The Alchemycal Rite

 As we turn toward the South we know this as the Alchemical Rite. Young Tradition is not like other forms of Old Craft I've run into which insist on an entire cosmology and ideology. I am honestly moving on inspiration, bit by bit, and very often things change. For several months now I had been doing Freemasony until I realzied that what I was doing, and will continue to do, is Alchemy, and that I had very little use for or feelings of connection with any branch of Freemasonry. Already though, I had adopted the series of knighthoods and planned to use in ritual, and correlating to the turns of the year, three swords, It was with the taking of the Red Knighthood and the Red Sword at Lammas that I turned to the South and began to think of another name for Young Tradition which is, the Alchemical (Alchymical) Rite.

The Alchemical Rite is the same as Young Tradition in the same way that the Latin Rite is the same as Roman Catholicism. The name denotes a difference in intensity and orientation. Like say, not very many Catholics would say, "I practice the Latin Rite" and, at the same time, there are many people who do not belong to the Church of Rome, who have left it over the years and become something else, or who have been left by it, who describe themselves as Catholic but not Roman, who would just as well be described as "practicing the Latin Rite." The Alchemical Rite is Young Tradition, but it did not start at the same time as Young Tradition and it is what I am doing especially in regard to the use of Knighthoods, Swords and the direction of the South. The Alchemical Rite is also something that would be followed after a long time of being in Young Tradition, as an adult Catholic would join the Knights of Columbus, not an unconfirmed youth. The Alchemical Rite is all I am gathering by looking south and east toward Egypt and the Arab world, the home of Alchemy, and the Alchemical Rite is also the insistence that the root of this Craft is Alchemy and its long eastern history. 

But, in a very serious way, the Alchemical Rite is also something I do not understand, because I am just making it up or discovering it.  The signs of the Alchymical Rite are the Alchemical Meeting, different from the narthex, the circle raising or the services of prayer and mediation, the Three Lights, Three pillars, three pyramids, the honoring of the south and the southeast, and the reverence of Fire and the Prince of Fires,  hence the blessedness of the Red Sword and its association with Fire as well as life's blood.

What is the purpose of these swords, though? I was enchanted by the AFW idea of the Three Blades, but these swords do not serve those purposes, not really. For starters, they are unfit and unwieldy implements for cutting. In addition to the same purpose as Cross and Stang, the Swords are signs of the Axis Mundi. They represent knighthood as well as kingship and belong to the Kings and Princes of each realm. They guard the altar and therefore the heart, mind and soul and therefore the practice, and in the case of the Red Sword, I cannot help but see it protecting the Alchemical Mysteries, the first one of which we have discussed, the Holy Heart which is ever in need of care.