Samhain, Halloween and the Hermetical signification.

At the orgin... Nature's Cycle.

The feasts of the Natural Cycle are very old, nowadays it is a Celtic revival that takes place with the Halloween, or Samhain (from Wiccan perspective). This is a way to celebrate the different aspects of Nature and of the cycle in a social manner, but also in a ritualistic and sacred way. All the cycle is sacred, this is an important message. Of course, culture will interpret and live the cycle in its own manner, but as Alchemist or Hermetist, one must try to delve more deeply in the meaning.

 

The symbols of Halloween/Samhain

From an Alchemical point of view, we can analyse the feast of the Samhain thus :

Today it is also linked powerfully to the death part of the cycle, since Samhain is the end of the Celtic year. We see skulls, bones, tombstones, coffins, witches, demons, bats, spiders and spiders' webs, pumpkin heads and vampires everywhere... it is said to scare the deads, ghosts, and all the tenebrous night creatures, and thus they cannot harm the disguised one. But the symbolism, taken from an alchemical point of view is just amazingly rich and profound. We are in a world of living symbols, it is just amazing to see how the hermetical culture can live today via such feasts, and it’s really an enjoyment.

From the psychological side of the cycle, it is the moment when we know we will have a hard time. Sometime we can feel it coming. We know the Blackness is coming inside us, and we get prepared for it, winter and darkness, the time to rest in our psychic grave is coming. A necessary moment. Learning to die is not easy, since one have to loose his imaginary control over the cycle, and surrender to death. You learn that you cry only when you resist to death, the dead do not cry, they just rest, in peace (tombstones' RIP). In the dark, still. A lot of depressive people stay to bed. Bed is the symbol of a coffin. When we wake a dead on his bed, it is the same thing. But the coffin is not yet inhumed.

A coffin, is the 'vessel of nature', the bones, the "salt", the pumpkin, the living fire in the matter taking an horrible form, all demons and weird, horrible creatures are the matter transforming, and fixating (spider's web), the tombstone is a link to the secret fire, and ghosts to the Spiritus coming from the dead matter, the Spirit like a vampire, biting the matter and covering it of his black mantle and making of it a creature of the Darkness ... here we are, in full Nigredo !

Enjoy your Halloween, enjoy your death, meditate upon your own inner cycle of evolution, understand how death acts, and what it is finally. What death bring in your life, what it creates or destroy. An end, or a new beginning ? Simply a part of the cycle... different, but equally necessary to the others parts of the cycle.

The sacrificial part, or the killing of the animals for winter, is the multiplication of the Stone or simply the beginning of the cycle in the matter, the living beast is sacrificed on the altar, with the ritual knife of sword, the Secret Fire, creating a (new) Black. The colours of Samhain (pronounce "soween", yes it's gaellic ...) is the brown colour and the Black. Colours that one can witness in his vessel, when the darkness is coming, and taking the advantage upon the Red colour when it is a multiplication or when the matter is already red... but crude. That's why meat is cut, salted, or smoked, all these actions are the sacred and secret Fire's deeds.

Cabala Mineralis hidden symbols

Je vous propose ici quelques symboles cachés ou bien voilés semble t'il, dans la première peinture de la Cabala Mineralis : (I propose you few symbols, hidden or well veiled, in the first image of the Cabala Mineralis :)
Ici, nous trouvons par exemple le symbole de Saturne sur le Chêne :
(Here, we find for example the symbol of Saturn on the oak :)

Ce qui est évocateur en tout cas. Mais c'est une autre histoire !
(Which is evocative. But this is another story !)

Nous trouvons aussi un "chapeau" derrière un Aigle ...
(We also find a 'hat' behin an eagle ...)

Enfin nous trouvons une Mérelle sur le pot de fleur.
(A last we find a St James Shell on the flower pot.)

J'ai prit plaisir à regarder et à méditer cet ouvrage fort beau, et bien peint. Mais j'ai été encore plus surpris à là découverte de ces symboles. / I had pleasure to look and meditate this very nice and well drawn book. But I've been even more surprized when I discovered these symbols.

Indian Alchemy

Indian Alchemy : http://www.indianalchemy.com/

A very nice site and products ! Really interesting. Especially in order to have a different point of view concerning spagyrics (even if it is wrongly called "Indian Alchemy"), and also maybe some enlightenments about Cinnabar.

Nouvelle Bibliothèque Alchimique gratuite en ligne (française).

Voici le lien http://bnam.fr/

Concerning my Scribd account.

When Scribd was beginning, one could download without having to pay something. I'm for gratuity, and then I removed all my alchemical and hermetical files from Scribd.

Now you can download some texts here :
http://www.4shared.com/dir/HXLPIu5h/sharing.html

Propolis

Propolis is a resinous mixture that honey bees collect from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Propolis is used for small gaps (approximately 6 millimeters (0.2 in) or less), while larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax. Its color varies depending on its botanical source, the most common being dark brown. Propolis is sticky at and above room temperature. At lower temperatures it becomes hard and very brittle.

Medical uses

Propolis is marketed by health food stores as a traditional medicine, and for its claimed beneficial effect on human health.

Natural medicine practitioners use propolis for the relief of various conditions, including inflammations, viral diseases, ulcers, superficial burns or scalds.

Propolis is also believed to promote heart health, strengthen the immune system and reduce the chances of cataracts. Old beekeepers recommend a piece of propolis kept in the mouth as a remedy for a sore throat. Propolis lozenges and tinctures can be bought in many countries. Though claims have been made for its use in treating allergies, propolis may cause severe allergic reactions if the user is sensitive to bees or bee products.

Some of these claims are being clinically investigated and several studies are published in the biomedical literature. Since the chemical composition of propolis varies depending on season, bee species and geographic location, caution must be applied in extrapolating results (as above).

As an antimicrobial

Depending upon its composition, propolis may show powerful local antibiotic and antifungal properties.

As an emollient

Studies also indicate that it may be effective in treating skin burns.

As an immunomodulator

Propolis also exhibits immunomodulatory effects.

As a dental antiplaque agent

Propolis is a subject of recent dentistry research, since there is some evidence that propolis may actively protect against caries and other forms of oral disease, due to its antimicrobial properties. Propolis can also be used to treat canker sores. Its use in canal debridement for endodontic procedures has been explored in Brazil.

As an antitumor growth agent

Propolis' use in inhibiting tumorigenesis has been studied in mice in Japan.(wikipedia )

Here is my propolis tincture. A deep red colour.

The extraction of propolis is made easely and very quickly, whitout the help of heat. You just need a pure alcohol, water prevent the extraction. When diluted in water, propolis gives a white coloration alike Macis. The taste is good.

Make it *alive*, and not "technical"

I made several experiments with plants, and in my opinion, if the product is well done, I mean, a true Spiritus Vini, gently distilled and perfectly rectified (caput, corpus, & cauda draconis removed), and a good quality plant, you don't need to bother with salts, insoluble salts etc, unless you want to make a vegetable stone.

Effects can be more than surprising.

What do you want to add with ashes ? They contain nothing of the plant now, they are burned ! No energy remains, and energy can only be in the Sulphury part. Don't try to imitate an Alchemical process while doing Spageria. This is not the same thing.

Don't over complicate, just make a good job at first.

Another problem I have seen is in the so called 'ens' process. People use K2CO3, or potassium carbonate, but if you extract this salt, per se, you will have a golden Spiritus Vini. Which mean that, if you add a plant in the deliquescent alkaline water, you will spoil your Sulphur with another one that have nothing to do here...

Why using an alkaline salt if you are able to make a pure S.V ... why using K2CO3 upon easily extractible plants and not directly S.V ? I don't know, maybe in order to add a "moon" effect ? In this case, just link it to the moon once extracted. And don't dare to tell me that "the book said to do so ...".

Ignorance and greed

There is, of course, a lack of knowledge of Nature's Laws in the Art of Alchemy today (Science, the servant, like in Fairy tales, play now the role of false Princess, and stole the crown of Alchemy), that's not new, almost all the tradition were lost in two centuries, some peices being still under the eye of people, but not recognised, are waiting for an alchemized eye to contemplate their beauty and secrets.

A lot of people imagine that they will find in paper "lessons" what is needed to be learned, glad of their little experiments, with their brand new apparatus, they decide to open website and to sell products. They call that 'Alchemy', and it's just in fact, spagerics. But, "alchemy" is better for business since the word is used in Harry Potter Books... they all claim now to be big lab, making "Spagerics", or "Paracelsus' drugs" etc etc, and they never, never speak about the true goal of this art, and science. As lab they only understand technique, the science part "take that, grind it, extract it, filter it under vacuum, put the label and put online" (and no circulation of the tincture since electricity is not cheap)... that's so dead.

Dead products are also sold to people that understand nothing about all this stuff. Some "metallic elixirs" white and clear as pure water, containing nothing more than maybe alcohol or dew is sold. A tincture of silver, looking like a tincture of gold ? Both clear as water ... is that normal ? Of course, no. There is nothing in the flask. Metals dead for nothing. They are of course, de bona fide, because themselves never saw in their life the true colour of a metal, they imagine that they can have the soul of a metal without colouring the menstrum... magic trick. Not funny.

It would not be a problem if the tinctures they sell where not made after a "fermentation" of the product...inducing a process of putrefaction in a product will lead to a dead Sulphur, dead, I mean, "giver of death", Sulphur can only give what it has, of course, they don't know, do they have a brain, I wonder... the third problem is that they use improper products in order to make their tinctures. As they don't understand laws, they don't understand cycle and the effect of cycle upon matter and the composition of matter. Some guy selling "tinctures" were in fact caught selling coloured sugar water ... spagerics is not a placebo effect, it's not even a physical effect, it is, before everything, an energetic effect, a living effect. These productions must be alive.

For example, do you know you should not ingest obsidian tincture ? Do you know why ?

I let you find the answer.

Spiritual Initiation in Alchemy

We are talking here about True Alchemy, not particular Alchemy (and this is also different from Archemy or Science of Particulars).

Some of us have the goal, in Alchemy, to have Enlightenment, and for this we must have the Stone, which is only a way to produce this State. But we have to be aware that the Spiritual Initiation via Alchemical Path is very very uncommon and rare. It's far less uncommon in Zen, Advaita, Yoga, etc where far far more people reach these states of Being. This simply comes from the fact that Alchemy is an almost lost Science. We have only few rare initiates in this planet that knows the secrets of True Alchemy, and true disciples are rare.

Alchemy is one of the hardest ways to "get there". People imagine that since they have the technique of some process they will easily have the Stone, it is absolutely not the case at all, sometime they strive for nothing valuable, and they imagine that they finally have the Stone (because they have seen few colours, and it looks like a red stony matter), and are disappointed, most part of the time, the story end ... in a dead end, full of frustration and despair, and worse, in poisoning himself and others like in some "orders" where the 'Stone' is given by the guru to the disciples... True Alchemy is clearly revealed nowhere in texts. It's all hints, allegories and images, symbols, and it is needed to have a key to open the process and a real faculty to read between the lines and to decipher the symbolic code used centuries before.
If you want enlightenment via Alchemy, I invite you to revise your spiritual motivations profoundly concerning the possible fulfilling of this goal with this Art. One person upon a billion, even less, can reach enlightenment via Alchemy. It's far more direct by other paths, those who walk these paths of Material realization have a very special quality of soul, requiring a lot of Hermes in it. This is why oratory is required (which must be made of astrologia, theurgia, and study of symbols, texts, meditation (zen like) and also the different laws of Nature), and of course and practical side made with the laboratory, both are one and complete each other.
Most part of process revealed today are part of the said "particular Alchemy". Nothing Universal is involved, but these paths can lead to interesting medicines, transmutations, learning about the process, qualities of matter, laws of Nature, and mastery of inner archetypes, also balancing inner energies etc, and attaining minors states of initiation or purification. These paths are for example the Antimony path of Bacstrom, of "Flamel" as they call it in the PON, involving silver, gold, mercury and antimony (Flamel Path is not at all the path described here), or the Roger's Caro Cinnabar Path, all the different Alkhaests Paths also, the Golden Water Path or Via Antiqua, etc.

Alchemy has a lot of ramifications, like the roots of our old oak. And it is a complex subject.
I want to thanks all my friends in the Art for their support, help, contributions. Thank you my friends !!