Alchemists were the Yogis of the West

Everyone who has looked at the question of alchemy has been labelled a nutcase, an occultist or worse. The imagery which is presented in alchemy is medieval and therefore must be full of superstituion and primitive. At the same time yoga is considered a recognized health exercise and meditation promoting stress release, calm and “mindfulness”. Whatever mindfulness is — a lot of people want to have it. Alchemy therefore is for those who love tattooing themselves with these quaint symbols and want to appear as exotic and mysterious. Doesn’t matter if it a winged serpent or a green lion. It smacks of fantasy, middle earth, and dungeons & dragons. So what about it? Why could alchemy be of interest today?

The fascination with alchemy, apart from meditation and mindfulness is, that its approach is that of dealing with the actual, the material world. According to C.G. Jung alchemy is in essence the psychic projections of the alchemists into the substances they were exploring. But neither for the substances, nor for the psychological processes involved there were proper classifications in place. It all melded into one phenomenon: affect, imagination, thoughts, experience, expertise with the process of interacting with the substances. This is particularly interesting when you think of the artistic process, where you cannot separate that which is happening within the artist with the artefact the artists is working on, it all bleeds into each other, even when the artefact is completed. Alchemy therefore does not separate the outside from the inside but claims that there is a meaningful connection.

When looking at alchemical imagery they appear far beyond our contemporary understanding, and to be clear: they were even far beyond the understanding of fellow alchemists. Much more so the attempt to formalize any process, which had very obscure, fantastic ingredients. But then some images seem appear to be canonized or generally accepted. Even some procedural steps are repeated by different practitioners. Although not always in the same order.

The alchemists were observing external and internal processes at the same time and did this repeatedly, until many realized that there was something in their own consciousness for which they had no words for and no definitions, so they had to come with their own definitions which were largely metaphorical. And only those metaphorical definitions which managed to be replicated by fellow alchemists then managed to stick around. What can be safely said is that the unconscious material in the search for the “stone of the philosophers” would then surface and make itself known in images, sounds and feelings. Although this experience is also documented they did manage to very precisely give instruction within a process on how to deal with these experiences. These instructions in their written form are for the most unintelligible, but oddly enough in the imagery they are quite straight forward — if one understands how to read them.

Let us take one of the very common images, that of Rex and Regina, of King and Queen:

The most common misconception is that this an analogy of “opposites” or even of “gender qualities” like masculine and feminine. While gendering is of course part of the traditional definitions, it’s a mere side-show which leads to more confusion on behalf of the modern-day viewer. Key to understanding what is being expressed here are the sun and the moon. And the process, which is captured here, the “marriage” or “conjunction”. Within the above image we only see a part of the process.

As the king rules over the daytime, the queen rules over the night and even alchemists were aware that their own consciousness had different expressions. One in the daytime, when awake, and one at nighttime, when dreaming. Therefore, there must be two rulers of consciousness with two very different expressions. Or as we would call it today: consciousness and sub-consciousness. The alchemists believed or thought to have discovered that a “marriage” of these two forms of consciousness was the nexus of inspiration, of where the holy spirit entered the mind and brought with it creativity and guidance. Therefore, a white dove it seen entering from above carrying with it a third flowering branch with it.

One might dismiss this as mere fantasy, but the interesting aspect of this is when we look at an artistic, or intuitive process, which requires the conscious and the subconscious to collaborate to produce and artistic expression like music, song, dance. But also, innovation and creativity in general. Most neuroscientists, as well cognitive scientists will agree that creativity and novelty requires both conscious and subconscious faculties. A specific mind-set of relaxation and focus at the same time. We now call this “flow”.

The second aspect of this image is that it needs to be seen as part of a process, in which king and queen merge, usually to a point of dissolution, death and resurrection as a unified form:

What these images imply is that only a merger of the conscious with the subconscious and their subsequent ceasing to “be”, to exist, to live, can lead to spiritual liberty and rebirth. And herein lies something fundamental, the bridge to eastern meditational practice. To Yoga.

Because these alchemical images are not fantastic imagination, they are a very practical guideline to meditation and mirror an ancient definition of Yoga itself.

Patanjali, the supposed author of the the “Yoga Sutras”, defined Yoga in his second Sutra as the “yogas citta-vrtti-nirodhah” or “the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff”. Only through this cessation, through the death of attachment to the “stuff” in our conscious and subconscious, so Patanjali claims, can the individual attain any form of liberty.

And there you go.

Alchemists were the Yogis of the West.