The Alchemical Life: An Invocation to 2018

The Hermetically Sealed Personality

We have a physical body. The universe wanted to express itself and constructed a physical paradigm to manifest that expression. The body is a sheath that protects and hides the individuated essence gifted or cursed with sentience and free will. Those that make the decision to embark on that ultimate quest must learn to take the pain, misery, alienation and venom and convert it into creative energy. The secret to knowing a person, a spiritual teacher, potential friend or lover is to observe what they create. This is the supreme alchemy of consciousness, of manifested intentions. True Art was always an alchemical spiritual invocation, a product of muses or divine or supernatural inspiration, or a call, prayer, plead or expression of that energy. Art was alchemical, transmuting the human experience into the subtle realm of ideas and ideals. Life itself is the ultimate expression of art in creating meaning, defining your own sacred path, and participating in the eternal miracle that produces something from nothing.

Many have noted degenerate art was used as a weaponized tool of regimes and modernization to distort the notions of tradition and beauty, of coherence and moral absolutes, into a nihilism or permanent existential angst. Now we see most people creating nothing at all, or misanthropic, neurotic self-indulgent vomiting of their frustrations and failures to make life healthy, meaningful and beautiful. Look at the violent, antisocial music and trauma-based, sensory jarring agenda-laced mainstream media. We can learn what is healthy, just as food or herbs are evaluated by noting their effects on our bodies and mental states. We can reverse engineer hidden secrets in what a person finds attractive, interesting and beautiful, especially when they think no one else is looking. This is a part of a cultural and individual acceptance and complacency that allows and tolerates and then loves and pays for these destructive and toxic elements into their world.

They have sown the seeds of this toxic art, lifestyle and culture and we see the harvest in the crumbling society. This is the fullest corruption of the Kali Yuga, which is not named for the goddess Kali as many think, but for a demon Kali who is the archenemy of Kalki, the 10th and final avatar of the Hindu God Vishnu. The creative divine energy is presenced in our conquering our own demons and venoms and to begin creating and manifesting the world we want to live in for ourselves, our loved ones and by extension, all sentient world. This is the Great Work. To stare into the Abyss and realize the essential void in its frigid, bottomless horrors and return back to the world with love, strength, compassion and honor. We become the spirit of these divine avatars, remaining noble and honorable and strong in the decay as those that give into the demons of their own neurosis, selfishness and victimization.

Evaluate your peers and friends for what they do in this precious incarnation. Evaluate their creations, from food and nourishment for the family prepared with love and attention, to their poetry, music, their writings. Or discern if they are even creative at all: Are they destructive? Contributing to toxicity, wallowing in victomhood, excuses, deranged narratives of New Age spookism? Conjured fallacies of the anti-tradition and counter-traditions filling their head with dead ends, platitudes and distorted ideals? There has to be a firewall from this type of dissipating energy; it’s infectious, ensnaring and distracting at least and potentially much worse. Almost as bad as the destructive is the one that remains neutral or neutralized by insecurities, excuses and the past. Thus there is either transmutation or mutation or stagnation. We become gold, we bear fruit and ripen on the vine or we rot.

Even the best of intentions are dissipated by talking and not doing. The brain gets its dopamine responses from people’s reactions, it is tricked into thinking it’s accomplished something, but it has just postponed and slightly shifted the burden so it seems lighter. The alchemy is in a true expression, of consistent deeds and actions that accumulate into a legacy and life of integrity. This is of an authentic golden integration of purpose and action of intention and manifestation. This is the alchemical gold of the alchemical life. The person becomes authentic in their integrity and standards and become ultramagnetic in their ability to attract their intentions within the parameters of their station and karma.

Precious metals are often faked, especially in the ancient world. This became to cloud the science of alchemy, reducing it to an issue of gold making, gold faking, away from its spiritual and medicinal original context. As everything becomes more and more artificial, simulated, there has to be genuine third eye vision capacity to recognize true genuine intent. We have to develop the magical empathy to be able to see through the artificial veneers and masks to truly discern what is beneficial, authentic and sincere. Those chattering like pensioners over tea about their spiritual path reverse their progress, and both entangle each other in webs of misguidance, bumping around in the dark with no light.

Alchemy is the ultimate science of humans as microcosms, bringing into being the full essence of the material and spiritual worlds. What we do with each day with our energy, words and actions, what we create or how we express our essence is the indelible marks on the blank canvas of time. Our life, our relationships, what we choose to consume as content (what we listen to, ingest, pro-actively study, research or observe) are the inputs that affect the output of our personal Art. How we potentiate that energy, to heal, to change, to know, to create is the various skillful means that are unique like prescriptions to specific defects or ailments. The healing ordeal is often so intense that many can not even take the first waves of discomfort, so they learn to cope and put on elaborate masks and narratives and have bipolar fits of enthusiasm but they can not stabilize the intensity. They can not fix the volatile.

So people can not be judged or trusted or evaluated by their superficial words and the veneer of their short term actions they want to demonstrate. But we can evaluate them by their art, or the world they create for themselves or are attempting to create for themselves and others. There are the personal signals they attempt to send, and then the overall frequency of their self that they are transmitting to the world. The alchemical process takes a crucible, which in this world means a psychic hermetic seal, an isolation and amplification of one’s own energy that must in some Way harmonize with the macrocosmic symphony.

At some fundamental level, the meaning of life is, again, an expression of energy and consciousness. A true free will is necessary to allow the myriads things to interact truly in the causal and acausal realms. The true evolution is the higher and more subtle manifestations of the purest consciousness that retains its physicality. This is the true sensual and sensory and sensuous nature of carnal bodies. What is expressed, consciously or subconsciously through what you create (or don’t create) is the expression of what you truly are.

It is no wonder that the greatest Masters nearly all had a craft, skill or art they were famous for in addition to their spiritual pursuits, from expert butchers, teamen, gardeners, painters, musicians, archers, potters, chefs, or farmers. Because these are complimentary disciplines of this physical world. All ancient art and life was an invocation to creative powers as divine, from the Shiva linga to the rites of Spring and solar cults of the solstice. This is also a means to opt out of the system, investing in community, friends and neighbors and starving the beast system by simply creating you own autonomy, sustenance, entertainment and meaning. Trade or buy soap, coffee, produce from your friends and neighbours who make and sell their own rather than some corporation. This is a financial alchemy of permaculture and local economies that empowers individuals and community. We surrender family, business, community, autonomy by buying into the corporate and mainstream systems that deprive of us an authentic creative existence.

This is the essence of life. It is not a passive, victimized surrender to circumstance but magic in its true essence of willing change through sheer energy. This is the essence of medicine, using skillful means and herbs to be the catalyst for the ekstasis or frenzy needed to create, heal and transmute by the power of expressed, focus creative consciousness. Before you can trust others and build and create meaning and culture of innate worth you must learn to trust yourself. By remaining consistently dedicated and letting your vows and oaths to yourself have real meaning. Be a person of quality; creative, healthy and strong. For help making herbal allies and alchemical catalysts to a new you in the New Year contact us at bottlegourdherbs @ gmail .com