Historical connection between Eastern and Western Alchemy?

[Nungali]

One reason I am emphasizing this is to bring to the fore the extent to which modern ideas about matter and spirit, based on the 'Scientific Revolution' of the Seventeenth Century and the 'Romantic Reaction' of the Nineteenth Century, make reading back into the Sixteenth Century and earlier very difficult. This is a problem that I have emphasized in my posts in the 'Year of Reading Agrippa' thread and which I will examine in greater detail if I am able to do so.

 

Slightly OT but, relating to this important observation.

 

There is a great 12 page preface by John Romer in his book 'A History of Ancient Egypt - From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid' on such a consideration when examining history. It has lead to a great book, IMO ; the longest, most comprehensive and 'evidenced' based book I have yet to find on the Old Kingdom.

 

(And now , completely Off Topic ; how did those ancient people build such a structure ? Most probably by some type of ancient diesel fueled crane of some type;

 

[Nungali]

An idea: Perhaps we are being foolish in looking for spiritual truths in centuries-old works. Spirituality (and man) is living, evolving, and present... here and now. Is it an unreasonable conjecture that perhaps our modern interpretation of alchemy isn't the most effective and accurate from the standpoint of spiritual development?

 

No, I dont find that unreasonable but for a whole range of different reasons that I dont have time to into now (getting dark, I am on limited solar power - been overcast lately).

 

Also I dont go with any one system for spiritual development , its a wide range in my case, so I would not go along with just a ( even great ) modern take on alchemy, by itself,

 

I have fingers in many pies

 

Old works have value if considerations are made as to the inner valid contents considering their time place and personality framework ( part of which Donald pointed out above).

 

We shouldnt throw the baby out with the bath water but develop the essential (and if they are 'spiritual' or 'nature based' their inner-core should have some validity over time and external changes) into modern useful paradigms.

 

Part of this is to do with developing that inner core with new discoveries and , especially since the rise of science, (not 'scientism') new developments in that field. For me that is where " living, evolving, and present... here and now. " arises.

 

Even in my own time it changes as I grow and develop, pass through maturity towards old age. Some of my old views do seem archaic now, but within all the experiences there is gold to be extracted and operated within a new form now.

[Apech]

I just wanted to make a couple of observations on this very interesting conversation.

 

having studied Egyptian Religion for 40 years based on the original texts I have no doubt that the Emerald Tablet does constitute a transmission from ancient Egypt ... albeit one that is to a certain extent rephrased due to external influences. I'm not going to attempt a proof here ... you'll just have to take my word that this is my conclusion

 

The idea that there is a split between external alchemy and internal alchemy is relatively modern (compared to ancient history). Its dangerous to try to back project that schism onto the ancient writers and sages. I don't think they would acknowledge the difference the way we would today ... as this kind of view is based on our world view that there is an external objectively verifiable and self existent 'outer' world and another internal subjective world. To the ancients both the gross and the subtle were real aspects of the world, so working in one affected the other through correspondences and resonance and so on.

 

The origin of the Egyptian 'alchemical' view is in the formation of the world through the bodily substances of the god Atum. Whose name means 'complete' (that is whole), and his substances are his semen and spit which deified are Shu and Tefnet ... male and female (light vs. dark, dry vs. moist) rather like yin and yang. These ideas together with the idea of bodily transformation through the indentification of parts of the body with divine powers was extent at least by 2350 BC because the process is outlined in the Pyramid Texts of Unas. But these ideas must be, given their completeness and the fact that the end of the fifth dynasty was towards the end of the Old Kingdom period, much much older possibly by many centuries (some say millenia). Egyptian medicine had a system of internal channels called medw which are similar to yogic and Taoist internal alchemy channels and this was also developed in the Old Kingdom.

 

So the idea of a very ancient origin to Western alchemy and hermeticism generally is valid. But the western system has always been characterised by a kind of open pragmatism. A willingness to take ideas, images, practices and so on from anywhere if they seem appropriate and useful. So what developed historically was like this, both eclectic and consisting of inspired individual teachers rather than long historical lineages.

 

None of what I have said above suggests that Taoist practices, indeed Chinese practices came from Egypt. I would say that both the inspiration for Egypt and China was ante-diluvian that is from widespread shamanic practices which were universal in communities from before the last ice age. So it was later through the Silk Route that the ideas of East and West began to mix again and any similarities can be attributed to an even more common ancient origin.

 

Just my thoughts of course.

[FraterUFA]

 

Edited July 10, 2015 by FraterUFA

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I just wanted to make a couple of observations on this very interesting conversation.

 

having studied Egyptian Religion for 40 years based on the original texts I have no doubt that the Emerald Tablet does constitute a transmission from ancient Egypt ... albeit one that is to a certain extent rephrased due to external influences. I'm not going to attempt a proof here ... you'll just have to take my word that this is my conclusion

 

The idea that there is a split between external alchemy and internal alchemy is relatively modern (compared to ancient history). Its dangerous to try to back project that schism onto the ancient writers and sages. I don't think they would acknowledge the difference the way we would today ... as this kind of view is based on our world view that there is an external objectively verifiable and self existent 'outer' world and another internal subjective world. To the ancients both the gross and the subtle were real aspects of the world, so working in one affected the other through correspondences and resonance and so on.

 

The origin of the Egyptian 'alchemical' view is in the formation of the world through the bodily substances of the god Atum. Whose name means 'complete' (that is whole), and his substances are his semen and spit which deified are Shu and Tefnet ... male and female (light vs. dark, dry vs. moist) rather like yin and yang. These ideas together with the idea of bodily transformation through the indentification of parts of the body with divine powers was extent at least by 2350 BC because the process is outlined in the Pyramid Texts of Unas. But these ideas must be, given their completeness and the fact that the end of the fifth dynasty was towards the end of the Old Kingdom period, much much older possibly by many centuries (some say millenia). Egyptian medicine had a system of internal channels called medw which are similar to yogic and Taoist internal alchemy channels and this was also developed in the Old Kingdom.

 

So the idea of a very ancient origin to Western alchemy and hermeticism generally is valid. But the western system has always been characterised by a kind of open pragmatism. A willingness to take ideas, images, practices and so on from anywhere if they seem appropriate and useful. So what developed historically was like this, both eclectic and consisting of inspired individual teachers rather than long historical lineages.

 

None of what I have said above suggests that Taoist practices, indeed Chinese practices came from Egypt. I would say that both the inspiration for Egypt and China was ante-diluvian that is from widespread shamanic practices which were universal in communities from before the last ice age. So it was later through the Silk Route that the ideas of East and West began to mix again and any similarities can be attributed to an even more common ancient origin.

 

Just my thoughts of course. (Empahsis mine, ZYD)

 

Thank you for your contribution Apech. I will have more to say about it later, but for now I want to emphasize this:

 

The idea that there is a split between external alchemy and internal alchemy is relatively modern (compared to ancient history). Its dangerous to try to back project that schism onto the ancient writers and sages. I don't think they would acknowledge the difference the way we would today ... as this kind of view is based on our world view that there is an external objectively verifiable and self existent 'outer' world and another internal subjective world.

 

This is exactly the point that I have been trying to make and why I emphasizeda this comment:

 

major changes?

It must be remembered that Alchemy is a pre-cartesian activity and divisions like Philosophical, Mystical and Scientific are almost meaningless.--Alchemist Jack (talk) 21:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(From Wikipedia Alchemy Ariticle Talk page)

 

and posted this:

 

One reason I am emphasizing this is to bring to the fore the extent to which modern ideas about matter and spirit, based on the 'Scientific Revolution' of the Seventeenth Century and the 'Romantic Reaction' of the Nineteenth Century, make reading back into the Sixteenth Century and earlier very difficult. This is a problem that I have emphasized in my posts in the 'Year of Reading Agrippa' thread and which I will examine in greater detail if I am able to do so. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

 

Because the modern worldview which you describe is wholly the creation of the Seventeenth century and largely that of Descartes. The fact that people are constantly importing such notions into ancient writings is an unfortunate symptom of that intellectual pandemic which I call 'closet Cartesianism'.

 

The question in regard to alchemy is not the antiquity of some of the ideas that contribute to it, but when and by whom, they were applied to the field of metallurgy thus creating what we might call the Hermetic sub-field of 'external' alchemy.

 

That is why from the beginning of my posts here I have emphasized certain ideas and why I asked the question, 'why is Brandy called a distilled spirit?'

 

I hope to clarify this soon, but I have already put more time into this than I really can afford to do.

[Apech]

Looking forward to the brandy

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Before we share that 'brandy', I hope that no one minds if I expand a bit on the subject that I introduced here, the pandemic of 'closet Cartesianism':

 

Because the modern worldview which you describe is wholly the creation of the Seventeenth century and largely that of Descartes. The fact that people are constantly importing such notions into ancient writings is an unfortunate symptom of that intellectual pandemic which I call 'closet Cartesianism'.

 

In another thread I had pointed out the pervasive nature of 'closet Cartesianism' in the following way:

 

[Cartesianism is] not so much 'easy to adopt' as so built into the language and conceptual framework of the Western World and even of other societies strongly influenced by it, as to be almost impossible to avoid. Phrases such as 'ghost in the machine', 'mind over matter', etc. all presuppose this world view. Replace mind/matter with spirit/matter and you still have the same mess:

http://youtu.be/TXcEO_iUoLE

This is why the systematic examination of belief structures is important.

I could go on and on about how harmful this cultural meme has been, but that would get us too far off of this good topic. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

I have referenced my post in the 'Year of Reading Agrippa' thread and here I explain part of my reason for so emphasizing historical context:

 

Well, I hope I haven't bored anyone with this long digression into Christian thinking circa 1500, but I assure you that it was necessary. The reason why it was necessary is because there are three great intellectual 'schisms' that divide us at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century and the third millennium and the beginning of the Sixteenth Century and the Middle of the last millennium. By 1900 they were all in place and strongly influence the development of 'Occultism and Spiritual Paths' (The reference is to an interesting book by Mouni Sadhu) in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. These are the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the 'Scientific Revolution' and what has been called the 'Romantic' revolution.

I have made this long digression to give insight into one of these, the Reformation and its aftermath. Now you can say, as many reading here might, that, 'I'm not a Christian, what does this have to do with me?' Well it does, unless you grew up in a some part of the world untouched by 'Western Civilization', which is almost no where at this time, you grew up exposed to and reacting to and accepting or rejecting a 'set', which I mean in a mathematical/logical sense, of cultural memes and in general these cultural memes vary a bit between countries that have been or are predominantly Catholic or Protestant. Catholic and Protestant attitudes influenced the direction of the Scientific Revolution and determined the forms which Romanticism was to take. They were to determine what chapters of Aprippa's Three Books Barrett included in The Magus and which he left out, and they also determine why the relation between Agrippa's two major works, On Occult Philosophy and On the Vanity and Uncertainty of Arts and Sciences could even be somewhat confusing to someone otherwise so informative as Charles Nauert and all of this I hope to be able to elucidate by such digressions as this as this thread continues. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

Going back to the previous thread I tried to summarize the changes that have taken place since 1600 as follows:

 

The worldview of the Middle Ages was radically different from that which was proposed and generally adopted during the Seventeenth Century. The worldview throughout the Middle Ages was based on ancient Greek philosophy, especially the synthesis of Plato and Aristotle which was worked out in the Middle Platonist period and perfected by the late Platonists such as Plotinus, etc., and was holistic and organic. Granted Heaven may pull us one way and the World another, but there was a fundamental wholeness to it which is completely sundered by events in the Seventeenth Century.

It started with Pierre Gassendi's revival of Epicureanism and was most influential in the Philosophy of Descartes, who perhaps to his credit created a world view that was not purely materialist like the Epicurean one, still resulted in a damaging dichotomy.

By postulating that Mind and Matter were two exclusive substances, Mind a 'thinking substance' and matter and 'extended substance', he left no way for them to interact, all bodies perceptible by sense, whether animate or inanimate were ruled by purely mechanical causes, this made animals machines and the universe a giant mechanical clockwork. Even the human body was a machine, which somehow or other also managed to maintain some connection to the 'thinking substance'. Descartes postulated that the connection was the pineal gland, but it didn't take long for people to realize that the pineal gland would also be part of the 'extended substance' and thus part of the machine and of no use in explaining mind/body interaction.

This is the whole origin of 'the ghost in the machine' that haunts Western Culture. Pretty much all Western Philosophy after 1700 is infected with it and either comes up with a clumsy work around or banishes the 'ghost' from the 'machine' and embraces a pure mechanistic materialism, or rejects the 'machine' as unreal and an illusion, and declares the 'ghost' to be the only real thing. This is the origin of modern materialism in the late Eighteenth Century and also of the 'Romanicist Rebellion' against it starting around 1800 and basing itself on Kant's clumsy work around, by sundering mind into 'reason' and 'understanding', which were, as mutually exclusive 'faculties', as much a problem as the one they were intended to solve.

This is of course a very superficial account of a long,complex period of development, but all that I have time for right now. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

I don't have time right now to be writing long original posts, so I hope no one minds my quoting from my other posts. If anyone doubts the huge gulf that separates from the modern worldview from the earlier worldview, they might find my attempts in the Agrippa thread to clarify the thinking of the Western Christian Church, to the modern Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant sects that are the result of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. That only deals with the effects of one of these three 'cultural earthquakes', that have left the past of the West as much of a terra incognita as any completely foreign culture.

[Nungali]

I would say that both the inspiration for Egypt and China was ante-diluvian that is from widespread shamanic practices which were universal in communities from before the last ice age. So it was later through the Silk Route that the ideas of East and West began to mix again and any similarities can be attributed to an even more common ancient origin.

 

Just my thoughts of course.

 

I have looked for traces in PIE culture as a root source (the location fits with the Silk Route considering the most likely locations of the centre of their Empire (Aryana Vaeja) , no success as yet. There does seem some hints in latter Zoroastrian concepts related to haoma (the ancient vedic 'lost' Soma) 'culture' but nothing overtly alchemical

 

http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/haoma/index.htm

 

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I came to the conclusion that I could not deal with the matters under consideration in one post and have chosen to post a series. The best point to begin is with Aristotle's theory of the Four Causes and in particular Formal and Final causes. The reason being that from Hellenistic times until the end of the Seventeenth Century these were fundamental to understanding alchemy and magic.

 

Back in the early 1970s I was trying to understand both Agrippa's First Book of Occult Philosophy, which deals with natural magic and also the literature of alchemy. One work in particular helped me to understand both and that was Bonus of Ferrara's New Pearl of Great Price. I will quote from that in some detail in a subsequent post, for now I am going to quote from posts that I made elucidating and defending Agrippa's doctrine of 'occult virtues' in terms of Aristotle's Formal Causes.

 

 

...historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the scientific component of past observations and beliefs from what their predecessors had readily labeled error and superstition. The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. (My emphasis, Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 2)

I might add that they are also not in principle 'irrational' much less illogical. Rationality is different from mere logic, though it uses the tools of logic, it contains evaluative meta-principles, such as Occam's razor which are used to evaluate merely logical judgments. Logic is so mechanical that like computers, which are more or less embodiments of 'logic' and its operations in binary form, it is very much a 'garbage in, garbage out' affair. If you start from bad premises the results are not going to be good just because you talk about them logically.

 

Agrippa's work is full of 'out-of-date theories', which are not irrational because the religious controversies and intellectual fashions of the 17^th Century made them unintelligible to subsequent thinkers. The one which I intend to deal with here is called 'occult virtues'. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

 

 

What I discovered in Bonus' work was a discussion of Alchemy in Aristotelian terms and while I did not have the level of expertise in either Plato or Aristotle that I was develop by the end of the 70s, I saw the idea as very interesting and Agrippa's first book helped me understand alchemy and an Aristotelian view of alchemy helped me to understand Agrippa's First Book. In some ways alchemy can be viewed as a very specific application of the doctrine of occult virtues and if I was to later characterize Agrippa's Three Books, somewhat jokingly, as a textbook of Platonic engineering, which by the way does include consciousness as part of 'engineering', alchemy could be viewed as a type of Platonic 'chemical' engineering.

What follows is largely from one source, an essay by Thomas Kuhn entitled 'Concepts of Cause in the Development of Physics', which can be found in a collection of his essays The Essential Tension, on p. 21, but this one essay summarizes in a neat form the result of years of study and reflection on the problems of the relationship between magic and science and the validity of formal causes and its applicability to the question of 'occult virtues'.

 

 

'Until about 1600 the principal tradition in physics was Aristotelian, and Aristotle's analysis of cause was dominant too. The latter, however, continued to be of use long after the former had been discarded, and it therefore merits separate examination at the start. According to Aristotle, every change, including coming into being, had four causes: material, efficient, formal, and final. These four exhausted the types of answers that could be given to a request for an explanation of change. In the case of a statue, for example, the material cause of its existence is the marble; its efficient cause is the force exerted on the marble by the sculptor's tools; its formal cause is the idealized form of the finished object, present from the start in the sculptor's mind; and the final cause is an increase in the number of beautiful objects accessible to the members of Greek society.' (Emphasis is mine)(Kuhn, Thomas; The Essential Tension, p. 24)

I prefer the example of a bronze statue because such a statue requires a mold, which makes the concept of a formal cause as something that can exist prior to and long after a particular statue, being the formal cause of many statues in different times and even places. Formal causes are like that, individuals are instances of them. Remember that Agrippa in his discussion of occult virtues speaks both of exemplary forms that exist on a higher level and are associated with ideas in the Platonic sense and 'specificall' and express forms, by which he means there are forms for each species of things such as particular stones like hematite, plants like pomegranate, or animals like dogs.

 

Final causes are motivating factors, the whys of something, why it is the way it is, or why it was done. The following implicitly deals with final causes, and brings out an important aspect of final causes, self-realization:

'In principle, every change possessed all four causes, one of each type, but in practice the sort of cause invoked for effective explanation varied greatly from field to field. When considering the science of physics, Aristotelians ordinarily made use of only two causes, formal and final, and these regularly merged into one. Violent changes, those that disrupted the natural order of the cosmos, were of course attributed to efficient causes, to pushes and pulls, but changes of this sort were not thought capable of further explanation and thus lay outside of physics. That subject dealt only with the restoration and maintenance of natural order, and these depended upon formal causes alone. Thus, stones fell to the center of the universe because their nature or form could be entirely realized only in that position; fire rose to the periphery for the same reason; and celestial matter realized its nature by turning regularly and eternally in place.' (Emphasis is mine) (Kuhn, Thomas; The Essential Tension, p. 24)

In Aristotle this notion of self-realization is embodied in concepts of potency and act. A seed has the potential to be a plant, in order for this potential to become actual it mush be planted in suitable soil, watered and exposed to sunlight. The result is the actualization or realization of the potential inherent in the seed. In Mencian Confucianism every person has the potential to be a sage, but few people ever actualize that potential. Very often the final cause and the formal cause are so closely linked that the thing embodying the formal cause the thing in question becomes desirable in itself. This is the logic behind the saying 'Virtue is its own reward'. In the tradition of Classical Philosophy virtue was not merely moral rectitude founded on the suppression of 'natural' impulses, it was rather the realization of higher aspects of human potential which brought 'natural' impulses into proper alignment with higher values and, like the 'occult virtues' which I discussed in earlier posts, where occult virtue is magical power, virtue at once a source of charismatic power, personal integration and emotional satisfaction. Similar ideas exist in both Confucianism and Daoism.

 

 

In this world view everything was a manifestation of its formal cause, not the sum of its parts, and the fundamental view was that everything was in a sense alive, even metals being 'generated in the bowels of the earth'. Plato had characterized the whole world as a huge animal, not a giant clockwork and it was this organic model of the world which prevailed among the educated for almost 2000 years.

 

Materialism reintroduced around 1600, well on its way to supremacy by 1700, tops out between 1800 and 1900, but since 1900 almost all of the advances of sciences have more and more undermined it, so that even by the middle of the Twentieth Century a forward thinking person could say:

...empiricism, though it persists, is a relic of the past without scientific basis, and has itself proved to be, in this age of evolution, relativity and quanta, an outworn and outmoded superstition. (Errol Harris, Nature, Mind and Modern Science, 1954, p. 453)

By empiricism Harris means modern materialism, which he analyses in the book in a very clear way. Now 60 years later his case can be made even more forcefully and some argue that formal causes are already the dominant causal explanation in science:

 

 

'What is to be concluded from this brief sketch? As a minimal summary I suggest the following. Though the narrow concept of cause was a vital part of the physics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its importance declined in the nineteenth and has almost vanished in the twentieth. ... the structure of physical explanation closely resembles that which Aristotle developed in analyzing formal causes. Effects are deduced from a few specified innate properties of the entities with which the explanation is concerned. The logical status of those properties and of the explanations deduced from them is the same as that of Aristotle's forms. Cause in physics has again become cause in the broader sense, that is, explanation.' (Emphasis is mine) (Kuhn, Thomas; The Essential Tension, p. 28)

To summarize, the 'mechanical philosophy' of the 17th Century, which became the basis of modern materialism, was never and could never be a coherent philosophy, problems with it appeared as early as Newton, whose theory of Gravity was criticized by the likes of Christian Huygens, the greatest observational astronomer of the 17th Century, as being a retrograde revival of occult virtues and action at a distance, in contrast to the then fashionable purely mechanical physics of Descartes which proved then, as any purely mechanical physics must fail, to be unable to provide a coherent physics. Quantum mechanics, which is really very unmechanical, can even be viewed as the final reductio ad absurdam disproof of materialism. Formal causes are not per se wrong and have been shown to be effective in physics. Why they and their correlated concept of occult virtues in magical theory are rejected in neo-magical theory is the result of ignorance and prejudice, not of rational analysis of traditional sources, either in the early 19th Century when the magical revival was starting, or now after 200 years of reductionist incursions into Western magical theory and practice. (Emphasis added, ZYD)

 

 

In the above I was speaking mostly about magic, but the same goes for alchemy.

 

 

 

Edit: Added also to this sentence 'natural magic and also the literature of alchemy', to emphasize that they were separate studies. Agrippa's First Book does mention alchemy, but certainly does not deal with the literature of alchemy as the first version implied. I have also tried to tidy spacing in quotes.

Edited July 30, 2014 by Zhongyongdaoist

[Apech]

Odd that people hold on to 'materialism' in a post Hiroshima age ... where it became all to evident that matter is energy anyway and so perhaps they should put their fundamental belief in 'energy' as the basis of reality rather than matter. Although of course no one really understands what energy actually is - even though we use the term all the time. Pragmatic empiricism is stronger I think as it does not necessarily carry with it a particular view of the ultimate nature of substance even though it might seem to. What is hardest to shake is the idea that the objective world is the 'real real' and all else is imagination (in the weak sense) all our thoughts, feelings and so on just phantasms or noise in the information stream of dull facts.

 

(had to get that off my chest).

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Odd that people hold on to 'materialism' in a post Hiroshima age ... where it became all to evident that matter is energy anyway and so perhaps they should put their fundamental belief in 'energy' as the basis of reality rather than matter. Although of course no one really understands what energy actually is - even though we use the term all the time. Pragmatic empiricism is stronger I think as it does not necessarily carry with it a particular view of the ultimate nature of substance even though it might seem to. What is hardest to shake is the idea that the objective world is the 'real real' and all else is imagination (in the weak sense) all our thoughts, feelings and so on just phantasms or noise in the information stream of dull facts.

 

(had to get that off my chest). (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

What is hardest to shake is the idea that the objective world is the 'real real' and all else is imagination (in the weak sense) all our thoughts, feelings and so on just phantasms or noise in the information stream of dull facts: This is exactly what I have described as 'Closet Cartesianism' and yes it is hard to shake off and for reasons that I have mentioned, it is built into the language of object and subject. One needs to start to speak and think of the world differently.

 

I became acutely aware of these problems in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the solution which I adopted at the time was to adopt Platonism as my working model of reality. This decision had many benefits, but I cannot go into them in detail here. While I wasn't to read the book from which the following excerpt is taken until circa 2000, I was very familiar with the ideas from other works:

 

It may be, however, that Newton is an exceedingly important figure for still a third reason. He not only found a precise mathematical use for concepts like force, mass, inertia ; he gave new meanings to the old terms space, time, and motion, which had hitherto been unimportant but were now becoming the fundamental categories of men's thinking. In his treatment of such ultimate concepts, together with his doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, his notion of the nature of the physical universe and of its relation to human knowledge (in all of which he carried to a more influential position a movement already well advanced) —in a word, in his decisive portrayal of the ultimate postulates of the new science and its successful method as they appeared to him, Newton was constituting himself a philosopher rather than a scientist as we now distinguish them. He was presenting a metaphysical groundwork for the mathematical march of mind which in him had achieved its most notable victories. Imbedded directly and prominently in the Principia, Newton's most widely studied work, these metaphysical notions were carried wherever his scientific influence penetrated, and borrowed a possibly unjustified certainty from the clear demonstrability of the gravitational theorems to which they are appended as Scholia. Newton was unrivalled as a scientist—it may appear that he is not above criticism as a metaphysician. He tried scrupulously, at least in his experimental work, to avoid metaphysics. He disliked hypotheses, by which he meant explanatory propositions which were not immediately deduced from phenomena. At the same time, following his illustrious predecessors, he does give or assume definite answers to such fundamental questions as the nature of space, time, and matter ; the relations of man with the objects of his knowledge ; and it is just such answers that constitute metaphysics. The fact that his treatment of these great themes—borne as it was over the educated world by the weight of his scientific prestige—was covered over by this cloak of positivism, may have become itself a danger. It may have helped not a little to insinuate a set of uncritically accepted ideas about the world into the common intellectual background of the modern man. What Newton did not distinguish, others were not apt carefully to analyse. The actual achievements of the new science were undeniable furthermore, the old set of categories, involving, as it appeared, the now discredited medieval physics, was no longer an alternative to any competent thinker. In these circumstances it is easy to understand how modern philosophy might have been led into certain puzzles which were due to the unchallenged presence of these new categories and presuppositions. p.20-21

 

The French Encyclopdists and materialists of the middle of the eighteenth century felt themselves one and all to be more consistent Newtonians than Newton himself. p. 21 to 22

 

The only way to bring this issue to the bar of truth is to plunge into the philosophy of early modern science, locating its key assumptions as they appear, and following them out to their classic formulation in the metaphysical paragraphs of Sir Isaac Newton. The present is a brief historical study which aims to meet this need. The analysis will be sufficiently detailed to allow our characters to do much speaking for themselves, and to lay bare as explicitly as possible the real interests and methods revealed in their work. At its close the reader will understand more clearly the nature of modern thinking and judge more accurately the validity of the contemporary scientific world-view. p. 22 (E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

The Book was written and published in the late 1920s, but is still considered to be sound history of science.

 

The worldview which Newton: 'carried to a more influential position a movement already well advanced', was basically a worldview of extended substances which were 'objects (hence 'objective') to which the senses were subject (hence subjective), this worldview was created largely by the work of Descartes and Locke.

[Apech]

... even more interesting when you look at what Newton himself actually believed about the world and all that is in it. The poster boy of the new science didn't even buy the basic world-view. Duller minds which came after firmed it up for him no doubt. While Billy Blake was shouting at them about the power of the imagination and that energy was pure delight.

[GrandmasterP]

Newton was a closet Unitarian.

He had to keep that quiet or he'd have lost his Fellowship ( tenure).

[Apech]

Newton was a closet Unitarian. He had to keep that quiet or he'd have lost his Fellowship ( tenure).

 

What! he wanted to unite all closets into one almighty cupboard?

[stefos]

Hi all,

 

The salient point here is "Yes, there IS a historical connection between "East" and "West."

 

Francis Yates wrote about this stuff in her books.

 

The Troubadours, The Cabbalists/Kabbalists, Rosicrucians, and magickal schools (Edward Dee) and Paracelsus are all interrelated.

 

Now, the salient issue here is "Is there a school in existence today in the West which has a valid lineage in alchemical things?"

 

For example, The Rosicrucians = Many groups talk about being "Rosicrucian" but do they have the practices the Rosicrucians REALLY had?

 

I have the book "The Secret symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th & 17th century" in English & in the original German.

In it, "Figura Magia et Cabbalistica" is mentioned, translated into English it means "Figures which render/show/are of Magic & Kabbalah." So, to my immediate understanding any real Rosicrucian group must teach magic & Kabbalah and if they don't, they're probably a fake Rosicrucian body.

 

Comments?

[Nungali]

It depends on definition. In my tradition the definition of a Rosicrucian was similar to a Bodhisatva. They have achieved a certain level but defray advancement to assist others. Its a very social level and should be concerned with social welfare (generally or within the specific Order) and much of its work is to do with healing.

 

IMO the Magic and Kabbalah are a means to an end and not essentials. Although historically it is very tied into , at least, alchemical symbolism.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Nungali

[stefos]

It depends on definition. In my tradition the definition of a Rosicrucian was similar to a Bodhisatva. They have achieved a certain level but defray advancement to assist others. Its a very social level and should be concerned with social welfare (generally or within the specific Order) and much of its work is to do with healing.

 

IMO the Magic and Kabbalah are a means to an end and not essentials. Although historically it is very tied into , at least, alchemical symbolism.

 

Hi,

 

May I ask which tradition you belong to? Is it Rosicrucian in nature with roots in Europe?

 

Also, Why would this book "The Secret symbols..." have alchemical plates with Magic and Kabbalah on them IF they weren't integral to actual Rosicrucian practice?

 

Finally, I don't know what kind of "magic" this text "The Secret symbols...." is referring to and would assume that is part of being in the order before you know. What do you think?

 

Thanks,

Stefos

Edited September 2, 2014 by stefos

[FraterUFA]

 

Edited July 10, 2015 by FraterUFA

[Nungali]

Hi,

 

May I ask which tradition you belong to? Is it Rosicrucian in nature with roots in Europe?

 

Yes. (Without getting into what one might consider valid 'roots' ... one could even say that AMORC { not my tradition} is Rosicrucian in nature and has 'roots' in Europe .)

 

Here is the dilema; one of the books many people like or seem to say has validity is Case's 'The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order -

 

http://ehrati-occultbooks.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/paul-foster-case-true-and-invisible.html

 

Although I like the book , the title does outline the dilemma

 

Also, Why would this book "The Secret symbols..." have alchemical plates with Magic and Kabbalah on them IF they weren't integral to actual Rosicrucian practice?

 

Well, in retrospect, I say they are not essential , they certainly helped me ... they may be integral to you or others. I dont mean to suggest anyone should avoid them or that they have no worth ... but I also dont see that they need to be essentially Kabbalistic , although this is one of the frameworks back then, in an hermetic context.

 

I worked with these for a while :

 

 

at times some of the emblems triggered things in me that I was trying to work out or come to terms with , that I just couldnt frame, the symbology here helped me a lot (as it does with all mystical subjects) , but the dynamics were unfolding in multiple areas as well, the emblems helped but the essential 'messages' and realisations IMO come through nature or working with and in the processes of nature.

 

Also, they were developed from a different mindset ... to use them with some modern mindsets might lead to very different conclusions. When I have further explored my own mindset and understood the old mindset more I may do revision on these ... and then I could have a different opinion.

 

Finally, I don't know what kind of "magic" this text "The Secret symbols...." is referring to and would assume that is part of being in the order before you know. What do you think?

 

Thanks,

Stefos

 

Its hard to tell without seeing what you are refering to, I tried a search and noting came up.

 

Also this statement is a little confusing to me:

 

"I have the book "The Secret symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th & 17th century" in English & in the original German.

In it, "Figura Magia et Cabbalistica" is mentioned, translated into English it means "Figures which render/show/are of Magic & Kabbalah." So, to my immediate understanding any real Rosicrucian group must teach magic & Kabbalah and if they don't, they're probably a fake Rosicrucian body."

 

It seems the book has some Kabbalistic and magical 'figures' ( ? ) ... okay, a Rosicrucian system can or does and did use them historically, it is integral to an hermetic development in Europe and that did include Kabbalah and magic and astrology and alchemy and ... but I dont see how not teaching Kabbalah and magic makes them a fake group. It depends on whether one looks at means or aims.

 

What is the aim of the Rosicrucian ? If that aim can be achieved by better methods in a new time should we still insist on the old forms and not incorporate the new ?

 

There is the whole issue of what constitutes 'teaching' as well. In my tradition it was not 'teaching' kabbalah and magic ... but it used them to teach and communicate the aims and to assist and outline the stages of growth, initiation and development (and the the things that can occur during these stages to the individual internally and externally). To learn the actual essentials of Kabbalah and magic was up to the individual, whether from others in the group as a network ( which at times resulted in people with a specific developed skill being able to teach those 'more advanced' in the group hierarchy ) . Some level of education was required and some examination as there is little point of doing a ceremony if you dont understand the symbolism and correspondences . So, they didnt teach magic and kabbalah but used it to teach.

 

(I hope that made sense ? )

Edited September 3, 2014 by Nungali

[Nungali]

I meant to mention this source as well. I first found it unreadable and too specific to its own tradition.

 

A few years later, after more experience I was able to compare the essential nature and 'inward reality' of the 'symbolic variations' of different traditions better. Then on a second reading of the Book I was quiet blown away ... and saw some similar processes from a different perspective ... and also affirmed some things I had been curious about.

 

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA099/English/RSP1966/TheRos_index.html

 

(Try the last chapter. If one can get past the Atlantean and ray stuff one gets to " The pupil will have entered deeply enough into the experience when certain symptoms appear, an external symptom and an inner vision." and the stages of this set out. )

 

I am not Christian or an Anthroposophist but it certainly was an eye opener. Some might not make the connections or have an affinity with it . The things that most interested me was the similarities to do with unusual physical experiences (mine, others in the group I was in, what Steiner describes and some of the old Rosicrucian Emblems) between two totally different traditions and Steiner's take on those processes. Nowadays I put it all down to 'psychology' (that is, the 'Nungali version' of it). If an analogy / 'symbol system' outlines the stages and processes of human spiritual development and is valid, it should be able to translate and have affinity with other valid systems and be identified with processes in nature.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Nungali

[FraterUFA]

 

Edited July 10, 2015 by FraterUFA

[Nungali]

I've always liked this passage by Franz Hartmann;

 

" LET IT BE KNOWN that there exists, unknown to the great crowd, a very ancient order of sages, whose object is the amelioration and spiritual elevation of mankind, by means of conquering error and aiding men and women in their efforts of attaining the power of recognizing the truth. This Order has existed already in the most remote and prehistoric times and it has manifested its activity secretly and openly in the world under different names and in various forms; it has caused social and political revolutions and proved to be the rock of salvation in times of danger and misfortune. It has always upheld the banner of freedom against tyranny, in whatever shape this appeared, whether as clerical or political, or social despotism or oppression of any kind. To this secret order every wise and spiritually enlightened person belongs by right of his or her nature; because they all, even if they are personally unknown to each other, are one in their purpose and object, and they all work under the guidance of the one light of truth. Into this sacred Society no one can be admitted by another, unless he has the power to enter it himself by virtue of his own interior illumination; neither can any one after he has once entered, be expelled, unless he should expel himself by becoming unfaithful to his principles and forget again the truths which he has learned by his own experience. "

[stefos]

A school? Probably not, because organizations tend to come and go. But a direct lineage is undoubtedly a reality.

 

The Rosicrucians followed a system of direct teacher-student transmission. In fact, many teachers had multiple students.

 

Considering the importance of the knowledge they possessed, to think that there is nobody alive today who knows the secrets of alchemy would mean that they intentionally wanted this knowledge to die off and/or there was nobody available to carry it on. Both are preposterous.

 

Hi FraterUFA,

 

Which organization do you belong to sir/ma'am if I may ask publicly and kindly ask for a response in private?

 

Yes. (Without getting into what one might consider valid 'roots' ... one could even say that AMORC { not my tradition} is Rosicrucian in nature and has 'roots' in Europe .)

 

Here is the dilema; one of the books many people like or seem to say has validity is Case's 'The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order -

 

http://ehrati-occultbooks.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/paul-foster-case-true-and-invisible.html

 

Although I like the book , the title does outline the dilemma

 

 

Well, in retrospect, I say they are not essential , they certainly helped me ... they may be integral to you or others. I dont mean to suggest anyone should avoid them or that they have no worth ... but I also dont see that they need to be essentially Kabbalistic , although this is one of the frameworks back then, in an hermetic context.

 

I worked with these for a while :

 

 

at times some of the emblems triggered things in me that I was trying to work out or come to terms with , that I just couldnt frame, the symbology here helped me a lot (as it does with all mystical subjects) , but the dynamics were unfolding in multiple areas as well, the emblems helped but the essential 'messages' and realisations IMO come through nature or working with and in the processes of nature.

 

Also, they were developed from a different mindset ... to use them with some modern mindsets might lead to very different conclusions. When I have further explored my own mindset and understood the old mindset more I may do revision on these ... and then I could have a different opinion.

 

 

Its hard to tell without seeing what you are refering to, I tried a search and noting came up.

 

Also this statement is a little confusing to me:

 

"I have the book "The Secret symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th & 17th century" in English & in the original German.

In it, "Figura Magia et Cabbalistica" is mentioned, translated into English it means "Figures which render/show/are of Magic & Kabbalah." So, to my immediate understanding any real Rosicrucian group must teach magic & Kabbalah and if they don't, they're probably a fake Rosicrucian body."

 

It seems the book has some Kabbalistic and magical 'figures' ( ? ) ... okay, a Rosicrucian system can or does and did use them historically, it is integral to an hermetic development in Europe and that did include Kabbalah and magic and astrology and alchemy and ... but I dont see how not teaching Kabbalah and magic makes them a fake group. It depends on whether one looks at means or aims.

 

What is the aim of the Rosicrucian ? If that aim can be achieved by better methods in a new time should we still insist on the old forms and not incorporate the new ?

 

There is the whole issue of what constitutes 'teaching' as well. In my tradition it was not 'teaching' kabbalah and magic ... but it used them to teach and communicate the aims and to assist and outline the stages of growth, initiation and development (and the the things that can occur during these stages to the individual internally and externally). To learn the actual essentials of Kabbalah and magic was up to the individual, whether from others in the group as a network ( which at times resulted in people with a specific developed skill being able to teach those 'more advanced' in the group hierarchy ) . Some level of education was required and some examination as there is little point of doing a ceremony if you dont understand the symbolism and correspondences . So, they didnt teach magic and kabbalah but used it to teach.

 

(I hope that made sense ? )

Hi Nungali,

 

Which organization do you belong to sir/ma'am if I may ask publicly and kindly ask for a response in private?

 

 

Thank you both,

Stefos

 

I will return the answer in kind privately as well.

[FraterUFA]

 

Edited July 10, 2015 by FraterUFA

[Nungali]

Mine was a 'spurious derivation' out of 'R+C Heredom'. (That is, I am no longer an active member in any esoteric or religious organisation. )

 

This article http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/high_degrees_freemasonry.html @ "Esoteric Freemasonry" gives an outline of its developments.