Celestial Alchemy.—Even if it were within our power to describe the secrets of celestial alchemy, by means of which the universe was created and which includes the regeneration of man and the attainment of conscious immortality, and if this could be done publicly without profaning those mysteries, the explanation would probably be comprehensible only to those who, knowing it already, do not require it. Those who wish to investigate this subject for the love of wisdom will find the whole process fully described symbolically in “The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Century,”[24] a book easily comprehensible if studied by the light of wisdom, but unintelligible for the carnal mind, that sees all truths perverted. Some explanations have also been attempted in the book entitled “In the Pronaos of the Temple.”[25] We will only say that there the Three Substances appear as the Three Beginnings; the first manifestation of the Unity as a Trinity, and the Seven Tattwas as the seven primitive spirits,[26] or “living breaths” issuing from the bosom of Parabrahm.[27]
The Universe is the Macrocosm, and Man the Microcosm, and as the first great Cause is the creator of the world and the cause of all evolution, so is individual man the creator in his own interior and external world, capable of causing certain superior states in his mind by the power of his will in obedience to the law, and to create forms by means of his thoughts, while the condition of his interior state will in time produce corresponding effects and transmutation in his physical body. Well will it pay him to devote all his time to this practice of Alchemy and obtain the pure gold of wisdom from the inferior metals represented by his animal passions. These passions are the capital lent to him by nature to make them into “silver and gold,” while he lives upon this earth: they are the steps upon which he can climb up to immortality and find his own true divine Self.
To practise this kind of Alchemy he will require no books, no furnaces and no tools; for he is himself the alembic, the fire and the substance to be ennobled. There, in his silent laboratory and with doors closed against all vain and carnal desires and selfish thoughts, he may mortify his terrestrial nature by gaining the victory of self-control, so that his higher nature may become liberated from animal bonds by entering into the resurrection from the tomb of ignorance into the light of self-knowledge. To accomplish this he will have to purify his mind and let his soul become animated by the power of the spirit of truth; that which is inert in him must become sublimated in the fire of divine love, so as to rise to heaven in the shape of holy aspirations, while the smoke of sophistry, dogmatism, false science and self-righteousness must be permitted to pass out through the chimney, to return no more. In this way will he be able to find the way of combining
with
and thus to make it into substantial gold that will last through eternity.
The above will be sufficient to give a hint in regard to the character of Alchemy and its relation to chemistry. Between these two aspects there is a third one, namely, what may be called “Astral Alchemy.”
The Alchemy of the Astral Plane.—As the lower Alchemy requires for its practice the faculties of the physical body, and the celestial Alchemy the energy of the spirit having become a power in the body of man: so the practice of Alchemy in dealing with that which belongs to the astral plane requires the evolution of consciousness and perception in the astral organism of man; for in the majority of those who live on the physical plane, the astral form is as unconscious of its surroundings upon the plane to which it belongs, and as ignorant of their nature, as a babe is ignorant of the meanings of things in this world. It is, however, not our purpose to enter into this subject, as this would bring us into the almost inexhaustible realm of spiritism, hypnotism, witchcraft and sorcery: all of which things are superstitions if believed in by those who know nothing about their laws, but realities for those who know the laws by which such phenomena take place.[28] The key to the understanding of these phenomena is in the realization of the truth that the Universe is a manifestation of power upon the three planes of existence. The spiritual plane has its seven states of existence, representing self-conscious intelligent powers, thrones and dominions, angels and archangels, all of these being manifestations of the primordial cause called God. The physical plane has its seven states of existence, represented as powers in which consciousness is still latent. In the middle region, the astral plane, we also find again seven states of existence in the form of living forces attaining consciousness in the organization of man. There the “seven planets” manifest themselves either for good or for evil according to the nature of the person in whom they become manifest. Thus, for instance, that universal element which is symbolized as
