H. Stanley Redgrove

“ Contradictory ideas from different compartments will then present themselves to consciousness at the same moment of time, and the result of the perception of their contradictory nature will be mental anguish and turmoil, persisting until one set of ideas is conquered and overcome by the other, and harmony and unity are restored.
It is true of all of us, then, that we seek for Unity—unity in mind and life. Some seek it in science and a life of knowledge; some seek it in religion and a life of faith; some seek it in human love and find it in the life of service to their fellows ”

“ III. MEDICINE AND MAGIC
THERE are few tasks at once so instructive and so fascinating as the tracing of the development of the human mind as manifested in the evolution of scientific and philosophical theories. And this is, perhaps, especially true when, as in the case of medicine, this evolution has followed paths so tortuous, intersected by so many fantastic byways, that one is not infrequently doubtful as to the true road. ”

“ And whether or not the desire for material wealth was a secondary object, the true aim of the genuine alchemist was a much nobler one than this as one of them exclaims with true scientific fervour: "Would to God... all men might become adepts in our Art—for then gold, the great idol of mankind, would lose its value, and we should prize it only for its scientific teaching." ”

“ Many the methods, right and wrong; many the terms under which the One is conceived, true and false—in a sense, to use the phraseology of a bygone system of philosophy, we are all, consciously or unconsciously, following paths that lead thither or paths that lead away, seekers in the quest of the Philosopher's Stone.
Let us, in these excursions in the byways of thought, consider for a while the form that the quest of fundamental unity took in the hands of those curious mediaeval philosophers, half mystics, half experimentalists in natural things—that are known by the name of "alchemists." ”

“ It is ever a conjunction between male and female in a mystical sense; it is ever the bringing together by art of things separated by an imperfect order of things; it is ever the perfection of natures by means of this conjunction. But if the mystical work of alchemy is an inward work in consciousness, then the union between male and female is an union in consciousness; and if we remember the traditions of a state when male and female had not as yet been divided, it may dawn upon us that the higher alchemy was a practice for the return into this ineffable mode of being. ”

“ For if it be true, as all must admit, that the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known, then the universe must either be explained in terms of man—i.e. in terms of will or desire—or remain incomprehensible. That is to say, a philosophy must either be anthropomorphic, or no philosophy at all.
Thus a metaphysical scrutiny of the results of modern science leads us to a belief in God. But man felt the need of unity, and crude animism, though a step in the right direction, failed to satisfy his thought, long before the days of modern science. ”

“ Men before him had experimented, but none seemed to have realised the importance of the experimental method. Nor was he, of course, by any means the first mathematician—there was a long line of Greek and Arabian mathematicians behind him, men whose knowledge of the science was in many cases much greater than his—or the most learned mathematician of his day; but none realised the importance of mathematics as an organon of scientific research as he did; and he was assuredly the priest who joined mathematics to experiment in the bonds of sacred matrimony. ”

“ IX. THE QUEST OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
THE need of unity is a primary need of human thought. Behind the varied multiplicity of the world of phenomena, primitive man, as I have indicated on a preceding excursion, begins to seek, more or less consciously, for that Unity which alone is Real. And this statement not only applies to the first dim gropings of the primitive human mind, but sums up almost the whole of science and philosophy; for almost all science and philosophy is explicitly or implicitly a search for unity, for one law or one love, one matter or one spirit. ”

“ We often hear religious but non-scientific men complain because scientific and perhaps equally as religious men do not in their books ascribe the production of natural phenomena to the Divine Power. But if they were so to do they would be transcending their business as scientists. In every science certain simple facts of experience are taken for granted: it is the business of the scientist to reduce other and more complex facts of experience to terms of these data, not to explain these data themselves. ”

“ I would suggest, in conclusion, that there is nothing really opposed to the spirit of modern science in the thesis that "all experience is magic, and only magically explicable." Science does not pretend to reveal the fundamental or underlying cause of phenomena, does not pretend to answer the final Why? This is rather the business of philosophy, though, in thus distinguishing between science and philosophy, I am far from insinuating that philosophy should be otherwise than scientific. ”

“ Indeed, if we may judge by the esteem in which the Hermetic maxim, "What is above is as that which is below, what is below is as that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing," was held by every alchemist, we are justified in asserting that the mystical theory of the spiritual significance of Nature—a theory with which, as we have seen, is closely connected the Neoplatonic and Kabalistic doctrine that all things emanate in series from the Divine Source of all Being—was at the very heart of alchemy. ”

“ As a matter of fact, how ever, all these excursions have been undertaken with one and the same object in view, that, namely, of understanding aright and appreciating at their true worth some of the more curious byways along which human thought has travelled. It is easy for the superficial thinker to dismiss much of the thought of the past (and, indeed, of the present) as mere superstition, not worth the trouble of investigation: but it is not scientific. There is a reason for every belief, even the most fantastic, and it should be our object to discover this reason. ”

“ Woman is a road whereby man travels either to God or the devil. The problem of sex is a far deeper problem than appears at first sight, involving mysteries both the direst and most holy. It is by no means a fantastic hypothesis that the inmost mystery of what a certain school of mystics calls "the Secret Tradition" was a sexual one. At any rate, the fact that some of those, at least, to whom alchemy connoted a mystical process, were alive to the profound spiritual significance of sex, renders of double interest what they have to intimate of the achievement of the Magnum Opus in man. ”

“ Indeed, the attitude of mind I have referred to is not restricted to primitive man; how many people to-day, for instance, just accept sex as a fact, pleasant or unpleasant according to their predilections, never querying, or feeling the need to query, its why and wherefore? It is by no means surprising, that when man first felt the need of satisfying himself as to the origin of the universe, he should have done so by a theory founded on what he knew of his own generation. ”

“ As I said, all virtue, power, and knowledge which man has from God was believed to descend to him by way of these angelical hierarchies, step by step; and thus it was thought that those of the lowest hierarchy alone were sent from heaven to man. It was such beings that white magic pretended to evoke. ”

“ We no longer onesidedly characterise the philosophy of the middle ages as scholasticism, but rather place mysticism beside it as of equal rank, and even as being the more fruitful and promising movement. ”

“ PYTHAGORAS was not merely a mathematician, he was first and foremost a philosopher, whose philosophy found in number the basis of all things, because number, for him, alone possessed stability of relationship. As I have remarked on a former occasion, "The theory that the Cosmos has its origin and explanation in Number... is one for which it is not difficult to account if we take into consideration the nature of the times in which it was formulated. The Greek of the period, looking upon Nature, beheld no picture of harmony, uniformity and fundamental unity. ”

“ But that is the business of philosophy. The task science attempts is the simpler one of the correlation of natural phenomena, and in this effort leaves the ultimate problems of metaphysics untouched. A universe, however, whose phenomena are not only capable of some degree of correlation, but present the extraordinary degree of harmony and unity which science makes manifest in Nature, cannot be, as in animism, the product of a vast number of inco-ordinated and antagonistic wills, but must either be the product of one Will, or not the product of will at all. ”

“ The alchemists conceived the universe to be a unity; they believed that all material bodies had been developed from one seed; their elements are merely different forms of one matter and, therefore, convertible one into another. They were thoroughgoing evolutionists with regard to the things of the material world, and their theory concerning the evolution of the metals was, I believe, the direct outcome of a metallurgical application of the mystical doctrine of the soul's development and regeneration. ”

“ When the mind takes the trouble to observe a fact of the third group, or is confronted by one of the fourth, it feels a sense of surprise. Such facts wear an air of strangeness, and the mind can only rest satisfied when it has shown them to itself as in some way cases of the second group of facts, or, at least, brought them into relation therewith. ”

“ God took the body out of which He built up man from those things which He created from nothingness into something... Hence man is now a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements, and so he is their quintessence.... But between the macrocosm and the microcosm this difference occurs, that the form, image, species, and substance of man are diverse therefrom. In man the earth is flesh, the water is blood, fire is the heat thereof, and air is the balsam. ”

“ Alchemy, so to speak, was generated and throve in a dim religious light. We cannot open a book by any one of the better sort of alchemists without noticing how closely their theology and their chemistry are interwoven, and what a remarkably religious view they take of their subject. ”

“ The most philosophic account of metallic seed is that, perhaps, of the mysterious adept "EIRENAEUS PHILALETHES," who distinguishes between it and mercury in a rather interesting manner. He writes: "Seed is the means of generic propagation given to all perfect things here below; it is the perfection of each body; and anybody that has no seed must be regarded as imperfect. Hence there can be no doubt that there is such a thing as metallic seed.... All metallic seed is the seed of gold; for gold is the intention of Nature in regard to all metals. ”

“ Know that the virgin signifies St Mary; By her breast we understand similarly Holy Church; And then by the kiss it ought to signify, That a man when he sleeps is in semblance of death; God slept as man, who suffered death on the cross, And his destruction was our redemption, And his labour our repose, Thus God deceived the Devil by a proper semblance ”

“ I think, indeed, that in the modern theories of energy and the all-pervading ether, the etheric and electrical origin and nature of matter and the evolution of the elements, we may witness the triumphs of mysticism as applied to the interpretation of Nature. Whether or not we shall ever transmute lead into gold, I believe there is a very true sense in which we may say that alchemy, purified by its death, has been proved true, whilst the materialistic view of Nature has been proved false. ”

“ By mystical theology I mean that system of religious thought which emphasises the unity between Creator and creature, though not necessarily to the extent of becoming pantheistic. Man, mystical theology asserts, has sprung from God, but has fallen away from Him through self-love. Within man, however, is the seed of divine grace, whereby, if he will follow the narrow road of self-renunciation, he may be regenerated, born anew, becoming transformed into the likeness of God and ultimately indissolubly united to God in love. ”

“ The union and fusion of the two lives was complete. One day when the master's wife was asked what length of time elapsed before a woman could become pure after intercourse with a man, she replied: 'If it is with her husband, she is pure all the time; if with another man, she is never pure.'" "Many women," adds the writer, "would smilingly remark that to give such a reply one must be the wife of Pythagoras, and love him as Theano did. And they would be in the right, for it is not marriage that sanctifies love, it is love which justifies marriage." ”

“ In the vegetable world, the live seed placed in the ground, and hence germinating, sprouting up, and becoming a beautiful and umbrageous tree, was a mystery. In the animal world, as the cause of all life, by which all beings came into existence, this power was a mystery. In the view of primitive man generation was the action of the Deity itself. It was the mode in which He brought all things into existence, the sun, the moon, the stars, the world, man were generated by Him. To the productive power man was deeply indebted, for to it he owed the harvests and the flocks which supported his life ”

“ The names of the Divine Being, angels and devils, the planets of the solar system (including sun and moon) and the days of the week, birds and beasts, colours, herbs, and precious stones—all, according to old-time occult philosophy, are connected by the sympathetic relation believed to run through all creation, the knowledge of which was essential to the magician; as well, also, the chief portions of the human body, for man, as we have seen, was believed to be a microcosm—a universe in miniature. ”

“ The alchemists sought to kill or destroy the body or outward form of the metals, in the hope that they might get at and utilise the living essence they believed to be immanent within. As PARACELSUS put it: "Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue... the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue." It seems to me quite obvious that in such ideas as these we have the application to metallurgy of the mystic doctrine of self-renunciation—that the soul must die to self before it can live to God ”

“ Mystical theology teaches that the powers and life of the soul are not inherent in it, but are given by the free grace of God. Neither, according to the alchemists, are the powers and life of nature in herself, but in that immanent spirit, the Soul of the World, that animates her. ”

“ Yet the concepts are not really disparate; for not only is the second birth like unto the first, and not only is the resurrection unto glory described as the Bridal Feast of the Lamb, but marriage is, in a manner, a form of death and rebirth. To justify this in a crude sense, I might say that, from the male standpoint at least, it is a giving of the life-substance to the beloved that life may be born anew and increase. ”

“ The Zohar regards marriage and the performance of the sexual function in marriage as of supreme importance, and this not merely because marriage symbolises a divine union, unless that expression is held to include all that logically follows from the fact, but because, as it seems, the sexual act in marriage may, in fact, become a ritual of transcendental magic.
At least three varieties of opinion can be traced from the view of sex we have under consideration, as to the nature of the perfect man, and hence of the most adequate symbol for transmutation. ”

“ I suggest, on the contrary, that the theory is really needed to explain the commonplace, since, in the last analysis, every bit of experience, every phenomenon, be it ever so ordinary—indeed the very fact of experience itself,—is most truly marvellous and magical, explicable only in terms of spirit. As ELIPHAS LEVI well says in one of his flashes of insight: "The supernatural is only the natural in an extraordinary grade, or it is the exalted natural; a miracle is a phenomenon which strikes the multitude because it is unexpected; the astonishing is that which astonishes ”

“ The common opinion concerning alchemy is that it was a pseudo-science or pseudo-art flourishing during the Dark Ages, and having for its aim the conversion of common metals into silver and gold by means of a most marvellous and wholly fabulous agent called the Philosopher's Stone, that its devotees were half knaves, half fools, whose views concerning Nature were entirely erroneous, and whose objects were entirely mercenary. ”