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Post by thisisnecessary on Jul 30, 2008 7:28:55 GMT
Helllo all, I am a lurker here, currently serving as the Junior Deacon at my lodge and open to the exploration of more esoteric parts of our craft.
I always hear that Alchemy has many different ties to Freemasonry, and that the system, though veiled, is essentially is almost the same process in a way. But, I never hear any specifics, and half of the time the alchemists I talk to on the internet are too vague and secretive when it comes to the specifics of their craft to compare to ours.
What do you guys think of this? Any alchemists here?
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Post by xiii on Jul 30, 2008 9:06:56 GMT
This is a place to start:
Timothy W. Hogan: The Alchemical Keys to Masonic Ritual
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Post by hollandr on Jul 30, 2008 10:38:35 GMT
I am no expert on alchemy but I am not too sure that Timothy Hogan is either. From reading the pages of his book that Google shows it seems to me that he confounds the processes of plant alchemy with those of mineral alchemy without distinguishing them as two distinct paths with different products
When "Freemasons" took over operative lodges of stone masons, some of the most influential Freemasons were Rosicrucians deeply involved in alchemy.
The study of alchemy leads directly into the hidden mysteries of nature and science.
The alchemical processes are based on spirit being brought to a greater aliveness in the matter. To be successful the brother must be pure of heart so that the spirit in the matter is willing to respond to the culturing alchemical processes. Further, the brother needs to develop a sensitivity to spirit so that he or she senses its presence and readiness to act in the alchemical processes.
Traces of alchemy can be found (or imagined) in:
- the objectives of the second degree - the perambulations (circulation) of the candidate - the raising in the third - in the time between degrees - the need to relate to a planet in the raising - the perfected nature of the mosaic pavement
But the kindly attentions of many GL to the ritual means that even if alchemical secrets were concealed that it will be easier to discover them by other means
Cheers
Russell
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Post by corab on Jul 30, 2008 11:45:05 GMT
It sure is very similar, Bro:. -- for one thing both disciplines refer to themselves as the Royal Art. There is much more, which I detailed in a paper which I presented by way of proficiency in the 2', so I'm a tad reluctant to throw it out here, but if you drop me a PM I will send you a copy. I'm currently working on a follow-up paper in the 3' which looks at the connections between the Qabalah, Spiritual Alchemy and Freemasonry -- but that's going to be in the pipeline for a bit whilst I finish another. BTW -- you need not read masonry-specific books on alchemy to discover the connections for yourself. I wholeheartedly recommend Carl Jung's works on Alchemy, although I would suggest novices to the subject leave his seminal Mysterium Coniunctionis for later on in their studies ... I sure have! S&F,
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Post by sid on Jul 30, 2008 12:33:45 GMT
Greetings, Helllo all, I am a lurker here, currently serving as the Junior Deacon at my lodge and open to the exploration of more esoteric parts of our craft. I always hear that Alchemy has many different ties to Freemasonry, and that the system, though veiled, is essentially is almost the same process in a way. But, I never hear any specifics, and half of the time the alchemists I talk to on the internet are too vague and secretive when it comes to the specifics of their craft to compare to ours. What do you guys think of this? Any alchemists here? Here is a link for you: www.sacred-texts.com/alc/index.htmalso anything written by Heinrich Khunrath
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Post by maat on Jul 30, 2008 23:46:54 GMT
Of the Chaos of the Sages Let the student incline his ear to the united verdict of the Sages, who describe this work as analogous to the Creation of the World. In the Beginning God created Heaven and Earth; and the Earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. These words are sufficient for the student of our Art. (Craft Degrees) The Heaven must be united to the Earth on the couch of friendship; so shall he reign in glory for ever. The Earth is the heavy body, the womb of the minerals, which it cherishes in itself, although it brings to light trees and animals. The Heaven is the place where the great Lights revolve, and through the air transmit their influences to the lower world. (Royal Arch) But in the beginning all was one confused chaos. Our Chaos is, as it were, a mineral earth (by virtue of its coagulation), and yet also volatile air—in the centre of which is the Heaven of the Sages, the Astral Centre, which with its light irradiates the earth to its surface. (Craft & Rose Croix) What man is wise enough to evolve out of this world a new King, who shall redeem his brothers from their natural weaknesses, by dying, being lifted on high, and giving his flesh and blood for the life of the world? (Craft) I thank Thee, O God, that Thou hast concealed these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes!www.sacred-texts.com/alc/hm2/hm206.htmSMIB Maat
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Post by jerohm on Aug 4, 2008 11:30:17 GMT
As you know, I'm not very familiar with brit rituals. In France (and in my opinion), Alchemy is present at the first degree. The entered apprentice have to work to transform a stone in another one. Couldn't we make a parallel between these two stones and the transmutation of lead into gold ? For me, the athanor isn't anything other that the entered apprentice himself. In my opinion, the entired apprentice has to understand that he is both materials and tools : he has to work on himself with himself by himself, with the whole that made of him a human beeing, in order to transmute his whole being in a perfect form... a form we could name gold. But like the building of a cathedral, one life isn't enough to obtain the perfect form. That's the reason why every mason has to work on himself for life... and the others Only then could he dare claim to have become a flamboyant cathedral, flamboyant like gold... or god.
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Tamrin
Member
Nosce te ipsum
Posts: 3,586
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 4, 2008 20:43:50 GMT
In my opinion, the entired apprentice has to understand that he is both materials and tools : he has to work on himself with himself by himself, with the whole that made of him a human beeing, in order to transmute his whole being in a perfect form.
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Post by maat on Aug 4, 2008 23:10:40 GMT
Good stuff! Wish the Anti's would access these sorts of threads. This is what masonry is all about. Come to think of it, with a future world manned by perfect beings... there really would be a new world order. The anti's knew what they were talking about after all. Maat
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Post by thisisnecessary on Aug 5, 2008 8:02:32 GMT
Thank you for the replies guys, good times.
I am still doing internet searches for other clues, I will try to keep you all updated for discussion if I come across anything worthwhile.
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Post by jerohm on Aug 5, 2008 8:08:36 GMT
Come to think of it, with a future world manned by perfect beings... there really would be a new world order. The anti's knew what they were talking about after all. Te te te ;D We don't want a new world order. We just "desire that men and women, throughout the world, shall be entitled in equal degree to the enjoyment of social Justice within a Humanity organised in free and fraternal societies." ;D
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Post by astraia on Aug 6, 2008 1:40:34 GMT
With only a few reservations I would recommend Julius Evola's "The Hermetic Tradition: The Symbols and Teachings of the Royal Art." It does come from a Traditionalist standpoint, and I am not entirely comfortable with some of the same author's other writings, but as a perspective and treatment of alchemy and a number of esoteric concepts I think it might be a very insightful read. Then you've got the whole host of alchemical engravings which proliferated during the 16th and 17th centuries - a good introduction to these might be "Alchemy and Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum" by Alexander Roob, published by Taschen. It draws together numerous concepts, Freemasonry included, and focuses particularly on the similar symbology in these esoteric traditions. The engravings of Count Michael Maier (which I'm neck-deep in at the moment - supposed to be producing a brilliant scholarly opinion on them are partially influenced by the Rosicrucian manifestoes, and the real question about them is - why pictures and not words? Numerous alchemical pictorial sequences feature exquisitely elaborate symbology drawn from various strands of mythology and there are elements in common with Freemasonry there too. Particularly in the idea of communicating sacred secrets through symbol and not word. A great collection with perhaps brief but good introductory descriptions is Stanislas Klossowski da Rola's "The Golden Game." And then there's Tobias Churton's "The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians and the first Freemasons," which is more scholarly but he writes well and so it's a comfortable read, gives a good historical buildup and explanation of the connections between these esoteric currents. At the end he delves more into some of the symbolic relationships between Freemasonry and alchemy, which he also does somewhere in his latest book "Freemasonry: the Reality," where he relates it to the Craft and Rose-Croix degrees in particular. Hope you find something of interest in there somewhere!
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Post by astraia on Aug 6, 2008 1:45:30 GMT
BTW.when you say specifics of alchemy, how do you mean? What the process was meant to be, how it worked, what exactly? (No I'm not shooting quesitons, just if you could be more specific then maybe I could suggest something useful - I've been studying alchemy from a number of angles for several years) - hqaven't quite blown myself up yet
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Post by thisisnecessary on Aug 6, 2008 22:50:14 GMT
Wow looks like I have a lot of reading to do. This may take a good while hehe.
On the specifics, I mean that I have heard that the process was the same but in a different guise. So this makes me wonder, if that was intentional or not, to produce yet another system with the same or similar goal.
If not, I would still like know what the similarities could be, seeing as that one is an initiatory system and the other is not, yet some concepts of symbolic teaching are quite similar. What are your guys' take on this? Pros and cons?
Or am I still totally off here?
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Post by maat on Aug 6, 2008 23:42:08 GMT
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Post by corab on Aug 7, 2008 12:08:23 GMT
On the specifics, I mean that I have heard that the process was the same but in a different guise. So this makes me wonder, if that was intentional or not, to produce yet another system with the same or similar goal. I would suggest the latter. If for the moment we accept the commonly held belief that formally organised freemasonry began in 1717, we also find the time round about which the process of dividing alchemy into two distinct divisions reached its completion. On the one hand there was the science of chemistry, and on the other the Royal Art of alchemy, which was -- and is -- of a speculative and spiritual nature. Whilst both that science and art continued to operate each in its own right, there is no doubt in my mind that the knowledge of both was alive and kicking at the time the Invisible College, culminating in the establishment of the Royal Society, was formed. Whether intentional or not, I believe the Royal Art of alchemy is a formative influence on freemasonry as we know it -- whether we recognise it or not. Arguably, the outward appearance of alchemy (creating "gold" out of "lead") was but a cover operation to safeguard the much deeper nature of the Great Work: to free the Spirit trapped in matter (represented by the base metals) through a series of rigorous chemical processes -- all of which, of course, was allegorical. The problem was that each alchemist worked in deepest isolation, and thus developed his own symbols and allegories, which meant that even if anyone ever found their notes, they wouldn't be able to decipher them. Much of that changed when Carl Jung found himself so intrigued by the similarities between the alchemical writings he had read and the processes of the psyche with which he was so intimately familiar. Jung dug deep into whatever alchemical writings he could get his hands on and based on the common symbolism, allegories and his solid knowledge of mythology, archetypes and the collective unconscious he made that vast body of individual alchemical writings accessible to modern man. Tell you what -- I'll see how much of my paper in the 2' I can safely transfer into the public domain and I'll stick it up here. Could be a couple of days, though, as both professional and craft commitments are heavy at the moment.
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Post by astraia on Aug 7, 2008 15:18:43 GMT
To be honest there are grounds for believing that alchemy too, was an intiatory system, and took that form pretty early on. In "The Forge and the Crucible" Mircea Eliade makes a case for the roots of alchemy deriving from early metallurgical practices, and there he explains that in very early antiquity metallurgy was considered a sacred art, only for the few, which required initiation into the powers of creation. This idea never entirely left alchemy as the tendency to pass on its "secrets" in the form of image and symbols developed, climaxing in the 17th century.
Two positions on this: "What has been said about the “transmission of the secret” being conferred only on the “worthy” need not be interpreted moralistically. It has to do with the fact that the consciousness of the one who is to be transformed has to be at the level of readiness to enter the new state." (Julius Evola)
According to Bernard of Treviso though, this is not an immanent danger, in that alchemical mysteries cannot be unlocked save by those who are capable of doing so, moreover they cannot be spoken at all, this implying the necessity of lived experience:
‘The concealment of the secret is dialectically related to its disclosure.’ (Wolfson, cited by Kocku von Stuckrad in a commentary on esoteric discourse).
The MA dissertation I'm working on right now is entitled "Alchemical Imagery as an initiatory path", and we are firmly discouraged from "reading into" the material what we hope to see there - rather there is a strict position that we must document the evidence that shows if there is a case for making such a hypothesis - now I haven't written it yet so I can't offer up any conclusions, but I can say that there's enough evidence to show that alchemy was indeed seen as an initiatory path and its progression of transmutations may well have been the basis for the structure of more formalised initiatory processes as became canonized in Freemasonry and other esoteric brotherhoods.
Bro:. Cora - I'm not quite sure what you mean by
It's more of a modern division to be honest - well certainly post-Enlightenment. Prior to that there were plenty of charlatans about giving alchemy a bad name as no more than a gold-making charade, and Paracelsus and Michael Maier spoke out most vituperatively against those "puffers" giving the Royal Art a bad name. But both these alchemists also very much encouraged practical alchemy on a par with spiritual transmutation - part of the spiritual process was rectifying what was found in nature (metals) simultaneously to the inner process of self-rectification/transmutation. We find similar admonitions in Fulcanelli, Canseliet, Barbault etc.
Also, on Jung, can I just say (and I'm still on the fence about this) - although I would agree 101% that he has come under fire for basically picking and choosing parts of alchemical discourse to fit his theories and not vice versa. Now when my interest in alchemy took off it was Jung's work that I started with, and my first MA thesis (the Alchemical Process as a Method for the Interpretation of Literature) leaned very heavily indeed on Jung's work. As a method for spiritual and psychological approach to alchemy I would agree that his work is valuable - but if you're interested in the "full" alchemical discourse than I have a sense that one should not rely only on such an approach.
There's a fantastic essay by Karen-Clare Voss entitled "Spiritual Alchemy: Interpreting Representative Texts and Images’, in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter Hanegraaff (New York: SUNY, 1998)
She makes a very astute point regarding how to approach the subject, saying that on no account should those wishing to study alchemy give undue weight to spiritual over practical or vice versa as justice will not be done to the subject. Regardless of whether we believe the transmutation of lead into gold is only an allegory - to the alchemists it was not - the allegory came in only with reference to spiritual alchemy - half the discourse in other words. The real challenge is separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of "puffers" (charlatans) vs "true" alchemists. Other than that to understand the process the idea is to attempt to 'become intimately familiar with the premodernist worldview that gave rise to spiritual alchemy and to develop a genuinely empathetic grasp of both the worldview and its manifestation’ (Voss).
Although in a sense a lot of this is unnecessary when seeking to understand the parallels between alchemy and Freemasonry in a modern setting, ie what it means to us, to my mind it is quite important to try to view alchemy for what it really was to the alchemists if seeking the historical connections between the development of the Masonic initiatory system and what had preceded it. The Rosicrucian manifestoes did play their part - although personally I don't believe that Freemasonry came out of that - I think it was there in a different form much earlier, and speculitive works such as that of David Stevenson's "The Origins of Freemasonry" as well as Churton's book I mentioned in a previous post go a long way towards deciphering some of those connections.
Hope I haven't now entirely confused the issue! (and please please don't think I'm being pedantic or anything of that sort - having been conditioned into being as careful as possible when handling this kind of material I'm simply trying to offer a particular kind of approach!)
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Post by hollandr on Aug 7, 2008 22:10:27 GMT
The usual vignettes of alchemy as either lead into gold or spiritual transformation place the discipline in too narrow a context. For example there is mineral alchemy, plant alchemy and animal alchemy. The last is hardly ever referred to and the only exposition I have seen is The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecaseofcharlesdexterward.htmAlchemy as a practice is essentially self-initiatory in the sense that penetration into the hidden mysteries of nature and science is dependent upon relationships with elements and elementals both internal and external Thus the external practice can be understood progressively as the practitioner develops internally and the external practice can stimulate internal progress Cheers Russell
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Post by maat on Aug 7, 2008 23:29:28 GMT
Two positions on this: "What has been said about the “transmission of the secret” being conferred only on the “worthy” need not be interpreted moralistically. It has to do with the fact that the consciousness of the one who is to be transformed has to be at the level of readiness to enter the new state." (Julius Evola) According to Bernard of Treviso though, this is not an immanent danger, in that alchemical mysteries cannot be unlocked save by those who are capable of doing so, moreover they cannot be spoken at all, this implying the necessity of lived experience ;D ;D ;D Now everyone knows 'the secret' of Freemasonry! Progression by lived experience. To know and then to do. Maat
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Tamrin
Member
Nosce te ipsum
Posts: 3,586
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 8, 2008 8:27:17 GMT
So the only exposition you have seen of this purported phenomenon is a work of fiction, yet this circumstance gives your credulity no pause!?
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