March 4, 2016 • 49 mins
In today's episode, the gang joins forces with special guest Damien Patrick Williams (aka @Wolven) as they explore the origins of alchemy, as well as its strangest secrets, famous practitioners and effects on the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Ladies
and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. My name is Noel,
(00:24):
and you are you, hopefully listeners. My name is Been,
our colleague and confidante, our our close associate, our what
some might call ride or die. Be at that shore.
Matt Frederick is on on a mission that he mentioned earlier,
not so much a secret mission, but a mission nonetheless,
(00:46):
and he will be returning very soon. You may be
able to catch him on a live show here and there,
but you didn't hear it from us. However, this does
not mean that it's just Nuel I and the studio today. No,
we are. We are thrilled to have a special guest
(01:07):
with us. This is a friend of the show and
a friend of mine. Um, we've known each other for
a while. Uh. This is an instructor at Kennesaw State University,
also pretty well known writer on religious studies, on the
intersection of technology and the occult, which we'll get to
spoiler alert, uh, as well as philosophy and as a
(01:29):
matter of fact, when we were talking about this off
the air, who were like, how do I how do
we encapsulate the stuff we're gonna talk to today? A
lot of wear, a lot of hats, A lot of hats,
ladies and gentlemen. Damian Patrick Williams, gonna be with you
guys today. Thanks for having me. Hey, yeah, thank you
so much for agreeing to go down a couple of
crazy rabbit holes with us. Thank The rabbit holes are
(01:50):
the best kind of rabbit holes. Yes, as far as
we're considered on this show, they are the only kind
of rabbit holes. Before we get to today's episode, Damien, Um,
there's a thing that Nolan, Matt and I do where
we introduced listeners to each other. It's something we like
to call shout out corners. That's right, ladies and gentlemen,
(02:13):
it is the return of the shout out corner. And
we have a few people who have requested a shout out.
Mr Brown, do you want to do the honors? Oh?
Why not? Uh, here's one for Tony Hernandez. Shout out
to Tony because he was listening to the Superbugs episode
while fighting an ongoing infection. Hopefully it wasn't a super infection.
(02:36):
Best of luck to you, sir, and shout out to Gwendolen,
who said it was a life goal of hers to
receive a shout out on the show. Check that off
the bucket list, Gwendolen, no doubt doubt, We've got We've
got one more here for today, and that would be
Staff Sergeant Adam Denshar, who wanted to know our thoughts
(03:01):
on simulated reality, which is something that Damian, you and
I and Nolan are going to get into in a
future episode. Right, Yes, yes, very much, And that's our
shout out corner for today. So I am so excited
that we're we're going to take a look at today's
(03:23):
topic because it's something that we have talked about at
times in our video series. We've touched on it a
little bit. UM alchemy, alchemy? So what what? What? What
is alchemy? UM? I think the best way to think
about alchemy is to think about the historical position it
(03:44):
tends to occupy. UM. You look back at like the
Dark and Middle Ages in both Europe and and a
corresponding time frame but even earlier than that back in China,
and you can see this drive to try to change
one thing into another. In the European alchemical set, you've
(04:05):
got this thing where everybody was trying to find a
way to turn lead into gold, which is like the
the the tip top thing that pretty much everybody knows
about alchemy, right Chrystopia, I think. And so this idea
of being able to transmute, and that's the big word,
(04:25):
and alchemical processes transmutation, being able to transmute one thing
to another thing, taking various minerals, various metals, various substances
and solutions and turning things into other things. I guess
when I think about alchemy as it's portrayed, you know,
in popular culture and such, there always seems to be
(04:46):
a mystical element to it. But then a lot of
times when I hear it describes is the way you've
done it sounds much more like a precise science. But
in reality, isn't it kind of somewhere in between exactly
what I was about to say. It's like you can't
separate the one from the other. Or if you look
at the the Hermetic well, hermetic philosophers, practitioners of what
(05:07):
were known as the Hermetic arts, these people were they
were very very precise about what it was that they
thought they were doing. There were specifical formulations, specific formulations,
um specific uh combinations and operations that needed to be undergone,
processes that needed to be very very carefully maintained. For instance,
(05:27):
in some of the some of the things that would
now in the modern age perhaps seem like spells or
rituals were considered something like a scientific and experiments that
must be reproducible exactly. And if it's not reproducible, then
it it fails. It's not it's not alchemy. It's like,
(05:48):
if it's not reproducible, if you can't put this down
in a text for a further alchemical student, a further
alchemists beyond yourself to engage in, then then it's a failure.
It needs further study. You you've obviously missed something if
it can't be reproduced, right, And we had spoken about
this before off air. I believe it was John d
(06:12):
who had some that we have been discussing, who had
some incredibly specific rules in terms of both process and
materials for his alchemical rituals. Yes, and D was at
a time he was perhaps the best known alchemist. And
(06:33):
you know, the popular imagination um. John D was the
spy master for Queen Elizabeth the First. He was her
secret agent, he was her advisor, he was her her
chief scientists, she was he was master magician to the Queen. Um.
There was a rumor that went around that for a
(06:54):
while there that he used to sign his letters double
O seven UM. That has been in no way, shape
or form ever fully substantiated. But it's a cool rumor.
It's a really cool rumor, Like that's where Ian Fleming
got it. So overall, I mean like a skill set
that definitely lends itself to subterfuge, you know, pulling the
(07:15):
wool over people's eyes exactly, being able to, if at
all possible, misdirect, being able to alter the perceptions of
the people that you have directly in front of you,
or perhaps not directly in front of you, but to
build up an aura, to build up a sense of mystery,
(07:35):
a sense of power that others might not be able
to adequately match. So how does that tie into the
results that we're talking about? Because I think he had
some pretty extensive journals that one might consider to be
scientific notes of sorts when it comes to this alchemy
that he did. Absolutely so d in his processes as
he was doing the work. John d is famous amongst
(07:59):
the cult circles anyway, famous for his work on the
Enochian texts Um. He does this work wherein he communes
with angels. There's no really, there's no other way that
he that you can put what he describes here. He
performs rituals, performs uh magical and alchemical operations to put
(08:23):
himself in a state of mind and a state of
physical and metaphysical being where he can talk to angels
and receive transmissions of their language. And then he transcribes
it down the languages the Enochian text exactly and so
the like the the Enoch or the Enochian is. It
(08:45):
takes its name from the biblical character of Enoch. The
Book of Enoch is an apocryphal text in Um Christianity.
It's it's providence is dubious, but it's It tells the
story of a man Uh named Enoch, who, at the
time of his death Um does not die and does
(09:09):
not then you know, spiritually transform into then a spiritual
being that goes to heaven to live with God. Instead,
Enoch is raised up. He is turned into Uh, an
angel at the time of his death, and so he
becomes the voice of God, he becomes the bridge for
humanity and divinity. And so the Enochian language, as D
(09:34):
describes it, is that bridge language. It is that that moment,
that way of communicating between humans and the divine. And
this is a fascinating concept, and it's one that we
see bandied about to some degree or another in a
lot of popular fiction, almost in a in like a
(09:54):
referential way. This transformative work. Um, you know, there's it's
like the whole Joseph Campbell of Frasier's work, you know,
with the dying and reborn God. And it's strange that
we see so many of the same stories echoing through
the halls of time. But there's one question that I
(10:15):
have to ask, did anyone successfully reproduce these work that
we know of, not in the kind of publicly claimed
reproductions of you know, here some huge, big results that
D claim to have gotten, Like because of these work,
(10:36):
You've got an entire tradition of Western magicians and alchemists
that come along, Hermetic philosophers, as many of them styled themselves,
that came along afterwards. And what they did was, you know,
they said, they've managed to reproduce the results. They also
said that if you didn't yourself see the results, it
was because you had not undergone the processes to be
(10:57):
able to see the results. That in order to direct
the experience this, you have to go through the transformative process.
You have to perform the process yourself in order to
actually be able to recognize what's happening, in order to
be able to hear it, see it, feel it yourself. Now,
that's that's the fascinating point. I want to I want
to go back just for um, just for uh some
(11:20):
background painting here for the audience. Uh, ladies and gentlemen.
When we're talking about the origin stuff. Here Noel and
Damian pointing out the we're pointing out that alchemy, as
this ancient art involving into a science, took place in
more than just Western Europe. Most Western alchemy I traces
(11:43):
back I believed to Hellenistic Egypt, and the the completely
separate branch, one could argue would be more Eastern. But
in both cases, what we're seeing is the the origin
of a tempting to logically categorize, quantifies somehow and explore
(12:06):
the universe in a in a rational way other than
just saying, oh crap, the sun's here again. I hope
it's not angry with me today. You know, Chinese alchemy,
for instance, is deeply tied to daois um um and
the Daoist what's oftentimes considered dallast magical practice um. But
(12:27):
what that looks like today when we look at what
they were doing in the operations that they were undergoing
in that process, we would call that, in a very
real sense, medicine. Yeah, we want to call that if
we wanted to make a kind of linear progression story
out of it. And the story that, you know, because
it's a narrative, is about making choices and might or
might not have merit to somebody else who hears it.
But if we wanted to tell a story about it,
(12:50):
we could tell a story about Chinese alchemy becoming modern
day pharmacology. It's about balancing various energy within yourself. It's
about using potions to extend life. It's about engaging in
the balancing of various elements and energies. And one of
(13:10):
the terms that got used in the old days was humorous.
That's really interesting because I mean a lot of that
is still very much alive today. And you know, massage
therapy and reflexology and you know, essential oils and all
that kind of stuff. And I mean, you know, certainly
there are those that would you know, poo poo it,
but I mean the people practice it and people swear
on it. Eflutely. I would argue perhaps that that is
(13:33):
more alive today than maybe some of the more transmutational
forms of alchemy. Well, this is getting ahead of ourselves
a little bit perhaps, But like a lot of the
people that I talked to, and when we talk about,
you know, the history of alchemy, and we talk about
you know, alchemy finds its footing in the modern era
in plenty first century as a material science. So you've
(13:57):
got let's let's put a pin in that which this is,
this is, this is a good and this is a
great point. I want to draw a parallel here as well.
So if we are, if we are telling this story right,
if what we would consider alchemy in China ultimately becomes pharmacology,
we have seen that there is substance to the use
(14:20):
of herbal medicine in in this in this sphere, right,
this is not a placebo effect in all cases, but
I also I wonder if the Western branch of alchemy
leads to well, as you as you said, uh, meta materials,
which we'll get to, but also some of the origins
(14:42):
of chemistry are found in alchemy. Is that correct? That
is absolutely correct, because we're talking, as we previously noted about,
you know, people who are trying to reproduce results, they're
talking about building and working with elements that they are
beginning in this way to understand and what we consider
a more fundamental way. The way that we look at
elements in chemistry now, the way that we think about
(15:05):
the atomic structure of things was unknown at that point
in time. There was vague hints if we look back
at like Democratus and Epicurus back in the Greeks of
you know, quote unquote atomic theory, but that was not
the kind of robust, you know, electron shells and protons
and neutrons kind of chemical theory that we have today. Um.
(15:29):
It was instead at that point in time about well,
there are base elements, there are elements of the earth.
There are elements that are more solid, and then there
are more rarefied elements. There are more refined elements, elements
like gold, like silver, like platinum, and those elements. If
(15:52):
you leave elements of the earth alone for long enough,
they'll become there's kind of more rare fied element. They
will evolve into it on their own. So our job
as alchemists is to figure out the process by which
those base elements turn into the more rarefied elements, and
to then replicate that process, to control that process, to
(16:15):
manipulate that process for ourselves. Ah. And this gets into
gets into something fascinating. So there is a bit of
an occultation, a bit of a conspiratorial aspect to alchemy.
There is a bit of stuff they don't want you
(16:35):
to know, because all of these works moving a base
element to something more rarefied, more pure, are a microcosmic
example of something else, which is the big the big
elephant in the room, the great work. Yes, and we'll
(16:56):
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Here's where it gets crazy. So Damien, what is this
great work? Well, well, we're talking about the idea of
(20:41):
the great work. We're usually referencing a kind of formulation,
a kind of conceptualization about the magical process of refining oneself.
So rather than taking a metal lead in creating a
metal like gold from it, we're taking a base human right,
(21:05):
base soul, the base nature of ourselves, base meaning animal,
like base, meaning you know, in the sense of we
have our drives that are for food and for sex,
and for comfort and for shelter. But those drives are
their their base. They're basic. They are not refined drives.
(21:28):
Those are not the drives that we ought to be
shooting for. They are, if need be yes, present, but
they're not which should drive our lives. They're not what
should make us who we are. Right, So this base
nature that we have needs to be refined through the
process of the great work into something pure, and in
(21:49):
many cases it's seen as something pure again, that is
back to what we used to be. So there becomes
this kind of um Abrahamic Judea Christian Islamic kind of
sense of the fall, the the imperfection of humans as
being the result of the work of humans or the
(22:10):
doings of humans. And so if we can do what
we can to recapture that kind of preden i fall moment,
if we can recapture that and turn ourselves back into
that through an integration with nature, through understanding the processes
of nature as nature works, through imbuing ourselves with the
(22:33):
same transmutational processes, the same willing control that nature has,
then we can turn ourselves again, We can make ourselves
again into that kind of perfect, rarefied golden state. So
the Great Work is ultimately a redemptive act. Many see
(22:53):
it that way in many ways. Yeah, many see it
that way. Um. Some see it as an apotheosis. Some
see the culmination of the Great Work as not becoming
again like we used to be. But to reach a
level as with God, that is, to put ourselves, we
had to come down from this quote unquote pure state.
(23:17):
We had to fall, We had to be in this
kind of process of being in the mud and trying
to survive and scrounge and scrape, and then move through
that and become more than that, and then become more
than we even ever were before that, and to become
finally like God. And that's the process of the Great Work.
(23:38):
And that's the point of it. Many see and some
see not just that, but that that's you know, for
putting God in this mix here, that that's what God
wants us to do, that's the purpose what we're supposed
to do. So would you say that being a successful
alchemist is sort of a physical personification of how being
(24:00):
successfully performed this great work on yourself. Yes, Um, that
was the idea of being a ultimately a successful alchemist.
And I should take a step back and say that
a lot of what we know, a lot of what
we think we know about alchemy, and a lot of
our perspective on alchemy is reconstruction. Right. So we're looking
(24:22):
backward at a group of people who been, as you noted,
we're very secretive about this work. There they were in
fact occulting it in many ways, UM off air. Previously
we discussed this idea of alchemical text being written in code. Yes, yes, okay,
this is this is a fantastic and bedeviling thing. So listeners,
(24:46):
a lot of a lot of us have written back
and forth with each other via maybe Twitter, email or
Facebook about UM mysterious texts. We We've talked about both
legit aimant ly undeciphered text like the Vonage manuscripts. We've
talked about UM, things that were recreations of that that
(25:10):
come from completely mundane sources, like the Kodak Seraphenius. However, UM,
this this is a fascinating thing because there are both
practical and philosophical reasons for writing and code. One of
the big questions that I'd like to explore will be
the relationship of alchemists to the established churches of the time. Uh,
(25:30):
And did that play any role in this use of
code um To an extent, some alchemists were in fact
working to hide their processes um and their actual activities
from the church at the time, because Uh, this was
a point at which the understanding of magic for the
(25:52):
sake of the church was beginning to be seen as
um kind of taboo. Uh. There was a point in
church history in which magic that gets done there is
there's biblical magic, like there is a history of Jewish magic,
of Christian magic, of Islamic magic. There are traditions of
magical processes being built out of certain understandings and certain
(26:15):
decipher ngs of the text. The entire history of jam
Atria and the Kabbalah is about deciphering coded messages from
out of the Torah from by using numerical transformations on
words and texts to then find hidden messages in the text.
And the same was applied to the New Testament by
(26:36):
Gnostic thinkers and building these kinds of perspectives out of um.
What is hidden? What does the hidden meaning within the text?
I mean the Gnostics came before the first really attested
cabalists obviously, But like, um, in all of this that
keep thinking, wasn't Jesus kind of an alchemist? Actually, some
of the alchemists and magicians, the hermetic magicians working later
(26:58):
down the line, made that exact argument that what Jesus
specifically was doing was working to teach people how to
perfect and to refine themselves. And in the process, by
the way, here so you can change one thing into another, right, people,
that's five loaves of fish or five blows of bread
and some fish. Here you go, bamp done. I don't know, guys,
(27:21):
but not in a mood for water today. I'm just
not feeling it. It's a nice sunny day out or
at a wedding. Shazam, here's the best wine you've ever tasted. Um. Yeah,
that's that's a really good point, I think. And it's
and I mean, that's it. That is that is a
line of thought that gets deployed, like I said, by
various or medicists, that what we see in Jesus as
(27:43):
that kind of figure is the ideal of the alchemist.
You know, there's something in all of this that keeps
kind of bothering me is that the end product of
a lot of this alchemy is usually some incredibly sought
after material. So there's certain an element of like titilation
and like peaking people's sort of baser instincts like greed
(28:06):
or like you know, wanting to be wealthy, and that's
sort of it's almost like, um, it would cause you
to be more likely to believe it if you think
it could benefit you in some way? Are you accusing
alchemy of being a prosperity theology. I'm not making any action.
This is what's really good. Yeah, that's really good point.
Rather than prosperity theology, I might actually suggest that you
(28:26):
think of it in terms of like marketing. You want
to sell a line of thinking. You want to sell
people on this process that's going to ultimately change and
benefit them if they follow through with it. But people
don't like to hear that. People people don't especially if
it's like a long, complex, involved process. Nobody wants to
(28:48):
hear that. It's like telling people to work out, Yeah,
go eat go, eat like vegetables and stuff and like
exercise and like don't smoke and eat red meat. And
I'm like, can I just like sit on the couch
with like an absis er and have some gold. And
then that's a good point. Yeah, so there's there's a
there's another thing there that when when you were saying
(29:11):
that nole, it makes me, it makes me think of
these pursuits. And I don't know how we got this
far into the podcast without talking about it. But if
you uh, ladies and gentlemen think of alchemy, then you
probably think at least once of the philosopher's stone, right um,
which is sometimes a misunderstood thing. It's not necessarily this
(29:34):
one guy's magic rock, right um. The philosopher's stone is
variously described uh. In many alchemical texts. It's sometimes a
stone like a literal gem. It's sometimes and a lixer
that one takes um. It's sometimes a uh particular it's
(29:54):
like a chalice. In some it's like at one point
in one text um Mercia Eliotti, the Sociologists of Religion
um looking and Anthropologist of Religion looks at the like
the overlap between the philosopher's Stone and the Holy Grail
as these transformative relics, these ideas of creation and refinement. Um.
(30:20):
But like all of these things are very very like
they're these things that you can take and then you
can hold them, or you can have them, or you
can move them, and you can work them into yourself.
But the process is um most researchers into alchemy have
come to understand. The process is about making yourself into
a philosopher's stone. Yes, about you becoming this thing that
(30:45):
can transform, because the the mythos of the philosopher's Stone
is that you can, with the philosopher's stone, transmute anything
into anything else without any kind of process, without any
kind of like hard work other than will, other than will,
you just will it to be. You want this, you
want transform, transform that gut into a raging six. You know,
(31:07):
you want the matrix and neo in the matrix. You
want to have, you know, the knowledge of everything in
the Library of Congress. You hold on the Philosopher's Stone,
you think about it real hard, and boom, there you go,
Like you want a pile of gold where this table
used to be. Then there it is, and you can
make anything out of anything without having to do the
hard work. It seems like a devil's bargain to me, though,
(31:28):
But that's the thing, is that you get this thing supposedly,
But in the Philosopher's Stone, what you're actually getting isn't
this object, this item that allows you to turn something
into something else. It's this way of existing that lets
you recognize the interconnection between all things. And even even
(31:51):
if this word you exist. The one of the implicit
arguments is that by nature of the process of creating
this sort of thing or discovering this sort of thing,
the person who wills it becomes themselves so changed by
that experience that they're not the same person who would
(32:11):
they would. So it is like a quest for like
the Holy Grail or something. It's not the object itself,
it's the process of getting to the object. And then
once you're at the object, you realize, well, I'm not
gonna do what I initially thought I was gonna do
with this thing. The magic was inside you all the
time of the time joehol Bush talks with it. I sorry,
I just anytime you can make a reference to the
(32:32):
last persade, I'm fine with it, which is still Oh man,
I was surprised. That holds up solid movie, It holds
up and then in some ways, you know, uh, what's
interesting there? And I love that we're talking about this
Holy Grail combination. Um oh, I'm getting a sidetracked. That
might be an episode for a different day. How about
(32:53):
the next thing that we often hear, which is the
cure all the panacea. Yes, and that actually comes back
around to a lot of what we hear in terms
of Chinese alchemy. Um, we have this goal of in
Chinese alchemy, your goal is to balance, as I said,
the energies inside of yourself, to overcome poison, to be
(33:16):
able to be healthier, to live longer, and in some
ultimate cases become immortal and possibly learned how to like
fly and stuff and not like a litch king, actually healthy, immortal, forever,
still out and they like, um, like there's stories of
the like the ancient you know, the ancient master who
(33:40):
has somehow mastered immortality, who has mastered and balanced all
of their energies and recognizes that all things are an
eternal dance of energies and they exist within that dance themselves,
and so if they just exist within it, they never
have to die. But also in those we see competing ideologies.
Is one we just say it narratives. Another we see
(34:01):
these competing ideas because some of the same mythical figures
or legendary figures who are seen by alchemists as trafficking
with other worldly powers of the divine are seeing those powers,
while depicted as angelic and alchemy, are depicted as nefarious
or infernal in some other I mean, I'll say it,
(34:24):
in a lot of organized religions. Yes, it's very true.
It's very true. I mean. So before we get back
into the Panacea, let's track it back a second to
talk about John Deal a little bit more, a little
bit about Enoch and the Anochian language in the Book
of Enoch and the Metatron. In the same apocryphal text
of the Book of Enoch, we're talking about a story
(34:46):
in which Enoch is given and has made privy to
the fall of the angels that fought on the side
of Lucifer in the battle against Heaven. He's made privy
to what happened to them, And what happened to them
is that they came down to Earth and they had,
(35:07):
as they say, congress and the knowledge of human women.
The Nephelim were born out of this union of angelic
and human. This kind of unholy abomination is usually how
it's categorized, is like the the outcome of you know,
(35:27):
angelic powers and human powers. Uh, making the various feature
figure with two backs. It's it's a thing that comes
about as a result of the divine and the human
meeting in a way that they're not supposed to great
things that don't go great together. Right. But also in
that before we get to the Nephelim or actually while
(35:47):
that's happening, because the angels in question that fall, they're
not just like, oh, we're gonna come down, Oh hey,
hot person, and like then that's over. It's like there's
they live with humans, they exchange with humans, they form,
they give knowledge and wisdom of things that humans were
never supposed to have. Um. Azazel Uh. For anybody out
(36:10):
there familiar with the uh the movie Fallen with Denzel Washington, Uh,
that character doesn't just come out of nothing. The character
of Asazel is actually first referenced in the Book of Enoch,
and he is originally an angel of death. His job
is to you know, to make death and two shepherds
souls in death, oftentimes connected with the figure of Samuel
(36:34):
and which is the in many categorizations the pre fall
name of lucifer Um. But Azazel becomes this minister of
war to human beings, Asazel teaches humans how to make war,
how to make weapons, how to make you know, metal weapons,
(36:54):
and so we see the story about the Bronze Age
recast as well. Then some angels fell down and talk
to some humans about some stuff, and now we knew
how to make swords out of metal. Right right, Let's
let's let's follow this the curve of this rabbit hole
just just a little bit further down this um a tangent.
I have a tangent for you guys, all right, So
(37:17):
for our listeners, you know, we have to be conscious this.
This might sound like what we're describing would be a
bunch of imaginative, somewhat deluded people who are spinning fanciful
of engaging stories about the world. But this is still
there's still science at work here, which is the strangest part.
(37:39):
I read recently, and I don't know if you guys
heard about this um that ancient Babylonian astronomers were tracking
Jupiter with calculus, with like actual and in fact calculus. Yeah,
and there several thousand years before we ever thought that
that was invented, right right, And because of this what's
so strange is that in what's so strange is that
(38:02):
the reason they were tracking, the reason that they had
this um amazingly complex math, which was well done, and
it's you know, let's keep in mind, this concerns a
planet that no one in our species, at least officially
has been to yet. Uh and so, and they're not
working with technology remotely close to what is here in
(38:26):
the modern day. They were tracking this, they were doing
this amazing job because they wanted to know the religious implications, right,
and they were ultimately looking for um even though they
were doing solid work, they were ultimately looking for explanations
on the acts and the moods of the gods. And
(38:47):
so ultimately, yeah, as a result of that, they ended
up inventing calculus, you know, about ten thou years before
we thought. It's like when you stop and think about
what is actually present in our capabilities, what we what
we can learn to do, and what motivates us to
do it. As you said, right, So, one of the
(39:08):
things that I tend to tell my students when we
learn about philosophy of religion and we talk about atheism
and agnosticism and belief, one of the things I talked
about is okay, so let's talk about Islam for a
little bit. Right. In Islam, it's a commandment to know
(39:30):
the works of God, to understand the world. It's a
responsibility that you dig down via science and math and
art and figure out the world however you can, because
from that perspective, God made this, and God put humans
(39:52):
here to enjoy it, to experience it, and to take
care of it. So you better fee year it out
pretty fast so that you can we get mathematical Like,
we get mathematical advancements from Islamic cultures around the world
down through human history. As a result of this, we
get architectural advancements, we get geometric advances that we never
(40:16):
would have seen if people hadn't been trying to accurately
reproduce religious experience because God said so. So it's that's
such a great way to put it. Because we're finding
is that Um Nolan, you and I were doing the
flat Earth episode earlier with Matt. One thing that we
found was this whole myth about this entire myth about
(40:39):
people thinking the Earth was flat until what was it
fous Yeah, and that that entire time, Um, people knew
for the the whole time people knew the Earth was round.
The big argument was like how big is it? Not
what shape is it? But because there were because there
were book that attempted to make science and faith seem um.
(41:05):
I think the phrase we use his logger heads, which
is an awkward word I was trying to bring back,
but I think I'm gonna have to give up on
that one. Logger heads. It's it's hard to deploy, but
it's a good word. I kind of like dropped it
and then just kept running in the podcast and hoped
that no one called called me out on it. The
best one we had was um in that episode was
(41:28):
where no, I think you invented it horse wash right,
It's hard to say it could have been used before,
but it just occurred to me. I'm gonna gets poetic,
I'm so so what what we're learning is that um,
not only is it not the case that science and
faith would be UM mortal enemies or irreconcilable, and instead
(41:52):
it is the case that for much of human civilization
the two have been one and the same exactly. And
that's precisely like when we think and talk about alchemy,
that's precisely what we're seeing. We're seeing this unification of
scientific faith and well scientific faith, that's what we're seeing.
(42:13):
We're seeing this scientific exploration what would later come to
be called scientific exploration of faith, of the workings of nature,
of the operations of God, because that's what her medicists, alchemists,
magicians at this time are looking for. They're looking for,
how does God work through nature? How is nature this
(42:34):
perfect plan that God created that you know, works and
functions and ticks along perfectly. How does that happen? And
can we do it? Ah? Yes, the million dollar question,
the million philosophers still in question, and the question we're
still trying to answer in many levels today. So let's
end on this note. What is modern alchemy? What is
(42:58):
the future of alchemy? The current this position of alchemy
as it's understood in the world today. Um, it's kind
of dichotomists. On the one hand, people look at alchemy
and look at the processes of alchemy and they scoff
and they say, um, how could anybody have ever been
(43:20):
so naive as the thing that you could transmute lead
into gold, When at the same time we have a
large hadron collider that could do you just that. That's like,
we have the ability to turn energy into matter. We
have the ability to do that on a very large scale,
(43:41):
and we can do it in a very small scale.
I know a physicist working at Agnes Scott right now
who could do that in her lab when she goes
in like later today, like she could. We can make
protons and neutrons out of photons. All you gotta do
is slam again, they're hard. We can we can do this.
(44:02):
We can change the atomic weight of things. We know
how to manipulate things and turn them into or give
them the properties of other things. Now we I think
if we brought John d or Isaac Newton. Oh yes,
also Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist for those of
you still unaware about that. Sorry, you just drop that
(44:23):
on you. But like an apple, like an apple on
your head, Isaac Newton alchemists. It is interesting though, because
I mean, you know, you think about just the very
idea that these processes would be possible is pretty innovative
in and of itself. You know, the fact that we're
now getting around to catching up with these ideas. You know,
I don't want to speak about whether or not I
(44:43):
believe these things to be true or not the results
were reproducible at the time, but the idea itself is fascinating,
that you can turn one material into another or you know,
change these fundamental aspects of matter, and the fact that
we're now getting around to it and hundreds of years
later is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, if if we weren't
(45:04):
already doing it in secret, I just have to pose
that part. Yeah, if it's let's put it this way.
We mentioned the hidden history of alchemy, We mentioned the
work being transcribed into coded texts, and if there are
people out there who have been, you know, in the
process of reproducing these results, turning themselves into philosophers stones
(45:28):
being able to understand the energetic processes that alter everything,
they're probably not just gonna, like, you know, tell everybody
that's a very good point, absolutely. I mean, beyond the
fact that actually being able to turn any material into
gold would at a fundamental level on upset the entire
(45:49):
world market. Um, if these philosophers were correct in their
belief that it's about the process that at learning and
becoming more that figuring this stuff out and the change
that we undergo as a process of it as a
result of the process. I mean, then they're not gonna
(46:13):
want to just tell you right how to do that.
That's a that's not only it's worse than a cheat
code because it invalidates what you could have done exactly.
So it cannot be done. It must or it cannot
be done by reading like the Reader's Digest or the
wiki of the cliff Notes. You have to go through
the process. And so imagine, as I said, like if
(46:35):
you bring Isaac Newton or John d today and they
see what we can do, they see what we've learned,
they see what we've become as a result of maybe
not following al chemical processes and spiritual engagement exactly, but
by saying, okay, what works, what can we know, what
can we understand? What do we know about nature? And
(46:58):
then what we have a the species? And what those
of us who follow those operations directly, who undergo those
operations directly in that search look like today, I think
they'd say that alchemy it was still doing pretty well.
And on that note, we are going to end our
first episode together. Damian, thank you so much for coming
(47:21):
on the show. Where can people find more of your work?
Where can they uh read about you? Maybe talk to
you on the internet. Uh, talk to me on the
internet on Twitter. That's at Wolvin that's w O l
v e N. And you can read my work at
a future worth thinking about dot com and technocult dot net.
(47:45):
All right, and uh, we are going to be returning
next week to uh No, Damian, I was really happy
with our ability to not talk about the other stuff
that were super excited to talk about. Yeah, we showed
some very good restraint there. I was. I was impressed
with I was impressed with this. Uh. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. We hope you tune in next week
(48:07):
when we cover technology and the occult, uh, the future
of science and magic. And in the meantime, if you'd
like to hear any other episode we also we've ever done.
We have one on gnosticism that you might enjoy. You
can visit our website. Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com And if you'd rather just communicate with
(48:29):
us directly and want to keep the Facebook and the
Twitters out of the whole affair, you can just drop
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
how Stuff Works dot Com. From more on this topic,
another unexplained phenomenon. Visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy. You
(48:54):
can also get in touch on Twitter at the handle
at conspiracy Style
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Ladies
and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. My name is Noel,
(00:24):
and you are you, hopefully listeners. My name is Been,
our colleague and confidante, our our close associate, our what
some might call ride or die. Be at that shore.
Matt Frederick is on on a mission that he mentioned earlier,
not so much a secret mission, but a mission nonetheless,
(00:46):
and he will be returning very soon. You may be
able to catch him on a live show here and there,
but you didn't hear it from us. However, this does
not mean that it's just Nuel I and the studio today. No,
we are. We are thrilled to have a special guest
(01:07):
with us. This is a friend of the show and
a friend of mine. Um, we've known each other for
a while. Uh. This is an instructor at Kennesaw State University,
also pretty well known writer on religious studies, on the
intersection of technology and the occult, which we'll get to
spoiler alert, uh, as well as philosophy and as a
(01:29):
matter of fact, when we were talking about this off
the air, who were like, how do I how do
we encapsulate the stuff we're gonna talk to today? A
lot of wear, a lot of hats, A lot of hats,
ladies and gentlemen. Damian Patrick Williams, gonna be with you
guys today. Thanks for having me. Hey, yeah, thank you
so much for agreeing to go down a couple of
crazy rabbit holes with us. Thank The rabbit holes are
(01:50):
the best kind of rabbit holes. Yes, as far as
we're considered on this show, they are the only kind
of rabbit holes. Before we get to today's episode, Damien, Um,
there's a thing that Nolan, Matt and I do where
we introduced listeners to each other. It's something we like
to call shout out corners. That's right, ladies and gentlemen,
(02:13):
it is the return of the shout out corner. And
we have a few people who have requested a shout out.
Mr Brown, do you want to do the honors? Oh?
Why not? Uh, here's one for Tony Hernandez. Shout out
to Tony because he was listening to the Superbugs episode
while fighting an ongoing infection. Hopefully it wasn't a super infection.
(02:36):
Best of luck to you, sir, and shout out to Gwendolen,
who said it was a life goal of hers to
receive a shout out on the show. Check that off
the bucket list, Gwendolen, no doubt doubt, We've got We've
got one more here for today, and that would be
Staff Sergeant Adam Denshar, who wanted to know our thoughts
(03:01):
on simulated reality, which is something that Damian, you and
I and Nolan are going to get into in a
future episode. Right, Yes, yes, very much, And that's our
shout out corner for today. So I am so excited
that we're we're going to take a look at today's
(03:23):
topic because it's something that we have talked about at
times in our video series. We've touched on it a
little bit. UM alchemy, alchemy? So what what? What? What
is alchemy? UM? I think the best way to think
about alchemy is to think about the historical position it
(03:44):
tends to occupy. UM. You look back at like the
Dark and Middle Ages in both Europe and and a
corresponding time frame but even earlier than that back in China,
and you can see this drive to try to change
one thing into another. In the European alchemical set, you've
(04:05):
got this thing where everybody was trying to find a
way to turn lead into gold, which is like the
the the tip top thing that pretty much everybody knows
about alchemy, right Chrystopia, I think. And so this idea
of being able to transmute, and that's the big word,
(04:25):
and alchemical processes transmutation, being able to transmute one thing
to another thing, taking various minerals, various metals, various substances
and solutions and turning things into other things. I guess
when I think about alchemy as it's portrayed, you know,
in popular culture and such, there always seems to be
(04:46):
a mystical element to it. But then a lot of
times when I hear it describes is the way you've
done it sounds much more like a precise science. But
in reality, isn't it kind of somewhere in between exactly
what I was about to say. It's like you can't
separate the one from the other. Or if you look
at the the Hermetic well, hermetic philosophers, practitioners of what
(05:07):
were known as the Hermetic arts, these people were they
were very very precise about what it was that they
thought they were doing. There were specifical formulations, specific formulations,
um specific uh combinations and operations that needed to be undergone,
processes that needed to be very very carefully maintained. For instance,
(05:27):
in some of the some of the things that would
now in the modern age perhaps seem like spells or
rituals were considered something like a scientific and experiments that
must be reproducible exactly. And if it's not reproducible, then
it it fails. It's not it's not alchemy. It's like,
(05:48):
if it's not reproducible, if you can't put this down
in a text for a further alchemical student, a further
alchemists beyond yourself to engage in, then then it's a failure.
It needs further study. You you've obviously missed something if
it can't be reproduced, right, And we had spoken about
this before off air. I believe it was John d
(06:12):
who had some that we have been discussing, who had
some incredibly specific rules in terms of both process and
materials for his alchemical rituals. Yes, and D was at
a time he was perhaps the best known alchemist. And
(06:33):
you know, the popular imagination um. John D was the
spy master for Queen Elizabeth the First. He was her
secret agent, he was her advisor, he was her her
chief scientists, she was he was master magician to the Queen. Um.
There was a rumor that went around that for a
(06:54):
while there that he used to sign his letters double
O seven UM. That has been in no way, shape
or form ever fully substantiated. But it's a cool rumor.
It's a really cool rumor, Like that's where Ian Fleming
got it. So overall, I mean like a skill set
that definitely lends itself to subterfuge, you know, pulling the
(07:15):
wool over people's eyes exactly, being able to, if at
all possible, misdirect, being able to alter the perceptions of
the people that you have directly in front of you,
or perhaps not directly in front of you, but to
build up an aura, to build up a sense of mystery,
(07:35):
a sense of power that others might not be able
to adequately match. So how does that tie into the
results that we're talking about? Because I think he had
some pretty extensive journals that one might consider to be
scientific notes of sorts when it comes to this alchemy
that he did. Absolutely so d in his processes as
he was doing the work. John d is famous amongst
(07:59):
the cult circles anyway, famous for his work on the
Enochian texts Um. He does this work wherein he communes
with angels. There's no really, there's no other way that
he that you can put what he describes here. He
performs rituals, performs uh magical and alchemical operations to put
(08:23):
himself in a state of mind and a state of
physical and metaphysical being where he can talk to angels
and receive transmissions of their language. And then he transcribes
it down the languages the Enochian text exactly and so
the like the the Enoch or the Enochian is. It
(08:45):
takes its name from the biblical character of Enoch. The
Book of Enoch is an apocryphal text in Um Christianity.
It's it's providence is dubious, but it's It tells the
story of a man Uh named Enoch, who, at the
time of his death Um does not die and does
(09:09):
not then you know, spiritually transform into then a spiritual
being that goes to heaven to live with God. Instead,
Enoch is raised up. He is turned into Uh, an
angel at the time of his death, and so he
becomes the voice of God, he becomes the bridge for
humanity and divinity. And so the Enochian language, as D
(09:34):
describes it, is that bridge language. It is that that moment,
that way of communicating between humans and the divine. And
this is a fascinating concept, and it's one that we
see bandied about to some degree or another in a
lot of popular fiction, almost in a in like a
(09:54):
referential way. This transformative work. Um, you know, there's it's
like the whole Joseph Campbell of Frasier's work, you know,
with the dying and reborn God. And it's strange that
we see so many of the same stories echoing through
the halls of time. But there's one question that I
(10:15):
have to ask, did anyone successfully reproduce these work that
we know of, not in the kind of publicly claimed
reproductions of you know, here some huge, big results that
D claim to have gotten, Like because of these work,
(10:36):
You've got an entire tradition of Western magicians and alchemists
that come along, Hermetic philosophers, as many of them styled themselves,
that came along afterwards. And what they did was, you know,
they said, they've managed to reproduce the results. They also
said that if you didn't yourself see the results, it
was because you had not undergone the processes to be
(10:57):
able to see the results. That in order to direct
the experience this, you have to go through the transformative process.
You have to perform the process yourself in order to
actually be able to recognize what's happening, in order to
be able to hear it, see it, feel it yourself. Now,
that's that's the fascinating point. I want to I want
to go back just for um, just for uh some
(11:20):
background painting here for the audience. Uh, ladies and gentlemen.
When we're talking about the origin stuff. Here Noel and
Damian pointing out the we're pointing out that alchemy, as
this ancient art involving into a science, took place in
more than just Western Europe. Most Western alchemy I traces
(11:43):
back I believed to Hellenistic Egypt, and the the completely
separate branch, one could argue would be more Eastern. But
in both cases, what we're seeing is the the origin
of a tempting to logically categorize, quantifies somehow and explore
(12:06):
the universe in a in a rational way other than
just saying, oh crap, the sun's here again. I hope
it's not angry with me today. You know, Chinese alchemy,
for instance, is deeply tied to daois um um and
the Daoist what's oftentimes considered dallast magical practice um. But
(12:27):
what that looks like today when we look at what
they were doing in the operations that they were undergoing
in that process, we would call that, in a very
real sense, medicine. Yeah, we want to call that if
we wanted to make a kind of linear progression story
out of it. And the story that, you know, because
it's a narrative, is about making choices and might or
might not have merit to somebody else who hears it.
But if we wanted to tell a story about it,
(12:50):
we could tell a story about Chinese alchemy becoming modern
day pharmacology. It's about balancing various energy within yourself. It's
about using potions to extend life. It's about engaging in
the balancing of various elements and energies. And one of
(13:10):
the terms that got used in the old days was humorous.
That's really interesting because I mean a lot of that
is still very much alive today. And you know, massage
therapy and reflexology and you know, essential oils and all
that kind of stuff. And I mean, you know, certainly
there are those that would you know, poo poo it,
but I mean the people practice it and people swear
on it. Eflutely. I would argue perhaps that that is
(13:33):
more alive today than maybe some of the more transmutational
forms of alchemy. Well, this is getting ahead of ourselves
a little bit perhaps, But like a lot of the
people that I talked to, and when we talk about,
you know, the history of alchemy, and we talk about
you know, alchemy finds its footing in the modern era
in plenty first century as a material science. So you've
(13:57):
got let's let's put a pin in that which this is,
this is, this is a good and this is a
great point. I want to draw a parallel here as well.
So if we are, if we are telling this story right,
if what we would consider alchemy in China ultimately becomes pharmacology,
we have seen that there is substance to the use
(14:20):
of herbal medicine in in this in this sphere, right,
this is not a placebo effect in all cases, but
I also I wonder if the Western branch of alchemy
leads to well, as you as you said, uh, meta materials,
which we'll get to, but also some of the origins
(14:42):
of chemistry are found in alchemy. Is that correct? That
is absolutely correct, because we're talking, as we previously noted about,
you know, people who are trying to reproduce results, they're
talking about building and working with elements that they are
beginning in this way to understand and what we consider
a more fundamental way. The way that we look at
elements in chemistry now, the way that we think about
(15:05):
the atomic structure of things was unknown at that point
in time. There was vague hints if we look back
at like Democratus and Epicurus back in the Greeks of
you know, quote unquote atomic theory, but that was not
the kind of robust, you know, electron shells and protons
and neutrons kind of chemical theory that we have today. Um.
(15:29):
It was instead at that point in time about well,
there are base elements, there are elements of the earth.
There are elements that are more solid, and then there
are more rarefied elements. There are more refined elements, elements
like gold, like silver, like platinum, and those elements. If
(15:52):
you leave elements of the earth alone for long enough,
they'll become there's kind of more rare fied element. They
will evolve into it on their own. So our job
as alchemists is to figure out the process by which
those base elements turn into the more rarefied elements, and
to then replicate that process, to control that process, to
(16:15):
manipulate that process for ourselves. Ah. And this gets into
gets into something fascinating. So there is a bit of
an occultation, a bit of a conspiratorial aspect to alchemy.
There is a bit of stuff they don't want you
(16:35):
to know, because all of these works moving a base
element to something more rarefied, more pure, are a microcosmic
example of something else, which is the big the big
elephant in the room, the great work. Yes, and we'll
(16:56):
get to that after a word from our sponsor. The
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phone and skipped the song back to the beginning. It's
all normal, and the cats have adjusted their antennadish ears
in the way that means they're ignoring me on purpose now,
So I ring out the wet yarns again and I'm
daydreaming about backup vocals. When there it is an extra word,
(18:29):
lilting through that third line and almost off key and
emphasized by its own tact on beat, and a moment
later that noise nothing like the hardwoods, now that I
hear it. It's a guttering grind, a warped door against
warped frame, muffled behind the rest of the track. Weird
that I didn't notice it before, but I figured it
(18:51):
for low fi charms. Some studio flots them, the mandolin
player bringing back another couple of beers before the next song,
or whatever. I should keep cleaning, Max said, should text
me later, maybe come back over. But something in my
mind keeps fluttering over that in this step, the mathematical
improbability of the pattern mop in bucket. I pick up
(19:11):
my phone and wind the song back, finger dragging over
a smooth screen, and this time it's expected, and I
sing along, punctuate the beat with a slap on my thigh,
and suddenly it's sensical, satisfying, even like picking a scab
or popping a zip. Even the stuttering scrape that comes
after is a strange comfort. Then I register heat on
(19:33):
my nape and turn blinking into brightness. The door that
never was is open, and the eyes beyond are burning. Burning,
m n burn, cleanse the clutter of this old world,
(19:57):
and open the door that never was with a Hermes
mop find them wherever ancient hidden doorways may lead. Use
only as directed and only in conjunction with Hermes approved
buckets and other Hermes Household products. Hermiseusehold pducts are not
responsible for any of the the following sid effects of necromancic
capitler aspeciation, canary wing, birdie left the court stone, poisoned wells, moonless, sabit, transpantation, transubstantiation,
unintended resurrection, gall dropsy, stroke, broken string, missing in order,
(20:19):
and costom. Herme's household is a subsidiary of illumination Global unlimited.
Here's where it gets crazy. So Damien, what is this
great work? Well, well, we're talking about the idea of
(20:41):
the great work. We're usually referencing a kind of formulation,
a kind of conceptualization about the magical process of refining oneself.
So rather than taking a metal lead in creating a
metal like gold from it, we're taking a base human right,
(21:05):
base soul, the base nature of ourselves, base meaning animal,
like base, meaning you know, in the sense of we
have our drives that are for food and for sex,
and for comfort and for shelter. But those drives are
their their base. They're basic. They are not refined drives.
(21:28):
Those are not the drives that we ought to be
shooting for. They are, if need be yes, present, but
they're not which should drive our lives. They're not what
should make us who we are. Right, So this base
nature that we have needs to be refined through the
process of the great work into something pure, and in
(21:49):
many cases it's seen as something pure again, that is
back to what we used to be. So there becomes
this kind of um Abrahamic Judea Christian Islamic kind of
sense of the fall, the the imperfection of humans as
being the result of the work of humans or the
(22:10):
doings of humans. And so if we can do what
we can to recapture that kind of preden i fall moment,
if we can recapture that and turn ourselves back into
that through an integration with nature, through understanding the processes
of nature as nature works, through imbuing ourselves with the
(22:33):
same transmutational processes, the same willing control that nature has,
then we can turn ourselves again, We can make ourselves
again into that kind of perfect, rarefied golden state. So
the Great Work is ultimately a redemptive act. Many see
(22:53):
it that way in many ways. Yeah, many see it
that way. Um. Some see it as an apotheosis. Some
see the culmination of the Great Work as not becoming
again like we used to be. But to reach a
level as with God, that is, to put ourselves, we
had to come down from this quote unquote pure state.
(23:17):
We had to fall, We had to be in this
kind of process of being in the mud and trying
to survive and scrounge and scrape, and then move through
that and become more than that, and then become more
than we even ever were before that, and to become
finally like God. And that's the process of the Great Work.
(23:38):
And that's the point of it. Many see and some
see not just that, but that that's you know, for
putting God in this mix here, that that's what God
wants us to do, that's the purpose what we're supposed
to do. So would you say that being a successful
alchemist is sort of a physical personification of how being
(24:00):
successfully performed this great work on yourself. Yes, Um, that
was the idea of being a ultimately a successful alchemist.
And I should take a step back and say that
a lot of what we know, a lot of what
we think we know about alchemy, and a lot of
our perspective on alchemy is reconstruction. Right. So we're looking
(24:22):
backward at a group of people who been, as you noted,
we're very secretive about this work. There they were in
fact occulting it in many ways, UM off air. Previously
we discussed this idea of alchemical text being written in code. Yes, yes, okay,
this is this is a fantastic and bedeviling thing. So listeners,
(24:46):
a lot of a lot of us have written back
and forth with each other via maybe Twitter, email or
Facebook about UM mysterious texts. We We've talked about both
legit aimant ly undeciphered text like the Vonage manuscripts. We've
talked about UM, things that were recreations of that that
(25:10):
come from completely mundane sources, like the Kodak Seraphenius. However, UM,
this this is a fascinating thing because there are both
practical and philosophical reasons for writing and code. One of
the big questions that I'd like to explore will be
the relationship of alchemists to the established churches of the time. Uh,
(25:30):
And did that play any role in this use of
code um To an extent, some alchemists were in fact
working to hide their processes um and their actual activities
from the church at the time, because Uh, this was
a point at which the understanding of magic for the
(25:52):
sake of the church was beginning to be seen as
um kind of taboo. Uh. There was a point in
church history in which magic that gets done there is
there's biblical magic, like there is a history of Jewish magic,
of Christian magic, of Islamic magic. There are traditions of
magical processes being built out of certain understandings and certain
(26:15):
decipher ngs of the text. The entire history of jam
Atria and the Kabbalah is about deciphering coded messages from
out of the Torah from by using numerical transformations on
words and texts to then find hidden messages in the text.
And the same was applied to the New Testament by
(26:36):
Gnostic thinkers and building these kinds of perspectives out of um.
What is hidden? What does the hidden meaning within the text?
I mean the Gnostics came before the first really attested
cabalists obviously, But like, um, in all of this that
keep thinking, wasn't Jesus kind of an alchemist? Actually, some
of the alchemists and magicians, the hermetic magicians working later
(26:58):
down the line, made that exact argument that what Jesus
specifically was doing was working to teach people how to
perfect and to refine themselves. And in the process, by
the way, here so you can change one thing into another, right, people,
that's five loaves of fish or five blows of bread
and some fish. Here you go, bamp done. I don't know, guys,
(27:21):
but not in a mood for water today. I'm just
not feeling it. It's a nice sunny day out or
at a wedding. Shazam, here's the best wine you've ever tasted. Um. Yeah,
that's that's a really good point, I think. And it's
and I mean, that's it. That is that is a
line of thought that gets deployed, like I said, by
various or medicists, that what we see in Jesus as
(27:43):
that kind of figure is the ideal of the alchemist.
You know, there's something in all of this that keeps
kind of bothering me is that the end product of
a lot of this alchemy is usually some incredibly sought
after material. So there's certain an element of like titilation
and like peaking people's sort of baser instincts like greed
(28:06):
or like you know, wanting to be wealthy, and that's
sort of it's almost like, um, it would cause you
to be more likely to believe it if you think
it could benefit you in some way? Are you accusing
alchemy of being a prosperity theology. I'm not making any action.
This is what's really good. Yeah, that's really good point.
Rather than prosperity theology, I might actually suggest that you
(28:26):
think of it in terms of like marketing. You want
to sell a line of thinking. You want to sell
people on this process that's going to ultimately change and
benefit them if they follow through with it. But people
don't like to hear that. People people don't especially if
it's like a long, complex, involved process. Nobody wants to
(28:48):
hear that. It's like telling people to work out, Yeah,
go eat go, eat like vegetables and stuff and like
exercise and like don't smoke and eat red meat. And
I'm like, can I just like sit on the couch
with like an absis er and have some gold. And
then that's a good point. Yeah, so there's there's a
there's another thing there that when when you were saying
(29:11):
that nole, it makes me, it makes me think of
these pursuits. And I don't know how we got this
far into the podcast without talking about it. But if
you uh, ladies and gentlemen think of alchemy, then you
probably think at least once of the philosopher's stone, right um,
which is sometimes a misunderstood thing. It's not necessarily this
(29:34):
one guy's magic rock, right um. The philosopher's stone is
variously described uh. In many alchemical texts. It's sometimes a
stone like a literal gem. It's sometimes and a lixer
that one takes um. It's sometimes a uh particular it's
(29:54):
like a chalice. In some it's like at one point
in one text um Mercia Eliotti, the Sociologists of Religion
um looking and Anthropologist of Religion looks at the like
the overlap between the philosopher's Stone and the Holy Grail
as these transformative relics, these ideas of creation and refinement. Um.
(30:20):
But like all of these things are very very like
they're these things that you can take and then you
can hold them, or you can have them, or you
can move them, and you can work them into yourself.
But the process is um most researchers into alchemy have
come to understand. The process is about making yourself into
a philosopher's stone. Yes, about you becoming this thing that
(30:45):
can transform, because the the mythos of the philosopher's Stone
is that you can, with the philosopher's stone, transmute anything
into anything else without any kind of process, without any
kind of like hard work other than will, other than will,
you just will it to be. You want this, you
want transform, transform that gut into a raging six. You know,
(31:07):
you want the matrix and neo in the matrix. You
want to have, you know, the knowledge of everything in
the Library of Congress. You hold on the Philosopher's Stone,
you think about it real hard, and boom, there you go,
Like you want a pile of gold where this table
used to be. Then there it is, and you can
make anything out of anything without having to do the
hard work. It seems like a devil's bargain to me, though,
(31:28):
But that's the thing, is that you get this thing supposedly,
But in the Philosopher's Stone, what you're actually getting isn't
this object, this item that allows you to turn something
into something else. It's this way of existing that lets
you recognize the interconnection between all things. And even even
(31:51):
if this word you exist. The one of the implicit
arguments is that by nature of the process of creating
this sort of thing or discovering this sort of thing,
the person who wills it becomes themselves so changed by
that experience that they're not the same person who would
(32:11):
they would. So it is like a quest for like
the Holy Grail or something. It's not the object itself,
it's the process of getting to the object. And then
once you're at the object, you realize, well, I'm not
gonna do what I initially thought I was gonna do
with this thing. The magic was inside you all the
time of the time joehol Bush talks with it. I sorry,
I just anytime you can make a reference to the
(32:32):
last persade, I'm fine with it, which is still Oh man,
I was surprised. That holds up solid movie, It holds
up and then in some ways, you know, uh, what's
interesting there? And I love that we're talking about this
Holy Grail combination. Um oh, I'm getting a sidetracked. That
might be an episode for a different day. How about
(32:53):
the next thing that we often hear, which is the
cure all the panacea. Yes, and that actually comes back
around to a lot of what we hear in terms
of Chinese alchemy. Um, we have this goal of in
Chinese alchemy, your goal is to balance, as I said,
the energies inside of yourself, to overcome poison, to be
(33:16):
able to be healthier, to live longer, and in some
ultimate cases become immortal and possibly learned how to like
fly and stuff and not like a litch king, actually healthy, immortal, forever,
still out and they like, um, like there's stories of
the like the ancient you know, the ancient master who
(33:40):
has somehow mastered immortality, who has mastered and balanced all
of their energies and recognizes that all things are an
eternal dance of energies and they exist within that dance themselves,
and so if they just exist within it, they never
have to die. But also in those we see competing ideologies.
Is one we just say it narratives. Another we see
(34:01):
these competing ideas because some of the same mythical figures
or legendary figures who are seen by alchemists as trafficking
with other worldly powers of the divine are seeing those powers,
while depicted as angelic and alchemy, are depicted as nefarious
or infernal in some other I mean, I'll say it,
(34:24):
in a lot of organized religions. Yes, it's very true.
It's very true. I mean. So before we get back
into the Panacea, let's track it back a second to
talk about John Deal a little bit more, a little
bit about Enoch and the Anochian language in the Book
of Enoch and the Metatron. In the same apocryphal text
of the Book of Enoch, we're talking about a story
(34:46):
in which Enoch is given and has made privy to
the fall of the angels that fought on the side
of Lucifer in the battle against Heaven. He's made privy
to what happened to them, And what happened to them
is that they came down to Earth and they had,
(35:07):
as they say, congress and the knowledge of human women.
The Nephelim were born out of this union of angelic
and human. This kind of unholy abomination is usually how
it's categorized, is like the the outcome of you know,
(35:27):
angelic powers and human powers. Uh, making the various feature
figure with two backs. It's it's a thing that comes
about as a result of the divine and the human
meeting in a way that they're not supposed to great
things that don't go great together. Right. But also in
that before we get to the Nephelim or actually while
(35:47):
that's happening, because the angels in question that fall, they're
not just like, oh, we're gonna come down, Oh hey,
hot person, and like then that's over. It's like there's
they live with humans, they exchange with humans, they form,
they give knowledge and wisdom of things that humans were
never supposed to have. Um. Azazel Uh. For anybody out
(36:10):
there familiar with the uh the movie Fallen with Denzel Washington, Uh,
that character doesn't just come out of nothing. The character
of Asazel is actually first referenced in the Book of Enoch,
and he is originally an angel of death. His job
is to you know, to make death and two shepherds
souls in death, oftentimes connected with the figure of Samuel
(36:34):
and which is the in many categorizations the pre fall
name of lucifer Um. But Azazel becomes this minister of
war to human beings, Asazel teaches humans how to make war,
how to make weapons, how to make you know, metal weapons,
(36:54):
and so we see the story about the Bronze Age
recast as well. Then some angels fell down and talk
to some humans about some stuff, and now we knew
how to make swords out of metal. Right right, Let's
let's let's follow this the curve of this rabbit hole
just just a little bit further down this um a tangent.
I have a tangent for you guys, all right, So
(37:17):
for our listeners, you know, we have to be conscious this.
This might sound like what we're describing would be a
bunch of imaginative, somewhat deluded people who are spinning fanciful
of engaging stories about the world. But this is still
there's still science at work here, which is the strangest part.
(37:39):
I read recently, and I don't know if you guys
heard about this um that ancient Babylonian astronomers were tracking
Jupiter with calculus, with like actual and in fact calculus. Yeah,
and there several thousand years before we ever thought that
that was invented, right right, And because of this what's
so strange is that in what's so strange is that
(38:02):
the reason they were tracking, the reason that they had
this um amazingly complex math, which was well done, and
it's you know, let's keep in mind, this concerns a
planet that no one in our species, at least officially
has been to yet. Uh and so, and they're not
working with technology remotely close to what is here in
(38:26):
the modern day. They were tracking this, they were doing
this amazing job because they wanted to know the religious implications, right,
and they were ultimately looking for um even though they
were doing solid work, they were ultimately looking for explanations
on the acts and the moods of the gods. And
(38:47):
so ultimately, yeah, as a result of that, they ended
up inventing calculus, you know, about ten thou years before
we thought. It's like when you stop and think about
what is actually present in our capabilities, what we what
we can learn to do, and what motivates us to
do it. As you said, right, So, one of the
(39:08):
things that I tend to tell my students when we
learn about philosophy of religion and we talk about atheism
and agnosticism and belief, one of the things I talked
about is okay, so let's talk about Islam for a
little bit. Right. In Islam, it's a commandment to know
(39:30):
the works of God, to understand the world. It's a
responsibility that you dig down via science and math and
art and figure out the world however you can, because
from that perspective, God made this, and God put humans
(39:52):
here to enjoy it, to experience it, and to take
care of it. So you better fee year it out
pretty fast so that you can we get mathematical Like,
we get mathematical advancements from Islamic cultures around the world
down through human history. As a result of this, we
get architectural advancements, we get geometric advances that we never
(40:16):
would have seen if people hadn't been trying to accurately
reproduce religious experience because God said so. So it's that's
such a great way to put it. Because we're finding
is that Um Nolan, you and I were doing the
flat Earth episode earlier with Matt. One thing that we
found was this whole myth about this entire myth about
(40:39):
people thinking the Earth was flat until what was it
fous Yeah, and that that entire time, Um, people knew
for the the whole time people knew the Earth was round.
The big argument was like how big is it? Not
what shape is it? But because there were because there
were book that attempted to make science and faith seem um.
(41:05):
I think the phrase we use his logger heads, which
is an awkward word I was trying to bring back,
but I think I'm gonna have to give up on
that one. Logger heads. It's it's hard to deploy, but
it's a good word. I kind of like dropped it
and then just kept running in the podcast and hoped
that no one called called me out on it. The
best one we had was um in that episode was
(41:28):
where no, I think you invented it horse wash right,
It's hard to say it could have been used before,
but it just occurred to me. I'm gonna gets poetic,
I'm so so what what we're learning is that um,
not only is it not the case that science and
faith would be UM mortal enemies or irreconcilable, and instead
(41:52):
it is the case that for much of human civilization
the two have been one and the same exactly. And
that's precisely like when we think and talk about alchemy,
that's precisely what we're seeing. We're seeing this unification of
scientific faith and well scientific faith, that's what we're seeing.
(42:13):
We're seeing this scientific exploration what would later come to
be called scientific exploration of faith, of the workings of nature,
of the operations of God, because that's what her medicists, alchemists,
magicians at this time are looking for. They're looking for,
how does God work through nature? How is nature this
(42:34):
perfect plan that God created that you know, works and
functions and ticks along perfectly. How does that happen? And
can we do it? Ah? Yes, the million dollar question,
the million philosophers still in question, and the question we're
still trying to answer in many levels today. So let's
end on this note. What is modern alchemy? What is
(42:58):
the future of alchemy? The current this position of alchemy
as it's understood in the world today. Um, it's kind
of dichotomists. On the one hand, people look at alchemy
and look at the processes of alchemy and they scoff
and they say, um, how could anybody have ever been
(43:20):
so naive as the thing that you could transmute lead
into gold, When at the same time we have a
large hadron collider that could do you just that. That's like,
we have the ability to turn energy into matter. We
have the ability to do that on a very large scale,
(43:41):
and we can do it in a very small scale.
I know a physicist working at Agnes Scott right now
who could do that in her lab when she goes
in like later today, like she could. We can make
protons and neutrons out of photons. All you gotta do
is slam again, they're hard. We can we can do this.
(44:02):
We can change the atomic weight of things. We know
how to manipulate things and turn them into or give
them the properties of other things. Now we I think
if we brought John d or Isaac Newton. Oh yes,
also Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist for those of
you still unaware about that. Sorry, you just drop that
(44:23):
on you. But like an apple, like an apple on
your head, Isaac Newton alchemists. It is interesting though, because
I mean, you know, you think about just the very
idea that these processes would be possible is pretty innovative
in and of itself. You know, the fact that we're
now getting around to catching up with these ideas. You know,
I don't want to speak about whether or not I
(44:43):
believe these things to be true or not the results
were reproducible at the time, but the idea itself is fascinating,
that you can turn one material into another or you know,
change these fundamental aspects of matter, and the fact that
we're now getting around to it and hundreds of years
later is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, if if we weren't
(45:04):
already doing it in secret, I just have to pose
that part. Yeah, if it's let's put it this way.
We mentioned the hidden history of alchemy, We mentioned the
work being transcribed into coded texts, and if there are
people out there who have been, you know, in the
process of reproducing these results, turning themselves into philosophers stones
(45:28):
being able to understand the energetic processes that alter everything,
they're probably not just gonna, like, you know, tell everybody
that's a very good point, absolutely. I mean, beyond the
fact that actually being able to turn any material into
gold would at a fundamental level on upset the entire
(45:49):
world market. Um, if these philosophers were correct in their
belief that it's about the process that at learning and
becoming more that figuring this stuff out and the change
that we undergo as a process of it as a
result of the process. I mean, then they're not gonna
(46:13):
want to just tell you right how to do that.
That's a that's not only it's worse than a cheat
code because it invalidates what you could have done exactly.
So it cannot be done. It must or it cannot
be done by reading like the Reader's Digest or the
wiki of the cliff Notes. You have to go through
the process. And so imagine, as I said, like if
(46:35):
you bring Isaac Newton or John d today and they
see what we can do, they see what we've learned,
they see what we've become as a result of maybe
not following al chemical processes and spiritual engagement exactly, but
by saying, okay, what works, what can we know, what
can we understand? What do we know about nature? And
(46:58):
then what we have a the species? And what those
of us who follow those operations directly, who undergo those
operations directly in that search look like today, I think
they'd say that alchemy it was still doing pretty well.
And on that note, we are going to end our
first episode together. Damian, thank you so much for coming
(47:21):
on the show. Where can people find more of your work?
Where can they uh read about you? Maybe talk to
you on the internet. Uh, talk to me on the
internet on Twitter. That's at Wolvin that's w O l
v e N. And you can read my work at
a future worth thinking about dot com and technocult dot net.
(47:45):
All right, and uh, we are going to be returning
next week to uh No, Damian, I was really happy
with our ability to not talk about the other stuff
that were super excited to talk about. Yeah, we showed
some very good restraint there. I was. I was impressed
with I was impressed with this. Uh. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. We hope you tune in next week
(48:07):
when we cover technology and the occult, uh, the future
of science and magic. And in the meantime, if you'd
like to hear any other episode we also we've ever done.
We have one on gnosticism that you might enjoy. You
can visit our website. Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com And if you'd rather just communicate with
(48:29):
us directly and want to keep the Facebook and the
Twitters out of the whole affair, you can just drop
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
how Stuff Works dot Com. From more on this topic,
another unexplained phenomenon. Visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy. You
(48:54):
can also get in touch on Twitter at the handle
at conspiracy Style
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