Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's almost midnight, so here we go with a new Magic Monday. The picture is Max Heindel, founder of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, one of the big four American Rosicrucian orders during the golden age of American occultism -- that was most of a century ago, in case you were wondering.

Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. Any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer, though it may be Tuesday sometime before I get to them all.

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use the button below to access my online tip jar.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed to new questions. See you next week!***

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Can you recommend some good books or other resources about alchemy?

[ecosophia]

Sure. The best way to start is to get some basic knowledge of spagyrics, the branch of alchemy that deals with herbs; the spagyric literature is fairly sane, which is more than can be said about most other modern writings on the subject! Having some experience with hands-on alchemical work also makes it much easier to make sense of the texts; Jung would have written far fewer absurdities on the subject if he'd spent some time practicing some basic form of laboratory alchemy.

Mark Stavish's book The Path of Alchemy is a very solid introduction to spagyrics, and the book I recommend to beginners; other important spagyric texts are The Alchemist's Handbook by Frater Albertus and Spagyrics by Manfred Junius. Meanwhile, for a broader education on the subject, Adam McLean's gargantuan alchemy website is your go-to place. The old alchemists used to say Lege, lege, lege, relege, ora, labora, ut invenies -- "read, read, read, reread, pray, work, and you will discover."

[(Anonymous)]

I'm curious, from your perspective, what one example of an absurdity that Jung wrote on the subject of alchemy might be. Jung focused on the subjective or psychological processes associated with alchemy. Is this what you mean, or something else? Thanks.

[ecosophia]

Jung actually has a lot of useful things to say about psychological alchemy, which is one branch or subset of the alchemical sciences. The absurdities showed up when he convinced himself that alchemy was only about psychology, and that the alchemists were merely projecting psychological factors onto the contents of their lab glassware. A few months spent macerating, calcining, cohobating, and projecting spagyric products would have taught him that psychological alchemy is only one branch of the Royal Art, and that there are also physical alchemies.