alchemy

Az 72 From Jonathan Hughes Arthurian Myth, Alchemy and the Kingship of Edward IV

George Ripley, who inspired Jung. Henry VI as the Fisher King. The pseudo Lullian writings
Edward’s character, sexual etc. deliberately created.
15th century England described as a nation addicted to prophecy.
Attitudes to heresy… 14th century mysticism, Richard Rolle, mystical speculation and heresy. Mediaeval inwardness, giving way in the 15th century to the alchemical Wasteland sort of thought. We could almost say that was revived by T S Eliot.
The whole health of the community.
Not a protestant understanding of heresy and freedom, yet not exactly orthodox Christianity. Heresy like a social nuisance, religiosity, individualistic contemplative excess.. Orthodoxy as realised, not what we understand from later.

Aq 324 Think of the enlightenment available to the young. Enlightenment as a state of consciousness. Something one can attain, experience and then no longer desire. I am not saying this is entirely wrong.
At a later age, a different form of enlightenment. Becomes interesting, the alchemical great work.
How one grows up. The religious influences upon one. The most intense religious or mystical experiences. States of mind that are valued. Self affirmation at different phases of life. I would not want to assert that age is better than youth or vice versa.
The direct route, LSD, madness, some of the insights of madness. The attempt to conceptualise. Not a claim to uniqueness.
One cannot really understand the meaning of the great work until one has lived. One has not enough to work on. Anything seems possible, realisation of an ideal.
All seems simply way of opinion, anything seems good enough.

Ae 268 Goethe, Milton, Blake, all in the same tradition. But Goethe was a child of the enlightenment, like Mozart, and did not escape from its characteristic shallowness, or childishness.
Spengler was right to speak of Faustian man. Faustian man is discontented with the Christian scheme, he finds it irksome, he is in rebellion against the God of the Jews. The tension comes out in Milton’s Satan and is explicitly developed in Blake. What is Goethe’s solution? He invents a different God, a completely benevolent father figure.
What then becomes the real drama of Faust’s life? A lot of old alchemy. Goethe himself becomes the religious prophet.
What is the depth behind all the alchemical symbolism? It can seem quite arbitrary does it have any clear esoteric meaning like the grail symbolism? I do not perceive that level not does Faust rise to the level of being a lawgiver. He is a child having a romp. Etc

Ad 31 there are certain barriers to be broken through, and breaking through them is an intense delight.
In the process a number of mythological, or what could be mythological figures, make their appearance, and there is metamorphosis one to the other.
By this I mean various female archetypes, some of which attract and some of which repel, some torment and some soothe.
This is pure alchemy and its end is a condition of pure contemplative delight and affirmation.

Zz 141 youth. The hot blooded choleric youth. His hot desires and the necessity he perceives to satisfy them directly. With age one comes to understand alchemical possibilities of transmutation.
Think of the sprits sometimes summoned up in alchemical operations.
The choleric, hot tempered ruddy faced man. The first decan of Aries, I perhaps remember may be some such example.
While from a long term biographical perspective it is necessary some of your desires be satisfied it is not true of all of them.
Memory satisfaction.

C 210 The ancient alchemists knew that it is not adequate to perform an operation once for its full spiritual effects to be felt. behaviourist psychologists know the same must meditate to strengthen myself in what I believe.

J 189 A. said he does not like gold. He prefers pewter, an extraordinarily perverse opinion to my mind, rooted as it is traditional symbolism, including alchemical Yet am I right to see it as a deficiency rather than an admirable perversity?

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