This article was written to help people further their understanding of nature, the universe and our own minds. It is about the “philosophers stone” a legendary substance tied to the tale of alchemists turning lead into gold however this article sheds some light on what this “stone” actually is and how to apply it.
There is a hidden pattern in nature, something that people a very long time ago figured out and kept secret from the rest of the world. It has been called many things throughout the ages. The reason for this was not only to keep it secret but because this pattern can be applied to many different subjects and materials, many people thought they were the ones to discover it. These people were called alchemists.
Also be warned that alchemists purposefully used words to hide what they were really talking about or often just had primitive terminology for the things they were describing. Each word being a sort of code to keep the formula safe from common folk and deviants etc. They will say things like “holy fire”, “celestial nitre”, “holy energy” etc. You have to remember that they had no scientific understandings of these forces and were just coming across them for the first time so the words they used to describe them were a bit fanciful. Though my point is that they are not imaginary forces they are just using a more primitive terminology to describe them.
The thing they discovered and the alchemists ultimate goal was known as the “philosophers stone”. This article is a breakdown of what that is and how to use it.
“The philosopher’s stone or more properly philosophers’ stone (Arabic: ḥajar al-falāsifa, Latin: lapis philosophorum), is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (chrysopoeia, from the Greek χρυσός khrusos, “gold”, and ποιεῖν poiēin, “to make”) or silver. It is also called the elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and for achieving immortality;[1] for many centuries, it was the most sought goal in alchemy. The philosopher’s stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosopher’s stone were known as the Magnum Opus (“Great Work”).[2]
As you can see they had many uses for it, according to them it had the power to “transmute” anything. Acting as an ultimate catalyst to whatever formula or substance it was applied to. Transmutation itself is just another word for transforming or changing, though it does still find it’s uses in the modern age.
Interestingly enough the word “transmutation” was only used to describe the process of making a philosophers stone or using one, before it found its other modern definitions in…
Biology
- Biological transmutation, the claim that nuclear transmutation occurs within living organisms
- Transmutation of species, the alteration of one species into another otherwise known as evolution.
Physics
- Dimensional transmutation, a physical mechanism in particle physics that transforms a pure number into a parameter with a dimension
- Nuclear transmutation, the conversion of one chemical element or isotope into another through nuclear reaction
Psychology
- Sexual transmutation or sexualseexm sexual energy into creativity and thereby facilitate spiritual awakening
Also of note is why choose that terminology over simpler modern words like “change” or “transform”? Perhaps its just sciences way of remembering its roots, chemistry as a subject did come from alchemy after all. Much like astrology and astronomy used to be the same subject, alchemy and chemistry were also linked in this way. As we progressed and leaned more towards science these fields split away from each other…or perhaps there is another reason.
Alchemy was known for a very long time as a “dark art”, especially in the dark and middle ages. That title did not mean that it was evil or nefarious in any way it meant that it was hidden, it was a hidden art. To keep it hidden alchemists implored the use of symbolism to represent their various formulas and materials. You can read these symbols for yourself to see what I mean.
It was like their own personal language much like how science uses Latin for its own personal language today. They could represent not only Elements and materials this way but entire formulas as well. As you may have expected the philosophers stone too has its own symbol.
It is a symbol that contains three major shapes.
- The outer circle
- The triangle
- The “squared circle”
As each symbol has a meaning so too does each shape within this symbol, you see the symbol is not a representation of a physical substance or thing…it is a formula. Not just any formula, this symbol is also a universal tool that can be applied to almost anything and today my friends I am going to teach you how.
To understand how to use this tool it is going to take a little reading (about 30 minuets) but at the end of this article I promise you will have learned something absolutely profound about the universe, nature, history and the mind. You see this tool has been used for a very long time by a very small group of people throughout human history. With the knowledge of its use one can master many different subjects quickly.
The overall idea of this process is you pass the starting material to be changed through the various shapes and the processes they represent one after another. Starting with the circle, then going to the triangle, then it passes through and is tempered by the 4 corners or triangles of the “squared circle”, then finally the circle becomes the square and is transformed.
To prove the process and demonstrate how it actually functions we will have to break down the various symbols and their symbolic functions. We will start with the first and outermost symbol.
The outer circle, this one like the triangle has many different forms and interpretations. It too can be “transmuted” from one subject to another. IT is chaos, the microcosm or unconscious the “prima materia” as the alchemists termed it. Classically, it’s primordial chaos, the unconscious, or the prima materia (base material). Chaos isn’t so much the opposite of order in this context as it is just a state a thing is in before it takes shape. It is the salve in the phrase salve et coagula.
“Prima materia
Alchemical emblem depicting the omnipresence of the philosophical matter. “The Stone that is Mercury, is cast upon the Earth, exalted on Mountains, resides in the Air, and is nourished in the Waters.”[1] (Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens. 1617.) The cubes represent prima materia.
In alchemy and philosophy, prima materia, materia prima or first matter (for a philosophical exposition refer to: Prime Matter), is the ubiquitous starting material required for the alchemical magnum opus and the creation of the philosopher’s stone. It is the primitive formless base of all matter similar to chaos, the quintessence or aether. Esoteric alchemists describe the prima materia using simile, and compare it to concepts like the anima mundi.
Contents
History
The concept of prima materia is sometimes attributed to Aristotle.[2] The earliest roots of the idea can be found in the philosophy of Anaxagoras, who described the nous in relation to chaos. Empedocles’ cosmogony is also relevant.[3]
When alchemy developed in Greco-Roman Egypt on the foundations of Greek philosophy, it included the concept of prima materia as a central tenet. Mary Anne Atwood uses words attributed to Arnaldus de Villa Nova to describe the role of prima materia in the fundamental theory of alchemy: “That there abides in nature a certain pure matter, which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies that it touches.”[4] Although descriptions of the prima materia have changed throughout history, the concept has remained central to alchemical thought.
Properties
Alchemical authors used similes to describe the universal nature of the prima materia. Arthur Edward Waite states that all alchemical writers concealed its “true name”. Since the prima materia has all the qualities and properties of elementary things, the names of all kinds of things were assigned to it.[5] A similar account can be found in the Theatrum Chemicum:
They have compared the “prima materia” to everything, to male and female, to the hermaphroditic monster, to heaven and earth, to body and spirit, chaos, microcosm, and the confused mass; it contains in itself all colors and potentially all metals; there is nothing more wonderful in the world, for it begets itself, conceives itself, and gives birth to itself.[6]
Comparisons have been made to Hyle, the primal fire, Proteus, Light, and Mercury.[7] Martin Ruland the Younger lists more than fifty synonyms for the prima materia in his 1612 alchemical dictionary. His text includes justifications for the names and comparisons. He repeats that, “the philosophers have so greatly admired the Creature of God which is called the Primal Matter, especially concerning its efficacy and mystery, that they have given to it many names, and almost every possible description, for they have not known how to sufficiently praise it.”[8] Waite lists an additional eighty four names.
Names assigned to the Prima Materia in Ruland’s 1612 alchemical dictionary, Lexicon alchemiae sive dictionarium alchemistarum.[9]
Microcosmos
The Philosophical Stone
The Eagle Stone
Water of Life
Venom
Poison
Chamber
Spirit
Medicine
Heaven
Clouds
Nebula or Fog
Dew
Shade
Moon
Stella Signata and Lucifer
Permanent Water
Fiery and Burning Water
Salt of Nitre and Saltpetre
Lye
Bride, Spouse, Mother, Eve
Pure and Uncontaminated Virgin
Milk of Virgin, or the Fig
Boiling Milk
Honey
A Spiritual Blood
Bath
A Syrup
Vinegar
Lead
Tin
Sulphur of Nature
Spittle of the Moon
Ore
The Serpent
The Dragon
Marble, Crystal, Glass
Scottish Gem
Urine
Magnesia
Magnet
White Ethesia
White Moisture
White Smoke
Dung
Metallic Entity
Mercury
The Soul and Heaven of the Elements
The Matter of all Forms
Tartar of the Philosophers
Dissolved Refuse
The Rainbow
Indian Gold
Heart of the Sun
Chaos
Venus
Healer
Angel of violet light”
As you can see this circle has as many forms and interpretations. Symbolically it also represents a cycle, the top can be seen as the positive, good, light, etc and the bottom the negative, bad, darkness. The Ouroboros (below) has two opposite ends the head and the tail, the two polarities spin around in a cycle. In other words it can represent time.
Some of you may be familiar with this depiction of the snake eating its own tail. This is what as know as the Ouroboros, it is a symbol used mainly by alchemists to represent a cycle (time) and duality. It has two parts the head and the tail which are opposites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
“The ouroboros or uroboros (/ˌjʊərəˈbɒrəs/[2]) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon[3] eating its own tail. The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy. The term derives from Ancient Greek οὐροβόρος,[4] from οὐρo oura ‘tail’ plus -βορός -boros ‘-eating’.[5][6] The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth; the snake’s skin-sloughing symbolizes the transmigration of souls. The snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol in some religions: the tail is a phallic symbol and the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol.[7]
Some snakes, such as rat snakes, have been known to consume themselves. One captive snake attempted to consume itself twice, dying in the second attempt. Another wild rat snake was found having swallowed about two-thirds of its body.”
So in this shape we see a cycle or time often demonstrated through rotating duality, it however is not the only circle in the philosophers stone symbol, there is a second circle inside the square at the center. They represent the same thing, the outer circle is the basic material unformed and raw, the circle inside the square also represents that. Inside the square it means that the final product or transmuted item/concept still contains that original material inside of it. Through this process we shape the circle into the square by combining it with the triangle (symbolically) but the square still contains the circle or base material within it.
Now lets go over the triangle, probably the most interesting of the shapes. In the formula the triangle represents the process of transmutation. Where the squared circle represents the result of transmutation the triangle the process of “transmuting”. If we were cooking something the triangle would represent the fire we are using to cook the food or if it were a chemical formula it would be the catalyst. Interestingly enough fire is represented by a triangle in the alchemical table of symbols we looked at earlier.
For those of you familiar with the “occult” which literally means hidden or other various religions you will recognize 3 being a sacred number that comes up a lot. Any shape has to have at the very least 3 sides (except the circle). I don’t want to get into numerology in this but to summarize it 10 is what some ancient regions and philosophies consider gods number for instance the infamous 33 degree of freemasonry is 3 tens and 3 ones, 33. Which divided by 10 is 3.3 etc.
They view it as a sort of perfect number because it is completely balanced. 3 therefore is know as the number of balance, and it is balance not only physically but by definition. 3’s physical representation is a triangle, this triangle and the number 3 can be made to represent many, many different things. Allow me to demonstrate.
So to get from our first shape (the outer circle) to the next shape in the process (the triangle) we have to find the three basic parts of what we are trying to transform. Alchemists classically call these three parts “salt, sulfur and mercury”. According to them everything can be broken down into 3 basic parts. The way you find these 3 parts is by balancing out duality.
Allow me to explain, see the outer circle can represent duality which is composed of two opposing sides that form a sort of wheel….but in every duality there is a mid point that can be called neither “left” or “right” or one or the other. It is the point where one side transform into the other because in duality both opposing sides are still connected. They are the opposing sides of the same thing, opposing but still relative and belonging to that thing. So what you do is figure out the outer circle or duality and its various representations and then find the middle point of the duality.
So lets go through and see what can fall into this sort of pattern, we will see if we can find any objective triangles.
I will be representing these symbolically as triangles because it is important that you see both the text and the symbolic shape so you can familiarize yourself with symbology and how this works. I am sorry if it becomes a little monotonous but it is important that you process both the symbol and the words together. We are going to start out with some kind of loose concepts and then work into literal examples to thoroughly demonstrate this.
To the ancients when they used the term “soul” what they usually meant was how your body feels, your mood etc. So in this triangle you would have you mind (your thoughts), soul (how you feel emotionally and energetically) this also can mean the electrical energy that animates your body and movements, and your body (your physical self). How you feel or your “soul” would be the combination of mind and body in a sense.
What materials does your body need to take in for fuel to stay alive?
- Soul (the electricity inside you that animates you in a sense) needs water so that the electro/chemical reactions of your nervous system can function and electricity can conduct better inside of you.
- Body needs food so it may build itself using the material consumed.
- Mind (your brain) needs blood to flow through it which needs air to function, stop breathing for 20 minuets and you usually go “brain dead” etc.
These are not the only uses of these resources in the body, just examples.
You must maintain a proper balance of all 3 to stay healthy and they form a sort of balance. This balance forms a sort of engine inside of you in a sense. Ill keep going.
The 3 different forms of complex life. Fungus being an in between for plants and animals (philosophically) as fungus grows like a plant but can move and even solve mazes like an animal.
Watch here:
There are also 3 kingdoms of simplistic life called Protista, Eubacteria and Archaebacteria but not enough information is know about them yet to fully categorize the life that composes these kingdoms.
It appears that some of these kingdoms are up for debate or used for mere convenience. I found this:
“The remaining three Kingdoms all consist entirely of microorganisms and because we still know very little about these little critters, the organisms that are clumped together into one Kingdom may be almost entirely evolutionary unrelated.
The Kingdom Protista includes the remaining eukaryotic organisms that do not fall into Fungi, Plantae or Animalia; while Bacteria and Archaea include all the organisms with prokaryotic cells. The two latter Kingdoms are incredibly diverse, both in terms of the estimated number of species and the level of metabolic differences within each Kingdom.”
that was a quote from here:
Lets continue…
We can even apply this symbol to motion and how a combustion engine operates and thus can be used to generate electricity. Like the symbol for the philosophers stone it composes 3 basic parts (the outer shell, the triangular gear and the inner gear) It contains both a triangle and a three step process the end result of which is even for transformation of fuel into energy or movement or in other words squaring a circle. Changine a circle (matter) into a square (energy).
We are going to further elaborate the above trinity. In nature life and death sort of moves in a sort of circle, not literally of course but sort of symbolically. Just like in the famous movie The Lion King. It can be summed up as Life, Death, Transformation. Something lives, consumes food and materials from other dead or un-living things, then it ages and dies breaking down into materials and food for other living things. It could also be represented as creation, maintenance, destruction.
Through this process of decomposition new life arises. Things like bugs, bacteria and fungus repurpose the dead to keep fueling life in general then things eat those animals and life goes on etc. The dead become repurposed and scattered into new forms of life, however gruesome this may be it is a sort of transformation of life. With death new life is made.
The following picture is whats known as ohm’s law triangle. Ohm’s Law is a mathematical formula used by electrical engineers and electricians alike for electrical calculations and work. Using this pattern you have a visual example of how the math works when calculating voltage, resistance and current.
You can read more about it in the following links.
A triangle is also used to explain the chemistry of fire.
In fact this triangle is used in many equations and works for all of them flawlessly.
We will elaborate on this example too.
Here is a more proper visual example of micro, “normal”, macro in the form of a four dimensional shape…yes I know that sounds ridiculous but here we are.
This shape encompasses micro, macro, and “normal” size. Ill explain a little so you can better understand.
Protons and neutrons are made up of what scientists call “quarks”. Here is a wiki entry about them.
“A quark (/kwɔːrk/ KWORK or /kwɑːrk/ KWARK) is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.[1] All commonly observable matter is composed of up quarks, down quarks and electrons. (3)
A proton is composed of two up quarks, one down quark, and the gluons that mediate the forces “binding” them together. The color assignment of individual quarks is arbitrary, but all three colors must be present; red, blue and green are used as an analogy to the primary colors that together produce a white color.”
Noticing the pattern? We can go even further still. Particle families or generations also come in threes.
Read about them here:
“In particle physics, a generation or family is a division of the elementary particles. Between generations, particles differ by their flavour quantum number and mass, but their electric and strong interactions are identical.
There are three generations according to the Standard Model of particle physics. Each generation contains two types of leptons and two types of quarks. The two leptons may be classified into one with electric charge −1 (electron-like) and neutral (neutrino); the two quarks may be classified into one with charge −1⁄3 (down-type) and one with charge +2⁄3 (up-type). The basic features of quark-lepton generation or families, such as their masses and mixings etc., can be described by some of the proposed family symmetries.”
Lets take a step back from science and try a physiological example to see if this pattern of balance still holds up in the realm of thought.
Allow me to elaborate. In order to solve many problems you need a combination of power, wisdom and courage. If you lack one there will be no balance and you will run into problems.
- With just wisdom and power you know what to do and you have the power to do it but you don’t have the courage to actually act and accomplish it.
- With just wisdom and courage you know what to do and you have the will to do it but you don’t have the power to accomplish it.
- With just power and courage you have the ability and will to do it but you don’t know what to do or how to accomplish it.
Seems to hold up pretty well, Even in the realm of thought things abide by these patterns.
Here’s a fun thing you can try on your own, try adding a fourth thing to these trinities and see if it works out and if it does trying adding two more things. I will visibly demonstrate why…
As you can see all of these shapes can fit into a triangle or vice versa…or thrice versa? Substitute the hexagon for the circle and its all three shapes of the philosophers stone. These are the two dimensional of 2D representations of what Pythagoras (a famous mathematician and philosopher) called the Platonic solids…
Their two dimensional counterparts. Every shape has a 2D version a 3D version and if you copy the 4D shape I showed you above then they all can be made to have a 4D representation as well (Square<Cube<Tesseract). Forming a trinity, I would include “1D” but that’s a theoretical dimension not a physical one so I cant, 1D is space/time. According to mathematics there are many other theoretical dimensions but this trinity just covers the spatial dimensions.
To further elaborate on how rudimentary shapes can be sort of “transcendent” and exist in the realm of thought and matter I have included the following pictures (though a bit of a mess) it is the visual tool Nikola Tesla used to help him with multiplication. It it is a symbolic representation of multiplication. He used it by following certain patterns and shapes, it will explain how to use it in the picture but it is not relative to the philosophers stone outside of being an example of how symbolic representation of patterns function.
Notice all of those shapes illustrated in 2, 3 and 4 are the same ones that can all be made from a triangle or vice versa like in the GIF? Tesla is using symbology. Everything follows a sort of pattern.
The middle symbol or the “squared circle” as it has been termed. In Alchemy this symbol represents transmutation (changing one thing into another) or transformation, changing a “circle” into a “square”. It symbolizes the outcome of the process. Now this symbol is actually rather well known by academics as it is a famous mathematical and philosophical problem introduced by Greek mathematicians in ancient times.
The question they proposed was “How does one construct a square with the area of a circle by using only a finite number of steps with a compass and straightedge”.
How can one transform (transmute) a circle into a square?
Well since those times many people have tried their hand at this venture and with great success.
A few eager and talented mathematicians concluded that the shapes could be cut up into various pieces to transform into one another. Here are a few demonstrations.
They failed at accomplishing this with just a compass and straight edge (though many actually tried) but they did prove that you could accomplish the task with the right tools. However this is not the symbol of the squared circle used in alchemy. In the symbol the circle is contained by the square, in the examples from above the circles edges go beyond the square, the shapes have to be of equal area for the transformation to work.
However as we saw earlier even in fields such as physics and biology this “transmutation” can be accomplished. Symbolically and physically the circle can be squared.
One other part of the squared circle worth mentioning are the 4 corners or triangles of the square. In alchemy the 4 “elements” are represented by 4 triangles. They are Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Though they are not to be taken at just face value, they represent more than just those elements of nature and like the other parts of the symbol can be interpreted in various ways. Here is a quick explanation of them from…
As you just read these “elements” as they call them are not so much physical elements such as on sciences periodic table of elements but rather generalizations for certain elements of nature. Science has terminology for these forces that you can read about here:
Not only the forces but you could also interpret them as the 4 fundamental states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas and plasma which if you think about it they match exactly the 4 “elements” in alchemy. Earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gas) and fire (plasma).
So the squared circle actually has several different parts to it that all have symbolic meanings and can be interpreted as different things depending on what the they are being used for. They “transmute” to various subjects. At there basic objective function though they are processes to pass the substance to be changed through such as burning something or abstracting things etc. They represent many different things but on a tangible scientific level they represent different processes in chemistry. When an alchemist said things like let the water dissolve it or fire congest it they were talking about laboratory procedures done with lab equipment.
Now that we have gone over and understand all the various parts of the symbol lets put it all together and make a “philosophers stone”.
As you just read the above symbol is and can be interpretive top to bottom. Every shape within it can function this way and this is how and why this symbol can be applied and used for so many different subjects. Here is a more classical symbol of it just for further clarification.
So to make use of this symbol, this universal tool all we have to do is find the corresponding parts of the symbols used in the stone. You see this symbol isn't one single item or ingredient, it is a pattern that represents a method for transformation, a catalyst for generation or if you reverse it degeneration. The squared circle is a square that contains the circle because the circle has been added to to make the square.
This symbol can be interpreted many different ways and still work. The name itself describes what it is, it is a material or foundation to build philosophy from. Just as when building structures we use stone for the foundations one can use this symbol as a foundation for many things. That is what the name means a stone to build with philosophically. Just like stone you can shape this symbol into all sorts of configurations to build upon.
We will start off with the outer circle. Cycles, duality, processes, the base material to be transmuted. Find the duality of whatever subject you are trying to apply the symbol to and once you know the “high” and “low” parts of it you establish a middle-ground between them. So if the duality was black and white the middle ground would be gray.
Once you have gotten that far you have succeeded in “sculpting” the circle or base material into a “triangle”. The circle has been molded into a triangle, now you must achieve balance on all three sides of the triangle. Once you balance the sides out you will be in the process of perfecting whatever it is you are trying to use the philosophers stone on. You just keep repeating the process to further sculpt or refine the base material, keep spinning the triangle around in a sense.
Another method to find the triangle within your subject is to break it down to its three basic parts, either physical parts or objective parts. Once you have those three parts just keep improving each one of them. A chemical example of this would be to break something down to its 3 chemical parts and keep refining, distilling and purifying them so that you have an overall higher quality base to work with. The outer circle in this example would be the time and process used to do this purifying, viewed as bringing the triangle through a cycle or spinning it.
This is where the 4 “elements” come in. Combine it in some way with the 4 “elements” or one of their many manifestations or representations. On a physical level this would be the actual method used to purify these base materials or sides of the triangle. Such as using “water” or a liquid to separate impurities from a substance or burning out impurities in a material with fire, even crushing a martial into a powder.
Then after enough of this process has passed you will have transmuted the base material or circle into a “square”. As a proof of concept we are going to use multiple examples of how this can be done. To start out we will use an example straight from alchemy (and chemistry), it is the process in which you improve the potency of drugs and substances. In alchemy this leads to the creation of what they call the “Vegetable stone” which is a super concentrated “stone” of medicine.
In this method it breaks down a plant into three parts (triangle), purifies each part with a different chemical processes (circle) and then recombines them into a superior product (square). The four elements are also present within it (air, water, fire, earth). Each process of purification uses one or multiple elements which would be adding the triangles to the circle to transform it into a square. For instance distillation involves heating something up (fire), the substance rising through the air and cooling (air), condensation on of the rising vapor back into liquid at the top of the vessel (water) and finally the plant matter and salt is left behind (earth).
Each one of those processes can be represented by a cycle and in nature they are all part of cycles, thus the circle represents them. Here are some badly drawn examples by me and accompanying explanations of these methods laid out in the above vegetable stone recipe.
The water cycle, when molecules of water vapor return to liquid or solid form, they create cloud droplets that can fall back to Earth as rain or snow a process called condensation. Most precipitation lands in the oceans. Precipitation that falls onto land flows into rivers, streams, and lakes. Some of it seeps into the soil where it is held underground as groundwater.
When warmed by the sun, water on the surface of oceans and freshwater bodies evaporates, forming a vapor. Water vapor rises into the atmosphere, where it condenses, forming clouds. It then falls back to the ground as precipitation. Moisture can also enter the atmosphere directly from ice or snow. In a process called sublimation, solid water, such as ice or snow, can transform directly into water vapor without first becoming a liquid.
Water and ethanol form something called an azeotrope, which is a mixture of two liquids that has a boiling point lower than either of the two liquids in their pure state. Distillation is the act of boiling a solution of liquids (and solids) in order to purify the solution via phase separation. The liquids boil off into a vapor, you condense them in a separate vessel, and the solids get left behind. In non-azeotropic mixtures, you can carefully control the temperature to selectively boil off only the molecule with the lowest boiling point first, collect that, and then raise the temperature to boil off the next lowest boiling point molecule, etc.
An azeotropic mixture, since it has a boiling point lower than either of the two pure liquids, will always yield a vapor of the two (or more) liquids combined. Distillation can never fully purify such a mixture, since the best it can ever yield is some percentage of the starting concentrations of the components of the mixture. An example might help. Say you make some moonshine and it consists of 5% ethanol and 95% water (considering liquids only). A pretty weak alcohol. You want something with more kick, so you distill this mixture to try and separate the two molecules. The vapor that will come off first will be a different percentage of each component than what was in the starting mixture. The exact composition depends on the phase diagram for the mixture. In our example, the mixture might be something like 50% ethanol and 50% water. Now you’ve got something with bite. You keep distilling your products until you reach the point where your results can no longer be concentrated any further. For water and ethanol, this is around 97% ethanol. It will just take you about 200 distillations to get there, since you get diminishing returns at such high concentrations in this example.
The main function of fermentation is to convert NADH back into the coenzyme NAD+ so that it can be used again for glycolysis. During fermentation, an organic electron acceptor (such as pyruvate or acetaldehyde) reacts with NADH to form NAD+, generating products such as carbon dioxide and ethanol (ethanol fermentation) or lactate (lactic acid fermentation) in the process.
Leaching is the process of a solute becoming detached or extracted from its carrier substance by way of a solvent.
Leaching is a naturally occurring process which scientists have adapted for a variety of applications with a variety of methods. Specific extraction methods depend on the soluble characteristics relative to the sorbent material such as concentration, distribution, nature, and size. Leaching can occur naturally seen from plant substances (inorganic and organic), solute leaching in soil, and in the decomposition of organic materials. Leaching can also be applied affectedly to enhance water quality and contaminant removal, as well as for disposal of hazardous waste products such as fly ash, or rare earth elements (REEs). Understanding leaching characteristics is important in preventing or encouraging the leaching process and preparing for it in the case where it is inevitable.
In an ideal leaching equilibrium stage, all the solute is dissolved by the solvent, leaving the carrier of the solute unchanged. The process of leaching however is not always ideal, and can be quite complex to understand and replicate, and often different methodologies will produce different results.
As you can see the symbols match up tho this overall process in creating this “vegetable stone” and as the author even states this is a lesser version of the “great work” or magnum opus as they call it. Meaning the methodology is the same it just uses different materials and processes. This is also the process to make rudimentary chemical medicines. Increasing chemical potency through various purification processes.
This method can be applied to more than just nature and life. To prove this to you we will use an image from earlier. A rotary engine, the wankel rotary engine to be specific which is a type of philosopher stone.
Allow me to explain, let us find the three symbols within this device.
- The circle is the outer shell of the engine, it is a round chamber that cycles through a process of injecting fuel and expelling exhaust and movement. It takes in matter and expels energy, transforming one into another.
- The triangle is the triangular gear inside of the circular chamber or circle, when the cycle of fuel injection is in perfect balance with the ignition/compression chamber and the exhaust chamber (the three sides of the triangle) it produces motion and makes the triangle spin.
- The 4 “points” of the square, classically represented as the 4 elements used in alchemy. Air, fire, water and earth. The earth is the fuel and outer shell of the engine (metal and oil), the water inlets around the outer shell contain the water, the fire is the ignition spark and the air is the exhaust being expelled. This is a physical example of the stone thus the 4 elements are represented by their physical forms.
- The squared circle is the overall process of the engine itself. On a fundamental level the combustion engine transforms physical matter into energy. It “transmutes” matter into energy, it makes a circle into a square, it transmutes a physical substance (fuel) into a concept (movement) through the process of balancing out a duality with a triangle and then passing it through the four “elements”.
It is the exact process the philosophers stone symbol represents, they are even the same shapes. The triangular gear contains another shape inside of it which is also a circle and that inner chamber within the triangle generates the power through motion. It is a perfect example of using the philosophers stone.
Not only that but this machine contains the 4 “points” of the square, classically represented as the 4 elements used in alchemy. Air, fire, water and earth. The earth is the fuel and outer shell of the engine (metal and oil), the water inlets around the outer shell contain the water, the fire is the ignition spark and the air is the air being taken in and exhaust being expelled. It is a perfect example of using the philosophers stone.
Now here is the strange part, this symbol for the stone…came hundreds if not thousands of years before we invented the combustion engine. Yet it is a almost perfect blue print for one symbolically and functionally. I don’t know about you but its made me have to reconsider humanities past, if this was hidden from us what else could have been?
Not only does this symbol work as a generator physically it works multiple ways. So what does that mean? Well it should be obvious that on the basic level this symbol is the pattern for generation or generating. It can generate electricity, motion and many other things. I am not a master of its uses I am only sharing what I know but I would wager a fair amount of money on it having an incredible amount of applications.
One other I know of is the human eye and how it functions. On a very basic level the eye is a kind of philosophers stone, it is a circle within a circle withing a circle that transforms light into information inside our brains. Anyone familiar with how the human eye functions will know this basic information on its function, for those who don’t here is a little reading on the subject.
“Your retina has two different types of cells that detect and respond to light — rods and cones. These cells that are sensitive to light are called photoreceptors. Rods are activated when you’re in low or dim light. Cones are stimulated in brighter environments. Most of us have about 6 million cones, and 110 million rods.”
The two types of cells form a duality, one takes in the bright light and the other the dark light.
“Cones contain photo pigments, or color-detecting molecules. Humans typically have three types of photo pigments — red, green and blue. Each type of cone is sensitive to different wavelengths of visible light.”
From that duality a trinity or triangle arises in the form of the 3 basic colors of visible light.
“When light hits an object, such as a lemon, the object absorbs some of that light and reflects the rest of it. That reflected light enters the human eye first through the cornea, the outermost part of the eye. The cornea bends light toward the pupil, which controls the amount of light that hits the lens. The lens then focuses the light on the retina, the layer of nerve cells in the back of the eye.”
The cornea, pupil, lens and retina are the 4 “elements” in this example. When you view the light as the material to be transformed these 4 “elements” mold and temper it just as a chemical process would do to a material in a lab.
All the parts for the stones symbol are present, allow me to symbolically demonstrate.
So what is the end goal of this “stone” and what does it transform? It turns light into thoughts or data via the eye which is then analyzed by the brain. Lets delve a little deeper into this by recognizing the two kinds of color and their ideal “canvases”. As we went over earlier the primary colors of light (red, green and blue) and the primary colors of painting (red, yellow, blue) are slightly different. One is an energy (light) and the other is material (paint or colored objects).
They are opposites in this way, so we can elaborate even further on it. Light and its many colors ideal “canvas” or background is darkness or black. If you want to see the colors of light it needs to be very dark the same way a mechanical projector needs it to be dark. Paint on the other hand needs a white canvas to show properly all of its colors.
Light (energy) needs black, paint (material) needs white. Interestingly enough white light is a combination of all the colors in the light spectrum, while black in painting (matter) is a combination of all colors in the physical color spectrum. If you mix up all the colors in paint eventually it all turns black. They are opposites in every regard and their behavior follows suit but they are opposites in the same subject (color).
Lets discuss a similarity between eyes and celestial bodies, the eye is meant and was formed to take in the light from the sun. In this way eyes are sort of the opposite of the sun as they are the receiving end of the light or the female part of the equation, the sun is bright white light and the pupils are pure black. If you know anything about space and stars you are familiar with black holes, a black hole is a collapsed star and in a way is the opposite of a star. You see stars radiate energy, they push out energy but black holes suck everything in (including light).
Black holes also turn matter into energy the same way the eye transforms light into thoughts etc.
Radiation is the opposite of gravity in this regard, radiation or radiating pushes out and gravity pulls in but I digress…
Another easily recognizable “philosophers stone” are seeds and plants, allow me to elaborate. Here’s a little illustration to brush up on the subject just in case.
- The outer circle is time just like all the others in a sense but in this example its represented by the day and night cycle specifically. The day brings warmth which activates the seeds germination, gives it energy to move so to speak.
- The triangle is a balance air or carbon monoxide, water and soil or nutrients. A healthy balance of these will determine how the plant grows and develops.
- The four corners of the square or four “elements” are already present. The warmth of the sun is fire, water is water, soil is earth and the the air is obviously air. The seed has to be tempered by these four elements so that it may change or generate.
- The “squared circle” is the seed growing into a plant or transforming into one. It becomes more than it was through this process and achieves generation or growth and development.
Here is some literature about seed germination and how it works so that you may confirm this yourself.
In fact you can use this symbol to transform more aspects of the plant kingdom such as improving fertilizer quality and soil. For fertilizer you can use the nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) triangle or NPK known as the NPK rating.
You can read more about the NPK triangle and what those letters mean here:
You can use the soil water absorption triangle to transform the plants soil as well.
After figuring out this for myself I started to see the symbol everywhere. I even found it in a few places that until understanding this pattern I had dismissed as superstitious or run of the mill strange human behavior. Specifically native American ritual dances. You probably didn’t think you were going to learn that native Americans understood the philosophers stone and how to use it today but here we are and here we go.
Now for those of you unfamiliar with Native American culture I will have to explain their views a little. Now to the indigenous peoples of America dancing was sacred and used for ceremony not for performance art like in European countries. To establish this I have included some pages from…
They danced for purposes not for entertainment, when they danced it was with an intention or desired outcome. A formula of sorts, also they were not the only culture to do this in fact many cultures through history have considered dancing sacred and done it for purpose.
The dances that peaked my interest however were the ones done for the purpose of “regenerating” the earth. Some tribes every so often would perform dances so that the seasons would continue to change such as the dances done in winter to wake the earth back up and end winter or the rain dance.
Now there are many different dances among the many different tribes of natives Americans so not every single one of them will adhere to this pattern exactly but the majority of them do and indeed originated from it. As the book went over there are requirements for each dance and ceremony but the three basic ones are.
- The right dance
- The right costume or regalia
- The right songs
When they had all three pieces in the right balance they would then begin the ceremony. These ceremony's usually have dancers all dancing around a fire in a circle which to them represented a cycle (remember the symbol for fire from the table of alchemical symbols? It was a triangle). Some of these dances were done during certain times of the year and done with the intention of keeping natures great cycles going so the shape came to be know as a symbol for those cycles. with the cycle spinning and with the right balance of these three pieces of the ceremony mentioned above they would try to transform or regenerate the world around them in this context.
Another example is the famous rain dance of the native Americans which could be viewed as such an operation or engine. A circle of dancers with the right balance of costume, music and dance moves; all dancing with the intention of turning dry spells into rain. Squaring the circle or transmuting the weather. I don’t know if such “engines” actually produced results but this view of the rituals is pretty profound when everything else is taken into consideration.
How is it they have this same symbol in operation among their culture? They were isolated from the alchemists who came up with it in ancient Greece and Egypt so it is unlikely they picked it up from them. Perhaps it is such a universal system and the natives were very observant of nature that they too figured out the philosophers stone, unaided. It is also possible given this revelation of sorts that all rituals originated from this process.
The pagans of Europe also had their fair share of rituals and ritual dancing was wide spread in the old world, the classical depiction of a witch is also very close to an alchemist. They brew things in pots and make potions (chemistry) and they use rituals and geometric shapes to make curses and such. Interestingly enough native American culture also had witches. To them a witch is somebody who uses ceremony for personal gain, as opposed for using it for the good of all.
Lets take a break from our past and look for the philosophers stone here in modern day. A entertaining place I found this symbol was in the three main characters of a very popular movie franchise…the Matrix. Neo (the one) Trinity and Morpheus. One of the outer circles interpretations and meanings that we went over earlier was the Prima Materia or prime matter.
This is prime matter represents the primal substance that makes up everything which is why you can use the symbol for many different things. So in this context the circle represent “the one” or the all, the prime substance that is part of all of us, everything is made up of matter. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie you can familiarize yourself with the plot here:
In this movie series Morpheus is trying to change the world into something better using Neo (the one). He is trying to make a square using the circle or from the circle, he is trying to “transmute” the world. To do this he uses Trinity (Neo’s love interest) to keep Neo balanced and push him further as he learns to master his gifts. Neo does not start out with the power to change the world he has to learn how to use it, he has to be sculpted.
So right there we have the 3 parts of the philosophers stone, the functionality of it demonstrated and symbolically represented. Morpheus name literally means to morph or transform…or transmute. Trinities name should be obvious in meaning (triangle) and Neo the circle or “the one”. The circle, the triangle and the transmutation.
Another place you can see its attempted use is in this type of prison named the Panopticon.
A rotunda surrounding an inspection tower, Bentham’s Panopticon prison was designed to ensure that inmates never knew when they were being watched (Credit: Public Domain)
Here it is being used for the “great seal” of the united states.
and here is the updated version that was actually used.
I even came across some masonic drawings with it included.
The Final place I found it was one very close to home and the place I think the idea for the “stone” came from…the human body.
Allow me to explain, lets picture a child as the inner circle and the fully matured (developed) adult as the square. How do we change a child into an adult? Lets not think of them as opposites in this regard but the child as a “un-sculpted” adult. So to begin we we will begin with the outer circle, a cycle.
So to begin we we will begin with the outer circle, a cycle of in-taking materials and expelling the unneeded parts of them. Intake and expelling are the opposite ends of this duality.
We intake food, water and air and expunge feces, urine and carbon dioxide in a cycle. Now the triangle, in order for us to begin developing or “transmuting” a child into an adult they have to have a good balance of 3 basic things to grow or to “generate” more of themself. They need to have a healthy balance of food, water and air. The cycle spins the triangle and the process is repeated over and over as they eat day to day and slowly they begin to grow and further develop into an adult.
If you are familiar with alchemy already you know the 4 “elements” are present inside our bodies. The final piece being the squared circle, the circle (child) is inside the square (adult) meaning the child is still part of the adult but the adult is more or bigger than the circle. In this light our bodies are “philosophers stones” and function like rotary engines and eyeballs. All of those things transform things, on a very basic level the human body transforms all it interacts with.
So lets sum up how to actually induce transformation and use the stone in theory.
- The outer circle we have to go through or induce a cycle and/or establish a duality, this could be going through the steps, procedures, motions, time but on a very basic level what you want to do is create movement (theoretically or physically) like making a wheel spin. For examples a day is a cycle, the water cycle of condensation and evaporation is a cycle. Reading something you are writing over and over again to make improvements could be viewed as a cycle. Or eating and pooping could be one, perhaps you have an exercise regime that you do daily in a certain order, that’s a cycle.
- The triangle you want to break down whatever you are applying the stone to into 3 basic parts or its simplest parts. What we are doing is separating something into 3 parts, improving each part, then recombining them into something better. For instance if you had a crappy car and you just replaced the tires with really nice ones you would just have a crappy car with nice tires. However if you have a crappy car and replace say the tires, engine and transmission with really nice ones you essentially have a much nicer car now.
- The squared circle is the end result and is achieved by combining the outer circle and the triangle. Essentially using the cycle of the circle to spin the triangle, think of the cycle as time and over time by improving the 3 parts within the triangle you start to generate or improve. For an example if you have 3 exercises you do every day over time they will make you stronger overall because combined they are adding the benefits together. As opposed to just doing one exercise a day like push ups, at the end of that cycle you will just be better at pushups and, still an improvement but not as lasting or great a benefit as combining all the other exercises together to…generate your body or add to it.
So using this process of improvement or transformation you can “turn lead into gold” meaning that you have improved the overall quality of the material you are using on a fundamental level. As opposed to just trying to match one of golds properties with lead such as trying to polish lead to look as shiny as gold. In the end you just have shiny lead that does not have the other qualities gold does.
Lets go back to a question that was asked earlier.
“How does one construct a square with the area of a circle by using only a finite number of steps with a compass and straightedge?”
One way to do this is to do it symbolically, draw a triangle around your squared circle with the straight edge then draw a circle around that with the compass. You have symbolically drawn the process out for how to square a circle or transform a circle into a square.
Now that we have gone over how the stone functions lets further flesh out how symbolism can operate when it comes to problem solving. Since everything adheres to these patterns we should be able to solve a variety of objectively similar problems using the same method and symbology right? For the following problems we will use a single method or solution which I will draw out as a symbol after and solve objectively. This is merely to further demonstrate that these patterns can “transmute” to various situations.
These are not direct examples of using the philosophers stone, they are merely loose concepts to demonstrate that problems can be symbolically solved using set patterns and that these patterns can be applied to physical and mental problems. It is a demonstration of the concept the philosophers stone is based on.
Picture the following…
- A painting of a crowd of people, you try to appreciate this painting from 200 feet away but you cant make out the details. You move closer to the painting and as you do the details come into focus and you can appreciate its beauty more because you can see more of it. Get to close though and you cant see all of it or it becomes blurry, it stretches outside your field of view and you can no longer see the entire painting.
- Listening to music, you try listen to it but the volume is very low. You cant make out all of the instruments playing or in some cases cant hear them at all. So you begin to turn the volume up, as you do you can make out more of the song and hear more of it. Thus you can appreciate it more because you can hear more of it. Make it to loud though and it will just turn into noise.
- Tuning the radio, you try to listen to your favorite station but its coming in fuzzy. So you take the dial tuning nob and start tuning it into the right position so that the station comes in more clearly. The closer you get to the right frequency the more clearly it comes in. It has to be just right though because if you go to far on either side it will come in fuzzy.
- Reading a book, you try reading a book but it uses a lot of words you don’t understand or know. You really want to read it though so you brush up on your vocabulary and learn new words. This allows you to understand the book more clearly because you can more clearly understand the story. However if you become incredibly well read then the books with more simplistic story’s or word structures will become boring or stupid to you and you wont want to read them, like reading a children’s book as an adult is less enjoyable then when you are a child.
- A video game on PC, you have a bad computer so the graphics on your game are terrible and you have a hard time enjoying the games you play. So you buy a new video card and turn the graphics all the way up. This allows you to turn on features that you could not before so you are able to enjoy the game more. However if you just focus on how the game looks and keep trying to improve it then you wont actually enjoy the game as much because you will always view it as flawed and it becomes work thus diminishing the actual enjoyment you get from it.
- A language, first the language only has a few words so communication is pretty basic and in-detailed. So they decided to add new words for more specific things. Now the language is able to better communicate what it needs to because its capable of giving more detailed descriptions etc. However if the person you are talking to does not understand all those words then you wont communicate well at all. Like explaining something to a child with elaborate or scientific wording, sometimes it is better to explain things in a simplistic way so that the listener can get a better grasp on what is trying to be communicated to them, you have to find the right balance for the most efficient communication.
All of those problems can be solved in the same way. You simply find the counter point to the solution in another problem then follow the same method, this method is balance. Its counterpoints in each example are distance for the painting, volume for music, tuning for the radio, a proper vocabulary level for the book, a video card for the game and a mutual understanding of words for the language being spoken between two people.
All the same objective problems, all the same objective solutions. Like a pattern but this particular pattern I am using is called balance. Another way to view this is all of those problems had a duality. The paintings was to far/to close, music’s was to loud/to quiet, tuning the radio was to left/to right, reading was you knew to many/to few words, language was limited/extensive detailed or descriptive words. Video game is hard to define but basically its a trade off of not enjoying the game because of a bad computer to not enjoying the game because of a really good computer, you are enjoying maintaining the hardware and improving the computer more than using it for its purpose which is playing the game or having fun so to speak.
Now we are going to look at all of those completely objectively. So all those opposites or “duality” form the circle, now using symbolism we need to balance them out by forming a triangle in or out of those circles. Find a middle point in that duality/circle. Once you do this the two opposite ends of the circle transform into a third thing. Black and white become grey, forward and backward become stationary, between red and blue there’s green, etc. In this way you transform the circle into a triangle. It is the symbolic first step in the process of the stone.
We had a duality (circle), we balanced it out by finding the middle point (triangle) and that duality transformed by combining into a third thing. The next step would be to pass the triangle through the “4 elements” but in conceptual examples like the ones I laid out that is kind of a hard process to define (if its even applicable). However in theory that would yield the “squared circle” or transformation/generation. The “squared circle” is a circle contained by a square to represent that the finished product still contains the circle/duality/original material.
Just to hammer out the understanding of it lets see what this combination means to each of the problems.
- The painting once combining to far and to close into just right transforms from a blurry image into defined art.
- Listening to music transforms from noise into music.
- the radio once balanced turns static into clear audio.
- Enjoying the right book with the right level of vocabulary or at the right age lets you appreciate something that otherwise you couldn’t or would dismiss.
- The video game when you balance out the enjoyment with how it looks/performs can transform from a frustrating experience to a pleasureful one.
- A language when understood and spoken to on the same relative level can better transform from communication to understanding. Such as how many people better understand the speakers of their native language.
These are all objective examples keep in mind so a little bit of interpretation is necessary. We did use the same method to solve all of them which was balance or the triangle. We took several dualities and balanced them out to transform them. However I was not able to determine the four “elements” within each.
Now lets try even more complex examples and see if this kinda of symbolic solutions still work. Ill start with six problems that are objectively the same and after we will attempt to solve them the same objective way using symbolism.
1. A very overweight man starts suffering multiple health problems as he ages, he gets no exercise and constantly overeats. As he ages his body is less able to cope with the extra weight and because of this its bodily systems start to falter and break down. Weak knees and strained joints, heart problems, sleep apnea/breathing problems, etc. He goes to the doctors to try and get help and they prescribe him drugs or other medical solutions for his various problems.
However new problems keep springing up and the problems he has tried to deal with persist and are only pacified by the medical treatments and prescription drugs he receives. These treatments are mere “band-aids”, in a way. All of his problems (in this example) stem from being overweight and because that problem is left unchecked new problems will keep spawning from it and the old ones will persist without constant monitoring and treatment. Eventually if these problems keep arising his body will give way and he will die.
2. A camper is having a fire in the middle of the forest, it is surrounded by some dead leaves and brush. Small sparks from the fire keep shooting out and starting smaller fires around the main fire. To deal with this the camper runs around extinguishing the smaller fires as they appear. However since the main fire is still burning the sparks keep popping out and starting new fires. The camper has to constantly monitor the fire and put “band-aids” on the situation by constantly extinguishing the smaller ones. If these small fires keep burning the brush eventually there will be no more brush to burn and only barren ground will remain.
3. An ignorant and uneducated population keeps voting in politicians who don’t serve the voters best interests and are corrupt. These corrupt politicians then go forth and cause problems for the people and their government because they are corrupt or selfish (a very familiar situation). The people get fed up with it and vote in new politicians. However because the populations is ignorant and uneducated they just vote in another corrupt selfish politician. Things eventually go bad and the problems persist so they keep voting in new politicians.
They keep slapping a “band-aid” on their government and society in the form of politicians. Sometimes these politicians fix or solve the problems they promise to but new problems keep arising and some persist because the main problem of the population being ignorant and uneducated is never dealt with so they keep making bad decisions on who to let run things. If these problems persist and new ones keep arising then eventually the government will collapse or fail.
4. A restaurant has a chef who keeps burning the food and messing up the orders. Customers start complaining and leaving so to make up for it the restaurant comps their food or gives them a free meal. Whatever “band-aid they can slap on the situation. However the restaurant has to constantly work to appease these unhappy customers because the chef continues to screw up the orders.
Every day new orders are screwed up because the main problem is not dealt with (the chef). If this keeps up then nobody will come back and the restaurant will go out of business.
5. A large chunk of the population of an imaginary isolated town (with no global economy or stock market) is poor because the only work they can find is for a business who underpays them. These people are poor and because of it face constant problems and suffer daily. In response to this the peoples government decides to give them a stimulus check of $100. This is about a weeks pay to these poor people. The money helps for a week and the poor peoples problems are partially alleviated, they can afford a nice meal for a few days or even some leisure items, pay off some debt or bills etc.
However it’s not enough money to really make a difference in their lives outside of being able to afford trivial pleasures for a week etc. After the week has gone by the money is gone and the people face the same problems and suffrage they did before the governments stimulus (band-aid). If this keeps up then this town will turn into a slum or the workers will have to leave town etc.
6. A man suffers from anger issues because he has un-dealt with trauma in his life. He is so angry all the time he unintentionally starts taking it out on his friends and family or those around him. He does not wish to do this but cant help it, so he is very fast to apologize and tries his best to undo the damage hes done to his relationships with anger. Buys people a gift or simply apologizes, maybe tries to be nicer to that person on purpose etc. However he is still angry inside so he keeps taking it out on people and has to keep trying to make up for it when he does.
Pretty different situations right? yes and no. Some are physical problems and others like the one with politics only take place in the mind or in social structures and are imaginary. Lets make symbolic representations of these problems to get another perspective on them. We will objectify them.
These are just crude shapes but think of it as a symbol. We are going to use this symbol as a sort of blueprint for the solution to these problems. Then we will apply a symbolic solution to this symbol that will “transmute” or translate to the actual problems. The circles are the symbol and the blue X’s are the symbolic solutions.
Now we can do the obvious thing and remove the source of these problems thus eliminating the other problems that spring from them. We will do this by applying a blue X, a symbol.
That would obviously work for these problems, so if that method works for all of those problems then theoretically another symbolic method would work for all of them too right? Lets test this theory to see if they adhere to the same pattern. Each of these examples is being perpetuated by the people trying to fix it by putting “band-aids” on the problems. They are not lasting or permanent solutions and require further attention, like a band-aid eventually falls off and has to be replaced. So lets go with that method but we will turn those “band-aids” into “super band-aids”.
Now we will translate our symbolic solution to each problem and see if it works.
1. Instead of telling the overweight man to get healthy and exercise the doctors give him (for the sake of this example) an new type of super drug that enhances his heart and lungs to super human levels. These new enhanced organs causes the man to be more energetic and alert, move faster and jump higher enhancing his muscles with the higher oxygen levels etc. Because of this he starts to move around more and gets in more exercise. Thus eventually losing the weight and solving the main problem without addressing it directly. He would not have to stop overeating (how you get fat usually), he could just burn those calories as he exercised with his theoretical super body.
2. Instead of dowsing the main fire the camper gets a gigantic bathtub full of water and dumps it on one of the smaller sparks besides the campfire. This is so much water that it overflows from the little spark onto the main campfire and extinguishes both of them. “Solving” the problem of the big campfire without addressing it directly.
3. The ignorant population keeps voting in bad leaders. So we find ourselves (hypothetically of course) the perfect leader. One who actually cares about these ignorant people and wants to lead them to a brighter future so to speak. As a true leader does and would do, this person leads the population out of ignorance by bolstering education and holding virtue and understanding as high ideals. This bolstering eventually snuffs out the ignorance and the population starts voting in leaders who represent the peoples best interests. Thus fewer problems arise for them and the old problems are solved and dealt with.
4. Instead of firing the cook the restaurant decides to offer its customers free drinks (alcoholic drinks and otherwise). The customers are happy to be saving money or drunk enough to not care about the foods bad quality and because free drinks are not common the customers keep coming back. The problem was solved without addressing it directly, in this case the overall problem would be no returning customers.
5. Instead of a $100 check they get one for $100,000. This allows them to buy a house or get a better education with college. Pay for medical expenses and eat healthy food, they have enough money for a little leisure activities and eventually some of them pull themselves out of poverty. An unlikely scenario with just the $100 stimulus. They even get enough money together to start a new business and the owners co op the business with all the poor people in town so poverty there is mostly eliminated (ideally of course).
6. The angry man is not going to anger management or counseling, instead hes going to do a super apology. One person who he takes his anger out on gets upset with him and instead of a regular apology he lets it all out. His deepest pains, explains why hes angry and begins to cry, apologizing profusely the entire time. (Ideally) the person who he apologizes to understands his plight and lets the man know that they are there for them and together they can work through this.
The person then contacts the other people in this angry persons life and explains what happened and the situation. Now everyone understands this mans anger and they are better able to help him deal with it by calling it out when it happens or trying to comfort him. This love that the man feels from these people actually caring about his problems eventually mitigates the anger he feels towards people and the people see through the anger and are no longer hurt as easily by it because they see that the angry man is a hurt person…though the angry man should still seek help for his mental anguish.
So our theory did work and these patterns still apply even in complex situations. We used the same method of the “super band-aid” to solve all of those problems. All you have to do is recognize the counterpoints in the problems, then apply a likewise solution.
If you put the different parts of these problems in the form of symbols you would have the same type of formula they use in chemistry, or cooking…or computer programming. You could represent any of these problems mathematically as well.
If you put the different parts of these problems in the form of symbols you would have the same type of formula they use in chemistry, or cooking…or computer programming. You could represent any of these problems mathematically as well.
This pattern is further demonstrable in some of the most extreme circumstances. Such as at a celestial and atomic level.
No matter the size or complexity they still adhere to the same kinds of patterns because everything starts at the same simplistic level and because of this everything unfolds or grows/develops in similar patterns as well
To further demonstrates that both the mind and physical space adhere to the same patterns and thus can be dealt with in similar ways we will use chemical processes and “transmute” them into the mind.
Allow me to elaborate.
Alchemy is in fact the theology of chemistry. Meaning they represented chemical formulas, solutions, techniques etc as symbols, people and stories or myths. Mostly to keep their work hidden from those who would wish to exploit them or persecute them for anti religious beliefs.
So what this means to this paper and these patterns is that you can apply these same chemical processes to the mind and its processes and yield similar results as their physical counterparts in chemistry. This is what is known as inner alchemy. I will give the chemical definition and follow it up with the mental counterpoint example or mind example.
- Solution, the act of passing from a gaseous or solid condition into one of liquidity. The state of being dissolved.
Mind — A method or process of dealing with a problem
- Filtration, the mechanical separation of a liquid from the undissolved particles suspended in it. To sort, sift, or isolate
Mind — Mental filtering is a cognitive distortion where we disregard and discard all the positive aspects of any given situation and focus on the negative aspects only.
- Evaporation, the changing or converting from a liquid or solid state with the aid of heat.
Mind — A vanishing away; gradual departure or disappearance; dissipation, as of vapor. The quality of being evanescent; liability to vanish and escape observation or possession: as, the evanescence of mist or dew; the evanescence of earthly hopes.
- Distillation, an operation by which a volatile liquid may be separated from substances which it holds in solution. The process of purifying a liquid by successive evaporation and condensation.
Mind — The act or process of purifying; the removal of impurities over and over again. The act of purifying; the act of freeing from impurities, or from whatever is heterogeneous or foreign: as, the purification of liquors or of metals. A cleansing the mind of guilt; the extinguishment of “evil” desire as something which does not belong in your mind or something you wish to rid yourself of.
- Separation, the operation of disuniting or decomposing substances. The act or process of moving apart or forcing something apart.
Mind — The process of sorting or distinguishing into different components, groups, or categories. The act of separating, removing, or disconnecting one thing from another; a dis-joining or dis-junction: as,the separation of the good from the bad.
- Rectification, the process of refining or purifying any substance by repeated distillation.
Mind — to rectify or set right. To make right or straight; correct when wrong, erroneous, or false; amend: as, to rectify errors, mistakes, or abuses: sometimes applied to persons.
- Calcination, the conversion into a powder or calx by the action of heat; expulsion of the volatile substance from a matter. Calcination, the heating of solids to a high temperature for the purpose of removing volatile substances, oxidizing a portion of mass, or rendering them friable. Calcination, therefore, is sometimes considered a process of purification.
Mind — The same as purification with slightly different substance. You could find a corresponding mental example if pressed but I do not want to split hairs to much.
- Commixtion, the blending of different ingredients into one compound or mass. Mixture; a blending, uniting, or combining of different ingredients in one mass or compound.
Mind — The same thing as combining, sometimes our thoughts or emotions can combine together to make new ones. Not a hard example to find in your mind.
- Purification (through putrefaction), disintegration by spontaneous decomposition; decay by artificial means. The state of being rotted
Mind — We will go with the definition of putrefaction, moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles.
- Inhibition, the process of stopping or retarding a chemical reaction.
Mind — Conscious or unconscious restraint of a behavioral process, desire, or impulse. the process of holding back or restraining.
- Fermentation, the conversion of organic substances into new compounds in the presence of a ferment.
Mind — Unrest; agitation, excitement provoked by a single “agitator”. This could be a person, place, thought, experience etc.
- Fixation, the act or process of ceasing to be a fluid and becoming firm; state of fixed being.
Mind — A strong attachment to a person or thing, manifested in an immature or pathological way.
- Multiplication, the act or process of multiplying or increasing in number; the state of being multiplied.
Mind — If you want to be happy you could thinking only happy thoughts or look for things to be happy about, increase your exposure to something mentally usually propagates more of those thoughts etc.
- Projection, the process of transmuting the base metals into gold. This one is harder to define in a physical way, ideally and theoretically it is when something links up mentally, physically, and spiritually. A prediction based on known evidence and observations.
Mind — The attribution of one’s own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others, thought in psychoanalytic theory to be an unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt. The attribution to another person or object the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself.
We are going to delve deeper into projection because for me personally at first glance this one seemed like bullshit. However when I looked into actual projection (light and projectors) I found there was some actual strange often un-thought about aspects of it that line up to the alchemists description of it or in other words there is some logic to it. So to explain this in scientific terms lets start with a famous experiment.
Camera Obscura, to put it into visual terms it means when you are in a dark room and cut a small hole in the wall an upside down image of whats on the other side will be projected into the hole and appear in the room.
Here is the wiki entry for a more proper explanation:
“Physical explanation
Rays of light travel in straight lines and change when they are reflected and partly absorbed by an object, retaining information about the color and brightness of the surface of that object. Lighted objects reflect rays of light in all directions. A small enough opening in a barrier admits only the rays that travel directly from different points in the scene on the other side, and these rays form an image of that scene where they reach a surface opposite from the opening.[6]
The human eye (and those of animals such as birds, fish, reptiles etc.) works much like a camera obscura with an opening (pupil), a convex lens, and a surface where the image is formed (retina). Some cameras obscura use a concave mirror for a focusing effect similar to a convex lens.[6]”
So I made you understand all of that so you could understand this. Things that are lit up by light cast an image of themselves outwards in all directions meaning that when you are looking at a planet or star far away in the sky a very small of image of that is present right in front of you but you need to magnify the image and bend the light of it with a telescope to actually see it. Our eyes merely capture light, the light is always present whether we are there to see it or not and so are those images of things lit up by it. So at all times the things lit up by light reflect some of that light and create a sort of sphere of their image around them, they project an image of themselves.
Now lets consider how photographic film works, on a fundamental level light makes an imprint on the things it hits or rather the colors of the light from that object do. Some things are more sensitive to this such as the silver halide crystals used in photography paper.
They react to each color within the light and through a process eventually can be made to reproduce the image that hit the photographic paper. So in that way projection can be imprinted onto another object.
Now let us also consider that each color of light has its own temperature. As you may have guessed red is warmer and blue is colder.
Lets delve deeper into the temperature of each color of light and what that means. Here is a wonderful explanation of it and also goes into detail bout the other colors of light we can’t see and how we proved they existed using temperature.
“Energy from the sun comes to the Earth in visible and invisible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Human eyes are sensitive to a small portion of that spectrum that includes the visible colors — from the longest visible wavelengths of light (red) to the shortest wavelengths (blue).
Microwaves, radio waves, infrared, and ultraviolet waves are portions of the invisible electromagnetic spectrum. We cannot see these portions of the spectrum with our eyes, but we have invented devices (radios, infrared detectors, ultraviolet dyes, etc.) that let us detect these portions as well.
Light is neither a wave nor a particle, but has properties of both. Light can be focused like a wave, but its energy is distributed in discrete packets called photons. The energy of each photon is inversely related to the wavelength of the light — blue light is the most energetic, while red light has the least energy per photon of exposure. Ultraviolet light (UV) is more energetic, but invisible to human eyes. Infrared light is also invisible, but if it is strong enough our skin detects it as heat.”
So what that means is that each color of light also has its own energy level. So not only is an image being projected from objects lit up but actual energy is also traveling with those colors. Actual physically measurable energy is being projected with the light and if you know anything about energy then you know that different levels of it have different effects on what it is interacting with. What alchemists called projection is true in that regard, I can’t make any definite statements about the mind being able to project its thoughts but we can prove that the light that comes off the alchemist carry's with it energy as well with its various colors.
Lets use an example, some of you are surly familiar with the sun’s rays fading paint and other things left in its light over long periods of time. Say we did camera obscura in a room against a black wall for a very long period. Over time the fading from that light on the black walls paint would most likely leave a sort of silhouette of whatever was being projected onto that paint. in that way the image from the other side has made an imprint on that wall.
The sun projects its light and energy onto us then in turn we project our light and energy onto other things. As above so below, our visual presence has an impact on the overall energy of the environment in this way.
Just something to keep in mind.
Using these process on the mind is what is called “Inner Alchemy”. Freemason lodges teach inner alchemy to their members as a way to improve themselves. Here is a more detailed example of it from the book “Practical Alchemy”.
Actually many Freemasons and practicing alchemists claim to only use the philosophers stone for spiritual purposes such as improving yourself as a person. They believe that it is only intended to be used for this purpose, while other alchemists as we saw were only interested in its chemical properties and claimed that its real purpose was just disguised in spiritual terms to keep it secret. In reality as we saw it is both, it is a universal tool.
In fact the Freemason logo is a symbol for the squared circle itself.
One other important teaching about how the mind has counterpoints in the physical world and vice versa is how the environment can directly effect the mind and vice versa. Allow me to explain and demonstrate.
Picture you are a person who bad things keep happening to, almost like the universe is picking on you. So as the days go on and these things keep happening to you the majority of your memories about your life are sad/bad. Thinking about them all the time makes you sad and this long period of sadness eventually leads to depression. This depression eventually starts to effect your environment/house in such that you stop cleaning it and tidying up because you simply do not have the will to do it.
For many people this is common sense, if you do not have the will to do anything then cleaning up your home is not on the list of things to do. To cement that point of depression effecting your environment here are some studies linking it to such things as hoarding.
Now lets also note that not all depression is caused by bad things happening to you or constant bad/sad thoughts. Some depression has a chemical nature and is the result of unbalanced hormones etc in the brain. However for our example we will be going with the above kind of depression. Sad thoughts effect your environment using depression to transmute to them.
Sad thoughts = Mind, Depression = Spirit, Home/environment = Body
Sad thoughts are just that, thoughts. Depression effects your spirit or in modern terms it effects your overall emotion/feeling on situations. Think of your thoughts as a picture you are painting and your spirit as what color you will paint it, depression is like painting everything blue. It is not a thought itself but it stains everything you think with negativity or a sad outlook so to speak.
Then that depression directly effects your environment by disrupting the usual cycle of cleaning and tidying up your surroundings. So in that way your sad thoughts use your “spirit” to transmute onto the physical world.
Here is a symbolic view:
Now lets try the reverse to further prove the point, as above so below. A bad environment can use depression to transmute itself into bad/sad thoughts. Lets go with an example, pretend you are forced to live in a slum with no power, peeling wall paper, no running water, its dark, its damp, bugs everywhere and its small. After awhile living in such conditions will lead you to being depressed and especially if you have no choice and its the best you can do or there is no way to leave such conditions financially speaking.
Eventually being surrounded by this place makes you depressed or sad. Think of it as having to work a funeral home that only does children's funerals. Eventually working there is going to make you sad, the places you are have an effect on your mind and how you feel or your enthusiasm.
To further prove to you that the environment has a direct effect on your mood or your “spirit” I have included some studies.
I am sure many of you are familiar with the term “mood lighting”. Light is part of our environment and it effects us in some obvious and subtle ways. Chiefly it effects our mood and emotions through complex mechanisms in the brain.
Now as we saw with the reverse example eventually this depression on your mood is going to effect how and what you think. Being around child deaths all the time or having to live in a slum with no escape is eventually going to lead to you thinking about sad things like that etc. In that way the environment uses depression or your “spirit” to transmute the negativity or sadness into your mind.
Like I explained earlier it is not an exact representation in how the stone works but it can be applied in this way regardless.
As you can see its pretty demonstrable that existence and the universe “unfolds” in a set way following a kind of pattern that everything is part of. With this knowledge and using these kind of techniques you will find that you do not come across problems you cannot find a solution to. As you gain more experience in life you will have more things to compare to and will be better able to apply this technique. This is one of the greatest teachings of the occult or mystery schools of ancient times if not the greatest one.
They would symbolically represent this teaching a few different ways but one of the most common is using the lotus flower or unfolding flower. The idea being that like a flower the universe also unfolds in a similar predictable pattern as it blooms or grows. It is one of the “keys” to the universe.
…Now comes the important part. I want you reader, all of you reading this to take this knowledge and learn how to recognize, use and spread it. This symbol, this tool is the key to bettering our world and humanities overall situation. Some of you may have realized by now that people have been keeping this knowledge suppressed for hundreds if not thousands of years. We can use this as a great catalyst for change within our world.
This tool is so great that even as you read it is starting a process within you, for you see once you learn how to use the philosophers stone…you become one. With this knowledge you become a great catalyst for change. You take this and you free yourself from those who would see you controlled and exploited. Better your life, help each other.
Look for the symbol around you, in media, company logos, anywhere symbolism is present. Look for a triangle inside a circle. Look for it because other people, bad people know how to use this stone and are using it on us. On all of society, it can be used many ways including psychologically.
I can give you a few examples to start you off on this investigation.
Here is a little insight to this insignia I found on a popular websites alchemy threads.
“In fact, this symbol itself can be a symbol for wisdom. If one shaves off the top part of the triangle, it becomes the symbol so popular at the time of the founding of the US and used on its dollar, the Unfinished Capstone. To complete the stone, this symbol is usually used with the. providential eye in the place of the top of the stone.
Providential is from pro video, Latin for “looking forward.” Another way this is described in Latin is “sapiens.” Providential and wisdom are synonyms. The idea of the unfinished capstone means that, if the laws were written correctly at the founding (the date written at the bottom of the pyramid), and the legislature takes a providential eye safeguarding the land and the laws for the future, the state can continue on forever.”
Lets go over why the “All seeing eye” is used as a symbol to begin with. As we went over on a very basic level the eye is a kind of philosophers stone, it is a circle within a circle withing a circle. Anyone familiar with how the human eye functions will know this basic information on its function, for those who don’t here is a little reading on the subject.
The “all seeing eye” is simply a metaphor or symbol for the philosophers stone or transformation.
The Illuminati a mysterious and mythical group that is said to control civilization from the shadows. Whether or not they exist I cannot say, however these mythical hooded figures logo is a philosophers stone in the form of an eye. At the very least the symbolism is there for the stone. Just something to consider now that you are more aware…
I will continue to hunt for information like this and publish it here when I find it. This article is a mere chapter in my overall work as is the electroreception article. My main body of work will be published here upon completion.
