Aaron Cheak

For phenomenologist and Kulturphilosoph, Jean Gebser (1905–1973), our pervasive time-angst is symptomatic of an intensification of consciousness that is breaking down but also breaking through our rational distortion of reality. Just as pressure creates diamonds, so too can our crushing time-angst be transfigured into the diaphanous, crystalline clarity of integral consciousness. What we hope to convey in this essay can be distilled into three main points: (1) rational time disintegrates, while time-freedom integrates; (2) in time-freedom, the unfolding of consciousness is not linear but whole; and (3) time-freedom renders origin—the pre-eternal wholeness of time—consciously present. We will conclude by discussing how the prerequisite to time-freedom, to rendering origin present, is primordial trust.

Für den Phänomenologen und Kulturphilosophen Jean Gebser (1905–1973) ist unsere durchdringende Zeitangst symptomatisch für eine Bewußtseinsintensivierung, die unsere rationale Realitätsverzerrung zusammenbricht, aber auch durchbricht. So wie Druck Diamanten erschafft, so kann auch unsere erdrückende Zeitangst in die durchscheinende, kristalline Klarheit des integralen Bewusstseins verwandelt werden. Was wir hiermit vermitteln wollen, lässt sich in drei Hauptpunkte destillieren: (1) Die rationale Zeit zerfällt, während die Zeitfreiheit integriert wird; (2) in der Zeitfreiheit ist die Entfaltung des Bewusstseins nicht linear, sondern ganz; und (3) Zeitfreiheit macht den Ursprung—die vorewige Ganzheit der Zeit—bewusst gegenwärtig. Wir schließen mit der Diskussion, wie die Voraussetzung für Zeitfreiheit, für die Vergegenwärtigung des Ursprungs, Urvertrauen ist.

While the exact identity of Huginus à Barma remains a mystery, our research has identified the original manuscript of the Saturnia Regna in a 1649 Moravian work composed by Minim friars. The dedication of this manuscript to ‘Ferdinand Trismegistus’ places the author directly in the ambit of Ferdinand III, and thus among the royal aurifactors of the Bohemian crown. The Praxis that Huginus delineates in the Paris edition of 1657, although not present in the 1649 manuscript, proves to be the first published version of the Cosmopolitan’s Philosophico Operatio—a tradition otherwise known only in manuscripts until 1682. While the central salt doctrine that forms the crux of this tradition has been well-known to historians of science for some time, we have shown that Huginus’ work forms a crucial early redaction of this doctrine, perhaps even the earliest. The influence of Sendivogius, and of works perpetuated under his name, further illuminates the complex historical and intellectual contexts in which Huginus’ work is situated. Huginus, it seems, was either directly involved in these circles, or privy to manuscripts circulating within them. The Society of Unknown Philosophers, whose manuscripts included a redaction of the central salt doctrine, may have been one such network.

"The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum" (La Clef du Cabinet Hermétique) presents the first English translation of an extremely rare French alchemical manuscript that recently surfaced in the New York Public Library’s Archives and Manuscripts Division. The history of the manuscript ties it directly to the Gallatin family, with intriguing links to the mysterious Parisian alchemist, Fulcanelli.

A biographical overview of the life and work of French Hermetic philosopher, René Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961), for the 2019 re-edition of his Le Jeu de Tarot Égyptien (The Game of Egyptian Tarot, 1926) produced and edited by Giordano Berti for Rinascimento Italian Style Art.

A historical introduction to the figure of Dr. Raphæl Eglinus Iconius (1559–1622), a Swiss Protestant theologian and alchemist who was excommunicated from Zürich and later appointed to the faculty of theology at the University of Marburg. This introduction examines Eglinus' involvement in the short collection of Hermetic maxims known as the Aphorismi Basiliani which first appeared in 1608, and provides an edition history of the text.

This study focuses on three interrelated ideas in the oeuvre of René Schwaller de Lubicz: (1) the concept of symbolique, in which the phenomenal cosmos is perceived as a reaction to metaphysical processes; (2) the basis of this idea in the alchemical theory of sulphur, mercury, and salt; and (3) Schwaller’s conception of the alchemical stone as a ‘juncture of transcendence and concretion’. Following this, we will conclude with a few remarks on the significance of Schwaller’s alchemy as a simultaneously operative and spiritual process. A detailed biographical survey is also provided, in order to situate Schwaller in his intellectual and historical contexts.

Best known for his Egyptological writings, which appeared from 1949 onwards, culminating in his three-volume masterpiece, Le Temple de l’homme (The Temple of Man, 1957-8), French Hermetic philosopher René Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961) also played a significant role in the Parisian alchemical revival. While he later disparaged his pre-Egyptological works, and did not republish them when they went out of print, one text has continued to hold a strange allure, and is probably the most fascinating piece from this period: a rare but controversial work entitled Adam l’homme rouge (Adam the Red Man, 1926). While in general the early writings of Schwaller have not ripened evenly, they nevertheless provide important windows into the development of his thought. The Adam text, which deals with the metaphysics of sex, is perhaps the most revealing in this regard, not only because of its erotic topos, but also for the alchemical themes that pervade it. The present study explores these themes and elucidates their contexts and subtexts. I argue that the views on gender and sexuality articulated herein are precise correlates of Schwaller’s alchemical views, which are operative as well as speculative, and that they cannot be divorced from this double context.

The emphasis on diaphany (transparency) arises for Gebser from the perception that the nature of origin (Ursprung) is neither a primordial light nor a primordial darkness but a Diaphainon—that which ‘renders darkness as well as brightness transparent or diaphanous’. Diaphany, for Gebser, is a matrix for the rational structures of consciousness (wakeful logos and light) as well as the pre-rational structures of consciousness (myth, dream, darkness). As Paul Klee remarks: ‘Nature is not at the surface but in the depths. Colours are an expression of this depth at the surface. They surge up from the roots of the world’. In a similar vein, this study seeks to explore the idea of diaphany not by examining Gebser’s philosophical articulation of it—its surface—but by looking at the vital experiences that underpinned it—its depths. Rather than a purely conceptual approach, which risks mere abstraction, I have chosen to explore the principle of diaphany through Gebser’s life experiences, through his poetic perceptions, and in particular, through his relationship to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke.

"René ‘Aor’ Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961) was an Alsatian artist, chemist, revolutionary, Neopythagorean, and Egyptologist. More covertly, however, he was a practicing Hermetic adept deeply experienced with esoteric laboratory processes. Student of Matisse, recipient of the chivalric title ‘de Lubicz’, and collaborator with one of the most influential alchemists of the twentieth century (Fulcanelli, alias Jean Julien Champagne), René Schwaller de Lubicz made one of the most powerful attempts in the modern world to wed the metaphysical to the concrete. Perhaps due to the fact that his Egyptosophical masterpiece, Le Temple de l’homme (The Temple of Man, 1957-8), comprises over a thousand pages of dense geometric analysis, Schwaller is among the most revered yet neglected esotericists of the twentieth century. In academic circles, his symbolist approach to Egyptology incited a virulent controversy, while in literary circles he drew the admiration and attention of figures such as Jean Cocteau and André Breton. Despite or because of this, little academic attention has been paid to his work. What is sorely needed are some concrete entry-points not only into his œuvre proper, but also into his social, intellectual and historical contexts. It is the purpose of this study to provide exactly this.

What I would present here is a detailed biographical and bibliographical survey of the life and work of René Schwaller de Lubicz. This will draw on the seven years of research that I completed as part of my doctoral dissertation: Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt (University of Queensland, 2011). I will guide the reader on a journey through Schwaller’s fascinating life, from the Parisian alchemical revival and the Hermetic experimentum crucis in stained glass, through to his fifteen year sojourn in Egypt, where he lived in daily contact with the temples at Luxor. The talk will be furnished with original translations from the French, and illustrated with rare photographs.

Alchemy may be described, in the words of Baudelaire, as a process of ‘distilling the eternal from the transient’. As the art of transmutation par excellence, the classical applications of alchemy have always been twofold: chrysopoeia and apotheosis (gold-making and god-making)—the perfection of metals and mortals. In seeking to turn ‘poison into wine’, alchemy, like tantra, engages material existence—often at its most dissolute or corruptible—in order to transform it into a vehicle of liberation. Like theurgy, it seeks not only personal liberation—the redemption of the soul from the cycles of generation and corruption—but also the liberation (or perfection) of nature herself through participation in the cosmic demiurgy. In its highest sense, therefore, alchemy conforms to what Lurianic kabbalists would call tikkun, the restoration of the world.  Almost invariably, the earliest alchemical texts describe procedures for creating elixirs of immortality—of extracting transformative essences from physical substances in order to render metals golden and mortals divine. Through this, the earliest alchemists innovated physical processes such as distillation and fermentation, extraction and refinement, and the analysis and synthesis of various chemical substances. However, it must not be forgotten that the earliest contexts of ‘material’ alchemy were not proto-scientific, but ritualistic. Whether one looks at the Taiqing (Great Clarity) tradition of third-to-sixth century China, the Siddha traditions of early medieval India, or the magical and theurgical milieux of Hellenistic Egypt, the most concrete alchemical practices were always inseparable from ritual invocations to and supplications of the divinities whose ranks the alchemist wished to enter. Moreover, in east and west alike, the alchemical techniques themselves were allegedly passed down from divinity to humanity. Ultimately, alchemy was a divine art, a sacred science, a hieratikē technē.

While the past thirty years of scholarship have seen a slow but steady turnaround of the assumption that the Hermetic texts were merely Hellenistic literary pastiches with no genuine origins in Egyptian theology, the actual Egyptian origin of alchemy continues to find far more resistance than it should in spite of the solid evidence that has amounted in its favour. For this reason, the question of Egypt not only as an etymology but as a source of alchemy needs to be more sufficiently examined. Indeed, it is only by looking into the deep continuities between the Egyptian Hermetic tradition and the theurgic and hieratic Neoplatonic traditions that one begins to fathom the authentic origins of the western alchemical tradition. More specifically, what the present chapter proposes to do is firstly reexamine the root of the term alchemy itself (the chem- etymon) by situating it firmly within its Egyptian and Hellenistic literary contexts. This will lead us through a number of hitherto unrecognised connections between the New Kingdom Egyptian theology of the divine eye, the Corpus Hermeticum, and the alchemy of Zosimos of Panopolis, penetrating right to the (literal) core of both the metallurgical and mystical process. After examining the theurgical imperatives of alchemy, in which spiritual and natural aims are merely two arcs of the same soteriological and cosmogonic cycle (apotheosis and demiurgy), we will then situate the union of hieratic and artisinal technē in Egyptian temple cult. In doing this we affirm the essential validity of the Egyptian signification that has always been so close to the heart of alchemy as a Hermetic tradition.

""It is the purpose of this chapter to firstly chart some of the broader currents in the history of Chinese alchemy, making reference to its western counterparts where relevant. Second, having provided this background, focus will be placed on one of the most revealing dynamics of the Taoist alchemical process, as encoded in the phrase: ‘taking from water to fill in fire’. This can only be understood when its cosmological, elemental, metallurgical and psycho-spiritual dynamics are sufficiently unpacked, and the lion’s share of the present chapter will be devoted to precisely this. Finally, we will conclude with a discussion of the central role of the golden embryo (jin dan) as the culminating yet primordial ontological ground of the alchemical process, especially as articulated in the highly ecumenical work of Liu Yiming, an alchemical commentator and scholar of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism for whom alchemy was a radically spiritual process synonymous with awakening (or restoring) the primordial consciousness of reality. In this connection, we will briefly explore some of the close doctrinal relations between the golden elixir of Taoist neidan, the Buddha nature (tathāgatagarbha, ‘Buddha womb/embryo’) of Mahayana Buddhism, and the chrysanthrōpos or ‘man of gold’ of the Graeco-Egyptian alchemical cannon.""

It is no surprise that Pythagorean, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic currents, transmitted to the west through both Byzantine and Islamicate channels, informed the first western alchemical texts proper, and were later revived more fully in the Florentine Renaissance by figures such as Marsilio Ficino. For these reasons, the deep indebtedness of European alchemy not only to its Islamicate precursors but also to its Graeco-Egyptian, Pythagorean, Hermetic and Neoplatonic sources (and quite possibly, its Chinese and Indo-Tibetan influences too, whether direct or indirect) must always be borne in mind. These points are all the more pertinent given the tendency of historically  specialised scholars to treat European alchemy too narrowly. The deeper currents in the historiography of alchemy emerging from China, India, Tibet, pharaonic Egypt, Hellenistic Egypt, Byzantium and Islam—the very foundations of early modern alchemy—all attest to the simultaneous engagement of the empirical and the spiritual as intimately linked and related phenomena. At the same time, from the close of the medieval period through to the contemporary era, there is an increasing emphasis in Taoist, Indo-Tibetan, and Islamicate alchemies on nondual or holarchical paradigms in which the cosmological, natural and medical sciences are closely integrated within a theological and soteriological imperative. This is quite at odds with the western tendency towards exclusively material or laboratory methods divorced from cosmological and spiritual contexts, and the developments in the west are in many respects quite peculiar in this regard, marking a distinct rupture when compared with those in the east. All of this suggests that the polemical tendency to radically oppose the empirical to the spiritual in a mutually exclusive fashion should be moderated in light of broader currents of development, both historically and macro-historically, underscoring once again the need for a more nondualistic conceptual apparatus capable of sidestepping the west’s logical positivist bias in its conception of matter, which is nothing but a hindrance if one wants to comprehend the deeper alchemical concepts pertaining to physis on their own terms.

"At the heart of the chiasmic idea is a ‘metaphysics of perception’ in which human perception becomes an instrument of divine self-perception. ‘The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me ’, Eckhart famously remarked. ‘I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known, so I created creatures, in order to become in them the object of my knowledge’, runs an Islamic hadith central to the cosmogony of Ibn al-Arabī. What we have here is not a matter of turning away from the senses in order to attain transcendence, but of engaging and using the senses properly in order to attain a perceptually ‘grounded’  transcendence; an embodied liberation (jivanmukti) in which we both embrace and supersede our finite individuality. Here,
reality perceives itself through the vehicle of human consciousness, and reciprocally, human consciousness participates in the self-perception of unrestricted reality."

""René ‘Aor’ Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961) was an Alsatian artist, chemist, revolutionary, Neopythagorean, and Egyptologist. More covertly, however, he was a practicing Hermetic adept deeply experienced with esoteric laboratory processes. As integrally conceived by de Lubicz, alchemy possesses a fundamental theological directive, and in a very specific sense forms a hieratic ars or technē (art, science, technique); whether practised on sensible species or on the human soul, the aim of this hieratikē technē is to liberate the consciousness of an entity by rendering its body—its vehicle of expression—increasingly immortal. For de Lubicz, the bodies known through empirical phenomena, i.e. through the mineralogical and biological kingdoms, are transitional bodies—gestational phases—in the genesis of the absolute instrument of consciousness: the ‘Anthropocosmos’, conceived as the initium, telos and integrum of the entire process of cosmogenesis. More specifically, Lubiczian alchemy focuses on the so-called ‘fixed nucleus’ or ‘indestructible salt’, the stable form upon which the mutational phases of this cosmic alchemy were seen to pivot. Overall, it is the intention of this chapter to demonstrate that Lubiczian alchemy, by centring on the esoteric formation of all ‘bodies’, to include the hidden ‘nucleus’ of continuity between metallurgical, biological and spiritual corporeality, speaks directly to the perception of alchemy as a nondual, operative-spiritual process.""

In Papyri Graecae Magicae I.1-42 the verb apotheóō is used to describe a rite of drowning. Here, deification by drowning follows the model of the eternally rejuvenated Osiris and is further assimilated to the Egyptian solar cosmology where to descend into the primordial waters (west, decline, death) is necessary to rejuvenation (east, incline, life). As among early Pythagoreans and southern Italian mystery cults, continual renewal through death and revivification is mediated by a descent (katabasis) into the underworld (in Egyptian cosmology, the duat). Apotheosis and drowning therefore cohere in the praxis of initiatory death, the conditio sine qua non of rebirth into immortal life. This paper will examine some of the finer details of the drowning motif in the PGM (in particular the materia magica—milk, honey, oil of lilies—along with their connections to divine rebirth) and, upon this basis, trace the symbolic resonance of these motifs in classical and late antique texts. Ultimately, the overarching logic at the heart of these symbolic registers will be emphasised in terms of a Heraclitean “harmony of contraries” seen to exist between the chthonic and the ouranian: like the lightning bolt, drowning deifies because the primordial forces that kill are deeply bound to those that animate and enliven.

Magic, like religion, is notoriously difficult to define. No scholarly consensus can be said to exist, a fact compounded by the increasing tendency in recent
studies to deconstruct the very category of magic rather than provide a constructive or at least heuristic definition of it. What is presented here is a return to a philological basis of description, but one which attempts to extend the linguistic analysis beyond the confines of a single language/culture. After a detailed survey of academic theories of magic, this paper approaches the definitional issue by considering some of the semantic and etymological aspects of magic, with specific attention to (i) Persian magu- and Greek mágos in classical antiquity, (ii) the proposed Indo-European root of magu and its cognates, (iii) the root and cognates of Sanskrit mâ as basis of the concept of mâyâ, and (iv) the Egyptian concept of heka and its signification in Egyptian cosmogony and theology. This paper concludes by identifying a number of motifs which are felt to adumbrate a broader definition of magic, all the while remaining consistent with the philological examples discussed.

Spanning the world’s artistic, scientific and religious traditions, alchemy has embraced and continues to embrace the complete spectrum of existence. From metallurgy to metaphysics, alchemy engages the technical, fine and hieratic arts in order to provide a living phenomenology of the one, single, elusive process that acts through all things. Ultimately—in its guise as « ars transmutationis »—alchemy penetrates to the heart of the transfiguring spiritual intensity that underpins the perfection of life, from mineral to human.

Despite this profoundly all-embracing purview, however, alchemy continues to be conceived as either proto-chemistry or proto-psychology. The present volume seeks to redress this false dichotomy by exploring alchemy as a quintessentially integral phenomenon. Opening wide the full spectrum of alchemy—from east to west, in history and practice, from antiquity to the avant garde—our aim is to penetrate as deeply as possible, within the limits of a single volume, into the rich practical and experiential traditions of the alchemical mysterium.

Featuring both well-established scholars and emerging, cutting-edge researchers, this book synthesises a quintessentially high caliber of academic authorities on the vast and baroque heritage of the alchemical world. As a whole, the volume seeks to strike the perfect balance—the golden mean—between strict, historical objectivity and empathic, phenomenological insight. Drawn from international ranks (Europe, the Antipodes, the Americas) and cutting across disciplinary boundaries (Egyptology, Classics, Sinology, Indology, Tibetology, philosophy, religious studies, Renaissance studies, history of science, art history, critical theory, media studies), the contributors to this volume include some of the most gifted investigators into the world’s esoteric lineages."

Featuring Aaron CHEAK ∙ Algis UŽDAVINYS ∙ Rodney BLACKHIRST ∙ David Gordon WHITE ∙ Kim LAI ∙ Sabrina DALLA VALLE ∙ Christopher A. PLAISANCE ∙ Hereward TILTON ∙ Angela VOSS ∙ Paul SCARPARI ∙ Leon MARVELL ∙ Mirco MANNUCCI ∙ Dan MELLAMPHY

Egyptian alchemy ∙ Greek alchemy ∙ Hellenistic alchemy ∙ Taoist alchemy ∙ Hindu Tantric alchemy ∙ Tibetan Buddhist alchemy ∙ Islamicate alchemy ∙ European alchemy ∙ Surrealist alchemy ∙ Erotic alchemy ∙ Laboratory alchemy ∙ Alchemy of the word ∙ Alchemy of the body ∙ Alchemy of the spirit ∙ and more.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Peer Reviewers
List of Illustrations

PART I—CORNERSTONES:
Ancient Alchemies, East and West

Introduction to Part One:
Circumambulating the Alchemical Mysterium
—Aaron Cheak

1. The Perfect Black: Egypt and Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

2. Telestic Transformation and Philosophical Rebirth:
From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism
—Algis Uždavinys

3. Metallurgy and Demiurgy:
The Roots of Greek Alchemy in the Mythology of Hephaestos (Discussions)
—Rod Blackhirst

4. Taking from Water to Fill in Fire:
The History and Dynamics of Taoist Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

5. Mercury and Immortality:
The Hindu Alchemical Tradition
—David Gordon White

6. Iatrochemistry, Metaphysiology, Gnōsis:
Tibetan Alchemy in the Kālacakra Tantra
—Kim Lai

PART II: TRANSFORMATIONS:
Alchemies of the Spirit, Body and Word

Introduction to Part Two:
Interzone: On the Origins and Nature of European Alchemy
—Aaron Cheak

7. The Alchemical Khiasmos:
Counter-Stretched Harmony and Divine Self-Perception
—Aaron Cheak & Sabrina Dalla Valle

8. Altus’ Ominous Aphorism:
Reading as Alchemical Process
—Mirco Mannucci

9. Turris Philosophorum:
On the Alchemical Iconography of the Tower
—Christopher A. Plaisance

10. Of Ether, Entheogens and Colloidal Gold:
Heinrich Khunrath and the Making of a Philosophers’ Stone
—Hereward Tilton

11. Becoming an Angel:
The Mundus Imaginalis of Henry Corbin and the Platonic Path of Self-Knowledge
—Angela Voss

12. The Kiss of Death:
Amor, Corpus Resurrectionis and the Alchemical Transfiguration of Eros
—Paul Scarpari

13. Agent of All Mutations:
Metallurgical, Biological and Spiritual Evolution in the Alchemy of René Schwaller de Lubicz
—Aaron Cheak

14. Take Two Emerald Tablets in the Morning:
Surrealism and the Alchemical Transubstantiation of the World
—Leon Marvell

15. Incredible Lunatic of the Future:
The Alchemical Horticulture of Alan Chadwick
—Rod Blackhirst

16. Alchemical Endgame:
‘Checkmate’ in Beckett and Eliot
—Dan Mellamphy

End matter:
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Author Biographies

This post-humously published text was written in 1941 during René Schwaller's fifteen year sojourn in Egypt. It appears to be a private letter to an unknown recipient, possibly Alexandre Varille, and was not intended for publication. In 2006 it appeared in volume two of La Table d’Émeraude's collection from Schwaller's personal notebooks, Notes et propos inédits (2005-6). The translation provided here was completed in 2010 and formed part of the appendices to my PhD dissertation, "Light Broken Through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt" (University of Queensland, 2011). Editorial notes have been provided to furnish context where relevant, but otherwise commentary has been kept to a minimum.

The life and work of the Alsatian hermeticist and Egyptosophist, René-Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) attests to the continued presence of a distinctly nondual current of alchemical precept and practice in which material transmutation and spiritual transmutation are not separate nor merely coincidental endeavours but two indispensably linked sides of the same coin. The link, for Schwaller, was perceived as a juncture of meta-physical and proto-physical forces, a process conceived in terms of an alchemical “salt” (a neutralisation reaction between an “acid” and a “base”). This thesis demonstrates that Lubiczian alchemy, by centring on the esoteric formation of all “bodies”, to include the hidden “nucleus” of continuity between metallurgical, biological and spiritual corporeality, speaks directly to the perception of alchemy as a nondual, operative-spiritual process.

Before examining Schwaller’s work proper, part one of this thesis deals with methodological and historiographical considerations at some length. I begin by detailing the “hermetic problem of salt” through cultural-historical, mythographical, chemical and alchemical lenses in order to introduce the phenomenon of salt as an “abstract concretion” resulting from polarised opposites (acid and base, fire and water, sun and sea, sulphur and mercury, etc.) The juncture of opposing principles perceived in the “hermetic problem” of salt anticipates the methodological discussion, which examines the dichotomy between history and phenomenology, along with the materialist and metaphysical sympathies of these methodologies. Form mirroring content, the method employed in this thesis seeks to establish a “neutralisation reaction” between such extremes, encompassing both empirical-historical and eidetic-phenomenological approaches. The guiding model for this synthesis is the Heraclitean palintonos harmoniē (counter-stretched harmony), in which inherently opposed tensions are viewed as integral rather than antithetical to the deeper vitality of the whole. Following from this, the broader argument of this thesis is based upon the perception that the modern academic caricature of alchemy as either operative (reducible to chemical explanations) or spiritual (reducible to psychological explanations) is in many respects a false dichotomy. In support of a more integrative premise, detailed examples are adduced from both eastern and western branches of alchemy (i) to argue for the revision of rigidly dualistic biases within the historiography of alchemy and (ii) to lend support to the adoption of a more nuanced critical apparatus that is able to come to terms with nondualistic currents within the plurality of alchemies. Upon these premises, the life and work of Schwaller de Lubicz is turned to as a modern exemplar of this nondual current in alchemy.

Part two of this thesis focuses on Schwaller de Lubicz’s life and work, his colour theory, and his alchemy. Through a detailed bio-bibliographical survey, the keys to Schwaller’s intellectual development are presented and situated within their relevant contexts. I examine his artistic, Theosophical, socio-political, initiatic, alchemical and Egyptological milieus. As a student of Matisse, Schwaller had a life-long interest in colour and light. For this reason, the colour phenomenon is presented as a guiding thread for the dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy in general and the “manipulation of salt” in particular. The colour theory is examined with reference to Newton’s Opticks, Goethe’s Farbenlehre and ultimately to the operative work on stained glass that Schwaller undertook with Jean-Julien Champagne (alias Fulcanelli).

The work on colour, metals and stained glass is for Schwaller a propadeutic for understanding the process by which spirit (light, colour) transforms the bodies in which it is incarnated (matter, substance). Ultimately, the “hermetic problem of salt” is seen to centre directly upon the mineral register of an entity’s consciousness (palingenetic memory); because this imperishable register of consciousness is also the determiner of an entity’s form, salt is consequently regarded as the mechanism of evolution, resurrection and palingenesis. The deeper dynamics of Lubiczian alchemy thus concerns the role of this “fixed nucleus” in the formation of bodies, from mineral to human. In particular, I examine the principles of Schwaller’s metallurgical alchemy in order to understand how the “spirit of metals” acts as a fiery metallic seed (sulphur) that “coagulates” a nutritive substance (mercury) into a bodily form (salt). This understanding is applied to the stained-glass work. I then look at his meta-biological alchemy, in which it is not the genetic seed but the palingenetic mineral salt that forms the determining principle in the biological entity’s evolution. In essence, Schwaller’s “hermetic problem of salt” is understood as the fulcrum not only of individual immortality, but also of the qualitative mutations (leaps) between kingdoms and species. More specifically, the kingdoms of nature are seen to emerge alchemically through "qualitative exaltations" induced by the divine seed-ferment (sulphur) upon the primordial materia (mercury) giving rise to a neutral centre of gravity: the saline magnetic nucleus or ‘styptic coagulating force’, the spiritual locus of physical form.

In the final analysis, Schwaller’s alchemy is quintessentially nondual in the sense that it encompasses both operative and spiritual processes. These are not separate but deeply interrelated realities. Through the idea of salt, Schwaller offers a holarchical explanation for the continuities between mineralogical, biological and spiritual bodies, and thus a theory for the material mechanism by which consciousness transforms phenomenal form. To approach this kind of alchemy as exclusively chemical or psychological is thus completely inadequate and reinforces the necessity for a nondual critical apparatus in the study of alchemy.

Magic, as perceived through the linguistic lenses of Indo-European *mag(h)-, Sanskrit māyā and Pharaonic Egyptian heka, is semantically bound to the notions of ability, effectiveness and power. This complex operates upon an onto-cosmological hierarchy involving the facility to master the continuum between essence and manifestation. It is via this continuum that humans are able to climb the ladder of being to establish themselves as gods (with commensurate power). Conversely, via this continuum, gods are able to affect (and effect) phenomenal appearance.

Among the Greeks, this continuum was articulated in terms of a divine and usually invisible underpinning to the manifest cosmos, on which basis the poles of the hierarchy became established in terms of phenomenal and intelligential orders of existence. Cosmological intermediaries were paralleled in the psychological and ontological spheres, serving both to separate and bridge the dualities of heaven/earth, reason/sense, and psyche/body. In Neoplatonism, Theurgy, and Sufism, the concept of imagination became revivified as a locus of theophany, ontological transition, and cosmic liminality. A tripartite cosmological motif becomes apparent; imagination—the mundus imaginalis—is understood as a mesocosmic process between micro- and macrocosmic extremes.

Centrifugal and centripetal phases are seen to characterise the transitions between essence and manifestation. The dialectic of the former is unitive and oriented toward the unmanifest. It proceeds by the integration of that which is Other to form a perfected whole (signified by androgyny, consubstantiality, harmony). The dialectic of the latter is divisive and oriented toward the manifest. It proceeds by the dis-integration of the whole to engender an Other (signified through contrasexuality, hypostasis, tension). Given this, magic may be understood as the availing of the mesocosmic imagination in order to ‘shift the veil of māyā’ and hence (i) reveal absolute reality (integrality and Gnosis) or (ii) effect creative action in the realm of manifestation (phenomenal appearance, manipulation of images). Hence, the acquisition of divine power is tantamount to deification; the enactment of divine power to reification.

Spanning the sciences and humanities, this conference seeks to explore the work of leading and neglected figures in the emergence of integral philosophy, past and present. By charting the “morphic resonances” that appear to exist among the works of diverse evolutionary and holarchical theorists, we aim to further Gebser’s commitment to a genuinely interdisciplinary methodology, and the rendering transparent of the integral world.

In this presentation I would like to explore some significant overlaps between the work of German poet and integral philosopher, Jean Gebser (1905–1973), and French Egyptologist and Hermetic philosopher, René Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961). Schwaller puts forth an essentially Pythagorean alchemical cosmology that bears some important resonances with Gebser’s work on the foundations and manifestations of integral consciousness. In this presentation I would like to focus on the theme of the “intensification” or “qualitative exaltation” of consciousness, and how scission, rupture, excess, disequilibrium, and fragmentation—in both nature and in culture—may be seen as vital indicators of the mutational process.

To do this I will explore the motif of dissolution in an alchemical and integral sense. Gebser himself has pointed out that the dissolution of our culture under the excesses of mental-rational fragmentation hides a hidden solution. In a similar vein, alchemical theory holds that for anything to “evolve” towards its innate integrality, it must first be reduced to a condition of formlessness, and this was done through the process of dissolution. “All organic bodies, as well as certain mineral compositions, are susceptible at the moment of their decomposition, to an orientation towards a new form” (Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science, p. 80).

To explicate the dynamics of this restructuration, I will develop the alchemical principle of enantiodromia—the idea that the excess of any phenomenon evokes its opposite. Just as solid crystalline salts emerge “miraculously” from a saturated liquid solution, radical transformation ensues from a state of superabundance and excess. Similarly, Schwaller held that instances of excess in nature were means by which consciousness could transcend phenomenal form. On a natural and cultural level, crisis, dissolution, and fragmentation become transitional vehicles for the liberation of spirit from limiting ontological structures.

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a poet, phenomenologist and visionary of the integral world. Through an attitude of primordial trust in the most dangerous uncertainties of existence, Gebser crystallized an approach to life that embraced death and all things arational as the primordial yet ever-present wellsprings of human existence. In the same way that glass allows darkness, color and light to become equally visible, Gebser cultivated a diaphanous perception of reality in which the biophysical, psychological and rational structures of consciousness could be rendered palpably and equally present to a living, nondualistic awareness. The whole thrust of Gebser’s life and work was not simply to articulate the incipient integral consciousness, but to embody it.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a detailed survey of Gebser’s life and work as a whole. Although a few studies of Gebser’s life and work exist in English, very few of them draw on the full breadth of his collected oeuvre (nine volumes in German). This paper will present the development of Gebser’s life as integrated with the development of his work and thought, making consistent reference to the German sources. The paper will feature numerous original translations from works hitherto unavailable in English. Overall, it is intended that the bio-bibliographical study proposed here will fill the paucity of knowledge in Anglophone Gebser studies about the details of Gebser’s biography and works. More specifically, two points will be emphasised: (i) the defining nature of Gebser's formative experiences/inspirations upon the development of his life and philosophy; and (ii) his abiding vocation as a poet and the pertinence of the poetic perception of reality to integral consciousness. In regards to both of these points, I will seek to shed particular light on Gebser’s indebtedness to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke in breaking through to a new consciousness. I will suggest that Gebser was to a large extent “inspired by the same muse” as Rilke. More generally, I will also give concrete details of Gebser's contacts with other important figures, such as Lorca, Jung, Heisenberg, Suzuki, Govinda, as well as Gebser’s own personal experience of integral consciousness.

"René ‘Aor’ Schwaller de Lubicz (1887–1961) was an Alsatian artist, chemist, revolutionary, Neopythagorean, and Egyptologist. More covertly, however, he was a practicing Hermetic adept deeply experienced with esoteric laboratory processes. Student of Matisse, recipient of the chivalric title ‘de Lubicz’, and collaborator with one of the most influential alchemists of the twentieth century (Fulcanelli, alias Jean Julien Champagne), René Schwaller de Lubicz made one of the most powerful attempts in the modern world to wed the metaphysical to the concrete. Perhaps due to the fact that his Egyptosophical masterpiece, Le Temple de l’homme (The Temple of Man, 1957-8), comprises over a thousand pages of dense geometric analysis, Schwaller is among the most revered yet neglected esotericists of the twentieth century. In academic circles, his symbolist approach to Egyptology incited a virulent controversy, while in literary circles he drew the admiration and attention of figures such as Jean Cocteau and André Breton. Despite or because of this, little academic attention has been paid to his work. What is sorely needed are some concrete entry-points not only into his œuvre proper, but also into his social, intellectual and historical contexts. It is the purpose of this paper to provide exactly this.

What I would like to present is a detailed biographical and bibliographical survey of the life and work of René Schwaller de Lubicz. This will draw on the seven years of research that I completed as part of my doctoral dissertation: Light Broken through the Prism of Life: René Schwaller de Lubicz and the Hermetic Problem of Salt (University of Queensland, 2011). I will guide the audience on a journey through Schwaller’s fascinating life, from the Parisian alchemical revival and the Hermetic experimentum crucis in stained glass, through to his fifteen year sojourn in Egypt, where he lived in daily contact with the temples at Luxor. The talk will be furnished with original translations from the French, and illustrated with rare photographs.

- See more at: http://esotericbookconference.com/lineup/aaron-cheak/#sthash.8gLuxg7K.dpuf"

Jean Gebser, in his unfinished biographical writings, speaks of the life-threatening experiences which crystallised into a primordial sense of trust (Urvertrauen) in the power-sources of being and existence (Kräftequellen des Daseins). This primordial trust formed the essential Haltung which enabled him to achieve liberation by embracing circumstances of danger and uncertainty as crucial to the realisation of the liberating integral consciousness—a liberation which enables the supersession of the egocentric ontology and its desperate clinging to empirical certitude. Through the formative power of certain “beneficial obstacles,” Gebser realised that “what we [actually] do has nothing at all to do with what we want (willen)” (Gesamtausgabe 7, 363). By this remark, Gebser alludes to the perception that the will of the ego is merely the limited, visible and perspectival aspect of a deeper volition which is grounded in the invisible—the spiritual origin. This paper seeks to explore the relationship between this “deeper” will and its “surface” counterpart in order to flesh out the dynamics of an “integral volition.” To do this we will firstly situate the concept of integral volition in the broader but homologous context of “integral teleology”—in Gebser’s parlance: Evolution alsNachvollzug—which entails the perception of “evolution” as an Auskristallisierung, a “crystallisation”of the visible “out of” the invisible (Gesamtausgabe 5/2, 71). We will then correlate Gebser’s perceptions with two seemingly disparate but deeply related concepts: (i) the Taoist phenomenon of Zhi Yin (“esoteric” volition, the polar complement to Zhi Yang, “exoteric” volition); and (ii) the hermetic salphilosophorum (the salt of the philosophers), understood, following the alchemical writings of René Schwaller de Lubicz, as the axial nucleus or kernel which is simultaneously the invisible, determining “seed” as well as the visible, determined “fruit” of any phenomenon. Drawing these threads together, we hope to demonstrate that what we have called “integral volition” and “integral teleology” both express one single reality, and that a self-reflexive relationship exists between the invisible and visible aspects of this reality in a way that cannot be reduced to the perspectives of linear teleology or rational volition. Like the zen art of archery, when the “target” towards which any process is “directed” is found to exist integrally within, the linear unfoldment, the empirical execution, is merely the fullfilment of what has already been achieved invisibly (hence integrally). In exploring these motifs, we hope to address the theme of this conference by demonstrating how identity, according to an integral perception, is consistent with the process by which the spiritual (Gebser’s das Sich) reveals itself to itself via the mutations of human consciousness, and that in the end, our identity is rooted not in the body, not in the soul, not in the mind, but like all these things, in the invisible.

In PGM I. 1-42 the verb apotheóō is used to describe a rite of drowning. Here, deification by drowning follows the model of the eternally rejuvenated Osiris, and is further assimilated to the Egyptian solar cosmology where to descend into the primordial waters (West, decline, death) is necessary to rejuvenation (East, incline, life). As among early Pythagoreans and southern Italian mystery cults, continual renewal through death and revivification is mediated by a descent (katabasis) into the underworld (in Egyptian cosmology, the Duat). Apotheosis and drowning therefore cohere in the praxis of initiatory death, the sine qua non of rebirth into immortal life. This paper will examine some of the finer details of drowning in the PGM (in particular the materia magica—milk, oil of lilies—along with their connections to birth), and, upon this basis, trace the symbolic resonance of these motifs in classical and late antique texts (from the Orphic renatus who falls “into milk” in order to become a god, to the immortalising Hermetic krater which is “filled with nous”). Ultimately, the overarching logic at the heart of these symbolic registers will be emphasised in terms of a Heraclitean “harmony of contraries” seen to exist between the chthonic and the ouranian: like the lightning bolt, drowning deifies because the power which kills is deeply bound to the power which animates and enlivens.

Originally rooted in Kula (i.e. clan-based) practices based in cremation grounds, the origins of tantra have been shown to develop out of a conflation of the erotic and the horrific with an emphasis on the role of yoginis and female deities as initiatrices. In seeking to literally
embody or manifest divine feminine power (Shakti) in the human microcosm through a ritual methodology of worldly power and pleasure, tantra envisioned the medium of human-divine interaction as proceeding via sexual fluids in which the essence of numinous power was instilled. Thus the tantric adept sought to engage sexually with divine feminine entities in a reciprocal exchange of sexual fluids for the mutual gain of supernatural powers. However, sectarian differences culminating in the Shrividya tantra of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries resulted in a process of ‘Brahminisation’, whereby the assimilation of the divine element to sexual fluids was intellectualized and hence sublimated into a symbology of photic and acoustic representations (e.g. yantra and mantra). We argue that it is precisely this dichotomy between the ‘wet’, feminine Kula practices and the ‘dry’, masculine Shrividya practices that is at root of the distinction in tantra between the vamacara (left-hand path) and the dakshinacara (right-hand path). Moreover, given that these terms gained wide currency in Western occult parlance in the nineteenth through twentieth centuries (Blavatsky, Crowley, LaVey, Aquino, et al.), it is imperative to distinguish the original tantric meanings from the various (mis)interpretations proliferated in modern Western occult contexts. To do this we seek to emphasise, through the methods of cunning linguistics, the essentially feminine nature of the authentic left hand path.

In his uncompleted biographical writings, Jean Gebser describes the crucial experiences which crystallised for him into a deep-seated sense of primordial trust (Urvertrauen). Formative experiences such as near-death by drowning are described as ‘beneficial obstacles’ for they instilled in him the essential comportment (Haltung) by which he was able to place a visceral trust not in what is rationally certifiable but in complete and utter uncertainty. This fundamental trust would provide the concrete basis for what Gebser would later describe as the conscious participation in the invisible or spiritual—the conditio sine qua non of integral consciousness. This paper will explore Gebser’s early experiences in detail as an introduction to exploring the principle of Urvertrauen as articulated in Gebser’s mature work, to include the situation of Heisenberg’s famous ‘uncertainty principle’ (Unbestimmtheitsprinzip) as a manifestation at the quantum level of this self-same need to integrate uncertainty as an integral constituent of reality. As an epilogue, we will discuss the resonance of Gebser’s ideas with Empedocles’ notion of ‘trust in mad strife’ (neikei mainomenô pisunos) in order to demonstrate some of the deeper, initiatic undertones that pertain to Gebser’s work.

Murderer of Osiris, divine criminal, enemy par excellence, disturber of the order which Egypt itself sought to exemplify, Seth-Typhon is nevertheless crucial to a cosmic ecology whereby the transitions between death and life can only be effected after the overmastering power of Seth has made a drastic fissure at the very threshold between existence and non-existence. Seth, as his epithets suggest, is the separator, divider and butcher. The reality embodied by Seth ultimately instigates the very rupture between the chaos of non-existence (represented by the primordial serpent Apep) and the existent cosmos itself (represented by the cosmogonic solar theophany). As such, Seth is the violent initiator who threatens both the created and the uncreated; the incarnation of the killing and vivifying limen at the edge of reality. This paper seeks above all to evoke the true spirit of Seth-Typhon by focusing on the most detailed evidence of his cult—the typhonian invocations preserved in the Greek Magical Papyri.

Since Paracelsus (1493-1541), salt has played a role in alchemy as the physical “body” which remains after combustion, the corporeal substance which survives death to reinaugurate new life. It was both “corruption and preservation against corruption” (Dorn); both the “last agent of corruption” and the “first agent in generation” (Steeb). As such, the alchemical salt functions as the fulcrum of death and revivification.

The Alsatian hermeticist, alchemist and esoteric Egyptologist René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961) held that an alchemical salt exists in the human femur (thighbone). This “salt” was a mineral nucleus upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness could be permanently “inscribed.” Because it was physically indestructable, the salt was seen by Schwaller as “more permanent than DNA” and was accorded a key a role in Schwaller’s esoteric theory of evolution (genesis). Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the salt located in the femur was the precise mechanism by which individual characteristics—the vital modes of  consciousness—are able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the death of the individual. The salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of rebirth (palingenesis).

To the rational-empirical consciousness, this position appears thoroughly absurd. However, we hope to show that the logic which operates at root of the motif “salt—thighbone—palingenesis” is not only consistent with an entire complex of ancient initiatory symbolism, but that, ultimately, a deeper consciousness—with its own epistemology—is implicated in the esoteric perception of reality. To understand this on its own terms, rather than advance the one-sided reductions peculiar to academia, efforts to see beyond our own “logic” must be made.