I recollected reading this from you while I had salvinorin coursing through my body. I had to consider a few different things.

First, what Sex energy is, how "fast it travels" in relation to other things.

And then the unique "Speed signature" of Salvinorin.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that whatever travels as fast as sexual energy is responsible for mystical states.

So I guess what I had seen from maybe a new perspective was this same old Idea that Salvia is more than just a kappa-opioid receptor agonist.


However, it DOES do that, too.


So essentially what I saw in intellectual way is that, if one cannot purify his own sexual energy, one will merely experience something rather uncomfortable. Too much sexual energy which isn't able to sublimate will create a psychadelic state, but it will be mixed with stressful energy.


And too little of that energy or a complete unawareness of it, and salvia wont even be active! (I was quidding it)


Because "She" needs two conditions fulfilled, an invitation and an offering. The speed-signature of salvinorin gets frankensteined by our sexual energy, and there turns out to be an actual living organism within ourselves.

..Sound is Solid..

adam wrote:

on the Philosophers' Stone (from a number of sources) , and bare in mind that much alchemical talk was secretive..alluding to something:
Encyclopedia Brittanica

crystalinks.com

the first known reference to the Philosphers' Stone is Zosimos of Panopolis (Egypt 3rd century AD, author of Concerning the true Book of Sophe, the Egyptian, and of the Divine Master of the Hebrews and the Sabaoth Powers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zosimos_of_Panopolis

pictured below, Isaac Newton's notes on the Philosophers' Stone:

Back in university I remember when studying jung, I read his alchemy interpretations and got very interested in the whole thing. Not that he 'exhausts' alchemy, because there may be a lot more we don't know, but I like the idea of the alchemy processes as direct reflection of an inner work that has to be done.

There were the different phases too, which some authors define differently, but the albedo, nigredo and rubedo... The good side, the bad side, and the 'red' side (or the dynamic beyond the two poles).

Then we got the separate processes, like for example disolutio (dissolving), separatio (separation), etc.. We must learn to unite and separate things not only in chemistry, but in our minds, feelings, and bodies. And all the transmutation that we go through internally!

I love looking at the alchemical plates too. It is certainly possible that some of them have hidden messages/knowledge in the way the figures are drawn (Like Da Vinci stuff... ). Or at least they have a very interesting symbolic value, and seem to mostly represent the progress of the soul in it's many steps.

This is from the Arabian Nights, which while fantastical, in this context turns out a mysterious little quote.

endlessness wrote: ..i like that!..and good to see you in the spirituality and mysticism area endlessness..

cubeananada wrote: ..very interesting..thanks for digging that up..
.

Alchemy is more than a single thing alchemy is not about turning the silver material object into gold material object
it is a bunch of correspondences and symbols dealing with the psyche, with the spirit.

There are experiments done on material objects but these serve as observation and these observation are used upon yourself so you can change according to your will.
Alchemists observe nature and use symbolic systems of correspondences to apply these on themselves to help overcome obstacles to evolve ones personality.

Alchemy truly belongs with spirituality and mysticism,kabbalah, archetypal astrology,tarot....and these kind of stuff.

We could argue whether there is anything "supernatural" about this or it's just psychology, but anyone practicing gets some results.
So basically while doing experiment with herbs/metals you observe nature and apply (in more complex way of course)your observations to yourself, it's is really a sort of psychological process like NLP for example.There are other benefits from the experiments of course, making tinctures out of herbs that are healthy for your body...and so on.

V.I.T.R.I.O.L

I do not believe in the urine theory a bit, but than again something so full of symbolism and double meanings is very interpretable, it's interesting nonetheless.

European alchemy, Chinese taoist alchemy, Vedic alchemy and Egyptian alchemy are not all the same thing really which makes it hard to talk about "alchemy" in a general sense. European alchemy was to some degree I think more focussed on transmuting base metals, taoist alchemy was more focussed on immortality etc..but I think in all branches of alchemy there were those who were into the deeper aspects of it also.

..and I still think the base metal transmutation stuff was origionally all about monoatomic(or diatomic w/e) elements, and the "purification" of the soul/mind when ingested over time. Something weird is definatly going on there if you do the work yourself and ingest this stuff. I am not suggesting anyone else actually go ingest this stuff though.. Ingest strange elements at your own risk. Please do lots of research if you want to go this path and don't ingest stuff you buy online. Buying these bottles of commercial Ormus online does not count..that's not alchemy and NOONE is selling real mono-atmonic gold IMO..these people are watering down alchemical tradition. There are people who have gone about this half assed and recklessly, ending up with very real heavy metal toxicity.

I like ananda bosmans opinion that the original soma was some kind of alchemical elixir made from many different plants, including rue, acacia, possibly phalaris and mushrooms combined with ORME's.

Look at the symbols and engravings and pictures of various alchemical traditions of antiquity and look for mushroom shapes. I was first put onto this idea from the book Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy (Heinrich) and thought it preposterous. I had done a fair amount of research into alchemy years ago for a screenplay I wrote, so I had quite a few books lying around. Just to prove how ridiculous it was, I picked up the largest and most pictorial of these Alchimie & Mystique (taschen) and thumbed through it.

I was startled. I began again, earmarking pages with even the vaguest reference or pictorial resemblance to a mushroom. By the time I was done, nearly every 5th page of a 702 page tome was bent. A series that allegedly described the universe and its creation even looked remarkably like several spore printed pages!! And furtherin, so did images of the locus terrenus.

Not saying that this proves anything by any means, but it certainly piqued my curiosity. Read the Heinrich book - quite interesting and entertaining but tenuous at best, particularly many of the assertions regarding the various world religions. Though I did put it down having a lot of second thoughts about what the alchemists were really up to and what was encoded in their dense and obscure texts and images.

Cheers,

JBArk

I was surprised to learn that Isaac Newton spent a significant amount of time on alchemical research and occult studies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/...ton's_occult_studies

We tend to think of him as the first modern scientist but it would be equally valid to view him as the last of the great alchemists.

John Maynard Keynes bought a trunk full of Newton's old papers at an auction. A lot of Newton's alchemical work was burnt in a fire but some of it had survived. After studying the papers, Keynes famously remarked "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians".

it is pretty obvious that there is magic mushroom cults going back all the way into the upper paleolithic. It's clearly in the cave art, extending into the art of the most early civilizations and organized religions etc. The cave art with the bee shaman is IMO not a representation of the use of honey to store mushrooms, but a symbol of the insect like buzzing of the high dose tryptamine experience. For me it is clearly there. I think humans relation to entheogenic tryptamines goes way back.

There is strong hints of psilocybe mushroom use even in European norse shamanic traditions, a culture that seems to be at least heavily influenced by the Vedic culture. There is references to the volva dressed in a blue dress kind of thing, wearing a hat with black frills or something that looks like the gills, and she sits on a cushion of white soft feathers that looks like mycelium, and she carries a little medicine pouch around her waist that some have speculated she carried died mushrooms in for her ceremonies.

I wish I could remember the book I read that in but there is a pdf online somewhere.

they know for sure that norse shamans used cannabis because they found a grave of a volva and they found cannabis seeds in her medicine bag along with henbane..after thousands of years they obviously knew about psilocybes.

I think that this all goes back to a common link with the vedas..or w/e inspired the vedas. Both Celtic and Norse mythology mirror the vedas so closely and they both share the same language group related to Sanskrit. Some claim that it all has roots in Turkey.

for your interest, a few images I found online with a very quick search (with respect to my post above^^^):

^^ interesting video, the only thing I wonder that we cannot really know, is to what extent was Isaac Newton inspired or guided by internal alchemy if at all. Pretty fascinating though that these guys carried out such reactions with little idea of the truth behind the matter, makes me wonder if todays scientists will be cast in the same light one day.

Anyhow it has been my belief that many alchemists were misled, that the true nature of alchemy was metaphor for internal transmutation. I personally believe that alchemy has to be balanced between an internal and external act. The forces within the body balanced with the arcane forces in nature are what lead to the creation of the stone, which from my readings you can't know its true nature until you have created it. It seems that the great work is part gnosis part faith.

Also I urge you all to watch the videos I posted earlier in the thread, I would like to hear what you all think of them.

In fact alchemists (i believe it was the medieval european ones) had a derogatory term for those who sought to transmute material lead into glittering gold: les Souffleurs, french for blower, or bellows (pic below). It was used to designate those foolish enough to believe the search for the STONE could be achieved through the material transformation of base metals.

sometimes I feel this way..othertimes I just think that it is just a sort of limited new age dumbed down ideology(there is tons of this crap in the new age movement about not needing anything outside of you etc, to the point where we have people who starve to death trying to be breatharians) that we have tried to map overtop of alchemical tradition..as if spirit and matter are not one..I don't think it was simply an outer persuit or an inner one..I think it was both as they lead into each other. This is why I don't think the green lion and the red lion etc were about trying to make some kind of purified metal..some might have tried to do that and it could be a neat trick but I think they were after something like the Orme's people are after today..and then ingesting them, and other psychedelic plants and attaining some kind of heightened energetic to spiritual state is the end result. This is my thoughts after doing limited work with some teks out there and ingesting the stuff..

I know there are some other regular members here who have also ingested some of these weird precipitations and stuff and had strong mental effects.

There is references to ingesting the red lion and the effects of just ingesting it once being permanent etc..which parallels the accounts of the only people I have heard of that actually apparently did make true monoatomic gold, people who are skilled chemists. I don't know if they actually did make it or what they ingested..but they claimed that just a few micrograms of the stuff made them pretty much go crazy for 6 months with permanent effects7

Alchemical superconduction?..or heavy metal toxicity? I don't know but it is pretty apparent that many Chinese alchemists died of heavy metal toxicity from ingesting they're products.

Maybe the red lion was some reddish waxy DMT.

Maybe all of the European alchemists were just fools and all missed the mark. I don't think we will ever know.

One thing I really don't believe, is that alchemy can be separated from the use of psychedelic plants. I think if you could go back to the start you would find people using psychedelic plants.

Well, for a tradition to continue as long as alchemy did, with one purported goal that was never really achieved, I find it a fairly safe assumption that they were up to something else and that the something they were up to is hidden in their texts and symbols and images.

What specifically that something is, or are, is the subject of conjecture but I think they left a long enough, though enigmatic, paper trail that someday someone will decipher the nature and identity of the philosopher's stone and what the true goal of the magnum opus was, from nigredo through albedo, citrinitas and cauda pavonis (peacock's tail) to its final state, rubedo.

Or maybe it is one of those things that is destined to forever baffle us... and spark our imagination.

JBArk

I think whats going on here at the nexus is the truest alchemy. That is working with these mind altering substances. I think things like ormes and other supplements, diets, sexual cultivation, exercise regimens, are all just adjuncts to the great work.

I believe dmt is the philosophers stone, seriously if dmt isn't what else could it be?

I still find old alchemical literature and artwork to be very insightful.

Jamie, agreed. Considering all these alchemical sources we could find, I only know about what is going inside of me.

I wouldn't ever have the gall to claim something I have experienced as green lion or red lion, however I do feel as if alchemy always result in the creation of a living self-conscious experience. It produces an organism, which has its lifetime and can be nourished or neglected.

Just different words to describe mystical states.
And perhaps some circles of people felt comfortable that they were relating an objective experience to each other.

I can say that Salvia is a very valuable tool for alchemy, but the alchemy itself is an experiment being done by a higher being. We participate in the result by making what preparations we can, we separate our dark from our light, (which is an eternal process on it's own level, but the toil is necessary.) we provide set and setting, the right conditions, and then inside of us a tree grows or we essentially animate dead material. Turning something dense into something brilliant.

I'll relate something from Lewis Carrol's fairy tale Sylvie and Bruno. He was definitely an alchemist. The following is a scene whet two fairies have a magic locket, after figuring out how to use it, they use it. And they ride a lion.

"was a happy thought. Up-and-down did it: and the landscape, which had been showing signs of mental aberration in various directions, returned to its normal condition of sobriety with the exception of a small yellowish-brown mouse, which continued to run wildly up and down the road, lashing its tail like a little lion. “Let’s follow it,” said Sylvie: and this also turned out a happy thought. The mouse at once settled down into a business-like jog-trot, with which we could easily keep pace. The only phenomenon, that gave me any uneasiness, was the rapid increase in the size of the little creature we were following, which became every moment more and more like a real lion. Soon the transformation was complete: and a noble lion stood patiently waiting for us to come up with it. No thought of fear seemed to occur to the children, who patted and stroked it as if it had been a Shetland-pony. “Help me up!” cried Bruno. And in another moment Sylvie had lifted him upon the broad back of the gentle beast, and seated herself behind him, pillion-fashion. Bruno took a good handful of mane in each hand, and made believe to guide this new kind of steed. “Gee-up!” seemed quite sufficient by way of verbal direction: the lion at once broke into an easy canter, and we soon found ourselves in the depths of the forest. I say ‘we,’ for I am certain that I accompanied them though how I managed to keep up with a cantering lion I am wholly unable to explain"


The few interesting things about this, is how the (transformed) lion is at first the size of a mouse, and then it grows until its large enough to carry the fairies. At the same time all of this is happening in the main characters dream.

The main character is dreaming but what he is experiencing in the dream is related to the Inner Alchemy Lewis Carrol was doing.

Lewis Carrol, whether or not he had done psychedelics was an old enough soul to learn how to do inner Alchemy.

He wasn't extreme about his inner alchemy, so he remained quite inconspicuous.
But he knew that whatever he was gaining by his inner work was not actually "his" to keep.

He goes very deep in this book, he shows using very subtle symbolism that he feels as if his whole life is a byproduct of the fruits of his inner alchemy. That essentially, some fairy children were experimenting, and the fruits of his work happened. So because the fruits of his work happened Lewis Carrol was imagined into existence by some fairy children !

A child in possession of a magic locket, experimented in various ways the proper way to rub it, because she forgot.
After rubbing the wrong way, and all the trees start marching up the hill and the river starts flowing with hot acid. So her brother suggests to rub it another way, which turns out to be the right way, and they produce a lion. And it grows out of mouse size, and when mature stands fully prepared to be ridden (like a mystical state manifesting)

And the narrator/observer is just experiencing all of this without a single idea how. Because lions move very fast. And the internal fairy child inside of us knows exactly how to approach this lion and ride it. She just has to rub her magic locket the right way. Which in our world means experiencing it be rubbed the wrong way a few times, and luckily the right way at some point.


And I can give an example of what the fairies rubbing the locket the right way in my world looks,
It looks like the work of an alchemists, who works to keep his sex energy pure (which is really a skill) and then when the right conditions manifest I ingest salvia, some harmalas, and all the while keep refining sexual energy.

Eventually the fairy children inside of me are ready to ride on a lion, and I experience a mystical state practically as an observer would watch two children ride a lion.


Thanks

..in a way i think Newton reflects a Balanced man of Knowledge..'left and right handed'..not skewed either way..hence his genius..Da Vinci was similar..

jamie's point about various alchemical traditions is good..Vedic, Egyptian etc..these are not simply about 'base metals'..this is the obsession, or code rather, of European alchemy..in a climate where herbalists/witches were burned..also those who defended them..

adam wrote:
..extactly..this was what i was alluding to when i mentioned that european alchemical texts (or post Roman Christian rather) were secretive and alluding..
inquisitor: "what are you doing with all that stuff?"
alchemist: "oh, finding a way to turn metals into gold..for the king of course.."
inquistor: "well, that's alright then..as long as there's no magic or pagan stuff, or any belief system outside the church's!"

..somewhere along the way, much of the original purpose may have been lost..and people really tried to turn metals into gold..but the wise knew this wasn't possible (in a literal sense)
.

Here is an interesting article about Alchemy and the East, it points out the most important differences between European alchemy and the eastern one. I found it interesting to see how the church has limited the European alchemy, or at least that's what the article claims and it seems to make a lot of sense:

http://realitysandwich.com/2155...alchemy-and-the-ecstasy/

I am glad I found this thread, thanks adam, seems like there is a lot of information on here, need to take my time to go through it.

Do you of any good books that cover the topic of alchemy in its totality (if that is even possible)?