The Summer 1988 GnosisInterview with Art Kunkin:"Practical Alchemy AndPhysical Immortality"

Submitted by Art Kunkin on Sat, 2008-08-16 23:32. Practical Alchemy & Physical ImmortalityAn Interview with Art Kunkinby Christopher FarmerGnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Tradition#8, Summer 1988"Everything possible to be believed is animage of truth." —William BlakeWith a twinkle in his eye. Art Kunkin gladly shared his experiences and initiations into alchemy. His mentor, Frater Albertus, died without a successor so Albertus's school and laboratory remain empty after four years.Art's latest incarnation as a practical alchemist would seem to contrast sharply with his '60s persona as editor and founder of the notorious L.A. Free Press until he orients you in the path he's taken over the last couple of decades and you see how eclectic he really is.The interview took place in mid-May, 1988 in a Santa Monica healthfood restaurant conveniently adjacent to the busy offices of theWhole Life Times, where he has been Senior Editor for the past twoyears. When we briefly touched upon politics, he just smiled when Ireminded him that Queen Elizabeth I had consulted John Dee(unofficial royal astrologer) when she wanted to know the date of hercoronation. He is an easy person to interview, as he can anticipatequestions.I went to a workshop Art taught and was enchanted. Here we havethe smith as the protagonist, dominating matter by transforming the"prima materia." As that prophet of Romanticism, Novalis, put it"Alle Erfahrung ist Magie, und nur magisch erklarbar." "All practicalknowledge is magic and only explicable magically."Chris Farmer

GNOSIS: What sparked your transition from '60s social activism toworking in an alchemical laboratory?KUNKIN: Toward the end of the '60s I had some psychicexperiences. One event involved precognition and the other along-range healing. As editor of the L.A.Free Press, I was beinginvited to all these New Age groups and one of them invited me to aworkshop where they told me that on the third day I would have acertain psychic experience...and I did! Later I met a psychic who did

a reading for me and, 45 minutes later, things I had been told by thepsychic began to come true.

So I began to ask why and how these events could possibly happen.At first I thought that developing these abilities would help make mea better activist. Then I realized that these abilities would also makeme a happier and better person. So I studied for several years with aGurdjieff-Spinoza group and then helped form a Sufi dance grouphere in Los Angeles, always seeking for the most powerful traditionalteachings as if inner guided.

Finally I studied Tibetan Buddhism and, almost immediately, wasattracted toward a very small and little known tendency in Lamaismcalled Dzogchen. I then found someone in Los Angeles who wasteaching it although he, Andrew DaPassano, did not know to call it bythis name.

G: Doesn't this involve Tantric visualizations as part of the Vajrayanaschool?

K: This was a teaching considered in Tibet to be the highest yogicteaching of Tibetan Buddhism, a rapid way of developing the mostclear mind, balanced emotions and a strong body. After experiencinga two and a half million dollar bankruptcy and stressful dealings withthe IRS, I studied meditation with Andrew for five years andestablished a school with him that eventually had 300 students, asizable operation because I had so many contacts and the teachingwas so powerful.

G: Much of your training in practical alchemy came from attending amodem-day "mystery school" in Utah called Paracelsus College,operated by Albert Riedel who called himself Frater Albertus. Whendid you first hear about this?

K: Sometime in late 1978 a young man who had joined one of ourmeditation classes approached me and said that I was teachingspiritual alchemy. Jimmy explained that the meditation Andrew and Iwere teaching for human development was identical in principle toprocedures of laboratory alchemy he had been learning from analchemist in Utah. He urged me to write Frater Albertus and apply foradmission to his Salt Lake City class. I did write but Albertus did notanswer my letter for a whole year.

I later learned that Albertus selected his students according to theirastrological chart and it was just not my time yet. Eventually I got aletter from him inviting me to come to a two week Prima (first) Class in February, 1980.

G: Paracelsus College was a seven-year program with two week

residency classes each year.K: Yes. While I was waiting to be invited to a class, I received theirpublications including the Alchemical Laboratory Bulletins and wasintrigued with learning something really new and valuable. Theregistration involved getting to Paracelsus College on your own andrenting a room at $125 per week although the room charge would bewaived if you could not afford it. So I set off for Utah. But at thesame time, because I was very skeptical, I packed a suitcase full ofbooks and was prepared to have a two-week vacation if this all didnot prove to be useful. However, when I got there and started class Inever even opened the suitcase of books because I was involved16-20 hours a day in studies and in the laboratory.

G: In our time most people studying alchemy know Carl Jung'swritings on alchemical phenomena and his conclusions that theresultant transmutations are visions or projections of the alchemist'sunconscious upon the matter contained in the alchemical vessels. Intheir own praxis, what did the Paracelsus students expect to leamthere?

K: Although I know of no official statistics, I believe that most of thestudents at the Paracelsus Research Society (PRS) never did muchlaboratory work after their Salt Lake City experience. Most seemedto consider their studies with Frater Albertus to be a type ofphilosophical training, Even though I have traveled to Germany,Switzerland, and Austria in the past two years visiting Frater'sstudents, I have only found a handful of people continuing laboratorywork. My own interest in alchemy medicinal Philosopher's Stone and extend my years of healthy life, not in accomplishing metallic transmutations.

G: My favorite book on alchemy is Prelude To Chemistry (MITPress, 1960) by John Read, but even more fascinating is to readAMBIX, The Journal of the Society for Alchemy and EarlyChemistry (Cambridge, 1939-Present). As you know, AMBIX hasarticles which actually describe what alchemists did in theirlaboratories.

K: Yes, I have read many back issues of AMBIX in the Paracelsuslibrary. Michael Walsh, a good friend of mine who lives in Salt Lake,writes for that unique quarterly. My recommendation for the bestshort history of alchemy, one that evaluates what various people did,is Alchemists & Gold by Jacques Sadoul. He is critical of Paracelsus,but, on the other hand, acknowledges that Eirenaeus Philalethes, ahermetic writer of the 17th century, demonstrated credibletransmutations.

G: How did Frater Albertus conduct his classes? What did he expect

to happen in only two weeks?

K: Well, it was a seven-year course, after all. What he taught duringthose first two weeks, consisted of three disciplines: Astrology,Kabbala, and the theory and practice of actual laboratory work.Astrology and Kabbala were taught to get an understanding of howthe medieval alchemists perceived the structure and laws of theuniverse. Also, to read the old alchemical books, one has to know thesymbolic codes they used then. {Kunkin shows me his notebooksfrom those days full of diagrams and drawings).

Fortunately I had been told in advance of the procedures at theParacelsus Research Society by Jimmy in Los Angeles, the youngman who first told me about Frater Albertus. Jimmy advised me thatif at all possible I should volunteer to be class librarian in Salt Lakebecause only the librarian had the key to the vault where theimportant alchemical books were kept. If I was librarian, I wouldhave access to those books whenever I wanted to read them.Therefore, as soon as the librarian post was mentioned, I immediatelyvolunteered.

Consequently, whenever I wasn't in the classroom or laboratory, I wasable to spend all my free time in the library. I became absolutelyfascinated with what I found there. There were over 400 manuscriptsrepresenting thousands of years of documentation about alchemy. Itbecame obvious to me that the old alchemists were very serious andintensely spiritual. They seemed to be very ethical, people who wouldtell the truth and not lie.

G: What do alchemists do and how do they do it?

K: In the library was a book by Frater Albertus called TheAlchemists Handbook in which he outlined what he taught in thelaboratory during the first two weeks of the Prima Class, namely, howto take an herb and separate it into its three components: body, soul,and spirit (salt, sulphur, and mercury in the alchemical code) or, as wewould say today, into its salts, oils, and alcohol, and how to make anherbal medicine using all those three essentials. At the end of thePrima Class Albertus gave us homework to do until we came to classnext year.

First of all, we were to get distilling and other laboratory glassware toset up our own laboratory at home. Then we were to collect sevenherbs that grew in our immediate area, selecting them according totheir astrological day of the week and then, using all three essentialsof the plant as we had been taught in Salt Lake, to make and takeeach of the seven medicines on the appropriate day of the week.The rational for this as presented by Albertus was that the entire

zodiac represented the perfected individual and what was importantin one's astrological chart was not only the major Sun Sign that peopleusually concentrate on but which of the four elements (fire, earth, air,water) might be missing in one's chart.

Making and taking the seven astrologically prepared medicines ontheir appropriate day of the week was part of his program forbalancing the individual and overcoming the limitations shown inone's natal or birth chart.

During the course of this Prima Class instruction on making herbalmedicines, Frater also gave hints about completing what in alchemy iscalled the "Small Work," i.e. the making of an herbal stone, that in theherbal kingdom is the equivalent of making the mineral philosopher'sstone used for the transmutation of metals. In the library was alsosuch books as They Made The Philosopher’s Stone by Richardand Isabel Ingalese that told, in their own words, of their presumablysuccessful alchemical experiments in Pasadena in the 1920s.

G: But how is it done? Could one make an herbal stone from hisinstructions? Did you?

K: He gave us some sense of how to do this but, in my opinion, theseinstructions were not complete. Nevertheless, this too was to be partof our "homework" during the rest of the year to see what wecould do on our own.

In my own case, during the Prima Class I read a book by LouisKervran titled "Biological Transmutations." Kervran was a scientistin France during the 1950's-1970's who observed transmutations thatoccurred in nature. He published his observations and his book wastranslated into English. I decided that when I got back to L.A. Iwould attempt one or two of the experiments in this book. (To answeryour question directly: yes, I eventually learned how to make theherbal stone but this was years after I completed my studies withFrater Albertus).

The two weeks in Salt Lake City went by rapidly. When I got back toL.A. I re-connected with my meditation school and began to obtainequipment to prepare the alchemical herbal medicines. I am verygood at manifestation so I got seven pick-up truck loads of glasswareand other laboratory equipment from a University of Californiachemistry professor who wanted to clean his garage. Then frompeople who experimented with making drugs in the 60s I got half adozen other small laboratories that were also gathering dust in variousgarages.

I also heard that Israel Regardie, the well known writer who had been

occultist Aleister Crowley's secretary and had attended all sevenclasses at Paracelsus Research Society, was selling his laboratory inStudio City so I called him on the phone and went to see him. Duringthe 60's I had published some articles Regardie had written but Inever met him until I returned from Salt Lake in 1980. The result ofmy contact with Regardie was that I did get some of his laboratorysupplies and, eventually, after we became close friends he gave mehis entire alchemical library worth about $3,000 in cash but pricelessin its content.

After putting together a small laboratory with all the equipment I hadmanifested I began doing the herbal work that Albertus had outlinedas well as one experiment from the "Biological Transmutations"book by Kervran. In a Petri dish I put in some soil bacteria I hadfound in a mud puddle at UCLA, fed the bacteria some manganesemetal and the bacteria turned the manganese into iron.(Kunkin shows me photos of the transmutations.]

G: How did this happen?

K: The Kervran book did not specify the bacteria so I went to thelibrary, looked through a copy of Bergey's Manual ofDeterminative Bacteriology and found a section on a sheathedbacteria called Leptothrix that seemed to fit the qualifications of thebacteria that Kervran had used. I lucked out, first in finding thebacteria without too much trouble, then in making a pure culture ofthe bacteria on a growth media that the bacteria liked, put inmanganese and got the streaks of iron that showed in Kervran'sphotos of his results. My test for the iron using potassiumpermanganate was entirely qualitative (I could not measure the smallamount of iron that was produced not been there before.

Then I redid the experiment using a culture media I obtained from theHughes Corporation that definitely was free of iron. Again ironappeared.

Next I did a computer search of the journal Chemical Abstracts.(This was 1980, before the Internet, but I knew the science librarianat a large electronics company and she had a computer and access toArpanet, the military predecessor of the Internet). I had my librarianfriend enter some keywords (Sphaeritilus Natans or Leptothrix, iron,manganese, Kervran, etc) and we came up with a listing in ChemicalAbstracts (1978) where a U.S. Army group in Virginia hadsuccessfully done the Kervran experiment.

(Incidentally, I did this experiment over a period of many weeks witha friend, Steve Peake, who had not been at alchemy class in Salt Lakeat all but he should get much of the credit for my results if this is

published because he found the bacteria in a mud puddle at UCLA).In short, I discovered that this Army Mobility Command in Virginiawas interested in making new kinds of batteries and, when they heardof Kervran's work, had mathematically calculated that, if atransmutation of manganese into iron had really taken place, therewas a surplus of energy created that could be used to design a totallynew kind of battery. So they also replicated the Kervran experimentand found that it worked: there was a transmutation of metals eventhough only a very tiny biological energy was involved and a surplusof energy resulted.

Not only did it work but they came up with a novel theory (involvingthe mitochondrial organelles in the bacteria) that might explain howalchemists could have transmuted metals in medieval Europe withoutusing a high energy atom smasher. At this point I became extremelyexcited.

(Note by Art Kunkin: In the book "Alchemy Secrets of LifeExtension" advertised on this website, I explain my Kervranexperiment more completely than Christopher Farmer elicited inthis 1988 interview. Incidentally, the original interview was tapedbut, in rereading this interview in 2006, it was obvious that inediting the tape, Mr Farmer reconstructed some of my sentences.Therefore, in this present version, I have taken the liberty ofrephrasing a few of these sentences to express what I really intendedto say. However, I also thank Mr. Farmer for his excellentinterview).

G: What was the point of all this detective work?

K: Only everything. I became aware of what alchemy was reallyabout. Alchemy is isolating the principle of life. This is what theancients called the vital force. Certainly they believed that everythingwas alive, including the mineral kingdom, and that this "spirit," asthey called it, existed in its most undifferentiated form in the mineral metallickingdom. So the old alchemists thought that if you isolatedthe life force in the mineral kingdom, you can prove that you havedone so by speeding up the evolution of metals, i.e., by doingtransmutations. Once you did that and had this life force isolated,then you could process it further and make an elixir of immortality.The legends speak at that point of your hair falling out, as well asyour fingernails and teeth, and everything grows anew as your cellsare revitalized.

G: In order to achieve this elixir of life, your description of thealchemist's task thus far appears to be part of that same closeduniverse, or it certainly sounds like the scientism that it wants toaugment or even replace. When the Egyptians mined their gold

("nub") in Upper Egypt (Nubia), the priests would invoke theblessings of the gods on their work. Do you see, to take this example,any conflict in doing similar incantations over such experiments suchas those you have been describing?

K: The ancient alchemists said that spiritual development had to gohand in hand with the laboratory work because, if what we knowabout the atom is true, you are in with the high-energy atom smashers of the modern scientist, but you are doing some kind of low-energy manipulation in the nucleus andtransforming the nucleus. It is almost as if the alchemist has to be intune with this sub-atomic finer force of nature, and surely the alchemists' subtle bodies had to be in some sort of communication with the mineral, animal, or plant kingdoms, whatever was being examined.

There is also a sense that the medicine of immortality that is producedcomes from some very poisonous substances, and that there had to bea preparation of the being in order to take it and for it to be amaximum effective medicine.

In fact, even before going to Salt Lake as I told you, I had beenexploring a meditational system which indeed did correspond betterwith the alchemical tradition than did the psychological insights ofJung. I had discovered that in the Tibetan tradition of Dzogchen I hadfound the alchemists of Tibet, and that the philosophicalcorrespondences were not at all accidental.

Later I actually met a lama from the Dzogchen community in Tibet and, although he himself wasn't instructed in laboratory alchemy, he acknowledged that thephilosophical approach of Dzogchen had developed out of alchemy!However, even though this lama was very knowledgeable aboutDzogchen philosophy and meditation, he wasn't able to tell meanything about Laboratory Alchemy and admitted it was part of histradition that had been neglected.

Anyway, by this time I am totally excited, having seen a littletransmutation take place in low-energy conditions although this issomething that modem science says can not happen! So I decided togo back to Salt Lake for the remainder of the seven-year work,concluding that there wasn't any place in the world that I wanted tobe but in Salt Lake. I made plans to move there; however, I had hadno commitment from Frater Albertus, nor any idea of what I woulddo for a living.

Then, as I was actually getting ready to move there (I had myfurniture and 10,000 books packed into a 40 foot railroad containerparked in front of my house in L.A. -- and some people --a caravan,really -- from my meditation center, who planned to join me in Salt

Lake City) I began receiving calls from some of the students in SaltLake telling me not to come. They told me that Frater Albertus was atotal phony. Although he always spoke of his wife, Emmy, as hissoulmate he had actually been sleeping around with his secretary andthree other women. He was not a spiritual Master at all, they told me,but a fraud.

Nevertheless, after many phone conversations with the students therein Salt Lake, I finally asked them, "Are you folks going to have analchemical set-up of any kind? Are you going to teach alchemy" Theysaid no and that Frater Albertus was the Devil. After someconsultation with Regardie, I had to tell all the people close toAlbertus who were advising me not to move to Salt Lake, that I wassorry but I needed to learn alchemy and that if Albertus is the Devilthen I will go to study with the Devil.

Regardie and I had several talks about this incident and we bothconcluded that Albertus was an important teacher even though hehad disillusioned many of his students by his personal behavior.

G: What do we know about Albertus? I noticed that his earliest book,published in German in 1931, was fiction. He was born in Dresden in1911 and met Emmy in Germany before he came to America whenhe was 17 or so. Didn't he come to Utah from Santa Cruz, where he'dbeen teaching alchemy with the Rosicrucians (AMORC)?

K: Yes. Frater was a character. He was one of the great egotisticalpersonalities of our time and very difficult to work with. He did writesome strange poetry and he was into fiction much earlier in his life.But my story of my time at Paracelsus College will tell you muchmore about him.

So I moved to Salt Lake and, when I arrived, I simply asked to meetwith Albertus and said, "Here I am!" I appeared on a scene now leftin a vacuum. The woman editing the society magazine, Essentia, hadleft, and his secretary had also resigned.

I'd had editorial and publishing experience so when Frater Albertusbegan to tell me how much it cost him to produce Essentia (anoutrageous amount because he was not taking advantage ofcomputerized typesetting or modern printing procedures), I told himthat if he continued to pay for the magazine at the rate he'd beenpaying, I could produce the same quality magazine without taking anyeditorial or production salary and simply be paid out of the savings Imade by changing printers and using new typesetting procedures.It was an offer that he couldn't refuse since all of his staff hadresigned and, with me, he was getting an experienced editor for free.So this is why I was taken in immediately, given an office and was

available to help him with other projects. I had a base and was thereat PRS for the next 3 1/2 years.

During the course of that period I took all seven years of the PRScourse, photocopied the entire PRS alchemical library, and set up alaboratory in my home. (I had now about $50,000 worth of laboratoryequipment that filled up three rooms, glassware and microscopes andcentrifuges and furnaces that I had purchased for pennies on thedollar at university surplus stores in California and Utah andArizona.), And as PRS students would visit Salt Lake to attendclasses, my house became a second laboratory for them.I had been a tool and die maker and a master machinist so I couldbuild laboratory equipment. Soon my house became the scene for themost advanced work going on around Albertus. When any PRSstudent would come up with some new ideas, we would do theexperiments at my house. I had rented a big Mormon style house, hadmy lab in the basement and used the big family room upstairs to teachmeditation classes.

By posting and passing out leaflets at various local meetings, Irecruited about 100 new local students for my meditation classes(many of them Rosicrucian and Freemason correspondence schoolmembers who never had an personal teacher) and by charging $5 aweek per student this was how I supported myself in Salt Lake, pluswhat I made from Essentia.

G: What was the reaction of Albertus to all this? Wasn't he jealous oflosing his power?

K: Definitely. He always wanted his students to bring new ideas andnew information only and directly to him and here, even though I amrecruiting people to him and urging people to work with himregardless of his personal behavior and being totally loyal to him, hedid not like the fact that I was making so many friends and also beinga teacher on my own.

Eventually Albertus told me that I couldn't have discussions with thestudents, He actually forbade me to talk with them, and this waswhile I was editing his magazine! By this time I really hadn't learnedanything new from him for about a year, And so I told him that Icouldn't continue to edit the magazine without talking to the readersof the magazine, the students.

Frater's nature was to teach up to a certain point and be "exceedinglygenerous" (the cliché he used constantly), but then he would freezeup and nothing more would be forthcoming. But despite all theproblems at Paracelsus College, it was a precious experience, sincethere wasn't a place like this anywhere else in the world. I am forever

grateful to Albertus for opening up to me the most fundamentalscience in the esoteric tradition.

Incidentally, I had learned so much about metallurgy and chemistry atParacelsus Research Society while studying ancient alchemy thatwithin two months after leaving I took a new job in Salt Lake City aspresident of a mining company located in Tucson, Arizona.G: Is alchemy a science or an art...Irving Berlin's music. Berlin is still alive at 100 and since he doesn't read music, because of his intuitive craft, someone called his musicwriting powers "alchemy that converts the diatonic scale to nuancesof logic and emotion."

K: The alchemist's view of the universe is that it consists of aphysical level, but also of other levels whatever you want to callthem, spiritual or subtle. Homeopathy is a remnant of this kind ofthinking, i.e., the notion that you can make medicines out of herbs orminerals that preserve the emotional, mental, and spiritual qualities ofthe herbs and therefore make the medicines work not only physicallybut on the emotional and mental levels of the human being who usesthese medicines.

But there is something else. One of the core aspects of all religions, ofall spirituality, is the idea that the physical human can evolve and thisevolution is spoken about in terms of the human becoming moregod-like. For example, humans have limitations that the gods do not,humans are mortal while God or the gods are immortal. So theTibetans, for example, deal with the limitation of human death bydeveloping various meditational methods for continuingconsciousness after physical death.

In the Jewish and Christian and Islamic religions there are also thestories of Ezekiel and Mohammed entering heaven in the physicalbody and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Tibetans have theirrainbow body where the physical body totally disappears from thislevel and enters another phase.

This core belief also goes back to Egyptian mummificationprocedures, a degenerated form of a regeneration theory thatoriginally was supposed to happen in the physical body.

So this is what the alchemists were striving for, this kind of evolution:sometimes it was expressed as being one with God or being able to sitin God's company, but there was always this concept of evolution intoa level of being closer to God.

G: Jacob Boehme would be most uncomfortable with theconversation we are having but, of course, Boehme used mysticallanguage far from the laboratory, as did the Rosicrucians, for that

matter, who consider alchemy a mental (or spiritual) process.

K: The subtle world and the physical worlds are considered to beparallel, but the adept is considered as one who is master both on thephysical and subtle levels. Historically these two worlds split apart.Science began to deal with (dead) nature while the metaphysiciansdealt with the subtle, non-physical levels they concentrated on in avery ungrounded way. The alchemical vision is for these two to cometogether, the physical world and the world of consciousness.If they do come together it is not only for the personal goals but forsocial evolution. If you can make scarce materials throughtransmutation, then we indeed have left the realm of scarcity behind.If it is possible to have medicines which normally keep onefunctioning for a hundred years — like Mr. Berlin — medicineswhich develop the spiritual aspect and also develop this physicallongevity, then all of humanity changes.

G: Frater Albertus said "All things are not for the use of everyone,although they were created for the benefit of all." That most famousancient alchemist, Zosimus of Panopolis, spoke of the good of thekingdom being upheld by the arts of exploiting metals, but that no onebut the priests could exercise power over them. Do you agree withsuch elitist views?

K: When I first had the psychic experiences I spoke of earlier andcould see that some aspects of the future could be known before theyhappened or that somehow healings could happen through mentalconcentration, my sense was that this could be a big part of theanswer to the problem of leadership that the radical movements havebeen struggling with. Trotsky says that the problem with the radicalswas one of leadership.

But radicals have never had a wa.....communist and socialist leadership only meant knowing the partyprogram, being able to run a mimeograph machine, to make a speech,write leaflets and represent the party. But all the leaders, Marx,Trotsky and Lenin, for example, were extraordinary people who,while having firm principles, were still able to be incredibly adjustableflexible within the context of each situation, so that the principlesmanifested within an actual historical time frame.

When I became familiar with the possibilities for spiritualdevelopment, for the development of consciousness, I came to realizethat it was possible to train individuals able to become be psychic andintuitive and, therefore, genuine leaders who had no inner need ordesire to manipulate other people.

G: Does this mean you disagree with Colin Wilson's popularizing the

notion of the "dominant 5%" concept of humanity, which at least isan alternative to Freud's idea of thanatos, or the basic urge to deathand destruction: hardly evolutionary, that.

K: When you look around it is obvious that there is a hierarchicaldevelopment and that some people seem to be ahead of others inconsciousness. I think this is an objective conclusion. The differencesbetween the high and the low, however, are pretty small.In the Tibetan tradition which I mentioned, there is a conception thatevery individual consists of 15 billion-year-old atoms; therefore,every individual has access to memories and a level of maturity farbeyond what we know today — in effect, that every individual hasthe ability to become a Buddha. But the personality conditioningprevents an individual from breaking through to this inner wisdom. Sothis tradition, entirely in the tradition of alchemy, speaks about theenlightenment experience or direct knowledge not being necessarilyreserved for a few, even if in practice at this level of development ofthe human brain and the human nervous system only a few do seemto break through into a greater experience of this collective humanconsciousness..

G: The use of ceremony in tandem with alchemical operationsinterests me, especially after attending your recent workshop onalchemical rituals, working with earth, water, fire and air. How highlydo you value this activity?

K: If the alchemist is simply manipulating dead substances and deadchemicals like an ordinary chemist then I would expect any results tobe limited. However, if the alchemist develops an atunement thelanguage and formulations of rituals to develop this resonance meanless to me than the intent there can be results that to theuninitiated seem totally magical.

If for thousands of years people have been performing a ceremony ina certain way, then it is useful to do that ceremony that way as anexperiment to determine if you can vibrate any of the atoms insideyou to evoke a consciousness that has a precise experience in makingthat ceremony effective. Yes, ritual is important but not from theintrinsic nature of a formula of words and gestures. Ritual achievesresults, in my opinion, because of the focused power of intention..

G: What makes magic so conservative?

K: People blindly repeat the forms of ritual because people don'tknow how to tap into the power of mental concentration. Once aperson has focused intention then that person can break with the formof the ritual and go right to the essence of the matter. Certainalchemists argue about the importance of planting only at sunrise or

taking an herb starting at the vernal equinox or whether you have tostart your operations at the first hour, etc. It is true that it is useful fora person who wants to manifest to be sensitive to certain rhythms andcycles of nature or of a prevailing context but that intuition naturallycomes to a person who has a focused nervous system.

G: What about the magic of, say, a Kenneth Grant?

K: Spiritual development has a lot to do with the success ofalchemical rituals Jung worked on this too and with balancingmale and female energies, bringing .....who is fundamentally androgynous. The difference between men andwomen is incredibly small. So in alchemy certain male and female oryin and yang chemicals are described in detail, and if the alchemisthas a certain approach to sexuality, I believe that the code will beopened more easily.

Since I'm a Tantric I've tried various regeneration systems and realizethat if you don't have a sexual balance you could possibly takepowerful alchemical medicines and they might not work. Theancients knew this and, for example, Thomas Vaughan and otheralchemists were involved with sexual alchemy.

I spoke with Regardie about thishe used Reichean techniques(derived from the work of Wilhelm Reich), of course and heagreed that there was little written information on this.

G: Paracelsus coined the word "spagyric" for alchemy. A Greekcognate, but related to the Latin alchemical motto "solve et coagula."What do you think about spagyrics?

K: It is a crucial concept and now you are asking me what the core ofalchemy is, so I will try to give you my answer.

Paracelsus meant spagyric to specifically define the separation,purification and cohobation that led to the production of medicineswithout necessarily preserving the life force. In other words, you cantake wheat, which contains the principle of life in it, as a basic foodand you can bake and prepare it to be a food, but in the process youhave lost the capacity for it to be a seed. Therefore baking breadwould be spagyric, whereas making what I will call "philosophicalbread" would allow for one to take a slice of that bread and put it inthe ground and it would grow!

At one point I went to Albertus and simply asked him, what are youreally teaching? He very frankly admitted to me that he wasn'tteaching alchemy in the early classes but rather spagyrics. Theimplication was that he knew what alchemy was and that he could

teach that but he didn't. My conclusion from that conversation is thathe never really "made it."

G: "Made it"?

K: An alchemist makes it, in my opinion, if he or she doesn't die butcan access the life energy that regenerates the body. I am convincedthat transmutations have taken place. They have been documented.This business about longevity and immortality is much harder to pindown. But witness all these anecdotal tales about St. Germain andFrancis Bacon; someone certainly was wandering around Europe forseveral hundred years making alchemical demonstrations and thatperson was keeping a tradition alive.

Sadoul says that a lot of these legends revolve around one or two or afew who really knew how to locate and use the life force right to thepresent. At least that's an interesting hypothesis.

G: A final comment?

K: What the alchemist does in his laboratory (and Jung wascorrect here) is exactly the same process of Solve et Coagula(Separate, Purify, Put Back Together) that is done in any therapy ormetaphysical or the most ultimate enlightenment training program.The differences between the levels are what you Separate (inother words, what you consider essential) how much do youPurify, and when do you stop the process, when are you satisfied withthe cohobation or Unification of the evolved essentials.

Bacstrom, in one of his mysterious letters, wrote to someone and said"Now I told you how to make silver (from lead), and it's not gold yetbut this will keep you wealthy but I know a science that iseven greater than alchemy." You know, if he’s talking aboutalchemy simply as the transmutation of metals (as he seems to bedoing here), he's right!

Fortean Times June 2008 Interview WithArt Kunkin