THE GREAT WORK ? ALCHEMY ”I AM”

BOOK—THE GREAT WORK (1854)

Grail Cup

“Hidden within man there exists a Heavenly and Divine Light which cannot be placed in man from without but must emerge from within.”   Within Manifest Life is a Hidden Reality of the Highest Order …?

The Cosmos calls to us to become aware that we participate in its Life, that everything is Sacred and connected, that the Cosmos has a Soul and that we can learn how to communicate with that Soul.

There has always been a chain of teachers (known as the Golden Chain or catena d’oro) who have transmitted their knowledge and insight from generation to generation over thousands of years.  Two great streams of alchemical knowledge, one flowing from Egypt and the other from Persia, Arabia and Islamic Spain, came together in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  There were some 4000 alchemists working in Europe between 1200 and 1650 and they created dozens of alchemical texts and images.  Many kabbalists were alchemists and vice-versa.  This image is a Kabbalistic one where two men are sharing a vision of the higher worlds. In the central circle are the zodiacal signs.

What is the treasure that Western civilisation has ignored or overlooked?  What is the gold that is not the common gold?  The Great Work of Alchemy tells us that we have our Source in the starry ground of the Cosmos, that we are literally Star-Life in every Cell of our Being.  The whole of Cosmic and Planetary evolution is an alchemical process, an ongoing process of creation and transformation, of dissolution and regeneration.

The Cosmos calls to us to be aware that we participate in its Life, that everything is sacred and connected—One Life, One Source, One Spirit.  The Great Work of Alchemy refines the base metal of our understanding so that we – evolved from the fiery substance of the stars – can know ourselves as Spirit.  It heals the deep wound in the Soul that has come into being because of a sense of alienation, loneliness and separation from the Divine.  It tells us who we are and why we are here…?