents aspiration and spiritual yearning. Associated with this idea there is the Chaldean Oracle:
Also there is the Vision of the fire-flashing courser of Light, or also a child borne aloft on the shoulders of the celestial steed, fiery, or clothed with Gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the Horse. But if thy meditation prolongeth itself thou shalt unite all these Symbols in the form of a Lion.109
Nearly all animals, from the psychological viewpoint, indicate libido or instinct, the type and size of animal indicating the degree of its domesticity. Speed in running is the chief characteristic of the horse. Its tendency when frightened to bolt with the bit between its teeth is another. These are fairly descriptive symbols of the primitive instinctive principle inhering within each one of us.
The alchemical writers inform us that those who search for urine and faeces are assuredly on the wrong track. That which comes forth from the horse’s belly is certainly urine and dung. But what is the characteristic of these? What is the symbolical meaning denoted and played upon by these writers? Clearly, they refer to a moist heat. It is this which renders explicable the phrase that Hermes employs.
The dissolved elements are transformed by a slow gentle heating into what is called the “Dragon eating his own wings and destroying himself.”110 At this juncture, it is worth quoting a similar process from Vaughan:
Continue this siege patiently, and they turn into an ugly venomous black toad; which will be transformed to a horrible devouring dragon creeping and weltering in the bottom of her cave, without wings. Touch her not by any means, not so much as with thy hands, for there is not upon earth such a vehement transcendent poison.111
We have already defined the dragon as the libido, undomesticated, weighted down by the burden of anxiety, guilt, and fear, effects, which are repressed into the Unconscious. The effect of this siege, of introversion or meditation, is to turn anxiety against anxiety. The dissolved constituents of the broken-down astro-mental form vie and war one with another. During psychotherapeutic, or any medical treatment, for that matter, neurotic and psychotic symptoms apparently become much more severe. Anxiety increases to an alarming degree. In homeopathic treatment, any ailment is treated by such drugs and medicines as by themselves will duplicate the symptoms thrown up by the bodily system. Very often a physical or psychic crisis precipitates itself—much to the consternation, at first, of the patient. This psychic condition arrived at, the contents of consciousness, foul and sordid as they are—the scum on the glue-pot described by Geraldine Coster—evocative of shame, guilt, and anxiety when seen in their starkness, must be subjected to yet further analysis. The infantile reactions so out of place in an adult must be discarded and destroyed. A species of meditation must be engaged upon. All the senses must be closed to outgoing stimuli. The consciousness and its attention are to be completely withdrawn and focused inwards upon the hitherto hidden contents of its own nature. This is the furnace, the fire being the concentrated attention brought to bear on consciousness by meditation and introversion.
“Observe that none of the spirit may escape”112 may well imply that the critical attention is not to be permitted to wander from the unpleasant poisonous items included in consciousness. The libido must not leak out from this enclosed sphere of attention. It is all far too valuable. In any event, it comprises an integral part of the personality. And if any part of the spirit escapes, no matter how minute and apparently insignificant, that loss is irreparable and fatal to the concept of integrity and wholeness.
In his Problems of Mysticism, Silberer has a word or two that are useful here:
Patient effort is required. Precipitancy is as great an evil as inactivity. It is just as bad to scorch the tender blossoms by a forced and hasty fire (that in spite of its intensity may be merely a straw fire) as to let go out the fire which should be continually kept alight, and to let grow cold the Mercury. The process of distillation is to be accomplished slowly, so that the spirit may not escape.113
There is another viewpoint of alchemy, an ethical one, which is worthy of consideration. It finds its expression in:
In the alembic of thy heart,
Through the athanor of affliction,
Seek thou the true stone of the wise.114
Life and everyday experience are, by this interpretation, the means of initiation. It is the impact of life upon the soul, and the transmutation of sorrow within which develops an even attitude as an habitual reaction of the psyche. The heart here is the furnace, whilst affliction, that is to say the experience generally of this world, is the initiating fire.
3. As meditation and the introversion process deepen and become more profound, the heating of the psychic contents gives rise to a phenomenon which can only be described in terms similar to any physical one. “Hot air rises.” That is to say, concentration, like a fiery ray turned inward, heats the interior principles. The dormant libido, formerly confined to the depths of the sea, rises to the higher levels, to the surface of consciousness.
What would be the effect of this libido ascent upon consciousness? Our text tells us. The brain, clearly, is the conscious intellectual life of the spirit. Sharp vinegar must without doubt refer to the libido, the vital living spirit. This assumption is justified in my mind by a significant allusion in a highly mystical and devotional treatise. Here, the spirit is represented as speaking metaphorically to the ego, its persona, in these words: “Wolf’s bane is not so sharp as steel; yet it pierceth the body more subtly. Even as evil kisses corrupt the blood, so do my words devour the spirit of man. I breathe, and there is infinite disease of the spirit. As an acid eats into steel, as a cancer that utterly corrupts the body; so am I unto the spirit of man. I shall not rest until I have dissolved it all.”115
In a word, consciousness is dissolved and eaten up by its impact with the upwelling libido from the unconscious psyche. Jung too observes that the impact of the narrow delimited yet intensely clear consciousness with the wide expanse of the Unconscious is disintegrative. Complexes and neurotic symptoms become changed considerably in their nature, which is to admit that the personality undergoes a marked transformation. The process, naturally, should be repeated again and again. Finally the point must be reached where in consciousness there is left no remnant at all of the elements causing suffering and conflict which formerly were so devastating and disturbing to the individual. Then only can a new life begin. Not until this freedom and liberation has been won can life be faced as it is, nor the nature of the world be seen in its true and intrinsic selfhood.
At the commencement of another cycle of recapitulation, Hermes reiterates the religious nature of the art, urging a spiritual point of view. How then could men have so deliberately misunderstood the terms of the art as to have fallen into the “torturing of metals”? The mistaken steps of the “Puffers,” as the false alchemists are known, who worried themselves to death with metals, minerals, and the most outrageous and unspeakable experiments, are here exposed by the author.
3. He states deliberately that the magical Form, wherein is concealed the unguent or elixir of Life, is within man himself in exactly the same sense as combustion is latent in combustible natures. It only awaits evocation.
4. The recapitulation proper is begun. Hermes signifies the two invisible poles of the quintessence wherein are implicit the three alchemical principles. The middle nature is the divine Mercury which reconciles the two opposites, and is the mediator between the heavenly fire of Sulphur and the earthy formative nature of Salt.
But, as the insistent author notes and has reminded us before, these principles and elements as they exist in their natural condition require purification. Nothing in nature is single and unadulterated. Gold when found is valueless until the grime and grit have been washed off, and the gold itself refined.
In magical working the same process stands out with crystalline clearness. If the element Air is required for invocation purposes in Temple, then as a preliminary every element and every other force even including that particular element the Magus desires later to work with, has to be powerfully banished from the Circle. But the banishing over, and a pure and clear area obtained within the confines of the circle or Temple, then the element Air, for example, may be invoked with safety. For with a sure knowledge the Magus has made thoroughly certain that no other elements are present to adulterate it or render it mixed and impure.
5. Hence, from the natural principles inherent within the human constitution, Hermes demands the removal of all imperfections. The vapour from the water refers to the libido-residues developed from unrestrained infantile fantasy—impure thought-forms would be the appropriate occult cliché. And when this is accomplished, and the emotions and their vehicle are purified, then indeed we have “the sovereign philosophy and secret of all hidden things.”116
That some investigators have confounded the high art with metallurgical operations seems not very difficult to understand. The first verse of the seventh section would assuredly give some degree of authority and confirmation to their efforts. Yet the key is there. The terms need but simple translation. The seven bodies or metals are referable to the seven astrological planets and these again to the constituents of man’s own nature.
Saturn—lead—libido; synthetic symbol of (crude) unformulated spiritual nature.
Jupiter—tin—consciousness; memory in particular.
Mars—iron—will.
Venus—copper—Emotion, passion, and feeling.
Mercury—quicksilver—nervous force, prana, vital magnetism.
Luna—silver—the astral; the quick ever-changing substance which is the vehicle of consciousness, plastic to every passing thought.
Sol—gold—Soul ; the redeemed and regenerated ego.
When purified by art, and illuminated by the processes of Alchemy, indeed consciousness may transmute all the other metals, or principles, in man. Transforming them, it enables them to perform their perfect and proper function in the psychic economy without hindrance, and without interference from any other—uniting them all into a single whole.
2. The ferment, here described, is none other than the vital spirit, libido. It alone, when assisted in its ascent from the darkling depths of the underworld, can so affect the different parts of the psyche as to act after the nature of a ferment—and to transform them. Unity of the individuality is indispensable to the commencement of the transforming action—otherwise we have not fermentation, but disintegration and chaos.
5. The result of integration may at first be bewildering insofar as life then presents itself in a totally different guise to the unsuspecting sight of the experimentalist. He has finished with the old neurotic point of view, but has entered a world where he is not yet certain of himself. It is a temporary state of doubt and perplexity. That is, it is not sweet. But it is only a temporary stopping place, soon yielding when familiarity accustoms vision to that which is strange, to a more settled and therefore happier and more balanced outlook.
87. Vaughan’s Lumen de Lumine or “A New Magical Light” (1651), can be found online at http://www.levity.com/alchemy/lumen.html, http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy2/vaughan4.htm, and at http://archive.org/details/lumendelumineorn00vaug.
88. See Chapter Two, “Section Third,” paragraph 1.
89. Ibid.
90. Jung, Carl Gustav, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Great Britain: Routledge, 2001), 51. Originally published in 1933.
91. See Chapter Two, “Section Third,” paragraph 5.
92. See Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 6th edition (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2002), between pages 118 and 119.
93. Atwood, 127.
94. See Chapter Two, “Section Third,” paragraph 5.
95. From A. E. Waite’s edition of Thomas Vaughan’s Coelum Terrae, originally published under Vaughan’s pseudonym ’Eugenius Philalethes’ as Magia Adamica: or the antiquitie of magic, and the descent thereof from Adam downwards, proved. Whereunto is added a … full discoverie of the true coelum terræ … By Eugenius Philalethes. London: T.W. for H.B, 1650. This can be found online at: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/vaughan1.html.
96. See Chapter Two, “Section Third,” paragraph 6.
97. Ibid.
98. See footnote 9.
99. See Chapter Two, “Section Third,” paragraph 7.
100. Mead, G. R. S., Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Gnostics a Contribution to the Study of Christianity (New York: Cosimo Books, 2007), 414. Originally published in 1904. See also http://www.gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/fragments_faith_forgotten/fff58.htm.
101. Atwood, 128.
102. Collins, Mabel, The Light on the Path (London: George Redway, 1888), part II paragraph 4. This book can be found online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14599/pg14599.txt. See also Google Books version (Los Angeles: United Lodge of Theosophists, 1920), 11—12.
103. Atwood, 130.
104. Atwood, 130.
105. See Chapter Two, “Section Fifth,” paragraph 1.
106. From the Mahayana Buddhist text, The Voice of the Silence. See The Voice of the Silence and other Chosen Fragments from the Book of Golden Precepts for the Daily Use of Lanoos (Disciples) translated and annotated by H. P. Blavatsky. This book is found online at: theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/Voice_of_the_Silence_V1.4.pdf.
107. See Chapter Six, “The First Key,” paragraph 6.
108. Atwood, 222—23.
109. From Proclus’ Commentary on the Chaldean Oracles, See Westcott, Collectanea Hermetica (Kila, MT: Kessinger Publishing ), 53. This quotation was incorporated into the Practicus Ritual. See Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 171.
110. See Chapter Two, “Section Fifth,” paragraph 2.
111. Atwood, 305—306.
112. See Chapter Two, “Section Fifth,” paragraph 2.
113. Silberer, Herbert. Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1917), 340. This book can be found online at Google Books.
114. From the Adeptus Minor Ceremony. See Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 236.
115. Excerpt from “Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente” by Aleister Crowley, The Holy Books (Dallas: Sangreal Foundation, 1972), 55. This can be found online at http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib65.html (13—17).
116. See Chapter Two, “Section Sixth,” paragraph 5.