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finally the stone, and because many zealous aspirants to the art have
not understood this they have failed in the great work on the spiritual
side. The schedule which now follows may elucidate this hard subject
somewhat more fully and plainly.
There are (a) the natural, external man, whose equivalent is the one
vessel; (b) the body of desire, which answers to the gross matter; (c)
the aspiration, the consciousness, the will of the supernatural life; (d)
the process of the will working on the body of desire within the
outward vessel; (e) the psychic and transcendental conversion thus
effected; (f) the reaction of the purified body of desire on the essential
will, so that the one sup-ports the other, while the latter is borne
upward, and from such raising there follows this further change, that
the spirit of a man puts on itself a new quality of life, becoming an
instrument which is at once feeding and is itself fed; (g) herein is the
symbol of the stone and the great elixir; (h) the spirit is nourished
from above by the analogies of Eucharistic ministry; (i) the spirit
nourishes the soul, as by bread and wine; (j) the soul effects the higher
conversion in the body of desire; (k) it thus comes about that the
essence which dissolves everything and changes everything is still
contained in a vessel, or- alternatively- that God abides in man.
This process, thus exhaustively delineated in the parables of alchemy,
is put with almost naked simplicity by Eucharistic doctrine, which
says that material lips receive the supersubstantial bread and wine,
that the soul is nourished and that Christ enters the soul. It seems,
therefore, within all reason and all truth to testify that the panis vivus
et vitalis is even as the trans-muting stone and that the chalice of the
new and eternal testa-ment is as the renewing elixir; but I say this
under certain reasonable reserves because, in accordance with my
formal indication, the closer the analogies between distinct systems of
symbolism the more urgent is that prudence which counsels us not to
confuse them by an interchangeable use.
All Christian mysticism came forth out of the Mass Book, and it
returns therein. But the Mass Book in the first instance came out of
the heart mystic which had unfolded in Christendom. The nucleus of
truth in the missal is Dominus prope est. The Mass shows that the
great work is in the first sense a work of the hands of man, because it
is he officiating as a priest in his own temple who offers the sacrifice
which he has purified. But the elements of that sacrifice are taken over
by an intervention from another order, and that which follows is
transfusion.
Re-expressing all this now in a closer summary, the apparatus of
mystical alchemy is indeed, comparatively speaking, simple.
The first matter is myrionimous and is yet one, corresponding to the
unity of the natural will and the unlimited complexity of its motives,
dispositions, desires, passions and distractions, on all of which the
work of wisdom must operate. The vessd is also one, for this is the
normal man complete in his own degree. The process has the seal of
Nature's directness; it is the graduation and increasing maintenance of
a particular fire. The initial work is a change in the substance of will,
aspiration and desire, which is the first conversion or transmutation in
the elementary sense.
But it is identical even to the end with the term proposed by the
Eucharist, which is the modification of the noumenal man by the
communication of Divine Substance. Here is the lapis qui non lapis,
lapis tingens, lapis angularis, lapis qui multiplicetur, lapis per quem
justus aedificabit domum Domini, et jam valde aedificatur et terram
possidebit, per omnia, etc. When it is said that the stone is multiplied,
even to a thousandfold, we know that this is true of all seed which is
sown upon good soil.
So, therefore, the stone transmutes and the Eucharist trans-mutes also;
the philosophical elements on the physical side go to the making of
the stone which is also physical; and the sacramental elements to the
generation of a new life in the soul. He who says Lapis
Philosophorum, says also: My beloved to me and I to him: Christ is
therefore the stone, and the stone in adept humanity is the union
realized, while the great secret is that Christ must be manifested
within.
Now it seems to me that it has not served less than an useful purpose
to establish after a new manner the intimate resemblance between the
higher understanding of one part of the secret tradi-tion and the better
interpretation of one sacrament of the church. It must be observed that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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