Hot off the Press!

Michael Guarino announces the publication of his new book, First Person Plural - The Journey of Soul Personality & Individual Identity

This book explores personality and its relationship to identity. The relationship between the two is built on the premise that “who I am” can best be explored by reflecting and integrating “who I was” with “who I want to be." These reflections propose the notion that personality is an attribute of soul, and identity is an opportunity to express it. Personality evolves. Identity expands and then ends. The expansion of identity is an opportunity for the personality to evolve to a higher level of conscious awareness. 

We are each a marriage of body and soul, and consequently all of our desires have their origin in our dual nature. This book is concerned with the traits and attributes that manifest from desire and is primarily concerned with desires associated with our higher consciousness. 

Two voices and styles of writing are used in this collection of essays. One voice is first person and personal, the other third person and speculative. Often two essays were written at the same time, one from an objective perspective that forms a hypothesis, the other looking at personal experience to formulate and validate the objective view. 

The book is available in print, as well as on Kindle for 99 cents. Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/First-Person-Plural-Michael-Guarino-ebook/dp/B00L0FYH8A/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402957262&sr=1-6&keywords=first+person+plural

Mr. Guarino may be contacted at: mailto: guarino26@msn.com

For those of you who missed reading Dennis William Hauck's article in the Rose Croix Journal, Volume 10, Searching for the Cosmic Quintessence: How Alchemists Meditated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, go to:

http://www.rosecroixjournal.org/issues/2014/articles/vol10_2_24_hauck.pdf

Links to free audio downloads of the meditations are at the end of the article.

In follow-up to the article, Dr. Hauck lead a discussion group on Google Hangout.  Here is the link to view the video:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/104259202139836494301/events/clqkc4li1th81ci3k8u1nu6o2is

The Rocky Mountain Chapter of the International Alchemy Guild

Brothers and Sisters,

As 2014 comes to a close, I reflect back on the previous months we have shared together. We have had guest lectures from Kevin Townley on the Tarot and Alchemy. We hosted Timothy Hogan, who spoke about the Philosopher's Stone, Gnosticism, Sufism, and the Druze. We were very lucky that Tim shared private photographs he was allowed to take of unpublished Islamic alchemical plates. We started our elixirs and are working towards getting our salts to the white. We have started a coffee meetup every Monday where everyone is welcome who wishes to discuss any topic on hermeticism or just share in the fellowship. We have added four new members to our circle and should have another two joining us later this month. As we become a stronger and stronger conduit for the Great Work, we will continue to expand!

We have one more meeting in November, which will be run by our Vice President, Greg Carrol, who will be setting up next year’s work. He will be discussing distillation and we will be extracting the sulfur from our plants. Next year will be dedicated to distillation and Qabalah. We will pick a sephirot each month and discuss the aspects of it. We will work our way through the Tree of Life while doing different methods of distillation. We do not have a meeting scheduled for December so everyone can take a break and reflect on our coming year.

2015 will be my last year as President of our Chapter. At the end of the year I will be passing on the torch to whoever is elected to lead us next. I will still be here to walk us through different experiments and offer workshops. I want to allow for fresh ideas and new paths to develop and give others a chance to lead our group. This will allow me to focus on other projects for the Alchemy Study Program, the Guild, as well as running the Alchemy Conference starting up in 2016.

Mathew David Ingalls

The Rocky Mountain Alchemy Conference:

http://rockymountainalchemyconference.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therockymountainalchemyconference?ref_type=bookmark

Website: http://rockymountainchapteriag.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IAG_RockyMt

President Mathew Ingalls:  mailto:mingalls@rockymountainchapteriag.com

Vice President Greg Carroll:  mailto:gcarroll@rockymountainchapteriag.com

Information: mailto:info@rockymountainchapteriag.com

Compassion is a verb.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.  

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Featured Articles

The Very Last Question… A Meditation

By Ricardo J. Menéndez González, PhD, FRC

The great educator Dr. Maria Montessori understood that, normally, children start asking questions of the “What” and “How” type during the ages of 2 and 4. Around age 5 they normally start asking the “Why” of everything. It seems as if the “Why” questions fall on a much higher level of cognitive skills. This inquisitive attitude of the cycles of “what, how and why” (to be repeated throughout life) is a strong factor on how humanity develops and consciousness expands.

Wondering if we would be asking a question before enlightenment occurs, and if so, on the nature of this very last inquisitive exercise, it occurred to me, following the previous logic, that it probably would be a “Why” question. This moment, I suspect, is very similar (if not identical) to the very last step of the alchemist prior to obtaining the philosopher stone and the elixir of life.

I don’t know what the “Why” question might be of an alchemical nature, but I dare to think and feel that it must have an answer along the following lines: “Because Love is all there is…” I also feel that the last alchemical step must be accompanied with a strong catalytic push of the purest dimension of divine Love. I suspect that until the answer and the question are completely intertwined and become one, the real magical effect will not occur.

I remember reading a supposedly Gandhi anecdote of a journalist asking him the old question: “Should the end justify the means?” To this, I understand that he replied by asking him to return the following week as he needed to meditate upon it... As the agreed days passed, Gandhi replied to the journalist (paraphrasing):

-“Your question is not a very good one as it assumes certain pre-condition to be true, that is of a separation between means and end”. “The means”, he added, “should be one with the end...”

Enlightenment is probably a “forever” experience, always fresh in our memories and consciousness. It appears to be logical that this powerful spiritual phenomenon must exist prior (or simultaneously) to a similar achievement in the material world with similar “forever” characteristics that is the transformation of lead into gold. The immutability of gold is the logical result at this level, and the adept’s permanent “golden halo” at the spiritual one. Then, Master Thoth’s position of “As above, so below; and as below, so above" will be fulfilled.

The achievement of the philosopher stone might be simply a pure attunement with the Cosmos by following the rules of Mother Nature in an alchemical mystical process. So, if this is the case, in order to achieve enlightenment, a highly purified spiritual development is necessary, and a similar parallel process must occur in the material world in order to obtain a golden manifestation. Alchemists very clearly state that the alchemical adept and the piece of lead, both need to go through the seven purifying steps of the alchemical process for a successful result, the one on the spiritual level, the other on the material.

I wonder what the rest of the words after “Why” would come on that last question (if so)… Who knows…? Hopefully, one day we will. That reminds me, somehow, of the old anecdote our navigational teacher once told us to exemplify the complexity of celestial navigation (this, of course before the introduction of the GPS). It’s the story of a high seas dialogue aboard a ship at the captain’s contemplation of the immensity of the ocean and the multiplicity of stars in the firmament. Even though it falls in the “When and Where” categories of “Time and Space” questions, I think and feel that it is pertinent here as we analyze a question by trying to balance the dual importance of its process and its answer…

- “Navigator, where are we?" asked the captain.

- “I don’t know exactly, Sir, but I know where we are going…”

Ah, to study in those hallowed halls of alchemical auguries. To meditate at magickal monuments and succumb to sacred sites. Working mind and body, for synergy of spirit surely supplicates gloriously alchemystikal transmutations.

This past July I was blessed with the time and space to tour libraries and archives in and around London and Edinburgh, along with my fellow Master's classmates of Library and Information Science. My alchemical study was able to evolve exponentially through both independent adventure and the indomitable support of my academic adviser and assistant professor. Their enthusiasm and faith allowed the crafting of my largest research paper to date, which explores the 16th and 17th century medico-alchemical holdings of the British, Freemasons' Hall, and Royal College of Physicians-London libraries.

This culminating research paper was completed after returning home to central Appalachia, USA; with primary research being done in the August of my trip, the majority of time I was being pulled from one nexus to the next. My calcining dark night of the soul was taken care of right off the bat, my first night of Saturn, so after that newborn perception experienced the innocence of freedom at unprecedented levels. With the personal guidebook of Carr-Gomm & Heygate's Book of English Magic, my center pulsated from this core of egregores.

Ashmole, Dee, Crowley, Mathers, Fortune, Waite, and Forman, along with a grand magisterium of et cetera esoteric personages, guided my adventures abroad. A conjunctive centering point along this entire journey was the magickal niche bookstore Treadwell's, whose proprietress, Dr. Christina Oakley-Harrington, became an insta-friend as we chatted on the richly carved antique couch gracing her shop. As a matter-of-fact, at different times throughout my journey all assistants in that bookshop gave me much wonderment and wisdom to work with, precisely corresponding to the moment.

Treadwell's bookstore, always fermenting with activity as a metaphysical community center, delighted me in a doctoral-level presentation illuminating a brief necromantic history of England and an occult walking tour through several boroughs of London. Tracing in the footsteps of the aforementioned practitioners is a humbling, yet, energizing initiation: The highly publicized public ritual of Aleister Crowley at Cleopatra's Needle; the neighborhoods where Simon Forman practiced, and voluminously recorded in minute detail, his highly successful astrological medical practice; Covent Garden, where The Golden Dawn came to light; and, of course, details and depictions of The Hellfire Club.

Oxford, an ancient seat of knowledge and wisdom, showed me the haunting grounds of Elias Ashmole, antiquarian Freemason who had a monumental impact on the preservation of the entire university system, as well as systems of magickal theory and practice. For also it was he who worked his whole life in order to rescue and accumulate the shattered and scattered writings, subject to King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries. Symbolic Freemason architect Christopher Wren, along with authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, also walked these streets and contemplated their worlds within this charming town. Having tea in The Eagle and Child pub, I synergized with egregores brought forth from discussions held by The Inklings in that place: the informal group in which Tolkien and Lewis mulled over their writings with other interested parties...for those who listen and feel, the walls talk and the fly that was previously observing, regales with anecdotes!

Temple Church in the City of London was my quiet place of repose within the bustle of that metropolis. Built by Knights Templar in the 1100's, the blend of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, along with the original round chapel structure, gave me hours of meditative cleansing time...I can still feel the reverberatory effect of construction to the point of physical vision. The separation of continuity, from Grail Mysteries until now, has not affected the strong matronly message evident in the walls of solid masonry.

In the final fleeting and furious moments of my academic journey, and with only seconds remaining to locate and distill my primary research, I had narrowed down my investigation into three London libraries. The only institution I could take pictures in, though, was the Royal College of Physicians, so I was overjoyed to get original images of, amongst other items of interest, a heavily annotated 1591 edition of The Compound of Alchemy by George Ripley. Halfway through this frantic 11th hour research within this rich repository did I realize I was in a totally different library than I thought I was! All my preliminary correspondence and research had me preparing to go to a completely different institution, and up until that quite surreal moment of realization, for all I knew, I was in that different library which I never even set foot in! Upon telling my adviser, she stated that I had a guardian angel...my journey was definitely guided by more than just academia...an academia that is becoming interested, once again, in the esoteric arts...another example, perhaps, of the coagulation of disciplines into a single, holistic paradigm?

Patrick Corcoran was born, bred, and lives, in West Virginia with his wife, Morgan, of five years. He has been a formal student of alchemy since 2006 at Flamel College and is now a student of the transmuted Alchemy Study Program. A member of the International Alchemy Guild, he looks forward to the success of the Alchemy Museum at Rosicrucian Park in San Jose, CA, and plans on visiting during this next summer solstice. Patrick aspires to produce spagyric preparations for healing and to assist in the creation of a holistic healing school in his home of central Appalachia.

Contact Patrick at:  mailto: patrick_corcoran@hotmail.com 

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.

Lily Tomlin

Alchemical Awakenings 

The Awakening of an Alchemy Study Program Student:

Matthew Thornburg

I have been really blessed with the Alchemy Guild these past years.  How I came to the Guild?  It was when I was in junior college studying for an Engine and Drive Train Mechanic Certificate.  About a year before then, my Grandmother gave me a Christmas gift of my very first Toshiba laptop.

In those days the Alchemy Guild was still part of Flamel College.  I would go on the website and read about its seminars in Los Angles, California but at that time I was very shy and didn’t sign up for any classes.  Two years later I finally decided to join the Alchemy Guild.

It was then that I became interested in internal alchemy, and my search within began.  The only close thing I could find to inner alchemy was Karate, and I studied to become a first-degree Shodan.  I was very excited and serious about this study! 

I have begun the Alchemy Study Program and received a free practical course, for which I am grateful.  The first book I purchased from the Crucible bookstore was The Sorcerer's Stone: A Beginner's Guild to Alchemy by Guild Alchemist Dennis William Hauck. The book put me right on track in pursuing the Great Works. 

Currently, my interest is focused on food, and I am pursuing the study of Herbal Alchemy. 

. . . and the Story of a Practicing Alchemist

   Finding the Alchemical Path

By Mathew David Ingalls, President of the Rocky Mountain Chapter

A story I share with members of my group is how I found my way into the occult, which put me on this alchemical journey. Most stories of occultists start at a young age. My story is no different, except for how I was exposed to the signs, symbols, and language of the occult.

My path started when I was about 6 years old living at Beale Air Force Base in California. During World War II Beale AFB housed German POWS. The obsession of Hitler and the SS with the occult has been no secret. When the Germans came to the US, they brought their secret societies with them. Where I used to play there were doorways carved into the trees. In the doorways were symbols I had never seen before. I looked at these symbols for years never knowing what they meant. It wasn’t until 20 plus years later that I learned they were Norse Rune symbols.

When I moved to Kirkland Air Force Base, I was introduced to another symbol, the Rose and Cross. My friend’s father was probably the largest man I had met--he was no stranger to a bench press! Most of the kids were terrified of him because he didn’t say much and because of his large stature. One night when I was sleeping over, he came home from work and asked if I wanted to help him with something. I nervously said yes and went out front. It was about 2:00 in the morning. He handed me a bag and we started pulling snails off the rose bushes. I thought the rose bushes belonged to his wife because flowers were for girls. He explained to me the symbolism of the rose and how the different colors meant different things. He told me he kept them because they symbolized the perfection he hoped to find within himself. He then lifted his sleeve and on his arm was a large red rose on a red cross.

A couple of years later we moved again to Southern California. I was in middle school and went to the library one day where there were “free books" that we could take home. I found a couple books in the trash and when I pulled them out, they were books on astrology, magic, and what I thought was chemistry. The librarian said she tossed them out because she didn’t think anyone would want them. I took them home and started reading. Soon I started seeing the same symbols that I saw when I was younger.

I was using the astrology book to try to predict people’s future. The magic book turned out to be a grimoire which we stopped using when a couple of my friends got freaked out--things started appearing! The chemistry book, the title of which I cannot remember, had the same symbols as in the magic book, but had lab experiments. I got some test tubes, distilled water, and pulled up some plants from the house to see what would happen. The horrible smell of fermentation caused me to toss them. As time went on, I found more and more books. By the time I was 15 I had discovered that the “chemistry” I was reading about was actually alchemy.

It wasn’t until I was about 22 that I earnestly started to seeked out initiation. I was doing research on the symbols I saw as a kid, and I kept seeing stories about Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. I was initiated, passed, and raised at Prince Frederick Lodge No. 142. I joined just about every appendant body within Freemasonry looking for something more than what they were offering. I had seen these alchemical and astrological symbols associated with the craft before. Shortly thereafter I joined the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rose Cross (AMORC) and the Traditional Martinist Order (TMO). There I read about an alchemy teacher named Frater Albertus. I even found an old AMORC alchemy lesson which introduced me to ethyl maceration and tincturing. I had only done a couple of tinctures before it was time for me to move again.

As all the pieces started to come together, I moved to Denver, Colorado to attend Gunsmithing School. I had taken welding and metallurgy courses in the past so I thought I would learn a trade for personal enrichment. I left my mother Masonic lodge as well and joined East Denver No. 160 in Denver, Colorado, where I was actively attending meetings. At East Denver just about every member belonged to other occult orders. We would discuss Rosicrucianism, Martinism, Magic, Alchemy, Gnosticism, Qabalah--just about everything under the Sun.

I was told about a forum called The Sanctum Sanctorum where Timothy Hogan taught alchemy courses based on the symbolism of Freemasonry. I also joined the International Alchemy Guild and Flammel College, which later became the Alchemy Study Program. Dennis William Hauck was my teacher for the study program and he guided me through the spiritual and psychological Work.

Later my roommate who was a third generation Rosicrucian gifted me with a copy of The Alchemist’s Handbook by Frater Albertus. With all these resources alchemy slowly consumed every bit of my being. I completed Tim’s work, received my hermetics degree certificate from the Alchemy Study Program and then set off to The Spagyricus Institute in Washington State where I completed my Prima course under the tutelage of Robert Allen Bartlett.

During this time I started a chapter in Denver for the International Alchemy Guild called the Rocky Mountain Chapter. We hold meetings to practice spiritual and laboratory Work, and we have guest speakers who specialize in different aspects of the Occult. There is much more to this story, but this gives a small glimpse into some ways the Occult and Alchemy have influenced my life.

Contact Mathew David Ingalls at:  mailto: mingalls@rockymountainchapteriag.com

Practical Alchemy

Experiments with the Elixir of Gold 

By Dr. Leland Byrd

All of my work in oil of gold is self-taught following the teachings of Frater Albertus.  None of my investigations were linear.

Oil of gold experimentation came about when I was making silver elixir.  The silver elixir was a crystaline clear liquid stored in a lab bottle.  It was this result that lead me to make an elixir of gold.  While it was in the deep red state I added the crystaline silver liquid.  When mixed together, the liquid turned a deeper red-black.  Next I added 92% grape alcohol to 100mml of the red-black mixture.  As the drops of grape alcohol made contact with the red-black liquid, it sank immediately to bottom of the flask.  Oil was then separated from red-black mixture.  The oil and the elixir became a deep orange color.  This deep orange elixir grows stronger with age.  The oil is now waiting for further healing investigations.

I have married the salts of the combined silver and gold, which was a very time consuming process.

My next intention is to experiment with dissolving gold nuggets in aqua regia. 

In my readings, I came across a Danish alchemist who had made a philosopher’s stone of very pure, light violet gold salts by reducing acid ph with potassium carbonate.  I learned that the potassium carbonate is very alkaline, and I continued to reduce the gold from a very light violet to a white gold salt. This salt is waiting further investigation when a proper use has been determined. 

Pure gold salts from other ph reductions were then investigated for transmutation purposes.  The experiment began by first melting a mini ball of lead in a tuna fish can to which was added gold powder and nitrate powder.  This experiment did not work as I had hoped.  The gold powder did not stay with the lead long enough to transform it; however, the gold powder and nitrate powder did penetrate through the tin can, which gave the tin a golden color.  The tin can rusted around the gold part and eventually the iron rust incorporated with the gold in the iron.  Further research is required.

Investigation is being made into the glass of lead and gold, combined, for crystal formation.  This experiment dissolves in acid and needs further work. Solve et coagula processes are being put into place now.

Dr. Leland Byrd may be contacted with questions at mailto:lelandbyrd7@gmail.com

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.  - Steve Jobs

Op Ed 

 A Journey Through Loss

by Paulette Dager-Harris

I have been enveloped in a shroud these past weeks with the unexpected passing of my brother-in-law, and this week a beloved friend.  These events have given me pause for reflection and have opened a space to move through grief and into observation.  Taking this step back has allowed me a glimmer into a deeper awareness that love and loss may be one of the greatest challenges we face as alchemists.  It is looking into the darkness of Death.

The week has moved me through key stages of the alchemical process triggered by these passings.  The initial feeling of searing pain ignited a fire deep within, the fire of change.  When I was able to recognize this fire as Calcination, I could sit in its discomfort and allow the fire to burn to embers.

Exhausted by the intensity of this emotional fire, tears began to flow.  I thought they would never stop. But tears began to ease as I equated them with the waters of Dissolution and slowly I began to feel lighter.  My mind questioned why I was not able to visualize an image or to dream about these dearly departed Ones, wishing for a farewell of sorts.  The words in Dennis William Hauck’s book, The Idiot’s Guide to Alchemy, echoed through my consciousness.  He explained that such conjuring oftentimes occurs in an attempt to hold the dearly departed near to us. With that understanding, the desire to reconnect evaporated.  Now their words of humor and joy spontaneously come to me at the most surprising and often ironic times.

My experience has been that by allowing these two stages of grief to run their course, glimpses of a life without my loved ones are awakening new desires within me.  Doors of possibilities are opening in my mind's eye as I step more fully into the potentiality of Separation.  The process of choosing to discard that which no longer serves and discerning those qualities I wish to carry forward in my life is helping me to form a new way of being that is unencumbered and expansive.            

This feeling of expansion is germinating a new belief system.  Renewed confidence in my abilities is growing.  My path becomes clearer, more defined.  Loss is being replaced with a sense of well being, knowing that I may carry on in this World enriched by the legacy they have left me.  I see in these discoveries the energetic state of Conjunction.

The journey does not stop here for Conjunction is the springboard that will take me to even greater heights of evolution.

Still through Egypt's desert places

Flows the lordly Nile,

From its banks the great stone faces

Gaze with patient smile.

Still the pyramids imperious

Pierce the cloudless skies,

And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,

Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian

Demi-gods and kings?

Nothing left but an inscription

Graven on stones and rings.

Where are Helios and Hephaestus,

Gods of eldest eld?

Where is Hermes Trismegistus,

Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred

Thousand books he wrote?

By the Thaumaturgists plundered,

Lost in lands remote;

In oblivion sunk forever,

As when o'er the land

Blows a storm-wind, in the river

Sinks the scattered sand.

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,

Seems this Theurgist,

In deep meditation mostly

Wrapped, as in a mist.

Vague, phantasmal, and unreal

To our thought he seems,

Walking in a world ideal,

In a land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging

Name and fame in one,

Like a stream, to which, converging

Many streamlets run?

Till, with gathered power proceeding,

Ampler sweep it takes,

Downward the sweet waters leading

From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,

Pausing now and then,

On the mystic union pondering

Between gods and men;

Half believing, wholly feeling,

With supreme delight,

How the gods, themselves concealing,

Lift men to their height.

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,

In the thoroughfare

Breathing, as if consecrated,

A diviner air;

And amid discordant noises,

In the jostling throng,

Hearing far, celestial voices

Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?

Who has searched or sought

All the unexplored and spacious

Universe of thought?

Who, in his own skill confiding,

Shall with rule and line

Mark the border-land dividing

Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!

How thy name sublime

Has descended to this latest

Progeny of time!

Happy they whose written pages

Perish with their lives,

If amid the crumbling ages

Still their name survives!

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately

Found I in the vast,

Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,

Grave-yard of the Past;

And a presence moved before me

On that gloomy shore,

As a waft of wind, that o'er me

Breathed, and was no more.