The Alchemical Process
The word alchemy is derived from the words Al and chemia.
Al is an ancient word meaning ‘God’ in the sense of the ‘All’, the ‘Absolute’. As part of the word alchemy it means ‘divine’ or ‘universal’. The word was used in many ancient languages and cultures, including the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hebrew and Celtic. Later, the Hebrew form of the word came to be written as El, which in the Christian bible is translated as ‘God’. In Islam the word appears as Allah.
Chemia is from the Greek word khemia, which itself is derived from the ancient Egyptian word kemit, meaning ‘black earth’. This referred to the dark fertile silt deposited in the Nile valley after each annual inundation of the river, which made possible the whole cultivation and civilisation of that otherwise desert area of north Africa. The word also referred to the prima materia or ‘first matter’—the dark, formless ether (chaos), in which and out of which all form (cosmos) is born by means of the ‘Word’—the wisdom, will or law of God.
Our word chemistry is derived from chemia. Alchemy thus means ‘the universal or divine chemistry’, or ‘the chemistry of the universe’, or ‘the chemistry of God’. It refers to the fundamental process of life, and all its sub-processes, which secret is embodied in the Wheel of Life and Tree of Life archetypes. This is the process by which the primeval, formless ether becomes the four basic alchemical elements (earth, water, air and fire), which then interact with each other throughout successive cycles of time until a balance, then a harmony, then a beauty of expression is achieved. At the moment of joy or ecstacy that the beauty produces, the harmonious and beautiful life form (or that part of the life form which has become so) transmutes into a radiant and ethereal form of light, which is said to be immortal.
In other words, alchemy is the process by which darkness is turned to light, ignorance into knowledge, selfishness into love, melancholy into bliss, formlessness into perfect form, non-expression into full expression of the divine. The lit candle is a symbol of this.
The dual meaning of the word kemit or chemia is important. On the one hand it refers to the soil, a material or natural substance; on the other hand it refers to the ether or first matter, a spiritual substance. Alchemy is, above all, a science of both heaven and earth, spirit and matter, mind and body, immortality and mortality. The blending of the two in mystical marriage, as lover and beloved, is the whole purpose of alchemy, which is the purpose of life itself.
Each alchemical element has a geometric basis, described as the Platonic Solids: the tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water) and hexahedron or cube (earth). The ether or quintessence (i.e. the fifth element, light) has the dodecahedron as its geometric basis.
The alchemical elements have a wealth of meaning, ranging from the four basic physical states of solid, liquid, gaseous and flame, to the psychological states of fixed, fluid, airy and fiery, to the life process of impulse, desire, thought and action, and to the four worlds of existence—natural, psychological, spiritual and divine. The ether refers to all four blended and united as one.
© Peter Dawkins
