Alchemy E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Alchemy and the Rise of the Modern Mysteries; The Loss of the Divine and the Alchemical Quest; Mysteries of the Metals; The Standpoint of Human Wisdom Today; Alchemy and Consciousness - the Transformation; Alchemy and Archangels; The Alchemy of Nature - Mercury, Sulphur, Salt; Beyond Nature Consciousness - the Spiritual Goal.

Leseprobe

ALCHEMY

POCKET LIBRARY OF SPIRITUAL WISDOM

Also available ATLANTIS THE DRUIDS CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ THE GODDESS THE HOLY GRAIL

ALCHEMY

The Evolution of the Mysteries

selections from the work of RUDOLF STEINER

Sophia Books

All translations revised by Christian von Arnim

Sophia Books An imprint of Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Series editor: Andrew Welburn For earlier English publications of extracted material see Sources

The material by Rudolf Steiner was originally published in German in various volumes of the ‘GA’ (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized edition is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach (for further information see Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures)

This edition translated © Rudolf Steiner Press 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 330 1

Cover illustration by Anne Stockton. Cover design by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Introduction: Alchemy and the Rise of the Modern Mysteries by Andrew J. Welburn

1. Alchemy and the Rise of the Modern Mysteries

The loss of the divine and the alchemical quest

Mysteries of the metals

The standpoint of human wisdom (anthroposophy) today

2. Alchemy and Consciousness: The Transmutation

3. Alchemy and Archangels

The alchemy of nature: mercury, sulphur, salt

Beyond nature consciousness: the spiritual goal

Notes

Sources

Suggested Further Reading

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Introduction: Alchemy and the Rise of the Modern Mysteries

by Andrew J. Welburn

One thing has become, over the last few years in particular, ever more clear. For whether they are historians of science, or healers of the human psyche, or seekers of esoteric knowledge, all the researchers alike have had to acknowledge that alchemy is very far from having yielded up all its secrets.

Indeed in all these circles its fascination continues to grow, as new research reveals, for example, its relevance to some of the greatest pioneers of modern thought, such as Isaac Newton and the brilliant chemist Robert Boyle. Both these august figures have subsequently been laid claim to by mainstream science as its champions in what can now be seen as its rewriting of history, trying to present them as rationalist culture-heroes and materialist founding fathers. As more and more research has been done, however, the real complexities of the story could no longer be kept concealed, and a fascinating picture unfolds once more as it now emerges that these twin geniuses of the early Royal Society had really envisaged that their mathematical and physical discoveries should go hand in hand with a spiritual and esoteric science. Both of them devoted long hours to intense alchemical research. Boyle corresponded at length with the members of an international alchemical society, and believed himself to be drawing ever closer to discovering the ultimate arcanum. Moreover, their involvement cannot any longer be dismissed as a personal peculiarity, which we ought to leave behind among the shadows of their time. For it has become evident that this spiritual and occult side of their investigations often furnished them with the crucial concepts for their physical science. Newton most likely hit on his idea of gravity (contrary to the popular myth, it is unlikely that it hit him in the form of the apple from the tree) by meditating on mystical and apocalyptic symbols of universal order. Boyle’s devastating critique of the chemistry of his day, we now know, was meant to clear the way for introducing the ideas of those ‘adepts’ in chemical wisdom with whom he believed himself to be in touch.1

In other ways too alchemy has invisibly become a part of the modern world. For example, the idea of great imaginative theatre, with powerfully depicted characters in interaction, first developed by Shakespeare and (in comedy) by Ben Jonson, is not only fundamentally indebted to alchemy on the level of references and allusions by the pioneers to the alchemy prevalent in their day. It owes to it something more essential, perhaps even the basic ‘experimental’ idea of letting different natures loose upon one another in an enclosed ‘viewing place’ (the ‘chemical theatre’ of the alembic), so as to let them change and be changed.2 Earlier, medieval theatre had worked quite differently, reflecting the more fixed nature of society by retelling well-known tales, frequently with a didactic or religious emphasis, and in any case where the story was well known, e.g. from the Bible. Therefore it reinforced what people already knew, rather than keeping them on the edge of their seats wondering how a situation was going to turn out, and who would have to adapt.

The wider sense we have nowadays of human interactions as challenging, open-ended and full of potential, inviting us to find out as much about ourselves as about the other person, is in some large part an inheritance of the Shakespearean theatre, with what we now know to be its heady alchemy. The overwhelming tragic power of a King Lear is certainly the spectacle of modern, ‘unaccommodated’ humanity facing the terror and potential of an uncertain world in the storm, but the model for it is the creative violence of chemical reaction, of elemental transmutation. It is only a further reflection of this when modern depth-psychology rediscovers in the dynamic of character-formation the transformational processes of alchemy, realizing anew that we are philosophical stones needing to be urged into life, or that we cannot be thought of as existing enclosed and complete: we require the making-whole-through-the-other, the marriage of the king and queen, the mysterium coniunctionis.3 In all these ways, even where they are no longer acknowledged by our culture, the deeper implications behind modern life are drawn frequently and often most profoundly from the cosmic and holistic vision of alchemical thought.

It would be a modern but very un-Shakespearian tragedy, therefore, if the underlying vision of the alchemical unity of life and cosmos were to be lost – even while we admit how much it has taught us. It would be to miss the very point of that alchemical unity to preserve the psychological analysis, or the awareness of alchemy’s role in the history of science, and yet to keep all the separate roles clinically apart; this would be like the dissection which, as Goethe’s positivist devil Mephisto gleefully remarks, can reveal everything about a living creature (except the unifying force of its spiritual life!). It is perhaps Rudolf Steiner’s greatest contribution to the issue that he can explain not only the spiritual truth that lay behind the inspired ideas of alchemy, leading up to a Newton and a Boyle, but how it is also a part of the whole development of our consciousness up to the present – and into the future. It is quite inadequate, from his point of view, to see alchemy as a past stage of science, when people could still accept the role of the spirit – a ‘paradisal’ state which, as Jung seems to suppose, we may yearn nostalgically to regain, at least internally, psychologically. Rather than being held up in this nostalgic way, alchemy and the psychic ‘individuation’ process of the modern soul are for Steiner twin aspects of the same historic, evolutionary development. They are an intrinsic part, in fact, of the quest for knowledge concerning the workings of external substance and matter which led to modern science and to modern consciousness. And the whole process, for him, is far from over. The true story of alchemy is only starting to be told even by the new historians of the Newtonian scientific revolution. The true story of alchemy, though in a thoroughly scientific sense, is that of the rise of the modern Mysteries.

The alchemical quest begins, according to Steiner, with the end of the ancient world and its integrated vision of the cosmos. In ancient civilization humanity still lived to a great extent in accord with the natural cycles – in fact they derived a deep spiritual satisfaction from the sense of harmonizing with their rhythms. Thus they felt God or the gods in everything; matter and spirit were one. But already in pre-Christian times human evolution was bringing a change in consciousness, as individuals started to develop a more separate sense of identity or personal destiny. The new consciousness offered a source of self-fulfilment to a kind of person who took more risks, made his own decisions and commitments. But its cost was the sense of oneness with the spirit in the cosmos. In modern times we have gone further and further down the road of individualistic consciousness, and experienced the alienation that goes with it.

If this were the whole picture, there would indeed remain nothing but nostalgia for our lost relationship to the cosmic whole. And many on both sides of the question try to tell us that this is the only picture we can have: the humanist that there is no going back on our independence because on it depends everything we have made of ourselves, our modern civilization, scientific thought, etc.; the psychologist that we have violated our natural relationship with the world, and so are caught in an insoluble contradiction. Christianity, according to Jung, fails to resolve the dilemma because it has not been able to penetrate the whole of the psyche, our unconscious, unreformed part.4