Alchemy is Not Orthodox

In this day and age, one of the greatest temptations is to put one’s primary faith and trust in purely human ideas, treating them as superior to the ideas of God. This is where mistakes in science come from – understanding creation through honest, direct experience of it is the noble goal of what people call science, but the mistake that the proud human mind makes is to ignore God’s direct experience of his own creation, both in his own creation of it, and what he has done by becoming part of it. Mistakenly, people are led to believe that it is only possible to do “true science” by ignoring God.

This is the mistake that is mixed in with is called “modern science” – alongside a human body of knowledge, is the commitment to ignore God and His experience and knowledge of creation, and to successively invent myths to explain both what creation fundamentally is, what the purpose of humanity is, and what the history of the cosmos is. These commitments and myths, like evolution, alchemy, transhumanism, etc, aren’t scientific at all – they are not based on any sort of direct experience, but are philosophies, myths and religions in their own right. Alchemy is the spiritual grandmother of much of the developments modern chemistry, computing, and medicine, and the spiritual dimension of it aims at self-refinement, self-improvement, to the point of self-deification.

Alchemy is fundamentally based on hermeticism, a pantheistic occult tradition. The fundamental goal of alchemy is to free the “God in matter”, including your own body/soul, to spiritually “evolve” into a higher level of existence, by manipulating matter, which is a lesser refined form of spirit. This process of continual refinement and evolution to cause self-deification is automatic, mechanical, and depends exclusively on the alchemist’s knowledge – and so, becoming God is reserved exclusively for people with the intellectual talent and technical expertise to perform alchemy.

Orthodoxy is not pantheistic. Creation and God are distinct in nature- There is the divine nature of the Holy Trinity, and the created nature of everything else. All created nature is dependant on the Holy Trinity to exist.

Creation, being reliant on God for its existence, was originally created completely in harmony with God. Death, decay, entropy, corruption, disease, hunger, tiredness, none of these existed when God created the world.

Since it is impossible to construct any lie without relying on the truth, there is a truly sublime kernel of truth in the alchemical & hermetic worldview: The idea of “As above, so below”, the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm, the greater is necessarily reflected in the lesser, and there is a sympathy between what is greater and what is lesser. This is true of Adam – Adam, made in the image of God, created to be the head of creation, was all of creation’s microcosm. Fully incorrupt creation could not harm Adam, and all of the animals obeyed Adam. The source of the incorruption of creation is God – God being the source of life, truth, goodness, and beauty.

Genesis is historical. Before Adam’s sin, there was no corruption in the world. The goal of alchemy is to attempt to refine matter to transcend corruption, in the end product of the philosopher’s stone (which some take to be a magical material created by the alchemist, or a metaphor for the deification of the Alchemist). So, at some point in history, from the confessionally Orthodox view, there was literally *no need* for alchemy even in theory – there is no purpose to trying to transcend corruption that does not exist. The problem that alchemy is trying to solve has not yet come into existence, since death and corruption have not yet entered into creation..

What caused death & corruption to enter creation, was Adam’s disobedience to God – Adam’s disobedience to the source of all life, truth, goodness, and beauty. Not only disobedience, but a *refusal* to acknowledge the error of his disobedience and a refusal to repent of his wrongdoing. So, in betraying the very source of life, truth, goodness, and beauty, the opposite of these entered into Adam, and through Adam, entered into creation. This is the cause of corruption in creation. As above, so below.

Christ, in his incarnation of the Virgin Mary as a second Adam, is the second microcosm to Adam’s first microcosm – With his crucifixion, death, and resurrection, he has redeemed human nature, and through human nature redeemed creation – performing what the alchemists try to do in their alchemical “Great work” not by a show of technical expertise, but by the self-sacrifice of an eternal divine person, Himself, both in the self-sacrifice on the cross, and the self-sacrifice of his dignity as the immaterial God, to forever become created. Because of this self-sacrifice, and the union of human nature to Christ, every human being can now be redeemed, and creation through them – if only they fully accept Christ, and willingly become initiated into the mystery of the Incarnation & Resurrection, to take on the internal work to die to their old sinful self, and resurrect in Christ.

The Saints have, since Christ’s sending the Holy Spirit into the Church in Pentecost, have continually followed in this path of Christ for over 2000 years. Many of them were gifted intellectually and geniuses in their own right, but most of them were not. Intellect and technicality isn’t a prerequisite for deification – Love of God, and the striving for holiness is. It is the rejection of the corruption of evil, and a complete faith, trust, and love in God that opens up their nature and person to be redeemed through Christ, and for them to be walking recapitulations of the Gospel, to the point of clairvoyance and miracle-working.