The Spiritual or Mystical Side The mystical side of alchemy

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The Spiritual or Mystical Side The mystical side of alchemy is about as well documented as its practical side. It is marked by a quest for spiritual perfection, just as the search for precious metals involved the perfecting and refinement of raw materials. The process is best illustrated by the aphorism, "Out of other things you will never make the One, until you have first become the One yourself.” Many alchemic operations can be understood as sacrificial offerings, as ceremonies to be accomplished after the alchemist himself has been initi ated into some higher mysteries. A long period of spiritual preparation is indispensable. The ultimate goal of this process, as in the mystery reli gions, is salvation. Thus alchemy appears to be a Hellenistic form of mysticism. Because the soul is divine in origin but tied to matter in this world and isolated from its spiritual home, it must, as far as possible, purify the divine spirit inherent in it from the contamination by matter.2 In his search for the materia prima, the alchemist discovers hidden powers within his own soul. The symbols he draws and studies help him explore his collective unconscious; the reading and rereading of books derived from divine revelation may create the drowsiness of intoxication; watching the chemical processes in his laboratory for hours on end may produce a kind of trance or an exhaustion that leads to trance.³ Thus alchemy can be more than a science; it can be a way of life, like religion or magic. Even when there are no tangible results, the alchemist goes on reading, praying, meditating, and distilling. Perhaps he will make an important discovery, but it will come more or less by accident, as a by product. Lead never turns into gold, and the philosopher's stone never materializes, but the search for perfection continues. The alchemist's quest to improve matter, or to ennoble baser sub stances, appealed to those who had been trained in the great philosophi cal schools of Greece-to the Platonists, who believed that the creation was basically good, and to the Aristotelians, who believed that nature, though not perfect, strives toward perfection. Indeed, some of the basic philosophical principles of alchemy were no doubt derived from earlier thought. The unity of all things, or rather their unity within diversity, had been postulated by the Eleatic school in the sixth century B.C. For the alchemists this principle was symbolized by the Ouroboros, the serpent that "eats its tail" and that carries the legend hen to pan ‘all is one'. The legend has been explained or paraphrased: “One is all, and by it all, and for it all, and if one does not contain all, all is nothing." This rendering reflects the position of Plotinus, who said: "Everything is everywhere and everything is everything and every single thing is everything" (Enn. 5.8.4)