THe Chemical Wedding:
Alchemy, Its history and Practice
V.I.T.R.I.O.L
“A common word in the alchemical texts is VITRIOL. This is an acronym for Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occulltum Lapidem. Visit the interior of the earth to find the Secret Stone.”
“When alchemical texts recommend visiting the interior of the earth, this is a way of talking about sinking down into one’s own body… By going inside themselves, these initiates saw the Outworld with supernatural clarity. To put it in cabalistic terms, man is the synthesis of all the Holy Names. All knowledge is therefore contained inside ourselves, if we learn how to read it. The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali allude tto travelling the heavens and shrinking to the size of the smallest particle as being among the powers that reward those who practise its arcane techniques. Indian adepts still talk of being able to travel to the far reaches of the cosmos and also to so concentrate their powers of perception that they see right down to the atomic level.”
-The Secret History of the World
The Golden Body
“Oh God! You who have shown me eternal love by bestowing on me the golden body. By merging with my heart, you have alchemized my body… during this alchemical process the Third Eye begins to open… Alchemy confers on its practitioners a supernatural intelligence.”
-The Secret History of the World
The Quintessence
“In early Arab texts the Work involves manipulation of the same Four Elements, but in European alchemy, rooted in the Middle Ages and flowering in the seventeenth century, a mysterious fifth element, the Quintessence, comes to the fore,”Orichalcum
-The Secret History of the World
The Bird of Resurrection
“If we succeed in making our selfish, sexual desires into living, spiritual desires, then the bird of resurrection, the Phoenix, rises. If our heart is overtaken by these transformed energies, then it becomes a centre of power. Anyone who has met a truly holy person will have felt the great power that a transformed heart radiates.”
-The Secret History of the World
Salt: Portals of Conciousness
Mercury: Portals of Influence
Sulfer: Portals of Death
Alchemy, like the Cabala, is a very broad church. If there is one great mysterious ‘Work’, it is approached via a remarkable variety of codes and symbols. In some cases the Work involves sulpher, mercury, and salt, in others roses, stars, the philosopher’s stone, salamanders, toads, crows, nets, the marriage bed and astrological symbols, such as the fish and the lion.”
“In the great age of alchemy, Sulphur represents the animal dimension, Mercury the vegetable dimension and salt the material dimension. These dimensions are centered in different parts of the body, the animal down below in the sex organs, the vegetable in the solar plexus, and salt in the head. Will and sexuality are seen as deeply intertwined in the esoteric philosophy. This is the Sulfurous part, Mercury the vegetable part is the the realm of feeling, Salt is the precipitate of thinking.”
“In all alchemical texts Mercury is the mediator between sulphur and salt. In the first stage of the process the vegetable dimension must be worked on to achieve the first stage of mystical experience, the entering of the Matrix, the sea of light that is the world between the worlds.”
“The second stage is what is sometimes called the Chemical Wedding, when soft female Mercury makes love to hard, rigid, red sulfur.”
-The Secret History of the World
