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CRUCIBLE AND TEST TUBE

The Finding of Knowledge -- Ancient
Teachings, Modern Interpretations

At least, that is how it was in the Middle Ages and later. We all know the image of the alchemist, dressed in his long robe decorated with astrological symbols, surrounded by crucibles, test tubes, beakers and jars, crouched before a smouldering furnace. An image that is not so far from the truth. But alchemy goes back a lot further than the Middle Ages. Indeed, it goes all the way back to the earliest civilisations.

Whilst it is not accepted by orthodox historians and archeologists, there is clear evidence that alchemy was not only practised in ancient Egypt but practised on an almost industrial scale. Conventional alchemical legend traces the start of alchemy to the Egyptian God, Thoth. Known to the Greeks as Hermes Trimegestus (Hermes the Thrice Majestic,) it is from this enigmatic source that the entire Hermetica (the corpus of non-Christian spiritual/mystical knowledge in the West) is named. Alchemy is a key aspect of Hermetic knowledge, which also includes astrology, the Kabbalah, aspects of yoga, ritual magic, sorcery, herbalism, the development and use of psychic powers and scrying (fortune telling and seeing into the future.)

It is, however, possible to trace the roots of alchemy back to the very start of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. Not just alchemy but just about everything can be traced back to the Sumerian civilization that existed in the fertile plains between and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Conventionally dated to around the 5th millennium BC, the Sumerian civilization has been traced to a much earlier genesis, circa 11,000 BC, by controversial Sumerian scholar, Zecharia Sitchen. Maintaining that the Sumerian civilization was originally established by the Gods themselves -- in the form of Alien visitors to this planet -- Sitchen’s views have a certain logical credibility to them even if his translations of thousands of Sumerian cuneiform tablets are somewhat suspect. The Sumerian god, Ningishzidda, is thought to be the equivalent of Thoth and of Hermes Trimegestus and has been identified as such by noted biblical scholar and New Age visionary, the late Sir Laurence Gardner. It is also possible that Ningishzidda is another name for the MesoAmerican God, Quetzalcoatl.

Alchemy is clearly a doctrine that is rooted in the earliest civilizations for, in slightly different forms, alchemical knowledge and traditions existed and still exist in the seminal cultures of both China and India. Although there appears to be no confirmatory evidence to support the contention, it would seem more than likely that the MesoAmerican cultures -- obsessed as they were with gold -- also had alchemical knowledge.

Although the names may differ all these gods have a similar role and part to play in the creation and re-creation myths. According to Sumerian cunneiform tablets, the main purpose for the arrival of the ‘gods’ on Earth was their need for gold and gold forms a prevailing motif in many ancient texts. Although the references are sparse, there is evidence that the ‘gods’ possessed a substance, known to the Mesopotamians as the ‘Highward Firestone,’ that gave them immense longevity and many godly powers. This took the form of a white powder. Sound familiar?

It is, however, in ancient Egypt that the evidence for the Philosophers’ Stone starts to proliferate. There are innumerable commemorative wall carvings in temples and tombs that depict the Philosophers’ Stone as a conical cake and the Egyptian Book of the Dead -- which, as it was written for specific individuals, comes in a number of forms -- makes many mentions of the Stone. The earliest complete Egyptian text, The Papryus of Ani, does not name the Stone but asks repeatedly: ‘What is it?’ (Interestingly the phrase ‘what is it?’ translates into Hebrew as the word ‘manna.’ But more on this later.) The question is asked many times within the lengthy papryus and in some interesting contexts: ‘I am purified of all imperfections. What is it? I ascend like the golden hawk of Horus. What is it? I pass by the immortals without dying. What is it? I come before my father in Heaven. What is it?’

Although the question was rhetorical, taking our terminology from the Bible we can hazard an answer, or answers. Perhaps it is the manna that fell from the sky like sweet white snow to feed the Israelites on their 40 year travail through the wilderness. However, the most common term used to describe the conical Egyptian cakes is shewbread.

In ancient Egypt, where the ingestion of shewbread by the Pharaohs and the priesthood seems to have been a fairly routine matter. Its function was clearly one of transcendence. It had come from the gods, was of the gods and offered the facility of joining the gods. The preservation of bodies in mummified forms and the many accoutrements of life found in burial chambers attest to the fact that through the use of shewbread the occupants expected to join the gods on a heavenly plane. Such extensive use of shewbread required almost industrial processing facilities.

In 1904, the renowned Victorian archeologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie discovered such a facility on the very top of a mountain in the Sinai Desert that had specific biblical associations. Now known as the Mount of Moses, Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, Serabit el Khadem is the ‘Mountain of God’ described in Exodus. This is the mountain where Moses struck the rock with his staff to reveal a water source for his dehydrated people. It is the mountain on which God addressed him from the burning bush. And it is the mountain on which God gave Moses the ten commandments and the tablets of testimony amid explosive flashes and thunderous quaking.

On the flat top of the mountain, Flinders Petrie discovered something surprising. Within a 230 yard long temple complex dedicated to the goddess Hathor that seemed to date back to the Pharaoh Sneferu (2600 BC) and to have been used continuously for millennia, he found what seemed to be an alchemical workshop. Within the halls and courts of the outer temple there were many tanks and circular basins. Nearby there were curiously shaped split-level bench/tables with recessed fronts and a metallurgist’s crucible. Among the many inscriptions adorning the temple walls, Petrie and his team were bemused by the proliferation of cartouches mentioning bread and light. Among the finds was a large quantity of fine white powder which Petrie tested only to discover it consisted of nothing more than silica and iron. He bagged this up and had it transported to the British Museum in London where it still resides.

The anomaly of a factory-type production facility within the precincts of a sacred temple complex passed Flinders Petrie by. But he obviously did not know that according to etymology the word ‘worship’ originally contained a ‘k’ just before boarding. Thus it was through the ‘workship’ of the priests that the gods were served.

Somewhat indiscrete about his discovery, before Petrie could investigate the temple further his funding was withdrawn by the Bible Exploration Society who really didn’t want anyone to hear about an Egyptian temple on the most sacred mountain in the Bible.

In the Hebrew Torah and the Old Testament within the King James Bible, shewbread is exclusively associated with the priestly classes. Known in Hebrew as ‘lechem,’ literally the ‘Bread of the Presence,’ shewbread was always present in the innermost sanctum of the Temple of Jerulsalem and, as the Ark of the Covenant also occupied the chamber, was, therefore, always in the presence of God. Shewbread comes in for many mentions in the Old Testament. In Chronicles, Samuel and Kings aspects of shewbread are discussed.

A particularly meaningful biblical association is that of white powder of gold and the priesthood of Melchizedek. Both the Torah and the Old Testament describe Melchizedek as a priest of ‘God Most High’ and it is accepted by many modern Christians that Jesus, in his role as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, was the ‘priest forever in the order of Melchizedek’ mentioned in Psalms 11:4. The priesthood of Melchizedek came to new prominence when it was promoted by the Church of the Latter-Day Saints as the priesthood authority of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and other Old Testament prophets with an authority higher than that of the Aaronic tradition of John the Baptist and the Levites (the tribe of Israelites from which the priesthood was and still is drawn.)

There are many associations of the Ark of the Covenant and shewbread. The Ark was said to contain more than the Tablets of Testimony bearing the commandments given to Moses by God Himself. The Ark was actually regarded as the Seat of God and the fact the shewbread was always present in the Temple’s Holy of Holies is extremely significant. The Ark was clearly a powerful object that was capable of killing, blinding and maiming those who approached it carelessly. Indeed, the Ark was used as a weapon of destruction on a number of occasions. Based on ancient tales of the power of the Ark and modern knowledge of the powers of ORMEs and superconductors, both Laurence Gardner and David Hudson contend that it was a repository for the Philosophers’ Stone in the form of white powder of gold or shewbread.

According to modern Hebrew scholars and leading rabbis, the secret of making manna or the white powder of gold has been lost since the destruction of the Temple of Solomon by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC. There is, however, a belief that when the temple was sacked, the priests -- who later set up the Essene community at Qunram (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947) -- left with many treasures including the knowledge of shewbread.

(An ‘up yours, Dan Brown’ aside. The treasures removed from the temple by the priests were those that they could easily transport which meant that when they left they took the knowledge but not the gold. The real treasure was buried beneath the temple to be discovered 1500 years later by the prototype Templars as they excavated the stables of King Solomon. It is possible that this treasure not only included white powder of gold but also instructions covering how to make it. The vast wealth accumulated by the Templars within decades of their return to France cannot solely have come from the gold and silver treasures found beneath the Temple of Solomon.)

Alchemy in various forms was practised by the Moors, the Greeks and the Romans and some alchemical treatise survive from each of these cultures. But increasingly the knowledge became more and more esoteric and veiled in secrecy. Alchemists, who were reluctant to share with just anyone the secrets they had spent their entire lives acquiring, described their processes allegorically and often included intentional mistakes or omissions in the texts they produced. One of the great Moorish alchemists, Jabir Ibn Hayyan, known in English as Ibn Gerber, produced a treatise so obscure that we had to invent a new word to describe it. Apart from a range of baby foods, Ibn Gerber’s greatest contribution to the world was the word ‘gibberish,’ which is derived from his name.

It was not until the late Middle Ages that alchemy took off in Europe. The Moorish invasion and take over of Spain started the process. A technologically more advanced culture than that existing in Western Europe at the time, the Moors brought knowledge of architecture, mathematics, chemistry and alchemy with them. One of the prime movers in the assumption of Islamic knowledge into the West was Gerbert of Aurillac, who was later to become Pope Silvester II, (d. 1003.)

Robert Grosseteste (1170–1253) was a pioneer of the scientific theory that would later be used and refined by the alchemists. However, the two most abiding ‘new thinkers’ of the period were Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274.) Both were Dominicans who studied Aristotle and worked at reconciling the differences between philosophy and Christianity. Aquinas also did a great deal of work in developing the scientific method. He even went as far as claiming that universals could be discovered only through logical reasoning, and, since reason could not run in opposition to God, reason must be compatible with theology. This ran contrary to the commonly held Platonic belief that universals were found through divine illumination alone. Magnus and Aquinas were among the first to take up the examination of alchemical theory and could be considered to be alchemists themselves, except that the two did little in the way of experimentation.

The first true alchemist in Medieval Europe was Roger Bacon. His work did as much for alchemy as Robert Boyle’s was to do for chemistry and Galileo’s for astronomy and physics. Bacon (1214–1294) was an Oxford Franciscan who explored optics and languages in addition to alchemy. It is Roger Bacon who is regarded as originating the search for the Philosophers’ Stone and the Elixir of Life: ‘That medicine which will remove all impurities and corruptibilities from the lesser metals will also, in the opinion of the wise, take off so much of the corruptibility of the body that human life may be prolonged for many centuries.’ The idea of immortality was replaced with the notion of long life; after all, man’s time on Earth was simply to wait and prepare for immortality in the world of God. Immortality on Earth did not mesh with Christian theology.

Bacon was not the only alchemist of the high Middle Ages, but he was the most significant. His works were used by countless alchemists between the 15th and 19th centuries. Other alchemists of Bacon’s time shared similar characteristics. First, and most obviously, nearly all were members of the clergy. This was simply because few people outside the parochial schools had the education to examine the Arabic-derived works. Also, alchemy at this time was sanctioned by the church as a good method of exploring and developing theology. Alchemy was interesting to a wide variety of churchmen because it offered a rationalistic view of the universe when men were just beginning to learn about rationalism.

Increasingly, however, alchemy moved away from the secular world and into the profane. In the early 14th century, not long before the end of the Middle Ages, Pope John XXII issued an edict against alchemy that effectively removed all church personnel from the practice, at least in theory.

Although many Hermetic Schools argued that the transmutation of base metal into gold was no more than an allegory for the transmutation of the soul into a higher being, it was to the crucibles and retorts that most alchemists turned. Their goal was the creation of the Philosophers’ Stone, the Elixir of Life, and their process was one of dissolution, combination and transmutation.

The alchemical process is a long and delicate one. Even today, using equipment that can be accurately controlled to maintain an exact temperature for extended periods of time, the process is fraught, difficult and lasts for months. Unlike David Hudson, who heated his elements to extremely high temperatures, the alchemical process demands that elements are heated for extended periods at very low temperatures. Working with a tolerance of only one or two degrees either side of the optimum and with furnaces that had no temperature indicator, regulator or controls, the early alchemists failed often. Indeed, the number who succeeded can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Although white powder of gold is clearly an extremely powerful substance, the creation of the Philosophers’ Stone, however, seems to go beyond the substance produced by David Hudson. According to modern alchemists, two elements are required to make the Philosophers Stone -- philosophic gold and philosophic mercury. Philosophic gold would seem to be the white powder of gold discovered by David Hudson. (Philosophic mercury is obtained through a process of extraction from antimony. However, not all antimony produces philosophic mercury. It has recently been revealed that the antimony must contain a certain amount of bizmuth to produce mercury with the ‘philosophic’ qualities required for the alchemical process.)

Despite a plethora of failures, alchemy gave the world a great deal. The science of distillation, sublimation and filtration, the discovery of alcohol, of nitric and sulfuric acids, of the alkalis, of the salts of mercury, of antimony and bismuth -- all discovered through alchemy. These discoveries and others laid the basis of all subsequent chemistry and physical research. Both Isaac Newton (1643-1727,) the father of modern science, and Robert Boyle (1627–1691,) who discovered many of the gases we know today, were practising alchemists.

The Royal Society of London, later to spawn the Royal Society of Arts & Sciences, was established by Newton, Boyle and others in the 1660s. The founding members, known as the Invisible College, were almost all alchemists, scientists and freemasons. And so we arrive back at the treasures buried beneath the Temple of Solomon and those nine original Templars. What can they have discovered that made the organisation of which they were the founding members so powerful and wealthy within decades of their return to France? What could they have possessed that could subdue popes and makes kings subservient?

For more revelations, secrets and myths read on, dear reader, as we uncover the magic of ORMUS