A metaphorical link between Maier’s drifting King and the Gulf Coast holocaust — the largest ecological disaster in the United States’ history — seems obvious. But what has Maier depicted? What stage within alchemy’s many elaborate processes is this one? Is there a clue for us to follow in the brew. And how does that formula turn out?

It’s best to start at the beginning.

Aside from being the precursor to the science of chemistry, what is alchemy exactly? Listen to Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant’s description from his book The Mystery of Human Relationship:

“The alchemist’s belief in a unity or Oneness of process is based on the notion of an ‘essence’ which pervades all creation and which connects qualities as opposites. All of alchemical thinking is concerned with opposites, states we know in our psychological being as mind and body, love and hate, good and evil, conscious and unconscious, spirit and matter, left-brain and right-brain function … Somehow, the alchemist had to recognize the opposites inherent in any process and then to unite them. A spiritual sense of Oneness plays a vital role, for a kind of illumination is often necessary to ’see’ opposites, an act of discovering order in chaos.”

And yet one can not achieve essential realization, the ’spiritual sense of oneness’, without first suffering alchemy’s marriage of opposites. As Jungian astrologer Liz Greene notes, the materialist stumbles when confronted with alchemy’s strange fusion of physical and psychic, which “does not differentiate between inanimate matter and inner states. Physical gold and psychic gold are the same in alchemical writings, and base matter is likewise both inside and outside the alchemist. We have, on a rational level, split the physical realm from the psychic since the Enlightenment, and have accepted this split as a statement of truth about the nature of reality.”

A.H. Almaas, in his book Essence, goes further than Schwartz-Salant. He asserts that the sought after sense of wholeness or ‘oneness’ can be approached directly, not just through sustained metaphorical perception, but experienced viscerally, palpably — as one’s very being-ness. Being expressed as the personal essence:

“Outsiders think that when alchemists use the term sun, they must be ‘referring to some kind of mental or spiritual process or perception.’ This is both true and untrue. It is true in that they are referring to essential perception. It is not true in that the alchemists actually mean sun — the physical sun in the sky — but a distinct essential reality that the word sun describes better than any other word…The human organism is a miniature universe. This is true in so many way that most people would be completely astounded if they were to see this reality for themselves. The outsider can think of the alchemical language only as symbolic, because this is easier to accept than the actual truth of alchemy…The individual has to be steeped in the direct knowledge of essential development in order to understand alchemical texts and to see that alchemy is literally the science of inner chemistry, or the science of dealing with inner substances.”

This awakened way of ’seeing’ is at the heart of all spiritual, contemplative and meditative practices. It is a literal approach to the essential that involves all of our centers of perception, the interplay of each organ within the miniature universe that is the human being. A conscious application and blending of the treasure trove of forces, impulses and instincts entwined within the unconscious married to the brilliant light of awareness. And those making the effort — attempting the marriage — can be considered modern day alchemists. Read more