The Alchemy of Sand
Hexagram 49
⚡NEW⚡ For a more complete experience click on NOTES to access the ever changing interactive feature of the Road Ahead. (You can also find it at the top of the Homepage)
Coaxing the spirits to come and grace my work is not always a calming enterprise. It seems to me that they are fickle in their appearances moving in and out of our life as they see fit and that in itself can make one a bit spooked at times. I am only praying for good results and a deeper understanding but others have a different agenda.
Marina Abramović the occultist to the stars believes in cooking spirits in combination with pig blood and sex-magic as a ritual that would take us from the humdrum fulcrum of everyday living in our cloud of distractions and tip the balance in the direction of following her into the dark light of fame. Something akin to demon worship by another means as practiced by Alex Soros a fellow traveler of Miss Marina into the world of political power and celebrity that is today measured in reptilian clicks on the internet and USAID cash.
No that is not what I am talking about. It is a much too exaggerated practice that involves teaming up with other travelers who are likely less aware of their role in these things but are basically here for the party and subsequent remuneration that accompanies the crowd of followers who believe they are actually in charge of their spirits, ask recent Grammy winning Country Music star Beyonce for instance. Not nearly in the league of poltergeist cooks but still in the same coven as other creatures whose job it is to spin out the webs of illusion and flatter their bosses enough to shower money down upon the favored arachnids of the day.
Miss Marina likes to slather blood all over her performance “art” (aka occult burlesque) in order to impress the foolhardy social climbers that occupy the castles of material power in Davos, Switzerland. This once storied land of learning and propriety filled with banks and diamond merchants now courts the oligarchs du jour who are amused by black magic1 and frolic while sipping infant plasma cocktails through sterling silver straws thought to protect them from the wrath of Dracula.
Yes of course I know that the disgusting hijinks displayed by the pornographic oligarchy is just a signature of hubris by people strutting across the stage in their brief candle lite moment of fame. Still these people are the dangerous killers of untold thousands a few miles away on the Ukrainian steppe. Somehow the spawn of this demonic plague continues to rule while the busted seams of their lifeboat oozes dark briny water: now a drop, now a drip, and soon a torrent.
Instead of entertaining myself by dedicating my life to the pursuit of celebrity I volunteer my time in the pottery laboratory of a small college nearby and attempt to wrestle some sort of ceramic application from the local sands, marls, and other overlooked elements available on the Central Ridge of Florida. This is a neglected wilderness of clashing geographic anomalies well suited to spiritual pursuits. It is like my book, The Other Road Ahead, a circuitous and elliptical place designed to pit one idea against another all the while masking its true intentions.
The Ridge is an alchemy of sorts where struggle is blended with uncontrollable processes of nature. However, my place in the laboratory of missing pieces is a study of using scientifically unknown materials with unknown chemical analysis to somehow assemble by guile, chance, and intuition a recognizable form transformed from the detritus of the Ridge into another reality: heating obscure sand particles into something shiny and wonderful, the essence of the materialistic alchemist.
Yet the actual secret is not the transmutation of elements it is something higher and more flamboyant. Known at least since the earliest Alexandrian students of this work that within the processes of nature’s mysteries was a much deeper calling that captured men’s spirits; the quest for the Source. Noodling as I do with the perennial substances of earth, water, air, and fire one gets a glimpse of the vail surrounding the Source but not yet the thing itself.
While the power glitterati surrounding the oligarchs spin their illusions in the belief that they are doing something novel, pioneering, noteworthy, in reality they are only retracing the footsteps of the Sun King of France, Louis the XIV who debauched his way into infamy. An ancient but sad story that ignores the great Alexandrian gnostic alchemist, Zosimos who lived in ~400 AD and recognized that it was not the material knowledge and wealth within Creation but the search for its spiritual components that elevated the spirit of human beings. He coded this path of faith with symbols and poetry in order to keep the Imperial Roman Catholic religious authorities off his neck and in so doing created an entire lexicon of spiritual development away from the prying eyes of the bishops.
In the familiar illustration below we see the viscous green sludge of biological goo (that would be us humans) forced under pressure and heat into a narrow path of a retort then transformed into the golden nectar of spirit. Not really a physics experiment but something of greater value. This universal truth would not make the occultists like Miss Marina or the institutional bishops any money from the material wealthy so it is ignored.
Nevertheless, the material world cannot be ignored. It surrounds us and we are part of it and without our physical skin there would only be the soul and spirit which is not designed to touch and see the exotic place where we live. Perhaps it is indeed a container or even as some say a prison but it is ours for the time being and not something to scoff at regardless the drawbacks it presents to us. However, as Zosimos reasoned, there are at least two worlds that we inhabit and although the material world will cause us great difficulty it is also a tool of gathering data that enriches our second home, the one we cannot see. The Alexandrians2 also knew that our world had rulers and authorities whose job it is to keep us under their thumb. So they invented elaborate codes to vail their work and save their skin from harm.
There is much to learn about this world of elements and energies and it seems daunting. There is no end of learning about just one subject as its secrets branch off over and over again into new and unexpected territories until we have lost the original point of departure. Therefore, I sit in this small lab and apply myself to one mystery after another balancing the mark of one substance against the measurement of another. All the while trying to keep my ageing brain processor chugging through 75+ years of assorted data dwarfed by a plethora of connections each holding a truckload of laughing dwarfs howling at me to make sense of it all. As marl and rock and sand pass by my cortex there is a whiff of something miraculous drifting by the mind’s eye and then receding back into itself, lost in an enigma. My spirits have given me another brief glimpse and that is enough.
Through the nattering crowds and scolds trying to intimidate us into inaction there is the pathway of the ancients still ahead and open to us all. Clement of Alexandria admonished us to stay off the dangerous roads filled with booby traps and aim for the path of wisdom. So beyond the thorns and sharp rocks and other obstacles of life there is a light in the distance. The light that keeps getting farther away as we seek it but one day it catches up to us just past that stony cliff ahead.
Please leave a contribution for the author 👇 (This is a very secure site and the people who operate this Tip Jar are helpful and receive only a small fee for their service)
MY BOOK CAN BE PURCHASED BELOW
You get the new Homepage and many more features including NOTES by clicking below 👇
The Black Magic of politics… https://dsreif.substack.com/p/cognitive-warfare
More on the Alexandrians… https://substack.com/@dsreif/note/c-64453554