This morning's lecture I think requires a slight preamble to establish a setting which is concerned with our problem. According to the Greek mythology, the deity Hermes was the son of Zeus, and Maya, one of the daughters of Atlas. He was originally a deity of agriculture and fertility. But in the course of the rise and sophistication of Greek culture, he was raised to the station of the messenger of the gods. As such, he is generally depicted with wings on his heels, a winged helmet and carrying a caduceus which has since been associated with the medical profession. Hermes was one of the more benevolent deities and was often associated with the principle of knowledge. Also, the communication of messages from the heavenly world, to the abodes of mortals. When the Romans dominated the area, they knew Hermes as Mercury, A god of swift of swiftness, of messages, and to a sense of the ability to read the human mind. In the meantime, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Alexandria in North Africa began to associate the concept of Hermes and Mercury with the deity of the Egyptians, both the god of writing, who was called also the scribe of the heavenly assembly of the Assyrian rites. So we now have a deity that by the beginning of the Christian era was known under three names and who was to become a tremendously important psychological force in the origin and and descent of what we turn today as mysticism. The names were brought together in a curious way to create in Alexandria a hypothetical person who was known to these people as Pope Hermes Trismegistus. Trismegistus meaning the three times great. No one seems to be quite sure when Hermes lives. They cannot give us any evidence as to whether he is simply a composite of earlier beliefs or whether there actually was a person by that name, or that some sage took that name. One thing is certain however, he became the personification of the wisdom of the world. He was believed to be the true author of all the books that were ever written. Because actually, all of these books depend upon a dimension of wisdom, a power of knowledge, man's capacity to think, to learn, to know and to transmit. He also became in particular the guardian of what was called the Hermetic Arch. And the Hermetic Arts have descended to us as chemistry, astronomy, music, geography and medicine. Now, this in itself is very interesting, especially when we find that this mysterious being, whoever he was, has had also left a series of books or writings especially attributed to himself. This was the Hermetic literature. And the most important of the Hermetic books was the shepherd of man. A mysterious dialogue between Hermes and universal mind. Where it came from and how it was compiled is one of the unsolved mysteries of history. But one thing is rather evident. It first came into prominence, first came to be known and first came to be venerated in Alexandria about the beginning of the Christian era. This mysterious book, the shepherd of men, brings in another dimension. Because in many of the old representations of Hermes, he is shown carrying a lamb on his shoulder and also carrying a shepherd's crook, thus tying into the concept of the good shepherd and the shepherd of men. This mysterious being, came to have a very profound influence upon the development of knowledge. He was one of several composite beings or person developed among the Alexandrian gnosis and the Neo Platonists to personify forms of learning and attitudes toward truth, the search for reality. All knowledge today, Hermeticism is largely centered in alchemy. And also, of course, in the works of the Rosicrucians and the Kabbalists. All of these groups consider Hermes as their patron saint. He is the mysterious power by means of which the esoteric truths of sciences came to be made available to humanity. Not a long ago period when problems were not as complex as they are today, Our forebears had a certain attitude toward knowledge which has been called hermetic. Hermetic, as we use it now, means to seal or to close tightly. And we can immediately seal a bottle or a package. But in those days, it has somewhat larger implications. Hermeticism was a system of thought which placed a very strong line across the advancement of arts and sciences. The theory behind emeticism is quite simple, yet today remains as much un fulfilled or misunderstood as it was in ancient times. The hermetic doctrine is based upon the belief that all existing things are locked within containers. They are symmetrically filled. Among the most important of these sealed things is the solar system. Another very important enclosed, material locked in a bottle is the planet Earth. And a third sealed mysterious container is man himself. Now this mysterious container, which locks all things within its own nature, makes it necessary for everything to save itself. Every problem of existence has its solution within it. Solutions do not come from the outside. They come from the inside. For example, we have today chemistry which is a very important branch of learning. The hermetists would have said that frankly, modern chemistry is locked in a bottle of its own. It is locked in a small container. And this bottle is the internal attitude of the chemist. Every form of knowledge is controlled by a eternalistic group. A group that has declared itself to be peculiarly qualified to devote its attention to the solution of universal mysteries. Yet generally speaking, all of the groups, regardless of what mystery they have selected as their province, all of them have failed. They have failed because they have not been able to escape from the little bottle in which they enclosed themselves. They declared what truth had to be. They declared that they had a way to find it. And they also declared that what they found by their way was truth. And the hermitus would have denied this. They would not have accepted this idea at all. They would not have believed, for example, that it would be possible for science while oriented to a physical solution of all mystery, could ever solve anything. Because the answers are not to be found in matter. They are not to be found in the material phases of things. They cannot explore the material structure of the universe long enough to discover what the universe means. They can find out its chemical components, they can discover forms of life evolving, how the life got there, they do not know. What the life actually is, they do not know. What its purpose was in the large plan of things, they do not know. All they are able to do is to classify a pattern, a ladder of unknown facts and try to discover from this classification the reason for these facts and it can't be done. Now the Alexandrians discovered that nearly 2000 years ago and probably it was known generally at a still earlier date in various parts of the world. The Alexandrians were fortunate in that their city was at the crossroads between Asia and Europe And therefore, that the wisdom of 2 hemispheres mingled in their community. Also, several religions functioned there, and many great philosophies were adequately represented. The, Alexandrian Hermitage followed the a a pattern which came also from Egypt. The Egyptians had a hieroglyph of a serpent swallowing its own tail. And everybody tried to figure out what that meant. Some gave it up as a pure hallucination. But others going more carefully into the situation came to an interesting conclusion that parallels and agrees with the Hermetic conviction. The serpent, by swallowing its tail, is feeding itself. And it has nothing to feed on but itself. And the hermitage said this is the perfect system and symbol of creation. Existence has nothing to feed upon but itself. We find this in what they later presented to us in the form of the golden chain of Homer. Homer's chain is a chain that links heaven and earth. The material world with the heights of the Olympian deity. It is a series of links. And these links became levels of research. They became levels of consciousness. And perhaps most of all, they became the basis of astronomy and the sidereal geography of space. Now, the idea of something living off of itself can perhaps be best exemplified today by what we call the food chain. If you have been watching the nature pictures and so forth that are among the better things we occasionally get on television, you will realize that every living thing lives from and of other living things. This mysterious food chain, by means of which life living upon life nourishes itself upon itself. And therefore, like the tailed serpent of the Egyptian, is nourished out of its own body. It lives by devouring itself. And yet at the same time, by this mystery, it becomes a symbol also of in eternity and immortality. There is a balance of nature in which nature continually subsisting from itself, maintains itself. This great cycle of nutrition is probably the, a symbol that the Neo Platonists and Hermetists of Egypt would have rejoiced in had they been able to put the elements together or perhaps they did. Anyway, empirically, they knew the facts. They knew also that all forms of knowledge nourished themselves from themselves. If you learn something, this becomes the basis of something else. The new knowledge is is matured or informed by the old. Everything is living upon its own processes. And these processes are all locked within an Hermetic retort, a laboratory vessel. And all the transmutations, transmissions of energy and force that make up the planet and its life, and the solar system with its life. All of these things exist sealed within vessels. These vessels being composed of the outer atmosphere which encloses the planet or the magnetic field of the solar system. So that everything that we see and have is more or less internally generated. It comes to bear its natural fruit because of a system which we call in the human body digestion and assimilation. But to the hermetists, these words meant the transmutation of forms of life. A chemistry, an aqua mystery going on constantly in which base elements which are themselves merely physical matter, can be transformed into digestible material by means of which bodies are maintained. And that within the body itself, every mystery that is found in the legends of alchemy and the transmutation of metal within the human body, these, legends are lived out as practical, natural, inevitable procedures. Therefore, we have to say for the moment that alchemy or the transmutation of base metals into gold is the secret of nutrition. And every time we eat a meal, we are alchemists, but we do not know it. And this, problem also gives us the word by which we understand chemistry today. Chemistry is the science of the land of khem, k h e m, and this land was Egypt. The prefix al, al or el. El in Hebrew, al in Arabic is divine or God as Elohim in the opening chapters of Genesis, the deities. Or Allah, the Muslim supreme deity whose name begins with El. This this a l prefix means divine. Therefore, alchemy is divine chemistry. It is a chemistry rooted in the mysteries of God rather than in some physical laboratory. Consequently, to these people, and I think we are beginning to think their way now after a long time, these people believe firmly that without the mystery the understanding of the mystery of deity, it would never be possible to come to the final conclusion and truth of any art or science. All equally depend upon a divine principle, And this divine principle must be understood before any question relating to knowledge can have its ultimate answer. Up to that point, the answers are all tentative and, suppositional. There is no final conclusion. Now we have just sent a spaceship out to ride around Saturn and Jupiter, and if all goes well, take a long range peak at Uranus and Neptune. This is going to come back and is going to be regarded as one of the supreme achievements of modern man. We are going to learn more about the motions of these planets. We may learn something of their chemical analysis. We may gain a better dimension and knowledge of the moves that move about them. We may also find something about their temperature or something about the density of the materials of which they are composed. But when we come back with all this information, we are in the same position as the old Arabic philosopher who surrounded by the wisdom of the world said man is born, man suffers and man dies. This is an essential. All the rest seemingly is highly theoretical. It is interesting. It is amazing. It stimulates a certain type of mind. It is magnificent to hold the attention of children. But when all these explorations end, man will still not have the answer to what is life. What is consciousness? What is energy? Its uses, we will claim. But the triad of powers that are at the source of all things remain locked forever in the mystery of the divine nature. And therefore, if we are going to explore, if we are going to search for the true answer to things, we have to begin to consider an entirely different approach to our search for reality. The Hermetists, Neo Platonists, and Gnostics, and many other mystical groups of the Far East, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, all these different faiths and doctrines realized, with the words of Omar that from man's own base metal must be filed the key to unlock the door the others howl without. We are all howling outside the gates of knowledge. We are all seeking some way to use the term of Irenaeus Filaviti, the alchemist. To open the shut palace door of the king. We are looking for the answers to things. And instead of finding answers, we simply find more questions. And the further we research, the greater the number of questions and the more difficult it is to discover an answer. What then is the answer that the Greeks and the and the Egyptians, decided on? They pointed out that according to legend, and they in their legendary bestow great wisdom upon the poet Homer, they pointed out that there was a mysterious chain of links between the Earth which was a kind of island and the mountain of the gods upon Olympus. This golden chain was what bound heaven and earth. And this golden chain was the pure principle of life itself. And this pure principle of life, the alchemists declared to be the Hermetic Mercury. They held that Mercury as we know is a solvent. It dissolves other metals into itself. But this is the base Mercury. And alchemy says that all metals of all substance and and everything in nature, there are 2 kinds. 1, the base and the other, the purified. Man himself is composed of elements and these elements are either in their base condition or in their purified condition. Man also has a mind which is either a material mind or a purified regenerated mind. All his emotions, even the cells of his body, go through processes of refinement. And the more refined they become, the more accurately they they bear witness to the will of the power within the body. All through alchemy then, we say, in those days, at least the masters of the subject declared that there were natural things which were called the prima materia. The base substance of everything. And in this base substance of everything is concealed everything else. There is a dark earth that is matter. And there is a regenerated, redeemed dark earth that is soul power. There is a darkness which is the darkness of ignorance, and there is the supreme darkness in which all things that are important are concealed from the propane. There are many levels and conditions of the regeneration of substances. But all these regenerations have to take place within the substance itself. This is another lesson that they try to tell us that it's timely at the moment. Many people today are trying to find ways of growing spiritually. And they are following mostly the attitude and processes of other forms of knowledge like education. They believe that inner light is to be attained by a kind of schooling. They attend classes. They join organizations. They listen carefully to the words of the so called wise. They read the approved texts. They do all these things assuming that the mystery is going to be communicated. It cannot be communicated according to the Hermitage. It can only be experienced. The answer has to lie within. In as much as man himself is locked within a bottle and everything that is necessary for his survival is within that bottle. He must use his own ways of reducing his materialistic pressures and releasing his spiritual convictions and overtones. So we have in the, Hermetic philosophy this concept that all things arise from within the forms in which they are generated. All things existing as the seed within themselves for the perpetuation of their material kind. And they also have within themselves the Hermetic seed of life. By means of which, all forms less than perfection can be gradually brought to perfection by causing this seed to grow. The growth of the seed of divinity within man is also part of the philosophy of Jacob Bemey, the great German mystic. He describes the human soul as a tree with its seed in the heart which grows from within and finally becomes the basis of the tree of all knowledge and all wisdom, which in the book of Revelation is for the healing of the nations. The seed of the great mystery is in each person. Transmutation, therefore, is a transformation from the person's own experiences. The, alchemist was referred to sometimes as Saturn, the gardener. And all the planets were involved in this story. Saturn was the gardener who had to take care of the garden of the soul. He had to weed it and water it. He had to protect it against all forms of invasion. He had to make certain that it was not neglected. Saturn as the wise counselor is also in in oriental and in North African mysticism, the symbol of karma, the symbol of the symbol of of repentance, of repayment. The symbol of inevitable operation of cause and effect. Therefore, it is Saturn who protects the growth of the seed. He surrounds it with protecting forms. He permits it to be discovered only by the pure of heart. He also, in guarding it, must, if necessary, draw out or take out the weeds that have been allowed to gather there. The weeds being false doctrines, false ideas, false concepts of life that try to, squeeze out or destroy the true seeds of wisdom. Now, this same seed has so many meanings, but we remember, in the bible it says, and the seed is the word of God. In this particular meaning, the seed is the root of the inevitable in all things that live. There is no creature from the tiniest little gnat in the sunbeam to the greatest galaxy of stars in which the seed of perfection is not present. The seed is the thing that lives, and all the rest is a protection or a husk around the seed. It is the seed that transmits life from generation to generation. It is the seed within which is the final transformer of all things. For everything has within itself, within its own locked nature, the secret and means of its own ultimate perfection. Everything that exists is exists is destined to be perfect. It is destined to fulfill the reason for itself, but it cannot know the reason for itself until it perfects itself. And all the experiences of life which have a tendency to advance the good work, the good deed is a seed. It is a nutrition. It is a form of life. It is something that helps things to grow. But this growth, this seed of life, this good deed grows by devouring itself. It eats up itself. It lives off of itself. And every form of growth lives off of itself. Love lives off of itself. It lives not because of its attachments or because of its associations. It grows within itself. And it grows in a sense by devouring the lesser aspects of itself as it ascends. This is the food chain that applies to every form of life in nature. Now among these people also, there were these superior ideas of science. In one of his books, I think if I remember it, it's the noble Morganham. Lord Bacon points out very clearly that when physics is properly understood, there is no need for metaphysics. Metaphysics is probably more nearly than anything else, true physics. That which we call physics is a diluted, partial, distorted aspect of a science that is in itself part of the divine plan of things. But no physics can be perfected unless the internal life of the physicist releases the power to understand. The, physicist can only understand physics as an experience within himself. Until this experience is available to him, he is still going to be plotting around trying to advance step by step. Even in these processes of advancement, whether he knows it or not, he's still obeying this law in a strange manner. He's growing by eating up his own predecessors. He is building by devouring the wisdom of those that went before him and casting off most of it. He is constantly growing and building, by using the background of substance, the body of his own science. The physicist is living off of the body of physics. And if he does it correctly and does it long enough, again, physics will become the serpent living from itself and will gradually attain the transmutation that is necessary. The, transformation of knowledge implies the presentation of a new, deeper, fuller dimension of knowledge. In our, thinking also, we can mention another Hermetic field which has need of some work. And that is the field of astronomy as it particularly applies to the difference between astronomy, astrology, and astrotheology. Astronomy, we are pretty well acquainted with. Very few people really understand it. And among those who do not really understand what they are seeing are most of the astronomers. The astrologer believes that he has found the has ascended from the physiology to the psychology of the subject. He has discovered something that is not yet fully appreciated appreciated either by himself or by physical astronomy. He has discovered that all bodies in space have influence. They have organisms of their own. They are part of something that is inside of another bottle, and that is the solar system. And then this solar system is enclosed in still a larger flask, and that is the cosmos. But each of these levels is self contained, and every form of ignorance must be transmuted by using its own previous mistakes as the food for its progress. In the highest phase of astrology, we have the astrotheology which was again developed in Egypt. Namely, the realization that astrology and all of the elements that compose it is one of the great maps or charts by means of which the universal purpose can be charted. It is not until, however, that the divine meaning of these elements are are meaning is realized that the astrologer will gain a new dimension, not of skill, but of intuitive and internal spiritual perception. Music, we know the problem of music. We realize what is happening to it today. We know what is happening to art. All these things are living off of the husks of each other or upon a material derived from outside sources. The artist is dependent upon the techniques that he learns. These techniques, however, must be he must feed themselves. They must swallow themselves. The true artist must transcend them. He uses the techniques in order to release something from within himself. And if he has nothing within himself, the techniques are in vain. Everything depends, therefore, upon this internal power of the person. The Alexandrians tried to give a concept of how the human being, can attain to the highest part of his own nature. The highest part of the nature of the solar system, according to them, was a series of steps, A ladder connecting heaven and earth. This ladder was the golden chain attributed to, to Homer, but very much interpreted at least by the Alexandrians. This ladder of ascent was not merely an ascent to space, but because of the wall and shell that encloses everything, the ladder is the ascent within the self. The steps of transformation that are necessary to transform the base nature of man into a divinely enlightened soul. And the alchemists had 10 such steps. And they can you and they concealed them under chemical terms to represent the various degrees of refinement, the various cycles through which metals and substances must pass in order to be perfected. Basil Valentine and not the old, Prometheus, said and pointed out as well as also did that if man as a soul being can perfect himself, if he can transform or transmute the base substances of his own existence and create a psychological goal or a psychological universal medicine for the healing of every ailment that can arise within himself, then also these philosophers believed that it would be conceivable that physical goals could actually be, achieved through the similar transmutations of chemical elements. We know that gold has been made. It has been made in recent times, but the amounts made are very minute and the time and effort stupendous. But the ancients claim that with the proper internal enlightenment as that as that of Nicolas, It would be perfectly possible in the growth of self to parallel this growth by the transmutation of the base substances of nature. Also, by the same procedure, the growth of the individual can become the basis and archetype for the perfection of human society, for the regeneration of the policies of government. It can, if it is properly developed, transform all material institutions subject to and usually involved in corruption to clarify, purify, and redeem themselves so that every art and science can become a blessing and can continue to unfold from the seed of itself until it achieves the fullness of its own potential. As it ascends, it also devours its adversaries. It swallows up the worms that prevent its own perfection. In the course of ascending for one degree of refinement to another, it also casts off that which is incompatible with its new higher insight or transforms that which was previously inadequate. So out of the same pattern of things, we develop, a concept which we find in Buddhism very clearly set forth. Namely, the idea that the individual and space are in each each one is a commonwealth, a commune of life. Buddha pointed out very definitely that the inner structure of the human body is a is a political system. It is just as political as any structure governing a state or a nation. The politics of the human body is also subject to every corruption that the politics in the world is subject to. It is subject to lobbies. The human being is filled with lobbies with parts of itself forever seeking special privileges. It can also bribe itself more quickly than any politician can possibly do. It is also subject to being infested by spies and all kinds of foreign factors attempting to take over. It is seeking to achieve its own internal maturity while within itself are elements which wish to enslave it. But it can never be enslaved by an outer power unless it first enslaves itself so that the human body becomes more or less a microcosm of practically everything that concerns the human being. And what constitutes the answer to it lies perhaps in, again, the Hermetic legend. When Alexander the Great came to the Valley of Hebron, he was told that he stood in the presence of an ancient monument that was the tomb of Hermes. He ordered the tomb to be opened and he found inside nothing but dust. Whatever had been there had gradually disappeared and disintegrated. But in the midst of the dust was an emerald, a magnificent stone. Some say produced by art, and therefore, an artificial synthetic stone. But it was a stone inscribed, and it is inscribed with the great an analogical statement attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Supposed to be the greatest secret of knowledge in all the world. For it said on this stone, that which has been will be. And, further than that, that which is true of the greatest is true of the least. All things are the same in pattern differing only in magnitude. And whatever exists in space is like to that which exists below. And everything that exists below is like to that which exists above. The microcosm and the microcosm are tied together by indissolvable sympathies that can never be broken. This temporal tablet has become probably the great textbook, the great text statement around which the Hermetic arts were built. But it is also a very splendid statement of what we all need in the form of knowledge. One point that is, of course, always a different difficulty because of materialistic attitudes is that we assume that each art and science must find its own answer. We assume that each individual must work from complete ignorance up, must find his own answer to everything, and cannot, under any condition, unite his efforts in any common pattern with the rest of the different fields of knowledge. The hermetists would say that all fields of knowledge are seeking the same answer. And that one answer, when it is the final and complete answer, answers every question that human consciousness or divine need can create. There is one answer that is so universal, so infinite, so complete that it ends forever all uncertainties in every field of learning. This was the work that the alchemist was concerned with, was to discover this answer. And in order to find it, he had to explore a way, to transmute or transform the substances in himself. And one of the Hermetic bottles or best retorts or vessels, is a miniature solar system which indicates very definitely that the whole solar system and every energy that is required is within the planet's body and within the human body. Man is the solar system. Everything that occurs outside of man is reflected into him. And every question that arises from outside circumstances can be answered from the insides, research of the parallel circumstances and factors. Thus, wherever we look for questions, we look out. When we look for answers, we look in. For all answers available to man are released through the eternal divine principle which is the seed of all individual things in existence. As much as that and the sunbeam or the vastest galaxy in space, each one is part of a single great pattern. And every development of life or every development of culture in the universe or in space is guided by the same infinite laws. And the purpose of the Hermetic philosophers was to trace these laws as adequately and as well as they could with the facilities that nature had given them. They realized, of course, to begin with that you do not start out in a mad dash for perfection. You do not believe that instantly you will be able to answer all the questions. This you cannot do. You cannot take an answer from anyone else and make that answer your own until you build it into your own life as an experience of consciousness. While it is an intellectual acceptance, it has no vital purpose. But it can be possible for the individual, as Hermes points out in his great tablet, to observe the outside and use this observation to stimulate the inside. This is probably the reason why we have human beings, each one completely isolated. The hermetists perhaps were the first to realize that no 2 human beings have ever been able to exchange places. That no one has ever been able to experience identically the inner life of any other creature. Man is therefore completely isolated. He cannot intuit completely. He may have sympathy. He may have a great measure of understanding. And he may share experiences which he has previously found and used to enrich his own consciousness. But he cannot be anyone but himself. Everything that he has, every experience of his life, every element of his growth has contributed to making him a separate being. Therefore, separateness is the great problem. It is separateness that is giving us our problem in the near East today. It is separateness that is stirring up trouble in Africa. It is separateness that is filling our courts with crime. Separateness is isolation. And isolation can become one of the most terrible forces in the world. Yet isolation is the only way in which nature is able to demand and attain its own end. Namely, that each living thing should become strong enough to control and regulate its own destiny. Unless this separateness was as it is, there could be no way of forcing the individual to outgrow separateness, to rise above it by a long series of patient experiences. These experiences being a problem of ascent of going upward gradually into a higher and fuller state of insight. If, therefore, we really want to know the answer to anything, the answer begins through the cultivation and the beginning of the transformation of our own natures. This transformation has been variously represented in the alchemical experiments by all kinds of symbols, All kinds of creatures, beings, colors, and sounds have been drawn in to make possible this immense and complicated series of alchemical symbols. They are all, however, simply names for processes that take place within ourselves. One of these symbols, for instance, is the raging wolf. This wolf comes in time and time again as a factor in the development on transformation of base metals. Now, this ravenous wolf can be in man a whole series of impediments that are not a wolf at all. But I like it. The characteristic of the wolf, the power of the animal, the hunger of the animal, the difficulty of subduing it, the fact that it ravages the land reminds us of things about ourselves. There are a great many people who are rather wolfish in their demands. The wolf, therefore, is in a sense man's appetite ambitions. The wolf represents a phase of physical error by means of which the individual is defeating himself. Therefore, the world has to be transformed. It has to be transmuted. It has to become a new creature, and it has to change its colors as in the processes of alchemical transmutation in which finally the various elements change colors until they develop what is called in chemistry the peacock's tail, a massive iridescent lights. These iridescent lights being descriptive of the unfoldment of the multicolor, multiform nature of the soul itself. Actually, the thing that the alchemist is searching is the soul to release it from bondage to everything else that exists, that it shall be completely and entirely liberated, that it shall be free to be itself, that it shall then be able to bestow itself. For within it lies all that is necessary to the common good. It is in the soul that essential wisdom exists, and the soul can give the wisdom to the rest of the rest of the personality. It is within the soul that true love is experienced. It is within the soul that integrity, comes into clear and defined proportions and dimensions. Everything that is important is bestowed by the soul. And everything that is lacking in human relationships is lacking because of the lack of soul maturity. So we have this mysterious thing that they call the chain. Of course, it's again, I think the Alexandrians in all probabilities reaching back for ancient symbols, developed this concept of the chain in a way very different from what might have been Homer's original intention. But in alchemy, let's see what we have another point here. Alchemy certainly existed in China. It existed there at least from 500 to a 1000 years before the beginning of the Christian era. It existed in several other nations. It probably existed in India and existed in many places. But in those areas, alchemy seemingly was for the most part a physical chemical study. The primary purpose was the transmutation of metals physically in order that wealth might be accumulated. Now wealth is the false value. It is the false gold, the fool's gold which, the chemists searched for in vain. And even if they found it, most of them died from possessing it. This physical goal was the goal of the early chemical, experiments in most ancient countries. And today, another type of goal, and that is some form of utility, is lying behind nearly all the advancements of our arts and sciences. We are not looking into the sciences and arts that we may become better human beings, but rather that we may have more conveniences, we may still increase our standard of living and can gradually escape from the inevitable proper consequences of our own misdeeds. Therefore, alchemy and chemistry in those days was not a philosophical and religious art, but are not based upon a concept of profit. And of course, material profit paralyzes any art and destroys completely the possibility of its fruition. Any art or science which is commercialized is set back a 1000 years at least. It cannot escape into its own integrities. Therefore, prior to the Alexandrian period, it seems that the, transforming of base metals was regarded as a literal thing. And it was in Alexandria that this entire concept was made metaphysical. And the alchemist became an alchemistical philosopher. One in whose nature the transformations were of a higher and more exalted nature. Having, faced the problem of the literal chemist, we then can go to the consideration of the literal almost everything that we know today. We know all the various chemists, the great industrial institutions that maintain chemists, the cosmetic institutions. We know the pharmaceutical houses that have chemists working day and night to make new pills or serums or something of that nature. We are aware that chemistry is tied to all of these problems. We also realize how physiology and physics and anatomy and biology are tied to laboratory experimentation and to all kinds of repeated experiments that have been done a 1,000 times and actually have very little to do with the final shape of anything. There were rules that were to be set up but never were effectively enforced. For example, in vivisection where it was assumed that it would be perfectly possible for 1 animal to be sacrificed the entire record be preserved in film with all its details and circulated among all the institutions that needed the information. The fact that the each one of them had to torture some poor creature by the dozen to have exactly the same results and not to gain one new bit of knowledge would have been a perfect example of what the Alexandrian Hermitus considered to be debased and false knowledge. But we have it. We have it because the higher aspects of the matter were never really considered. Now in India, we have mystical sects and we have them also in China and Japan that had to do with yoga. And the more we study the Hermetic tradition, the more certain it becomes that these people possess some kind of yoga. They possess a chemistry and alchemy of disciplines within themselves. It would not be difficult to explain this because we know that East Indian, Chinese, and many other nations traded in Alexandria. There is no doubt that scholarship went along the caravan routes and reached Egypt even earlier. There is no doubt in the world that the philosophies of Alexandria were influenced by Buddhism and yoga. This is now admitted even by the most skeptical thinkers. If we take Platonism or Neo Platonism, or if we take the Hermetic science and impose a yogic structure upon it, I think we have exactly what the, ancient symbols of alchemy tell us. Namely, that the entire system was founded upon a process of unfolding the potentials in the individual. Yoga became a term in the east, and alchemy became its equivalent in the west. And to a large measure, this is true of capitalism, and it was true of the Rosicrucian mystics of 17th century, the original ones. They all seem to have been nourished by the same general concept and belief. Namely, that there was a series of steps by means of which the individual ascending moved upward, from the earth to the abode of the deities. Now in man, the abode of the deities, according to alchemy, would be in man himself because everything must be solved within this bottle. Everything that is conceivable and if everything that is necessary for the perfection of the individual must be derived from the individual himself. He has certain nutritional relationships with the planet. He also has a certain electrical relationship with the sun and a magnetic one with the moon. But these provide energy like the energy on a wire from an electric source. But all the uses of that energy must be evolved within the individual himself. He must take one pure energy that is distributed throughout all space and must apply it to his own requirements. And in so doing, he must gradually live off of this energy. He must gradually use this energy, to perfect his own nature. Not long ago, I happened to see a very interesting film which showed part of the internal structure of insects. And here, we have something that is so small that it is practically invisible to the human eye without a microscope. And yet the structure of that little insect is itself an incredible mystery. No scientist knows why and how that elaborate and involved interfunction came into existence. The details so small we cannot see them are a 1,000 times more intricate than that to be found in the highest and most expensive watch. Here are eyes that no human being can fully understand. Here are structures of motion and various digestive structures in something which is no larger than the point of a pin. Everything that is necessary is there. And it is there age after age. It is perpetuated from cycle to cycle, and it is a mystery which we have not yet been able to understand. We cannot understand the larger phases of it in our own daily life. We see energy. We see constant motion. We see the evidences of long range evolutionary process which ties with Omer's golden chain. We see the constant presence of a tremendous pattern of processes, lawful processes. Yet the source of them is it remains always elusive. There is no faculty in man's physical nature that can discover the source of himself or the source of anything else. He has to go behind the physical part of himself. He has to transcend even the endocrine system. He has to transcend his sensory perceptions. Also, his reflective powers. There is something still deeper. He must go on to the point where he is able as a being to have the direct experience of the cause of all things. Until then, his ignorance cannot be cured. He has, however, a certain, participation which the alchemist also recognized. The alchemist declared that there were several orders within their own group. There were the adepts who were the ones who had perfected the great work. Then there were the illuminates. And the illuminates, were the mystics. They were the ones who understood the work. They were the ones who had been given a certain participation through inner experience, through mystical reveries, through visions, and through various types of clairvoyance. These illuminates had seen or sensed the reality. They had not performed the transmutation themselves, but they knew that it existed. And because of the nature of the psychic life within themselves, they had been given glimpses of it. And we find in the laws, even as the alchemists point out themselves, that there were glimpses that every sincere growing person has as he goes along. Glimpses that give courage to proceed. Glimpses by means of which the end to be attained comes to be recognized even if not actually attained. So that these illuminates, as they were called, like, and several others, Claude de Saint Martin, all the mystics were able to sense what was happening. They lifted some of the veils, but even the mystics saw as to a glass darkly. They were not able to really attain, but they became capable of a tremendous faith because inwardly, they had begun to sense. The illuminate was the one who sensed the reality, and he was on a higher level than those who had not sensed it. So the yogic system there, undoubtedly corresponds with Homer's chain. It is a series of internal steps by which the individual ascends, to the final union with the divine. It, is represented in Hermetic philosophy by the egg and the embryo. And, the steps that correspond with the chain are the 11 periods or levels of initiation which are necessary to bring things into life through the gradual change of their internal structure. Finally, the last change comes when the child or the creature is born. So we have the 9 months of the prenatal epic and the 10th month which is the birth. And this corresponds with the 10 links of Homer's chain. But there is also another birth, the birth of a mystery. There is the birth from the womb of the alchemical art which is the eggshell. But within the shell, in the alchemical, the magnetic field of the individual himself is aura. That which encloses him. That which turns all energies back upon themselves. That which forms the great wall which you properly maintain protects him from infections and all kinds of contagions, but which if depleted allow death to come in. The magnetic field is the wall of the castle and it is that which protects everything within it. Within this is an embryo, the embryo of the divine being, the homunculus. It is this embryo growing up within man of which his present state is a phase or aspect which ultimately will come to spiritual birth when it breaks through the shell of its own isolation and mingles itself with the cosmic purpose. All these symbols that go on and on and on, and there's so many of them that it's hard to to limit them. But we do know that, they are the knowledges to most of the doctrines of the great world religions. That they represent perhaps the Hermetic science or art. The clear scientific process by means of which we can understand the purpose of life. In other words, we do not gain it by long periods of education. We do not gain it, by the commendations of our associates. We have to grow. And growth is the release of the seed of immortality. As the chemists say, there are 2 kinds of growth. There are the growth of the physical seed in the ground which becomes nutrition. And on this nutrition, we live. And we, in turn, become the nutrition of something else. I remember very definitely one day when I was talking to Luther Burbank, he said, you know, when I die, I don't want to be buried somewhere. I don't want to just go into a cemetery. I want to be buried under the apple tree in my own garden so that my life can then become a nourisher of apples. Well, this the alchemist would understand because he would know it is part of the serpent eating its own tail. It is life supporting life. It is one living thing after another surviving. It begins with the most primitive forms of existence and that which lives on it. And it goes on and on to things that live on other things all the way to the top. Because there is no nutritional process according to alchemy, except this, this continual dependence of life upon life. But in this, we have qualm only. All that we have to really concern us is that out of this interdependence, this constant use of life to sustain life, nature has set this up. And for all these different steps and chains, there is no great evil. The only evil is abuse. But actually, all of these various steps and degrees are helping to develop and cause all types of creatures to improve and increase. They go on and on and on, go step by step until they achieve their own, perfection and fruition. Nature is not doing this to be unkind. Nature is doing it because it is the only way in which separate things can remain separate and until a time when they earn their union with all the rest of life. Everything has to have its own experience. This experience seems very mysterious and strange to us. But everything is growth, and every form of life is growing, and every form of life manifests a degree of growth. Each form of life from the least to the highest, from the tiniest net in the sunbeam, from the smallest electron or ion, up to the vastest cosmos. Each form of life every step between is a link in the golden chain. For all these processes are part of the unfoldment and the release of that divine power which is our inevitable right. Now, when we get this power, what do we do with it? Assuming that sometime in the remote aeons of aeons, we do get it. What will then happen? Well, according to the old beliefs and according to the alchemical concepts, when that time comes that we have fully blossomed, that we have become complete in every sense of the word and have become a sun, a tremendous center of released eternal brilliance. When the little seed in us has grown up and become a cosmic sun, then at that moment there will burst from us our solar system, a new order of life, vaster and more remarkable than anything we have known. And, we will become a center of life with another great order of evolution in space. We do not know how far this goes on. Even the most optimistic of the hermetists didn't try to find an ultimate end. But to them, if you can conceive of an ultimate end, that ultimate end is not to settle back in peace and rest forever in in playing harps in space. The end, whatever it may be, is that the soul itself, the inner life of man, will explode into a great cosmic usefulness. And that which has been the child will become the parent of children. That which has grown up will pay for its growth and the love and attention that it received by becoming a parent. And a sun is always an apparent in a solar system. The sun and the moon and the all the parts of the solar system are parental forces that have themselves grown up in space and have passed through all of the various great processes. These great processes may be difficult to understand and it certainly is a little difficult to understand how people 2000 years ago without most of the advantages that we have of instrumentations today were able to conceive of so vast and abstract concepts. And it even is impossible for the average person, even a thoughtful person, to present their concept in a complete and comprehensive manner. But that they had this idea of an eternal growth as an eternal release. All change as progress. The all things passing out of existence but not ceasing, but returning better. That all experiences, incidents, accidents of life are part of this great alchemical cycle of transformations, of regeneration, of coagulations, of condensations. All things passing through a vast cycle of moral chemical factors. So that out of it, we discover that chemistry is also a vast morality that related to it are processes which we must experience psychologically as the chemist experiences them in his laboratory. Over the whole chemical field were the the great chemist of, so called symbolic time. The alchemist declared that among others, the great master of the chemist was Elias the artist. A figure drawn from biblical symbolism. That among the great adepts were the great teachers of mankind. And many of those who were called the adepts of chemistry are never known to have made a physical chemical experiment as far as we know. They may have done so. But they had reached that point in which the chemistry was taking place within themselves. The illuminate is working with a higher degree of chemistry. The mystic such as Plotinus who beheld the mystery of the universe, is working with another level of this power within himself. We are all working with some level of it, and all the great adepts of alchemy are those who have warned us as Basil Valentine did. Woe woe unto the gold makers. It was not to be a physical experiment. The gold was perfection. The gold was purity because the gold was the only element known to the ancients that was immortal, that never changed. It could not be tarnished. That could not be decayed. Gold was the symbol of eternal life, eternal light, and eternal truth. These are the things the chemist were looking for. And by retiring into themselves and moving step by step along a great path which was outlined for them in their old literature. They ascended by natural degrees through the mysteries of chemistry then into a psychological chemistry Rosicrucians working on the subject politically who were searching for the universal reformation of society. The Esclippians of Greece and the healers of Egypt, the followers of the god of healing, were looking for the universal medicine. That which was to be the healing of all sickness. And they followed the same path with medicine. First of all, one of the greatest of all pharmacologists made a great research into physical medicine, but also into mystical. And today, our pharmacology is very heavily loaded with the recipes, formulas, and discoveries of chemists of 500 to a 1000 years ago. The Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks have all added to our knowledge of medicine. But they were all searching for the same thing. Not just the remedy for this ailment or that ailment, but the sovereign remedy to the supreme illness of man. And that illness is imperfection. It is not a sin. It is not a misfortune. It is inevitable. It is inevitable that the child must grow up. It is inevitable that little things must become greater. It is inevitable that small knowledge must increase. It is not that process that is wrong. It is the individual who doesn't understand this principle and therefore makes no effort to grow or makes a highly mistaken effort by simply assuming that it is a trick of the mind or some secret that can be imparted for a few dollars. While these situations exist, a great deal of unnecessary delusion is also present. But each one in his own way must climb the ladder, the escaladellessage, a mysterious ladder of links, the chain of Homer. By means of which in the end, he comes to union with the Olympian mountain and the spirits that dwell therein. And that mountain is inside of himself also. And in the magnetic theories, the North Pole of the aura is well represented and it's certainly equivalent in the straight desert of Shamo in it, Tibetan China. All these ancient beliefs tie together into geography, physiology, anatomy, art, music, literature, everything you can think of. There is the master plan. And what everyone should be searching for to the best of his ability and as enthusiastically as as possible is to become aware of this master plan. We may not be able to achieve it immediately, but if we can become aware of it, we will overcome the futility we feel in ourselves. We will overcome the sense of hopelessness or despair or isolation or frustration. We will no longer blame everything that happens as a misfortune of circumstances. We will see a plan and we know that the plan is right, that it is a divine plan, That it is the inevitable way in which the deity as the supreme alchemist transmutes all things into the likeness and identity of himself. Well, get that all for the morning, please.
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This morning's lecture, I believe, requires a slight preamble to establish a setting that concerns our problem. According to Greek mythology, the deity Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maya, one of the daughters of Atlas. Originally, he was a deity of agriculture and fertility. However, as Greek culture rose and became more sophisticated, he was elevated to the status of the messenger of the gods. Consequently, he is often depicted with wings on his heels, a winged helmet, and carrying a caduceus, which has since been associated with the medical profession. Hermes was one of the more benevolent deities and was often linked with the principle of knowledge. He was also responsible for communicating messages from the heavenly world to the abodes of mortals. When the Romans took control of the area, they knew Hermes as Mercury, a god of swiftness, messages, and the ability to read the human mind. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Alexandria in North Africa began to associate the concept of Hermes and Mercury with the ancient Egyptian deity of writing, also known as the scribe of the heavenly assembly in Assyrian rites. By the beginning of the Christian era, this deity was known by three names and played a significant role in the origin and development of what is now referred to as mysticism. The names were combined in Alexandria to create a hypothetical individual known to these people as Pope Hermes Trismegistus, meaning the three times great. The exact period when Hermes lived remains uncertain. There is no evidence to confirm whether he was a composite of earlier beliefs, an actual historical figure, or a sage who adopted the name. However, one thing is certain - he became the embodiment of the world's wisdom. He was believed to be the true author of all books ever written because every book depends on a dimension of wisdom, a power of knowledge, man's ability to think, learn, know, and pass on knowledge. He also became the guardian of what was known as the Hermetic Arch. The Hermetic Arts, including chemistry, astronomy, music, geography, and medicine, have been passed down to us. This is particularly interesting, especially when considering that this mysterious being, regardless of his true identity, left behind a series of books or writings attributed to him, known as the Hermetic literature. The most important of these books was "The Shepherd of Men," a mysterious dialogue between Hermes and the universal mind. The origins and compilation of this book remain unsolved mysteries of history. However, it is evident that this book gained prominence, recognition, and veneration in Alexandria around the beginning of the Christian era. "The Shepherd of Men" brings an added dimension as many depictions of Hermes show him carrying a lamb on his shoulder and a shepherd's crook, thus connecting to the concept of the good shepherd and the shepherd of men. This enigmatic being has had a profound influence on the development of knowledge. He was one of many composite beings developed among the Alexandrian Gnostics and the Neoplatonists to represent forms of learning and attitudes toward truth. Today, Hermeticism mainly focuses on alchemy and is prevalent in the works of the Rosicrucians and the Kabbalists. All these groups consider Hermes their patron saint, a mysterious force through which the esoteric truths of sciences are revealed to humanity. In a not-so-distant past when issues were not as complex as they are now, our ancestors held a certain attitude toward knowledge, which has been dubbed hermetic. Hermetic, in its modern usage, means to seal or to close tightly. It's easy to immediately seal a bottle or package. However, in ancient times, the term had broader implications. Hermeticism was a system of thought that placed a strong emphasis on the advancement of arts and sciences. The underlying theory of Hermeticism is rather simple yet remains as unfulfilled and misunderstood today as it was in ancient times. The hermetic doctrine is based on the belief that all existing things are contained within sealed vessels, symmetrically filled. Among the most important of these sealed vessels is the solar system. Another crucial sealed, mysterious container is the planet Earth. Additionally, a third sealed container is man himself. The essence of everything must save itself because within every problem of existence lies its solution. Solutions do not come from external sources; they originate internally. For instance, modern chemistry, a significant branch of learning today, is perceived by hermetists as being confined within its own container. The chemists themselves are the vessel, and their internal attitude is the container. All forms of knowledge are governed by a select group, a group that asserts its qualifications to delve into universal mysteries. While all groups, regardless of their chosen mystery, have fallen short, they have faltered because they have failed to step outside the confined container in which they have enclosed themselves. They've dictated what the truth should be, claimed to possess the means of uncovering it, and asserted that their findings were the ultimate truth. Hermetists would have refuted these claims. They would not have accepted this notion. For example, they would find it impossible to believe that science, oriented toward a purely physical resolution of all mysteries, could ever lead to a solution. After all, truth cannot be deduced from matter. It cannot be derived from the material aspects of things. Scientists cannot delve deep enough into the material structure of the universe to comprehend its inherent meaning. Although they can investigate its chemical composition and the evolution of life forms, the origins of life remain unknown. The true nature of life remains obscure. Its purpose in the grand scheme of things remains elusive. Scientists can only classify an array of unknown facts and attempt to extract the significance of these facts from the classification; however, this task is futile. The Alexandrians made a similar realization nearly 2,000 years ago, and this likely was not a recent discovery but rather a knowledge that was prevalent much earlier in various parts of the world. The city of Alexandria thrived as a center of knowledge due to its strategic location at the crossroads between Asia and Europe, allowing for the mingling of wisdom from the two hemispheres. The city also hosted several religions, many philosophies, and was represented by numerous great scholars. The Hermetic tradition in Alexandria followed the pattern established in Egypt, where the Egyptians had a hieroglyph depicting a serpent swallowing its own tail. While some dismissed this symbol as a mere hallucination, further investigation revealed a profound conclusion that resonated with the Hermetic belief. The serpent, by consuming its own tail, sustains itself without external sustenance, feeding on itself. This was hailed as the perfect system and symbol of creation for existence, feeding off itself. In a manner similar to the food chain observed in nature, every living thing nourishes itself from and upon other living things, sustaining itself from its own life force. By this process, the serpent, like the Egyptian deity, symbolized eternity and immortality, becoming a portrayal of the celestial cycle of sustenance and renewal. Nature maintains a delicate balance, continuously feeding off itself to sustain itself and perpetuate life. This grand cycle of nourishment acts as a symbol of the alchemists' belief that all things derive sustenance from themselves, nourishing themselves through their own processes. This system of self-nourishment echoes through the legends of alchemy, which portray the transmutation of base metals within the human body. These legends, representing spiritual truths, are manifested as practical, natural, and inevitable processes within the human psyche. Thus, alchemy, or the transformation of base metals into gold, is likened to the secret of nutrition. Every meal consumed is an act of alchemy, an unconscious participation in the eternal process of transmutation that occurs within the human body. This insight forms the basis for our understanding of chemistry today. Chemistry is a discipline rooted in the mysteries of Khem, the alchemical land, which was Egypt. The prefix "al" or "el" in Arabic and Hebrew respectively signifies divinity or God, emphasized by Elohim in the early chapters of Genesis and Allah, the Muslim supreme deity. Therefore, alchemy is divine chemistry, a spiritual science that delves into the mysteries of God, rather than a mere chemical experiment in a laboratory. According to these ancient beliefs, an understanding of the divine mystery is crucial to attaining true mastery of any art or science. All knowledge is predicated on a divine principle, which must be comprehended before any inquiry into knowledge can yield its ultimate truth. Until that point, all conclusions remain tentative and hypothetical, lacking a definitive resolution. Despite recent advancements in science and technology, our journey to Saturn and Jupiter, with a potential peek at Uranus and Neptune, is heralded as a monumental achievement of modern civilization. It promises to offer new insights into planetary motions, chemical compositions, atmospheric conditions, and the fundamental nature of these celestial bodies. However, upon the return of the spacecraft, we face the same existential conundrum as the ancient philosophers, who, surrounded by the vast knowledge of the world, recognized the insignificance of human existence in the grand scheme of things. This essential realization that man is born, suffers, and dies, highlights the limitations of human knowledge and the depth of the mysteries surrounding life, consciousness, and energy. The quest for scientific truth, while commendable, pales in comparison to the eternal truths that remain veiled in the divine nature. Therefore, if we are to embark on a genuine pursuit of knowledge and understanding, we must adopt a radically different approach to uncovering the true nature of reality. The hermetists, neoplatonists, Gnostics, and mystics of the Far East, including followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism, have all recognized the intrinsic value of man's base existence in unlocking the secrets of the universe. As the poet Omar aptly remarked, "From man's own base metal must be filed the key to unlock the door the others howl without." In our quest for knowledge, we often find ourselves howling outside the gates of understanding, seeking a way to access the mysteries of the universe. Instead of finding definitive answers, we are inundated with more questions, further complicating our search for truth. In light of this, the Greeks and the Egyptians sought to overcome the limitations of human understanding by delving into the ancient wisdom of alchemical philosophy. They believed that there was a mystical chain linking the Earth, a kind of island, to the mountain of the gods atop Mount Olympus. This golden chain symbolized the connection between heaven and earth and represented the pure principle of life itself. This divine principle, embodied by the Hermetic Mercury, was believed to be the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe and attaining universal knowledge. This ultimate goal was not merely scientific or intellectual, but a spiritual transformation that would transmute the base nature of man into a divinely enlightened soul. This process of spiritual alchemy, exemplified by the ancient masters, including Elias the artist, sought to elevate human consciousness and lead to the union of the individual soul with the cosmic purpose. Through the practice of Hermetic philosophy, individuals could ascend the ladder of spiritual enlightenment, embodying the principles of eternal growth, transformation, and unity with the divine. This eternal journey, represented by the mysterious chain of Homer, was a reminder of the interconnectedness of all life forms and the continuous evolution of the soul towards perfection and immortality. As we navigate the complexities of existence, it is imperative to remember that the pursuit of knowledge is not confined to the external world, but also encompasses the inner realms of the soul. Only by unlocking the mysteries within ourselves can we hope to unravel the profound truths of the universe and attain the ultimate wisdom that has eluded us for centuries. The base substance of everything. And in this base substance of everything is concealed everything else. There is a dark earth that is matter. And there is a regenerated, redeemed dark earth that is soul power. There is a darkness which is the darkness of ignorance, and there is the supreme darkness in which all things that are important are concealed from the propane. There are many levels and conditions of the regeneration of substances. But all these regenerations have to take place within the substance itself. This is another lesson that they try to tell us that it's timely at the moment. Many people today are trying to find ways of growing spiritually. And they are following mostly the attitude and processes of other forms of knowledge like education. They believe that inner light is to be attained by a kind of schooling. They attend classes. They join organizations. They listen carefully to the words of the so-called wise. They read the approved texts. They do all these things assuming that the mystery is going to be communicated. It cannot be communicated according to the Hermitage. It can only be experienced. The answer has to lie within. In as much as man himself is locked within a bottle and everything that is necessary for his survival is within that bottle. He must use his ways of reducing his materialistic pressures and releasing his spiritual convictions and overtones. So we have in the Hermetic philosophy this concept that all things arise from within the forms in which they are generated. All things existing as the seed within themselves for the perpetuation of their material kind. And they also have within themselves the Hermetic seed of life. By means of which, all forms less than perfection can be gradually brought to perfection by causing this seed to grow. The growth of the seed of divinity within man is also part of the philosophy of Jacob Bemey, the great German mystic. He describes the human soul as a tree with its seed in the heart which grows from within and finally becomes the basis of the tree of all knowledge and all wisdom, which in the book of Revelation is for the healing of the nations. The seed of the great mystery is in each person. Transmutation, therefore, is a transformation from the person's own experiences. The alchemist was referred to sometimes as Saturn, the gardener. And all the planets were involved in this story. Saturn was the gardener who had to take care of the garden of the soul. He had to weed it and water it. He had to protect it against all forms of invasion. He had to make certain that it was not neglected. Saturn as the wise counselor is also in oriental and in North African mysticism, the symbol of karma, the symbol of the symbol of repentance, of repayment. The symbol of inevitable operation of cause and effect. Therefore, it is Saturn who protects the growth of the seed. He surrounds it with protecting forms. He permits it to be discovered only by the pure of heart. He also, in guarding it, must, if necessary, draw out or take out the weeds that have been allowed to gather there. The weeds being false doctrines, false ideas, false concepts of life that try to squeeze out or destroy the true seeds of wisdom. Now, this same seed has so many meanings, but we remember, in the bible it says, and the seed is the word of God. In this particular meaning, the seed is the root of the inevitable in all things that live. There is no creature from the tiniest little gnat in the sunbeam to the greatest galaxy of stars in which the seed of perfection is not present. The seed is the thing that lives, and all the rest is a protection or a husk around the seed. It is the seed that transmits life from generation to generation. It is the seed within which is the final transformer of all things. For everything has within itself, within its own locked nature, the secret and means of its own ultimate perfection. Everything that exists is destined to be perfect. It is destined to fulfill the reason for itself, but it cannot know the reason for itself until it perfects itself. And all experiences of life which have a tendency to advance the good work, the good deed is a seed. It is a nutrition. It is a form of life. It is something that helps things to grow. But this growth, this seed of life, this good deed grows by devouring itself. It eats up itself. It lives off of itself. And every form of growth lives off of itself. Love lives off of itself. It lives not because of its attachments or because of its associations. It grows within itself. And it grows in a sense by devouring the lesser aspects of itself as it ascends. This is the food chain that applies to every form of life in nature. Now among these people also, there were these superior ideas of science. In one of his books, I think if I remember it, it's the noble Morganham. Lord Bacon points out very clearly that when physics is properly understood, there is no need for metaphysics. Metaphysics is probably more nearly than anything else, true physics. That which we call physics is a diluted, partial, distorted aspect of a science that is in itself part of the divine plan of things. But no physics can be perfected unless the internal life of the physicist releases the power to understand. The, physicist can only understand physics as an experience within himself. Until this experience is available to him, he is still going to be plotting around trying to advance step by step. Even in these processes of advancement, whether he knows it or not, he's still obeying this law in a strange manner. He's growing by eating up his own predecessors. He is building by devouring the wisdom of those that went before him and casting off most of it. He is constantly growing and building, by using the background of substance, the body of his own science. The physicist is living off of the body of physics. And if he does it correctly and does it long enough, again, physics will become the serpent living from itself and will gradually attain the transmutation that is necessary. The, transformation of knowledge implies the presentation of a new, deeper, fuller dimension of knowledge. In our, thinking also, we can mention another Hermetic field which has need of some work. And that is the field of astronomy as it particularly applies to the difference between astronomy, astrology, and astrotheology. Astronomy, we are pretty well acquainted with. Very few people really understand it. And among those who do not really understand what they are seeing are most of the astronomers. The astrologer believes that he has found the has ascended from the physiology to the psychology of the subject. He has discovered something that is not yet fully appreciated appreciated either by himself or by physical astronomy. He has discovered that all bodies in space have influence. They have organisms of their own. They are part of something that is inside of another bottle, and that is the solar system. And then this solar system is enclosed in still a larger flask, and that is the cosmos. But each of these levels is self-contained, and every form of ignorance must be transmuted by using its own previous mistakes as the food for its progress. In the highest phase of astrology, we have the astrotheology which was again developed in Egypt. Namely, the realization that astrology and all of the elements that compose it is one of the great maps or charts by means of which the universal purpose can be charted. It is not until, however, that the divine meaning of these elements are meaning is realized that the astrologer will gain a new dimension, not of skill, but of intuitive and internal spiritual perception. Music, we know the problem of music. We realize what is happening to it today. We know what is happening to art. All these things are living off of the husks of each other or upon a material derived from outside sources. The artist is dependent upon the techniques that he learns. These techniques, however, must be he must feed themselves. They must swallow themselves. The true artist must transcend them. He uses the techniques in order to release something from within himself. And if he has nothing within himself, the techniques are in vain. Everything depends, therefore, upon this internal power of the person. The Alexandrians tried to give a concept of how the human being can attain to the highest part of his own nature. The highest part of the nature of the solar system, according to them, was a series of steps, A ladder connecting heaven and earth. This ladder was the golden chain attributed to, to Homer, but very much interpreted at least by the Alexandrians. This ladder of ascent was not merely an ascent to space, but because of the wall and shell that encloses everything, the ladder is the ascent within the self. The steps of transformation that are necessary to transform the base nature of man into a divinely enlightened soul. And the alchemists had 10 such steps. And they can you and they concealed them under chemical terms to represent the various degrees of refinement, the various cycles through which metals and substances must pass in order to be perfected. Basil Valentine and not the old, Prometheus, said and pointed out as well as also did that if man as a soul being can perfect himself, if he can transform or transmute the base substances of his own existence and create a psychological goal or a psychological universal medicine for the healing of every ailment that can arise within himself, then also these philosophers believed that it would be conceivable that physical goals could actually be, achieved through the similar transmutations of chemical elements. We know that gold has been made. It has been made in recent times, but the amounts made are very minute and the time and effort stupendous. But the ancients claim that with the proper internal enlightenment as that as that of Nicolas, It would be perfectly possible in the growth of self to parallel this growth by the transmutation of the base substances of nature. Also, by the same procedure, the growth of the individual can become the basis and archetype for the perfection of human society, for the regeneration of the policies of government. It can, if it is properly developed, transform all material institutions subject to and usually involved in corruption to clarify, purify, and redeem themselves so that every art and science can become a blessing and can continue to unfold from the seed of itself until it achieves the fullness of its own potential. As it ascends, it also devours its adversaries. It swallows up the worms that prevent its own perfection. In the course of ascending for one degree of refinement to another, it also casts off that which is incompatible with its new higher insight or transforms that which was previously inadequate. So out of the same pattern of things, we develop, a concept which we find in Buddhism very clearly set forth. Namely, the idea that the individual and space are in each one is a commonwealth, a commune of life. Buddha pointed out very definitely that the inner structure of the human body is a is a political system. It is just as political as any structure governing a state or a nation. The politics of the human body is also subject to every corruption that the politics in the world is subject to. It is subject to lobbies. The human being is filled with lobbies with parts of itself forever seeking special privileges. It can also bribe itself more quickly than any politician can possibly do. It is also subject to being infested by spies and all kinds of foreign factors attempting to take over. It is seeking to achieve its own internal maturity while within itself are elements which wish to enslave it. But it can never be enslaved by an outer power unless it first enslaves itself so that the human body becomes more or less a microcosm of practically everything that concerns the human being. And what constitutes the answer to it lies perhaps in, again, the Hermetic legend. When Alexander the Great came to the Valley of Hebron, he was told that he stood in the presence of an ancient monument that was the tomb of Hermes. He ordered the tomb to be opened and he found inside nothing but dust. Whatever had been there had gradually disappeared and disintegrated. But in the midst of the dust was an emerald, a magnificent stone. Some say produced by art, and therefore, an artificial synthetic stone. But it was a stone inscribed, and it is inscribed with the great an analogical statement attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Supposed to be the greatest secret of knowledge in all the world. For it said on this stone, that which has been will be. And, further than that, that which is true of the greatest is true of the least. All things are the same in pattern differing only in magnitude. And whatever exists in space is like to that which exists below. And everything that exists below is like to that which exists above. The microcosm and the microcosm are tied together by indissolvable sympathies that can never be broken. This temporal tablet has become probably the great textbook, the great text statement around which the Hermetic arts were built. But it is also a very splendid statement of what we all need in the form of knowledge. One point that is, of course, always a different difficulty because of materialistic attitudes is that we assume that each art and science must find its own answer. We assume that each individual must work from complete ignorance up, must find his own answer to everything, and cannot, under any condition, unite his efforts in any common pattern with the rest of the different fields of knowledge. The hermetists would say that all fields of knowledge are seeking the same answer. And that one answer, when it is the final and complete answer, answers every question that human consciousness or divine need can create. There is one answer that is so universal, so infinite, so complete that it ends forever all uncertainties in every field of learning. This was the work that the alchemist was concerned with, was to discover this answer. And in order to find it, he had to explore a way, to transmute or transform the substances in himself. And one of the Hermetic bottles or best retorts or vessels, is a miniature solar system which indicates very definitely that the whole solar system and every energy that is required is within the planet's body and within the human body. Man is the solar system. Everything that occurs outside of man is reflected into him. And every question that arises from outside circumstances can be answered from the insides, research of the parallel circumstances and factors. Thus, wherever we look for questions, we look out. When we look for answers, we look in. For all answers available to man are released through the eternal divine principle which is the seed of all individual things in existence. As much as that and the sunbeam or the vastest galaxy in space, each one is part of a single great pattern. And every development of life or every development of culture in the universe or in space is guided by the same infinite laws. And the purpose of the Hermetic philosophers was to trace these laws as adequately and as well as they could with the facilities that nature had given them. They realized, of course, to begin with that you do not start out in a mad dash for perfection. You do not believe that instantly you will be able to answer all the questions. This you cannot do. You cannot take an answer from anyone else and make that answer your own until you build it into your own life as an experience of consciousness. While it is an intellectual acceptance, it has no vital purpose. But it can be possible for the individual, as Hermes points out in his great tablet, to observe the outside and use this observation to stimulate the inside. This is probably the reason why we have human beings, each one completely isolated. The hermetists perhaps were the first to realize that no 2 human beings have ever been able to exchange places. That no one has ever been able to experience identically the inner life of any other creature. Man is therefore completely isolated. He cannot intuit completely. He may have sympathy. He may have a great measure of understanding. And he may share experiences which he has previously found and used to enrich his own consciousness. But he cannot be anyone but himself. Everything that he has, every experience of his life, every element of his growth has contributed to making him a separate being. Therefore, separateness is the great problem. It is separateness that is giving us our problem in the near East today. It is separateness that is stirring up trouble in Africa. It is separateness that is filling our courts with crime. Separateness is isolation. And isolation can become one of the most terrible forces in the world. Yet isolation is the only way in which nature is able to demand and attain its own end. Namely, that each living thing should become strong enough to control and regulate its own destiny. Unless this separateness was as it is, there could be no way of forcing the individual to outgrow separateness, to rise above it by a long series of patient experiences. These experiences being a problem of ascent of going upward gradually into a higher and fuller state of insight. If, therefore, we really want to know the answer to anything, the answer begins through the cultivation and the beginning of the transformation of our own natures. This transformation has been variously represented in the alchemical experiments by all kinds of symbols. All kinds of creatures, beings, colors, and sounds have been drawn in to make possible this immense and complicated series of alchemical symbols. They are all, however, simply names for processes that take place within ourselves. One of these symbols, for instance, is the raging wolf. This wolf comes in time and time again as a factor in the development on transformation of base metals. Now, this ravenous wolf can be in man a whole series of impediments that are not a wolf at all. But I like it. The characteristic of the wolf, the power of the animal, the hunger of the animal, the difficulty of subduing it, the fact that it ravages the land reminds us of things about ourselves. There are a great many people who are rather wolfish in their demands. The wolf, therefore, is in a sense man's appetite ambitions. The wolf represents a phase of physical error by means of which the individual is defeating himself. Therefore, the world has to be transformed. It has to be transmuted. It has to become a new creature, and it has to change its colors as in the processes of alchemical transmutation in which finally the various elements change colors until they develop what is called in chemistry the peacock's tail, a massive iridescent lights. These iridescent lights being descriptive of the unfoldment of the multicolor, multiform nature of the soul itself. Actually, the thing that the alchemist is searching is the soul to release it from bondage to everything else that exists, that it shall be completely and entirely liberated, that it shall be free to be itself, that it shall then be able to bestow itself. For within it lies all that is necessary to the common good. It is in the soul that essential wisdom exists, and the soul can give the wisdom to the rest of the rest of the personality. It is within the soul that true love is experienced. It is within the soul that integrity, comes into clear and defined proportions and dimensions. Everything that is important is bestowed by the soul. And everything that is lacking in human relationships is lacking because of the lack of soul maturity. So we have this mysterious thing that they call the chain. Of course, it's again, I think the Alexandrians in all probabilities reaching back for ancient symbols, developed this concept of the chain in a way very different from what might have been Homer's original intention. But in alchemy, let's see what we have another point here. Alchemy certainly existed in China. It existed there at least from 500 to a 1000 years Before the beginning of the Christian era. It existed in several other nations. It probably existed in India and existed in many places. But in those areas, alchemy seemingly was for the most part a physical chemical study. The primary purpose was the transmutation of metals physically in order that wealth might be accumulated. Now wealth is the false value. It is the false gold, the fool's gold which the chemists searched for in vain. And even if they found it, most of them died from possessing it. This physical goal was the goal of the early chemical experiments in most ancient countries. And today, another type of goal, and that is some form of utility, is lying behind nearly all the advancements of our arts and sciences. We are not looking into the sciences and arts that we may become better human beings, but rather that we may have more conveniences, we may still increase our standard of living and can gradually escape from the inevitable proper consequences of our own misdeeds. Therefore, alchemy and chemistry in those days was not a philosophical and religious art, but are based upon a concept of profit. And of course, material profit paralyzes any art and destroys completely the possibility of its fruition. Any art or science which is commercialized is set back a 1000 years at least. It cannot escape into its own integrities. Therefore, prior to the Alexandrian period, it seems that the transforming of base metals was regarded as a literal thing. And it was in Alexandria that this entire concept was made metaphysical. And the alchemist became an alchemistical philosopher. One in whose nature the transformations were of a higher and more exalted nature. Having faced the problem of the literal chemist, we then can go to the consideration of the literal almost everything that we know today. We know all the various chemists, the great industrial institutions that maintain chemists, the cosmetic institutions. We know the pharmaceutical houses that have chemists working day and night to make new pills or serums or something of that nature. We are aware that chemistry is tied to all of these problems. We also realize how physiology and physics and anatomy and biology are tied to laboratory experimentation and to all kinds of repeated experiments that have been done a 1,000 times and actually have very little to do with the final shape of anything. There were rules that were to be set up but never were effectively enforced. For example, in vivisection where it was assumed that it would be perfectly possible for 1 animal to be sacrificed the entire record be preserved in film with all its details and circulated among all the institutions that needed the information. The fact that each one of them had to torture some poor creature by the dozen to have exactly the same results and not to gain one new bit of knowledge would have been a perfect example of what the Alexandrian Hermitus considered to be debased and false knowledge. But we have it. We have it because the higher aspects of the matter were never really considered. Now in India, we have mystical sects and we have them also in China and Japan that had to do with yoga. And the more we study the Hermetic tradition, the more certain it becomes that these people possess some kind of yoga. They possess a chemistry and alchemy of disciplines within themselves. It would not be difficult to explain this because we know that East Indian, Chinese, and many other nations traded in Alexandria. There is no doubt that scholarship went along the caravan routes and reached Egypt even earlier. There is no doubt in the world that the philosophies of Alexandria were influenced by Buddhism and yoga. This is now admitted even by the most skeptical thinkers. If we take Platonism or Neo Platonism, or if we take the Hermetic science and impose a yogic structure upon it, I think we have exactly what the ancient symbols of alchemy tell us. Namely, that the entire system was founded upon a process of unfolding the potentials in the individual. Yoga became a term in the east, and alchemy became its equivalent in the west. And to a large measure, this is true of capitalism, and it was true of the Rosicrucian mystics of 17th century, the original ones. They all seem to have been nourished by the same general concept and belief. Namely, that there was a series of steps by means of which the individual ascending moved upward, from the earth to the abode of the deities. Now in man, the abode of the deities, according to alchemy, would be in man himself because everything must be solved within this bottle. Everything that is conceivable and if everything that is necessary for the perfection of the individual must be derived from the individual himself. He has certain nutritional relationships with the planet. He also has a certain electrical relationship with the sun and a magnetic one with the moon. But these provide energy like the energy on a wire from an electric source. But all the uses of that energy must be evolved within the individual himself. He must take one pure energy that is distributed throughout all space and must apply it to his own requirements. And in so doing, he must gradually live off of this energy. He must gradually use this energy, to perfect his own nature. Not long ago, I happened to see a very interesting film which showed part of the internal structure of insects. And here, we have something that is so small that it is practically invisible to the human eye without a microscope. And yet the structure of that little insect is itself an incredible mystery. No scientist knows why and how that elaborate and involved interfunction came into existence. The details so small we cannot see them are a 1,000 times more intricate than that to be found in the highest and most expensive watch. Here are eyes that no human being can fully understand. Here are structures of motion and various digestive structures in something which is no larger than the point of a pin. Everything that is necessary is there. And it is there age after age. It is perpetuated from cycle to cycle, and it is a mystery which we have not yet been able to understand. We cannot understand the larger phases of it in our own daily life. We see energy. We see constant motion. We see the evidences of long range evolutionary process which ties with Omer's golden chain. We see the constant presence of a tremendous pattern of processes, lawful processes. Yet the source of them is it remains always elusive. There is no faculty in man's physical nature that can discover the source of himself or the source of anything else. He has to go behind the physical part of himself. He has to transcend even the endocrine system. He has to transcend his sensory perceptions. Also, his reflective powers. There is something still deeper. He must go on to the point where he is able as a being to have the direct experience of the cause of all things. Until then, his ignorance cannot be cured. He has, however, a certain, participation which the alchemist also recognized. The alchemist declared that there were several orders within their own group. There were the adepts who were the ones who had perfected the great work. Then there were the illuminates. And the illuminates, were the mystics. They were the ones who understood the work. They were the ones who had been given a certain participation through inner experience, through mystical reveries, through visions, and through various types of clairvoyance. These illuminates had seen or sensed the reality. They had not performed the transmutation themselves, but they knew that it existed. And because of the nature of the psychic life within themselves, they had been given glimpses of it. And we find in the laws, even as the alchemists point out themselves, that there were glimpses that every sincere growing person has as he goes along. Glimpses that give courage to proceed. Glimpses by means of which the end to be attained comes to be recognized even if not actually attained. So that these illuminates, as they were called, like, and several others, Claude de Saint Martin, all the mystics were able to sense what was happening. They lifted some of the veils, but even the mystics saw as to a glass darkly. They were not able to really attain, but they became capable of a tremendous faith because inwardly, they had begun to sense. The illuminate was the one who sensed the reality, and he was on a higher level than those who had not sensed it. So the yogic system there, undoubtedly corresponds with Homer's chain. It is a series of internal steps by which the individual ascends, to the final union with the divine. It, is represented in Hermetic philosophy by the egg and the embryo. And, the steps that correspond with the chain are the 11 periods or levels of initiation which are necessary to bring things into life through the gradual change of their internal structure. Finally, the last change comes when the child or the creature is born. So we have the 9 months of the prenatal epic and the 10th month which is the birth. And this corresponds with the 10 links of Homer's chain. But there is also another birth, the birth of a mystery. There is the birth from the womb of the alchemical art which is the eggshell. But within the shell, in the alchemical, the magnetic field of the individual himself is aura. That which encloses him. That which turns all energies back upon themselves. That which forms the great wall which you properly maintain protects him from infections and all kinds of contagions, but which if depleted allow death to come in. The magnetic field is the wall of the castle and it is that which protects everything within it. Within this is an embryo, the embryo of the divine being, the homunculus. It is this embryo growing up within man of which his present state is a phase or aspect which ultimately will come to spiritual birth when it breaks through the shell of its own isolation and mingles itself with the cosmic purpose. All these symbols that go on and on and on, and there's so many of them that it's hard to to limit them. But we do know that, they are the knowledge to most of the doctrines of the great world religions. That they represent perhaps the Hermetic science or art. The clear scientific process by means of which we can understand the purpose of life. In other words, we do not gain it by long periods of education. We do not gain it, by the commendations of our associates. We have to grow. And growth is the release of the seed of immortality. As the chemists say, there are 2 kinds of growth. There are the growth of the physical seed in the ground which becomes nutrition. And on this nutrition, we live. And we, in turn, become the nutrition of something else. I remember very definitely one day when I was talking to Luther Burbank, he said, you know, when I die, I don't want to be buried somewhere. I don't want to just go into a cemetery. I want to be buried under the apple tree in my own garden so that my life can then become a nourisher of apples. Well, this the alchemist would understand because he would know it is part of the serpent eating its own tail. It is life supporting life. It is one living thing after another surviving. It begins with the most primitive forms of existence and that which lives on it. And it goes on and on to things that live on other things all the way to the top. Because there is no nutritional process according to alchemy, except this, this continual dependence of life upon life. But in this, we have quellm only. All that we have to really concern us is that out of this interdependence, this constant use of life to sustain life, nature has set this up. And for all these different steps and chains, there is no great evil. The only evil is abuse. But actually, all of these various steps and degrees are helping to develop and cause all types of creatures to improve and increase. They go on and on and on, go step by step until they achieve their own, perfection and fruition. Nature is not doing this to be unkind. Nature is doing it because it is the only way in which separate things can remain separate and until a time when they earn their union with all the rest of life. Everything has to have its own experience. This experience seems very mysterious and strange to us. But everything is growth, and every form of life is growing, and every form of life manifests a degree of growth. Each form of life from the least to the highest, from the tiniest net in the sunbeam, from the smallest electron or ion, up to the vastest cosmos. Each form of life every step between is a link in the golden chain. For all these processes are part of the unfoldment and the release of that divine power which is our inevitable right. Now, when we get this power, what do we do with it? Assuming that sometime in the remote aeons of aeons, we do get it. What will then happen? Well, according to the old beliefs and according to the alchemical concepts, when that time comes that we have fully blossomed, that we have become complete in every sense of the word and have become a sun, a tremendous center of released eternal brilliance. When the little seed in us has grown up and become a cosmic sun, then at that moment there will burst from us our solar system, a new order of life, vaster and more remarkable than anything we have known. And, we will become a center of life with another great order of evolution in space. We do not know how far this goes on. Even the most optimistic of the hermetists didn't try to find an ultimate end. But to them, if you can conceive of an ultimate end, that ultimate end is not to settle back in peace and rest forever in in playing harps in space. The end, whatever it may be, is that the soul itself, the inner life of man, will explode into a great cosmic usefulness. And that which has been the child will become the parent of children. That which has grown up will pay for its growth and the love and attention that it received by becoming a parent. And a sun is always an apparent in a solar system. The sun and the moon and the all the parts of the solar system are parental forces that have themselves grown up in space and have passed through all of the various great processes. These great processes may be difficult to understand and it certainly is a little difficult to understand how people 2000 years ago without most of the advantages that we have of instrumentations today were able to conceive of so vast and abstract concepts. And it even is impossible for the average person, even a thoughtful person, to present their concept in a complete and comprehensive manner. But that they had this idea of an eternal growth as an eternal release. All change as progress. The all things passing out of existence but not ceasing, but returning better. That all experiences, incidents, accidents of life are part of this great alchemical cycle of transformations, of regeneration, of coagulations, of condensations. All things passing through a vast cycle of moral chemical factors. So that out of it, we discover that chemistry is also a vast morality that related to it are processes which we must experience psychologically as the chemist experiences them in his laboratory. Over the whole chemical field were the the great chemist of, so called symbolic time. The alchemist declared that among others, the great master of the chemist was Elias the artist. A figure drawn from biblical symbolism. That among the great adepts were the great teachers of mankind. And many of those who were called the adepts of chemistry are never known to have made a physical chemical experiment as far as we know. They may have done so. But they had reached that point in which the chemistry was taking place within themselves. The illuminate is working with a higher degree of chemistry. The mystic such as Plotinus who beheld the mystery of the universe, is working with another level of this power within himself. We are all working with some level of it, and all the great adepts of alchemy are those who have warned us as Basil Valentine did. Woe woe unto the gold makers. It was not to be a physical experiment. The gold was perfection. The gold was purity because the gold was the only element known to the ancients that was immortal, that never changed. It could not be tarnished. That could not be decayed. Gold was the symbol of eternal life, eternal light, and eternal truth. These are the things the chemist were looking for. And by retiring into themselves and moving step by step along a great path which was outlined for them in their old literature. They ascended by natural degrees through the mysteries of chemistry then into a psychological chemistry Rosicrucians working on the subject politically who were searching for the universal reformation of society. The Esclippians of Greece and the healers of Egypt, the followers of the god of healing, were looking for the universal medicine. That which was to be the healing of all sickness. And they followed the same path with medicine. First of all, one of the greatest of all pharmacologists made a great research into physical medicine, but also into mystical. And today, our pharmacology is very heavily loaded with the recipes, formulas, and discoveries of chemists of 500 to a 1000 years ago. The Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks have all added to our knowledge of medicine. But they were all searching for the same thing. Not just the remedy for this ailment or that ailment, but the sovereign remedy to the supreme illness of man. And that illness is imperfection. It is not a sin. It is not a misfortune. It is inevitable. It is inevitable that the child must grow up. It is inevitable that little things must become greater. It is inevitable that small knowledge must increase. It is not that process that is wrong. It is the individual who doesn't understand this principle and therefore makes no effort to grow or makes a highly mistaken effort by simply assuming that it is a trick of the mind or some secret that can be imparted for a few dollars. While these situations exist, a great deal of unnecessary delusion is also present. But each one in his own way must climb the ladder, the escaladellessage, a mysterious ladder of links, the chain of Homer. By means of which in the end, he comes to union with the Olympian mountain and the spirits that dwell therein. And that mountain is inside of himself also. And in the magnetic theories, the North Pole of the aura is well represented and it's certainly equivalent in the straight desert of Shamo in it, Tibetan China. All these ancient beliefs tie together into geography, physiology, anatomy, art, music, literature, everything you can think of. There is the master plan. And what everyone should be searching for to the best of his ability and as enthusiastically as as possible is to become aware of this master plan. We may not be able to achieve it immediately, but if we can become aware of it, we will overcome the futility we feel in ourselves. We will overcome the sense of hopelessness or despair or isolation or frustration. We will no longer blame everything that happens as a misfortune of circumstances. We will see a plan and we know that the plan is right, that it is a divine plan, That it is the inevitable way in which the deity as the supreme alchemist transmutes all things into the likeness and identity of himself. Well, get that all for the morning, please.
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This morning's lecture requires a slight preamble to establish a setting concerned with our problem. According to Greek mythology, the deity Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the daughters of Atlas. He was originally a deity of agriculture and fertility. However, with the rise and sophistication of Greek culture, he was elevated to the status of the messenger of the gods. As such, he is generally depicted with wings on his heels, a winged helmet, and carrying a caduceus, which has since been associated with the medical profession. Hermes was one of the more benevolent deities and was often linked to the principle of knowledge, as well as the communication of messages from the heavenly realm to the abodes of mortals.
When the Romans dominated the area, they referred to Hermes as Mercury, a god of swiftness, messages, and a sense of the ability to read the human mind. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic dynasty in Alexandria, North Africa, began to associate the concepts of Hermes and Mercury with the Egyptian deity who was also a god of writing, known as the scribe of the heavenly assembly of the Assyrian rites. Thus, by the beginning of the Christian era, we had a deity known under three names who was to become a tremendously important psychological force in the origins and descent of what we now refer to as mysticism. The names were combined in a curious way to create in Alexandria a hypothetical person known to these people as Pope Hermes Trismegistus, with "Trismegistus" meaning "thrice-great."
No one seems to be quite sure when Hermes lived. There is no evidence to determine whether he is simply a composite of earlier beliefs, whether there was actually a person by that name, or if some sage took that name. One thing is certain, however: he became the personification of the world's wisdom. He was believed to be the true author of all books ever written because all of these books depend upon a dimension of wisdom, a power of knowledge, man's capacity to think, learn, know, and transmit. He also became, in particular, the guardian of what was called the Hermetic Arts, which have descended to us as chemistry, astronomy, music, geography, and medicine.
Now, this in itself is very interesting, especially when we find that this mysterious being, whoever he was, left behind a series of writings attributed to himself. This was the Hermetic literature, and the most important of the Hermetic books was "The Shepherd of Men," a mysterious dialogue between Hermes and the Universal Mind. Where it came from and how it was compiled remains one of the unsolved mysteries of history. Yet, it is evident that it first came into prominence, gained recognition, and was venerated in Alexandria around the beginning of the Christian era.
This mysterious book, "The Shepherd of Men," introduces another dimension. In many of the old representations of Hermes, he is shown carrying a lamb on his shoulder and also holding a shepherd's crook, thus connecting him to the concept of the good shepherd and the shepherd of men. This enigmatic being had a profound influence on the development of knowledge. He was one of several composite beings developed among the Alexandrian Gnostics and Neo-Platonists to personify forms of learning and attitudes toward truth—the search for reality.
Today, Hermeticism is largely centered on alchemy, and, of course, on the works of the Rosicrucians and Kabbalists. All of these groups consider Hermes their patron saint. He is the mysterious power through which the esoteric truths of sciences become accessible to humanity. Not long ago, when problems were not as complex as they are today, our forebears had a certain attitude toward knowledge that has been termed "hermetic." As we use it now, "hermetic" means to seal or close tightly. In those days, however, it had somewhat larger implications.
Hermeticism was a system of thought that placed a very strong emphasis on the advancement of the arts and sciences. The theory behind hermeticism is quite simple, yet today it remains as unfulfilled or misunderstood as it was in ancient times. The hermetic doctrine is based on the belief that all existing things are locked within containers that are symmetrically filled. Among the most important of these sealed things is the solar system. Another very important enclosed material locked in a bottle is the planet Earth. A third sealed mysterious container is man himself.
This mysterious container, which encloses all things within its nature, necessitates that everything must save itself. Every problem of existence has its solution within it. Solutions do not come from the outside; they come from within. For example, we have chemistry, an important branch of learning. The hermetists would have said that modern chemistry is locked in a bottle of its own, confined within a small container. This bottle is the internal attitude of the chemist.
Every form of knowledge is controlled by an eternalistic group—a group that has declared itself peculiarly qualified to devote its attention to the solution of universal mysteries. Yet, generally speaking, all of these groups, regardless of the mystery they have chosen as their province, have failed. They have failed because they have not been able to escape from the little bottle in which they enclosed themselves. They declared what truth had to be, asserted that they had a way to find it, and claimed that what they found by their way was truth. The hermetists would have denied this; they would not have accepted the idea. They would not have believed, for instance, that it would be possible for science—while oriented to a physical solution of all mystery—to ever solve anything.
The answers are not to be found in matter. They are not to be found in the material aspects of things. The material structure of the universe cannot be explored long enough to discover its meaning. Scientists can find out its chemical components and discover forms of life evolving, but how that life arrived and what it actually is remain unknown. What its purpose is in the larger context of existence is also unknown. All they can do is classify patterns, a ladder of unknown facts, and attempt to discover the reasons for these facts, but it cannot be done.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Alexandrians discovered this, and probably it was known even earlier in various parts of the world. The Alexandrians were fortunate that their city was at the crossroads between Asia and Europe, allowing the wisdom of two hemispheres to mingle in their community. Several religions functioned there, and many significant philosophies were well represented.
The Alexandrian Hermeticists followed a pattern that originated in Egypt. The Egyptians had a hieroglyph of a serpent swallowing its own tail, which everyone tried to interpret. Some dismissed it as a pure hallucination, while others, studying it more carefully, reached an interesting conclusion that parallels and agrees with the Hermetic conviction. The serpent, by swallowing its tail, is feeding itself; it has nothing to nourish itself but itself. The hermeticists viewed this as the perfect symbol of creation. Existence has nothing upon which to feed but itself.
This concept can also be seen in what later presented itself in the form of the Golden Chain of Homer. Homer’s chain links heaven and Earth—the material world with the heights of the Olympian deities. It is a series of links that establish levels of research, levels of consciousness, and perhaps most importantly, the basis for astronomy and the sidereal geography of space.
The idea of something living off of itself can be exemplified today by what we call the food chain. If you have watched nature documentaries among the better offerings we occasionally receive on television, you will realize that every living thing relies on other living things for sustenance. This mysterious food chain, by which life nourishes itself through life, mirrors the serpent with its own tail. It lives by devouring itself, yet at the same time, it becomes a symbol of eternity and immortality.
There is a balance of nature in which nature continually subsists through itself, maintaining itself. This great cycle of nutrition is likely a symbol that the Neo-Platonists and Hermetists of Egypt would have embraced, had they been able to connect the elements. Nevertheless, they empirically understood the facts. They knew, too, that all forms of knowledge nourish themselves through their processes.
If you learn something, this knowledge becomes the basis for something else; new knowledge is informed by the old. Everything thrives on its own processes, and these processes are all locked within an hermetic retort—a laboratory vessel. All the transmutations and transmissions of energy and force that constitute the planet and its life—and the solar system with its life—exist sealed within vessels.
These vessels comprise the outer atmosphere enclosing the planet, or the magnetic field of the solar system. Therefore, everything we observe is internally generated. It bears its natural fruits because of a process we term digestion and assimilation in the human body. To the hermetists, these terms describe the transmutation of forms of life—alchemy, and a process of constant transformation in which base elements, merely physical matter, can be converted into consumable material necessary for sustaining lives.
Moreover, every mystery found in the legends of alchemy and the transmutation of metals within the human body are lived out as practical, natural, inevitable procedures. Therefore, we must acknowledge that alchemy, or the transmutation of base metals into gold, symbolizes the secret of nutrition. Each time we eat a meal, we are alchemists, though we may be unaware of it.
This concept brings us to the origin of the word we now understand as chemistry. Chemistry is rooted in "khem," the land of Egypt. The prefix "al," or "el" in Hebrew, signifies divine or God as in "Elohim" in the opening chapters of Genesis or "Allah," the Muslim supreme deity. This prefix means divine; hence, alchemy is divine chemistry.
It is a chemistry grounded in the mysteries of God rather than merely in some physical laboratory. Consequently, these ancient thinkers firmly believed that without unraveling the mystery of the divine, one could never arrive at the ultimate conclusion and truth of any art or science. All equally depend upon a divine principle, which must be understood before any question related to knowledge can find its ultimate answer—until that point, the answers are all tentative and suppositional without any final conclusion.
Recently, we have sent a spaceship to orbit Saturn and Jupiter and are hoping it will take a long-range look at Uranus and Neptune. When all is said and done, this mission is likely to be regarded as a supreme achievement of modern man. We will learn more about the motions of these planets, maybe discover something of their chemical compositions, or increase our understanding of the forces that govern them, including their temperature or density of materials.
However, when this information is returned, we will find ourselves in the same position as the old Arabic philosopher who said that man is born, man suffers, and man dies. This is essential; all else, seemingly, is highly theoretical. It is interesting and amazing, captivating the minds of children, but when all explorations conclude, man still will not have the answer to what life is, what consciousness is, or what energy is. We may outline its uses, but the triad of powers at the source of all things will remain locked in the divine mystery.
Therefore, if we are going to explore and search for the true answers, we must begin considering an entirely different approach to reality. The Hermetists, Neo-Platonists, Gnostics, and many other mystical groups from the Far East—including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism—have all realized, in the words of Omar, that from man's own base metal must be forged the key to unlock the door that others howl without. We are all howling outside the gates of knowledge, seeking a way to use Irenaeus Filaviti's term, the alchemist: to open the shut palace door of the king.
We seek answers to various questions, yet instead of finding them, all we seem to uncover is more questions. The further we research, the greater the number of questions arise, which complicate the discovery of an answer. So what was the answer that the Greeks and the Egyptians discerned? They pointed out, in accordance with legend, and through the wisdom bestowed upon the poet Homer, that there was a mysterious chain of links between the Earth—a kind of island—and the mountain of the gods on Olympus.
This golden chain bound heaven and Earth, and the pure principle of life itself was declared by the alchemists to be the Hermetic Mercury. They contended that Mercury, being a solvent, dissolves other substances into itself. Yet that is the base Mercury. Alchemy posited that all substances in nature fall into two categories: one, the base; the other, the purified.
Man himself comprises elements that exist either in their base or purified conditions. Man also has a mind that can be either a material mind or a refined, regenerated one. All of his emotions, even the cells of his body, undergo processes of refinement. The more refined and purified they become, the more accurately they reflect the will of the power within.
In those days, the masters of the subject declared that there were natural things referred to as the prima materia—the fundamental substance of everything. Within this substance resides everything else. There exists a dark Earth, which represents matter, and a redeemed dark Earth that symbolizes soul power. There is the darkness of ignorance, alongside the supreme darkness that conceals all essential matters from the profane.
There are many levels and conditions for the regeneration of substances. But all regenerations must occur within the substance itself. This is another lesson they sought to convey, particularly relevant today. Many individuals are attempting to discover ways to grow spiritually by following the methodology and processes of other forms of knowledge like education. They believe inner light can be attained through schooling. They attend classes, join organizations, and listen carefully to the teachings of those deemed wise. They read approved texts, assuming that the mystery will be communicated.
According to the Hermeticists, it cannot be. The answer lies solely within. To the extent that man himself is locked inside a bottle, everything necessary for his survival exists within that bottle. He must reduce materialistic pressures and liberate spiritual convictions and the overtones within. This concept reflects Hermetic philosophy, emphasizing that all things arise from the forms in which they are generated.
All things exist as seeds within themselves for the perpetuation of their material kind. The Hermetic seed of life has the potential for bringing all less-than-perfect forms gradually toward perfection through fostering this seed's growth. This nurturing of the divine seed within man is akin to the philosophy of Jacob Boehme, the great German mystic, who describes the human soul as a tree with its seed in the heart, growing from within and eventually becoming the basis of the tree of all knowledge and wisdom, a source for the healing of the nations, as described in the Book of Revelation.
The seed of the great mystery lies within each individual. Therefore, transmutation is the transformation derived from personal experiences. The alchemist was sometimes referred to as Saturn, the gardener. Saturn had to carefully tend to the garden of the soul. He had to weed, water, and protect it from invasion.
Saturn, as the wise counselor, symbolizes karma—the unavoidable operation of cause and effect. He surrounds the growing seed with protective forms, allowing it to be discovered only by the pure of heart. In guarding it, he must, if necessary, remove the weeds of false doctrines, ideas, and life concepts that threaten to suffocate or destroy the true seeds of wisdom.
The seed embodies many meanings; as stated in the Bible, the seed is identified as the word of God. Here, the seed represents the root of inevitability in all living things. From the tiniest gnat in sunlight to the grandest galaxy of stars, the seed of perfection is always present. The seed is the essence of life; everything else acts as a protective husk.
It is the seed that transmits life from generation to generation. Within the seed exists the ultimate transformer of all things, for everything contains within itself, in its locked nature, the secrets and means of its ultimate perfection. Everything that exists is destined to achieve perfection and fulfill its purpose, but one cannot understand this purpose until one perfects oneself.
Consequently, all experiences of life that promote good deeds and endeavors are seeds; they are nourishment and transformative for growth. But this growth—the seed of life and good deeds—advances by consuming itself. It feeds off itself; love thrives in this manner, not due to attachments, but from within, evolving by devouring lesser aspects of itself as it ascends. This food chain applies to every form of life in nature.
There were superior concepts of science among these individuals. In one of his works, Lord Bacon argues that when physics is properly understood, there is no need for metaphysics. Conversely, metaphysics could be seen as truer physics. That which we term physics is a diluted, partial, distorted aspect of a science that forms a part of the divine plan.
However, no physics can be perfected unless the physicist's internal life is activated, allowing him to understand. The physicist can only comprehend physics as that which he experiences within himself. Until that experience becomes available to him, he will continue to struggle step by step.
Even as he progresses, whether he recognizes it or not, he is growing by consuming his predecessors' wisdom. He constructs his knowledge by devouring their insights, while discarding much in the process. By correctly pursuing this journey, physics and the physicist work in tandem, growing by living from the essence of physics. Over time, physics will mirror the serpent feeding off of itself, gradually attaining the transmutation required.
The transformation of knowledge implies presenting a new, deeper, fuller dimension of understanding. We can also mention another Hermetic field in need of development: the difference between astronomy, astrology, and astro-theology. Most individuals have a rudimentary understanding of astronomy, but few fully grasp the complexities at play, often including astronomers themselves.
Astrologers believe they have progressed from the physical to the psychological dimensions of the subject. They claim to discern patterns and influences present in all bodies in space, asserting they are part of something transcending mere observation and belonging to a broader cosmic system. Each of these levels forms a self-contained unit, allowing ignorance to be transformed through utilizing previous errors as nourishment for progress.
Astro-theology was developed in Egypt, representing the realization that astrology and its elements are monumental maps charting universal purpose. However, the divine significance of these elements must be recognized before the astrologer can gain new understanding—not merely skill, but an intuitive and internal spiritual perception.
There are challenges across the musical and artistic domains. We observe contemporaneous issues within these fields, recognizing they all seem to be drawing from each other, consuming material sourced from outside forces. An artist must transcend mere technique, using it to release something ensconced within themselves. Without an internal foundation, techniques bear no fruit.
Everything hinges upon the internal power of the individual. The Alexandrians proposed a concept of how humans could attain the highest part of themselves. According to them, the pinnacle of nature within the solar system manifested as a sequence of steps—a ladder connecting heaven and earth. This ladder was the golden chain attributed to Homer, enriched by Alexandrian interpretations.
This ladder of ascent represented not merely a spatial elevation but a journey within the self. It symbolized the steps of transformation necessary for changing man's base nature into a divinely enlightened soul. The alchemists purported ten such steps, which they cleverly concealed under chemical terminology that illustrated the varying stages of refinement substances must undergo for perfecting.
Basil Valentine, alongside others, asserted that if man, as a soul being, could perfect and transform his base existence, creating a psychological goal or universal remedy for every ailment encountered, they believed that physical goals could similarly be achieved through analogous transformations of chemical elements.
Though we recognize that gold has been synthesized in modern times, the quantities produced remain minuscule, demanding extraordinary effort and time. Nonetheless, the ancients believed that with proper internal enlightenment—like that possessed by Nicolas—physical attainment could parallel personal growth through transmutation of nature's base substances.
Moreover, this growth on an individual level could provide the template for enhancing human society and renewing governmental policies. Properly developed, individual growth can purify, clarify, and redeem corrupt institutions, enabling all arts and sciences to blossom, developing from their seeds until they fulfill their potential.
As they ascend, they also consume that which hinders their perfection—discarding incompatible aspects of themselves or transforming inadequate elements. From this cyclical evolution emerges a concept stated clearly in Buddhism: the individual interacts with an intricate commonwealth of life.
Buddha emphasized that the internal structure of the human body mirrors a political system as subject to the same corruption as any governing entity. The political dynamics at play in human physiology are rife with lobbying factions vying for special privileges, along with all sorts of foreign elements seeking domination. The body, while striving for internal maturity, is beset by elements longing to enslave it.
The human body, therefore, becomes a microcosm, reflecting everything concerning the human condition, with the answers lying within the Hermetic legend. When Alexander the Great arrived in the Valley of Hebron, he was informed that he stood before an ancient monument—the tomb of Hermes. He ordered that the tomb be opened, revealing nothing but dust. Whatever once existed had gradually vanished; in the dust lay an emerald—a magnificent stone—crafted through art.
This stone bore an inscription: the greatest secret of knowledge in all the world, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It proclaimed that which has been will be, and further stated that what is true of the greatest is true of the least—suggesting that all things share a common pattern, differing only in magnitude. Furthermore, whatever exists in space is akin to that which exists below, signifying a profound connection between the microcosm and macrocosm, interconnected by indissolvable ties that cannot be broken.
This temporal tablet has likely become the cornerstone around which Hermetic arts developed. It serves as a splendid statement of the knowledge we all seek. However, the persistent challenge lies in materialistic beliefs that assume each art and science must uncover its unique truth. We typically believe individuals must navigate from total ignorance to find their own answers and cannot associate their efforts with other fields of knowledge.
The hermetists contend that all fields of knowledge pursue the same truth, and this one truth, when discovered, solves every question that human consciousness or divine need can elicit. There exists a single answer, universal, infinite, and complete, that resolves all uncertainties across all learning. This was the focus of the alchemist: to uncover that singular answer.
In pursuit of this, one must explore a path leading to the transmutation or transformation of one's essence. One important hermetic vessel, a miniature solar system, indicates that all cosmic energies required rest within the planetary body and the human body. Man embodies this solar system; everything occurring externally resonates within him, meaning every question deriving from outside influences finds its answer through internal inquiry into related circumstances and factors.
Thus, as we seek questions externally, we often forget that answers lie within. All answers reachable by mankind emerge through the eternal divine principle—the seed residing in every individual exists in both the sunbeam and the vastest galaxy alike. Every aspect constitutes part of a single grand pattern; every facet of life or culture development in the universe follows the same infinite laws.
The Hermetic philosophers aimed to trace these laws to the best of their capacity and with the means that nature afforded them. They realized at the onset that achieving perfection is not an instantaneous process; one cannot expect to attain complete understanding overnight. No definitive answers can be borrowed or acquired until integrated into one's own life as experiential consciousness. While intellectual acceptance may occur, it lacks vital purpose.
Ultimately, individual observation of the outside world must serve as a stimulus for internal awakening. Perhaps this is why we perceive individual isolation. The hermetists specifically recognized that no two humans can exchange places or experience identically another's inner life. Each individual remains fundamentally isolated, can sympathize, understand, and share experiences previously known to him, but he can never embody another. Each personal journey—every experience shape and quality—contributes to the formation of a distinct identity.
Thus, separateness poses a significant problem, fueling tensions in the Near East today, instigating trouble in Africa, and contributing to crime in our courts. Isolation can manifest as one of the world's most disastrous forces, yet it remains the method through which nature demands that individuals regulate their own destinies.
Without this separateness, individuals could not transcend it, nor rise above through a series of patient experiences. These experiences form a gradual upward journey toward a fuller understanding. Therefore, any intent to uncover life's answers must begin through cultivation and transformation of one's own nature.
This transformation has been represented through myriad alchemical symbols and creatures. Various beings and forms have been woven into an extensive and intricate spectrum of alchemical symbols, all essentially designations for processes occurring within ourselves. One notable symbol, for instance, is that of the rampaging wolf, recurring as a hindering factor in the transformation of base metals.
This ravenous wolf may represent manifold impediments within man, manifesting in forms not literally wolfish. Instead, it embodies the characteristics of hunger, power, and difficulty pertaining to therein. It symbolizes the appetite and ambition that can defeat the individual, serving as a reminder of our struggle.
Many individuals exhibit wolfish attitudes in their demands. Hence, the wolf signifies man's physical errors—his ambitions and appetites that undermine him. The world must undergo transformation; it must evolve into a new creature, adopting new colors as illustrated through alchemical transmutation processes, culminating in what is termed in chemistry as the peacock's tail—a dazzling, iridescent display.
These iridescent lights represent the unfoldment of the multi-faceted, diverse nature of the soul. Ultimately, the alchemist seeks the soul's liberation from everything else that inhibits it, striving for complete freedom. Within the soul resides everything necessary for the common good. It is the soul that holds essential wisdom, imparting this wisdom throughout the rest of our being.
True love and integrity emerge from that soul. Consequently, a deficiency within human relationships directly correlates with a lack of soul maturity. Therefore, we encounter this mysterious concept of "the chain." While the Alexandrians likely drew from ancient symbols to develop this concept, their methodology diverged considerably from Homer's original intent.
In the realm of alchemy, we note that alchemy also existed in China, likely dating back to as early as 500 to 1000 years before the Christian era. It likely also existed in India and various other nations but tended to focus on physical chemical studies, primarily aimed at transmuting metals for wealth accumulation. Yet wealth constitutes a false value, the so-called "fool's gold" sought in vain by chemists, as many have perished from hoarding it.
This physical end was predominant in the chemical experiments of most past civilizations. In modern times, we see a similar pervasive utility-driven end reflecting in our scientific pursuits—more conveniences and elevated standards of living, enabling evasion of the rightful consequences of our actions.
Thus, alchemy and chemistry in ancient contexts often lacked a philosophical and religious basis, focusing predominately on profit. Material profit hinders any art, stunting its growth by thousands of years, and obstructing the potential for its fruition.
Prior to the Alexandrian era, transmuting base metals was generally perceived as a literal undertaking. In Alexandria, this entire concept transitioned into metaphysical discussions, thus transforming the alchemist into a philosophical thinker, one whose transformations were higher and more exalted.
Having examined the literal chemist, we can delve into how the literal understanding persists today. We recognize the numerous institutions employing chemists—cosmetic companies, pharmaceutical firms, and others conducting constant research and development. We understand the links between chemistry and laboratory experimentation—repetitions yielding limited knowledge.
Instances arise where rules go unrigorously enforced, like vivisection, where it was assumed a single animal's recorded sacrifice could suffice to share information across institutions. Yet, the need to torture multiple animals to obtain duplicate results evidences a disturbing repeat of practices resulting in minimal additional knowledge, which the Alexandrian Hermetists considered debased and false.
However, higher aspects of a materialistic nature remain overlooked. In India, mystical sects exist alongside yoga; as we explore Hermetic traditions, we begin to discern the shared yogic and alchemical disciplines within. This understanding traces back to trading routes, where Egyptian scholarship intersected with ideas and knowledge from the East.
Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and Hermetic science bear traces of yogic structures within their interpretations. This prompts an argument that the entire system concerns a process of uncovering potentials within the individual. Yoga serves as an Eastern term while alchemy signifies its counterpart in the West. Both signify a pathway and a series of steps guiding individuals from Earth to the realm of the gods.
According to alchemical tradition, man himself epitomizes the abode of the deities; every conceivable answer must be attained from within. Nutritional relationships with the planet, an electrical affinity with the Sun, and magnetic relationships with the Moon all supply energy akin to energy derived from an electrical source.
Yet all applications of that energy must evolve within the individual. He must harness that pure energy dispersed throughout all space to fulfill his own needs. By doing so, he must gradually consume and utilize that energy to perfect his essence. Recently, I encountered an intriguing film examining the intricate structure of insects; these minute beings host complexities invisible without a microscope.
Their internal workings reveal a profound mystery; scientists remain perplexed as to how such intricacy evolved. The essence of life—energy, motion—is ever present, robust evidence of a long-range evolutionary process in harmony with Omar's golden chain. Continuous patterns and lawful processes echo throughout nature, yet the origin of these mysteries remains elusive.
No physical faculty can unveil the essence of oneself or answer the questions of existence; humans must transcend even their own physical nature, beyond the endocrine system and sensory perceptions, to uncover something deeper. Individuals must attain direct experiences of the force driving all things before ignorance can dissipate. Nevertheless, a certain participative acknowledgment exists, recognized by the alchemists.
Various orders within their ranks were acknowledged: adepts who perfected the great work, and the illuminates, the mystics who comprehended the purpose. The illuminates experienced glimpses of reality, overshadowed by doubt yet nurtured by courage. They sensed the truth, enriched their lives with expanded consciousness, yet were never fully able to attain. They operated within a deeper understanding that elevates them above those who have not yet sensed this reality.
The yogic aspects correspond to Homer's chain—a series of internal steps through which one ascends to divine union. This is depicted in Hermetic philosophy by the egg and embryo; steps correspond to levels of initiation essential for bringing creativity into life via gradual structural transformations. The culmination occurs at the point of birth, paralleling the nine months of gestation and culminating in the tenth month.
Essentially, a birth from the womb of alchemical art exists within the shell, while the magnetic field surrounding the individual acts as an aura—enclosing and containing all the energies. This field serves as the grand wall protecting him from outside infection. If compromised, it permits intrusion of detrimental forces.
Within this structure, the embryo of the divine grows—the homunculus. Presently, each of us reflects a phase of that embryonic state, ultimately realizing spiritual birth as it transcends the shell of isolation to intertwine with universal purpose. Many symbols represent this ongoing process. These domains touch upon the knowledge found within the doctrines of major world religions.
They signify the Hermetic science or art—a clear scientific pathway leading to understanding life's purpose. In essence, acquiring this knowledge does not emerge from mere education; rather, it requires active growth that releases the seed of immortality within. Chemically speaking, two forms of growth exist—the physical seed flourishing in the ground that nourishes us—ultimately becoming the sustenance of another being.
Luther Burbank once expressed a desire for burial beneath an apple tree, asserting that he wished for his life to nourish the apples. The alchemist, understanding this principle, recognizes it as part of the cycle of life, which entails one living entity thriving upon another. This cycle expands from primitive life-forms and their offspring, extending through the intricate web of existence to the zenith of life itself.
Nature's structure facilitates this interconnectedness. Each step within the chain experiences growth and development until each arrives at its optimal state of fruition. Nature's design is not cruel; it is the necessary means through which separate entities can maintain individuality until they earn their unified place within the broader context of life.
All entities must undergo experiences for growth. These experiences appear enigmatic and peculiar; growth signifies every facet of life, from the tiniest gnat to the grandest galaxy, encapsulating each segment of existence as links within the golden chain. Such processes contribute to the unveiling of a divine power that belongs to us all.
When we possess that power, what then unfolds? Assuming that at some point in the distant aeons, we attain that knowledge, what occurs? According to old beliefs and alchemical principles, when we blossom fully, becoming complete in every sense, our essence—now a cosmic sun—will burst forth to create a new order of life, expansive and remarkable beyond anything known thus far.
We become the center of life amid a new evolutionary order in space. No one knows how far this continuity stretches—certainly, even the most optimistic hermetists never sought ultimate end. However, they believed that should an end be conceivable, it would not be resting in tranquility or indulging in eternal bliss but an outpouring of cosmic usefulness.
What once was a child transforms into the parent, the constant chain of life perpetuating itself. That which has matured into a cosmic sun engenders progeny—a parental force guiding the solar system. These cycles represent the trails traversed through substantial processes, enduring through ages.
This complex and vast understanding might seem befuddling; how could individuals from over two millennia ago, uninfluenced by modern advancements, conceive such abstract principles? Navigating these concepts proves challenging even for discerning minds. Yet they comprehended eternal growth as an infinite release—seeing all transitions leading towards progress, with experiences and incidents continuously shaping transformative cycles.
Thus, every element passes through various alchemical transformations within the grand cycle, reflecting moral factors that must be experienced psychologically—much like the paths chemists traverse in their laboratories. The alchemists believe the greatest master of chemistry is Elias, a figure embodying biblical symbolism.
True alchemists, the great teachers of human understanding, transcended physical experiments. Many adepts never performed physical chemical experiments; yet their internal transformations were significant. The illumined individuals, such as Plotinus, beheld the mysteries of existence, manifesting a tier of power linked within themselves.
Each one participates at a distinct level, engaging the journey towards mastery. Similarly, the old adage from Basil Valentine reverberates: “Woe unto the gold makers.” It was never about physical experimentation; gold symbolized perfection—purity—a timeless, unchanging element that could not tarnish or decay. Gold symbolizes eternal life, eternal light, and eternal truth—the essence the chemists sought.
By journeying inward and progressing along the path delineated in their ancient literature, they ascended through the mysteries of chemistry toward psychological alchemy. Rosicrucians, politically engaged in societal reform, seek universal medicine—the remedy for every ailment, not only in physical terms but as a sovereign remedy for mankind's supreme illness: imperfection.
Perfection is not a sin or misfortune; rather, it is an inescapable aspect of existence. It is inevitable for a child to mature, and for small things to grow into something greater. This collective process is not inherently wrong; it is individuals who misunderstand the principle and fail to grow or mistakenly treat it as a ruse or secret that can be bought.
As circumstances dictate, a multitude of delusions persist. Each person must climb their own version of Homer's golden chain, culminating in a reunion with the Olympian realm within themselves. The magnetic fields connect all aspects of understanding—embracing profound geography, physiology, anatomy, art, music, literature, and everything a person can imagine—converging as the master plan.
Ultimately, this master plan may not be instantly attainable, but awareness leads to overcoming futility and despair. Engaging in this understanding liberates individuals from the blame assigned to circumstances and recognizes the divine purpose, mapping every aspect of life as orchestrated by the supreme alchemist—transmuting all things into his likeness.
Feel free to ask for further modifications or clarifications!
Blog Outline in Bullet Points
I. The Hermetic Tradition
- A. Introduction to Hermes Trismegistus -
- Greek mythology & origin
- Messenger of the gods
- God of writing
- Personification of wisdom
- Guardian of Hermetic arts
- Author of the Hermetic Literature
- The Shepherd of Men
- B. Hermeticism -
- Sealed containers & internal solutions
- Examples: solar system, planet Earth, Man
- Everything has the solution within itself
- External solutions are inadequate
- Examples: chemistry, psychology, etc.
- Sealed containers & internal solutions
- C. Alexandrian Hermeticism -
- Importance of location as a crossroads
- Different religions and philosophies
- Hieroglyph of the serpent swallowing its tail
- Symbol of self-reliance and self-nurturing
- Examples: Golden Chain of Homer, food chain
- D. The Hermetic Chain -
- Links as levels of research, consciousness, and astronomy
- Living off of itself through transformation
- Food chain as a symbol of eternity and immortality
- Balance of nature
- Hermetists & Neo-Platonists on self-living systems
- Alchemist's interpretation of the food chain
II. Knowledge and its Limits
- A. Hermetic Wisdom on Human Limits -
- Difficulty in understanding the universe
- Knowing the components but not the meaning
- Understanding the processes but not the purpose
- Dependence on external answers
- Saturn as the symbol of karma and repentance
- B. The Quest for Knowledge -
- The golden chain as the link between heaven and earth
- The chain as the principle of life
- Alchemist's interpretation of the chain
- All things contain the seed of their own perfection
- The seed of divinity within man (Jacob Bemey)
- Transmutation as transformation from within
- C. The Alchemist as Gardener -
- Saturn as the gardener of the soul
- Protection and nurturing of the inner seed
- Protection from false doctrines and ideas
- The seed as the word of God
- The seed as the foundation of everything
- D. The Limitations of External Knowledge -
- Physics and metaphysics
- Astronomy, astrology, and astrotheology
- Art and music influenced by external sources
- The true artist transcends techniques
III. The Ascend and the Seed
- A. The Alexandrian Concept of Human Ascent -
- The golden chain as a ladder of ascent within the self
- Transformation of base human nature into a divine soul
- The 10 steps of alchemical transformation
- Basil Valentine on the potential of human transformation
- B. The Microcosm and the Macrocosm -
- Buddha's view of the human body as a political system
- Corruption and self-sabotage within the individual
- The human body as a microcosm of the universe
- The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
- All things are connected and reflect each other
- Internal and external answers
- C. Separateness and Union -
- The problem of isolation in human beings
- Overcoming separateness through individual growth
- The golden chain as a symbol of internal transformation
- Wolf as a symbol of human desires and challenges
- Alchemical symbols for internal processes
- D. The Soul as the Center -
- The soul as the source of wisdom, love, and integrity
- The importance of soul maturity in human relationships
- The soul as the gateway to self-realization
IV. The Hermetic Arts and Beyond
- A. Alchemy in Different Cultures -
- Differences in goals and approaches
- Emphasis on wealth vs. self-transformation
- Commercialization as a barrier to progress
- Yoga and other Eastern disciplines
- Influence of Eastern philosophies on Hermeticism
- B. The Internal Structure of Man -
- The mysteries of the human body
- The analogy of insects and their complex structures
- The source of energy and its internal processes
- The need for transcending the physical and sensory
- Direct experience of the divine as the ultimate goal
- C. Glimpses of the Divine -
- The role of the adepts, illuminates, and mystics
- Inner experiences and visions as confirmation
- Growing faith based on inner understanding
- D. The Egg and the Embryo -
- The alchemical analogy of 9 months in the womb and the 10th month of birth
- The birth of the divine being as the ultimate goal
- The magnetic field as a protective barrier
- The embryo growing into a divine Sun
- E. The Cycle of Life and Growth -
- The serpent eating its own tail as a symbol of self-sustenance
- Different forms of life supporting each other's growth
- The golden chain as a representation of interdependence
- The final goal of self-realization as the release of divine power
- F. The Responsibility of Growth -
- The cycle of growth and its benefits
- The importance of understanding and utilizing the cycle
- The responsibility of contributing to the greater whole
- The sun as a symbol of parental force and growth
- G. Eternal Growth and Release -
- The alchemical concept of continuous evolution
- The goal of becoming a cosmic sun
- The emergence of a new order of life
- The eternal cycle of transformation and regeneration
- Conclusion: The pursuit of understanding and contributing to the grand plan
Note: This is just an outline. You can add more details and examples to each section as needed. You can also rearrange the sections and adjust the wording to fit your specific style and audience.