How can you use alchemy

In terms of personal transformation, separation involves rediscovering who you are at your core - the visionary "gold" of your life that was previously muddied by the baser, "lead"-like elements of your life. It requires a conscious choice of what is worth getting rid of and what is worth reincorporating into your new, refined personality.

Try thinking about what characteristics you respect most in someone you admire, and why those characteristics are important. Writing in a journal is a great way to gain insight and become more self-aware. It allows you to catalog your thoughts and make connections between the way you think and the way you behave.

Recognizing your own negative qualities is probably the most profound realization one can have, but sometimes we need help in realizing our shortcomings.

If you ask a few trusted friends to give you an honest assessment, though, you'll probably gain some valuable insight into what aspects of your personality or demeanor could stand to change. Part 2. Practice conjunction. Alchemically, conjunction involves assembling the saved elements from the separation stage into something new and different.

In terms of personal transformation, conjunction requires you to combine the conscious and subconscious minds, as well as elements of the masculine and feminine components of your personality, into something new. In other words, don't try to become that which you are not - become the best parts of who you already are. Try removing yourself from any distractions to a quiet place.

Close your eyes and focus solely on the pattern of your breathing. Breathe slowly through your nostrils and into your abdomen, hold the breath for a few seconds but not to the point of discomfort , and exhale slowly through the nostrils. Focus on the sensation of breathing in through your nostrils, the feeling of your abdomen rising and falling, and the sensation of the air escaping back out through your nostrils.

Try visualizing the best version of yourself. Imagine everything going well in your life, and imagine yourself as being fully prepared and in control of everything in your life. Think about what is most important to you and what aspects of yourself you value the most. Begin fermentation. Fermentation traditionally involved using microorganisms such as bacteria or yeast, for example to chemically alter a substance.

Common applications of fermentation include the use of yeast to convert sugar into alcohol or the use of bacteria to turn milk into cheese. In terms of personal transformation, fermentation requires you to accept inspiration of some type that will energize or enlighten you. These include but are not limited to deep and intense prayer, deep meditation, a conscious desire for some mystical or spiritual union with a higher power, transformative therapy, or altered states of consciousness. Proceed to distillation.

Distillation is the process of heating a substance until it turns to vapor, then collecting the condensed vapor as it cools into a liquid. Distillation is sometimes called purifying because it further removes impurities and nonessential components for example, think about how brandy is distilled from wine by boiling off the water.

When it comes to personal transformation, distillation is the "purification" of your personal psychic forces to ensure that nothing remains of the undesirable elements of your old self. Test Your Vocabulary. Test your vocabulary with our question quiz! Love words?

Need even more definitions? Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'. Take the quiz. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa , are confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek alchemy.

Michael Scot, the renowned wizard of popular tradition, earned his reputation by numerous works on astrology and alchemy. Francis Bacon abuses the astrologers of his day no less than the alchemists, but he does so because he has visions of a reformed astrology and a reformed alchemy. A variety of topics, including alchemy , history. Forman also practiced alchemy , for Lilly found among his papers several horaries asking whether he would ever attain the Philosopher's Stone.

The people there perform alchemy with those they meet and like, and sometimes it seems like a supernatural bonding. I studied alchemy and new age ideas at first, and then yoga. These impure materials could be transmuted by alchemy into the perfection of gold.

This was known to medieval alchemy as the sign of the cloven hoof.. Here is the possibility for transformation, for experiencing true spiritual alchemy. A number of ideas from Neo-Confucian and Taoist philosophy also occur in the texts as well as references to internal alchemy. By winning an part history part newer alchemy ' was. I really got a sense of the true alchemy of macrobiotics. Rising out of the left hand figure's shoulder is a Tau Cross, which is associated with the Mithraic cult and alchemy.

The Alchemy Task manager helps you manage multiple Alchemy workstations in a production environment, allowing your staff to maximize productivity. Its emphasis on the ancient Egyptian roots of western alchemy will also interest those drawn to Jung's transpersonal psychology and alchemical studies. Like astrology, the symbolism of alchemy has in modern times been scrutinized in the light of Jungian psychology. In the later years of his life he turned to the study of the earlier phases of the science which he did so much to advance, and students of chemical history are greatly indebted to him for his book on Les Origines de l'alchimie and his Introduction a l'etude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen age , as well as for publishing translations of various old Greek, Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy and chemistry Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, , and La Chimie au moyen age, In the earlier part of the 16th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but the preparation of medicines, and this union of chemistry with medicine was one characteristic of the iatrochemical school of which he was the precursor.

It seems that this secondary principle became the dominant idea in alchemy , and in this sense the word is used in Byzantine literature of the 4th century; Suidas, writing in the 11th century, defines chemistry as the " preparation of silver and gold " see Alchemy. As a Rosicrucian Wollner dabbled in alchemy and other mystic arts, but he also affected to be zealous for Christian orthodoxy, imperilled by Frederick II.

However, the goals of alchemy went far beyond simply creating some golden nuggets. Alchemy was rooted in a complex spiritual worldview in which everything around us contains a sort of universal spirit, and metals were believed not only to be alive but also to grow inside the Earth. When a base, or common, metal such as lead was found, it was thought to simply be a spiritually and physically immature form of higher metals such as gold. To the alchemists, metals were not the unique substances that populate the Periodic Table , but instead the same thing in different stages of development or refinement on their way to spiritual perfection.

As James Randi notes in his "Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural," "Beginning about the year and reaching its flower in medieval times, alchemy was an art based partly upon experimentation and partly upon magic. Early investigators of natural processes centered their search on a mythical substance they knew as philosopher's stone, which was supposed to possess many valuable attributes such as the power to heal, to prolong life, and to change base metals into precious metal — such as gold.

Historian Nevill Drury, in his book "Magic and Witchcraft," notes that, "The word alchemy is thought to derive from an Egyptian word, 'chem' or 'qem,' meaning black — a reference to the black alluvial soils bordering the Nile We know that the Greek word 'chyma,' meaning to fuse or cast metals, established itself in Arabic as 'al kimia' — from which alchemy is derived.