The Philosopher's Stone

Wikipedia gives detailed information on the Philosopher’s Stone, the object of all alchemy. From descriptions of what it is and what it does, it is clear that few ever believed that they were trying to create a merely physical rock, or amulet. What the alchemist is doing is reaching some type of deep down touchstone, the heart of all creation, the heart of the human soul and the soul of the world as well. This is the Stone the builders rejected, the Philosopher’s Stone is the cornerstone of everything. It is the Rough Ashler of the free mason’s the rough stone of Taoism that must be returned to its original wholeness.

            Alternately, this stone is the elixir of life, or it creates the elixir of life. So it is the Graal as well as what the Graal holds. It turns base metals to gold, gives long life, grants immortality and insight. It is the vehicle of transformation in this world, the Eye of the Dragon.

            Here are some descriptions from the Wikipedia article.

The theoretical roots outlining the stone’s creation can be traced to Greek philosophy. Alchemists later used the classical elements, the concept of anima mundi, and Creation stories presented in texts like Plato's Timaeus as analogies for their process.[4] According to Plato, the four elements are derived from a common source or prima materia (first matter), associated with chaos. Prima materia is also the name alchemists assign to the starting ingredient for the creation of the philosopher's stone. The importance of this philosophical first matter persisted throughout the history of alchemy. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Vaughan writes, "the first matter of the stone is the very same with the first matter of all things".[5]





The equivalent of the philosopher's stone in Buddhism and Hinduism is the Cintamani.[12] It is also referred to[13] as Paras/Parasmani (Hindi: पारस/पारसमणि) or Paris (Marathi: परिस).

In Mahayana Buddhism, Chintamani is held by the bodhisattvas, Avalokiteshvara and Ksitigarbha. It is also seen carried upon the back of the Lung ta (wind horse) which is depicted on Tibetan prayer flags. By reciting the Dharani of Chintamani, Buddhist tradition maintains that one attains the Wisdom of Buddhas, is able to understand the truth of the Buddhas, and turns afflictions into Bodhi. It is said to allow one to see the Holy Retinue of Amitabha and his assembly upon one's deathbed. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition the Chintamani is sometimes depicted as a luminous pearl and is in the possession of several of different forms of the Buddha.[14]

While it is true that sometimes, some people were looking for an actual stone that turned actual lead into actual gold, most often, an alchemist is a term for someone seeking far more than this, seeking to transform the base things at hand back to their original golden nature, seeking it in all the work we do. The Seeking is not metaphorically, but magically.

     

The English philosopher Sir Thomas Browne in his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) identified the religious aspect of the quest for the philosopher's Stone when declaring:

The smattering I have of the Philosophers stone, (which is something more than the perfect exaltation of gold) hath taught me a great deale of Divinity.

— (R.M.Part 1:38)[11]

Alchemy is all the processes of the magician’s life, by which we transform all we find that is base back into the divine, by which gradually and earnestly we change that which we touch.

The Work: Part One

I love the phrase The Work. It’s such an almost vague phrase. I love to hear a witch talking of “getting on with the Work” or “doing the Work”. I love that the Craft is a work. Work, of course, is shortened or the essential form of the term, the Great Work, originally referring to the alchemical process which is all that the magician does to bring about the Philosopher’s Stone. We have taken it into the Craft understanding the very process of creating the Philosopher’s Stone, Alchemy, is what the work is about.

            The concept of The Work is what separates an adept and a devotee from people dabbling around in Wicca books on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, that what we are doing is not a business of learning one off spells, but that, we are involved in something whole, something that encompasses all of what we do, the spells, the rituals, the gestures, the meditations, the surrenders, the sacrifices, the adherence to principles which take place in the seemingly ordinary sphere of life. We are saying that The Work is ongoing, not a matter of instant success, that The Work is something we are inviting to take place in our lives though we will not see the whole of it, and we may not truly have much of a concept of what it is doing.

           

Wikipedia describes the alchemical definition of Work. We have inherited a medieval concept which may have, or may have never been thought to create an actual Philosopher’s Stone. The phases used by the magicians, are the phases we, in our way, use in our own devotion in one way or several.

The Great Work (Latin: Magnum opus) is an alchemical term for the process of working with the prima materia to create the philosopher's stone. It has been used to describe personal and spiritual transmutation in the Hermetic tradition, attached to laboratory processes and chemical color changes, used as a model for the individuation process, and as a device in art and literature. The magnum opus has been carried forward in New Age and neo-Hermetic movements which sometimes attached new symbolism and significance to the processes. The original process philosophy has four stages:^[1][2]

• nigredo, a blackening or melanosis
• albedo, a whitening or leucosis
• citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis
• rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

So those are the very bare bones of Alchemy, of going about the Great Work. Now that we know what the work is, creating the Philosopher’s Stone, let us turn to a small exploration of just what that is.

Our Lord of the Forge

We have spoken of the the fire from heaven, and the fire that is made when two earthly things collide and the air gives their spark life. We have mentioned the smith fire of Wayland and Tubal Cain, the spiritual fire, the divine intelligence manifested by the Holy Spirit, and Hermes. We have seen that fire between heaven and earth in Agni, the God who carries sacrifices from the altar to the gods. But what of the fire born from the earth of the earth, the divine fire of burning stone expressed in the Goddess Pele, erupting in red and orange lava, spilling over the old earth to make new earth, destroying to create, constantly forming new lands? In the Hawaiian Islands you can see the work of creation right before your eyes. It is by this fire, erupting from the depths of the Mother, that the earth we know was made. At one point in time, all the land we treasure was either granite, gradually broken down by the great fungi, or lava belched up from the earth.

            This too, is the Smith’s fire, and the Earth his smithy.

            Hephaestos, the Greek deity of ingenuity, the smith of the Olympian gods counts for little by the time he is put into stories. He is the lame butt of many jokes, tossed from heaven by Zeus, unloved by Hera who, in other stories, tosses him away because of his ugliness. There is a wary space between he and the other gods. But does this truly speak of scorn, or of fear, of something uncanny, un… Olympian about the Olympian smith? He is, after all, the god who in the end is the husband of Aphrodite, another deity whose origin is not Olympos, who is alternately scorned in stories, but feared in actual cultic practice. If Aphrodite’s origins are in Inanna and Ishtar, in the great Asherah bride of Yahweh, what then is the true nature of her Smith husband?

            The stories we have now tell us Haphaestos was the son of Zeus and Hera, the sky god and goddess, the former the lord of the lightning bolts, and so Hephaestos is related to the heavenly fire. In the stories written down centuries later, he often snubbed by the Olympians and counted for little, but the reality of his worship may have been somewhat different. Often the soldier god and the farmer god are the same, and this is because the soldier and the farmer were the same, as was the farm field and the battlefield. Agriculture and war were related, for the first meant staking out permanent land, the other keeping it. But this intimate relationship between the farmer and the soldier meant that the smith who made the plough also made the sword. So the God of War and the God of the Forge would have been deeply honored. This may, by the way, be the reason both were seen as spouses to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Desire. They may have even been a trinity of sorts.

Hephaestos is linked the the first generation of earth shaking monsters Mother Earth bore. They are said to be his servants and companions, and his forge is said to be under Mount Aetna in Sicily. Every time it erupts this is the work of Hephaestos and at mount Aetna and in all of Italy, he is known by his Latin name. Vulcan, for which is forges, volcanoes, are named.

            So Vulcan is the Lord of the Transformation, smithing far more than swords and horseshoes. Vulcan is not only the stirrer of the earth’s inner fires, but ours as well. He is counted as misshapen and ugly, but is this because, as some have said, smiths were lamed on purpose so that they could not leave a village, or is it because being in the midst of transformation and change is to always appear misshapen and unfinished, so this is the primary appearance of the Lord of the Forge?

Fire

The business of four elements is a strange one anyway. In chemistry we learned there are actually well over a hundred and yet no witch I know has ever called the corners for Helium, Boron and Magnesium. When we speak of the elements we speak on another and older level, and yet, because it’s the language of poetry, there is always something left out. For me, when blessing the circle or the witch’s sphere, it is air that is left out, and blessed by the stang. I have the bowl with water, that with earth, I strike the fire and bear it about, but I do not have the bowl of air, and yet, of course, every bowl is the bowl of air.  Air is all around. What is more, Fire doesn’t play like the other elements, the water remains on the altar: though, of course, in time it would evaporate left unattended. The salt symbolizing earth remains. Fire, however, burns itself out fairly quickly. It is the very essence of  transience. It is Agni and Ellegua, the God who comes from heaven and returns carrying our offerings. It is the intelligence of Mercury the messenger. Fire is the one element created and the one that soon dies. It is the one that can envelop everything, change everything, reshape the world by its visitation or, give few signs of ever having been.

            Elizabeth Goudge says the butterfly is strange because it isn’t quite a bird, and it isn’t quite a flower. The same can be said with fire. Not quite solid, it is not quite air. It comes into being literally out of nowhere, when two earthly bodies strike each other and are fed by air, the fire comes into being. When the waters in the heavens strikes against itself, lightning is made. When this heavenly fire strikes the earth, earthly fire blooms on the earth. In this later regard Water is the Mother of the uncontrollable fire. But in the regard of the Fire of East, the Fire of Creation and the Forge, the Castle of Air and Stone is the incubator of fire, Air and Stone its Mother and Father.

            Of the elements fire is most like a spirit, there and not there. Powerful and consuming, but silent inside of every tree and rock. Not in this world until the moment we bring it into the world, then soon gone. Fire is the torch by which the vegetation of Cain became the offering that ascended to heaven. Fire, fed by Air through the bellows, makes the smithy work. Even in Christian mysticism, the fire and air retain this relationship. Jesus declares of  the children of God, “The wind blows where it wills and you know not where it comes from or where it departs. So are the children of the Spirit.” But at Pentecost this Wind which is always present, this Sophia, Lady Wisdom, the Mother Breath, becomes Brigit, the Fire of the Holy Spirit, settling on tongues upon the disciples and the Blessed Virgin. Some thought is required here. This amazing story, often ignored by many Christians or intentionally misunderstood, is teaching us something. The earth striking earth is the body of those waiting and in love with the Divine. We are striking each other, coming together, and that striking, touched by Air, produces the Burning One in this world, in every aspect of our witchly lives.

The Castle of Air and Stone

 

Easter Day quickly shows us the location and the nature of the next castle to which, on Beltane, we orient ourselves. And we orient in the fullest sense, for it is a turning completely to the East. . This is one of the Hidden Castles, the demesnes spoken of directly. Here is placed the Anvil of Tubal Cain, and the object of the East is an anvil, or the Stone, which was the original anvil, or even three stones. The story of King Arthur implies this with the rough stone, the iron anvil on the stone and then the sword in the stone being the three forms of making. In Taoism one seeks to return to the rough stone, in freemasonry, one wishes to transcend it. In the Craft there is flow between both states.

In the story of conventional story of King Arthur, this sword in stone rests in a church yard, but the original smithies were caves. In Mary Stewart’s evocative retelling of the King Arthur story, The Hollow Hills, Arthur does not pull this sword up in a church yard, but rather in the Green Chapel, a cave turned into a temple that was devoted to ancient gods and, once forgotten, reconsecrated by Merin. It is in this cave temple that Arthur pulls the sword from a stone altar, and it is this place, in all its transformations that is the Castle to the East, the Castle of Air and Stone. It is the Chapel of the Sword, It is the smithy of the great Smith called Cain, Tubal Cain and Wayland. This is the chamber of the Maker.

            This is the door through which Inanna and Jesus entered, and then left the underworld. This is the cave temple of Persephone, the Goddess of the Above and the Below.  This is the chapel of Mary Magdalene. The Castle of Air and Light is also the dreaming, gazing place of creation and vision. Here the Goddess Maia gives birth to the brilliant Hermes. Here Osiris is born, Christ born as well as reborn and resurrected. It is the place of sleep, death and resurrection, alchemy. It is the empty tomb of Christ, but it is the tomb of all those who have been perfected in life and yet whose souls touch the earth and live again. This is Ayers Rock, Uluru, the passage between the common easily seen world and the constant Dreamtime. This the crystal cave of Merlin, where the sorcerer lies dreaming, passing in and out of the otherworld.

The Arms of the Dragon

-What are you afraid of?

-I don't know.

                 

-Shall I tell you what's out there?

-Yes, please.

The Dragon.

A beast of such power...

...that if you were to see it whole

and complete in a single glance...

...it would burn you to cinders.

                  

-Where is it?

-It is everywhere.

It is everything.

Its scales glisten in the bark of trees.

Its roar is heard in the wind.

And its forked tongue strikes like....

Like lightning. Yes, that's it.


How can I...?

What shall I...? Must I...?



Do nothing.

Be still. Sleep.

Rest in the arms of the Dragon.