In part three of this series of articles, we’ve taken a closer look at a core concept of alchemy: That the archetypal energies of planets and stars are also manifest in you and work through you, the human. We’ve discussed some circumstantial modern evidence that this may well be so. We have examined the idea of metallic preparations and those of gems and minerals as being earthly representatives of these stellar energies or formative forces.
Today, we peek into the laboratory of the practical alchemist. What does he —well, mostly he. There have been very few female alchemists throughout the ages —attempt to create there?
We should emphasize again, for it is so far-out when looked at from a contemporary viewpoint, that he bases his entire practice on the system of correspondences between the stars and planets and the human, expressed in the concept of the human being as a microcosm or miniature representation of the formative forces of the greater universe or macrocosm. It is this key understanding that gives laboratory alchemy its raison d’être: producing pharmaceuticals on the basis of this concept, substances that address a specific zone or area of the human energy body and fortify the particular area, thus inducing a transformation of the human. Depending upon how skillful the preparations have been made, an immediate and strong effect, or a vague and miniscule effect, on the corresponding organ is noticeable.
Laboratory alchemy, as part of (at the peak of?) the natural healing arts, does not aim at killing microbes. This ‘shoot the invaders’ concept derived from the Parisian School of Biology, and was made famous by Louis Pasteur. But at the end of his life, Pasteur admitted that the microbe is nothing and the inner milieu is everything. At the same time, Antoine Bechamp, a biologist working at the University of Montpellier in Southern France (known as Cathar-Land to history buffs), presented a wildly differing concept to the astonished world. He utilized high-resolution optical microscopy and could demonstrate that human blood, which is usually considered sterile, carries besides red blood cells and white blood cells another, third element1.
In the microscope, this third element shows as tiny specks of light in comparison to the much larger blood cells. Upon closer examination, these dots of light called mycrozymas or ‘tiny ferments’ by Bechamp, are changeable. In a healthy human, they undergo three stages of transformation, all of them empowering the human. If the internal environment deteriorates, however, these specks of light turn into pathogens! Thus, the invader is already within you – a natural component of every living being, and not there to kill you but to support life. As soon as the body deteriorates, however, the microzymas’ task is to dissolve the deteriorating tissue – disease is characterized by this stage.
Today, modern medicine holds onto the world-view of Pasteur and continues to administer antibiotics to target specific but ever changeable ‘invaders,’ while a few renegade naturopaths have taken Bechamp’s original work to new heights and understanding. The late German Herr Professor Enderlein has done some spectacular work in this regard. An internet search for the terms ‘Enderlein’ and ‘pleomorphism’ will lead to several websites that show the micrographs of the said microzymas or protits, as Enderlein called them, at their various stages.
Today, this arcane information is there for everyone to see who cares to look.
Ancient alchemists may or may not have had any idea of these mycrozymas, but they sure knew that any deterioration of health could be understood as a process of ‘fermentation’ or, as they put it more drastically, as ‘rotting.’ They also knew that this process is often preceded by a disturbance of emotional and mental well-being. It was therefore their goal to re-energize the diseased area and thus enable nature to go about the necessary repair. Alchemy, coming from a spiritual angle, has never been interested in manipulating biological functions on a biological level, but rather intervening where mind intersects with body.
It thus became necessary to extract the ‘formative forces’ of metals, rocks and gems and tie them to a carrier that allowed them to be introduced safely into the human system; to perform curative effects without doing harm. This seemingly impossible task has been, and is being, achieved by alchemists around the globe. Let us examine the various categories of preparations and the effects we can expect from them.
At the entry level of mineral and metal alchemy are the transformed metals, turned into edible substances with very little, if any, metal toxicity. These preparations are called ‘ashes of metals’ in alchemy, and more specifically, in the West they are called ‘calxes of metals.’ In India, they are called ‘bhasmas of metals.’ Ayurvedic physicians are carrying the torch of this art today, and many companies in India prepare bhasmas of various qualities. These bhasmas range from complex, micro-clustered metal oxides to the totally non-metallic, non-toxic form of a bhasma that passes the test of apunarbhavatva or ‘test of non-revivability.’ This strange terminology signifies that such an ash of a metal cannot be returned to the metallic stage by any standard metallurgical process. In Western alchemy we find the same idea: the high-end calx of gold was known and used in the Pharmacopoeia of Western Medieval Alchemy as ‘the retrograded calx of Gold that cannot be revivified’ [meaning again it cannot be returned to the metallic state by conventional metallurgical processes]. 2
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