This is a question that people ask me often and, while the Art is what it is, there are many answers.

One has to do with how alchemists understand the age old question about the relationship of  life and matter. Jean Dubuis, who created and taught courses on alchemy, explained it this way in his PON Seminars in 1992:

“The alchemical concept of life and matter lies at the opposite pole of that of the current scientific community. Science is trying to find out how matter created life. Alchemy states that life created matter. Alchemy affirms that at the origin, there is consciousness. Consciousness is the need to Be of the Absolute. In order to satisfy this need, consciousness created life, and in order to evolve, life created matter.”

To understand fully what alchemy is, however, the element of Time must be added to what Dubuis said. He spoke of the past: “consciousness created life” and “life created matter.” He also said life created matter to evolve. In the present, in every moment, life constantly grows, changes, transforms and evolves itself. If Dubuis is right, and I think he is, life – and this includes us – is continually creating matter.

Open your mind now, open a window there just a crack, and listen to these words with “ears to hear.” I’m not asking you to change how you think or feel, just inviting you to be quiet a moment with the words:

“Life continually creates matter”

Many people interested in alchemy look first to online sites and perhaps next to recently published books on the Art. Both provide extensive and valuable information.

However, there exists no substitute for reading the words of famous alchemists themselves such as Thoth, Sendivogius Paracelsus, Flamel, Dee, Ripley and others. Even if these writings from other times and cultures seem difficult to understand, only they can provide the necessary context to read and evaluate more modern writings.

Several web sites contain links to a fascinating array of texts that you will see referenced in online articles as well as books about alchemy. Here are three of my favorites and I encourage you to sample the ones that you find interesting.

Flamel College’s Library, Adam McLean’s list of Alchemy Texts, and Dennis Hauck’s list of Original Alchemy Texts. After selecting the link to Hauck’s list, you’ll need to scroll down past other great resources until you see the links to the Texts.

In future blog posts, I’ll reveal a few things about my favorite texts.

I abandon myself with love and trust

To You, the Source of All Things,

So your purpose can be realized by my life.

Guided by your will, I gratefully and with compassion,

Embrace and elevate this world and all living beings in it.

The Goddess is speaking now. Hold the image you have of the Goddess – your goddess – for she can take many forms. Listen carefully to her for she has vast knowledge of the material world. She wants to share it with you. Unpredictable change surrounds you at this time. You may find that your thoughts are more dreamy than usual, even other worldly, overwhelming and frightening. Stay with them, hold them in your mind without acting immediately. Communication from many sources flows now and you need information and personal energy to make choices. You’ve already made choices and the changes you see are the result of your actions and decisions. Your goddess is guiding you. This is a rare time to bring different, conflicting parts of ourselves together.

Everything you need to make a transformative change in your life exists now. Hold on. Timing is crucial. There is no need to make hasty decisions and choices. Wait until the time feels right to you.

“The bodies of metals are domiciles of their spirits. When their terrestrial substance is by degrees made thin, extended, and purified; the life and fire hitherto lying dormant is excited and made to appear: for the life which dwells in the metals is laid hid, as it were, asleep nor can it exert its power or show itself unless the bodies be first dissolved and turned into their radical source.”

Golden Treatise of Hermes Trismegistus

You have spent some personal time with the Azoth during the last two weeks. Now, I want to take you on a tour of the Azoth by looking at some of the major symbols included in this famous mandala.

If you focus on the hands and feet of the Alchemist, you will find the Four Elements essential to the Great Work. In one hand is a torch with a flame representing Fire and in the other a feather that represents Air. One foot of the Alchemist rests on land or Earth, the other on the waves of an ocean – Water. The Alchemist is the child of the Sun and the Moon. In the lower left quadrant of the Azoth is the Sun King. His scepter and shield are symbols of his power over the material world. But notice the fire breathing Dragon in the cave below him. This creature is the King’s unconscious, hidden away in the depth’s but ready to emerge. The lower right quadrant is the Moon Queen. She holds straps around a large fish symbolizing her control of the forces unseen by the Sun King. Behind her is a container of wheat, a symbol of her fertility. In her left hand is a bow and arrows reminding us that she accepts the wounds of the heart for her acceptance of the uncontrollable parts of our existence. The King represents our thoughts and at the highest level, the One Mind. The Queen stands for our emotions that are tied to the One Thing or the Chaos of the Below. Their eventual marriage begins the combination of all opposites and the creation of what ancient Egyptians referred to as the Intelligence with Heart and others call the Philosopher’s Stone.

At the top center of the mandala is a winged symbol that can be viewed as a heart or the pineal gland at the center of the brain. This symbol originated from the Winged Disk of the Egyptian Pharaoh – Akanaten – that became the top of the caduceus, the entwined snakes which are the core of the Wand of Thoth or his Greek counterpart, Hermes. The heart of pineal gland represents the Manifested Essence of our Souls. In the upper left quadrant is a salamander engulfed in fire from the sun below it. The salamander is attracted to the Sun and is a symbol of the Soul or Anima. In the right, upper quadrant of the Azoth is a bird and the word Spiritus or Spirit. The bird is attracted to the coolness of the Moon below it. At the center of the mandala between the Alchemist’s feet is the Cubic Stone with the word Corpus or Body above it. The Cube is surrounded by five stars that reveal it contains the Quintessence or Fifth Element. The Anima, Spiritus and Corpus at the apexes of a downward pointing triangle and each of them represents one of the tree archetypal, Forces of the Above – Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. These three Forces combined with the Four Elements are the energy centers of the Great Work used to create the Stone.

You are ready to experience the seven operations of alchemy or stages of transformation now. We will learn more about the first operation Calcination next.

The Secret of the Universe is living a life of Trust Love Openness – TLO. If you can find a way to trust however slightly, you will discover love. If you love even just a little you will open yourself. If you are open, translucent, vulnerable, you will discover the cosmos can be trusted. And the wheel of life becomes a spiral that carries you home.

Mother Nature may just be blowing bubbles or She may have a message for us. You decide.

This photo of two vast gas bubbles above and below the center our Milky Way raises two questions for me.

First, how does this structure, which if we could see it with our unaided eyes would cover half of our visible sky, go unnoticed by astronomers until now? In a recent news article, an astrophysicist offers an explanation that a fog of gamma ray radiation was lifted by the use of a new telescope and nifty data analysis. OK, but why now?

Second, why do the gas bubbles form a perfect figure 8 instead of the undefined, cloud like shape we usually see through the end of a telescope? The figure 8 has a rich history of meaning. Most of us associate it with infinity. Another meaning is the process of continuous co-creation of the Above and the Below, the spiritual and the material. Here is an alchemical image that captures this point of view.

This discovery leaves me wondering if what we see now is not a lot of hot air but the message that our home in the Milky Way is safe and secure because it will go on continually recreating itself.

Nature, my Mother, my Father, hear me. I want to stand with you on the edge of the World each day as it continually comes into existence. There remains much work for me to first do within myself, of this I am aware, but this desire to feel your presence burns as an eternal flame in my soul.

Nature, my Mother, my Father, see me. This Flame of Desire moves me during the day, takes me to new heights and depths during the night then calls me back to your embrace in the dawn of the Sun’s rising. Each day I seek and learn more from watching and being with you.

Nature, my Mother, my Father, touch me. Stir me with the sounds of laughter and love of my sisters and brothers. Caress me with your breath as it stirs the leaves of the trees. Move me with the coming and goings of all your creatures, large and small. Thrill me with the birthing and blossoming that surrounds me. Take my hand, show me the way to be and what to do so that I may do my part to bring your Divine Dream into reality.