50040917 viii om
takingcare2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Take Care):
# Is alchemy the feeling of chemistry in the air between two persons?
# The type where people in the room, with the two energy-flowing
# individuals, can also feel the heat of their attraction.
conventionally that's called 'chemistry'. sometimes people
romanticize it or add something to its mystique by calling
it something more spiritual ('alchemy'), but this is uncommon.
# ...find out if there is a word that is assigned
# to this type of energy reaction.
traditionally 'alchemy' is the name given to transmutational
endeavours surrounding base metals (such as lead) or personal
aspects (one's unrefined character, or 'spirit') into some
presupposedly possible alternative.
twin traditions through spacetime have developed within the
Chinese, Persian and European (at least) strands of alchemy:
1) transmuting lead or some other less costly
metal into gold.
2) transmuting one's spirit into something
admirable ('golden') or durable ('immortal').
the first was all but abandoned with the arising of chemistry
and the typical feats that are supposed to have made their
respective alchemists into rich men. these seem to primarily
have been fictions, deceits, or instructional metaphors, and
have little to no historical basis behind them (the die-hards
of course hold out and still continue to achieve it anyway).
the second is usually misunderstood or misplaced, and those
who pur****t immortality as the aim have never shown examples
or the examples are said to go off into a fantastic realm to
live, alike to numerous afterlife survival motifs. these seem
primarily also to be fictions, but there may be some grain of
truth to their attempts to rarefy and enhance experience. that
is, while alive, certain mystical activities may add some kind
of aesthetic or attenuated quality to the lives of those who
engage them. from what we've been able to tell so far, this
might be a product of psychosocial predisposition and general
mental function (demonstrated as 'the powers of the mind' by
administering what is commonly called the 'placebo test' in
association with case trials, providing of a sugar pill or
something else known by itself to give no discernable effects
as supposed and for which the tests are being conducted).
usually the stories surrounding successful alchemists are long
ago and far away, though there are crafty modern exceptions to
this who ****eld their data carefully 'so as to avoid theft of
their formulae'. needless to say, no modern successes have been
satisfactorily duplicated so as to confirm their results. in
part this is one of the main problems with alchemy: some claim
that the personal nature of the formula (who one is, where one
is living, the timing, the conditions of weather, astronomy,
day of the week, one's religious purity, any number of other
causative factors are involved), so that repeats of successes
would be precluded or least extremely difficult at the least,
perhaps impossible outside very strange twin studies :>).
it has been one of my longstanding holdouts, given my general
scientific upbringing, to suppose that alchemy was a means of
rarefying and attenuating experience, and that 'immortality'
was actually experience of this attenuated type, effectively
*lengthening the subjective aspect of experience rather than
its objective duration*. I have no confirmations on this as
yet and most of the alchemists I've met or spoken with via
telecommunications do not share this perspective on their art.
I look forward to hearing from others whose opinions on
this topic are liable to be contentional and entertaining!
mu
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