Alchymia Archetypica By Hereward Tilton 1
It is by means of this virtue that the Christian Cabalist effects an
ascent through the heavenly spheres culminating in his own
angelification or deification. Integrating Neoplatonic and Hermetic
currents of thought and practice with a heterodox Christian
interpretation of the Jewish Kabbalah, this central esoteric tradition
of the Renaissance must figure henceforth in scholarly historiographies of alchemy; in this regard the present paper is very much consonant with the anti-eclectic historiography proposed by Hanegraaff (2012: 152, 377-379).
Indeed, to the best of my knowledge the phrase «spiritual alchemy»
itself first occurs in an esoteric context in the work of a Christian
Cabalist, the Englishman Robert Fludd (1574-1637). The work is the
Clavis philosophiæ et alchymiæ Fluddanæ (1633), and the context is Marin
Mersenne’s dispute with Fludd concerning the latter’s defense of the
elusive Rosicrucian fraternity.
The Catholic Mersenne objected in particular to Fludd’s Christian Cabalistic account of the human soul’s union with the divine men or agent intellect, which seemed to make man the equal of God; he also disputed Fludd’s assertion that «the righteous man is an alchemist, who having found the Philosophers’ Stone makes himself immortal with it» (Fludd 1633: 75). Fludd (referring to himself in the third person) responds thus:
Fludd does not deny that the pious and just [iustus] man is a spiritual alchemist.
But does Mersenne understand or discern the true alchemist? He, indeed, is someone who can distinguish falsehood from truth, vice from virtue, darkness from light, the impure stain of sin from the purity of the god-like soul, and separate them with the fire of the divine genius. For by this way and no other is leprous lead transformed into gold — with the necessary washing and cleansing, to be sure. Thus with tears, penitence and abstinence, sin is separated from that scintilla of supercelestial life, from that true gold (so I declare) procured by Christ.
Thus the son of darkness, assisted in his own activity by a divine act of the Word, arises and is exalted into the son of God and light.
Thus the impious and unrighteous man, glorified by this spiritual alchemy, is elevated from the darkness into the light sphere of piety and righteousness.
From the book : Alchymia Archetypica By Hereward Tilton
The Catholic Mersenne objected in particular to Fludd’s Christian Cabalistic account of the human soul’s union with the divine men or agent intellect, which seemed to make man the equal of God; he also disputed Fludd’s assertion that «the righteous man is an alchemist, who having found the Philosophers’ Stone makes himself immortal with it» (Fludd 1633: 75). Fludd (referring to himself in the third person) responds thus:
Fludd does not deny that the pious and just [iustus] man is a spiritual alchemist.
But does Mersenne understand or discern the true alchemist? He, indeed, is someone who can distinguish falsehood from truth, vice from virtue, darkness from light, the impure stain of sin from the purity of the god-like soul, and separate them with the fire of the divine genius. For by this way and no other is leprous lead transformed into gold — with the necessary washing and cleansing, to be sure. Thus with tears, penitence and abstinence, sin is separated from that scintilla of supercelestial life, from that true gold (so I declare) procured by Christ.
Thus the son of darkness, assisted in his own activity by a divine act of the Word, arises and is exalted into the son of God and light.
Thus the impious and unrighteous man, glorified by this spiritual alchemy, is elevated from the darkness into the light sphere of piety and righteousness.
From the book : Alchymia Archetypica By Hereward Tilton
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