“Techniques are available to teach the ‘Three Fold Process’ of separation, purification, and cohobation. As an example, in the plant world, one can extract the alchemical sulphur, which is the essential oil. Then, one can extract from the purified plant, the spirit. This exhibits itself as alcohol. Happily, ‘store bought’ ethyl alcohol will do nicely. Finally, the residue of the plant, the ‘fecal...

“[There] is a strong body of evidence to suggest that [Sir Walter] Raleigh was associated with what might be called an esoteric society known as the ‘School of Night.’ According to this theory, which has been accepted by a number of well-known scholars, Raleigh was the patron of the school and Thomas Harriot, the great Elizabethan mathematician and astronomer, was its master. The members of this group included the Earls...

“[Alchemists] consider all things to be composed of three essentials: sulphur, mercury and salt. These are consciousness (sulphur), a vivifying life force (mercury), and the vehicle in which the latter two are housed (salt). They correspond to soul, spirit, and body, in that order. This is the same spirit and soul as found in religion. However, in alchemy, we learn how to separate these three so that they can be seen and held. ...

From Hildegard von Bingen’s Liber Divinorum Operum “The neglect of the twelfth century as one of the most important turning points for esoterics can easily be traced to the facile presumption, so common to our modern mentality, that the Middle Ages, by definition, was a single-mindedly anti-esoteric era. In fact, the twelfth century, along with the thirteenth, often referred to as the ‘High’ Middle Ages, saw a...

“One of the most important [secret societies in European history] was a German fringe masonic group called the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross. This Golden and Rosy Cross was a remarkable phenomenon. It was a kind of Golden Dawn of its day, bringing together many different elements and fusing them together in the same sort of way that the Golden Dawn did. In fact the Golden Dawn adopted the grade system used by the Golden and...

1911: (more…)

1601/1602(?):...

“Ever since the time of the Greek philosopher Plotinus (205-270 C.E.), Neoplatonism has played a vital role in the spiritual traditions of the Western world. In Neoplatonic thought, the physical universe is seen as a reflection of the Great Chain of Being which reaches from the simple, transcendent Source of the cosmos through more complex and finely articulated layers of manifestation. The universe is seen as an organic whole in...

1463: (more…)

“The alchemists’s view of the universe is that it consists of a physical level, but also of other levels – whatever you want to call them, spiritual or subtle. Homeopathy is a residue of this kind of thinking, i.e., the notion that you can make medicines out of herbs or minerals which preserve the emotional, mental, and spiritual qualities of the herbs and therefore make the medicines work not only physically, but on...