The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

Hercules was seeking the tree of life, the divine Apple tree in the
Garden of the Hesperides that produced golden apples of felicity. 826
Mother Earth originally gave this tree with golden apples to the Great
Goddess Hera as a wedding present. Hera placed the tree in her orchard
on Mount Atlas with the Hesperides. 827 The three sweetly singing
Hesperides were Hespere, Aegle and Erytheis. 828
Hercules' blade, reddened with the blood of the ferocious
hundred-headed Ladon, who coiled around the apple tree, is the necessary
key to enter the garden. 829 There the Hesperides, the Three Daughters of
the West who really symbolize the great Triple or Mother Goddess, grant
him wisdom.
Such symbolism is patently alchemical with the Dragon, its blood
and the golden Apple tree all being seen within an alchemist's flask
during the Great Work. A sacrifice is necessary, but it is not always the
Dragon. We will understand this further when we look at the legend of St
George and the Dragon in Chapter 15.
The aforementioned alchemist, Zosimus, was a highly passionate
advocate for intellectual and academic honesty in alchemy. He inveighed
against the jealousy, vanity and mean-spiritedness of those who concealed
their alchemical wisdom asserting:
…everybody should possess a book of chemistry, which should
not be hidden away.
Zosimus openly criticized his contemporary Theosebia who kept
her alchemical wisdom secret, only transmitting it under oath to small
groups. Suggestive of the Mysteries and legends of St George, Zosimus
clearly agreed that the procedures of alchemy are strictly preparatory to
the purification and perfection of the soul. He wrote: 830
Perform these things until your soul is perfected.
Another celebrated alchemist, Paracelsus lived from 1493 to
1534. He was born Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim but called
himself both Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim and Paracelsus. Others honored him as the Swiss Hermes
because he had learned the secrets of alchemy in Constantinople and from
them developed the first cure for syphilis. In his Theory of Alchemy,
Paracelsus proposed ritual Questions and Answers to confirm the
perfection of the soul: 831
Q. What do the philosophers understand by their gold and silver?
A. The philosophers apply to their sulphur the name of gold, and to
their mercury the name of silver.
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