Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00095)

June 5 2005

Dear Kathy:

I think this is a translation of HPB’s article: It was originally in
French.


Source: Theosophical Movement, Vol 26, pp 81... and 105...
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ALCHEMY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY --- H.P.B.



[This article in 3 parts, was written in French by H. P. Blavatsky. It
appeared in Vol. II of La Revue Theosophique, October, November and December
1889 and is translated from that. 

[ It was reprinted in The Theosophical Movement, Vol. 26 - pp. 81, 105. A
copy of the original is in Blavatsky: Collected Works, Vol. XI, p. 505.
--Eds. ]

[This translation is prepared by D T B using the original French version.]


====================

1

Archaic chemistry or Alchemy has always used the language of symbolism. And
this symbolism is found to be similar to that which all ancient religions
used.

In The Secret Doctrine we have shown that everything in this, the world of
effects, has three attributes--a triple synthesis of the seven principles of
Nature.  

In order to state this more clearly, let us say that everything in the world
around us, as also in man, is composed of three principles and four aspects.


Man, is himself a complex unity, consisting of the physical body, a
rational soul and divine spirit; so too, every being in nature has its
objective form, its vital soul, and the divine spark purely spiritual and
subjective. Neither the first, nor the second of these division can be
denied or objected to; for, if we admit that metals, certain woods,
minerals and drugs possess innate powers that affect other living organisms,
even science will agree to this fact. As to the third: the presence of an
absolute quintessence in each atom, materialism, unable to deal with the
concept of a vital anima mundi, denies it utterly.

We fear it will derive little good from this attitude. We, for our part,
finding in materialism ample proof of moral and spiritual blindness, remain
unimpressed by its denial, and, leaving the blind to continue leading the
blind, we proceed on our own path.

In sympathy with all nature, every science has three fundamental aspects,
and when of these it chooses to make practical applications, it may use any
one or all of them together. Before Alchemy existed as a science its
quintessence alone acted in nature's correlations on all its planes, (as
indeed, it still does). 

When men of the highest intelligence first appeared on earth, they allowed
to this supreme power full and unlimited freedom of action, and observing
this, they, from those beginnings learned great secrets. All that they
needed to do was to imitate it in its action. But in order to produce
similar effects using their individual will, they were obliged to develop in
their human constitution a power called Kriyasakti in occult phraseology.

This faculty is creative, and is the direct agent on the objective plane of
the prime creative principle. Its operation resembles electricity
descending a lightning rod, since it conducts and gives finite shape to the
creative quintessence, which, if released ignorantly into the lower planes,
will kill; but which, when delivered through the channel of a wise human
intellect, creates according to preset plan.

>From this primitive Alchemy, magnetic Magic and many other branches of the
tree of true occult science were born.

When in the course of time the nations of men developed a nature so
intensely saturated with egotism and vanity as to be convinced of their
complete superiority to all others--living now, or in the past; when the
use of Kriyasakti became increasingly difficult and this divine faculty
almost disappeared from the earth; men lost by degrees the science of their
primal ancestors.  

They went further, and rejecting altogether the traditions of their
antediluvian progenitors, they began to contemptuously deny any presence of
spirit and soul to this wisdom, the most ancient of all on our earth. Of
the three attributes of nature they only acknowledged matter, or rather its
illusory aspect, for of real matter or substance, materialists confesses
that they cannot discern it, and so are completely 
ignorant of it.

Thus, modern chemistry was developed. Change is the visible result of all
cyclic evolution.  

The perfect circle becomes the One, then a triangle, and from these it
develops into the quaternary, and then, of these, the quinary is formed.
The creative principle issues from the Rootless Root of absolute
Existence--that which has neither beginning nor end--the symbol for which is
a serpent, the perpetuum mobile, which is shown swallowing its tail so that
these two are again united. This was the Azoth of the Alchemists of the
Medieval Ages.  

The circle then becomes a triangle, emanating like Minerva from Jupiter's
head. The circle represents the metaphysical Absolute; a line issuing from
its right side represents a synthesis of all that is metaphysical, and that
issuing from its left, represents all that is physical. When Mother Nature
produced a line that joined these two original lines, we may trace there the
reawakening of Cosmic Life. Until then Purusha or Spirit, is separated from
Prakriti or Matter, which has not yet manifested.  

These "legs" exist only potentially, they cannot move; nor have "arms" been
yet produced, wherewith to mold into objective forms sublunary beings.
Deprived of limbs, Purusha [Spirit] can only begin to build when it has
mounted symbolically on to the shoulders of blind Prakriti * [matter];  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Footnote	* From Kapila's Sankhya philosophy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
 

then the triangle becomes the pentacle, the star of the microcosm. Before
this stage is reached both must pass through the condition of the quaternary
state, that of the creative cross.  

This is the symbolic cross of the terrestrial mystics. And it is they who
debased and defiled it. This symbolic cross divided into four, may be read
at will: "Taro," "Tora," "Ator," and "Rota." Primordial virgin matter,
called "adamic earth," or the "Holy Spirit" of the ancient Alchemists of the
"Rosy Cross," was altered by some Kabalists--who made themselves the
flunkeys of modern science--into Na2 CO3, soda, and C2H 6O, alcohol !

Ah ! Star of the Morning, Daughter of the Dawn, how thou hast fallen from
thy high celestial estate--poor Alchemy ! All, on this poor, ancient planet
are thrice deceived; all on it are doomed to weariness, to fracture, and to
pass away. And yet, all that once was, which is, and shall be will remain
for ever the same, until the end of time. Words are traps, and soon the
meaning underlying them is disfigured.  

But eternal root ideas shall for ever endure. Under the "asses' skin" in
which Princess Nature wraps herself--so that fools may be deceived, as we
are told in the fables of Perrault--the disciple of those ancient
philosophers perceives eternal truth, and -- adores ! This asses' skin,
instead of Princess Nature stark and true, we are made to believe is more
acceptable to the taste of our modern philosophicules and materialistic
Alchemists. They sacrifice the living soul to dead forms. But all that
ugly skin falls away before the piercing glance of Prince Charming who
recognizes by the marriage ring his original pledge.  

To all those anxious courtiers hovering round Dame Nature, each seeking to
peer through her veils of matter, she offers nought but that ugly rind. And
so, they now console themselves, giving fresh names to things as old as the
world, while loudly proclaiming their latest discoveries.  

The necromancy of Moses became by transformation, modern Spiritualism, the
Science of venerable Temple Initiates, the Magnetism of Indian
Gymnosophists, and the healing Mesmerism of Esculapius "the Saviour," are
only now acknowledged on condition that they be renamed hypnotism, which is,
in truth, black magic. 

Modern materialists would have us believe that Alchemy, or the transmutation
of base metals into gold and silver, has from the earliest of ages been no
more than mystification and flummery. According to them it is not science
but a delusion, and therefore all who believe, or show interest in it, are
either dupes or impostors. Our modern encyclopedias are seen to contain
many a derogative epithet leveled at alchemists and occultists.

Gentlemen of the French Académie! This may be all very well for you, butif
you are so sure of yourselves, give us clear, irrefutable proof of the
absolute impossibility of transmuting metals ! How is it that a metallic
base is found everywhere, even in alkalis ? We know of some scientists, men
of outstanding ability, who believe that the concept of reducing elements to
their primordial state, and even to their original essence (see for instance
Mr. Crookes' meta-elements) is not as strange as it seemed at first hearing.


These elements, now hypothesized to exist from the beginning as an igneous
mass, and from which you claim the earth's crust has been formed, surely
these may be again dissolved and returned to their original state, by a
series of transformations.  

The real problem is to find a solvent of sufficient potency to do in a few
days or years that which nature has taken ages to do. Chemistry, through
Mr. Crookes, has demonstrated that a strong family relationship exists
between metals, indicating not only similarity of properties, but an
identity of genesis.

Gentlemen! You who scoff and laugh at Alchemy and Alchemists, may I ask you
how it is that one of your finest chemists, M. Berthelot, author of La
Synthèse Chimique, has read deeply into Alchemical lore, and will not 
deny to Alchemists a most profound knowledge of the subject ?

Again, how is it that M. Chevreul, that respected savant whose great age, no
less than his living to his death in full possession of all his faculties,
who has ever moved our generation to admiration, inspite of its overwhelming
self-sufficiency--a pride so difficult to penetrate; how does it happen,
that he who made so many practical and useful applications available to
industry, should have possessed so many books and works on Alchemy ?

Could it be possible that the key to the secret of his longevity may be
found in one of those very works, which, according to you are but a
collection of superstitions, as useless as they are ridiculous ?

The fact remains that this great savant, the father of modern chemistry,
took pains to bequeath after his death, to the Library of the Museum, the
numerous works he possessed on this "false science," and in this act of his
we see unmistakable evidence of the esteem in which he held them. Nor have
we yet heard that the luminaries of science attached to this Sanctuary have
thrown those books on alchemy into the waste-paper basket as "useless
rubbish full of fantastic reveries engendered by the sick imagination of
diseased and maddened brains."

Our wise men are forgetful--in the first place, having never yet found a key
to the jargon used in Hermetic manuscripts, they have no right to pronounce
decisions on their veracity; and secondly, wisdom has certainly not born
for the first time with them alone, nor will it necessarily disappear from
the world upon their death.

Each science, we say, has three aspects, and at least two are acknowledged
by all: the objective and the subjective. We can classify Alchemical
transmutation under the first, whether with or without the powder of
projection; under the second, we would place all that relates to the mind.


Under the third is concealed a suspicion relating to the loftiest
spirituality. Since the symbols used for the first two are similar, and
possess moreover, as I have tried to show in The Secret Doctrine, seven
interpretations varying each in their application to any of these three
planes: the physical, the psychic, or the purely spiritual; it is now easy
to see that for a clear comprehension, only great Initiates can correctly
interpret the jargon of the Hermetic philosophers.  

Since many more false than true Hermetic writings exist, if Hermes himself
were to read them now, even he might be confused. Who knows, as a case in
point, whether a series of well defined formulas used to produce a
predictable result in technical Alchemy, may not imply and produce a totally
different result, were they to be applied in the dead-letter sense to
matters belonging to the domain of psychology ? Our late brother Kenneth
Mackenzie when, speaking of Hermetic Societies says:-

“…of gold by the use of those special laws belonging to his own art, the
formulating of a mystical philosophy was of secondary importance, for his
art might be pursued without direct reference to any system of theosophy;
while the Sage who had raised himself to a superior plane of metaphysical
contemplation, would naturally reject the crude material part of his
studies, considering these beneath the level of his goals.”  
--Royal Masonic Cyclopedia

Thus it becomes clear that symbols taken as guides for the transmutation of
metals are found to be of small value when compared with methods which we
now call chemical. We would like to ask further: Who of our "great men"
today would dare to treat as impostors men such as Paracelsus, Van Helmont,
Roger Bacon, Boerhaave and many other illustrious Alchemists ?

While French Academicians may mock the Kabala or Alchemy today (we find them
deriving their inspiration from these) and many discoveries of the Kabalists
and Occultists of Europe, sub rosa, show evidence of the existence of the
Secret Sciences of the East. In fact, the wisdom the Orient no longer
exists for our wise men of the West; it died with the Magi.  

==================================


II

Nevertheless, Alchemy, which if we search diligently we shall find, as the
foundation of every occult science, came to them from the far East. Some
pretend it is only the posthumous evolution of the magic of Chaldea. We
shall try to prove that this latter is only the heir, first to an
antediluvian Alchemy, and then to an Alchemy of the Egyptians. Olaus
Borrichius, an authority on this question, asks us to search for its origin
in remotest antiquity.

To what epoch may we ascribe the origin of Alchemy ? No modern writer is
able to tell us exactly. Some give us Adam as its first adept; others
place it to the account of an indiscretion: "the sons of God, who, seeing
that the daughters of man were beautiful, took them for their wives."  

Moses and Solomon are later Adepts in the science, for they were preceded by
Abraham, who was in turn antedated in the science of Sciences by Hermes. Is
it not Avicenna who says that the Smaragdine Tablet--the oldest existing
treatise on Alchemy--was found on the body of Hermes buried centuries ago at
Hebron by Sarah, the wife of Abraham ? That Hermes never was the name of a
man, but a generic title, just as in former times we had the Neo-Platonists,
and in the present the Theosophists.

What in fact is known about Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes three times the
greatest ? Less than we know of Abraham, his wife Sarah and his concubine
Hagar, which St. Paul declares to be an allegory.  

Even in the time of Plato, Hermes was already identified with the Thoth of
the Egyptians. But this word Thoth does not mean only "intelligence;" it
means also "assembly," a school. In truth Thoth Hermes is simply the
personification of the voice of the priestly caste of Egypt; that is to
say, of the Grand Hierophants.  

And if this is the case, can we tell at what epoch of prehistoric times did
this hierarchy of initiated priests began to flourish in the land of Chemi ?
And even if this were possible we should still be far from having arrived at
a complete solution of our problem. For ancient China, no less than ancient
Egypt, claims to be the land of the alkahest and of physical and
transcendental Alchemy; and China may very probably be right.  

A missionary, an old resident of Peking, William A. P. Martin, calls it the
"cradle of Alchemy." Cradle is hardly the right word perhaps, but it is
certain that the celestial empire has the right to class herself amongst the
very oldest schools of occult science. In any case Alchemy has penetrated
into Europe from China, as we shall prove.

In the meantime our reader has a choice of solutions, for another pious
missionary, Hood, assures us solemnly that Alchemy was born in the garden
"planted in Haden on the side towards the east." If we may believe him, it
is the offspring of Satan who tempted Eve in the shape of a Serpent; but
the good man forgot to follow up his assertion to its legitimate
conclusion as is proved even by the name of the science. For the Hebrew
word for Serpent is Nahash, plural Nahashim. Now it is from this last
syllable shim that the words chemistry and alchemy are derived. Is this not
clear as day and established in agreement with the severest rules of
philology ?

Let us now consider our proofs.

The first authorities in archaic sciences--William Godwin amongst
others--have shown us on incontestable evidence that, though Alchemy was
cultivated by nearly all the nations of antiquity long before our era, the
Greeks only began to study it after the beginning of the Christian era and
that it was only popularized very much later.  

Of course by this is meant only the lay Greeks, not the Initiates. For the
adepts of the Hellenic temples of Magna Grecia knew it from the days of the
Argonauts. The European origin of Alchemy dates from this time, as is well
illustrated by the allegorical story of the Golden Fleece.

Thus we need only read that which Suidas says in his lexicon with reference
to this expedition of Jason, too well known to require telling here:-

“Deras, the Golden Fleece which Jason and the Argonauts, after a voyage on
the Black Sea in Colchis, took with the aid of Medea, daughter of AEtes, of
AEa. Only instead of taking that which the poets pretended the hero took, it
was a treatise written on a skin which explained how gold could be made by
chemical means. Contemporaries called this skin of a ram the Golden Fleece,
most probably because of the great value attaching to the instructions on
it.

This explanation is clearer and much more probable than the erudite vagaries
of our modern mythologists *, for we must remember that the  

	
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Footnote 

* M. de Gubernatis (Mythol. Zool., 1427) finds that because "in Sanscrit
the ram is called mesha or meha, he who spills or who pours out," so the
golden fleece of the Greeks should be " the mist...raining down water;" and
Mr. Schwartz compares the fleece of a ram to a stormy night and tells us
that the ram speaking is the voice which seems to issue from an electric
cloud. We imagine these learned men are rather too full of vapours
themselves to be ever taken seriously by students And yet M. P. Decharme,
the author of Mythologie de la Grece Antique, seems to share their opinions.
__________________________________________________________


Colchis of the Greeks is the modern Meretie of the Black Sea; that the
Rion, the great river which crosses the country, is the Phasis of the
ancients, which even to this day contains traces of gold; and that the
traditions of the indigenous races who live on the shores of the Black Sea,
such as the Mingrelians, the Abhazians and the Meretians know full well this
old legend of the Golden Fleece. Their ancestors say they have all been
"makers of gold," that is to say, they possessed the secret of transmutation
which in modern times we call Alchemy.

In any case it is certain that the Greeks were ignorant of the Hermetic
science up to the time of the Neo-Platonists (towards the end of the fourth
and fifth centuries) with the exception of the initiated, and that they knew
nothing of the real Alchemy of the Ancient Egyptians, whose secrets were
certainly not--revealed to the public at large.  

In the third century we find the Emperor Diocletian publishing his famous
edict and ordering a careful search to be made in Egypt for books treating
of the fabrication of gold, which were collected together and made into a
public auto-da-fé. W. Godwin tells us that after this there did not remain
one single work on Alchemy above ground in the kingdom of the Pharaohs and
for the space of two centuries it was never spoken of. He might have added
that there still remained underground a large number of such works written
on papyrus and buried with the mummies ten times millenarian.  

The whole secret lies in the power to recognize such a treatise on Alchemy
in what appears to be only a fairy tale, such as we have in that of the
Golden Fleece or in the romances of the earlier Pharaohs. But it was not
the secret wisdom hidden in the allegories of the papyri which introduced
Alchemy into Europe or the Hermetic sciences.  

History tells us that Alchemy was cultivated in China more than 16 centuries
before our era and that it had never been more flourishing than during the
first centuries of Christianity. And it is towards the end of the fourth
century, when the East opened its ports to the commerce of the Latin races,
that Alchemy once again penetrated into Europe. Byzantium and Alexandria,
the two principal centres of this commerce, were quickly inundated with
works on transmutation.

Let us compare the Chinese system with that which is called Hermetic
science.

1. The twofold object which both schools aim at is identical: the
making of gold and the rejuvenating and prolonging of human life by means of
the menstruum universale and lapis philosophorum. The third object or true
meaning of the "transmutation" has been completely neglected by Christian
adepts; for, being satisfied with their belief in the immortality of the
soul, the adherents of the older Alchemists have never properly understood
this question. Now, partly through negligence, partly through habit, it has
been completely struck out of the summum bonum sought for by the Alchemists
of Christian countries. Nevertheless it is only this last of the three
objects which interests the real Oriental Alchemists. All initiated adepts,
despising gold and having a profound indifference for life, cared very
little about the first two.

2. Both these schools recognize the existence of two elixirs: the
great and the small one. The use of the second on the physical plane
transmutes metals and restores youth. The Great Elixir, which was only
symbolically an elixir, conferred the greatest boon of all: the immortality
of consciousness in the Spirit, the Nirvana which in the sequence of
evolution precedes Paranirvana or absolute union with the One Essence.

3. The principles which form the basis of the two systems are also
identical, that is to say: the compound nature of metals and their
emanation from one common seminal germ. The letters tsing in the Chinese
alphabet, which stands for "germ," and t'ai, "matrix," which is found so
constantly in Chinese works on Alchemy, are the ancestors of the same words
which we meet with so frequently in the Alchemical treatises of the
Hermetists.

4. Mercury and lead, mercury and sulphur are equally in use in the
East and in the West, and adding to these many others we find that both
schools accepted them under a triple meaning, the last or third of these
being that which European Alchemists do not understand.

6. Both schools of Alchemy are closely allied to astrology and
magic.

7. And finally they both make use of a fantastic phraseology, a fact
which is noticed by the Author of Studies of Alchemy in China * who finds
that the language of Western Alchemists, while so

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnote * By Rev. W. A. Martin, of Peking.
_____________________________________________
	
entirely different from that of all other Western sciences, imitates
perfectly the metaphorical jargon of Eastern nations, proving that Alchemy
in Europe had its origin in the far East. Nor should any prejudices be
entertained against Alchemy because we say that it is closely connected with
astrology and magic. 


============================================================================
=========

Part II	ALCHEMY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ---
H.P.B.



The word magic is an old Persian term which means "knowledge," and embraced
the knowledge of all sciences, both physical and metaphysical, studied in
those days. The wise and priestly classes of the Chaldeans taught magic,
from which came Magism and Gnosticism. 

Was not Abraham called a Chaldean ? And was it not Joseph, a pious Jew, who,
speaking of the patriarch, said that he taught mathematics, or the esoteric
science, in Egypt, including the science of the stars, a professor of Magism
being necessarily an astrologer ?
 
But it would be a great mistake to confuse the Alchemy of the Middle Ages
with that of antediluvian times. As it is understood in the present day the
philosopher's stone used in the transmutation of metals has three principal
agents: 
							
The Alchemists of both countries accept the alkahest or the universal
solvent--and the equally the doctrine of a cycle of transmutation elixir
vitale possessing the property of indefinitely luring -- which the precious
metals pass back to prolonging human life. But neither of these has the
real quality of their basic elements. Neither philosophers nor the
Initiates occupied themselves with the last two. The three Alchemical
agents, like the Trinity, one and indivisible, have become three distinct
agents solely through falling under the influence of human egotism. While
the sacerdotal caste, grasping and ambitious, anthropomorphised the
Spiritual One by dividing it into three persons, the false mystics separated
the Divine Force from a universal Kriyasakti and turned it into three
agents.

___________________________________

Part II

[ This is the concluding portion of an article by H. P. Blavatsky,
which first appeared in the French journal, La Revue Theosophique,	for
October, November and December 1889.-- Eds.]

========


In his Magie Naturelle, Baptista Porta tells us at all times, it is clearly
called the final aim of all: 

“I do not promise you mountains of gold, nor the philosopher's stone, nor
even the golden liquor which renders immortal him who drinks it...All that
is only visionary; for, the world being mutable and subject to change, all
that it produces must be destroyed.”


Geber, the great Arabian Alchemist, is even more explicit. He seems, indeed,
to have written down the following words in prophetic forecast of the
future:  

“If we have hidden aught from thee, thou son of science, be not surprised;
for we have not hidden it especially from thee, but have made use of a
language which will hide the truth from the wicked in order that men who are
unjust and ignoble may not understand it. But thou, son of Truth, seek and
thou wilt find the gift, the most precious of all. You, sons of folly,
impiety and profane works, cease endeavoring to penetrate the secrets of
this science; for they will destroy you and will hurl you into the most
profound misery.”


Let us see what other writers have to say on the question. Having begun to
think that Alchemy was after all solely a philosophy, entirely metaphysical,
instead of a physical science (in which they erred), they declared that the
extraordinary transmutation of base metals into gold was merely a figurative
expression for the transformation of man, freeing him of his hereditary
evils and of his infirmities in order that he might attain to a degree of
regeneration which would elevate him into a divine Being.*

	
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Footnote * Hermetic Philosophy, by A. Wilder.
____________________________________________________


This in fact is the synthesis of transcendental Alchemy and is its principal
object; but this does not for all that represent every end which his
science has in view. Aristotle said in Alexandria that "the philosopher's
stone was not a stone at all, that it is in each man, everywhere, at all
times, and is called the final aim of all philosophers."

Aristotle was mistaken in his first proposition, though right with regard to
the second. In the physical kingdom, the secret of the alkahest produces an
ingredient which is called the philosopher's stone; but, for those who care
not for perishable gold, the alkahest, as Professor Wilder tells us, is only
the allgeist, the divine Spirit, which dissolves gross matter in order that
the unsanctified elements may be destroyed...The elixir vitae therefore is
only the waters of life which, as Godwin says, "is a universal medicine
possessing the power to rejuvenate man and to prolong life indefinitely."

Dr. Kopp, in Germany, published a History of Chemistry 40 years ago.
Speaking of Alchemy, looked at especially as the forerunner of modern
chemistry, the German doctor makes use of a very significant expression such
as the Pythagorean and the Platonist will understand at once. "If," says he,

"for the word World we substitute the microcosm represented by man, then it
becomes easy to interpret."

Irenaeus Philalethes declares:

“The philosopher's stone represents the whole universe (or macrocosm) and
possesses all the virtues of the great system collected and compressed into
the lesser system. This last has a magnetic power which draws to it that
which has affinities with it in the universe. It is the celestial virtue
which spreads throughout creation, but which is epitomized in a miniature
abridgment of itself (as man).”


Listen to what Alipile says in one of his translated works: 
 
“He who knows the microcosm cannot long remain ignorant of the macrocosm.
This is why the Egyptians, those zealous investigators of Nature, so often
said: "Man, know thy Self" But their disciples, more restricted in their
powers of appreciation, took this adage as being allegorical and in their
ignorance inscribed it in their temples. But I declare to you, whoever you
may be, who desire to plunge into the depths of Nature, that if that which
you seek you do not find within yourself, you will never find it without.
He who aspires to a first place in the ranks of Nature's students will never
find a vaster or better subject of study than he himself presents.

Therefore following in this the example of the Egyptians and in agreement
with the Truth which has been shown to me by experience, I repeat these very
words of the Egyptians with a loud voice and from the very bottom of my
soul, " Oh man, know thyself, for the treasure of treasures is entombed
within you."


Irenaeus Philalethes, cosmopolitan, an English Alchemist and Hermetic
philosopher, wrote in 1659, alluding to the persecution to which philosophy
was subjected:-

“Many of those who are strangers to the art think that to possess it they
must do such and such a thing; like many others we thought so too; but,
having become more careful and less ambitious of the three rewards (offered
by Alchemy), on account of the great peril we run, we have chosen the only
infallible one and the most hidden...”


And in truth the Alchemists were wise to do so. For, living in an age when
for a slight difference of opinion on religious questions men and women were
treated as heretics, placed under a ban and proscribed, and when science was
stigmatized as sorcery, it was quite natural, as Professor A. Wilder says,
"that men who cultivate ideas which are out of the general line of thought
should invent a symbological language and means of communication amongst
themselves which should conceal their identity from those thirsting for
their blood."

The author reminds us of the Hindu allegory of Krishna asking his adopted
mother to look into his mouth. She did so and saw there the entire
universe. This agrees exactly with the Kabalistic teaching which holds that
the microcosm is but the faithful reflection of the macrocosm--a
photographic copy to him who understands. This is why Cornelius Agrippa,
perhaps the most widely known of all the Alchemists, says:-

“It is a created thing, the object of astonishment both to heaven and earth.
It is a compound of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms; it is found
every-where, though recognized by few, and is called by its real name by no
one; for it is buried under numbers, signs, and enigmas without the help of
which neither Alchemy nor natural magic could reach perfection.”

 
The allusion becomes even clearer if we read a certain passage in the
Enchiridion of Alchemists (1672):-

“Therefore I will render visible to you in this discourse the natural
condition of the philosopher's stone wrapped in its triple garment, this
stone of richness and of charity, which holds all secrets and which is a
divine mystery the like of which Nature in her sublimity has not in all the
world. Observe well what I tell you and remember that it has a triple
covering, namely: the Body, the Soul, and the Spirit.”


In other words this stone contains the secret of the transmutation of
metals, that of the elixir of long life and of conscious immortality.

This last secret was the one which the old philosophers chose to unravel,
leaving to the lesser lights of modern times the pleasure of wearing
themselves out in the attempt to solve the two first. It is the "Word" or
the "infallible name," of which Moses said that there was no need to seek it
in distant places "for the Word is close to you; it is in your mouth and in
your heart."

Philalethes, the English Alchemist, says the same thing in other terms:--

“Our writings will be like a double-edged knife for the world at large;
some will use them to hew out works of art, others will only cut their
fingers with them. Nevertheless it is not we who are to blame, since we
warn most seriously all those who attempt the task that they are undertaking
to master the most elevated philosophy in Nature. And this is so whether we
write well or badly. For though we write in English, these writings will be
Greek to some who will, nevertheless, persist in believing that they have
well understood us, while in reality they distort in the most perverse
manner that which we teach; for can it be supposed that those who are
naturally fools should become wise simply by reading books which testify to
their own natures ?”


Espagnet warned his readers in the same way. He prays the lovers of Nature
to read little, and then only those whose veracity and intelligence is above
suspicion. Let the reader seize quickly a meaning which the author may
probably only darkly hint at; for, he adds, truth lives in obscurity;
(Hermetic) philosophers deceive most when they appear to write most clearly,
and ever divulge more secrets the more obscurely they write. 

The truth cannot be given to the public; even less in these days than in
those days when the Apostles were advised not to cast pearls before swine.
All these fragments which we have just cited are, we hold, so many proofs of
that which we have advanced.  

Outside of the schools of Adepts, almost unapproachable for Western
students, there does not exist in the whole world--and more especially in
Europe, one single work on Occultism, and above all on Alchemy, which is
written in clear and precise language, or which offers to the public a
system or a method which could be followed as in the physical sciences.  

All treatises, which come from an Initiate or from an Adept, ancient or
modern, unable to reveal all, limit themselves to throwing light on certain
problems which are allowed to be disclosed to those worthy of knowing, while
remaining at the same time hidden from those who are unworthy of receiving
the truth, for fear they should make a selfish use of their knowledge.

Therefore he who, complaining of the obscurity of writers of the Eastern
school, should confront them with those of either the Middle Ages or of
modern times which seem to be more clearly written, would prove only two
things: first, he deceives his readers in deceiving himself; secondly, he
would advertise modern charlatanism, knowing all the time that he is
deceiving the public.  

It is very easy to find semi-modern works which are written with precision
and method, but giving only the personal ideas of the writer on the subject;
that is to say, of value only to those who know absolutely nothing of the
true occult science.  

We are beginning to make much of Eliphas Levi, who alone knew probably more
than all our wise men of Europe of 1889 put together. But, when once the
half dozen books of the Abbe Louis Constant have been read, reread and
learnt by heart, how far are we advanced in practical Occultism, or even in
the understanding of the theories of the Kabala?  

His style is poetical and quite charming. His paradoxes, and nearly every
phrase in each of his volumes is one, are thoroughly French in character.
But even if we learn them so as to repeat them by heart from the beginning
to the end, what, pray, has he really taught us ? Nothing, absolutely
nothing--except, perhaps, the French language.  

We know several of the pupils of this great magician of modern times,
English, French and German, all men of learning, of iron wills, many of whom
have sacrificed whole years to these studies. One of his disciples made him
a life annuity which he paid him for upwards of ten years, besides paying
him 100 francs for every letter when he was obliged to be away. This person
at the end of ten years knew less of magic and of the Kabala than a chela of
ten years' standing of an Indian astrologer.

We have in the library at Adyar his letters on magic in several volumes of
manuscripts, written in French and translated into English, and we defy the
admirers of Eliphas Levi to show us one single individual who would have
become an Occultist even in theory, by following the teaching of the French
magician.

Why is this since he evidently got his secrets from an Initiate ? Simply
because he never possessed the right to initiate others. Those who know
something of Occultism will understand what we mean by this; those who are
only pretenders will contradict us, and probably hate us all the more for
having told such hard truths.

The secret sciences, or rather the key which alone explains the mystery of
the jargon in which they are expressed, cannot be developed. Like the Sphinx
who dies the moment the enigma of its being is guessed by an Oedipus, they
are only occult as long as they remain unknown to the uninitiated. Then
again they cannot be bought or sold.  

A Rosicrucian "becomes, he is not made," says an old adage of the Hermetic
philosophers, to which the Occultists add, "The science of the gods is
mastered by violence; conquered it may be, but it never is to be had for
the mere asking."  

This is exactly what the author of the Acts of the Apostles intended to
convey when he wrote the answer of Peter to Simon Magus: "May thy gold
perish with thee since thou hast thought that the gifts of God may be bought
with money."  

Occult wisdom should never be used either to make money, or for the
attainment of any egotistical ends, or even to minister to personal pride.

Let us go further and say at once that--except in an exceptional case where
gold might be the means of saving a whole nation--even the act itself of
transmutation, when the only motive is the acquisition of riches, becomes
black magic.  

So that neither the secrets of Magic, nor of Occultism, nor of Alchemy, can
ever be revealed during the existence of our race, which worships the golden
calf with an ever-increasing frenzy.

Therefore, of what value can those works be which promise to give us the key
of initiation for any of these sciences, which are in fact only one ?

We understand perfectly such Adepts as Paracelsus and Roger Bacon. The
first was one of the great harbingers of modern chemistry; the second, that
of physics. Roger Bacon, in his "Treatise on the Admirable Forces of Art
and of Nature," shows this clearly.  

We find in it a foreshadowing of all the sciences of our day. He speaks in
it of powder for cannons, and predicts the use of steam as a motive power.
The hydraulic press, the diving bell and the kaleidoscope, are all
described; he prophesies the invention of flying machines, constructed in
such a way that he who is seated in the middle of this mechanical
contrivance, in which we easily recognize a type of the modern balloon, has
only to turn a mechanism to set in motion artificial wings which begin to
beat the air in imitation of those of a bird.  

Then he defends his brother Alchemists against the accusation of using a
secret cryptography:-

“The reason for the secrecy which is maintained by the Wise of all countries
is the general contempt and indifference shown for the profounder truths of
knowledge, the generality of people being unable to use those things which
are of the highest good. Even those amongst them who do have an idea which
proves related to something of real utility, owe it generally to chance and
their good fortune; so that failing to appreciate its full meaning they
fall into scientific errors to the great detriment and ruin, not only of the
few, but often of the many.”


All of which proves that he who divulges our secrets is worse than foolish,
unless he veils that which he discloses to the multitude, and dis-guises it
so cleverly that even the wise understand with difficulty.  

There are those amongst us who hide their secrets under a certain way of
writing, as for example using only consonants, so that those who read this
style of writing can only decipher the true meaning when they know the
meaning of the words (the Hermetic jargon).  

This kind (of cryptography) was in use amongst the Jews, the Chaldeans, the
Syrians, the Arabs, and even the Greeks, and largely adopted in former times
especially by the Jews. This is proved by the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old
Testament, the books of Moses or the Pentateuch rendered ten times more
fantastic by the introduction of Masoretic points.  

But as with the Bible, which has been made to say everything required of it
except that which it really did say, thanks to Masorite and the Fathers of
the Church, so it was also with Kabalistic and Alchemical books. The key of
both having been lost centuries ago in Europe, the Kabala (the good Kabala
of the Marquis de Mirville, according to the ex-rabbi, the Chevalier Drach,
that pious and most Catholic Hebrew scholar) serves now as a witness
confirmatory of both the New and the Old Testaments.  

According to modern Kabalists, the Zohar is a book of modern prophecies,
especially relating to the Catholic dogmas of the Latin Church, and is the
fundamental stone of the Gospel; which indeed might be true if it were
admitted that both in the Gospels and in the Bible, each name is symbolical
and each story allegorical, just as was the case with all sacred writings
preceding the Christian canon.

Before closing this article, which has already become too long, let us make
a rapid resumé of what we have said.

I do not know if our argument and copious extracts will have any effect on
the generality of our readers. But I am sure, at all events, that what we
have said will have the same effect on Kabalists and modern Masters as the
waving of a red rag in front of a bull; but we have long ceased to fear the
sharpest horns.  

These Masters owe all their science to the dead letter of the Kabala and to
the fantastic interpretation placed on it by some few mystics of the present
and the last century, on which "Initiates" of libraries and museums have in
their turn made variations, so that they are bound to defend them, tooth and
nail. People will see only the raging fire of contest, and he who raises
the greatest conflagration will remain the victor. 

Nevertheless--Magna est veritas et prevalebit. [Great is truth and it
prevails.]

I. It has been asserted that Alchemy penetrated into Europe from
China, and that, falling into profane hands, Alchemy (like astrology) is no
longer the pure and divine science of the schools of Thoth-Hermes of the
first Egyptian Dynasties.

2. It is also certain that the Zohar, of which both Europe and
other Christian countries possess fragments, is not the same as the Zohar of
Simon Ben Jochai, but a compilation of old writings and traditions collected
by Moses de Leon of Cordova in the 13th century, who, according to Mosheim,
has followed in many cases the interpretations which were given him by
Christian Gnostics of Chaldea and Syria where he went to seek them.  

The real, old Zohar is only found whole in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, of
which there now exist only two or three incomplete copies, which are in the
possession of initiated rabbis.

One of these lived in Poland, in strict seclusion, and he destroyed his copy
before dying in 1817; as for the other, the wisest rabbi of Palestine, he
emigrated from Jaffa some few years ago.

3. Of the real Hermetic books there only remains a fragment known
as the "Smaragdine Tablet," of which we shall presently speak. All the works
compiled on the books of Thoth had been destroyed and burnt in Egypt by the
order of Diocletian in the third century of our era.  

All the others, including Pymander, are in their present form merely
recollections, more or less vague and erroneous, of different Greek or even
Latin authors, who often did not hesitate to palm them off as genuine
Hermetic fragments. And, even if by chance these exist, they would be as
incomprehensible to the "Masters" of today as the books of the Alchemists of
the Middle Ages. 

In proof of this we have quoted their own thoroughly sincere confessions. We
have shown the reasons they give for this:  

(a) their mysteries were too sacred to be profaned by the ignorant, being
written down and explained only for the use of a few Initiates; and they
are also too dangerous to be trusted in the hands of those who might mistake
their use;  

(b) in the Middle Ages the precautions taken were ten times as great; for
otherwise they stood a good chance of being roasted alive to the greater
glory of God and His Church.

The key to the jargon of the Alchemists and of the real meaning of the
symbols and allegories of the Kabala are now to be found only in the East.
Never having been rediscovered in Europe, what now serves as the guiding
star to our modern Kabalists so that they shall recognize the truths in the
writings of the Alchemists and in the small number of treatises which,
written by real Initiates, are still to be found in our national libraries ?

We conclude, therefore, that in rejecting aid from the only quarter from
whence in this our century they may expect to find the Key to the old
esotericisms and to the Wisdom-Religion, they, whether Kabalists, elect of
God or modern Prophets throw to the winds their only chance of studying
primitive truths and profiting by them.

In any event we may be assured that it is not the Eastern School which loses
by the exchange.

We have dared to say that many French Kabalists have often expressed the
opinion that the Eastern School could never be worth much, no matter how it
may pride itself on possessing secrets unknown to Europeans, because
it admits women into its ranks.

To this we might answer by repeating the fable told by brother Jos. N. Nutt,
Grand Master of the Masonic lodges of the United States for women, to show
what women would do if they were not shackled by males:

“A lion, passing by a monument representing an athletic and powerful figure
of a man tearing open the jaws of a lion, said: "If this scene had been
carved by a lion the two figures would have been exchanged." The same
remark holds good for woman.  
					
If only she were allowed to represent the phases of human life she would
distribute the parts in reverse order.  

She it was who first took man to the Tree of Knowledge, and made him to know
Good and Evil; and if she had been left free to do that which she desired,
she would have then led him to the Tree of Life and thus would have made him
immortal !

==============
H. P. Blavatsky





Dallas
 

-----Original Message-----
From: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com [mailto:theos-talk@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Cass Silva
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 7:40 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World Re: Alchemy in the XIX Century

Sorry to interrupt, but would anyone be able to direct me on a talk HPB gave
on Alchemy in the 21st Century? Or was it Alice Bailey?
Regards
Cass



		
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