Alchemy and Medicine have always maintained a close relationship of contents. Both sciences, each one in its field, have dealt preferentially with Human Health even though their criteria were never coincident. This, of course, demands a reasonable and coherent explanation now that Spagyria, younger sister of Alchemy and hermetic science like her, begins to resurrect with increasing success in the circles of the Alternative Medicines of Europe.
While Medicine owes its name and its existence to the "Medes" or Persians, the health sciences derived from the Egyptian paradigm, the ancient country of Kemi or the "black land", developed the term "kémico" or its form Latinized "controversial" to be adjective
"Kemic sciences, epithet to which the Arabs would lend their article to become" al-kemic ", where the noun" alchemy "naturally comes from. Both terms, "medicine" and "alchemy", had in principle a common semantics and yet their budgets and pillars were always completely different and even radically opposed. While the Persian or "medical" paradigm opted, in absolute coherence with traditional Iranian dualism, for healing through the opposition of opposites (heat is removed with cold and cold with heat), the Egyptian paradigm or kémico, developed a system based on healing by what is also called sympathetic medicine, law of signatures and from the eighteenth century, homeopathy.
During the Middle Ages, both schools of thought survive and develop their methods in both the Christian and Muslim world, and it will be from the sixteenth century when in the Renaissance Europe the medical paradigm is finally adopted and as a Roman heritage ” officially recognized as a scientist, reducing the old "al kimiya" to the category of pseudo science, and what is worse is included in the index of cursed sciences.
The events of history have meant that today, the term "alchemy" is applied only to a quasi-mythical and legendary science, determined to transmute ignoble metals into gold and practically stripped of the whole dimension that it once had as "Health science" . We know, however, that as happened in the ancient times of Pharaonic Egypt, the Kemic paradigm enjoyed great predicament and the support of the public authorities during most of the Andalusian period. Indeed, one of the happiest historical moments for the old Alchemy was during the golden centuries of Islamic hegemony ... Logically, the search for Knowledge (maarifa) as a Quranic imperative, along with the tendency to Unitarianism (tawhid), one of The doctrinal characteristics of Islam, make up two powerful engines that were able to encourage the expansion of medieval Islam and that largely explain the collection of traditions and manuscripts that many of the caliphs imposed. Possibly, the doctrinal unitarism emanating from the Egyptian schools of thought of Hellenistic Alexandria, had to make Muslims fall in love, so that, not only did they protect these schools, but they quickly Islamized them by connecting them with other currents of thought, also survivors of the paradigm kémico and that they stayed alive in some places of the Middle East.
With the Renaissance, the old kémico paradigm, suffers the persecution of intolerance, the Moorish (hakim) kémicos who had formed in the schools and universities of al Andalus, especially in Granada, continued to practice their profession for a few more years after the conquest of the Nasrid city, but its science, already devoid of the legality of the Christian State, will be banned and discredited in most cases. Techniques as sophisticated as that of the seedlings or attractants, medicinal inks made according to the spagyric science and that characters and figures calculated with complicated techniques were used to write on paper, to be later discarded in water or, whey or wine, were banned and prosecuted for considering (as stated in several inquisitorial processes) that with said characters summoned Muhammad and the demons. This very sophisticated technique of the seedlings, ended up already distorted and sprovided with its original scientific rigor (keep in mind that it united in the same process the precision of the decimal dilutions, the microdoses and the wave concept in the way that Homeopathy and Radionics conceive it today) forming part of the arsenal of sorcerers and rural healers who, even today, write Christian prayers on a piece of paper for patients to swallow them in wine or water. Something similar happened with the “sahumerios” applied after the “hammam” or steam bath that were considered as suspects of being rituals of witchcraft and invocation to the devils, when in fact it was a magnificent route of application of the properties more volatile of certain medicinal plants.
The very manufacture of the remedies according to the techniques of fermentation and distillate after the capture of the Universal Spirit through the dew of the month of May, which was the operative base of the Spagyria, was in serious danger of being lost after the terrible onslaught of the intolerant ignorance. The fortunate intervention of a king, however, managed to save once again the hermetic tradition of exile and oblivion. Philip II in love with Alchemy and therefore his younger sister, Spagyria, achieved with the precious collaboration of Arias Montano, his librarian, not only recovering a large number of alchemical and espagyric works written in Arabic and in Hebrew and from the pillaged libraries of al-Andalus, but also known to be surrounded by alchemists and Moorish espagyrics with which he became the mystery of manufacturing of the ancient spagyric remedies in the no less mysterious preparation, of blessed medicinal liquors to whose careful manufacture friars were applied. How better could part of the Muslim kémic science be hidden, but between alcoholic beverages and monks?
The persecution of Spagyria in the rest of Europe, although it was apparently more discreet, did not cease to harass the most restless spirits of the Renaissance. Giovani Pico de la Mirándola, Láscaris, Alexander Sheton and, of course, the great Paracelsus, each suffered in his own way the attacks of institutional stupidity. Despite what modern biographies usually say, the true initiator of Paracelsus in the Kemic sciences, it was not the Abbe Tritemio, with whom he certainly studied in his youth, but Soliman Trismosin, an alchemist of Granada origin, like so many others banished in Istanbul It was precisely there, in the former Constantinople, where Paracelsus was initiated.
Nostradamus, the mysterious seer, also secretly studied kémic science in Andalusian books, books that certainly gave him the secret of two powerful plants, the "haunting harmel" and the magical "ajenuz"
The term "spagyria" to which we have been referring, was coined by Paracelsus himself in direct reference to the Greek words "spao" (separate) and "ageirein" (to gather) and leads us directly to the fundamental apothegem of the karmic paradigm and by both of all hermetic sciences: "solve et coagula", that is: dissolve and curdle, imperatives that define the two polar states of matter: Sulfur and Mercurius.
We could define Mercurius as the state of maximum dissolution to which the Sulfur tends, and this as the state of maximum density to which Mercurius tends. As can be guessed, both extreme poles of matter make up a dynamic whole.
A mysterious force that the alchemists call espiritus mundi universal baraka ruh or simply dynamis, inevitably pushes to the state sulphur, reached the maximum possible coagulation, towards dissolution, towards the gradual loss of all cohesion, towards Chaos. This entropy, however, is compensated by an opposite process that nests in the most intimate of the mercurial state and that behaves like the principle of coagulation.If we call the mercurial end Death, at the sulphurous end we will have to identify it with the birth, so that each of the two extremes presents in the most intimate of its nature, an irresistible love towards the opposite pole. It could be said without hurting the truth, that within the Mercurius dwells the germ of the sulfur and that in the heart of the sulfur is the first entity of the Mercurius, a universal law that explains the dynamics of the entire Creation and that in the case of human drama translates into the certainty that life and death are part of a unique and necessary process, of a cadence, of a dynamic symmetry imposed by the same Universal Spirit since the beginning of time.
The extreme states that we have just defined, are completed with a third element that Basilio Valentin gave the name of Sal . The saline state is by definition an intermediate state, product of the violent clash between the sulfur and the mercurius. Salt, in turn, has the property of temporarily stopping the dynamics of the Universal Spirit by seizing it in a sort of net or crystallized mesh. The phenomenon of crystallization was therefore, studied with special attention by spaghetics and alchemists, given that it represented a natural instrument capable of curbing the entropy It is therefore capable of extending physical life and, on the other hand, a way of manipulating highly subtle energy information and even of trapping the very same motor of the Universe in the proper network: the Spiritus Mundi.
The therapeutic systems developed from such a cosmogenesis, as it can easily be understood, differ radically from those to which our world has accustomed us. The concepts of Health, Sickness, Birth and Death, charge a very different semantics in the context of Spagyria and are inserted in a different scale of values. For the Spaniard, the fundamental thing is to establish the correct situation of the patient in the sulphur-mercurius vector, that is, in the coagula-solve vector more clearly expressed: in the birth-death vector. Science k The system establishes several methods and systems capable of determining that sulphur-mercurius state, that biological age that interests us and that will determine the active temperament of the patient. The observance of the hermetic laws, Astrology and other resources of the Spagyria, determine, in turn, the physical and mental pattern towards which one should tend in each case to Get the cure.
Knowing the spaghetist that the set of forces or modulations of the Universal Spirit acting on his patient is the same as that acting in every manifestation of Nature, will be applied immediately to use those same forces to make their remedy using the law of signatures and the application of sacred Algebra. A procedure that we call ritmification will adjust the dose and frequency of the remedy to the patient's biological fingerboard and to the convenient rhythm of the sun and the Moon. This adjustment to the rhythms of the Universe is of special importance in our science, both when applying a preparation and making it. Actually, the rhythmification is nothing but the conscious expression of the Symmetry, and therefore, the conscious alignment with the Nous or Order against the Chaos or entropic tendency. Exactly the same meaning has the ordination of sacred time regarding the position of the sun in the ritual prayers of Islam and in some feasts of the ancient Christian calendar. In this sense, we could say that to pray is to rhythmify the spirit of man, to order the soul and the will with the Nous and in front of the Chaos, so that, seen thus, to affirm the spiritual role and the priestly character of the spagyria as Theurgy, it makes full sense.
The development of this way of approaching Nature, in this way of redeeming one's own death by integrating it into the Solve et Coagula process, implies the application of a Science with Consciousness, far from the arrogance so characteristic of what Schools today and Universities
Although it may seem incredible, the thread of the tradition of authentic Spagyria, understood as the art of healing, has never been broken. His old unitarian philosophy that starts from a single state of health in the face of a single disease, is still in force in the practice of some, not many, certainly professionals, and again raises his head and emerges (not without difficulty) from the dark antros in the That had been confined. For a few years, the Sothis laboratory has become the heir of the Andalusian spagyric tradition and brings to light again, elaborated spagyric remedies as it was done in Islamic Granada. The therapeutic methods, the patient and artisanal elaboration of triacas, arcanes and magisteriums, the collection in May of the Dew loaded with universal spirit in the feet of Sierra Nevada, are now conjugated with the modern research instruments thus faithfully following the path that the avatars of fate they will stop dry five centuries ago.
The Sothis initiative was followed two years later by the Heliosar laboratory, which, at the hand of the German house Phinter at first, and independently lately, tries to resume the tradition of the paracelsic school as laboratories have been doing Spagyrists from Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
The old Spagyria, in short, in its various schools, all daughters, yes, of the same paradigm, begins to stretch and take a nature card in our country.
Almadrasa, the Andalusian school of Espagiria based in Granada and very close to the Sothis circle, is preparing to open its doors to the transmission of the old Science. The "Iberian Spagyric Guild", is constituted in San Sebastián as a professional association away from diplomas for university students, academic teachings and with the simple intention of establishing, as before, the nobility of the trade and the good work of the craftsman against the arrogance of the doctorate and facing the banality of the artist ..
Other schools have been giving courses and seminars of initiation to Espagiria in some Spanish cities, such is also the case of the so-called SEIS group (society of studies and spagyricas research) promoted by the Heliosar laboratory.
But not everything is roses in this recovered story, because as one might expect, our science will not be saved from the sad caterva of dark characters that from the burrows of mediocrity will come out as legion of false prophets to teach what they never knew, to deceive the good people with a thousand tricks and fallacies and in order to defile our Science with exotic impurities and sloppy slogans of eclectic slogans. We must be advised when discerning the true spagyric of the blower charlatan. In spite of everything, the paths are traced in our bull skin and if God allows it, the Tradition will be reconfigured with all its force. Everything will happen as it should.
Today's resurgence of the Kendemic-Andalusian paradigm from which Paracelsus himself drank, could not occur even in the environments of mediocrity and opportunistic visionarism to which we have just alluded, nor in the classrooms of the decadent Technical (which is not Science) petty bourgeois. How should the most sacred of Sciences be among the spoils of pride and madness of those who believe they can do without the One Lord?
No, our spagyria had to resurface with an artisan vocation, in the wise simplicity of the guilds and masters and not between diplomas and vainglories.
The old instruments come to light again after almost five hundred years of forced silence. Will there be any doubt? Other inquisitions, other obscure interests, other executioners with other disguises, and even will not be missing, we have already said, as happened in the past, who hide their fallacies behind the name of our Science driven by ambition, resentment or envy, but in one way or another, in times of hardship or abundance, the transmission of Hermes Science will never be broken, perhaps because its laws are written by fire in the hearts of men.
Abu Omar Yabir
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