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CHAOS NATURAE
Under constructionionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...9.html
CHAOS NATURAE
Chaos, Complexity & Alchemical Process
By Iona Miller, 2009
"Whence will come the Chameleon of our Chaos, in which all secrets are hid in their potential state."
Sacred Science
We are agents of chaos. The secrets of chaos are embodied and revealed in alchemy and chaos theory. Alchemy and chaos theory are metamodels, demonstrating we are verbs, not nouns - holographically interconnected dynamical processes, not separate things. The whole is contained in the part in reiterated patterns of nested structure. Chaos is the transformative energy. We have the capacity to transform utterly in any given instant of pure potential.
Chaos is complete in itself, internally harmonious. Creation is a self-contained, organic process of development. Layered complexity automatically surfaces the features it is critical to work on at a different level. We do not have to take apart, analyze or interpret the complexity of images but learn to flow with them just as they are presented n the stream of consciousness and experience. Each flowing image brings a morphological epiphany, "I am that."
We are always in dynamic balance between order and chaos. Nature's way also expresses our deepest nature, precreative chaos. Paradoxically, we initially have to separate ourselves from it to become more intimate with it.
Mining the soul through mindbody cultivation, we disassemble ourselves to recongeal in purified or refined form, reintegrated at a holistic level of dynamic functionality. We revert to chaos in meditation as the body stills and thoughts slow down and cease in universal resonance. Healing emerges by immersion in the undifferentiated chaotic consciousness.
Project Archive Update
IONA MILLER WEB PRESENCEWHAT’S NEW: Updated 4-2009
PERPETUAL MENU: ionamiller.iwarp.com
1/1/06 - 1/1/08
IONATOPIA 2006-2008 HOMEPAGE & LINKS MENU:
Comprehensive intro and updates for all writing and art.
Art Manifesto 2006-08 ionatopia.50megs.com
2009
June 2009
May 2009
***New Publication – “ANIMA MUNDI” by Iona Miller for Alchemy Journal (Vol. 10 No. 1)
ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...7.html Global emphasis on urgent ecological awareness implies a reflowering of the Neo-Platonic and alchemical notion of ANIMA MUNDI the Soul of the World, an archetypal way of seeing through the world. Our narcissistic tendency is self-absorption, over-valuing individual subjectivity at the expense of the real problems of the world. The language of Anima Mundi includes beauty, aesthetics, depth, inner life and political activity -- psychological practices of larger groups. We are all engaged in making the world soul even as she shapes us. Also book review of ALCHEMICAL ESSAYS, see ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.html
April 2009
***New Publishing - PARANOIA Magazine Anniversary Issue #50 on newstands now
“Is Earth Becoming a Dune Planet” by Iona Miller: Imperialism, Charismatic Leadership, Messianic Hunger, Corporate Feudalism, Neuro-Bio-Info-Cogno, Secret Societies, Culture Collapse, Drugs, Cults and Jihad
***New Article – BEING IN SOUL: Post-postmodern Approach to Alchemical Art by Iona Miller. 2009 Art Manifesto. “Nothing is possible without love, not even the processes of alchemy, for love puts one in a mood to risk everything and not to withhold elements.” C.G. Jung. Alchemy explores the nature of matter-energy and consciousness. Jung spoke of soul as psyche, a heightened awareness of subjective realities. Image is a direct expression of soul. As modern alchemists we can build our lived understanding of alchemy with psychological insights as well as experimental work. Like the medieval artistae whose medium was the sacred art of alchemy, we pursue the philosophical gold to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary through service to the Living Light.
March 2009
***New Article - GEOMAGENTISM & YOU by Iona Miller ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...2.html The brain is affected by geomagnetic fields. Fluctuating geomagnetic effects can lead to increased liminality and anomalous experiences by perturbing the human mindbody. Dissociative weakening of the threshold between our rational and irrational minds is relevant to paranormal experience." Field effects include "creative" and "toxic" hallucinations and temporal lobe microseizures [Krippner and Persinger]. Liminality is mediated by the temporal lobes and modulated by fields. These experiences may changes one's beliefs or worldview.
***New Article - ANCIENT METROLOGY by Iona Miller; Earth’s Measure is the Golden Key to Precession ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/custom3_7.html Measurement was a sacred system of knowledge established in prehistory, based on observations of cosmic cycles. Standards of measure were framed upon universal principles of number and the geophysical dimensions of the ever-turning Earth. There is no starting nor ending point. Celestial time is virtually inconceivable without the Great Cycle. Cosmology, horizon-based astronomy, astrology, architecture, navigation, geography, geometry, mathematics, timekeeping, writing, proportion in art, and musical notation were all related to numerical canon. The ancients encoded their knowledge of the world in their sacred monuments and texts as an esoteric code of numbers, formulas, and proportion.
January 2009
*** New Website - 2009 HOMEPAGE
Find Iona’s latest articles and musings here. Uber-Science, Science-Art, Arete, Alchemy, Metrology, Intelligenda, Geomagnetics, New Digital Art, High Weirdness, more. ionamiller2009.iwarp.com
***New Article – “ARETE: Raising the Bar” by Iona Miller. Arete is an ancient Greek concept for the 'spirit of virtue,' natural excellence without necessarily being heroic, a usually flawed archetype. It's time to reclaim the high-ground of our national honor for all Americans by redefining what that means. This spirit of arete was the basis of the Human Potential Movement, a non-miliant version of "be all you can be." In modern life, all acts are political acts, therefore, the arete of the citizen has a holistic effect. Our personal acts affect our whole lives and culture. ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...4.html
***New Article “HOPE IS DOPE” by Iona Miller. Hope Is A Meme Now that our airbag economy is collapsing like a loaf of wet Wonderbread we are suddenly breaking through our cultural denial to a new level that embodies Mystery as Hope. Cherished hopes and beliefs about ourselves and our futures have been crushed even as others have been raised. An avalanche of collapsing systems actively demonstrates that chaotic dynamics are in play. We live in chaos. It is the central issue in our lives, particularly when we feel out of control of our own destinies and security. Hope has a religious component and is learned in the sociological context. Hope is ‘trust’ or ‘belief’ that process will result in better times. Hope is a defense against fear and pain. Hope is touted as the antidote to depression and economic Depression. ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...2.html
2008
October 2008
***New Publishing - Huntergatheress Journal huntergatheress.com/
“Manifest Destiny Manifesto” by Iona Miller. We can create an evolutionary politics to build a more creative future. Calculated cycles of commodification and scarcity, business and war have driven the military/industrial complex and the multinational corporate climate. Cover Ups and confusion have paralyzed us into apathy where nothing significant can be trusted, believed or known. But we can empower ourselves to resist status quo politics and shape ourselves a better destiny - a 21st century Manifest Destiny that fulfills our positive spiritual potential. If we don't want a dark future for humanity, we must reinvent ourselves and our culture from the foundation upwards, one inspired person at a time to large-scale societal transformation that heals personal and global socioeconomical scars.
***Radio Broadcast -
Iona Miller; Visionary, Performance Artist & Spywhisperer
joins Host Al Anderson on “The Ascending Way”
October 16, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern
Visionary Artist, Philosopher, Hypnotherapist, Author, Activist
will discuss Science-Art, Post-Traumatic Culture, and Creativity
Ridgewood, N.Y. --Sept. 25, 2008 --Iona Miller, brilliant Author and Transdisciplinary Commentator on diverse Technical and Spiritual subjects will appear on BlogTalkRadio?s show “The Ascending Way: blogtalkradio.com/Ascending-Way with host Al Anderson on Thursday Oct. 16, 2008, at 2:00 pm Eastern. The Exclusive Interview will discuss Iona?s work which is “an omnisensory fusion of sacred activism, intelligence, science-art, chaos theory, plenum physics, and emergent paradigm shift melding experiential psychotherapy, new physics, biophysics, philosophy, cosmology, healing, creativity, qabalah, magick, paranormal, "dirty tricks," media ecology, mind control, paramedia, metaphysics, and culture change.” ARCHIVED AT blogtalkradio.com/Ascending-Way .
***New Website - THOMAS LYTTLE MEMORIAL WEBSITTE - The Psychedelic Yogi tomlyttle.iwarp.com/
Tom published many of Iona Miller's articles, collected here for the first time.
A controversial writer, Tom Lyttle lived in the Bermuda Triangle and in a sort of Bermuda Triangle of the spotless mind. Lyttle was the publisher and editor of Psychedelic Monographs and Essays, a periodical 1985-1993. “Best of” compilation using selections from PM&E, titled Psychedelics: A Collection of the Most Exciting New Material on Psychedelic Drugs. Barricade Books Inc.,1994. Psychedelics Reimagined included Timothy Leary, Hakim Bey, Iona Miller. Lyttle sold autographed blottters of psychedelic celebrities like Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Sasha Shulgin, Annie Sprinkle, Peter Fonda, Allen Ginsberg, Alex Grey, Laurence Gartel, HR Giger.
***New Web Site - CREATIVE PROCESS creativeprocess.iwarp.com
On creativity, creative process, types and creativity, experts on creativity, commentary.
***PRESS: HunterGatheress II: Manifest Destiny Manifesto, drops Oct. 15 huntergatheress.com
September 2008
***New Article – “MAKING OUT IN CHAPEL PERILOUS” ionamiller2008.iwarp.com/whats...4.html
Every Culture Has Its Proving Grounds
The legend of Chapel Perilous and the Holy Grail is the root of the meme also used as a milestone on the inner journey by Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. Find out what it might mean for you.
August 2008
***New Article - ESP(iona)ge Series continues with "GERM WARFARE"
This Germ’s for You ionamiller2008.iwarp.com/whats...8.html
The trigger has already been pulled on the smoking gun of biowarfare and we were all in the crosshairs. In the 1950s-70s, pathogenic mycoplasma were covertly released in top-secret “mock” attacks. Dr Maurice Hilleman, chief virologist for the pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme, stated that this disease agent is now carried by everybody in North America and possibly most people throughout the world. Is this what they mean by “better living through chemistry?” See this site.
***New Article - "ESOTERICS: THE NEW DOPE" ionamiller2008.iwarp.com/rich_text.html
Iona Miller brings a unique background to the overlapping arenas of parapsychology and intelligence work. Her close contact with experts in the field brings a level of comprehension beyond that of most conspiracy and freedom writers. In addition, her work in metaphysics and psychotherapeutics, as well as art and paramedia ecology, brings a depth and aesthetic mere reporters cannot duplicate. Ms. Miller works with the world's top physicists, transpersonal psychologists, intell officers from several agencies, and a host of "usual suspects." Take a walk on the wild side of ESP(iona)ge and see what that clandestine world has to offer and how it works. Ms. Miller specializes in Do It Yourself (DIY) Mind Control Countermeasures.
July 2008
***2008 Updates/Coming Attractions - ionamiller2008.iwarp.com
Iona Miller 2008: The Global Underground - Tim Leary, Shasha Shulgin and the Usual Suspects explored and explained in terms of Intelligence connections. "Tim Leary & the Pink Power Pills, " "Sasha's Ecstasy & the Agony of the Neo-CONtrollers," also part 2 of Shulgin. Shorter version appearing in print soon with Paranoia Magazine. Coming Soon, "No Fear & Loathing in Amsterdam" on its changing scene. The next issue of Paranoioa's annual HUNTERGATHERESS JOURNAL contains my "Manifest Destiny Manifesto" - an outrageous act of political performance art.
June 2008
***New Site: EMBEDDED HOLOGRAMS / QUANTUM TANTRA
embeddedholograms.iwarp.com
MAY 2008
***New Site - Disseminating Social & Scientific Innovations
SCIENCE-ARTIFICER GUILD Int’l
science-artificer.iwarp.com/ JOIN US: SAGI -- a Nonlocal Action Thinktank -- invites you to network, collaborate and collectively dream, design and build exemplar projects as new foundation memes to embody the future as an alternative to Apocalypse. Vision is rooted in the negentropic forces of life itself. Breakthroughs in lifestyle, political theory, health science, intelligence, macrohistory, women's studies, art history, economics, ethics, medical best practice, communications theory, and more. Today's research challenges require many minds to find viable solutions, new options for collective participatory wisdom. SAGI is one such option.
***New Site - HISTORY OF DIGITAL ART 101 – E-book Online
digitalarthistory.iwarp.com
Complete listing of Archived Projects through 2009: ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...1.html
***New Article in HUNTERGATHERESS II ionamiller2008.iwarp.com/whats...3.html
BEYOND MANIFEST DESTINY: Applying Therapeutic Technique to Healing Our National Dysfunction. Soul of America, Toxic Shame & Blame, Depression, God Cult, Creative Repatterning, Self-Image, Transfomation, Owning the Shadow, Soul Retrieval, Vision, Crisis, Commitment, Strategies, Manifest Destiny, Ethical Economics, Compassionate Consumption, Conscious Evolution, Emergent Paradigm
April 2008
***New Article: THE OSBORNE EFFECT leutrellosborne.50megs.com/rich....html
Veteran CIA Case Officer Has Alternate Theory About the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was the COINTEL FACTOR.
MARCH 2008
***NEW PRINT ARTICLE: HunterGatheress Journal huntergatheress.com
***New Website - Alchemy SuperPortal 2008 spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com Spiritual Alchemy, Alchemy 101, Universal Solvent, Nigredo & Depression, Saint Germain, Modern Alchemist, Psychogenesis Artshow, Conscious Alchemy
FEB. 2008
***New Website - SPYWHISPERER WEBSITE spywhisperer.iwarp.com Sub Rosa, Spywhisperer, Age of Intell, Transformation Agent,
Rolling Stone, Wizards, Snake Eaters, Kennntell, Zero Point, UberSpook, Parapsychology, Mind Control, Bioholography, Skullduggery, Power Train, Paranoia
Jan. 2008
***New Website - Io 2008 MENU - ionamillermenu.iwarp.com
***New Article - "Dragon Guardians" ionamiller2008.iwarp.com
***New Article - "The Nigredo: Working Through Depression in Alchemy" spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com
***New Article - THE AGE OF INTELLIGENCE ionamillermenu.iwarp.com/whats_new.html Modern IO is not about the old messages of psychological operations (PSYOPS), but rather about empowering billions of people with both information tools and access to truthful information. It is about education, not manipulation. It is about sharing, not secrecy. It is about human understanding to create wealth and stabilize societies, not about the threat of violence and the delivery of precision munitions. IO substitutes information for violence -- more intelligent intelligence.
Field Body
Meditatio
There is no more important aspect than brain chemistry for alchemy. Meditation and contemplation are a crucial part of the attention-focusing alchemical process. We can meditate with or without an object of contemplation, freeing our minds from its own content to enjoy the natural mind. We "reboot" ourselves from this primordial awareness, the Source and Zero-Point of consciousness.
Current research in meditation and neurotheology has shown tangible psychophysical benefits from meditation. Neurotheology is the biological basis of spirituality (Miller, 2008). Both alpha and theta brainwaves facilitate healing and benefit higher-order cognitive functions. When we phase lock at these frequencies, we also phase-lock with the resonant frequencies of the Earth (Shumann's Resonances, Miller, 2004).
The latest research shows significantly larger grey matter volumes in the right frontal cortex, right thalamus, left interior temporal gyrus and right hippocampus of meditators. Emotional regulation and response control improve with mindful behavior. Brain resonance CDs (binaural beat technology) can facilitate alpha and theta by driving the brain toward cascades of this harmonious response, removing any doubt of achieving the desired conditions.
Once you know the brain neurology and the resonant nature of the mindbody connection, you can make up your own mind about your mystical or anomalous experiences. It is our evolutionary legacy; we are the product of our environment and precisely tuned to it. The holistic nature of the body reflects the Nature of the Cosmos; our nature is not separate from Nature. There is great value in discipline, practice, and service which exercises the full spectrum of our human potential.
Wholly Daze
In creativity and meditation we seek in a fully conscious way, willfully cooperating and facilitating the process not only of connecting with God, but experiencing oneself in the process of “becoming” god. The ego no longer perceives itself as a separate expression of consciousness, but as the same essence as All.
Of course, we can never fully complete that process. No one can fully embody God, but we can move toward it. The succession of conscious states is toward higher integration, not toward lower dissociation. The process of integration in growth toward positive values has the complementary virtues of being obvious in fact and transcendental in implications. It means we evolve from reactive creatures into an integrated part of the spiritual dimension.
The task of meditation is essentially letting the body fall as deeply asleep as possible while the mind remains focused. In fact, if it were not for the opposite function’s presence, even in the mystical state, we would fall asleep. The REM or dream state is similar: there is extreme cerebral excitation, even though muscular activity is inhibited. Hemispheric synchronization producing long, slow alpha and theta brainwaves with high amplitude is another factor. The deeper the meditation, the slower and stronger the waves.
The energy “rush” of meditation comes when either the arousal or quiescent state “spills over” into stimulating its complementary system. When both parts of the autonomic nervous system go online simultaneously, the limbic system goes wild with emotion, absorption and oceanic bliss. This is reflected in the gender based, male-female imagery of the kundalini serpent power and the yin and yang of the Tao.
When both systems go into maximal discharge, this neurochemical flux is subjectively perceived as Absolute Unity of Being, boundlessness, timelessness, and sacredness. Our relationship to humans, earth, and cosmos is one of a relationship to the Other. Our first formative influence is the experience of empathy. And empathy needs a face. If we find that face in our personal experience of God, who shall say nay? Beyond that lies only the yawning infinity of the Void.
Meditation may modulate pineal activity, eliciting a standing wave through resonance effects that affects other brain centers with both chemical and electromagnetic coordination. Resonance can be induced in the pineal using electric, magnetic, or sound energy. Such harmonization resynchronizes both hemispheres of the brain. This may result in a chain of synergetic activity resulting in the production and release of naturally-produced hallucinogenic compounds.
Neurotransmitters bridge the mindbody gap. They are the chemicals which account for the transmission of signals from one neuron to the next across synapses. They can motivate or sedate, excite or calm us. Some brain chemicals are part of the key to our spirituality. Brain function is implicated in openness to spiritual experience from spiritual acceptance to the supernatural. An understanding of neurological processes helps you evaluate your subjective experiences.
Embodying the Vision
Alchemy cannot be a closed system of static dogmatic thoughts. It is a way of reimagining and creating metaphors from different points of view or narratives that open the field of infinite meanings. Each reiteration creates new networks, new meaning, new insights, embodiments, metamorphosis and transformation.
Participating in this process means mythologizing our own chaotic character, even pathologizing. Depth psychology tells us if we don't let in the Trickster and other gods, they can become physical or mental diseases. Yet if we become ill, we should not blame ourselves with "New Age guilt."
It is a truism in therapy that art expression clarifies and releases emotional flow. The classical alchemists nearly always illustrated their works, making universal pictures with themselves as point of reference. Alchemy would be a dry discourse without its images, without the discipline of images that leads to flow, to solutio.
Alchemy begins and ends in the quest for eternal life. It is a spiritual technology of rebirth using natural methods that in their effect transcend nature by amplifying that which is immortal within us. It does not exist in nature but must be prepared by Art. Art is a form of manifesting, making and objectifying the world - spiritual physics.
Artists and mystics are aware of their own internal space and thus able to enter it, playing the mindbody like a musical instrument. Looking inside, they see the true nature of reality and can express that literally and symbolically. We all possess the creative potential. All creative acts are a marriage of spirit and matter, reaching down into the body as the source of our essential being and becoming.
Today, we might describe this resonance as accessing energy that regenerates the mindbody. Healing is an aspect of creativity; nature is within and without us. The Magus does not dominate reality but develops embodied psychophysical equilibrium, clarity, wisdom and compassion.
Creative work originates in the body and is projected out into the world. The projections are then internalized into awareness. The bodymind of the artist is an alchemical vessel containing the creative flux during the process of transformation. Awareness and consciousness form a continuous alchemical movement. The creative gold is generated and embodied in the alembic of the mindbody.
The mindbody is the same substance as the Cosmos and contains and reveals its mysteries. Meditation masters speak of an inner Light that pervades the physical and energy bodies. Now science investigates it as biophotons. Through quantum physics we can watch that matter/energy/information devolve back into the unstructured void from which potential emanates.
Mystics have often equated this pervasive Light/Sound with primordial Consciousness and the source of life as well as matter. Quantum bioholography shows the DNA literally produces coherent light, which transduces to sound that directs the formative processes of life. Radiant energy is radiant energy. Whether we look outside into our environment or inside into ourselves we find primordial Light.
Alchemy reduces all to the first state, the ground state of being - original experience that is timeless, infinite. The classical Void, the quantum vacuum is a carrier of information. The energy body or the field body entangles us with the negentropic potential of the zero-point field. Radiant light literally emerges from this mystic void. Primordial structuring processes are common to both psyche and matter, working in the gap or empty interval between intention and action.
So, alchemy refines the way the mindbody generates and processes inherent light as medicine. It refines the aspirant's ability for tapping and amplifying Medicine Light. This primordial state is the luminous ground of our being, hidden deep in the heart of things.
All other goals are subordinate to this prime directive which includes meditative techniques for continuing consciousness after death. This Philosopher's Stone is also the Universal Medicine, the regenerative Elixir of Life. The greatest mystery is the LIFE IN DEATH: we don't die but continue in transcendent form.
This is the virtual secret of man and nature. The human body is the athenor that contains the fire and the First and Last Matter which are "One" with the vessel of transformation. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone.
“It was a mineral substance, dense and opaque; it was melted and became transparent glass and then became much finer glass. And then this later had been subject for the first time to fusion and projection of the white Elixir, it became incandescent crystal. It was fused a second time and the Elixir was projected on it; it became diamond. Place it on the anvil, strike it with a hammer, it will dent the anvil and the hammer but it will not break.
Strike it with a piece of lead and it will break into cubiform fragments. That is the true sign that it really is diamond, but if it has become diamond it is also a sign that the diamond was hidden int he essential depths of the mineral substance, because, in fact, the composition of the later is the result of two well-known principles, mercury and sulphur, according to what is established in physics.
And this diamond, separated from the crystal, this crystal separated from the glass, this glass separated from this mineral opacity, is homologous to the ‘Resurrection Body’ of the faithful believer in the Paradise of the Future Aeon (that is o say jism B, the essential archetypal body, the corpus supra coeleste, the ‘diamond body’)”
--Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa’i (d. 1241/1826) (excerpt from Article IX, Henry Corbin’s Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth)
Post-postmodern alchemy
ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.htmlPost-Postmodern Alchemy
The topic of ancient and medieval alchemy was, arguably, rescued from obscurity largely through the efforts of C. G. Jung and a few others. Jung gleaned psychological illumination from alchemy and other spiritual technologies. As modern alchemists we can build our lived understanding of alchemy with psychological insights as well as experimental work.
As exemplified in alchemy's prime directive, "Solve et Coagula," the raw material of self and world is deconstructed to facilitate emergent self-organization at a higher level. This is nature's way, as chaos theory has shown us. Nature is a dynamical balance of order and chaos. The edge of chaos is the point of emergence for new behaviors, enhanced capacities and transformed identity.
The edge of chaos, where critical systems adapt and evolve, is the most effective place to be. Alchemy challenges us to remain at the evolutionary edge, mutable to the transformative process. The alchemical perspective is not merely deconstructionist, but paradoxically regenerative. In this sense, alchemy is post-postmodern though it radically predates that philosophy.
There is theory and practice in science, and two applications in alchemy -- spiritual alchemy and experimental alchemy involving literal lab work. Spiritual alchemy is a theophanic metaphysics, revealing a sacred presence within its process. You can work either the spiritual or practical method separately or both in concert. Like mystics of all paths who have gone before, we make the experiment on ourselves. Our potential exceeds what our conscious awareness alone could ever make of us. There is an autonomous domain of soul.
Jungian, Archetypal, Imaginal and Transpersonal psychology deal clearly in contemporary language with the same process and mystical philosophy we find in alchemy. Archetypal or Imaginal psychology is a relativistic, polytheistic orientation rather than monotheistic. It recognizes multiple points of view in the latent infinity of psyche. To be an alchemist requires learning the language of alchemy, becoming conversant in its terms and operations. But these are concepts and metaphors until they are grounded with practice, planted in the earth (coagulatio).
Soul based therapies claim imagination and images as primary concerns, describing a nonlinear dynamic process of being-in-anima. Psychological life has a metaphoric and phenomenological character expressed in images. Archetypal images impact us in multidimensional ways. We learn as much from our experimental failures as successes. That is how we find our creative edge.
As we move within the transformative elements of alchemy we radically switch perspectives. By seeing through and mirroring the fractal elements of alchemy we learn to recognize the nigredo, the albedo, the rubedo and coniunctio when they arise. We get a feel for the Mercurial, the Venusian, Martian and Saturnian energies and what feelings and images come with them. We see through the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual synchronicities the outer world presents that mirror our inner lives. The uncanny and extraordinary becomes familiar, more expected than not.
There are ancient elements at work in our psychic lives. Astrological, kabbalistic, metallurgical and even chemical elements are metaphorical, archetypal, symbolic forces operating in a holistic system. Imaginal psychology draws on the sacred potentials of alchemy, spiritual traditions, somatic practices, creative arts, mythology, indigenous wisdom, humor, deep ecology, literary and poetic imagination. The opus of soul work includes mystical philosophy, cultural history, and social critique. More than academic commentary, it is an applied art of affinities, a revelatory 'psience' with self (body-spirit) as laboratory.
Soul Healing
Image is a direct expression of soul. Alchemical images articulate a different reality of soul, that is neither mind nor matter -- imaginative consciousness. The being of nature is Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. Mind and heart, sensuality and aesthetics flow from this root of psyche as imagination -- the primary element and mode of experience. Psyche continuously creates and pours forth emergent images that matter. Body is the physical form of spirit, the somatic source of imagery that helps us grow spiritually and creatively.
Thus, alchemy, the art of understanding nature and our own nature, is a way to mirror and care for the soul with psychophysical, chemical and cosmological aspects. Soul as center of our inquiry and practice speaks to us meaningfully through the imagery of alchemy, the wisdom of the heart, through which we remember our naked connection to the cycles of nature and rhythms of the Earth. The universal couple is the ever-passionate Alchemist and seductive Soror Mystica, Anima Mundi revealing herself. Image is the esoteric lover, the intimate other that offers us healing and gives us meaning.
The Alchemical Field
Alchemy is a poetic process of active imagination in which we can act and suffer in a creative way. Discovery excites us. Aesthetic response is an awakening that drives us. To pursue alchemy, we must love it, utterly. Vulnerability opens us to breakthrough that fosters commitment. We surrender our hearts to the creative process that moves us into liberation. We respond to the impetus to realize our full potential. Thus, alchemy is an aesthetic education that leads us beyond normalcy into our gifts and talents. As such, it is a compassionate act of self-care.
Reality is in-formed by soul's metaphorical weave of mythical narrative. Soul (anima) is an active intelligence that forms or plots our fates. Being-in-Anima (esse in anima) is to be ensouled. Soma Sophia, the Body of Wisdom is inherent dwelling within the body of Anima Mundi.
Psyche is immersed in imagination, metaphor, poetry and myth, including scientific and spiritual technologies. Fantasy deliteralizes the illusory concreteness of matter. Images and fantasy are the carriers of meaning. The language of alchemy provides archetypes for the world as it is phenomenologically constructed. Inspiration replenishes the world, the wasteland of the nigredo.
Alchemy is a Way of being in soul with its own common language that anchors the narrative of each alchemist's life. We are deepened through the instruction of these inherited cultural symbols. Alchemy is a language of the soul, a matrix of transformation that coordinates our efforts. It allows us to play with ideas about the nature of reality and our own spiritual and practical nature. Alchemy configures our soul, aligning us with a deeper life. The identity of our story is welded to the identity of our character.
Arcane Meaning
There is a unity of existence underlying psyche and matter, mind and body. We live life in terms of our story. We construct a reality accessible only through that alchemical language of earthiness and the transcendental, the mundane and the intangible. Alchemical metaphors appear spontaneously in the psyches of all individuals, largely unnoticed. But alchemy naturally includes work with dark matter and energy. It is this darkness that makes it the occult pursuit of Light.
We can consciously choose to notice and see through alchemical metaphors forming an intentionality. Do we choose alchemy or does it somehow choose us? Some are moved toward alchemy as something to live in and through, a way for soul to find itself in life, to find the multidimensionality of the "one that is many." A momentary insight can capture a lifetime of experiences.
Pondering the burning questions of life leads to self expression that functions as a reciprocal feedback loop between the sacred and profane. We penetrate the Mystery even as the dynamic impulse penetrates us. This inspiration is why we make art and explore our spirituality. Intentionality is contemplative focus (meditatio) which opens an inner dialogue with the cosmos.
Our works lead toward bliss when they are life-changing. We change the context of our lives. Raising the alchemical heat increases the intensity of being. It enables us to drill a hole to the very center of ourselves, following the injunction VITRIOL: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. ("Visit the Interior Parts of the Earth; By Rectification Thou Shalt Find the Hidden Stone.") This is the true meta-syn, the elixir of life.
Choosing alchemy as an artful lifestyle transmutes chance into fate. We live life in terms of our alchemical story which makes meaning possible. Literal events become metaphorical enactments, deepening events into meaningful experiences with poetic suggestion. Alchemy is a cosmological myth ("As Above, So Below") that reunites us with the sacred, with the divine. We are involved with the world in a new way, no longer inhibited by reductionistic culture. The Philosopher's Stone is a non-dual state of consciousness.
Jung felt that art is a healing response to collective cultural norms. The alchemical art connects the individual psyche to esoteric history and underground currents of occulture. Alchemy's ideas are tools that help us animate the literal and superficial by moving us immediately beyond literal objectivities into the mythic perspective of ambiguity, multiplicity and inherent meaning. The alchemical art lies in inducing the synchronistic unification of psyche and matter as a numinous reality. It is a resurrection of spirit in the realm of matter that raises consciousness by reframing our personal history.
Aesthetic Arrest
Clarity is artistic discovery of the universal. There is enchantment in the quality of wholeness. There is beauty in the rhythms of nature and our nature. Aesthetic response is an essential emotional aspect of alchemy that lends flow and harmony to the process of balance, rhythm and synthesis of immediate perception. That flow is lyrical, epic and dramatic. Aesthetic signification is one thing, but the deep emotional impact of aesthetic arrest -- being suspended for a thrilling radiant moment in the eternal -- stops us in our tracks in a moment of realization.
We dissolve in the mysterious ground of being, the sublime wellspring of creativity. The mind goes still as primal awareness expands into wholeness. Something without physical form shines forth from the hidden world in that very moment. These luminous experiences, true works of art, drive us onward in the Quest. We are struck with divine inspiration and the passion to see it through to completion. Sensuous cognition of beauty is a revelation, an astonishment that captivates our rapt attention.
Aesthetic arrest blows apart the illusory differences between the sacred and the profane. We are inspired in the a-ha moment, utterly dissolved in the momentary ego-death of its solutio that tears asunder illusory nature. This aesthetic experience is an act of surrender that is an epiphany. It makes us gasp for air and sparks a cascade of pleasure.
We become a part of the truth we seek at the paradox of participation. The alchemist lives at this paradox. The greening of the wasteland restores artistic expression. Voegelin calls each participant in therapeutic process and practice a simultaneous part and whole of a reality of consciousness like a marriage, polity, or cosmos. Alchemy speaks of the Royal Marriage, or paradoxical cosmic conjunction (coniunctio) of opposites.
We are directly connected to beauty and wholeness. We know what it means to exist rooted in the mysterious creative ground of being. As artists we are mythmakers, dreaming the alchemical dream onward. Myth is transparent to transcendent process in the Now-Here. In sublimatio we reach escape velocity. In aesthetic arrest, the phenomenal field disappears as we come to our own Zero Point. Any artistic expression produced by this personal experience is likely to lead others to their own, as the alchemists have led us with their secret fire.
Soul is made by narrating events in terms of myth, the metaphoric and symbolic dimensions of our experience. Poetics brings the archetypal into participation with the mundane by tending the currents of life. The alchemist in us is an imaginative variation of our mundane character through which some of us come to recognize our life story. Our enlivened art speaks from and to our depths. Alchemy is a direct way of knowing -- experience-based knowledge -- a gnosis.
ALCHEMICAL ORIENTATION
Jung Love
Jung was enamored with alchemy -- the spiritual impulse, hidden wisdom and experiential matrix he found there. Jung was self-initiated by his own mercurial occult spirit. Occult practice was at the core of Jug's theory, clinical practice and inner experience. By revitalizing alchemy he participated in its mysteries. Occult ideas were circulating widely among Central European intellectuals before World War II and they captured Jung's imagination.
Following an influential dream, Jung collected an entire library of alchemical works. He compiled alchemy’s universal truths in several of his works including Psychology and Alchemy, Alchemical Studies, Mysterium Coniunctionis, The Secret of the Golden Flower, Aion, and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
Jung codified the encrypted language of alchemy in terms of our human transformation process, including irrational consciousness. Yet, Jung’s is not the only interpretation of those elements, including the Quest and the Great Work. While initially we might learn about symbols, we have to learn how to work with them, to work within them since they contain us, rather than being contained within ourselves. The alchemist is a living symbol, an ensouled personification of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone.
Jung’s second-generation followers adhered fairly strictly to his monist view of alchemy. Highlights of this period include now classic works by Marie-Louse von Franz and Edward Edinger. Edinger gave us Ego and Archetype plus Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. The works of von Franz include Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy; An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.
Other Jungian contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance. Another Jungian contribution is Mircea Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. Their work was referenced and paralleled by contemporary alchemy scholars like Frater Albertus, Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, Richard Grossinger, David Fidler, Adam McLean and other modern commentators.
Revisioning the Psyche
Moving beyond Jung's popularized but static definitions, 3rd generation psychotherapeutic practitioners were far more innovative than preservationist. They overthrew Jung's old order with new hermeneutic understanding beyond the progressive, heroic Self, which is a concept not an image. In this they were true to the vital and reflective Mercurial Spirit.
Revisioning the whole mindscape, James Hillman led a revolt against the ossified orthodoxy of Jungianism that came to be called Archetypal Psychology and later Imaginal Psychology. It freed the psyche from what had become a conservative fundamentalism with a party line and right and wrong interpretations. It brought back living process and moved interest out of the containment of the cloistered therapy room into the living, breathing World-at-Large by reframing the psyche and deliteralizing concrete reality.
Once a person has focused intention a break with the form of ritual can lead right to its essence. A similar process is happening in the practice of alchemy, which has come to include more than scholar/practitioners and laboratory experimentalists. Globally, new subcultures are engaging in spagyrics, fire circles, artistic metallurgy, social networks, art shows and performance as well as other volatile tranformative practices, which have escaped the retort into the world. Alchemists no longer have to wok in isolation. But alchemy is no psycho-spiritual franchise, but a deeply individual process.
Alchemy's process-oriented spirituality has come down to earth. As depth psychology has drawn from the spring of alchemy, so too can we gain the wisdom of our art from psychological practice. Their common language allows us to break free of conventional constraints on our thought, experience and behaviors to enter the mythic dimension in new expressive ways.
We do so as soon as we recognize the poetic element behind identifying ourselves as alchemists and what that means in the narrative of our life stories. Alchemy is the kind of language we employ describing the intimate engagement between psyche and matter. It is the original mindbody medicine.
The Way of Alchemy
Alchemy is not a sacred 17th century cow, embodied only in hoary texts, enigmatic laboratory procedures, and static pictures. Soul is made in the fractal reiteration of the deepening of experience – all experience – which molds character (narrative identity) with mythologizing. Alchemy is one of these dynamic means of moving beyond deconstruction into soul-making – a phenomenological approach.
Alchemy is a creative encounter with chaos and a struggle to understand the nature of healing. Chaos is the Universal Solvent. Healing springs from deep within. All apparent structure is hidden in chaos, and in chaos there are hidden forms. As we deconstruct our fictional selves, we find that deep within there is a primordial consciousness of pure Being. Connection with this wellspring is the Source of life and creativity. Chaos is the crucible of creation. Through alchemy, we move deeper into the images, and then become them, rather than merely interacting with them.
Alchemy, like therapy, is a practical Way of making life into a flowing story, and that story is necessarily illustrated to convey what cannot be said in words, to include what happens in the gaps in consciousness. The alchemy of by-gone centuries is as inappropriate today as obsolete science. Naturally, there is value there but we don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of its extant literature to apply its wisdom and gain its treasure.
Post-postmodern alchemy has broken the retort and escaped into the world at large, into bigger stories. We craft a personal narrative by recognizing and reiterating mythic claims, metaphorical enactments through reflective speculation, experimentation, projection, meditation, dream, image and fantasy. Reflection deepens into experience and expression through artful means of what never happens but always is.
Soul is an active intelligence because myth leads to practical moves. Soul is made through suffering the process and by taking up myth as a poetic perspective – a dramatic complexity of multiple metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of experience. In this sense, alchemy cannot be separated from life. The narration is one of life’s possibilities, of our alternative selves as realizable potential, including discordant elements, into meaningful story lived in and through the alchemical process.
If we are truly Mercurial, we oscillate in our thoughts, are enigmatic in our language, inconsistent with ideas, and resistant to any fixed definitions or propositions. Perhaps only archetypal imagination serves this mercurial nature. It is explored and embodied best through artistic expression of archetypal images, making the universal particular and moving archaic symbolism into the immediate present, rather than relying exclusively on stale retrievals and intellectual commentary.
Soul-Making
What soul does is make fantasy images. Alchemy is a psychological metaphysics, a worldview that takes the soul further into mythopoiesis, producing images, events, and phenomena. Analysis and discourse (deductive and inductive reasoning) merely turns the libido into a narcissistic reflection of itself, when it could be embodied or manifested, even beyond self-evident intuition.
Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.”
Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Breaking our containment in the ancient practices through artful means releases libido into the world, into the drive, which loves the world, even into erotic desire for anima mundi.
Embodying the Vision
Alchemy cannot be a closed system of static dogmatic thoughts. It is a way of reimagining and creating metaphors from different points of view or narratives that open the field of infinite meanings. Each reiteration creates new networks, new meaning, new insights, embodiments, metamorphosis and transformation. To participate in this process means mythologizing our own chaotic character.
It is a truism in therapy that art expression clarifies and releases emotional flow. The classical alchemists nearly always illustrated their works, making universal pictures with themselves as point of reference. Alchemy would be a dry discourse without its images, without the discipline of images that leads to flow, to solutio.
Alchemy begins and ends in the quest for eternal life. It is a spiritual technology of rebirth using natural methods that in their effect transcend nature by amplifying that which is immortal within us. It does not exist in nature but must be prepared by Art. Art is a form of manifesting, making and objectifying the world - spiritual physics.
Artists and mystics are aware of their own internal space and thus able to enter it, playing the mindbody like a musical instrument. Looking inside, they see the true nature of reality and can express that literally and symbolically. We all possess the creative potential. All creative acts are a marriage of spirit and matter, reaching down into the body as the source of our essential being and becoming.
Today, we might describe this resonance as accessing energy that regenerates the mindbody. Healing is an aspect of creativity; nature is within and without us. The Magus does not dominate reality but develops embodied psychophysical equilibrium, clarity, wisdom and compassion.
Creative work originates in the body and is projected out into the world. The projections are then internalized into awareness. The bodymind of the artist is an alchemical vessel containing the creative flux during the process of transformation. Awareness and consciousness form a continuous alchemical movement. The creative gold is generated and embodied in the alembic of the mindbody. The mindbody is the same substance as the Cosmos and contains and reveals its mysteries.
Alchemy reduces all to the first state, the ground state of being - original experience that is timeless, infinite. The classical Void, the quantum vacuum is a carrier of information. The energy body or the field body connects us with the negentropic potential of the zero-point field. Radiant light literally emerges from this mystic void. Primordial structuring processes are common to both psyche and matter, working in the gap or empty interval between intention and action.
So, alchemy refines the way the mindbody generates and processes inherent light as medicine. It refines the aspirant's ability for tapping and amplifying Medicine Light. This primordial state is the luminous ground of our being, hidden deep in the heart of things.
All other goals are subordinate to this prime directive which includes meditative techniques for continuing consciousness after death. This Philosopher's Stone is also the Universal Medicine, the regenerative Elixir of Life. The greatest mystery is the LIFE IN DEATH: we don't die but continue in transcendent form
.
This is the virtual secret of man and nature. The human body is the athenor that contains the fire and the First and Last Matter which are "One" with the vessel of transformation. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone.
REFERENCES
Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Marlan, Stanton, Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in Honor of James Hillman, Spring Journal Books, New Orleans, 2008.
Miller, Iona; “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” Chaosophy ’93, 1992. www.asklepia.org/chaosophy...ophy3.html
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (based on The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago, 1994.
Miller, Iona; “Introduction to Alchemy 101,” 1985. spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com/rich....html
Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.
The Art of Alchemy
ARCHETYPAL IMAGINATION in SPIRITUAL ALCHEMY:The Art of Alchemy in Archetype, Imagination and Soul
By Iona Miller, 2009
“Psyche cannot be totally different from matter, for how otherwise could it move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ultimate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the right lines.” --Carl Jung, AION
“To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the soul of the world and its objects…From this point of view, the psychic reality of the world’s soul becomes available from the images. There is no way to separate our soul from the souls of others – and by “others” I mean people as well as everything that we can consider an environment. It is, thus no longer possible to work with the classical notion of individuation and its rhetoric of “my travel,” “my process,” “my journeys,” the blind frenetic pursuit of an inner Self, and to ignore the individuation of the soul of the world and its objects. The care of the soul does not necessarily mean introversion or denying the reality of the world, its substance and objects. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self, and exclude the world.”
--Marcus Quintaes on James Hillman’s Polemics in Archetypal Psychologies (Marlan, 2008)
Post-Postmodern Alchemy
The topic of ancient and medieval alchemy was rescued from obscurity largely through the efforts of C. G. Jung. Following an influential dream, he collected an entire library of alchemical works. He compiled alchemy’s universal truths in several of his works including Psychology and Alchemy, Alchemical Studies, Mysterium Coniunctionis, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
Jung codified the encrypted language of alchemy in terms of our human transformation process, including irrational consciousness. Yet, Jung’s is not the only interpretation of those elements, including the Quest and the Great Work. While initially we might learn about symbols, we have to learn how to work with them, to work within them since they contain us, rather than being contained within ourselves. The alchemist is a living symbol of the healing power of the Philosopher's Stone.
Jung’s second-generation followers adhered fairly strictly to his monist view of alchemy. Highlights of this period include now classic works by Marie-Louse von Franz and Edward Edinger. Edinger gave us Ego and Archetype plus Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy. The works of von Franz include Alchemical Active Imagination, Projection and Recollection in Jungian Psychology, Number and Time, and Alchemy; An Introduction to the Symbolism and its Psychology, to name but a few.
Other Jugnian contributors include Henry Corbin with Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, on Arabic alchemy, M. Esther Harding's Psychic Energy, Robert Grinnell's Alchemy in a Modern Woman, and Edward Whitmont's Psyche and Substance. Another Jungian contribution is Mircea Eliade's The Forge & the Crucible. Their work was referenced and paralleled by scholars like Frater Albertus, Stanislas Klossowski De Rola, Richard Grossinger, Adam McLean and other modern commentators.
But the 3rd generation of psychotherapeutic practitioners were far more innovative than preservationist. In this they were true to the vital and reflective Mercurical Spirit. Revisioning the whole mindscape, James Hillman led a revolt against the ossified orthodoxy that came to be called Archetypal Psychology and later Imaginal Psychology. It freed the psyche from what had become a conservative fundamentalism with a party line and right and wrong interpretations. It brought back living process and moved interest out of the containment of the cloistered therapy room into the living, breathing World-at-Large.
A similar process is happening in the practice of alchemy, which has come to include not only scholar/practitioners and laboratory or experimentalists, but globalized cultural forms of spagyrics, fire circles, and other volatile practices, which have escaped the retort into the world. It has brought alchemy’s process-oriented spirituality down to earth.
The Way of Alchemy
Alchemy is not a sacred 17th century cow, embodied only in hoary texts, enigmatic laboratory procedures, and static pictures. Soul is made in the fractal reiteration of the deepening of experience – all experience – which molds character (narrative identity) with mythologizing. Alchemy is one of these dynamic means of moving beyond deconstruction into soul-making – a phenomenological approach.
Alchemy is a creative encounter with chaos and a struggle to understand the nature of healing. Chaos is the Universal Solvent. Healing springs from deep within. All apparent structure is hidden in chaos, and in chaos there are hidden forms. As we deconstruct our fictional selves, we find that deep within there is a primordial consciousness of pure Being. Connection with this wellspring is the Source of life and creativity. Chaos is the crucible of creation. Through alchemy, we move deeper into the images, and then become them, rather than merely interacting with them.
Alchemy, like therapy, is a practical Way of making life into a flowing story, and that story is necessarily illustrated to convey what cannot be said in words, to include what happens in the gaps in consciousness. The alchemy of by-gone centuries is as inappropriate today as obsolete science. Naturally, there is value there but we don’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of its extant literature to apply its wisdom and gain its treasure.
Post-postmodern alchemy has broken the retort and escaped into the world at large, into bigger stories. We craft a personal narrative by recognizing and reiterating mythic claims, metaphorical enactments through reflective speculation, experimentation, projection, meditation, dream, image and fantasy. Reflection deepens into experience and expression through artful means of what never happens but always is.
Soul is an active intelligence because myth leads to practical moves. Soul is made through suffering the process and by taking up myth as a poetic perspective – a dramatic complexity of multiple metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of experience. In this sense, alchemy cannot be separated from life. The narration is one of life’s possibilities, of our alternative selves as realizable potential, including discordant elements, into meaningful story lived in and through the alchemical process.
If we are truly Mercurial, we oscillate in our thoughts, are enigmatic in our language, inconsistent with ideas, and resistant to any fixed definitions or propositions. Perhaps only archetypal imagination serves this mercurial nature. It is explored and embodied best through artistic expression of archetypal images, making the universal particular and moving archaic symbolism into the immediate present, rather than relying exclusively on stale retrievals and intellectual commentary.
Soul-Making
What soul does is make fantasy images. Alchemy is a psychological metaphysics, a worldview that takes the soul further into mythopoiesis, producing images, events, and phenomena. Analysis and discourse (deductive and inductive reasoning) merely turns the libido into a narcissistic reflection of itself, when it could be embodied or manifested, even beyond self-evident intuition.
Soul-making approximates what it means to be “in soul,” esse in anima, immersed in both an internal and external process of transmutation. It is the process of making psyche matter, of making the World Soul – the Anima Mundi – through image, phenomena and pathologizing. It is not limited to so-called spiritual matters, but spiritualizes the whole sociopolitical field of human endeavors so that it all “matters.”
Imagination is stimulated by mythical fiction, which generates mythological imagination and speculative freedom of the soul. Breaking our containment in the ancient practices through artful means releases libido into the world, into the drive, which loves the world, even into erotic desire for anima mundi.
Embodying the Vision
Alchemy cannot be a closed system of static dogmatic thoughts. It is a way of reimagining and creating metaphors from different points of view or narratives that open the field of infinite meanings. Each reiteration creates new networks, new meaning, new insights, embodiments, metamorphosis and transformation. To participate in this process means mythologizing our own chaotic character.
It is a truism in therapy that art expression clarifies and releases emotional flow. The classical alchemists nearly always illustrated their works, making universal pictures with themselves as point of reference. Alchemy would be a dry discourse without its images, without the discipline of images that leads to flow, to solutio.
REFERENCES
Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois, 1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York, 1973.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Miller, Iona; “Chaos As the Universal Solvent,” Chaosophy ’93, 1992. www.asklepia.org/chaosophy...ophy3.html
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (formerly The Book of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago, 1994.
Miller, Iona; “Introduction to Alchemy 101,” 1985. spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com/rich....html
Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York, 1988.
Esoteric Book Conference 2009
Esoteric Book Conference 2009September 19 & 20 Seattle Center
[esotericbookfair.blogspot.com]
The Esoteric Book Conference is an annual international event to bring together authors, artists, publishers and bookmakers working in the field of esotericism. In addition to presentations by notable authors and scholars, the conference opens it doors to publishers and booksellers showcasing new & used books as well as rare and hard-to-find esoteric texts. For two days the conference hosts the largest selection of esoteric books under one roof. Contemporary esoteric publishing, finepress book arts and antiquarian texts are offered to augment the libraries of readers, scholars and collectors alike.
This multi-disciplined conference will feature presentations by contemporary authorities researching and working in esoteric currents both East & West. Western Esotericism, Gnosticism, Theosophy, Mythology, Shamanism, Rosicrucianism, Sacred Sciences, Occulture and World Religions are among the subjects to be represented. An esoteric book fair and art show will also be on site allowing education, vending and networking in a unique field of literary, historical and cultural arts.
Call for proposals.
The Esoteric Book Conference is seeking proposals for author presentations, book signings, vending and submissions for the art show. Space is limited at this first annual conference so proposals should be submitted as soon as possible.
Proposals and inquiries may be sent to: ouroboros[at]bookarts[dot]org
Retorts on the Soul
Brain science and the search for the self* 20 March 2009 by A C Grayling
* Magazine issue 2700. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* For similar stories, visit the Mindfields by A.C. Grayling and
The Human Brain Topic Guides
AFTER John Locke published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding
in 1690, he sent copies to various savants of his acquaintance,
asking for comments and in particular for advice on whether he had
left out anything essential - for if so, he could add it to a second
edition. His correspondent William Molyneaux of Dublin replied that
Locke needed to say something about personal identity: that is, what
makes a person the same person throughout their life.
Belief in the idea of a substantial soul - a "you" that is separate
from your body - was waning. In the absence of this metaphysical
entity as a convenience for underpinning personal identity, what,
asked Molyneaux, makes the retired general continuous with the eager
subaltern of 40 years before, and he with the red-cheeked baby in his
nurse's arms 20 years before that? In response, Locke added a chapter
to his second edition which instantly caused a storm of controversy
and has been famous ever since in the annals of philosophy.
In that chapter Locke argued that a person's identity over time
resides in their consciousness (he coined this term, and here
introduced it to the English language) of being the same self at a
later time as at an earlier, and that the mechanism that makes this
possible is memory. Whereas a stone is the same stone over time
because it is the very same lump of matter - or almost, allowing for
erosion - and an oak tree is identical with its originating acorn
because it is the same continuous organisation of matter, a person is
only the same through time if he or she is self-aware of being so.
Memory loss interrupts identity, and complete loss of memory is
therefore loss of the self.
The divines, represented by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of
Worcester, took umbrage and attacked Locke for ignoring the immortal
soul. In 1712 The Spectator magazine ran a front-cover demand that
"the wits of Kingdom" should get together in conference to settle the
matter of personal identity and selfhood, because the controversy was
getting out of control. In 1739, when David Hume published the first
volume of his Treatise on Human Nature, he stated that there is no
such thing as the self, for if one conducts the empirical inquiry of
introspecting - looking within oneself - to see what there is apart
from current sensations, feelings, desires and thoughts, one does not
find an extra something, a "self", over and above these things, which
owns them and endures beyond them.
Thus in 50 years the unreflective idea that each individual has an
immortal soul as the basis of their selfhood had changed utterly. For
millennia before Locke, no one had so much as raised the question.
But it was no surprise that the question should suddenly become
urgent as the EnlightenmentMovie Camera dawned, with its central idea
of the autonomous individual who is a bearer of rights and
responsible for his or her own moral outlook; such an idea needs a
robust idea of selfhood, and the philosophers eagerly tried to make
sense of it.
Hume's sceptical view did not prevail. Kant argued that logic
requires a concept-imposing self to make experience possible, and the
Romantics made the self the centre of each individual's universe: "I
am that which began," wrote Swinburne in Hertha, "Out of me the years
roll, out of me God and Man." Without a deep idea of the self there
could be no Freud or psychoanalysis.
So fundamental is the idea of the self to modern human consciousness
that one would expect developments in neuroscience to have a direct
bearing on it. And as Thomas Metzinger argues in his stimulating new
book The Ego Tunnel, reviewed on page 44 of this issue, that is
exactly what is happening - with surprising and often disconcerting
results.
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