The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

efer to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the Jewish Zohar as
particularly fine mystical records.
From the sanctuary of Harran, there was a transfer of alchemy
and metallurgy to Islamic Sufism. During the Italian Renaissance, the
same knowledge became available from Constantinople through the
enthusiastic acquisition of manuscripts by Cosimo de Medici. From
Renaissance Italy, it made its way to Britain where the Elizabethans
received it enthusiastically.
Ancient Harran generated chains of alchemy and architecture.
These led through French cathedral building to the definition of Scottish
and English Freemasonry. Links in the chain include the Phoenician
Dionysian Artificers, the Roman Collegia, the Magistri Comacini of
Como and the Compagnonnage.
From Jerusalem, the Jewish stream split into the Rabbinical
Kabbalahists of the city of Alexandria, the Qumran Essenes and the
Gnostics. The Alexandrian stream spilled into Greece, Spain and Ireland
where it appears to have all but petered-out. The Essene stream ended
abruptly with the total Roman suppression of Jewish nationalism in the
first and second centuries CE. Yet, there are faint but intriguing lines of
survival of Melchizedek Priests in the Diaspora of Southern France
through to today. The Roman Catholic Church suppressed both the
Gnostic stream and the Great Heresy of the Bogomils. The former
culminated with the Albigensian Crusade and violent assault on
Montségur in 1245CE. Yet, again, stories emerged from the Inquisition
that four Parfaits smuggled the Cathars' treasure to safety. 3
Another chain commences around 1128CE with discoveries by
the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. Sheltered in Scotland after their
dissolution, the Knights Templar traditions fused into Scottish guilds of
the Compagnonnage and later into English Freemasonry. Subsequently
the German Rosicrucians fled to the protection of James I of England
during the Thirty Years War in the early 1600s. From there, the
Rosicrucians developed a very close affinity with English Freemasonry.
They were to amalgamate with the upper degrees of Freemasonry,
bringing organizational structure to the whole movement.
Alchemy has fundamentally influenced Western society,
particularly in medicine and religion. In religion, for example, the
Eucharist ceremony symbolizes alchemy. We find the rituals of the
Roman Catholic Church, involving the congregation as the living church
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