Blavatsky Deciphers the Alchemical Writings

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 13 pages

From Lucifer of December 1889, reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings XII as footnotes to The Alchemists. John Ransom Bridge had contributed an essay defending the alchemists of the Middle Ages, quoting several of their writings; the symbolical expressions in those quotations drew comments from Blavatsky, and it is the comments rather than the essay that make the file useful. What she is doing throughout is translating the alchemists' colour language into the scheme of principles this section sets out.

The method shows in the first example. Quoting Eirenaeus Philalethes' Secrets Revealed of 1669 — that proceeding warily in this regimen one shall observe a certain citrine sweat upon the Body, and after that citrine vapour the Body below shall be tinctured of a violet colour with an obscure purple intermixed — she asks whether "thy Body below tinctured of a violet colour" does not rather refer to the Linga-sharira, which corresponds to violet as a compound of the red of Kama-rupa and the dark indigo-blue above it. The colour key she is using is the one given in Colours of the Inner Constitution of Man in batch 1, which makes that file the one to have open alongside this. The claim at the head states the whole transposition: that the stone, being lower manas, is born of the spirit which is higher manas, and that this is how the lead of personality is transformed into the gold of pure spirit.

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