a closer look at the spagyric process (post to my yahoo elist)
In my last essay I defined alchemy as being the study and application of the spagyric process. Now, in order to understand in more depth ust what alchemy is, it will be necessary to understand in more detail ust what the spagyric process is. So with everything I have explained up until this point we are now in a position to grasp a detailed explanation of this concept. The old alchemists learned most of what they understood about alchemy from the observation of nature's process. They explained this fact frequently in statements such as ... "my son, you must follow in nature's footsteps". For years I thought about this aspect of their work but couldn't really grasp exactly what it was that they were pointing at. What was it in nature that they were observing, and from that observation gathering together the body of knowledge we now call alchemy? In a good number of old texts on alchemy, where descriptions of natural processes are provided as examples of how alchemy operates in nature, those descriptions are often about how metals form in the earth. This is a common theme. Also it is not infrequent to see explanations of animal reproduction and basic horticulture as analogies of nature's alchemical mechanisms. But the kinds of descriptions that are given are highly symbolic, vague, incomplete (when it comes to looking for a complete picture of the alchemical process) ... and to be honest, from what we know today about natural science, the old alchemist's view of geological chemistry and physics, botany and biology are full of misconceptions. Eventually, after reading the Golden Chain of Homer one day, I realised that the place in nature that offered the clearest explanation of nature's alchemical mechanism, and the one most easily observed by anyone, and open to testing by the student alchemist, was what I might call ... the planet's macrocosmic chemical circulatory. That which modern science calls ... the cycle of precipitation. Any student of the lab tradition, of a rainy Sunday, when working in their lab keeping vigil over a distillation, while standing at the window watching the streaks of rain dripping down the window pane, can't help recognising a correspondence between what is happening in their flasks and what is happening outside in their immediate environment.
A little more contemplation on this concept and it is not hard to see that our entire planet, when viewed in the bigger picture, and considered (al)-chemically, is just a larger model of a pelicanisation or circulation. At the centre of this enclosed system is a huge mass of 'matter', composed of animal, vegetable and mineral substances. A relatively huge volume of liquid is constantly circulating within the vessel, being distilled by the heat of the sun and by heat welling up from the centre of the earth, then condensing in the atmosphere, and returning to the earth, where is soaks in to everything, washes everything, and macerates all matter laying on and in the earth's surface. Exactly the same mechanism is operating inside the alchemist's pelican (circulatory vessel), and we know from a long and careful study of alchemy that circulation is one of the 'key' techniques of the alchemical process. At the same time, as students of nature's process, we can take samples of earth, plant matter, animal matter, of sea water, river water, the water of lakes and rain water, and alchemically analyse them to discover what is going on 'out there' in nature, and what kinds of substances (alchemically speaking) are hidden in these various pieces of the planet's circulatory mechanism. In this way, if we know what we are doing, we can build up a picture of under what kinds of conditions the planet's macrocosmic al-chemistry began, what state it is in now, and where it is heading to in the future. Not only this but we can mimic this macrocosmic process microcosmically inside the flasks in our lab ... while at the same time tweaking the process so that we can perform it more efficiently, more economically, and more quickly than it is working outside in nature. The kind of results we would come up with, after a long period of research, are the kind of knowledge we see described in The Golden Chain of Homer . That text is, largely, a description of the alchemical mechanism that can be seen and investigated in nature, through the large-scale circulatory of the planet's chemical eco-system. Now, either over an very long period of this kind of investigation, in the early history of alchemy (when the basic rules of the game were being defined and laid down), or through our having inherited an accurate explanation of this body of knowledge by someone who already knew it, the fundamental doctrine of alchemy was formulated. That is, from
observing and analysing nature's macrocosmic circulatory, the old alchemists started to recognise that there was a simple but highly effective 'mechanism' working within this process. The more they studied this mechanism the more obvious it became that it was not only present in the planet's precipitation cycle, but that it was a universal mechanism, to be found in every department of nature, and in every living system. This is the mechanism which was originally conceived of as al-chemy ... God's chemistry ... and of which Paracelsus coined the term ... spagyria ... to emphasize the nature of its process. When the spagyric mechanism was first recognised, and all the extraneous pieces of natural process were removed from it, leaving us with just a raw and simple picture of what was happening in that mechanism, the following formula was established: In its most simple form it was understood that spagyrics involved a SEPARATION of a living systems integrated clockwork into four fundamental 'conditions', which were called the alchemical ELEMENTS ... or the basic Elements of the spagyric mechanism. These Elements, once separate, were then PURIFIED. That is, everything which was not strictly part of the pure Element was removed from it. Then the three PRINCIPAL Elements, once clean, were RECOMBINED back into a homogeneous living unit, which could thereafter no longer be separated back into its constituent Elemental parts. This of course is a highly simplified view of the spagyric mechanism. But it is nevertheless a valid view, because when we look at the planetary circulatory system from an alchemical point-of-view, we can see that each stage of the spagyric process is happening constantly, all at the same time, just in the way the basic formula describes. (See attached diagram). Nevertheless, as alchemists studied this basic rotary process, and closely looked at what was happening at each of its stages, they developed ways of improving on the mechanism. This is what is meant by the phrase that ... "art improves where nature has left off" [my paraphrase] ... which is often repeated by alchemical writers. The alchemist has taken what nature has to offer, and has tweaked her process 'artfully' to improve upon it. So we can imagine, somewhat
analogically, that during his working of the circulatory process, the alchemist can stop it at certain points, remove pieces of the mechanism and tweak them by more efficient methods, place the pieces back in the mechanism, and restart the process. By this means he can greatly speed up the work. From centuries of alchemical research we have therefore developed the spagyric mechanism from a basic circulatory to include all manner of dissolutions, using many and various solvents, calcinations, imbibations, sublimations, desiccations, deliquescences, etc, etc. In this manner, for example, a salt which may take years to dissolve in a liquid by simple circulation, can be dissolved in minutes if it is removed from the circulatory and volatised by some technique, then replaced back in the pelican - and so on. From the basic spagyric process, further steps in the mechanism were also discovered or added, to improve on the overall technique. For example, it was discovered that the entire work moves along far more effectively, and the outcome is far more potent, if first the crude matter which is taken in hand to begin the work is first retrograded (reverse engineered), back to its proto-state .. its ' CHAOS', and then the Elements of the substance SEPARATED from that chaos. Then at the end of the process, once the Q-STATE had been established, and the matter was again homogeneous, it was discovered that the potency of the Q-state could be amplified by manipulating it in a special way. This further stage in the work was then called MULTIPLICATION ... of the effect of the quintessence. Then, finally, the ultimate final conclusion of the work was added, to round-off the process with its logical goal ... when the Q-state was added to a dysfunctional living system in order to rectify or heal that system, and raise it to its highest expression. This final stage of the process was labeled PROJECTION, and is the completion of the alchemist's Great Work. It is not hard to imagine, then, that similar to the way in which ancient astronomers were watching the night sky, figuring out how to calculate the earth's rotation against the positions of the fixed stars, recognising that some of those stars moved, and in a strictly defined orbit, and to calculate the time it took the earth to circumambulate the sun once, and that the cycles of eclipses were predictable ... that the alchemists, themselves, were likewise watching the earth's al-chemical process, analysing and calculating its stages and developments, and coming to understand how spagria was operating and unfolding all around them.
From the above description of the way in which the spagyric mechanism operates in nature, we might also find ourselves contemplating the way in which the ancient alchemists first understood the alchemical process, in a very simple operation. In this way we should be able to strip away all of the complexity, confusion and error that is so much part of modern alchemical point-of-view, and get back to the simple, basic, root of the work ... and then from there retrace the old Adept's steps. regards rubaphilos .
