User:Ssstephen/Reading/The Forge and the Crucible

the magic of the instruments. the art of creating tools is essentially superhuman—either divine or demoniac (for the smith also forges murderous weapons)... the ambivalent magic of stone weapons, both lethal and beneficient, like the thunderbolt itself, was transmitted and magnified in the new instruments forged of metal.

creation is a sacrifice.

what Nature cannot perfect in a vast space of time we can achieve in a short space of time by our art'

from the Summa Perfectionis

The theme of sacrifice (or of personal sacrifice) at the time of smelting, which is a mythico-ritual motif more or less related to the idea of mystic union between a human being (or a couple) and metals, is especially important. morphologically, this theme should belong with the great class of sacrifices of creation whose primary model in the cosmogonic myth I have already described. to ensure the 'marriage of metals' in the smelting process, a living being must 'animate' the operation and the best means of achieving this is by the sacrifice, the transfer of a life. the soul of the victim changes its fleshy envelope: it changes its human body for a new 'body'—a building, an object, even an operation—which it makes Alice, or animates. 

Fusing metals (joining, creating, synthesising, transformation of holy matter) requires a sacrifice to succeed. Do people still believe this? Is there always a cost to creation? Does extracting metals or other resources from their natural state come at a cost or a need to sacrifice something else?

poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie

But where cosmogonic symbols were presented in an embryological context, the creation of objects was equivalent to a childbirth.

all creation as a form of giving birth, but in fact obstetrics or abortion. scary.

further reading:

1. ecstasy, robery johnston
2. la chamanisme et las techniques archaiques de l'extase, mircea eliade
3. alchemy, ej holmyard

as 'masters of fire', shamans and sorcerers swallow burning coal, handle red-hot iron and walk on fire... these powers indicate access to a certain ecstatic state or, on another cultural plane, to an unconditioned state of perfect spiritual freedom.

And by extenstion smiths, potters and alchemists as 'masters of fire' have access to the same state. is this idea still believed of 'artists' in the modern sense of the word, that those who make things artificially, by artifice, have access to some ecstatic or spiritual state. will this belief about these artists be superceded by rationality the same way as it has been for other artists (smiths, chemists). somehow the potter is also still thought of in this way. but in fact the artist is making tools.

in Bali there are initiation rites for apprentice smiths and during their work mantra are uttered before each tool is used.

the smith, in virtue of the sacred character of his craft, the mythologies and genealogies of which he is the keeper, and his association with the shaman and the warrior, has come to play a significant part in the creation and diffusion of epic poetry.

there would appear to have existed, therefore, at several different cultural levels (which is a mark of very great antiquity), a close connection between the at of the Smith, the occult sciences (shamanism, magic, healing, etc) and the art of song, dance and poetry. these overlapping techniques, moreover, appear to have been handed down in an aura of sacred mystery comprising initiations, specific rituals and 'trade secrets'. 

transdisciplinary practices. forging tools and making art are deeply connected with eachother and mystic or magic practices, they interact with the world on a similar plane. is art magic or toolmaking? yes both. homo faber. is there a link between the words fable and faber?

the 'mastery of fire', common both to magician, shaman and smith, was, in Christian folklore, looked upon as the work of the devil

yes burn it to the ground.

(certainly the obvious or consciously accessible significance can be a matter for discussion, but to limit the problem in this way is to sin through an excess of rationalism. a folktale does not address itself to the awakened secularised consciousness: it exerts its power in the deep recesses of the psyche, and nourishes and simulates the imagination... images, inspired by tales, act directly on the psyche of the audience even when, consciously, the latter does not realise the primal significance of any particular symbol.)

this is maybe the best parenthesis i have ever read.

the survarna tantra affirms that by eating 'killed mercury' (nasta-pista), man becomes immortal... even the alchemist's urine and faeces are capable of transmuting copper into gold.

Ingestion as destructive, egestion as creative. Eating is killing and death. Making shit. Digestion as transformation and the body as synthesiser.

as far as the Indian alchemist is concerned, operations on mineral substances were not, and could not be, simple chemical experiments. on the contrary, they involved his karmic situation; in other words they had decisive spiritual consequences.

acknowledging that the spiritual, the belief systems, the world of the mind and of the observer are entangled with the physical and material reality. there is no way to measure, experiment or observe without coming from an ideological standpoint somewhere, it needs to be addressed, accepted, taken into consideration. things only exist and are only seen from certain (or uncertain) social and cultural perspectives.

further reading european/arabic/alexandrian alchemy:

1. fulcanelli
2. eugene canseliet
3. j. evola
4. alexander von bernus
5. rené alleau

modern man is incapable of experiencing the sacred in his dealings with matter; at most he can achieve an aesthetic experience... it is clear that a thinking dominated by cosmological symbolism created an experience of the world vastly different from that accessible to modern man. to symbolic thinking the world is not only 'alive' but also 'open': an object is never simply itself (as is the case with modern consciousness), it is also a sign of, of a repository for, something else.

openness as undefined, and the ability to be otherwise.

historians of science have rightly emphasised that the authors of these [ancient oriental alchemical] prescriptions make use of quantities and numbers which would prove, in their view, the scientific character of these operations.

as with David Graeber, an assumption, even here, that numbers are scientific. yes numbers can be used to measure but counting also has a strong mystical element, and numbers as symbols are still a thing even today. the sexual power of 69, the fear instilled by 1945, lucky number 7, buildings that skip floor 13. why is he called andre3000? or 6ix9ine, or 2pac? iphone X, duvel 666, digits have strong emotive powers.

this is an interesting question to me, the mystical origins of science and rationality. descartes, the roman grid, numerology. the vector hidden inside every raster measurement. the nonbinary reality of data.

it is the conception of a complex and dramatic Life of Matter which constitutes the originality of alchemy as opposed to classical Greek science.

the dramatic Life of Matter. transsubstantiation.

melansis (black), leukosis (white), xanthosis (yellow), and iosis (red)... nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo, sometimes viriditas, sometimes cauda pavonis.

states and stages. phases. colour symbolism.

[death] was the reduction of substances to the materia prima, to the massa confusa, the fluid, shapeless mass corresponding—on the cosmological plane—to chaos... 'perform no operation till all be made water'.

oh fuck this chapter is going to get intense, i already want to quote the entire first paragraph. dissolving gold in aqua regia. reintegration of chaos. aquatic symbolism. through water all things must be destroyed. a baptism as a death. it's a bit too personal but the whole is in every part and it all needs to die.

opportet operatorem interesse operi

the work is us. we are the work. there is no separation between being and making. whaaaaat. but yeah maybe i guess.

the vas mirabile of the alchemist, his furnaces, his retorts, play an even more ambitious role [than putting him in the role of Time]. these pieces of apparatus are at the very centre of a return to primordial chaos, of a rehearsal of the cosmogony. substances die in them and are revived, to be finally transmuted to gold.

did alchemists really believe this? maybe they just wanted free money. its a nice story and that doesnt depend on us believing it or the original practitioners believing it either, but it would be interesting to know how they felt about it.

an extremely complex symbolism associates the terrifying fire-theophanies with the sweetest flames of mystic love and with the luminous manifestations of the divine as well as with the innumerable 'combustions' and 'passions' of the soul. at many levels, fire, flame, dazzling light, inner heat, express spiritual experiences, the incarnation of the sacred, the proximity of God.

i am starting to like fire more than i used to because of this book. i mean literal fire has always fascinated terrified and attracted me but i am starting to see how that elemental power comes across in other matter and forces too.

the conclusion i was expecting starts on page 172 (a fine number), its all good but ill grab a bit:

it is in the specific dogma of the nineteenth century, according to which man's true mission is to transform and improve upon nature and become her master, that we must look for the authentic continuation of the alchemists dream.

industrialisation as the control of nature and acceleration of time. the total transmutation of nature, its transformation into 'energy'. the myth of infinite progress. supplanting time. efficient exploitation. synthetic products. organic chemistry. the dream of creating.

it is in work finally secularised, in work in its pure state, numbered in hours and units of energy consumed, that man feels the implacable nature of temporal duration, is full weight and slowness.

insatiable boredom, inescapable death. that's all were left with when we get rid of magic and produce.

the secularisation of work is like an open wound in the body of modern society

for a more modern (more realistic?) account of the spiritual elements of alchemy: spiritual alchemy, mike a zuber.

and older less realistic: mary ann atwood ethan allen hitchcock