Magnum Opus Alchemy Pdf

Magnum opus alchemy pdf Continue Paul Kyritsis - Sunday, October 09, 2011 To understand the motivation of alchemy we must go back to the second century ce, a time when pseudepigraphic writings aimed at nurturing the philosophical and theosophical coherence of the world were ripe. Most of these syncretized Gnostic, stoic, platonic and aristotle elements were attributed to historically unverifiable figures such as the three times greatest Hermes Trismegistus and Moses; deities such as Isis, Gore and Agatodaimon; and legendary figures such as Opanes, Pammen and Cleopatra. The most important for our study is the introductory text of Corpus Hermeticum, a treatise called Poimandres. In it, the anonymous author reveals the belief that the essence of microcosm and macrocosm, man and space as a whole, is understood only through revelation or mystical understanding. This Gnostic system of thought attributes the creation of the universe to the interaction of two principles; pure spirit, otherwise known as God, and matter. The first is fiery and active, the second reflective and passive. According to the narration of the frame, the process of formation was mediated by two sentient beings, which differed from the virgin spiritual-noetic substance. First, it was the demiurgic spirit or nous that continued to order a fixed sphere of stars, seven planetary spheres with their respective daemones and the sublunary kingdom. This was followed by a disembodied proto-man, who repeated the entire order on a much smaller scale. The obvious still must be a welcome departure from the usual performances of creations such as those we could read in biblical Genesis or the Sumerian account of Ulligara and Salgarra. The disembodied proto-man, the ethereal model of man, in other words, was not subordinate to God; he was alone with God, brother or brother of God. Unencumbered by the density of incarnation, the ethereal man was loved by God like his own child and bestowed all the honors and privileges that came with such a favorable feeling. He was omnipotent, transcendent and immortal, with demiurgic coghicting abilities that made him the envy of heavenly and earthly beasts. After all, it was his own curiosity that made him powerless. Seeking to study more closely the created essence of matter, he descended on the multidimensional stages of cosmic scale, until he reached the last kingdom, the sublunary. Here he looked at the supernatal face of Mother Nature and became in love with her. She reciprocated these feelings and, acting on her lowest and involuntary impulses, pulled him to her side. The subsequent action turned him into a complete constituent being; his newfound physicality imposed a state of earthly life, but his spark of soul, derived from the Empirean, ethereal fire of the sky, remained immortal. was also hermaphrodite in nature, consisting of both male and female parts. A second-century non-Christian text from the Naka Hammidi Library entitled Adam's Apocalypse describes this aspect through a narrative between Adam, the first man, and his son Seth. In the story, Adam equates the state of paradise perfection and knowledge of the original gnosis to the hermaphrodistic constitution, showing that the fall occurred only after the enraged god Yaldabat, the ruler of the eons of forces, divided the bodily androgynous proto-man into a man and a woman. Alchemy assigns this Gnostic point of view and attributes the salvation of the reintegration of female and male forces within itself. The purpose of anyone who awakens to this higher call is to re-nationalize the seven planetary spheres, fragmented as it was the anatomy of his or her soul and giving away parts of the respective daemons to reconcile the integral Adamian state of uroboric chastity and finally communicate with and become one with Godhead in the eighth, Empyrean. The scenic representation of this idea is immortalized in the opening of the Mutus Liber plate, where two angels trample up and down Jacob's stairs and kick into their pipes in an attempt to awaken the sleeping figure at the bottom. From this point of view, an alembice or vessel is a human body, and the Philosopher's Stone is a consciousness purified from its physical drives and carnal desires through a repeated cycle of compounds, or chemical marriages, if you like, between male and female forces - The Straw and the Moon. Just as you can experience reality through the mediation of your five physical senses, so does alchemical esotericism seeks to understand the psychoneotic kingdom through elements, properties and organic processes manifested in the natural world. The idea embodied in the airtight principle, both above and below, which can be taken mean that everything existing on a material plane is the erroneous variety of the ideal equivalent to the next vortex of the cosmic spiral (i.e. think platonic metaphysics). Similarly, both internal and external expresses fundamental correspondence between the laws of macrocosm and microcosm, or the demiurgic spirit (nous) and the ethereal proto-man, if you prefer. The attempt to establish these laws prompted early alchemists to seek and identify the material component for prima matter - prothean, volatile, constantly oscillating and elusive basic substances from which the cosmos and the human soul are carved. The two that seemed to match the mold were water and mercury. The first was soon justified on the premise that it was too abundant in nature to encompass the quintessence of an immutable substance that was not taught in the irrational eruptions of creation. Also have already been involved as one of the first four qualities or principles to distinguish from primitive chaos like Empodocles (492-432bce) and Aristotle (384-322bce). That left Mercury as the only candidate. Although alchemists of all ages have strongly argued that their mercury is not a mercury (Hg) of a vulgar herd, we can be more than sure that the miraculous and mutative properties of the latter is what inspired it. Let's take a quick look at Mercury's central and key role in Magnum Opus. When alchemical treatises speak of Mercury or Mercury Water, they refer to the menstruation and matrix of the cosmos, the undifferentiate first case consists of both a hot, dry and active male principle, and a moist, cold and receptive female principle. Both are expressed exoteroly under the rubric of elementary sulfur and argent vive. This paradoxical duality defines the differentiated aspect of prima-matter, but it can also be seen during painstaking procedures carried out in the alembic and eventually, ultima materia. Given that Mercury was the only known substance that demonstrated an inherent talent for tackling and coagula (meaning to dissolve and coagula, or to separate and combine together) by combining other metals, it began to be seen as a ribis or hermaphrodite, as well as a symbol of alchemy in its entirety. The Numinous Mercury and the animizing spirit was the Protean; it could not be seen or touched, but it permeated the elementary processes that unravelled through the two-pro struggle between philosophical gray and argent vive. On the one hand, it was vitriol, poison or vinegar that killed a plant, mineral or metal in an almbic and reduced it to a rotten mass, and on the other hand, it was water that washed over dead residues or ash and will resurrect it again. In any case, Mercurial nature was a living contradiction, akin to an African lioness, mother of a lamb or an atom, bursting in two places at the same time. She-male or he-woman couldn't quite make up his mind about what he wanted to be, how his name was or how long he wanted to take on an assumed role on the subject. He will appear during chemical operations as a duplicitous male trickster who released poisons and dissolved substances one minute, and as a faithful female servant who contrived elixirs and coagulated substances the next. Unlike everything else on the planet, Mercury had no stabilizing shape, weight or temperature; he reasoned with impulse and acted covertly. Early alchemists never attributed Mercury to a certain stage of the alchemical opus, because it was the formative force of all work, having finished the whole process, which consisted of repeated divisions and coagulations between gray and argent vive, Sol and Luna. The degree of purity achieved was shown through each marriage or coniunctionis of these two elements. Pictorial representations of these compounds show in chronological and ascending order the connection of chicken and rooster, dog and, red male and white woman, and finally the Red King and the White queen. This double struggle took place within the framework of the three-fold division. At the same time, the earliest known model of alchemical transmutation, transformation and elevation of prima-matter (basic matter) into ulty-matter (preparation of gold, or Philosopher's Stone) was marked by four separate phases of coloration, which served as exoteric markers of the process of reduction initiated by the laws of cosmic sympathy and antipathy. Thus, ultima-matter was assigned a form only after having undergone putrefaction through melanosis or nigredo, bleaching through leukemia or albedo, yellowing through xantosis or cytriths, and finally redness through iosis or rubedode. Purple sometimes took the place of red in the last of these stages, alluding to the royal and spiritual scheme ascending directly to a process that at first turned out to be nothing more than a narrative transcription of color and metal cleaning. In the alchemical literature, melanosis symbolized black crow, leukemia - white pigeon, Xantosis - yellow flower, and ios - red dragon or phoenix. Both the repetitive chemical marriages between philosophical sulfur and argent vive, and the three-fold color division, were backed by a seven-fold diagram based on planetary forces and their composite metals.

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