Hello and Welcome

If you have made it to this page

and are not a member,

I suggest you sign up.

It's a free forum

so you don't have to pay

anything.

There are lots more features for you to use

if you sign up.

Also your welcome ot make

suggestions.

THE ALCHEMISTIC LETTER

TO THE BROTHER ADEPT WHO DARES

TRY TO DISCOVER ZOOASTER'S CAVE,

OR THE PHILOSOPHER'S INTELLECTUAL ECHOES,

BY MEANS OF WHICH THEY COMMUNICATE

TO ONE ANOTHER FROM THEIR CAVES.

Know thou, that Hermetic Art. Evolved in a dim,

mystic age, before antiquity began,

it endured through the slowly rolling cycles to be bandied

about by the ever-ready flippancy of

nineteenth century students.

It has lived, because it is endowed with

that quality which never dies------TRUTH.

Modern philosophy, of which chemistry

is but a fragment,

draws its sustenance from the prime facts which were

revealed in anient Egypt through Hermetic thought,

and fixed by the Hermetic stylus.

"The Hermetic allegories,"

so various in interpretable

susceptibility, led subsequent

thinkers into speculations and experimentations,

which have resulted profitably to the world.

It is not strange that some of the followers of Hermes,

especially the more mercurial and imaginative,

should have evolved nebulous theories,

no longer explainable,

and involving recondite

spiritual considerations.

Know thou that the ultimate on psycho-chemical

investigation is the proximate of the infinite.

Accordingly,

a class came to believe that

a projecction of natural mental

faculties into an advanced state of

consciousness called the "s..wisdon faculty"

constitutes the final possibility of Alchemy.

The attainment of this exalted condition is till

believed practicable by many earnest savants.

Once on this lofty plane,

the individual would not be

trammelled by material obstacles,

but would abide in that spiritual placidity which

is the exquisite realization of mortal perfection.

So exalted he would be in naked parallelism with

Omniscience, and through

his illuminated understanding,

could feast his soul on those exalted

pleasures which are only less than deific.

Notwithstanding the exploitings of a

number of the philosophers

in which by reason of our inability to comprehend,

sense seemed lost in a passage of

in-cohesive dreamery and

resonancy of terminology,

some of the purest spiritual

researchers

the world has ever known,

were made in the dawn of history.

The much abused

alchemical philosophers existed upon a plane,

in some respects above the level of the science of today.

Many of them lived for the good of the world only in an

atmosphere above the materialistic hordes that people the world,

and toiling over their crucibles and alembics

,died in their cells "uttering no voice" Take,

for example, Eirenaeus Philalethes, who, born in

1623,

lived contmporaneously with Robert Boyle.

A fragment from his writings will illustrate

the purpose which

impelled the searcher for the true light of

alchemy to record his discoveries in allegories

and we have no

right to question the honesty

of his utterances:

"The Searcher of all hearts knows that I write the truth:

nor is there any cause to accuse me of envy.

I write with an unterrified quill in an unheard of style,

to the honor of God, to the profit of my neighbors,

with contepmt of the world and

its riches, because Elias, the artist,

is already born, and now glorious things are declared of the city of God.

I dare affirm that I do possess more

riches than the whole known world is worth,

but I can not make use of it because of the snares of knaves.

I disdain, loathe,

and detest the idolizing of silver and gold by

which the pomps and vanities of the world are celebrated.

Ah! filthy evil! Ah! Vain Nothingness!

Believe ye that I conceal the art out of envy?

No, verily I protest to you:

I grieve from the very bottom of my soul that we

(alchemists) are driven like vagabonds from the face of the Lord throughout the earth.

But what need of many words? The thing that we have seen, taught and made,

which we have, possess, and know, that we do declare;

being moved with compassion for the studious,

and with indignation of gold, silver, and precious stones.

Believe me, the time is at the door,

I feel it in spirit, when we, adeptists,

shall return fromthe four corners of the earth,

nor shall we fear any snares that are laid against our lives, but we shall give thanks.

I would to God that every ingenious man in the whole earth understood this science:

then it would be valued only for its wisdom, and virtue only would be had in honor."

Of course there was a more worldy class,

and a large contingent of mercenary impostors

(as science is always encubered),

parasites,

whose animus was shamefully unlike the purity of true esoteric psychologists.

These men devoted their lives to experimentation for selfish advancement.

They constructed alchemical outfits,

and carried on a ceaseless inquiry into the nature of sovents,

and studied their influences on earthly bodies,

their ultimate object being the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone,

and the alkahest which boerhaave asserts was never discovered.

Their records were often a verbose melange,

puposely so written no doubt, to cover their tracks,

and to make themselves conspicuous.

Other Hermetic believers occupied a more elevated position,

and connected the intellectual with the material,

hoping to gain by considerations,

but the highest literary achievement, the Magnum Opus.

Others still sought to draw from

Astrology and Magic the secrets that would lead them to their ambitious goal.

Thus there were degrees of fineness in a fraternity,

which the science of today must recognize and admit.

Boerhaave, the illustrious, respected Geber, of the

alchemistic school, and none need feel

compromised in admiring the talented alchemists who,

like speculation, and extinguished both himself and his science

in the light of the rising sun of materialism.

Cagliostgro the visionary, the poet, the inspired, the

erratic comet in the universe of intellect,

perished in prison as a mountebank, and then the plodding chemist of today,

with his tedious mechanical methods, and cold,

unresponsive, materialistic dogmas,

arose from the ashes and sprang into prominence.

Read the story backward, and you shall see that in alchemy

we behold the beginning of all the sciences of today:

alchemy is the cradle that rocked them.

Fostered with necromancy, astrology,

occultism and all the progeno of mystic dreamer,

the infant sciences struggled for existence through the dark ages,

in care of the once persecuted and now traduced alchemist.

The world owes a monument today more to Hermetic heroes,

than to all other influences and

instrumentalities, religion excepted, combined,

for out present civilization is largely a legacy from the alchemist.

Bergin with Hermes Trismegistus, and cloe with Joseph Balsamo,

and if you are inclined towards science, do not criticise too

severely their verbal logorrhea, and their romanticism,

for your science is trading backward;

it will encroach upon their field again,

and you may have to unsay your words of hasy censure.

These men fulfilled their mission, and did it well.

If they told more than men now thnk they knew

they also knew more than they told,

and more than modern philosophy embraces.

They could not live to see all the future they eagerly hoped for,

buty they started a future for mankind that will far excede in sweetness and light

the most entrancing visions of their most imaginative dreamers.

They spoke of the existence of a "red elixir," and while they wrote, t

he barbarous world about them ran red with blood,

---blood of the pure in heart, blood of the saints, blood of a Saviour;

and their allegory and wisdom formulae were recoded in blood of their own sacrifices.

They dreamed of a "white elixir"

that is yet to bless mankind, and a brighter day for man,

a period of peace, happiness long life, contentment,

good will and brotherly love and in the name of this

"white elixir"

they directed the world towards a vision of divine light.

Even pure gold, as they told the materialistic world who worship gold,

was penetrated and whelmed by this subtle,

superlatively refined spirit of matter.

Is not the day of allegorical "white elixir" nearly at hand?

Would that it were!

I say to you now, brothers of the twenty first century,

as one speaking by authority to you, cease (some of you)

the alchemical lore of other days,

give up your loved allegories; it is a duty, you must relinquish them.

There is a richer field. Do not delay.

Unlock theis mystic door that stands hinged and ready,

waiting the touch of men who can interpret the talisman;

place before mankind the knowledge that lies behind its rivets.

In the secret lodges that have preserved the wisdom of the days of

Enoch and Elias of Egypt,

who propagated the Egyptian Order,

a branch of your ancient brotherhood, is to be found concealed

much knowledge that should now be spread before the world

and added to the treasures of our circle of adepts.

This cabalistic wisdom is not recorded in boods nor in manuscript,

but has been purposely preserved from the uninitiated,

in the unreadable brains of unresponsive men.

Those who are selected to act as carriers thereof, are as a rule,

like dumb water bearers,

or the dead sheet of paper that mechanically

preserves an inspiration derived from minds unseen;

they serve a purpose as a child mechanically commits

to memory a blank verse to repeat to others,

who in turn commit to repeate again

---neither of them speaking undertandingly.

Search ye these hidden paths,

for the day of mental liberation approaches,

and publish to the world all that is locked within the

doors of that antiquated organization.

The world is nearly ripe for the wisdom faculty,

and men are ready to unravel the golden threads

that mystic wisdom has inwoven in her web of secret knowledge.

Look for knowledge where I have indicated,

to gain it do not hesitate to swear allegiance to this sacred order,

for so you must do to gain entance to the brotherhood,

and then you must act what men will call the traitor.

You will, however, be doing a sacred duty,

for the world will profit,

humanity will be the gainer,

"Peace on Earth, Good Will to Man,"

will be closer to mankind, and at last when the sign appears,

the "white elixir" will no longer be allegorical; it will it will become a reality.

In the name of the Great Mystic Vase-Man,

go thou into these lodges, learn of their secrets,

and spread their treasures befor those who can interpret them.