Alchemy blog- Uno

Thinking that I might have several more alchemy related blog entries, I think I will just refer to this as the first one.

As part of my all spiritual all-the-time line up of books, I'm reading a book called "The Emerald Tablet" by Dennis William Hauck. It is an information packed wild read about the Emerald Tablet, which contained alchemical teachings. Hauck makes the case that Alchemy, at times in history, was purposely used to be entirely symbolic of the actual spiritual teachings that it professed.

What some considered the pseudo-science of Alchemy was actually a cover for a type of living spiritual art that aimed at transforming the base metal of "Lead' in a person's soul to a higher consciousness represented by the precious metal Gold. The teachings in the Tablet were being cleverly disguised from the dominant (book burning, head loping) churches of the time. The introduction takes you on a fascinating ride throughout history following the Tablet from Ancient Egypt at its inception through the hands of various owners and discoverers. The book also discuses how the teachings in the Tablet influenced every major religion and modern day society. Also what I really love about alchemy is that is brought science and spirituality together in a unique combination that might not be found in the world again.

The Tablet's true author is unknown but some think it was written by Hermes Trismegistis ( also known as the father of The Hermetic Tradition). On Wiki you can read all of the various translations of the Tablet. If you really want to read an in-depth discourse on who wrote the Emerald Tablet itself and where it came from, this web site has lots of info. Also, here is an incredibly interesting interview with the author of this book Dennis Hauck. I wish I had more time to detail it all because it is very interesting stuff. However I will do the best I can to summarize parts of the material.

The Tablet was said to have been infused in all levels of Egyptian culture. It is one of the oldest recorded teachings in the world. It is the spiritual analogy to what Latin root words are to our language. The Tablet's teachings pop up in all religions a plenty (Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) but with new packaging added by the subsequent religions. The Emerald Tablet could also be thought of as the Divine Cook Book. Existing on many levels in order to speak to many different kinds of peoples, it provides a recipe that if followed diligently, eventually leads back to the One Mind, which everything came from.

People who used Alchemy in their lives felt that they were connected with their work and that the greater their character became the better result they would have in any kind of experiment with alchemy. This is a similar concept to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, specifically the observer effect. This effect in quantum mechanics states that the observer of the experiment determines and can alter the results simply by observing the experiment. Also alchemists believed they must be pure in order to produce meaningful results in life and tried to conquer their egos, ordinary lusts, and need for worldly possessions. Alchemists lived their lives like a chemistry lab experiment, going through the phases one would go through in a laboratory to produce a pure element, except they were working on their character and soul at the same time with the same processes. The steps they went through were calcination, dissolution, fermentation, distillation, and coagulation. All the steps are symbolic and have very in depth meaning. Hauck does a good job of describing what they mean and even providing modern day pop-culture examples to show us how this process still exists in everyday life. This book is full of the most magnificent symbology that you will ever come across.

Many great figures have spent their lives trying to discern the messages in the Tablet, here are a few examples. Isaac Newton dedicated much of his life to studying Alchemy and in fact studied alchemy longer than the comparatively small portion of physics he is known for. He did his own translation of the Emerald Tablet in 1680. Newtons "Hypothesis of Light" and his theories on Gravity (actions at a distance, even through a vacuum) might have been influenced by Alchemy.

The Tablet had a lot of influence on the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, who also studied Alchemy. His theory of "The Collective Unconscious" is the same as what the Tablet calls the "One Mind" that is available to everyone. Carl Jung studied Gnosticism and its connections with the Tablet and felt like they were a bridge between spiritual wisdom handed down starting with the Egyptians and a new future of mind sciences. He had one of the largest collections of rare alchemical and Taoist books in the world.

Carl Jung had this to say about his studies:
[Alchemy] represented the historical link with Gnosticism, and . . . a continuity therefore existed between past and present. Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious" Memories, Dreams, Reflections of C.G. Jung, ed. by Aniela Jaffe, transl. by R. and C. Winston (Vintage, 1963) p.192-193 Jung also wrote an amazing must-read treatise on his work called, "Psychology and Alchemy" and gave lectures all over the world about his findings. I have always been interested in Carl Jung, he is like an old friend to me as I have sat up many late nights reading through his work. He is one historic figure I wish that I could have known. I love that he loved alchemy. - you have reached the end of post uno