Alchemical Lightwork, Navigating Dead Materialism, Spiritual Regeneration | Arthur Versluis - Forbidden Knowledge News

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Speaker 2 (01:16):
I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder
and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird
that people are going to have to talk about how
weird it is. Eventually people are going to say, what
the hell is going on. It's not enough to say
it's nuts. You have to explain why it's so nuts.

(01:37):
The invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings,
possible contact with extraterrestrials. The systems which are in place
to keep the world saying are in utterly inadequate to
the forces that have been unleashed.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Welcome back to Forbidden Knowledge News. I'm your host Chris Matthew.
Today my guest is Arthur Vers Lewis. First, be sure
and check out my films. Doors of Perception is on
Amazon Prime, I Call It Louisiana is on two b,
Roku Channel.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Apple and Moore.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
We're booking guests for November. If you have suggestions or
you'd like to be a guest, email me Forbidden Knowledge
neews at gmail dot com. Visit our website Forbidden Knowledge
dot News. It's the home of the Forbidden Knowledge Network.
We also feature some of your favorite podcasts and content creators. Today,
I want to welcome doctor Arthur vers Lewis. He is

(02:35):
president of the Hiros Institute, a nonprofit devoted to realizing
the sacred in contemporary life. The former chair of the
Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University, and he
has written numerous books. Arthur, welcome, how you doing.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
I'm doing fine, wonderful day here. Thanks for the invitation
to talk with you.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thanks so much for coming on. We're going to be
discussing your book, Alchemical Like Work, which provides a guide
to transformation and regeneration of humanity by transcending materialism and
seeding new cultures rooted in authentic wisdom. It provides a
path to spiritual awakening and healing in this age of

(03:22):
technological materialism. Very much looking forward to getting your insights
into this before we do. This is your first time on,
tell us a little bit about yourself and let the
audience know how they can find out more about you.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Sure, there's a couple of things I can say. One
is if you want to check out my previous books,
of course, any online bookstore, but Arthur verslus dot com.
And then secondly, Hirostot Institute, which is a nonprofit that

(04:00):
some friends and I have been engaged in and actually
includes a course which is complimentary to that corresponds to
the Alchemical Light Work book. So that's a little bit
of website introduction.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Anyway, right on, tell us a little bit more about
yourself and what led you to this line of research
and work and ultimately to write these books.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Sure, I've been writing about mysticism and spiritual practices for
many years, and in the course of that, quite a
few years ago, now, I was giving a talk in Minneapolis,
and this fellow came up to me and introduced himself,

(04:53):
and he had a series of manuscripts with him, and
we started to talk and we became fast friends. And
he's a practitioner of spiritual alchemy, and so he's also
a clinical psychologist, and so we work together, have worked
together now for decades, and so the practice of alchemy

(05:17):
is directly tied to that encounter in that friendship over
so many years. It also ties into my academic work,
because I've written scholarly works about Christian mysticism, including books
like Wisdom's Children or Platonic Mysticism. But Alchemical Light Work

(05:39):
is a book about how to apply these two contemporary
life in the contemporary situation, drawing on the practical experience
that comes from working with someone engaged in spiritual alchemy
for many years and engaging it in also myself.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
For those that are new to these spiritual concepts like alchemy,
there are lots of misconceptions. I believe many in the
audience that may not have a complete understanding of alchemy
as it relates to the concepts that you're discussing in

(06:18):
the book. So for those that may not know, could
you tell us just a little bit about spiritual alchemy,
your understanding of it as it relates to the information.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Sure. Well, there's a couple of things to draw on here.
One is that, of course your audience may be somewhat
different because they've been become familiar through you with different

(06:51):
paranormal and other kinds of phenomena. But broadly speaking, our
society is extremely materialist, and in fact, I published a
book recently called Breaking Through the Materialistic Deception that deals
with this and deals with how pervasive materialism is. So

(07:13):
the first step, and this is the first step in
alchemical light work as well, is to begin to recognize
that we're surrounded by a worldview that is really not
aligned with how things really are. And so alchemy is
really about in this context, it's about waking up. It's

(07:34):
about giving us a map to move from a kind
of conditioning to freedom from that conditioning, and that conditioning
is very materialistic, it's very dualistic. And so the first
stage of alchemy is the stage of the negrado or

(07:58):
the black that's the stage of darkness. So we all
begin with that because of course we don't know what
we don't know. We begin in the stage of not
knowing and darkness, and then a light breaks in and
that begins the second stage, which is the breaking in

(08:20):
of light, which is the white stage in alchemy. And
then the third stage is the rubedo or the red stage,
which is the stage of flourishing. And so alchemy in
this context is about giving us a map of awakening,
of how to wake up from a materialistic society and

(08:45):
how to begin to open to different way of being
in the world. This is spiritual alchemy. There also are
forms of alchemy like plant alchemy, which is working with
plants making tink shit, which I've done. There's also working
with metals minerals transforming mercury, purifying mercury for example, into

(09:11):
a medicine. And then the third kind of alchemy is
spiritual alchemy, and that's what this book is about.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
You mentioned how we are living in a reality saturated
with dead materialism and programming that prevents us from reaching
these levels of understanding. As far as your research goes,
how did this occur to humanity? There was once a

(09:43):
point it seemed that we were connected more with nature
and what we understand is source. Somehow our ruling class
put forth these ideologies that transformed humanity over time into
what it is now. But in your perspective, how did

(10:04):
that all start?

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Well, it's a good question. One of the things that
I discuss in the Breaking Through the Materialistic Deception book
is that when we look at nature, we look at
the natural world today generally speaking, we see it as
quote resources unquote, We see it as objects to be

(10:33):
used in some way or exploited. And that's not the
way it was nature was understood for the vast bulk
of human history. So you're absolutely right there was a shift,
and that shift took place in the period in the
early modern period. So really in the period from the

(10:57):
Renaissance to the present you had a kind of division.
One path that was open to us and is still open,
is alchemical and you see that in the early modern
period with figures like Jakabuma and other mystics practitioners of
spiritual alchemy who provide a completely different way of understanding

(11:21):
and that ties in also with folk traditions concerning nature
and how to see nature and the spiritual dimensions of nature.
But then you had this second course which begins in
the same timeframe, and that includes the French Revolution, the
rejection of religion, the rejection of spirituality, the development of secularism,

(11:46):
and then later dialectical materialism, which is another name for Marxism,
and that in turn leads to where we are today,
and that includes of course capitalism as well, because capitalism
also sees both dialectical materialism and capitalism do see the

(12:09):
natural world as objects to be exploited and without having
any spiritual dimensions or spiritual aspects. And so how do
we get back to a more holistic and balanced way
to see to seeing and understanding who we are and
how we are in the world. And that's that's what

(12:31):
alchemy provides a map for doing, and that's what this
book is about.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Talk a little bit about some of the ancient traditions
you explore that utilize different types of spiritual alchemy that
may be able to help our modern collective understand.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Sure, the beginning of alchemy in the form that it
is developed in this book alchemical light work is in
the early Christian period, and so you had during that
period around say two hundred AD roughly, you had at

(13:16):
the same time what became conventional forms of Christianity today.
You had Gnosticism and Platonism and Hermetism, which is the
tradition of Hermes. And this tradition is part of that.
It comes out of the tradition of Hermes, but it

(13:39):
also exists in Christianity. It's a Christian tradition as well.
And so in the book, I draw on the Emerald Tablet,
which is an alchemical text attributed to Hermes, sometimes called
the thrice Great or the three times Great Hermes, because
of course there are three realms. Those three realms are spirit, soul,

(14:02):
and body in terms of the individual and nature and
humanity and spirit in terms of the external. So the
Emerald Tablet provides us with aphorisms, and each short sentence

(14:23):
single sentence, provides an epigraph for a chapter of the book.
But I also draw on this spiritual alchemical tradition that
developed in the early modern period, which is what I've
been taught, and so that's what I'm sharing with people
and figures that represent that include Jakabuma, the Great Mystic,

(14:46):
and then some people in his tradition, which include an
English physician named John Portage, Doctor John Portage, Dionysius Freyre
some really trusting people who clarified this path that's very
ancient for a modern form.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
I look at the spiritual understandings that are emerging in
our modern age, especially in the past few years, there
seems to be a re emergence of these gnostic beliefs
and understandings, although it does seem to be taken to
a very negative state at times. I think the new

(15:30):
understandings of narcissism are quite depressing at times, believing that
we're essentially in a prison planet and there's no real
escape because we're reincarnated to feed the arkans essentially. But
I don't really think that that's a good understanding of

(15:50):
the nature of our experience. Here you mentioned conventional Christianity.
This is another religion that has been infiltrated and inverted,
and modern Christianity, I believe, has a lot of complete
misunderstandings and inversions. Like I said, what is your understanding

(16:15):
of the nature of this experience as it relates to
spiritual beliefs like gnosticism and even Christianity, and how can
we look at those in a way that give us
a better picture of the human experience.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Well, in the book, I'm dealing with this particular hermetic
tradition that then is carried on in Christianity, and a
lot of my work is actually about the continuity of
mysticism of a spiritual path within Christianity, but also parallel

(16:55):
to it, because hermetism or hermeticism reappears in different forms.
It's it is not only hermetic in the sense of
belonging to antiquity. You have Christian hermatism, you have Islamic hermatism,
you have different forms of hermatism. Hermes reappears. And so

(17:21):
in answer to your question, I actually have a book
I wrote called American Gnosis, which is about neo gnosticism
and how gnostic forms of thought have reappeared in films,
in literature all over the place. And you're right, it
is a very potentially pessimistic worldview if you take if

(17:50):
one takes it as complete in itself without any possibility
of getting out. In other words, if it's seen, as
you say, as a prison planet, then that that's what
the Gnostics were about, and that's what we see in
neo gnosticism, this modern form of it. That's true. However,

(18:12):
that's not really what Narsissism itself was about. It was
about gnosis, which is liberation, and it's very similar to
what you see in Buddhism. Actually, Buddhism and Gnosticism historically
may have even been connected. There are some scholars who
think so, and it's very different than that kind of

(18:34):
interpretation that you do see in contemporary life. But because we
do potentially so give an example, So Mark Zuckerberg and
Facebook managed to create artificial reality and an artificial reality headset,
and it's ultimately convincing that is actually potentially a manifestation

(19:03):
really of neo gnostic thinking, because you have a demiurge,
you have a false virtual reality, you have the very
things that I talk about in American nosis and in
alchemical light work. But what alchemical light work does is very,
very different than that, because it's part of a tradition

(19:27):
that values the natural world and recognizes the spiritual dimensions
of ourselves in the natural world. And so there's a
completely different way of seeing things which is not pessimistic
at all. Ultimately it's optimistic.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Let's talk a little bit about the alchemical stages of
transformation that you write about. You also refer to it
as a spiritual map. Tell us a little bit about that,
and let's explore.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Sure, well, there's different aspects of it. I mentioned and
already the stages, the alchemical stages, which are the black,
the white, the yellow, which is an intervening stage sir trinitas,
or the golden, the yellowing or goldening you could say,
and then the red the rubato, and those stages form

(20:20):
sections of the book. And the book is about a
map for spiritual awakening that isn't tied to any particular
tradition necessarily, but in the book, in the course I
mentioned on Hiros Institute, it's actually primarily Christian. It comes

(20:45):
from the Christian theosophic tradition and it's the application of
that for the individual primarily. So the book is focused
on individual awakening, but it also includes some amazing alchemical
illustration which show the transformation of a couple, the King
and the queen, man and woman being transformed. And so

(21:09):
there's also a couple dimension, a male female dimension, which
actually some of the original texts about that were included
in a book called The Divine Couple. And then the
natural result of the couple beyond the couple includes community, friends,

(21:34):
the extension of the individual and couple into the group.
And so the book at the end discusses the possibility
of creating what you might call island cultures or cultures
of light, the development of a completely different way of

(21:56):
being in the world, which nonetheless draws on the same
things we have available to us today, but it's a
different orientation, and so the book points towards some examples
of that. So really the process is one of waking
up to a different way of seeing ourselves and each

(22:16):
other and the natural world.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Maybe you could give us brief synopsis of each of
those stages so the audience can have a little bit
better understanding of what each of those means.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Sure, well, the first part of the book includes a
chapter about letting go of our baggage, setting aside our baggage,
because we come burdened with a worldview that a set
of worldviews that we're not always even aware of because

(22:54):
it's so pervasive. Materialism propaganda, the pressures, social media, you know,
our own family issues, issues of the community, where we are,
all kinds of things that impinge on us. And so
part of the practice here is to learn to let

(23:16):
go of those things. So and also to be aware
of them, first of all, because in order to go
beyond these things, first you need to have some awareness
that they're there. And that's the dawning of the light.
That's the beginning of the light. And the practice here
is the invocation of light, which is the traditional practice

(23:40):
which goes back to hermetism and antiquity. I include in
the course a invocation to the light. That's ancient. It's
an ancient invocation to the light. And here light is spiritual,
it's a spiritual illumination which you see manifesting in different traditions.

(24:01):
And here Christianity can be understood as a mystery religion
or a religion of light, which is a very different
way than many people are familiar with. But it's there.
It's there. It doesn't this path does not require necessarily
that one be Christian. It's Christian because that's what I

(24:23):
was taught, that's what the practitioner that I've worked with,
that's what he is. But alchemy exists in Hinduism, it
exists in Buddhism, it exists in different religious traditions, And
so what we're talking about here is really a human practice,

(24:45):
and it's a practice that's inherent to us as human
beings in the natural world, in the way that we
already are. And so it's not importing something exotic or strange.
It's simply recognizing reality as it actually is.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
And it's extremely difficult to share those types of understandings
with the nature of our modern programming. The gnostic and
hermetic and alchemical teachings have been suppressed mainly because it

(25:24):
is something that benefits humanity. It is something that essentially
frees us from the programming and bondage of this matrix
system that we're born into. And the ruling class, the
parasitic ruling class, does not want that to occur, so

(25:47):
they will do everything in their power to suppress this,
make it seem like wu wo spiritual nonsense. And the
focus goes on the main Abrahamic religion. And if you
don't conform to the left or right paradigm, to the
mainstream religious understandings, then you become an outcast. And essentially

(26:11):
you're considered crazy for even looking at some of these things.
So essentially I can see how powerful and even dangerous
to the system these understandings can be.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Right well, in the book, what I discuss is and
what I point toward are ways of being in the
contemporary world but also outside it, outside creating communities that

(26:44):
are cultures of light, that are outside what you describe
as programming. And it's it's interesting, you know, today more
there's more publishing about these different esoteric traditions. It is
true there are academic works that do break into some

(27:07):
of this territory. But what they typically do, and I've
been directly attacked for this for what we're talking about
here today, what they typically do is and force a
materialistic and nonpractitioner perspective. So, for example, there's a well

(27:29):
known academic writer on alchemy who says that all alchemy
is physical and can be easily explained, and it's a
material phenomenon and so on, and so he's kind of
a debunker in a way. And there are other people
as well who are directly opposed within the academic system

(27:51):
to putting these kinds of things into practice, or to
even recognizing that. So it's really interesting that you have
a kind of Arkhan function within the academic world as well,
a sort of positional function happening to enforce a kind
of de facto materialism or kind of inquisitorial mindset, a

(28:14):
sort of quasi Christian secular inquisitor mindset. So this does exist.
But at the same time, we live in this amazing
period when we can talk about these things and we
can do it through technology. We can discuss things, and
people can organize themselves on their own basis, and those

(28:35):
are great, great freedoms that we have. So there are
positives within this, But you're absolutely right, much of this
has been we could say, overlooked and in some cases
directly suppressed. That is true. So we live in an
extraordinary time to be able to explore these things.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yes, another concept that many might have a misunderstanding about
is the term light work. You also talk about creating
cultures of light. Maybe expand a little bit on what
you're meaning by light work cultures of light. What does
this mean to you?

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Well, these are pre existing words and terms, but here
they're being brought into a deeper and pre existing tradition.
Alchemical traditions. So when you look at the alchemical traditions illustrations,
it's all about light. The cover of the book is

(29:42):
a famous alchemical illustration that shows the sun beaming over
a landscape from this extraordinary set of alchemical illustrations called
Splendor Solace, the Splendor of the Sun. And at the
end of of the Emerald tablet, which is very short,

(30:03):
at the very end, its concludes with, thus is the
operation of the Sun completed. So light is essential, It's
a central part of the alchemical tradition. And so what
this book does is take the term, pre existing term

(30:27):
light work and restore it to its natural place within
the alchemical tradition.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
When we're talking about the spiritual nature of our reality,
what lies beyond our normal perception. Would you say that
there is an ecosystem of intelligences that we can interact
with that exists just beyond human perception in these outer

(30:58):
spiritual realms, and they can be beneficial in this alchemical work.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Would you agree, well, there definitely are in European folk tradition,
Western European, Eastern European folk tradition, and in Asian traditions
like Taoism, Buddhism, certainly. I've been also a Buddhist for

(31:27):
many years. And in Vadriana and Tibetan Buddhism, there's a
recognition also of the existence of all kinds of non
physical beings in the world. So, for example, in traditional Tibet,
mountains have a conscious being, there's a spirit of a mountain,

(31:53):
there's spirits of water, there's spirits tied to the weather, trees,
all kinds of different natural phenomena. In Western European tradition,
the understanding is very similar actually, that there are spirits

(32:14):
of place, there are spirits of place. There's an ancient
Roman tradition of this, and before that Greek and so
the tradition, for example in Western Europe is to leave
a small offering for your local spirit, for leave a
little offering for the spirit that guards your home, and

(32:36):
so on. Maybe leave a little milk and a cookie,
which got carried on into Santa Claus and the idea
of leaving at least once a year you leave something
for Santa Claus, right, milk and cookies. Well, really that's
a hangover, a holdover of this very ancient tradition. So

(32:57):
these traditions have existed for thousands and thousands of years,
and we've just forgotten them, We've lost track. And so
part of the alchemical tradition is to recognize us. And
not all these beings are necessarily friendly. It's not, that's
not the tradition, but the tradition the traditions are in

(33:22):
general to at least recognize them and work with them
so that you don't have negative consequences.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
When we look at everything that has been unfolding for
just even the past few decades in our reality. Within
the past few years, a lot of folks have started
to become aware that there are powerful groups that attempt
to steer society in certain ways. Oftentimes, I wonder if

(33:55):
there are just as powerful groups, maybe secret societies some kind,
that not only have the knowledge of things that we're
discussing tonight and embrace the light as we were saying,
but are working behind the scenes to implement some of

(34:16):
these teachings into mass consciousness and going against the anti
human narratives that the other powerful groups are trying to present.
Do you think that there are positive secret societies that
are trying to bring new understandings.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
The Rosicrucians, the Brotherhood of the Rosie Cross, and I
talk a little bit about drawing Thomas Vaughan's writing about that.
Thomas Vaughan was a great alchemist and a practitioner, and
he wrote a little bit about that, so I included
some of that. But and that's been a pre existing
ideas that's been out out there and around since at

(35:01):
least the time of the Rosicrucians, the idea of a
secret brotherhood devoted to helping people awaken and so on.
But this book doesn't require a secret society or a
secret order. It's simply an overview of our situation where
we are in the contemporary world, and what we can

(35:25):
do regardless of what's happening around us, what's possible for us,
and how we can begin to see nature around us
in a different way, and how we can begin to flourish,
and how even communities can flourish. None of this requires
a secret you know, a secret group, or some kind

(35:45):
of other entities or something you know, projected necessarily, but
rather recognizing that we have the capacity that this can
be done. That just as the Amish don't require anything
other than they buy land in the same area and

(36:07):
they then pretty soon you got an Amish community. It's
really that simple. I will say though, that one of
the extraordinary things about our time is the existence of
Vajrayana Buddhism Tibatan Buddhism in exile, because those traditions have

(36:28):
continued unbroken in a kind of miraculous way. And so
that's definitely worth mentioning. In terms of what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
With all the events that have been unfolding in the
past few years, there does seem to be an awakening
of humanity and you essentially guide people how to navigate
our modern age through this alchemical transformation. What's your understanding
of what has been happening in the collective consciousness to

(37:03):
start to trigger this new awareness in the collective. I
know that there's a lot of chaos, but it does
seem that more people are coming online and becoming aware
of the spiritual nature of our reality than ever before.
And I'd love to get your thoughts on what could
be behind that.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Well, there's a lot of different things that one could
say about that. It is true that there is a
distinct opportunity right now which didn't exist before because of
the Internet, because of the kinds of communication that we have.

(37:47):
It has both a negative and a positive. So on
the negative side, you know, I was giving a workshop
on meditation practice to a group of undergraduates at the
university and there were a few couple hundred there, and
so we were talking about the statistics concerning college students

(38:08):
that they are highly anxious, they tend to be depressed,
suicide rates are higher than normal. And so we talked
about this in the group and I asked them why
why do you think that is in their consensus was
it was actually fostered or generated in large part by

(38:31):
social media and by their feeling that other people were
more successful doing better than them, And so then they've
created a false image of themselves in order to balance
that out. And then the friends create another false image,
even more distorted, and they all feel anxious at the
same time. And so my point here is that on

(38:56):
the one hand, the technology can be very positive, it
can be a vehicle for sharing things that previously couldn't
learn about. But at the same time, the exact same
technology can foster or generate this kind of anxiety and

(39:23):
all sorts of challenges. So how do we navigate through this?
And I think the book provides a map for us
in a way that is very helpful. And so that's
part of why I wrote the book.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Getting a little deeper into navigating our modern age of
AI and technology and psychological operations for those that are
just starting to become aware of things. And like you said,
there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of depression

(40:00):
because folks don't really know what to do with that
kind of deception whenever they first become aware of it. So,
without giving away too much in your book, what suggestions
would you give people that are just starting to become
aware of things like this?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Well, there are a couple of things that you can do.
The course that we set up on Hiros Institute. This
nonprofit is designed to fit with the book in order
to provide some exercises or practices for people that are
directly related to the book and to begin to work

(40:47):
through some of the things you're talking about. So I
don't get anything personally from that. Anything that goes to
it to the institute goes to the or the activities
of the institute. But I did spend a fair bit
of time creating this nonprofit course for that very reason,

(41:09):
in order to help provide a kind of inexpensive framework
for people to begin and to begin working with this
tradition however they, however, they feel most called to do it.
So although the primary practice within it is Christian and

(41:36):
drawing on it's the exact it's actually verbatim what this
friend of mine teaches it, and he and I have
worked together for years, and so it's directly reflecting his practice.
But at the same time, there are things to explore beyond,

(42:04):
you know, the course and the book. But I would
say this provides you with an overview and a kind
of also practice, you know, practical approach, and so that's
why I set it up the way I did, also
breaking through the materialistic deception that book, even though it

(42:27):
could be, as you say, initially difficult for somebody who's really,
you know, been inculcated in a kind of materialistic framework,
ultimately it's optimistic because you're having a whole panorama open
to you. Suddenly, a whole new way of seeing the

(42:48):
world is possible. You're not constricted, you're not stuck in
this kind of reactive and negative mode anymore. You can
see that much more is possible, and that a different
way of being as possible and that's and then that's
developed and uh uh, that's developed or expanded in the

(43:12):
Alchemical Light Work book. So those are a few remarks
in response to, you know, your question about somebody who's
just coming to these kinds of things for the first time, and.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
You said a lot of these teachings are based off
of conventional Christianity. What are your thoughts of the teachings
of Jesus Christ. Do you believe this was a real person,
was it just an archetype? Was it a combination of
different people? What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Well, essentially, there's I had mentioned that there's a Christianity
that's a mystery tradition, and in the Christianity as a
mystery tradition, and Christ is the revelation of light, and
so the invocation of Christ is the invocation of light,

(44:07):
and that ties back to and is not in conflict
with the ancient mysteries, in the ancient mysteries, and I
have a book about that actually, which explores the ancient
mystery tradition in terms of it's called Entering the Mysteries,

(44:29):
and it's about exactly this. In the ancient mystery tradition
before Christianity, people would go into a mystery rite, and
often it was at night. There would be a darkness,
there would be fear and anxiety. To sound familiar, there'd
be fear and anxiety and really a very challenging environment.

(44:52):
And then there's an illumination. There's the light that comes
in and they then in the ancient mystery were able
to see after death, and so they become initiates and
they're able to live in a different way after death.

(45:15):
And you see that actually in the inscriptions. For example,
the island of Samothrace Samothraki and Greece ancient mystery center.
They have many there are many archaeological remains that people
would leave a note or they leave something carved in

(45:36):
stone about the mysteries and about the mysteries as revealing
life after death, which is illumination. And what I'm saying
is that that tradition is also paralleled in Christianity, and
that tradition is a revelation of light. Christ does the

(45:58):
revelation of light in the hermetic tradition. Of course, Hermes
as the revealer of light. And so that's a different
way of understanding Christianity than than belief alone. We're not
talking about belief alone here, and that's what I was
alluding to with what you really could call confessional Christianity.

(46:21):
Confessional is you have to confess this is true. It's
a belief system you have to believe. Whereas here what
we're talking about is invoking light, the light of Christ,
in order to become more illumined, more illuminated. And this
is a Christian tradition, but it's also a hermetic tradition.

(46:44):
So that's what I would say an answer to your question,
actually from the point of view of this tradition.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
As it relates to what you wrote about in the book,
how does this envision an ideal future if we were
to embrace these teachings.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Well, the tradition is about a more balanced way of being.
The balance is between us, humans, nature and spirit. So
at the later in the book, I actually have an
image of a triketra, which is three pointed image, and

(47:29):
those are the three elements that need to be interwoven
in order for there to be a culture. A culture
is the union and flourishing of all three of those.
And so you see that as an example. In Shinto Japan,
you go to a Shinto shrine, what do you have
it's the natural world, it's the human world intersecting with it,

(47:53):
and it's the realm of the spirit, and those three
are all manifest and so that's an example of the
kind of culture that is possible. So the book is actually,
in part, pointing a head toward a future that's beyond

(48:14):
the immediate. It's pointing toward what's possible. I think we're
in a very traumatic and challenging and accelerating period, and
I think what you said about that is is true.
At the same time, on the other side of that

(48:35):
is some possibility for a very different way of being
in the world. And that's that's really what the book
is in envisioning. It's envisioning a way of being that
is in balance, that's interconnected between these three realms, and
that is much more difficult in a it's impossible in

(48:59):
a totally virtual reality where you don't have nature, and
you don't have the spirit, and you don't even have
the human So of course you're not gonna have these things.
But nonetheless, all these things continue to exist and they're
very natural to us as human beings. And so that's
what I would emphasize.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Are you optimistic about the future with the chaotic nature
of everything that is unfolding.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Ultimately, yes, because we have the inherent These are all
just inherently human elements that are inherently natural to us
as human beings. In other words, alchemy. The basic idea
of alchemy is that things went awry, but they can

(49:51):
be restored to their original primordial harmony. That's what the
Emerald Tablet is about. That's what the the different streams
of images like Splendor, Solas, or the series of images
that are reproduced in this book for the first time
they in a mass market book. They've never been available

(50:13):
before in this color series. And so they are all
about restoration of what is primordially there. And actually in
the book I incorporate this term primordialism, meaning what is
primordially there as are human inheritance. And so because it's

(50:36):
our natural human inheritance, it can't be despite the best
efforts of the bad guys. You could say, it can't
be extirpated because it's naturally there. And so that's what
alchemy tells us. That's its its starting point really, and

(50:57):
so yes, you have to in that context, you have
to be optimistic because we exist, nature exists, the realm
of the spirit exists. Therefore these things are possible.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Let's talk a little bit more about the insights you
offer as it relates to couples in relationships and even
small communities. This is something that is terribly lacking in
our modern reality. Relationships are falling apart. There's a lot

(51:30):
of toxicity and dysfunction in relationships in our modern age.
Talk a little bit about some of the concepts you're
writing about that can help people with relationships.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
That's a really perceptive question because that's absolutely pervasive as
a set of issues today. There's no question about that.
And so one thing that we intend to do as
a follow up to the course. The first course we

(52:08):
have on Hiris Institute is actually called Gathering Light, which
is a phrase that was not my own, but I
thought it was so beautiful as a phrase, gathering light.
Usually we think of gathering dark, you know, and that's
like the cliche, the gathering dark, and so we thought, well,

(52:31):
gathering Light would be, you know, a really beautiful title
for the course. But the second course will be on relationships.
That's what we envision and that's a central part of
the alchemical tradition because, for example, I mentioned Thomas Vaughan,

(52:54):
who was an alchemist, and he actually he and his
wife were alchemists together and work together in alchemical practice. Consciously,
there's a tradition of this, and so male female relationships
can be very a relationship can be very different than

(53:16):
we are often told in contemporary life or kind of
the view that's inculcated, which is one in which everything
seems to be falling apart, as you say, in society,
and men and women are separated ideologically and in all

(53:37):
different ways, and there's all kinds of deterioration happening, and
social challenges and marriage rate falling. Well, when people are
engaged in a shared practice and a shared transcendent point

(53:58):
of view, that changes. That changes is the nature of
the relationship. And so this is not inherent to alchemy
in itself. This is alchemy describing or referring to something
that's inherent in us as human beings that we need,
what transcends us as individuals in order to transcend ourselves,

(54:20):
and relationship is one aspect of doing that, and it's
an essential aspect in this tradition actually, which is one
in which men and women are understood as complementary separated
but able to come together and form a greater unity.

(54:45):
And so that's inherent in this alchemical tradition, and you
see it literally happen in these images, where in the
beginning you have a separate king and queen, they slowly
merge and then the final image is a reserme direct
to Christ coming from the tomb. And so the sequence

(55:05):
of images is not necessarily it's very mysterious and is
very profound. And what we're talking about is not a
it's it's not a shallow thing that we're talking about.
It's a very profound thing. And so that's part of
this tradition. It's inherent in it. And we're going to

(55:28):
create a course that helps amplify that and do that.
That's going to take a little while doing this. Doing
these kinds of things is really a major investment of
time actually.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
To close out, how important do you think spiritual practice is,
like meditation, prayer, stillness, breathing, How important are those two
Achieving this understanding and spiritual connection.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
Essential? It's essential, And that's true in the Buddhist tradition
for sure. Buddhism is centered on meditation practice, and there's
very clear texts that point you through stages of practice
and help you locate where you are in the overall picture.

(56:25):
And in the Western tradition you have alchemical images that
do that in alchemical texts, but they're they're often very
challenging to understand, and so it's hard to figure out
the symbolism. And in this book, what I'm doing is
bringing these things together so that people can see that

(56:49):
there is a map within the Western tradition as well.
It's not only Asian set of traditions, but you have
Platonism and Platonic mysticism, and you have alchemy in the West,
and so these provide analogus to what you see in Buddhism.

(57:10):
And it's essential. If you don't have inner practice, then
it's not possible to really transform and wake up. You
have to have that in order to have a process.
And really the alchemical work is about a process, which
is a can be understood in terms of a spiral,
where you're moving in a spiral upward and you come

(57:35):
back to the same place in the spiral, but it's
not the same place, and so it's not you're going
in a linear a linear movement from point A to
point B like we usually think that's how contemporary, our
contemporary thinking works, but there's a different way of understanding,

(57:56):
and spiral helps us understand this in a more in
a way that's more gentle to ourselves and to those
around us, to think of things in a spiral moving
upward rather than on simply a line from here to there.
If that makes.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Sense, This is excellent Arthur, to close out, Do you
have any closing thoughts? Is there anything new that you
are currently working on that you'd like to give us
a little preview of and also let the audience know
once again how they can find your work.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Sure, there are a couple of things. One of course,
I mentioned Hiros Institute, which is literally Hiros dot Institute
on the web. But also I have different books that
I brought out in the past. I have this book
on the Materialistic Deception. But I'm also working with my

(58:56):
friend Robert Foss on a sequel to a book we
did earlier called Conversations and Apocalyptic Times, which is a
kind of introduction to some of these themes we've been
talking about, and Alchemical light Work is an extension of that,
and we're thinking now about and working on a sequel

(59:18):
which goes very deeply into the practices, the alchemical practices,
and that is a long term project that will take
probably at least a couple of years to complete. But
alchemical light work is opening a door into this whole
world of practice that people may not have known even

(59:41):
existed before, a whole way of seeing the world, a
kind of map, and so I hope the map is
helpful to people. And especially in this kind of traumatic
period that we're in where everything is accelerating and falling
apart around us, is really helpful to me to have
something to realize that there is ancient Western tradition which

(01:00:08):
is also which also has analogs in Asian traditions, that
is a universal human set of possibilities. That's really helpful
for me. So I wanted to share that with people.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Yes, I agree, this is essential information to assist with
navigating these chaotic times. And Arthur, thank you again so
much for coming on. Definitely have to have you back on.
There's much more we can get into. And until next time, everyone,
have an excellent evening. We will talk again tomorrow. We'll
see y'all. DN. Hello friends. If you're looking to start

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Alchemical Lightwork, Navigating Dead Materialism, Spiritual Regeneration | Arthur Versluis

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Alchemical Lightwork, Navigating Dead Materialism, Spiritual Regeneration | Arthur Versluis