2 - The Philosopher's Stone
montalk.net 22 July 10

The Philosopher's Stone is not just a spiritual metaphor but an actual substance that can transmute lead or mercury into gold. The Stone is a product of Alchemy. Unlike chemistry, which only deals with physical matter and energy, Alchemy makes use of etheric and astral energies to reconfigure matter at the quantum level. Alchemy is to chemistry what a cube is to the square; it is a superset of chemistry and is capable of so much more.

How Etheric Energy Overrides Physical Laws

Alchemical achievements require successfully gathering, concentrating, and multiplying etheric energy. When this energy reaches a critical threshold, it overpowers the normal laws of physics and allows seemingly miraculous processes to take place. I believe it does this by biasing probability. By amplifying the probability of minor quantum effects, which are normally limited to the subatomic scale, they manifest on the larger atomic scale. In this way, one element spontaneously transforms into another.

The world around us is made of subatomic particles that regularly undergo unpredictable jumps, teleportation, bilocation, superposition, and other strange quantum behaviors. Why don't everyday solid objects do likewise? Because the random quantum jittering of their subatomic particles collectively average out to zero. Think of a large crowd of people; seen from the air, the crowd as a whole is stationary, even though individuals within the crowd move in seemingly random directions. It's because their movements are random and uncoordinated that they average to zero net movement on the whole.

The world we see around us is merely a crowd of subatomic particles whose individual quantum jumps aren't apparent because they average to collective stillness. Physical laws that govern our everyday world, known as the deterministic laws of classical physics, are merely the laws of the crowd. These laws are what's left of quantum physics after the unpredictability is removed through statistical averaging. They are not absolute laws; they are just the most probable manner in which matter and energy behave.

Physical laws can be bent. While the probability is incredibly low that enough coordination and coherence develops among the quantum jitters to manifest on a collective scale, that is exactly what etheric energy does. It alters probability and thereby skews the laws of thermodynamics, gravity, electromagnetism, and chemistry.

Alchemy does not violate the laws of physics, nor does it always follow them, rather it bends them as needed. It operates upon the quantum foundation from which these laws arise in the first place, via etheric energy affecting the probability of quantum events.

The Alchemy of Transmutation

Alchemy uses the code names salt, mercury, and sulphur to denote the different components of a substance.

• Salt denotes the physical component, the seat, base, matrix, anchor, or ark of the nonphysical aspects.
• Mercury is the etheric component and represents the dynamic, vital, transmutative, vivifying energy present within the substance.
• Sulphur denotes the archetypal identity or pure vibrational essence, analogous to the human astral body and spirit because it contains the "Idea" unique to that substance.

For example, in Alchemy an element like gold is seen to have three components: the salt of gold, mercury of gold, and sulphur of gold. These respectively denote the physical, etheric, and archetypal aspects of gold. Same goes for other materials employed in Alchemy, they also have their salt, mercury, and sulphur components.

The goal of transmutation is to impress the archetypal signature of one element upon another in order to change it to that element. By changing an element's archetypal signature it cannot remain the same element.

What Alchemy does in the case of transmutation of lead into gold, is to

• extract mercury from etherically potent sources
• imbue it with the sulphur of gold
• store the combination in a suitable salt.

The result is then ready to impress its archetypal essence of "goldness" upon a different element responsive to transmutation.

This is the Philosopher's Stone, or rather one form of it called the Red Stone because it is made with gold and assumes a red color.

Making the Philosopher's Stone

Complete and accurate instructions for making the Stone don't exist in one place. Nevertheless, a basic understanding can be pieced together from the sources listed at the end of this article. The following is my own tentative interpolation of these sources. My goal is not to give a detailed recipe, but to explain key features of the process because they are relevant to my thesis concerning the Demiurge.

Natural etheric energy is cosmic or biological in origin. Both derive it from a higher dimension. The center of stars including our Sun are dimensional windows through which physical and nonphysical energy enters our local universe. The Moon modulates and reflects what it receives from the Sun, therefore both Sun and Moon are our nearest cosmic sources of etheric energy. It accompanies sunlight and moonlight and enters into the atmosphere's water vapor before condensing as morning dew.

Biological etheric energy comes from living things. That is because life incarnate cannot exist without etheric energy bonding consciousness to the body. Thus bacteria, plants, animals, and humans all contain and emit etheric energy. However, the quality of this energy varies depending on the source. Just as the Moon colors what it receives from the Sun, so do lifeforms color what they receive from a higher dimension.

Thus not all forms of etheric energy are appropriate for the creation of the Stone since plant, animal, and human emissions are too distant from the Stone's own nature, which is more that of a living mineral. Hence the Alchemists limited their search to the cosmic and mineral realms. And if they did look to the biological realm for assistance, they would only have found it among the most primitive of bacteria, for these are closest to the mineral kingdom.

Water is an attractor and carrier of etheric energy, but it is not the only one. Salts also serve that function. Many different kinds of salt exist, all of them consisting of a metal joined to a non-metal. Table salt is sodium joined to chlorine, sphalerite is zinc joined to sulfur, while galena is lead joined to sulfur. Other metals such as iron, copper, magnesium, calcium, cadmium, etc. can form salts¹.

Metal is another good attractor and carrier of etheric energy. Of all common metals, Alchemists say that iron has the greatest affinity for etheric energy. It is therefore a curious fact that blood, the carrier of such energy in our bodies, consists mostly of water, iron, and salt. It is also interesting that in folklore and occultism, a piece of iron, a line of salt, or a stream of water can act as barriers to unfriendly nonphysical entities, who would have their energy siphoned away by these substances. Garlic and onions play a similar role in folkore, and their key component is the element sulfur. Sulfur is yet another etherically active substance.

To know what materials Alchemists selected to make the Stone, you must understand how they thought. In the old days, Alchemists believed that metals originated in the Earth when dew from the heavens condensed on the ground, worked its way downward, and met with heat and vapors percolating upwards from the center of the planet. The combination produced a primitive metallic seed out of which all other metals grew. They believed that various metals were this one seed at different stages of growth, with gold being the final stage.

Gold was considered to be oldest of the metals, the final state toward which other metals were evolving. But in its old age, gold had expended all of its etheric energy. What was left was a dead body (salt) carrying the image (sulphur) of gold, but lacking the youthful vitality (mercury) that younger metals still possessed. Thus the goal of Alchemy was to take the noblest of metals and reinvigorate it, thereby taking it to a state of evolution higher than anything achievable in nature.

In practice, this meant starting with the youngest of metallic products, one so early in its evolution that it wasn't yet a robust metal but rather more of a primitive metalloid. It had to have an affinity for gold and be a potent source of etheric energy, something that contained the secret fire of the cosmos. Alchemists chose a mineral that resembled gold but appeared darkened by impurities. This raw matter they crushed to a fine powder, fed with dew and oxygen, and incubated with heat.

Their aim was to induce putrefaction in order to unbind the matter's mercury, salt, and sulphur components, just as death unbinds the human physical, etheric, and astral bodies. This was difficult because putrefaction takes a long time in the mineral kingdom and the speed depends on the electrochemical qualities of the mineral which varies from mine to mine as well as the presence or absence of bacterial catalysts.

In any case, when the appropriate factors are present, the mineral decomposes as intended. In successfully extracting the mercury and salt from this mineral and leaving behind the impure sulphur, they now had a youthful body and soul that could be joined to gold's ancient spirit. This mercurial salt they called their secret fire, universal solvent, the "water that does not wet the hands", common mercury, and alkahest. Alchemists believed it was the one thing by which the whole work could be accomplished, the one agent that could dissolve gold and acquire its sulphur.

In the so-called "Dry Path" of making the Stone, this salt and the gold leaf are placed in a crucible and heated to glowing temperature for several days, thereby joining them into one. This path is the quickest but also the most dangerous due to the high temperatures and potential for explosions. In the "Wet Path," gold leaf is mixed into the water-solubilized salt, then sealed in a glass flask and heated until the gold is fully disaggregated by the universal solvent. The result is a white buttery substance some have called "philosophical mercury," and this is the Philosopher's Stone in its nascent form.

After putrefying this white substance to blackness, heating until its impurities are driven away and it turns white once more, then further heating and repetition of this process eventually produces a red oil on the surface. This red oil is the sulphur of gold completely fused with youthful mercury. Further heating and evaporation coagulates the oil into a solid. This solid is the Philosopher's Stone in its finished form, unless one wishes to multiply its power by dissolving it in more fresh universal solvent (which is a donor of etheric energy) and repeating the previous operation, except using the Stone instead of gold leaf this time. This can be repeated any number of times, and each time a fresh dose of etheric energy impregnates the solid or oily remains and takes the Stone to its next order of power.

Upon attaining success, the final result is a dense stone, red and translucent like a ruby. It is water-soluble, melts like wax, flows like quicksilver when melted, does not burn at any temperature, yet volatizes when thrown into the molten metal it aims to transmute. It is a physical substance supersaturated with etheric energy and imprinted with the vibrational fingerprint of gold. When pulverized, mixed into beeswax, and cast into molten lead, it transmutes a certain multiple of its weight of lead into gold. It can also transmute quicksilver the same way. The lead or quicksilver atoms are overwhelmed by the etheric potency of the Stone and become malleable at the quantum level, allowing the fingerprint of gold to reconfigure them accordingly, thereby converting these into gold.

Alchemists emphasize that to succeed in this work, one must be of the highest ethics, have a deep mind capable of penetrating the mysteries of nature, and be a good observer and experimenter. Prayer and purity are essential to receive the intuitive insights and synchronistic guidance needed to discover the right steps in the right order. This is important because the less one understands about Alchemy, the more hidden variables there are, the lower the chances of success by trial and error. But if you are decreed so by destiny, or if you attain sufficient spiritual purity that higher forces deem you responsible enough to handle it, then you will be synchronistically and intuitively guided to success. But that won't happen if you are driven by greed, skepticism, or other anti-spiritual motives, or if it goes against your karma and destiny. You don't find the Stone, the Stone finds you.

The secret is synchronistically encrypted from those who would use it to cause trouble for themselves or others. Even misguided help can be a form of damage, thus in addition to purity, wisdom is needed. And if by chance someone did discover it and attempted to cause trouble, they would likely die suddenly, as already happens to people who try to bring antigravity and free energy technology into the world. The Philosopher's Stone is of that same vein. That's why no Alchemist has ever revealed the full picture. They not only realize the terrible implications of its misuse, but fear what harm might come to themselves if they facilitate that by giving knowledge without sufficient discretion.

Again, here I only give a general and limited estimation of the process for the sake of illustrating the underlying dynamics involved, as they are pertinent to my exposition on the Demiurge.

Other Applications of the Stone

At the first order of multiplication, a minuscule portion of the Stone may be dissolved in water or wine, and thereof a small portion ingested daily. This "Elixir of Life" or "Universal Medicine" is claimed to strongly energizes one's etheric body. With a reinforced etheric body, the physical body is less impacted by the degrading effects of linear time and may even reverse aging. Additionally, psychic powers begin to manifest as a function of increased etheric energy current output. So you can imagine what became of Alchemical masters who succeeded in producing the Stone and made full use of it. They became more than human. However, they presumably had the spiritual maturity to handle this. Any ordinary person, in being more psychically fragile, would go crazy, get sick and die from being unable to handle the increased etheric current load.

This "Universal Medicine" takes on great importance in Alchemy, because it represents a true panacea, something that cures all ills by charging the diseased organs with vital energy so that rightful health is regained. This goal is far more important than the transmutation of metals. In fact, the transmutation is done primarily as a test to see how strong the Stone, and thus whether it is safe for ingestion because beyond the first power it is no longer safe to use as a medicine.

In another application, by the seventh or eighth order of multiplication, the Stone remains liquid begins to physically glow, even more brightly if multiplied again. It glows continually without exhaustion. This is what powers the fabled "eternal lamps" in occult lore. And if multiplied beyond a certain point, it is said to eat through glass and even explode in something akin to a matter-antimatter reaction, which is obviously very dangerous. This shows that etheric energy, concentrated beyond a certain point, may initiate an outpouring of electromagnetic energy. This make sense because ether is the precursor and precipitator of matter, energy, space, and time.

Thus the Stone, in its full application, potentially provides wealth, health, psychic power, and light. No wonder it has been kept so secret through the ages, mainly to keep it out of the hands of unscrupulous individuals whose misuse of these powers would bring catastrophic consequences upon the world. That is not to say such catastrophes haven't happened.

Alchemy as Demiurgic Technology

What we have here is Demiurgic technology. How so? Recall that the Demiurge has an astral and etheric body. The etheric shapes matter according to the archetypes or "vibrational patterns" contained in the astral.

Well, the Philosopher's Stone is a physical object charged with etheric energy, carrying the vibrational pattern of gold. It can reshape physical matter like lead or mercury into conformance with that vibration. Thus the Stone is a physical object imbued with Demiurgic power. The technology of using etheric and astral energies to reconfigure matter is hereby called Demiurgic technology.

The most remarkable thing is that it's made by human hands, which is the closest thing to hyper-dimensional technology that one person in an attic laboratory can produce using everyday materials and uncommon techniques.

But even with all its purported greatness, the Philosopher's Stone is only an elementary demonstration of a science with far greater potential. Alchemy as we know it is a primitive form of hyper-dimensional science. Producing the Stone is like wrapping a wire around a nail, connecting it to a battery, and rejoicing in it becoming an electromagnet. But higher forms of Demiurgic technology exist that can produce something more like a billion-dollar supercollider. Both the wire-wrapped nail and supercollider employ the same basic principles of electromagnetism, but the first is a trivially simplistic version of the latter.

In the Philosopher's Stone we have proof, through circumstantial evidence and logicality of its existence, of what can be scaled up to an even higher level. Remember, the power of the Stone lies in its etheric potency, and its potency determines the degree to which it can bias probability and influence physicality. The archetypal fingerprint determines the nature of this biasing.

The weakest etheric fields can only nudge an electron this way or that. A bit stronger can nudge neurons and living cells. Even stronger it can influence synchronicity. Stronger, it can override chemical laws and allow for elemental transmutation or psychic spoon bending. You can scale this up higher and higher until you reach a point where the entire world, our entire timeline, can be shifted, reconfigured, reprogrammed, transmuted. Etheric energy does all this at the quantum level, which is the foundation of our physical reality.

That Alchemy can only produce these effects on the chemical scale, places it in the category of Low Demiurgic Technology. So what, then, is High Demiurgic Technology? It is that which does to the universe what Alchemy does to gold leaf and lead ingots. It can manufacture an artifact charged with such unbelievable amounts of etheric energy as to dissolve and reconfigure the world in accordance with the artifact's programmed archetypes.

This object is a kind of "World Philosopher's Stone", the macrocosmic equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone. Two well-known examples of such High Demiurgic Technology will be discussed in the articles to follow.

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Further Reading

Real Alchemy: A Primer of Practical Alchemy (3rd Ed., 2009, Ibis) – by Robert Bartlett. Basic primer on Alchemy, including an explanation of the terminology, theory, and lab techniques. Written in modern language, this is a good introduction to Alchemy.

The Book of Aquarius – Free download or hardcopy available at Amazon. Some basic theories on how Alchemy works, though I disagree with the author that urine is the key. It isn't. What matters is the 'urine' given off by the raw starting mineral after it endures bacterial fermentation.

Covenant of Silence (2nd Edition, 2010). This book summarizes various traditional alchemical texts and provides a more modern interpretation of their meaning. It's out of print and Nicholas Collette died recently at the age of 32. I don't agree with this book that the salt of dew or sea salt is the key. Collette himself said later that he was mistaken about that. But it was the first Alchemy book I read, that explained how lifeforce energy was what made it all work.

Dwellings of the Philosophers (French Ed. 1964, Archive Press. English Ed. 1999, Archive Press) – by Fulcanelli. Straight from the horse's mouth, this is a lengthy treatise by the most famous Alchemist of the 20th century. Unfortunately he goes to great lengths to compartmentalize, rearrange, and obscure the secrets of Alchemy while simultaneously revealing them to the world in cryptic form. So this dense book takes some work to read and decipher and therefore won't be everyone's cup of tea. My advice is to read this book at least five times, paying attention to the alchemical philosophy and techniques delineated rather than the architectural and historical passages which are just filler separating what's important. Annotate in the margins (or copy into a text document) the useful passages according to the sub-topic they pertain to, so that by assembling all relevant details on a sub-topic, you have a fully fleshed out puzzle piece that can then be arranged into logical sequence with the other puzzle pieces. My article above provides a suggested arrangement. At the end of this book, Fulcanelli also strays into other topics like the mechanism behind the ending of World Ages and how ours is ending right now, which is interesting. The hardcopy of this book goes out of print periodically and scalpers charge hundreds of dollars for it, although you can  view it online as well. If you want to learn traditional real alchemy, then this book is required reading. It says more than any other source, and it does not lie or lead astray.

Luminous World – Baron Karl Von Reichenbach – excerpted from Lost Science by Gerry Vassilatos. Informative summary of Reichenbach's investigations into "Od Energy" — a subtle energy bearing much similarity to chi, prana, etheric, and orgone energy. Reichenbach was a scientist and employed his skills in researching this energy. Read this interesting article to get a better idea of how etheric energy behaves.

A Rosicrucian Notebook (English Ed. 1992, Samuel Weiser Inc.) – by Willie Schrödter. Not a notebook by a Rosicrucian, but by a researcher into Rosicrucianism. It is an exoteric survey of anecdotes and quotations concerning the real Rosicrucian order. This is a compendium of occultism, mysticism, and weird science with tons of interesting tidbits concerning such topics as ever-burning lamps, remote healing, clairvoyance, the Stone, and other tools of Rosicrucian science. Everything is documented, so this book is a useful reference to find related sources on particular topics. It's not an essential book but interesting and has some obscure information.

Biological Transmutations (First English Ed. 1998, Beekman Publishers Inc.) – by Louis Kervran. Scientific investigations into transmutations of elements within living things, including bacteria, plants, and humans. Kervran explores the scientific basis behind this transmutation, which is valuable in attempting to understand how Alchemy may be explainable from a more mainstream scientific perspective. Take note that the temperatures Kervran cites for effective biological transmutation and non-biological transmutation are respectively the same as those used in the Wet and Dry Paths of Alchemy.

RAMS Digital Library – Large collection of numerous rare alchemical manuscripts, found nowhere else. Highly valuable source of information. Focus on Pontanus, Artephius, Cyliani, Sendivogius and Adiramled. Though Adiramled warns that it's better to read a few good sources many times, than many mediocre sources a few times. The sources I'm listing here are the "few good" ones but I suppose there are some gems to be found in the RAMS library as well.

Pontanus' Epistle – 1659 treatise on the "Secret Fire" being the key to producing the Stone.

The Secret Book of Artephius – 12th Century. Also mentions the Secret Fire. Ignore his implication that Antimony is the starting point. It's a code word for another mineral. Note that he talks about three fires, the third being the secret fire which is a substance that embodies a metaphysical energy that drives the creation of the Stone from beginning to end.

Cyliani's Hermes Unveiled  – An elaborate metaphor symbolically encoding the Alchemical process, particularly the Wet Path.

Sendivogius' The New Chemical Light – A relatively clear and entertaining explanation of creating the Stone, or at least the first stages. It's still done in riddle form, but he does a good job of explaining how Alchemists believed metals are created. From that you can reverse engineer what they might have done to reproduce it in the lab, under their assumptions.

Hermes Trismegistus Old Natural Path – By I.C.H. An obscure manuscript published in Leipzig, 1782, referenced by Cyliani. Key info on the technique for breaking down the raw starting material, and the proper order of the various phases. Never before translated into English. I was the editor and book designer for this edition. ( online)

Thirteen Secret Letters – Also by the author of Hermes Trismegistus Old Natural Path, this book contains thirteen letters written by members of the 18th century Golden and Rosicrucian Order, a high degree Masonic Order with a strong emphasis on laboratory alchemy. The letters explain one method for preparing the matter and extracting from it the mercury and sulfur. Rare and valuable text. ( online)

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NOTES

^1. The root "pyr" is Greek for fire. The dynamic vitalizing force of the soul, the Demiurgic energy so to speak, was called "sacred fire" by the ancients. Therefore the root "pyr" is bound with the concept of Demiurgic technology. Hence terms like pyramid, Pyrenees, and pyrite, three terms that are very closely related to Demiurgic technology. As will be explained in another article, the Great Pyramid is a channeler, collector, and amplifier of etheric energy. The Pyrenees are the mountain range between France and Spain, where a conclave of powerful Alchemists allegedly reside. And pyrite is a salt of sulfur and iron that sparks when struck, and thus contains within it latent fire, or so it appeared to the ancients. This brass or bronze-colored mineral, or rather its starry pseudomorph known as marcasite, was the raw material preferred by Fulcanelli for production of the Philosopher's Stone. Note that pyrite is also known as "Fool's Gold." It is the true gold of Fools in the esoteric sense, for they value it more than real gold; through it, they can make as much gold as they require and produce the Elixir of Life.

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