Transcription
Hi, my name is Tim Hogan. I have been lecturing over the years on the symbolism and esoteric practices associated with Alchemy, in particularly its association with Freemasonry and the Western Mystery School tradition. Through my books and lectures, I've been asked several times over the years if there was a video available, uh, outlining some of these processes and showing some of these connections. Which, until this time, has not been available. However, it's, uh, my great pleasure that we can now make this video available and hopefully it can bring light into your path and to your Lodge.
Most Freemasons, in particular, when they hear that there's a possible connection between Alchemy and Freemasonry, first ask the question, "What is alchemy?" Well, most Masons aren't very well versed in the subject, even though it's something that is highlighted within the degrees themselves. In particular, the stages of alchemy are something that are highlighted in the craft degrees, or symbolic Blue Lodge degrees, but they're veiled in such a way that you wouldn't immediately recognize it. It is my hope, through my books and through this video, that we can outline and show how some of these connections exist in order to educate each Freemason.
Freemasonry actually has a long history of involvement with Alchemists from its earliest stages. To give a few examples, such notables as Robert Morray and Elias Ashmole, considered two of the first symbolic Freemasons, were both operative Alchemists, as was Jean Phil Theophilus Desaguliers, who some people believe created the third degree of masonry, or at least embellished it into the form we know it today. Other Alchemists who are also Freemasons throughout history include such notables as Benjamin Franklin and General Joseph Warren in Europe. To this day, there are lodges that have Alchemy labs in them, and the interest in alchemy has started to increase substantially amongst lodges in the United States, particularly of the traditional observance variety. There are even some rumors that in the Lodges of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, there was an operative lab that was used regularly. So therefore, it's important that we examine Alchemy, how it could possibly be associated with the craft itself, and what its Origins are.
We find Alchemy being mentioned in the earliest texts of human civilization. It was certainly a science that was propagated by the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Chinese. You find it in Babylonian myths, in the Greek societies. Philosophers like Aristotle were ardent proponents of alchemy. Some even believe that Alexander the Great discovered the grave of the patron saint of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus, and Aristotle helped him to understand how his Emerald, famed Emerald Tablet, worked. We find Alchemy incorporated later on into the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. Some people have speculated that the Knights Templar themselves were students in studying Alchemy and inherited these texts from the Muslims of the Holy Land during the Crusades, and people like the Druze and the Sufis and the Sabians. We also find Alchemy associated with people like Sir Francis Bacon and later with the development into the Royal Society, where people like Sir Isaac Newton studied Alchemy and who worked with people like Robert Boyle to develop alchemical operations. So whether we're looking to ancient origins of masonry, to the Knights Templar, to the Elizabethan court, or even to the Royal Society, as many Masonic historians have done, everywhere we turn, including with the very Cathedrals themselves and those who were building them, we find the science of alchemy being emphasized again and again and again. Therefore, it's imperative as Freemasons that we study this art and see how it can be related to our degrees. As you may see, the secrets to Alchemy may be the very Stone that the Builder rejected when it comes to the Masonic craft.
Therefore, come with me; we will go into the lab, and I can show you how these things relate. Welcome to a pretty typical Alchemy lab. What I'm going to do with you now is I'm going to walk through some of the processes of alchemy and show how they may in fact relate to the craft, so that you can have a better idea of how this work works.
The Alchemist believed that all of nature was connected into one system in which there was a vast energy that manifested through everything that was connected with the consciousness of God that gave birth to things. Therefore, a careful study of nature revealed not only the geometry but also the very nature and signatures of things, so that the Alchemist could understand how to work with them in order to get what he most desired out of it. Therefore, the, the entire process was called the Great Art, and the understanding of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences were therefore necessary in the alchemical operation. Not surprisingly, the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences were also ruled by the seven planets in Antiquity, as were the days of the week, and each day was divided into alchemical hours for operation. Not only this, but herbs, gems, uh, and other minerals were all designated as being ruled by one of these planetary influences, and therefore The Alchemist was very careful in choosing herbs, for example, that were associated with a particular planetary influence, so those could be used in helping to heal different parts of the body which were also ruled by that planetary influence.
The first stage in the alchemical process involved invoking the blessings of deity. The Alchemist believed that it was only through the help of God and God working through the alchemist that he could bring about the transmutations that were necessary in nature. Therefore, it was believed that there was a marriage that occurred between the consciousness of The Alchemist and the consciousness of God, and in that marriage is what allowed all things to be possible in the alchemical work. After The Alchemist prayed, the next stage in the alchemical process was actually to divest oneself of all metallic substances. It was believed that Metals, in particular, uh, could affect how the energy behaved, and therefore The Alchemist, trying to capture as much energy as possible, didn't want to have the metals interfere with it. In particular, particular the metal of iron was thought to interfere with not only other metals but herbs as well, so the divesting of iron substances was particularly important. This is also why iron was ruled by the planet Mars, which was associated with war and aggression. Within Freemasonry, we may see the idea of no tool of iron being used in the construction of King Solomon's Temple as a metaphor of all aggression and war associated with Mars are removed from the temple when we begin the work. The same is true within the alchemical lab. The Alchemist taught that everything in their Doctrine can be described through symbols, and therefore it was understanding of symbols and the symbolic language that allowed The Alchemist to communicate.
The next stage that an alchemist needed to do is he needed to choose a particular herb that he wanted to work with. All Alchemy involves collecting things with planetary signatures, breaking them down in order to rebuild them in more perfect forms. So an alchemist would collect an herb, for example, let's say St. John's wort, which was ruled by the sun, and it would, it was very important that the herb was pulled out by its roots in order that all Essence was kept intact. Once that herb was pulled out by its roots, the next stage was to hang it up and allow it to dry. Once it was dried, then you, you the next stage was to actually take the herb and, by using a mortar and pestle, grind it up as fine as possible. To this day, there are some chambers of reflection which are used particularly within the Entered Apprentice degree in Europe and in some traditional observance lodges in which a mortar and pestle will be found. Once this herb was ground up as fine as possible, the next stage was to take this herb and place it into a vessel. Once it was in The Vessel, the next stage would be to take an alcohol or Spirits, fill the vessel up to a low water mark, and allow the oils from within that herb to start to digest into the solution itself. This was really the first stage of the alchemical process, and because it was so involved with liquid, it was associated with water.
In order to further this process along, The Alchemist would take the vessel and place it in what was known as a sand bath. Come here, and I'll show it to you. Once the herb was placed into the vessel, it was then placed within a sand bath. What this allowed it to do is, as there was heat, the heat would become equally distributed around the vessel itself. The liquid within the vessel would, would start to heat up and circulate within the vessel. When this happened, it caused the oils to start to separate. The Alchemist would be sure at the beginning stages of this work to then take the vessel out of the sand bath twice in 24 hours in order to shake The Vessel very vigorously. This helped to separate the oils even further, then it was placed back in the sand bath to allow everything to circulate. When this stage occurred, it, the herb was no longer associated with just an herb but took on the new alchemical name of the caput mortuum. Caput mortuum literally means dead head, and it was sometimes symbolized in alchemical texts by a skull and crossbones. Sometimes it was depicted as a raven resting on top of a skull. But ultimately, it symbolized the first little death of the herb itself as it was washed within the vessel.
Certainly, this beginning stages, any Entered Apprentice will find resonance within the actual penalties associated with his degree; the fact that this degree was associated with water, the herb was, was torn out by its roots, buried in the rough sands of the sea at a low water mark, where it was then shaken twice in 24 hours, after which it was called caput mortuum, associated with the dead head. So the fact that at this point then it's called dead head or caput mortuum, certainly has relevance related to the penal sign associated with the Entered Apprentice. True to not only alchemical texts but the early rites of initiation of the Gnostics and even earlier Egyptian Mystery Schools, the first stage of initiation into the Mysteries was always associated with water. Water was considered purifying, and in this first stage in alchemy, the liquid menstrum that we have in this case using alcohol represents that water as we're cleansing the herb and literally giving it a baptism, if you will, to prepare it for its next stage.
The next stage in the alchemical process after the herb has digested and has gone through that water stage is to take the herb in its vessel and distill it. Distilling it, what this does is it removes the heart and vitals of the herb or the, the mineral components and the oils from the herb and separates them from the body of the herb itself. When distillation happens through heat, the vessels heated up, the liquid then turns into steam. The steam rises up to the highest pinnacle of the apparatus only to later fall and condense down like dew or rain into another vessel. In this way, all the Essences from the herb have been removed. This next stage was associated with air because, as is very clear, the liquid as it turns into that steam is a form of air itself. In the alchemical text, the stage was usually represented by birds or vultures, sometimes crows picking at, at corpses and pecking out the heart and vital organs of the corpse itself and then flying to the highest pinnacle of an athanor or a tower. An athanor was an alchemical apparatus which was used for distillation, among other things, which allowed these Essences to be captured at the highest pinnacle, and often times alchemical text depicted them as a temple or as a church steeple in which they prayed at because the work was deemed sacred.
Within Freemasonry, such ideas are obviously alluded to again, related to the Penalty associated with the, the obligation of a Fellowcraft. Just as the first degree was associated with water, the second degree then is associated with air. In it, we find the idea of the birds picking out the heart and vitals and taking them to the highest pinnacle of the temple within Freemasonry itself. This idea of the distillation also relates to the Fellowcraft, as he is in the first degree; he is digesting all the experiences that he's been initiated into, but by the second degree he's learning to distill it and break it down and figure out how to get the best Essences out of this new craft. Sometimes what happens is, after all the Essences have been distilled out, what is left over at the bottom of the vessel is a, is the remaining ground up herb, and during the final stages of an, of distillation, tiny holes will start to form in the ground up herb itself, and they look like prairie dog holes or, or ground squirrel holes in a field. The jurisdiction, Masonic jurisdictions that talk about the beasts of the field, this is, this what it's alluding to is this plane or this field that's created where all these tiny holes are formed that you would find snakes or, or other beasties crawling out of, because that's exactly what we see within the vessel itself.
One of the things that's also worth pointing out is that during the alchemical process, the herb goes through different stages at, at each level where it turns black, red, red, and white. The first time as it, during what we would associate with the Entered Apprentice degree, the green herb is picked, and as it dries out it turns kind of blackish. As it's subjected then to the menstrum or the alcohol, the alcohol itself starts to turn blackish at first, but with heat it begins to turn reddish at the beginning of the Fellowcraft degree or the distillation stage of the process. This red liquid is then distilled over, and as it's distilled over it comes out as a new clear or whitish solution, so it has gone from black to red to white through this first stage of the process. Once everything has been removed and distilled from the original vessel, what we have are then two components out of three which are required within the alchemical work. We have effectively removed what is called The Sulfur of the herb or the oils of the herb and also the Mercury of the herb which was associated with the alcohol, and actually what the Mercury was was it was believed to be a vital life force which is contained within the air we breathe and it's attracted to things like water and alcohol. In fact, this is where the word Spirits gets its name from, for alcohol itself. So we have, we have captured the Mercury and the sulfur. There is one final element that we need to capture though, which is called the salts of the herb, and ultimately it was believed that the salts, the sulfur, and the Mercury could be recombined in order to form a perfect Stone.
In alchemical texts, the salts were usually associated with corn or wheat, since corn or wheat is a main body that's made up of all kinds of little seeds or little parts, just like matter itself can be broken down to all these little grains of the secret alchemical salt. The sulfur was associated with oil because it was the actual oils from out of the herb itself, and the alcohol or Mercury was associated with wine, particularly since grapes and wine could, were associated with the sun in alchemical texts, but it was also very easy to draw alcohol from wine itself. So corn, wine, and oil then would go together to form a perfect stone or salt, sulfur, and Mercury, just like we find in Cornerstone ceremonies within Freemasonry itself. In order to extract the salts, however, we needed to pull them from the bowels of the original vessel that we were distilling. At the bottom of this vessel, after we've distilled all the liquids out of it, is a Remnant body which is broken down in which the Alchemist called feces, mostly because it stank, didn't smell very good, and it kind of looked like feces. This residue that was left over at the bowels of, of the vessel then needed to be burned to ashes or calcinated in a crucible in order so that we could extract the salts out of it. So The Crucible or calcination dish which is, is what was used in order to calcinate down the, or, or torch down the, the actual feces or the, the residue that was left over, the dead body of the herb.
Now what's interesting is, in Old alchemical texts, they used cipher symbols for the different stages of the work and for the different implements and lab equipment that was used. The symbol for a crucible or a calcination dish was actually a square with an inverted triangle at the top of it, looking almost identical to a Master Mason's apron. So the very symbol for a, of a Master Mason's apron itself is the same shape as the alchemical cipher for a crucible or calcination dish. Once the, the herb was, the residue of the herb was torched down into The Crucible, at first it would turn black, almost completely black, as a basically like a charcoal. However, with further heat, the substance would turn reddish gray, and with further heat it would turn, the ash would turn whitish. Once The Alchemist got to this stage of, of calcinating it from black to reddish gray to eventually white, he knew that he could then extract secret salts out of that gray ash. The secret salts came in two forms; there was a soluble secret salt and an insoluble secret salt, but both appeared as a bright white substance, and the insoluble secret salts in particular were referred to by The Alchemist as the hidden Mana. Mana, in Hebrew, means "What is it?" and it was associated with this name of Mana because Alchemists were having no way of detecting what this substance was that they ultimately got out of the body of the herb. Now the process of calcinating it down and then eventually raising these white salts or the secret salts, also known as the hidden Mana, out of it was called raising the herb, and through this process it was believed that by then recombining the white secret salts with the sulfur and the Mercury, you can bring the herb back to life in a new and more potent and glorious form with all impurities removed.
In order to extract the Mana or the secret salts, it was important that the ash was subjected to certain acids and alkalizes in order to purge the salts from the body that was containing it. Even within the ash itself, it was still containing the hidden Mana and the secret salts, so very corrosive processes needed to happen in order to liberate this secret salt. One of the important themes associated with the Master Mason degree is this element of fire. Again, within the penalty itself, we have the association with fire. However, we should also not underestimate the figure of Tubal-Cain within the Master Mason degree, who we are informed invented metallic operations by fire. Also, it's important to note that within Freemasonry, in order to truly raise a brother, it's important to put oneself in the grip of a lion's paw or what is also sometimes called an eagle's claw. The lion's paw is associated with the hand placed in this position. This is important because within Alchemy, it's, or within the, the Hebrew Mysteries, this was the shape of the Hebrew letter Shin, which was associated with fire in the Kabbalah. So the very shape of our hand is also associated with fire when we go to raise a brother.
So once the ashes have been cleaned and cooked in acid, the next stage was to go ahead and try to extract that Mana from it, which is what I'm trying to do right now. If we do this right, what'll happen is we can get the Mana to manifest out of this solution. Now Mana was called by different names by different cultures. Certainly in Revelations, we hear about the hidden Mana and the white stone, and this was alluding, according to Alchemists, to this alchemical process. Mana in other cultures, like ancient Sumer, was referred to as shimana. You find it in Vedic texts as vimana, and you, and you find it called by certain Gnostic groups as Mani. In fact, the Gnostic leader Mani probably got his name from it. Also, the Mandeans, which were another Gnostic group in Iran and Iraq, the Cathars referred to it as Mani as well, and in fact the Mani Sola ceremony that they performed, which was a Grail Mass, was associated with this Mana substance. Also, in the Tibetan texts and Buddhist texts, you see it referred to as Mani. This is why, in, for example, the Tibetan Buddhist chant Om Mani Padme Hum, it refers to the Mani or the white stone hidden within the Lotus. So what we're doing here is we're changing the vibratory condition of this solution so that the Mana can manifest out, and we're almost at the point now where it will begin to manifest. Hold up to, and here we go. We'll start to see now a, it appears as a white fluffy substance, almost looks like, will look like clouds or like stars in The Vessel. The Essenes referred to it as the Sheen of God, but it'll manifest out as this white substance. Now as we allow it to settle, you'll begin to see that Mana start to settle out and form. Able to see it, shake it up again, real slowly.
Once the Mana has formed, it's still in a poisonous solution, and that solution needs to be cleansed in order to get a purified Mana out of it. So the solution is filtered and cleaned several times, ultimately resulting in a pure white Mana like we have here in this vessel. This white Mana or secret salts can then be recombined with the oils and with the symbolic Mercury or alcohol from earlier in the experiment. Once this is done, we have a perfect Elixir at that point. Traditionally, the proportions are said to be three parts oil to four parts salts to five parts alcohol, or 3, 4, 5, and it's for that reason that the Alchemist regularly used the 3, 4, 5 triangle of Pythagoras as a symbol for the alchemical work. It displayed the correct proportions in creating their Elixir. This Elixir could then be heated down slightly in order to create a paste or what was called The Alchemist's honey. In fact, the symbol of the Beehive was regularly shown in alchemical texts because bees are like Alchemists who go out into nature and collect the raw materials, bring it back into the lab, and transmute it into golden honey, just like lead into gold. And honey itself is known to have good health benefits, so it was a good antibacterial, but the Elixir itself can be made into a honey and then ultimately can be formed into a stone through further heating. So then you would have your Elixir or your vegetable Stone. However, in alchemy, there was another stage in which the Elixir could be taken through adding other steps to it which I cannot outline in this video due to oaths I have taken.
The Elixir itself can be raised to an even higher state which is called the Red Lion. This Red Lion, what happens is the Elixir itself actually turns, turns into a blood-red substance. Christian Alchemists refer to this substance as the blood of Christ, and some people believe that the original communion, at least some Alchemists believe that the original Christian communion consisted of this blood-red substance, which does taste a little bit like blood, and the white Mana, which were the original blood or wine and bread or body of Christ. In the earlier Egyptian Mysteries, it was known as the blood of Osiris. This special substance was deemed to be able to heal any part of the body, and it was associated with the Holy Grail itself. In fact, the earliest mention of the word Grail goes back to ancient Sumer where it was referred to as Graal, and this alluded to the alchemical science. This Red Lion could then have a special process to it where an acid was added to it, which would actually transmute it one more time and turn it into what was known as The White Eagle stage in alchemy. This White Eagle substance, which looks very much identical to Mana, has the ability to transmute base metals into gold itself. So the two forms of the philosopher's stone in this capacity then are the Red Lion and the White Eagle, and so in Freemasonry, when our brother is raised by the lion's paw or the eagle's claw, Alchemists like myself certainly believe that this is alluding to the final stage of raising the substance to that perfect Stone.
Now it should be pointed out that along the stage in forming this perfect Stone, there are certain hallmarks within Masonic ritual. One is associated with the sheaf of corn hanging over a water ford. We are told that the word "sheaf" has come to mean a sheaf of corn hanging over a water ford, but this doesn't mean that it has always meant this. In fact, in Greek, the word "cilith" actually means "to revere a stone," so even in this word itself we have illusions to a stone. I should also point out that in the ancient Egyptian tongue, we find not only the Mana of the Hebrews, but we find the Ma, what was known as the Maat or the Ma, which meant truth. The Maat or the Ma'at was the goddess who represented truth and who weighed the scales at the end of one's life to determine one's virtues before they were raised from the dead. Add to this what was known as the Ben, which meant both truth and stone in Hebrew, and the Ma'at Ben was in fact the truth of the stone or the truth of light. If you take this word of Ben and put it backwards, you get the word Neb, which is the Egyptian word for gold. So this was encoded in alchemical Doctrine, which some believe has been passed on to this day within Freemasonry itself.
So I hope seeing some of these alchemical processes can help to make associations between the actual degrees of Freemasonry, Masonic ritual, and the alchemical process. It should be stated that there are many more symbols found within Freemasonry that relate to Alchemy. The fact that, for example, the entire alchemical process goes through, through the stages of turning black, red, and white three times, so it's 3 * 3 changes, which some jurisdictions will recognize as the grand honors of masonry. Other symbols in alchemy included the use of Noah's Ark, because the story of Noah went through the progression of the elements from starting with water at the great flood to air associated with the birds that were let off, the doves that were let off into the air, to finally the landing of Noah and the burnt sacrifice associated with fire. Some of the other symbols that we do find within masonry and Alchemy include the very symbol of the what was called the squared circle itself. The square always represented things material, and the circle represented things spiritual; therefore, the squared circle was a symbol for the philosopher's stone, and of course the symbols that we use to make a squared circle is a square, uh, in order to make a square and a set of compasses in order to make the circle. So the very square and compasses that we find within Freemasonry itself alludes to this idea. Other symbols include the point within a circle, which to The Alchemist was a cipher symbol for both gold and the sun, and it also had cabalistic references. So everywhere we turn within masonry, we find these alchemical ideas. Other symbols include the, the writings of Hermes, particularly the Emerald Tablet, which allude to the above and the below that we find within our Masonic pillars, the globes on top of our pillars, the fact that in some jurisdictions the rods of the actual deacons themselves featured Hermes on top of them, also known as Mercury. In other jurisdictions, the Sun and Moon are featured, which are also from Hermes's Emerald Tablet, which emphasizes that its father is the Sun and its mother is, is the Moon. So these ideas that we find with the Deacon's rods and also with the lesser lights of masonry are fundamental to alchemical texts.
Alchemy further extends into the other rites and bodies of masonry, between the Scottish Rite, which talks about masonry many times throughout its degrees, particularly the 27th degree in the, in the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite, and in which the 32nd-degree brother receives a black hat, the Knight Commander of the Court of Honor receives a red hat, and the 33rd-degree brother receives a white hat, which emphasizes the colors of masonry. These ideas are further emphasized in the York Rite, particularly in relation to Mana, which was said to be stored within the Ark, and of course other Masonic bodies like the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, for example, cover Alchemy quite a bit within their grades. So everywhere within Freemasonry itself can be found these ideas, but because few Brothers have studied the science and the subject of alchemy, few, few Brothers have been aware of this connection. I hope seeing some of these connections in this video has helped you to see the connection that exists and has always existed between Alchemy and Freemasonry. A general study of it can lead one…
To not only a general sense of Mastery within the craft itself, and hence become the Master Mason, becomes a true Master Craftsman, but it can also lead to the study of other esoteric disciplines that were associated with Alchemy, like sacred geometry, the study of Cabala, the study of Gnosticism, and the in the Gnostic doctrines of uniting one's Consciousness with the bigger consciousness of the world.
All these things play into Alchemy, just as they all play into Alchemy or into Freemasonry itself.
I hope this has been enlightening and has provided further light for you on your quest.