The alchemical tradition in India begins with the Nath Siddhas - they
wanted to become 'siddhas', that is, enlightened yogins who had realized
the ultimate while yet living - jivan-mukti.
Yoga is alchemical in the sense that brain chemicals can be altered by
means of mantra and hatha yoga. According to MMY soma is produced in the
human gut during meditation.
Shaman rituals and customs are widespread in India. Closely associated
with the legend of the Northern Shaman is the classical form of ecstatic
practice.
The word shaman means 'to know' in the Tunga language, associated with
the Fly Agaric or Amanita muscaria, the 'magic mushroom of immortality'.
The use of Amanita was practiced by groups all across the northern
Eurasia, especially eastern Siberia before the migration to South Asia.
According to what I've read, there is some evidence that those who used
prehistoric drinking vessels as 'beakers' took Fly Agaric in a ritual,
cultic context.
There is an old nursery rhyme:
"He has of purple pure
A mantle around him.
Say, who may the manikin be
Who stands there on one leg?"
On 9/27/2013 10:26 AM, Share Long wrote:
ah ha! the plot thickens...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* "s3raph...@yahoo.com" <s3raph...@yahoo.com>
*To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
*Sent:* Friday, September 27, 2013 10:21 AM
*Subject:* [FairfieldLife] RE: "Secrets of Alchemy"
In new-age shops I've noticed a couple of books by this chap - I've
not read them but he's into TM!
ROBERT E. COX holds a master’s degree in Vedic Studies from the
Institute of Creative Intelligence in Switzerland. For nine years he
lived as a reclusive monk, during which time he received intuitive
cognitions regarding the structure and dynamics of consciousness that
inspired his research.
Might be worth a peek? Google the titles : -
"The Elixir of Immortality: A Modern-Day Alchemist's Discovery of the
Philosopher's Stone" and
"Creating the Soul Body: The Sacred Science of Immortality"
---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote:
From a review by Nicholas Popper of Lawrence M. Principe's Secrets of
Alchemy:
Alchemy has not always been associated with esoteric mystics muttering
necromantic incantations in the quest for spiritual purification. For
much of its history, Principe reveals, alchemy was recognized as a
sophisticated pursuit entailing the vigorous exertion of mind and
hand, a convergence of laboratory experimentation and theoretical
speculation that yielded spectacular control of chemical processes. To
protect their hard-earned knowledge, alchemists wrote under pseudonyms
and encrypted discoveries in mystical-sounding codenames (Decknamen).
While this contributed to alchemy’s association with mysticism,
Principe argues persuasively that its traditional essence lay in the
expert combining of substances, and that no account of it can
rightfully ignore its experimental and material foundations....
...Such flawed [mystical] interpretations stem from projecting
post-Enlightenment meanings of alchemy onto the earlier period and
assuming that earlier alchemists’ spiritual declarations wholly
governed their coded recipes....These reflected a context in which all
knowledge was described as a divine gift....
Read more:
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1317931.ece
